RECORDING

Chapter Thirty-Two

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

Bruised mauve light — the kind you can find only on a winter dawn — glowed in Azusa's hazy vision as she awoke the next morning in Yui's cozy bed. The heat under the down comforter was near-stifling, causing the pocket of flesh between her breasts to pool with sweat; her grey night shirt was plastered to this valley of her chest. The soles of her feet and her palms tingled rawly with the stuff, intensifying that queer tender beat-up feeling Azusa got when her sleep was of the hard, head-clearing variety.

So refreshingly beat-up felt Azusa's body that for about three seconds she could not move and the world did not seem to exist as anything more than that purple dawn glow. Then she stirred — the pleasure she always felt in her muscles bordered on erotic — and took stock of Yui dozing next to her.

Her sticky chest shook as she laughed quietly. Some people have a knack for making the act of sleeping look like it feels so good, and Azusa supposed that morning she had the fortune of dating one. Yui slept on her stomach to the kouhai's left, just like before, but there was a carelessly casual fashion to how she was sleeping this time. Her left hand was up on her pillows next to her face, palm down with the fingers curled slightly, whilst her right arm hung over the edge of the bed. The right half of her face was crushed into her pillow, her pursed lips undoubtedly drooling.

Maybe it looked kinda gross, but it also looked like it felt good.

Azusa extended a sensitive hand to slip it under Yui's left one. Her hand brushed her girlfriend's sleep-warmed skin, and after a moment Yui reflexively squeezed it, sending pangs through Azusa's arm that felt both painful and wonderful. Then with a deep slow draw of breath that sounded like Yui's lungs were expanding to the size of bath tubs with sweet oxygen, the senpai woke up, releasing the younger girl's hand so she could prop herself up on her own. Her head was bowed, her eyes barely open. She still wore her sweatshirt under which, Azusa was certain, lilac-scented sweat poured and flowed. The senpai lifted her tousled head to squint at the dimly glowing window against which snow still glanced and skittered. Her slow breathing sounded like Yui was about five percent awake. Then her head turned the other way toward her alarm clock, and Azusa guessed that this glance at the clock was her girlfriend's reconnection to the waking world for when she lay back down she looked a bit more alert.

Whereas Azusa felt beat-up and tingly upon rousing, Yui could describe her wakening experience as feeling clogged, as if her entire body was suffering some sinus congestion that took half an hour to drain out of her, leaving her refreshed and completely awake. This half hour was typically spent in bed, laying there, her brain awake but her body half-asleep. Winter made the prospect of getting out of bed even less appealing, bringing to the surface such thoughts as, I'm not getting up until it's as warm out there as it is in here.

Yui had dreamt last night of Chiharu. The two of them stood in Mansion Yamoto, in the acoustic room, the blank walls of which seemingly endless by the work of Yui's folly. She had commented, "You sure have thick eyebrows, don't you, Chiu-chan?" and rather than blow her stack over being called by her girlhood nickname as Chiharu usually did the ojou had smiled in her peculiar slight way and nodded, "Yes. But, you know…"

Yui knew what was coming but still jolted with shock as Chiharu pulled her right eyebrow off her forehead and confessed, "They're actually chocolate orange slices. Wanna try one?"

Yui wasn't so sure about this. The last time she ate eyebrows their owner had melted into a puddle of gaijin-goo. So the guitarist politely refused.

Her pale round face the very picture of open hurt and disappointment, Chiharu frowned, "You don't want one? But they're so 'in' right now!" She reattached her eyebrow, which wiggled on its own accord and snickered, "That's right…We're so 'in'…"

Yui then experienced a blinding flash of realization: Oh my God! Those things are CONTROLLING her! With a roar of triumph mixed with terror, the brunette tore Chiharu's eyebrows off her face and stuffed them in her mouth, the milky tang of candy chocolate oranges…

Yui had started awake when Chiharu dropped dead and eyebrowless to the floor.

Thinking of this dream must have caused a furrow of consternation to ridge the brunette's forehead for Azusa reached across the narrow gap between them to smooth it out. Yui let her girlfriend in her arms, a dozy embrace full of sleep-heat, the kouhai resting her head in the nook between Yui's head and right arm.

"What're you thinking about?" Azusa whispered.

"Eyebrows are kind of scary, aren't they? They control you and make you do things you don't want to do, but if you get rid of them you die."

What…? That one slapped the kouhai's blind side straight from the dark. She blinked blankly, then asked, "Did you have a bad dream?"

"I had a weird dream."

