Chapter 8: Ghosts

At the very edge of her vision, Yumi could have sworn that she saw a girl.

True that it was only a quick flash, and that when she turned her head, the street looked as empty as it had before, but for a moment she could distinctly see the shape of a high school student dashing past the corner. There hadn't been much time for detail, especially considering the dim light, but she was almost certain that she had seen the waving folds of that uniform—the Lillian uniform—flapping away in the wind.

In fact, the girl had kind of looked like herself.

Yumi put her face in her hands and sighed deeply, but she kept walking. It was nothing; just a mirage. Why would a Lillian Academy student be running around alone so late in the evening?

Then again, wasn't that what she was doing herself, albeit a bit more slowly and aimlessly? Immediately following her afternoon classes, she had rushed off the school grounds, her now daily habit of avoiding Sachiko kicking into full gear.

For a reason that she couldn't quite pinpoint, though, something inside of her resisted the notion of going home as well. She wasn't in the mood to sit on a bus or a train. She wanted to keep moving on her own power, as if there were an accumulated store of energy inside of her that needed to be exhausted. So instead, she meandered for a long time in the neighborhoods surrounding the hills, visiting a coffeehouse and then a few shops, and finally wandering around the park until the daylight started to grow thin.

And so she found herself here, shuffling along the empty side streets near Lillian, floating around like a ghost with no certain haunting place.

A ghost. Maybe that's what she had seen earlier.

When she finally gave in and slumped into a bench near the bus stop, her eyes seemed to immediately close on their own. She wasn't tired—she didn't feel much of anything, as all the walking had seemed to push her into this plane that was devoid of emotion—but her brain had been dancing around in a dreamy haze all day.

She took a deep breath. Everything seemed to become still. Even the sounds of the few cars that slipped by seemed to fade into the background of her senses. Is this what meditating feels like? she wondered. She had always been more of the praying type—talking to Maria-sama as opposed to listening to her. If I listened, though, she thought, what would she have to say? Would I even hear her through all the noise?

"Yumi."

Yumi let out a startled screech and jolted out of her seat. Her eyes snapped open.

The voice had come from behind her—it had been soft, probably not much more than a whisper, but it had nonetheless shaken her out of her daze much too suddenly. It was only after a second that she realized how familiar the voice had been. It was that same polite severity, that same inflection that made her name sound like a question.

She twisted her head around and felt her face immediately grow warm. It was Ogasawara Sachiko, of course.

Usually, her Onee-sama was quick to scold her whenever she freaked out like this, especially in public, but this time Sachiko didn't say anything. Instead, she merely looked at Yumi carefully, her hands clasped together in front of her, her posture impeccable as usual. She was leaning forward ever so slightly, as if she were in the midst of deciding whether to take another step towards her or not.

"Onee-sama," Yumi said softly.

There was a complicated expression on Sachiko's face, one that Yumi didn't quite understand. She could detect an odd serenity in Sachiko—a far-away look—but also a touch of uncertainty when their eyes met directly. "So, you're still calling me that after all," she said.

Yes, apparently she was. The title had just flowed out of her mouth, completely without any conscious thought. Without having to ponder it much, though, Yumi knew that she hadn't spoken mistakenly.

She stared at the pale woman who stood before her. She watched as a strong gust of wind blew against them and the locks of Sachiko's silky hair billowed like the streamers of a zig-zagging kite. Sachiko's body nearly buckled; it was subtle, but Yumi could see how she had to shuffle slightly with her feet and lean into the wind to keep from stumbling. She did it with such refinement, that she made it look almost as if it had been completely on purpose. Sachiko could make anything look like it was on purpose.

But Sachiko was so very, very fragile. Underneath the facade, Yumi knew that it was incredibly easy to destroy her emotionally, especially when it was someone that Sachiko cared about who was hurting her. In a lot of ways, Yumi was her biggest vulnerability. This was why Yumi had always tiptoed around Sachiko's eggshells very carefully, had always taken her position as imouto with a huge sense of responsibility.

She wasn't sure if she could take that burden much longer, though. Too many of the things that she wanted required hurting Sachiko.

"Look at me, Yumi." The voice was soft and insistent. It made Yumi realize that she had averted her eyes. "You may not want to face me now, and I don't blame you after what happened between us—but if we don't talk about this, then what will become of our soeurship?"

"So it's the soeur relationship that Onee-sama wants to save?" Yumi found herself saying. Even though she was older now and had grown more bold, she still felt a bit uncomfortable talking to Sachiko so plainly, not veiling her words in the veneer of roundabout politeness that she had tended to use before.

