RECORDING
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kotatsu Complications
Yui gasped, hesitating on the creaky rowan branch. This neighborhood, unlike her own, had a very old-fashioned quality to it. The Taika Reformation far behind this tree which the guitarist now crouched in, it groaned at her gentlest movements. A plume of air burst from her mouth as she exhaled in relief, and continued climbing. Above her, the stars trailed on their set paths, the only steady things in a universe of instability.
Yui knew this was foolhardy, even for herself. The danger aside, people just didn't show up outside each other's windows in the middle of the night. But Yui needed to see Azusa, to talk to her. They hadn't seen each other all day.
After all this, I hope she's awake, she thought as another branch threatened to drop her into the Nakanos' front yard.
Fortunately, Azusa was awake. A soft, incandescent light glowed from her window, revealing the kouhai seated at her kotatsu, her nose in a book. Yui hissed in sympathetic pain upon viewing the deep purple bruise that blotted her face. Despite that, Azusa's eyes seemed vibrant, possibly in response to the events transpiring in her book.
Yui shinnied farther along the branch, pausing with every creak. Then she slowly extended her right hand, the bough protesting the sudden shift of weight, and rapped it against the window. Azusa jumped, her book flying out of her small hands. A look of terror ruled her face as she looked up, only to give way to curiosity when she saw her girlfriend clinging to the untrustworthy tree. Slowly pulling herself from the kotatsu's warmth, she made her way to the window, which she unlatched and threw open.
"You're not gonna read me a poem, are you?" she joked, suppressing shivers.
Yui, who had been shivering since she left her house, took the joke in earnest. "I'm not much of a poet. Sorries."
"No. I mean, in romantic novels they always…Oh, never mind." Azusa sighed. "C'mon in." She put her hand out to help Yui into her room. Once her girlfriend was in she pulled her window shut. Raising an eyebrow, the kouhai stared at the chipped paint on the frame, thinking that she hadn't opened that window since September.
Practically paralyzing shivers stiffened Yui's form as she took a few rigid steps further into her girlfriend's bedroom. Her fingers were strawberry-red and fixed in an uncomfortable, unbending position on her hands. When she exhaled on them it felt so good that it went around the bend and hurt.
Is it really that cold out? In early November? Azusa touched her chilly window with the tips of her fingers , then suddenly recalled Yui's sensitivity to things hot and cold.
"Okay, get under the kotatsu," she ordered in a whisper. "You look like you're gonna die."
Yui needed no second bidding. She shoved her legs under the table and pulled the blanket up to her chest. Pretty soon the shivers ebbed away until they were nothing but a knot of tension in the senpai's lower back; even that melted away in the kotatsu's welcoming warmth.
Azusa wordlessly joined her, seating herself so close to Yui that their legs touched, their hips. She felt so soft and gentle to the older girl, yet so warm. Azusa's hip sent a sharp but pleasant tingle up Yui's side.
"I didn't want you to come," the younger girl whispered, leaning her head against Yui's shoulder. Her obsidian hair was down and rippled sideways along her back with her head, like liquid onyx. Her hand found Yui's under the kotatsu. "But I'm glad you did."
Smiling, the senpai looked down at her girlfriend. In Azusa's garnet eyes Yui saw an uncharacteristic and copious amount of tenderness swelling, like gentle waves in a glass of red wine. She remembered the kouhai last night: kissing and nuzzling Yui with more enthusiasm to beat the band; standing in the porch light, eager but afraid to say what was plain as day in her eyes now.
"Oh, Azu-nyan," Yui murmured, tilting her head towards the kouhai's for a kiss.
Azusa tilted her head away. So Yui tilted her head the other way, but still the younger girl avoided her lips.
"Azu-nyaaan, not this agaaaaiiin," the senpai whined, bringing her arms around Azusa's waist to hold her in place. "We're in private. No one's watching."
"Keep your voice down!" Azusa hissed, tilting her face away from Yui's at the same time. "It's not that I don't want to. It's just that it hurts."