From Yui's night stand came the whine of a vibrating cell phone. Azusa knew it was hers; she remembered setting it on vibrate after leaving her house last night. She let it go, figuring it to be one of those "wrong rings" she frequently got these days.

Instead she pressed her sleep-tender body closer to Yui's thinking about how soft and warm she was, how good it felt to cuddle her, and how this beautiful, funny girl could worry about blindly and unwittingly following in her parents' footsteps. NEET…Azusa's heart had gone out for Yui, hearing about her irresponsibly and stupidly romantic parents, who had started going abroad before Ui's first birthday and her older sister's second. They not only missed out on an education and gainful employment but also almost all of their daughters' lives. Every little thing Yui-senpai has done, every little accomplishment, no matter how trivial it may have been in the grand scheme of things…Last night while hearing the story of Hirasawa Taiki and Tsubasa Azusa felt a blue-steel lump choke her throat to think that they didn't know — and perhaps didn't care — that Yui learned guitar from the ground up in a fraction of a semester. Those…They don't exist to them, those accomplishments…

And what about Ui? Did Taiki and Tsubasa know that, living on her own, their youngest child could run a household as well as any strict matriarch could? That she had taught herself the way of culinary arts far beyond the beginners' boiled rice? In the morning years of life people's accomplishments existed for the encouragement and approval of their parents — without Mom and Dad, who and what were all these small and grand achievements for?

Yui, as if reading Azusa's mind, lowered her chin until she could look right into her girlfriend's burgundy eyes and murmured softly, "Even if I've no parents, I still have family…more family than just Ui, too."

The kouhai nodded, knowing what Yui meant.

Her eyes seemed to darken, or perhaps it was the sparse light. At this tiny hour the black-haired girl could make out the dusty outlines of furniture. When a girl is in bed with someone she loves six o'clock I the morning can seem holy in its grandness.

"What I told you about last night…Not many people know about it, you know..." Yui's soprano voice was low, serious even. Azusa had never seen her like this. "I don't want many people to know…"

At last her solemnity seemed to break, and a warm smile spread across her face. Her brown eyes swam in the pre-dawn light. Under the covers her hand found her girlfriend's, and she squeezed it with firm and unquestioning affection. Keeping her gaze locked with Azusa's, she whispered, "I just want you to know right now."

The raven-haired kouhai slipped her other hand up until the side of it was grazing Yui's cheek. "Your secret's safe with me," she mumbled and moved closer, lips parting.

The brunette's eyelids were drooping, about to shut. "I know it is," she whispered just before closing her soft, full lips around her girlfriend's thin ones. It was a sweet kiss, warm and easy, and Azusa could feel it all the way up and down her spine.

Heat rose under the sheets as the two girls made out for the next twenty minutes, causing sweet sweat to stand out on their faces and pool under their shirts. Neither of them much minded the heat, especially Azusa, who drunk her girlfriend's flowery female smell into her lungs. She could practically feel the stuff rushing through her veins. Once during this time period her phone buzzed again, and again the kouhai ignored it. Anyone in their right mind would let the phone ring in this situation. Though Azusa dimly wondered who would be calling at this hour.

When Yui began to prod the younger girl onto her back Azusa let her. The senpai nudged, the kouhai guided, and then the former had mounted the latter in a new kind of embrace — one that felt curiously exhilarating to Azusa. Weird, exhilarating, and frightening. She realized that in Yui's bed, with the brunette on top of her, their mouths and tongues embracing as surely as they were, no adults around to infringe or interrupt, they could do that thing their baser sub consciousnesses cried out for but they themselves might shy away from. That sex thing.

Azusa groaned involuntarily and Yui pressed her mouth deeper. Aside from that utterance the only sounds that had passed between them were the light, fluttering ones of their kisses; the best and most intimate ones seemed to make no sound at all. Between every long, sultry kiss and every short affectionate one Azusa could feel Yui's breath puffing against her mouth, seeming to gradually quicken, their smooth tongues still touching even if their lips weren't. After one particular kiss and before another kiss that, Azusa was certain, got Yui's sexual motor purring, the kouhai had clamped her lips ferociously around her tongue, sucking. What she heard from her girlfriend while doing this was a sigh that — though not vocalized —came from deep inside her —the sigh of an extremely sexually excited woman. And after Yui pushed her tongue fully inside, hugging the younger girl's lips with her own, Azusa couldn't help thinking that hot winter morning that Yui was a senpai who really knew how to use it inside a girl's mouth.

Azusa felt Yui's tongue, felt her long body twining intimately over her own, felt the weight of her hands on either side of her pressing down on the mattress, knew Yui had her pinned, knew what Yui wanted to do with her. So let her, that baser mind murmured. It's rude to object to a senpai's orders.