She knew it was better this way, though. Every milligram of politeness meant the sacrifice of a milligram of clarity.

She was a little surprised to see Sachiko shaking her head. "No, you're right, I am more than your Onee-sama," Sachiko said. "I don't know what I am to you exactly, but I don't think we can honestly say that we're merely soeurs. I don't even know if what we have has a definition, but I want to salvage the relationship between us—whatever that may be."

Yumi stared at her, completely taken off guard. What Sachiko said was entirely true—in fact, several of the relationships in Yumi's life hovered in a gray area like this—but she hadn't expected her to so openly acknowledge it. Where had this naked honesty come from all of a sudden? At first, she didn't know what to say in response.

Sachiko only smiled at her. "Let's take a walk, Yumi."

Though her feet were tired from all of her earlier wandering, she did not protest. She followed her Onee-sama down the walkway that lined the outside of the school, their steps quickly falling into their usual matching rhythm. It had been a long time since they had walked together like this, but Yumi found herself absorbed in the pattern easily, like she was picking up an old habit.

She pulled up beside Sachiko and looked up into her face. The bottom edge of the older woman's eyes were a bit puffy, she noticed, but otherwise her face seemed strangely relaxed in a way that was almost startling. It made Yumi realize then that Sachiko often carried a certain base degree of tension around the corners of her eyes and mouth—a tension that was conspicuously absent now.

"I've given in," Sachiko said all of a sudden, as if she were answering Yumi's unspoken question. "Whatever you decide that you want, Yumi, I accept it. It's not often I feel this way about anything, so take advantage of my mood. Soon enough I will slip back into my usual hysterics." When she turned to look back at Yumi, her eyes were alight with energy, with something like amusement.

Yumi was taken aback. She couldn't help but raise her eyebrows in surprise, which only seemed to make Sachiko's odd smile widen. Yumi had never seen anything quite like this on Sachiko's face before, even after years together.

"Perhaps a bit of Sei-sama has rubbed off on me."

Yumi came to a halt. "You spoke to Sei-sama?"

"Briefly," Sachiko replied, but she kept walking away from the school, and Yumi quickly began following again.

How strange, Yumi thought. Sachiko-sama and Sei-sama were always on good terms, but they were not particularly close, and they probably wouldn't even speak to each other at all if it weren't for the fact that Sei's best friend was Sachiko's Onee-sama.

"When did you see Sei-sama?" Yumi asked. And why? she thought, though she didn't voice this. She couldn't help but look over her shoulder on reflex and scan the streets a little for Sei's lanky figure. It struck her that she could sometimes feel Sei's presence if she concentrated hard enough. Maybe Yumi had called her to the area unconsciously somehow—or maybe it was just her imagination. At any rate, Satou Sei was nowhere to be found in the immediate vicinity.

"I was praying in the sanctuary and we ran into each other," Sachiko explained. "I suppose you could say that we had a heart-to-heart."

"What about?" Yumi had tried to keep her tone neutral, one with no expectation, but she had failed. She sounded nervous even to her own ears.

But Sachiko kept walking. They passed slowly by a row of convenience stores and a 100-yen shop. They turned a nearby corner and advanced along a street that paralleled the train tracks. They walked for so long in silence, that Yumi was finally sure that Sachiko must not have heard her question.

Then she answered: "We talked about a lot of things, Yumi. For the most part, though, we talked about me, about what I was hiding from myself—and from you." She stopped. Her heels slid lightly across the gravel on the side of the tracks as she turned to look at Yumi. Some of the tension was back on her face, her eyes were wider and a smattering of moisture in them gleamed very conspicuously in the moonlight.

Once again, Yumi was taken by surprise.

Sachiko seemed to steel herself for something. Her muscles flexed, and then it all came tumbling out: "I love you, Yumi," she said. "It's the kind of love that you may be unable to return, as I understand it, but I can't pretend that it isn't there. I can't simply hide behind social convention and hope that I can still reap the benefits of an honest relationship with you. I can't avoid conveying my feelings and then pretend somehow that you will receive what I have to express. It's not fair to you. I cannot make you suffer when I alone am the one who deserves this torment—it is I who is the coward."

Yumi stared at her. A few tears had finally spilled over onto Sachiko's cheeks and her hands clenched at her sides in a pair of tight fists. At first, she began averting her eyes from Yumi's gaze, but within a matter of a few seconds, she doubled back and seemingly forced herself to look straight into Yumi's eyes.