Yui stopped pursuing Azusa's lips long enough to really consider the bruise on her face. A dark magenta stain seeped and spread along the younger girl's jaw, constantly swirling, never still, like a painful Rorschach blot. The senpai shivered. What in the world did they do to her? Azusa's pretty face, tarnished, discolored, and lopsided. And how it must have hurt her! Yui's eyebrows lowered, darkening her visage in its own respect, as she considered finding her girlfriend's oral surgeon and confronting him. But…what if he goes and bruises me? Yui looked once more at the contusion and discarded that idea.
Instead she brought a hand to Azusa's shoulder and planted a heavy kiss upon her unbruised cheek. The kouhai flinched, as if expecting pain, and her copper eyes snapped open when none came. It occurred to her that never had she ever been kissed on the cheek.
"S-senpai," Azusa gasped. Cold air brushed the wetness upon her face, yet warm blood suffused her cheeks, bringing out the rufous qualities of her bruise. She dipped her head demurely, peering at Yui from under long eyelashes, and grasped her arm. "I…I have something I need to say to you."
"I do, too," the senpai said in an unusually serious voice. Surprised, Azusa looked up to find her normally cheery girlfriend frowning with a sort of grave sorrow in her eyes. "You go first, though."
The kouhai swallowed, more worried about what Yui could have to say than she had to. "Um…Well, I've wanted to say it for a…long time now." Every second crawled by, as if the two of them were co-starring in that Urashima Taro fairytale, and Azusa's jaw began to ache on its own accord. "And I've certainly felt this way for even longer…Oh, good grief," she gasped, realizing that she hadn't breathed at all for the past minute. Was this going to be Halloween, redux?
"I meant to tell you when we were watching Beowulf the movie, but…" Azusa paused as dull pain throbbed on the right side of her face. Forcing herself to inhale, she continued in a rush, "…but it's hard, y'know?" She looked up at Yui with solid, intense eyes. "I've never felt this way before."
The throbbing intensified, almost blasting the poor girl's entire head with agony in tandem with the volcanic pounding of her heart. Azusa now felt like she could understand the figure of speech: "Like ripping off a Band-Aid."
"I tried to tell you last night, but something just…" Her eyes screwed tight from an overload of emotional distraught and physical anguish, and Azusa let her head fall forward against Yui's chest. Her slight frame trembled. For sure she was breathing, but the heavy breaths the senpai heard from the kouhai weren't dry, but wet.
"I'm sorry," Azusa choked. She took a few slow breaths to calm herself, but it did naught. "I'm really so immature, aren't I?" she sobbed shamefully. Her shaking lessened momentarily as she felt Yui's arms come around her shoulders. "I mean…What I mean is…I don't know. I just talk and yell about how childish you are, and I can't even…" I can't even talk about saying 'I love you.' How screwed up is that?
The conversation there paused for more than a few minutes, the silence only broken by the kouhai's muffled sobs. Azusa could feel Yui's palm pressed firmly on her back, rubbing, stirring the cotton of her shirt against her skin. The elder girl could feel her own breath struggling past the iron lump in her throat. Azusa didn't cry much, Yui knew, despite the magnitude of stress weighing on her. And now, after all this time, Yui understood her stressor, her desire to love and know that it was wrong.
"Anyways," Azusa murmured at length, once her voice was steady enough, "I'm tired of being that way. You deserve better than that."
Yui shook her head, silently denying this. 'That way' is the Azu-nyan I fell for. She would have her girlfriend no other way.
The kouhai slowly lifted her head off Yui with a shuddering sigh. Her brain had exhausted its share of pain, thereby numbing the pounding in her head. Drying her eyes, she decided to get on with what she was saying, no matter how insufferable it was for her. Because this is for Yui-senpai. It's no longer just about me. There really was no right time to say this, no right place or right girl. Sometimes you just have to say what's in your heart.
"Yui…I love you."
She glanced aside, face reddening, letting it for the moment be about her again. Her breath caught in her parched, drug-flavored throat. She gulped a couple times, her racing heart protesting with a few nauseating palpitations. Her head was spinning. She dearly hoped she wouldn't vomit — that was the last thing she needed after this root canal. "That's what I wanted to say," she chokingly concluded, forcing her gaze forward.