As the brunette lowered her body a little more, her braless shimmying breasts brushed her girlfriend's, and Azusa felt a jolt in them that was so strong her nipples felt cold at first before settling down into a hot throb. And indeed they had responded as if she was cold — they became hard, like flesh-encased bullets standing up from her twins, and they became sensitive enough to read the texture of her shirt. The baser mind whispered, If yours get hard, then Yui-senpai's probably do, too.

Are they right now? Azusa wondered, and the urgent press of Yui's chest against hers answered that question.

"Oh, Azu-nyan…" The senpai pulled back a little, using the same low whisper as her husky sigh. Her brown eyes were bright, fiery, excited.

Feel like pulling my kotatsu switch a little? That line with all its absurd innuendo had let itself into the kouhai's brain like an uninvited guest, and she shoved it right back out before it could take its shoes off in her mouth. Yui-senpai probably wouldn't get that one, anyway. To suggest anything to Yui, sexual or not, you had to use a more straightforward approach, drop a few hints at least. So Azusa whispered, "Is your sister still asleep? If we're quiet, we could…"

"Pretty sure she's still asleep, since it's Saturday and all…" Sexual excitement lent Yui an odd maturity, in her voice at least. She cocked her head and noted, "You're not normally…like this."

Azusa knew this was true. A month or two ago she probably would have pulled a Mio and ran screaming from a situation like this. "When I'm sure of something I'll move right towards it." Her garnet eyes full, she smiled and brought a caressing hand along Yui's back, her strokes undisturbed by a bra strap. "I'm sure I love you. I know that you love me enough to let me in on something so personal and sad — on your birthday, no less. So…I thought…maybe I could let you in on something personal as well…?"

As usual Azusa couldn't put the things she was sure of into words. Hers and Yui's soap opera, if one were to exist, would be The Nasal Slur and the Just Plain Inarticulate.

But the good thing about Yui was that she got the gist of things you couldn't quite express. Who was she to expect her girlfriend's constant and unwavering best? If she was to expect that much that would only mean she didn't know Azusa at all.

Or so Yui thought as she dipped her head — in which she could feel her torrid pulse pounding —and surged her lips deeply with her girlfriend's. Their affection that morning was intensely reciprocal, with both of them feeling good and wanting to make the other feel just as good. Wasn't there quite a bit to be said for the pleasure one experiences from making the girl he or she is with feel awesome, for that sense of irresistibility you are imbued with when she hugs you closer and her sweet, urgent voice gasps your name? Smut authors and men's magazine columnists might disagree, and Azusa, flying high as Yui hummed and arched into her back-strokes, would suggest these writers had quite a bit to learn.

The phone buzzed again, and this time the kouhai wanted either to turn it off or smash it. At its fourth peal she dismissed the possibility of a "wrong ring." Would a wrong ring really call so persistently at six in the morning? It couldn't have been Jun, she was asleep. Same with the Light Music Club…or, if anyone, it could be Mugi. She seemed like the type to subscribe to the old "up with the sun, asleep with the moon" truism. She could have been calling on an emergency: "I fell down the stairs and broke my wrist," for example. But if that was the case, wouldn't she also try getting through to Yui, too? The brunette's cell phone hadn't made so much as a text message beep.

Vmm…vmm…vmm…

And then the name of the ringer crashed inside Azusa's head like cymbals, and a dreadful numbness showered over her body: a rude transition from the plethora of sensations it was experiencing moments ago. Yui's lips moved against Azusa's still ones with an awkward smacking sound. Confused by her girlfriend's abrupt listlessness, she hesitantly pressed one more kiss on her gaping mouth, waiting for it to respond in kind by closing lovingly around her own. Rather, the only part of Azusa's lips that moved was the flesh on the top one that Yui stirred. More confused still, the senpai lifted her head to whisper, "Hey, what's wrong?"

Azusa only gulped, feeling the dry walls of her throat rub together roughly, and her wide copper eyes darted toward the nightstand. Her cell phone was vibrating so aggressively it turned donuts on the wood.

Are you smoking? Their sharp looks to match the sharp smell n her clothes.

Oh my God! Who else would it be? Azusa's right arm pistoned left toward the nightstand, turning her on her side and forcing Yui off her. Normally she could single-handedly flip her phone open, but now the nerves in her hands snapped and twanged like guitar strings; as a policeman places both hands on his gun to steady it, so Azusa steadied her buzzing phone with her left hand and flicked it open with her right.

"What?" she choked in a dry, terrified voice.