There was a question in her expression. She wanted Yumi to answer.

"Onee-sama…," Yumi began. She took a step towards the older woman, reaching out, but not quite touching her.

What was her answer? What did Yumi really want from her? If she was honest with herself, the answer was that she didn't want anything at all. She loved Sachiko just as she was, and could never ask anything of her that would ever make their relationship more satisfying. Whether they were soeurs or not, whether they had kissed or not, whether Yumi had carried unrequited romantic feelings around for years or not—it all seemed so small and insignificant in that moment. It was so unimportant in the face of...

What we have with each other, Yumi thought just then, is more important than anything we could possibly call it.

In fact, it was the same with anyone she had ever loved, romantically or not. It was the same with Touko, it was the same with Satou Sei-sama. There was no name for what she felt for Sachiko. She could probably stand there and try to come up with a million words for it, and still not a single one would fit.

She could try to put it into a box, to definitively call Sachiko her sister or her schoolmate or her lover, to draw a line so that then she could decide whether Sachiko had crossed it on that awkward day...but she couldn't. Every time she tried to make sense of it, to draw a boundary, she felt more detached, like she wasn't even experiencing this moment with Sachiko, like she was retreating into the realm of her fuzzy mind and watching the whole ordeal as if it were happening to someone else.

And she wanted desperately, more than anything, to experience Sachiko. As she stood there in a daze, she realized that the only thing that had ever brought her joy in their relationship was the opportunity to experience Sachiko directly—not to admire from afar, nor to condemn her, nor to think about her dreamily, but to see her right there in front of her, as she was, to smell her light perfume, to taste...

Oddly enough, an image burst into her mind suddenly, an image of her body pressed tightly against the lean frame of Sei-sama, of all people. Then, just as quickly, she felt the urge to run into Sachiko's arms. The two images seemed to melt together.

She held herself back.

What is this? Yumi thought to herself. This doesn't make any sense... Her face was burning.

But she was done trying to force things to make sense.

When she looked up and focused again on the vulnerable face that stared back at her, she realized that her chest had been welling up with a sensation that she couldn't understand. It was what she had felt the week before, when Sei had dropped her off at home. It wasn't simple happiness and it wasn't sadness, either—instead, it was just a swelling, a sensation of expansion with seemingly no meaning.

The tears came for her, too, and rather suddenly. They weren't as dignified as Sachiko's, they were accompanied by shudders that only seemed to alarm the woman in front of her. She waved her hand to allay Sachiko's concerns, and she tried to meet her eyes straight on.

When she was ready to speak, the first few syllables came out breathlessly. "Onee-sama, I want to...get to know you," Yumi said finally. "Outside of tradition, outside of convention. I want to get to know you again, this time without these barriers between us. I want to know who Onee-sama is; I want to know everything about you."

Yumi wasn't sure what happened first—if Sachiko had opened her arms, or if Yumi had dashed towards her—but they clasped against each other in a powerful embrace. She pressed her face to Sachiko's chest, her eyes closed so tightly that colored sparks burst in the darkness of her vision.

"You may not like what you learn about me," Sachiko whispered, her lips pressing lightly against Yumi's cheek.

"I don't care," Yumi said—and she meant it. "How could I say that I truly love Onee-sama if I don't love even the things that I dislike about her? What kind of love would that be?"

Sachiko took in a sharp breath and tightened the embrace.

The train was coming. Yumi could hear it, could feel the woosh of energy and air coming from far away. The crossing gates began to ding, and the warmth of Sachiko's body was suddenly absent, and the unpleasant sensation of Yumi's shoulder stretching nearly out of its socket quickly replaced it.

Sachiko yanked her by the arm, away from the tracks and towards the sidewalk. Yumi opened her eyes and found that she was once again standing close to her Onee-sama, surrounded in a sea of Sachiko's hair. Through the veil of the strands she finally noticed exactly where they were.

After all this time, they had somehow walked all the way to a train station. In her supreme state of distraction, she hadn't even realized where they had been going. She wondered if Sachiko had walked here on purpose.

Sachiko held her tightly by the wrist and looked into her eyes. "I accept this," she said. "I accept your reply as a gift from God. My second prayer has been answered. Let's go."

Before Yumi could even process what she had said, Sachiko led her up the steps towards the station. They made it to the platform just as the doors of the steel giant were swishing open.