She hardly had time to see the look on Yui's face, for the senpai threw herself face-forward against Azusa's chest. The kouhai inadvertently yelped, unable to check if either of her parents had heard. Yui had her pinned to the floor, her face mashed against her girlfriend's in a ferociously affectionate nuzzle. A joyous whimper vibrated her throat lightly. "Azu-nyan, I love you, too!" she burst ardently, not caring who heard. People could say what they wanted about Yui and Azusa and lesbians in general, but they could not stop them from loving each other.
"Ahh! My face!" Azusa began ranting in a rough undertone: "Keep it down! You want my parents to find you here? And stop that! You're crushing my face and it hurts!"
"Gomen, gomen," Yui giggled, pulling her face away. She remained half- on top of Azusa, running a caressing hand along her bare forearm, her other hand supporting her weight. She's still the same Azu-nyan, she thought warmly, thumbing her girlfriend's nose. The kouhai stared up at her through smoldering, hooded eyes, her silky ivory hair splayed about underneath her. The rubedity of her eyes made her glowing passions burn all the more hotly within them.
Even so, Azusa's heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her neck and wrists. All of Yui's parts and places sunk into hers — so light, slight, and gentle, and yet so sultry. Either way, it was feminine in a way that made Azusa feel feminine in the most indecent and absurd ways. Here they were, alone, in the middle of the night. Anything could happen.
"You always blush like crazy," Yui commented with another chuckle. "It's cute." If one half of her girlfriend's blushing face wasn't bruised the senpai would have kissed her with enough tenderness to suffuse the entire bedroom with the warmth of love.
"Yeah, well…" Azusa's breath snagged in her throat once more like a wind-blown plastic bag on a tree branch, and the concupiscible flames licking her chest and cheeks and ears felt a lot less pleasant. She urgently sat up, lightly wrestling Yui off in the process. "We shouldn't be laying here like this."
Yui cocked her head. "Why not?"
The younger girl shuddered, preferring not to say why not. Instead she changed the subject: "What was it you had to tell me?" It must have been totally dire to impart, if the somber expression on Yui's face was anything to judge by.
And that cheerless look returned to the brunette's normally vibrant features, paling them like a lightbulb that has been switched off. "…It's nothing," she mumbled, her chestnut eyes focused on her hands clasped in her lap.
"C'mon, Yui." Azusa tilted her head so her copper eyes met her girlfriend's. "It's not like you to be this secretive."
The elder guitarist sighed. "I've just been thinking today…"
Azusa nodded, prompting Yui to continue. But the senpai had fallen silent once more and showed no obvious signs of going on. The kougai prodded, "What were you thinking about?"
"You…" Yui's voice trailed off uncertainly, uptilting a bit at the end, as if she didn't know how to finish the sentence. She took another pensive but brief pause. Shaking her head, she said, "I don't know how to say it…"
Azusa sunk into a thoughtfulness of her own. Her small head dipped until her chin was tapping her collarbone. She understood what it was like, not knowing how to say things. She just never expected this sort of reticence from Yui. That's the thing about her, the raven-haired kouhai thought fondly, reaching to touch her girlfriend's elbow. We could live to be a thousand years old, and she could still surprise me. "Just say what's in your heart," she whispered, giving the advice that helped her say what she needed to.
"I was thinking about why you couldn't outright say 'I love you.'" Yui looked up at Azusa, and her eyes were soft, gentle. "You told me it was because of your age, but…I dunno…I don't think that's all why."
The kouhai gulped. So I was right before, she thought dreadfully. She was angry.
"Y-Yui-senpai," she blurted with alarming panic in her voice, "when I say 'I love you,' I mean it. I really do."
Yui lowered her head so her brune bangs shadowed her eyes, and her silence stretched further.
Azusa squeezed her elbow. "Yui…"
From under the shadow created by the senpai's hair sounded a light snuffle. Yui looked up, revealing enormous iridescent tears that sprouted from her eyes and rolled unchecked down her cheeks. "That's the thing…Azu-nyan," she sniffled, vainly arming away the tears. "I know that even…despite everything you have to worry about…you still love me."
The kouhai released her elbow out of confusion. "Eh?"
"Worrying about…what e-everyone thinks of us…Our classmates, your parents," Yui clarified amid hoarse sobs. Her upper lip glistened with mucus. "It never occurred to me, but…" She knew she wasn't making a bit of sense. She didn't have to: Azusa had told her to say what was in her heart, and that was what she was doing. "What really gets me is…I feel like…it's not just for yourself that you worry. It's like you worry for me."