"What, yourself," Mitsuki sounded both pissed and pleased. "I hope you enjoyed yourself last night. Surely whatever roll in the hay you and your big mister smoker-san were getting in has to be worth the looooong chat we'll have when you get your butt home…which will be sometime around, oh say, right now?"

Azusa's cotton mouth fell open to affirm, just as she always had done. Yes, Mom. No, Mom. Of course, Mom. Just like the good girl she was conditioned to be. Hikaru and Mitsuki had trained her well.

But she didn't affirm, and her mouth clamped shut, lips slim and hard with anger. …No, she was past the point of being angry. She was furious. What was she doing wrong, huh? Here she was, having an innocent make out session with her girlfriend. Okay, it wasn't all that innocent, but she wasn't bothering anybody, was just minding her own business. And just look at this. Just look. She was about to be scolded, punished, maybe have her computer privileges revoked (and they were slim enough already, fifteen minutes a day). How 'bout all that happy crappy, eh? But really, it was the thought of this conversation of hers and Yui's — this talk that was so stark and loving that nobody else could have it but them — and this big (sex) thing they were about to do all squashed because of Hikaru and Mitsuki's driving need to know what Azusa was doing all the time that enraged the kouhai to the point of snarling deliberately, her heart slamming and her chest heaving like some cornered animal, "Mother…I don't know where you get the gall to call me at six o'clock in the morning and out of the blue order me to come trotting home like some stupid puppy, but I know where you can shove it. Good bye."

Snap! The sound of the kouhai hanging up on her mother.

Azusa sat still on the edge of Yui's bed, watching her hand wander to and fro in its uncontrollable shaking, feeling not like a human being but a hot bundle of twitching nerves. Her ribs jumped up and down with every swift shallow breath she drew.

From behind her Yui whispered, "Whoa. Azu-nyan."

The younger girl tried to sigh, only to find her fought-up lungs had no room for it. "Oh, Yui-senpai, what have I done…?" Saying that to Mitsuki had felt good. It felt like power, though perhaps she had experienced a bit too much of it. Power like this didn't feel good at all after it was wielded. "I just invited my mother to insert her nerve in a place where the sunlight is dim." Her voice was quavering and a tad shrill. "I guess I should head home…face the music…" She tested the floor with her trembling feet before easing herself full on it, like a person settling into water. "Sorry to leave you like this," she added, turning to face Yui.

The older girl nodded. "It's okay. Don't worry about it."

A little too late for that. Azusa dressed herself in Yui's presence (with the senpai looking the other way) and managed to get her hair up in pigtails despite her unsteady hands. Last and best of all, her hands found Yui's face in the wan light and she kissed her goodbye, thinking only of how good this kiss felt to the senpai and how badly they had wanted each other earlier.

Azusa's homecoming reminded her of that episode of The Powerpuff Girls, the one which introduces that nymphet villain Sedusa. The kouhai crept guiltily through the door and in the foyer to e stopped by her mother's high-pitched yet heavy voice which sounded eerily like Kuwatani Natsuko's.

"And just where have you been?"

Azusa started and turned toward the darkened living room. A yellow cone of light suddenly appeared, showing Mitsuki curled on the couch with her left hand grasping the lamp switch. Her brown eyes were flat with anger.

"Well?"

The shakes in the guitarist's limbs started up, her knees warning to buckle and her arms convulsing. Oh, stop it, she commanded her nerves. Let her punish me. I'll serve my punishment and this whole thing will blow over. It always does. Even for telling her mother to shove her wherewithal up her ass the extent of what Azusa was looking at was two months' grounding and no computer till further notice. Fine. The library's full of 'em.

"Are you just going to stand there?" Hikaru asked, appearing in the lamplight behind Mitsuki, his arms crossed over his wide but short chest. "Come here a moment."

Her father's lectures, however, were things Azusa couldn't abide. They lasted for hours and they were usually nothing but thinly-concealed insults and scare tactics.

Just face it. Sticks and stones, Azusa, sticks and stones…

She got her shoes off and dragged her unsteady ass into the living room. She found the armchair to the left of the entertainment center and plopped down into it, ready for the long speech that could fill a novel, ready for:

Where is your honor?

What do you think people think of you? What do you think people think of us?

Do you plan to live like this forever?

You won't get very far this way

What she got instead, and this was from Mitsuki, was: "Who is he?"

Azusa was so heavily anticipating this dreaded lecture that she almost responded in kind with 'yes, Father' or 'no, Father.' This opener, though, sent her brain fluttering in confusion. What "he" was there to talk about?

"Huh?"