Sachiko gave her another mysterious look and let go of her hand. "We have a lot to talk about, but it can wait until we've both calmed down." She turned towards the widening doors of the train. "I know that you usually take the bus to the M station and then go home from there, but something tells me that you have somewhere else to be tonight." When Yumi stared at her in surprise, Sachiko merely smiled and asked, "Am I wrong?"

Yumi shook her head. Obediently, she stepped over the crack between the platform and the train, and turned to face her Onee-sama. As the doors began to squeeze shut between them, Sachiko's smile turned a touch bittersweet.

"Do call me tomorrow. We can make plans then," she said to Yumi. "And say thank you to Sei-sama for me."

Then the rubber edges of the glass doors joined in their own squeaky embrace, and the train began to march forward into the night.

Yumi peered through the windows of the two doors that separated her rail car from the next. A pair of clear, light-colored eyes looked back at her. There was no hesitation, no awkwardness—only a steady gaze that did not waver for even a second after they had noticed each other. As always, the woman's face looked hard to read, almost inorganic in its solidness, like it was carved out of pale stone.

She wasn't sure who had spotted whom first. Yumi, whose train car was mostly empty, hadn't thought to look around until she was a few minutes into the ride, until she had realized that she only had a vague idea of where she was supposed to go. As she had wandered over to a station map on the wall, her eyes had quickly caught sight of that living statue. The statue had then turned immediately towards her.

Yumi thought that maybe neither of them had noticed the other first. It was Sachiko-sama who must have seen Sei-sama on the platform before she had nudged Yumi onto the train. It was Sachiko-sama who had seen them both and pushed them together.

Yumi couldn't help but be surprised by this realization. How had Sachiko known what Yumi wanted before Yumi had even thought of it herself?

Well, they were soeurs after all.

Satou Sei remained on the other side of the doors, unmoving. Though there were plenty of seats, she stood, staring at Yumi curiously, almost as one did towards an attractive stranger. Her right hand was wrapped around a grip bar overhead and her body seemed to hang from it loosely, lazily. In her other hand, a small school bag swung from side to side with the movements of the train. It was the only point on Sei's body that seemed a little tense; her knuckles were flexing noticeably against the handle of the bag.

Why won't she come? Yumi thought. It was rather strange. Sei was normally the one to sneak up on Yumi, to come up behind her before Yumi had even realized what was happening, to wrap her in a half-platonic, half-romantic, fully-shameless embrace.

Sei continued to simply look, her expression blank. Perhaps the emptiness was expectation; perhaps it was Yumi's turn to fill the space between them.

So she walked up to the juncture between the two cars and ran her hand against the button on the wall. The pair of doors between them swished open with a hiss. The two cars were held together at a joint, and Yumi almost stumbled as the train edged around a wide corner and the cars shifted, dancing coyly with each other.

When she managed to grab onto the inside wall and steady herself, she looked up to see that she was standing less than a meter from where Satou Sei regarded her with a questioning expression.

"You surprised me, Yumi-chan," she said. "It's not very often that you find me first." Her face broke into a smile.

Yumi smiled back. "Lately I've been finding you a lot, Sei-sama."

"That's true." Sei said nothing more after that, but she seemed like she was about to take a step towards Yumi. As she shifted her weight, the bag at her side bounced against her leg. For some strange reason, this made her look down quickly, a wince briefly flashing over her face, and then she leaned back and stood as she had before. The smile faded somewhat.

"What are you up to tonight, Sei-sama?" Yumi asked. "It's a bit late to be going home, isn't it?"

Sei replied with some amusement in her tone: "And what are you doing here, Yumi-chan? I thought you lived a bit further up the line. Actually, don't you usually take the bus home, anyway?"

"I was on my way to visit a friend's place." Yumi paused, watching Sei's expression carefully. "But now I don't think she's home."

"Oh?" But Sei seemed to get the point. Her smile widened into a small grin. "Inviting yourself over, I see. How presumptuous. Imagine what people would say if they knew a Lillian graduate could be so ill-mannered."

"Not only that, but I couldn't remember exactly where you had told me you lived, so I'm glad that I ran into you. This way I can invite myself over properly." Even though Yumi was throwing Sei an insolent smile, tipping her chin up towards Sei in a way that was completely improper when addressing a superior, there was a blush rising in her cheeks. She knew that it betrayed her still lingering lack of confidence. She also knew that Sei didn't care.

"I am going to your apartment tonight," Yumi declared. Somehow, she had managed to pronounce the words without stuttering.