And so the scatter-brained third year had hit the mark with such simplicity that Azusa couldn't deny it. It was true, after all. A blemish on her reputation was one thing, but anyone who wanted to hurt Yui with a homophobic slur would have Azusa to answer to. If the younger girl could take those slurs for Yui like bullets shot from a gun, if in that case the older guitarist could not get hurt, she would do that. Willingly. She owed it to Yui as a bandmate, junior, and above all her girlfriend. Unfortunately, when it came to defending one's same-sex other, it was hardly like that.
Azusa collected a handful of tissues from the box atop the kotatsu and patted away the tears and snot. "Well," she whispered, realizing with a jolt that her father at least might be able to hear their crying. Mr. Nakano favored reading away the late-night hours whilst Mitsuki and Azusa snoozed contentedly, if logs are contented. "What kind of a person would I be if I didn't worry about you now and then?"
Yui mulled that over. Her girlfriend worried so much, though, about an innumerable amount of things. Having Azusa worry about her was really like being part of her entity. The brunette could only wonder at the love between them, where it could go. That just one short year ago — heck, a week and a half ago — they had just been plain old Hirasawa Yui and Nakano Azusa. Who would they be a month later?
"Ricchan and Mio-chan talked with me," she said after she had stopped crying, "about the whole homophobia thing." She shook her head in amazement. "Honestly, it never occurred to me that people had to worry about such things, but I guess they do. Ricchan and Mio-chan, Mugi-chan and Sawa-chan-sensei, Jun-chan…"
Azusa looked at her sharply. "Jun?" She leaned forward frantically. "Jun-chan likes somebody?"
Yui grinned, eager to tell the kouhai all about this. Then her face fell and, fidgeting, she groaned, "Ohhh. This is why Ui gets mad at me sometimes…"
"Then you probably shouldn't say it," Azusa grumbled.
A soft but startling knock rapped from the other side of the bedroom door and, terrified, the kouhai shoved Yui under the kotatsu, hissing, "Hide and be quiet!"
"Azusa…?" her father called, his voice near yet muffled.
"Yeah, come in," Azusa yelled in a too-high-pitched voice. She tried to ignore Yui squirming and thrashing against her legs.
Hikaru quietly opened the door and stepped inside. He had a peculiar look on his face. "What are you doing up?"
"I just…woke up about an hour ago and I was wide awake," the kouhai said truthfully, shifting to make room for her girlfriend under the kotatsu.
If earlier it had been too freezing for Yui to breathe, now she was having the opposite problem. The kotatsu's stifling heat was like a great, hot hand placed over her mouth and nose, as well as in her throat and lungs. Every breath she took was slow and labored. What made matters worse was that she was still wearing her microfleece hoodie. Sweat stains pooled under her arms and in the small of her back, permeating the kotatsu's underside with a muggy salty smell. If only she had room to comfortably and quietly take off the hoodie.
"Who were you talking to?" Hikaru asked.
"Talking to…?" Azusa's garnet eyes were wide, shiny with fright, and darted about in search of answers. "I was on the phone…with…somebody."
Mr. Nakano's slanted, hooded eyes strayed to her daughter's cell phone on the kotatsu near her hand. His eyebrows knitted and he rubbed his stubble. Who would she be talking to so late at night? He had to hand it to his wife: this sort of thing, plus Azusa's defensiveness, supported the boyfriend theory.
'Call me tonight' used to be code for 'Let's have phone sex' when I was in high school? I wonder if it still is? Now that that thought had wormed its way into Hikaru's brain and settled there he noticed Azusa's face was a bit ruddier than usual, the way Mitsuki's was that afternoon right after she blew her loa—
"No!" he cried, his face bright red, and he turned away and pulled at his hair, one leg kicked up behind him frantically. Horrifying shivers — he didn't know if they stemmed from disgust or pleasure — ran up and down his body. "A man cannot have those thoughts about his daughter! Bad Hikaru! BAD HIKARU!"
"Um, Dad…? Are you going to be okay?"