"Don't say 'huh,'" Hikaru admonished. "'Huh' is what stupid people say. We say 'nani desu ka.'"

"And don't play dumb, Azusa — it's insulting," Mitsuki added. "Despite what you might have thought, your father and I know very well what's been going on. And don't get me wrong — I was once a girl myself, so I knew all about having secret relationships and all. So who's the guy? What's his name?"

The kouhai thought at first that they had already found out about her and Yui: I knew all about having secret relationships and all. But: Who is he? What's his name?

"I remember when I was your age I fell head over heels for a certain cute boy who joined the jazz club I was in…" The loving look Mitsuki was giving Hikaru probably would have embarrassed or even sickened Azusa were she not still puzzling over this surprise-lecture. "I thought surely my parents would disapprove of us. So I didn't tell them. I dated your father for eight whole months, and my folks never found out. In retrospect, it was kind of disrespectful to turn my back on my family the way I did, but that's the way we kids are sometimes, ne? We forget people who will always be there to make things happen.

"Well, do you know, they found out about us in the most…awkward way." That awkward way had been Mitsuki's parents walking in on Hikaru doing it with her, getting right down to where the sweat forms in the crease and the heat gets hot and the pink comes glimmering through. "But, you know, they were okay with it. With us. To this day I have a good, stable relationship with my mom and dad — and your father has a good relationship with them, too.

"So you can tell us who your boyfriend is."

"Boyfriend?" Azusa spluttered, flabbergasted. Well, there it was. And, in a way, it made sense. If a parent suspects her daughter's in love, by default she would assume it was with a boy. Heterosexuality was automatic. Homosexuality, as the narrow-minded liked to think, was something you had to learn from the vile dogs who would also teach you to shoot up heroine, decapitate babies, and throw kittens in wood chippers. Homosexuals, both male and female, were the equivalents of sexist death merchants in Mitsuki and Hikaru's dawn years.

But she was born in 1970, he in 1971. Weren't they raised with love and peace, lava lamps and LSD?

"We'll be okay with it," Mitsuki asserted. "No matter who you're in love with, we'll be okay with it."

Azusa looked up uneasily, peering at her mother from under her eyelashes. "No matter who I'm in love with?"

Her mother nodded. "No matter who you're in love with — just as long as he treats you good."

Yui did treat Azusa good, plus eighteen percent interest. The older girl made her feel like the best person she could possibly be. If treats-you-good was the only prerequisite, and if Azusa could make her parents see just how good Yui treated her, they might overlook the whole homosexuality thing, might not see their daughter as a pervert or a child molester or any of the other false gay stereotypes.

"Well, now that I think about it, this was inevitable…" The pigtailed girl sighed, staring at her small hands folded upon her thighs. Her being female aside, her resemblance to Hikaru was total, and right now as she smiled to herself there was so much of him in her face that it both frightened and perked Mitsuki.

Maybe the homophobic parents thing was naught more than an old wives' tale. Maybe it really just depended on your parents, not the parents you've heard stories about. Maybe there was only one kid in gay history who ever got kicked out, but his or her story got passed around (and edited)through so many generations that people believed that this was something an about-to-be-uncloseted homosexual had to constantly scan the horizons for. It had become like those cancer warnings on cigarette packs: Remaining closeted now will greatly reduce your risk of being evicted. But perhaps the GayDA needed to reassess this warning. Those parents who tossed out that kid are not my parents, Azusa thought.

Even if her parents were conservative a strained relationship with them was more likely than being kicked out. It was a new era, by God, a stronger loving world in which families didn't do stuff like that. The boggy homophobe gene pool was shrinking more and more. Even some religious people were more accepting of it.

And hey — in two years "don't ask, don't tell" would be repealed in the United States. And in two years civil unions would be legal in the state of Illinois.

Go on! Azusa yelled at herself. Stop dithering and go on!

"First of all, what I was doing last night, it wasn't what you think it was." The kouhai doubted this disclaimer would reach her parents. You can't get pregnant from screwing a girl, if that's what you're worried about. "Last night I was with my…my…" She almost said friend, and instead pushed that word away. Friend. It was an uncomfortable word. It was a homophobe's word.

This was hopeless.

"Um, listen," Azusa mumbled, trying a different approach. "I guess I have to tell you something important now, and it's…it's hard. So just listen, please."

She looked at her parents. They didn't have any particular expression on their faces. They looked ready to listen.

Say it, you idiot!

I'm a lesbian.

Yurizuka, FTW.

She lowered her head, as if bracing herself against wind; closed her eyes, hiding in their darkness, said quickly, "Mom Dad I'm gay," and waited for the storm to break.