"Is that so?" Sei asked her without any inflection that suggested a question. She finally took half a step towards Yumi and appeared to search her face for something. They stood close to each other, their eyes locked, the intimacy of their shared gaze unmistakably that of a pair of lovers. Yumi wondered if this was the sort of stare the preceded a kiss; at the same time, Sei's look came off as a slight bit aggressive, as if she were crouched over Yumi and poised to lash out at her.

Yumi opened herself up to it. She had no intention of resisting anything that Sei was about to do to her.

After a few seconds, though, nothing came of it. Yumi felt a bit self-conscious standing there all of a sudden, knowing that others outside of the empty car might be able to see, and that it was plainly obvious what was going on between them.

Still, she was satisfied on one level. She had finally been able grasp something about the connection that she had with Sei, something that was missing from what she had with most other people—including with Sachiko. There was a strange sort of violence between her and Sei that flavored their relationship. It expressed itself as an occasional sensation of pushing and pulling, this vague desire to have Sei manhandle her, then an odd feeling that she wanted to dig her nails into Sei's skin and fight her off. She had never felt anything like that with anyone else.

Things are different with her.

But what was it, exactly? They loved each other, of course, but there was something else there, an edge that had always made Yumi a bit cautious.

I want to have sex with Sei-sama. That's why it's different.

The thought came to her mind before she could attempt to suppress it. When she let the thought arise without resistance, though, she realized that it was stupid to run away from it. After all, why else had she decided to follow Sei home? Of course she wanted her. If it wasn't for the fact that Sei was a master in the subtle art of creating just the right amount of distance at just the right time, they would have crossed that line long ago.

If Sei had only asked, she would have said yes—maybe not during the first year that they had known each other, but not long after that she could have been easily convinced at any time. But Sei was never going to ask.

It was yet another odd moment of clarity. It was like what she had felt at the arcade, an instance where the world seemed to become slow and vivid.

Sei appeared to sense the shift in the air as well. She gazed at Yumi curiously. "You look...older tonight," she said. "Different. There's something different."

"I spoke to Onee-sama earlier," Yumi murmured, and finally she broke the stare, looking out at the world that quickly passed beside them.

Sei nodded. Yumi could see the outline of her reflection in the window. "I knew you had the courage, Yumi. I knew you would face her on your own eventually."

Yumi laughed sardonically. "Actually, she came up to me. I didn't have the energy to run away."

"When you're avoiding someone, you always have the energy to run, Yumi-chan; I've seen it," Sei said to her, grinning proudly. "I think you're more grown up than you think. You faced one of your greatest fears, and that deserves some praise. Give yourself more credit."

"Maybe some of that's true," Yumi said, looking back at Sei. "I did face a fear. I was always too scared to examine my relationship with Onee-sama closely. I was afraid it would...disappear if I looked directly at it, I think. Maybe like a mirage? I felt like, if we risked shaking the foundation of what it meant to be soeurs, then the idea of the whole soeur system would break down somehow...and a part of me would die with it—a part of her, too. I know it sounds dumb saying it out loud like this now."

Sei shook her head. "No, I understand."

Yumi smiled at her quietly for a moment, but then she let her face fall into a mock frown. "It wasn't all me, though. I know that you helped. Don't try to deny it. Onee-sama told me." It didn't actually bother her, though. In fact, as soon as Yumi had realized that Satou Sei's magic had been involved in the night's unfolding, Yumi's desire to see her had sparked with an unusual fervor—enough that even Sachiko had apparently sensed it.

"That's besides the point, isn't it?" Sei said with a chuckle. "But you're right. I'm sorry. I accidentally meddled in your affairs, and I'm not very good at it—unlike you experts from the Rosa Chinensis tribe. It was an amateur's mistake that you found out I was here."

"You leave traces everywhere, Sei-sama...or maybe I just know where to find the signs of your presence." Yumi lifted her hand to rub the side of her own arm bashfully. It hadn't been her intention to be so openly flirtatious, but then again, she was on a confidence streak that night, and she was ready to ride the wave until the end.

She wasn't yet sure what that end was exactly. Still, she wondered what kind of neighborhood Sei lived in, what her apartment looked like, what type of bedsheets she owned.

Sei had closed her eyes momentarily. Her fist seemed to grow tighter against the handle of the bag in her hand.

"That isn't yours, is it?" Yumi finally asked.

Sei opened her eyes. "No."

"It's Alice's, isn't it? I've seen her carrying it around before."

"You have a sharp eye, Yumi-chan." Sei smiled at her with approval—but then her face clouded over with something else. "Does it bother you?"

"Does what bother me?" Yumi said, but of course she already knew exactly what Sei was asking.