Sighing, Hikaru slumped his shoulders and forced himself to look at Azusa. His face was exhausted and sober, frown lines attaching his nose to the corners of his mouth. Any father should protect his daughter from the impure wills of horny teenage boys, right? Yet why should I force my agenda on a girl who might go to Tokyo U next year?
His eyes suddenly snapped open. "Hey!" he said, and he eagerly rushed forward to seat himself under the kotatsu across from Azusa. "Why didn't you tell me you were trying to get into Tokyo U?"
Azusa squinted. "What?"
Yui had gasped in terror when she saw Hikaru's legs suddenly appear under the kotatsu. If she made one false move, he would find her. And as deep the trouble Yui knew she would get into with him was, she also knew her girlfriend would get into far worse trouble. Now it was her turn to worry about Azusa, whom she scooched closer to in an attempt to avoid her father. Damn men's long legs, for Yui had to go so far away her head came too close to Azusa's…
"Some friends of yours came by this afternoon," Hikaru said, beaming, "and one of them — some funny gal with a headband — she's helping you get into Tokyo U, right?"
"Ritsu-senpai…?" Azusa murmured, edging farther back so Yui's head wasn't so close to her see-you-next-Tuesday. So she lied to my parents, eh? she thought with a grunt. Ritsu could get famous for how frequently she lied and how bad she was at it. She had Dad fooled, though. And who am I to criticize when I just lied to him myself? Deciding maybe at the time the drummer had a good reason for lying, Azusa played along with: "Eheh, yeah. I just wanted a great educational experience to look forward to after I graduate next year…"
"Eh?" Mr. Nakano blinked. "She told me you'd be going next year."
Azusa's eyebrows slanted, and her eyes went saucer-like. How much detail did Ritsu-senpai fabricate into this lie? she thought frantically. "Well, actually, I…I, uh, was thinking of staying at Sakuragaoka for another year. So many third year experiences that I don't want to miss out on, y'know? The trip to Kyoto, the play, the…"
I'm going to pass out, Yui thought breathlessly. Black dots and sparks of color clouded her vision like a fireworks display and her body became heavy, numb. If I could switch off the heater maybe, she thought dully. Her hand groped about blindly in search of the switch. Her overheated head sank languidly to the floor by her girlfriend's feet. At last her tired hand came upon a little bump between two folds of fabric. Taking it for the switch, Yui eagerly tugged at it.
"HYAAAAHHHH!" Azusa yelped, a jolt shooting through her body from between her legs and back again.
"The Hyatt!" Hikaru exclaimed. "Nice hotel…Gosh, I didn't think they had such nice hotels in Kyoto. During my high school days, we went to Kyoto and…"
Azusa didn't want to listen to his yarn, but knew she would have to. No girl wants to listen to her father talk while her girlfriend's pulling at her…her…You think she woulda stopped pulling after I yelled, huh? she thought, not realizing that the senpai's senses were currently dulled.
Meanwhile under the kotatsu Yui kept tugging lethargically. Come on, you. Why won't you turn off? she wondered, not realizing she was actually turning someone on.
"…Well, anyway," Hikaru concluded. He paused to yawn like a cavern, stretching his arms above his head. "You do what you like. Whatever makes you happy and doesn't hurt anybody. You're a good kid." He then extended a hand to cup Azusa's within it. "Just don't grow up too fast, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah. Sure." The kouhai was shivering. If a girl didn't want her father to talk to her while someone was handling her "kotatsu switch," she definitely didn't want him touching her. Glaring downwards, she dealt Yui a swift kick that stopped her switchplay. "You look drained, Dad. You should go to bed."
"I was just thinkin' that myself. Good night, Azusa." He leaned forward to kiss her, and she shrank away, bidding him an eager but unwelcoming 'good night.'
As soon as he was gone, Azusa furiously threw open the blanket. "Oh, don't you feel brave, you pervert, you — eep!" she squeaked upon finding Yui collapsed and unconscious at the bottom of the kotatsu. "Yui-senpai! Speak to me!" she wailed, shaking the older girl hysterically. "Are you alive! Say something!"
"…Turn off…the kotatsu…please…"
A/N
A direct rip-off from Love Hina, admittedly. Everybody loved Azusa's kotatsu switch. Along with "braingasm," to be used in a later chapter, it was one of those phrases that came up frequently in conversations with other authors.