"That I'm with Alice—that I was with Alice, rather."

"Did something happen?" Yumi decided that this was better than answering, because the truth was that she didn't yet know how she felt about Sei and Alice being together.

"We, uh…." A tinge of pink actually showed up on Sei's face. It was barely noticeable, but it was enough to make Yumi stare at her in surprise.

"So that happened," Yumi muttered before she could censor herself. She looked away, a bit embarrassed. She knew that it was no threat to what she had with Sei—she could never imagine being possessive of her the way she had been with Sachiko; even just the thought was laughable—but she would be lying if she told herself that it didn't make her feel a bit uncomfortable to learn this piece of information.

Especially since she was on a train headed for Sei's apartment in the middle of the night with not exactly the most innocent of intentions herself. Wouldn't it be weird to sleep with Sei immediately after Sei had been with another girl? Should she ask her to shower first?

Yumi wanted to laugh. The situation was just so ridiculous. The most absurd part of it was that, no matter how much she examined herself for a trace of anger, for a trace of offendedness, she found absolutely none. Try as she might, she couldn't bring herself to be outraged or to feel any blow to her ego, even though some small, surface part of her felt like she should. It was only normal, right?

She couldn't even bring herself to find Sei's behavior unacceptable. Actually, to her mild horror, she discovered that it even made her feel a little more attracted to Sei if she was perfectly honest with herself.

Sei stared at her with a touch of worry. "No, we didn't do that." Then she paused. "Well, maybe we did. Maybe she did. I don't really know, to be honest. It was all...over a lot faster than I'm used to. Actually, there were a lot of things about it that I wasn't used to. Maybe it was the same for her. I think I scared her." An uneasy look had returned to Sei's face. "She ran off. I didn't chase her."

When Yumi looked more closely at the bag in Sei's hand, she finally noticed that it wasn't zipped all the way. The tips of a pair of shoes poked out of the open space, and she thought that she could see some fabric crammed in there as well. They appeared to be male clothes.

"She ran off naked?" Yumi asked, totally confused.

Sei shook her head and let out a long sigh. "Maybe naked would have been better, considering what she was wearing."

"Why didn't you chase her, then?" She was asking earnestly.

Sei gave Yumi a strange look for a moment, but soon her expression softened into a pensive smile. "I've only ever chased one girl, Yumi-chan. Once was enough."

Yumi noticed the pain on Sei's face for the first time. She felt a little guilty suddenly. She had been so absorbed in her own newfound feelings, in the liberation that she felt after facing Sachiko, in the realization that she didn't have to confine her desires anymore, that she had missed that look of quiet suffering in Sei's eyes.

Without thinking, she reached out and covered Sei's left hand with her own. "I don't have to go home with you. If you'd rather be alone, I understand."

Sei studied her face for a long time—and then the bittersweet smile shifted into something else, something that Yumi once again could not read. "I've only ever chased one girl," Sei murmured again. She loosened her grip suddenly and the bag dropped with a thud against the floor of the train. She took Yumi's hand and brought it to her lips. "But you're not running, are you? In fact, you approached me bravely. So of course I'll give you what you want."

Before Yumi could react, Sei had pulled her by the arm and clasped her in a violent embrace. Yumi took a hard, sharp breath against Sei's chest, inhaling every trace of her essence, digging her fingers into the fabric of Sei's shirt. At first, she couldn't make sense of the feeling of overwhelming frustration that suddenly filled her; it was like she couldn't get close enough, couldn't press her body deeply enough against Sei's elegant frame.

But Sei seemed to know. She pulled back a bit, so that just the smallest crack of space grew between them. Then she leaned down and pressed her lips against Yumi's.

Yumi could hardly breathe. The feeling, the taste of Sei's slightly open mouth filled her with a sensation that both catered to some unspeakable hunger inside of her, and yet left her burning for something more, something deeper. She felt intense pleasure from the touch of Sei's soft skin, and at the same time felt annoyance that such a barrier as skin existed in the first place, when she wanted to be closer, when she wanted Sei to touch some place deep within her.

The nearly empty rail car barreled down the tracks. Inside, the ghostly silhouette of a couple locked in a kiss, their passion shamelessly open for the outside world to watch, sped along with the humming train.

A/N:

Yep, so I updated the description, since I think we've moved far beyond "brief suggestions" of Sei/Yumi at this point, haha. Sometimes the characters just do what they want, even when you don't necessarily plan it. Thanks a lot for reading, and as always let me know what you think if you've made it this far!