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13. Even Promises Don't Last Forever
Even when they were back in Youko's hotel room, lying in the same single bed with their shoulders touching, Youko could make herself speak. Maybe when there was too much to say one simply could not decide from where to start, or maybe she was still afraid of breaking the magic that tied them together, if ever so precariously. The other woman did not speak, either. They were not openly looking at each other, but Youko tried to steal a glimpse or two of the blonde whenever she thought she could escape the latter's notice.
Sei had aged. The thought, or rather, the fact, was a somewhat terrifying one. There were small lines around her eyes, which were now framed by light, but clearly visible dark rings, and her skin resembled no longer that of a nineteen-year-old, but more than from her physical appearance her age showed in her demeanour and in the air she carried about her. Back in the Yamayurikai, they had been almost immortal, revered by everyone as demigods. But now, ten years later, lying next to each other in an anonymous hotel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they were just two women caught between youth and maturity.
Two women, who could not even sort out their lives on their own. Two women, who were drawn to each other by a force as unrelenting as gravity, but as gravity compelled the Earth to circle around the Sun, so was it determined for us to ride on the different sides on an eternal carousel, so that try as we might, we would never truly reach each other.
Youko shuddered.
"What's wrong?"
It was strange to at last hear Sei's voice. It sounded surprisingly unfamiliar, yet it pleased Youko's ear, and it pushed aside any brooding thoughts. It was consoling to remember that some things never changed, one of them being how hearing Sei's voice affected her. A few goosebumps erupted on her skin, and an almost imperceptible shiver ran through her spine.
"Nothing, really. Just thinking about something."
She tried to keep her tone casual.
"A penny for your thoughts, then."
"Maybe later."
The blonde woman did not push the topic further, but instead turned on the bed to face Youko and threw her left arm around the latter, as if it had been the most natural thing to do in the world. A voice of surprise escaped from Youko's lips, and after a moment of indecision, she, too, turned on her side to face Sei.
Despite everything, Sei was still as attractive as ever. With her blonde hair, large gray eyes and sharp features, sometimes Youko wondered if she had escaped from some imaginary universe to the real world. But when she unconsciously reached her hand to touch Sei's cheek, she could feel the smoothness against her fingertips, and she could also hear the astonished gasp which now emanated from Sei's shapely mouth. Neither was the warm, tingling sensation in her lower stomach an illusion.
She kissed Sei.
Or maybe it was less a kiss than a quick brush of her lips against Sei's, enough for her to taste the sweetness, but so brief that it left her wanting for more. The scent of instant coffee had faded, and replaced only by alluring moisture and a slight trembling. Youko had meant it to last longer, but the motion had escaped her control and she had withdrawed sooner than she had intended, but in Youko's mind, she was already holding Sei tight in her arms, their lips once again locked together, their tongues tentatively exploring each other…
"Do it again."
It was neither a request nor a command, yet those calm words ignited an irresistible flame inside Youko which relentlessly burned away the last vestiges of her insecurities. Because at least temporarily, she could be certain that what she wanted was exactly what her most long-lasting love desired.
She gave Sei another tentative kiss, and this time, it held so long that it left them both catching their breaths when they finally separated. She had also managed to unbutton Sei's denim shorts, which now were only loosely clinging to the latter's thighs, revealing a few enticing bits of fair skin.
Their lips met again, a tentative affair at first, with Youko carefully nibbling Sei and wrapping her arms gently around the latter. They remained in that indefinite position for some time, Youko not even daring to breathe, let alone take any further initiatives. Too much time had passed for them to be naturally in sync, and she did not want spoil anything by pure rashness.
But then Sei drew her abruptly towards herself, responding to Youko's kiss almost violently and with so much passion, almost raw lust, that it surprised even Youko who had not believed anything could have taken her aback. But something in feeling Sei's tongue inside her mouth and Sei's arms painfully gripping her waist almost frightened her, and she started to wriggle in Sei's embrace, trying to slide her arms to Sei's chest to push the latter away from herself.
Again to Youko's surprise, Sei was as quick to draw back as she had taken hold of her. Pulling her face a few inches away from Youko's, Sei looked at her questioningly, her eyebrows subtly raised.
"I am so sorry."
Sei burst out laughing.
In any other situation it could have been a humiliation for Youko, but now it was a relief to hear Sei laugh so easily, in such a relaxed fashion, without a tinge of irony or bitterness. And there was no reason for her not to do so – Youko's words were more likely to be from some poor movie than from real life. As if an apology would have changed anything between them. As if their connection had not transcended all such weak gestures a long ago.
"That was the lamest thing I've ever heard. Even you should be able to do better than that."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"You know, you just don't go pushing yourself on someone and then changing your mind at the crucial moment."
Sei's tone was gently mocking, and her eyes glinted with a trace of amusement. Maybe behind the mirrorlike surface Youko could see something else, too - a desire to ignore Youko's protests, and a great effort to control herself. Sei had not pulled her arms away from Youko, and her hands were resting on Youko's sides, like predators patiently awaiting the next chance to catch the prey.
"I don't know… It just doesn't make any sense. One moment I am at pains with everything, sitting in front of my computer and wasting away my holiday, and then a couple of hours later, I am here beside you", Youko said quietly, absent-mindedly tracing her fingers around Sei's lips. "I know it sounds cheesy, but I still can't completely believe that this is really happening. There is no reason for you to be here, and even less reason to be here with me. Then again, that is no concern of mine."
Sei snorted, pulling a falsely disappointed face.
"And here I was expecting to get some attention. In vain again, it seems."
"And I would be honored to give you as much attention as you ever might need. I want to embrace you, kiss you, I want to make love to you until you beg me to stop", Youko exhaled, blushing slightly. "But I want to continue doing it for the rest of our lives."
"Well, so do I", Sei replied, grinning.
"I am glad you do."
"But right now, I want to do this."
Sei managed to unbutton Youko's blouse halfway before Youko stopped her by gripping Sei's hands in her own.
"You do know that I could not stand us falling apart again, don't you? I don't want to lose you as soon as I have found you again."
"Yes, I know."
Sei pushed Youko's hands aside, and after a few swift movements by the blonde woman Youko was stripped of everything but her underwear. Sei hauled herself to sit on Youko's lap, and she went on to look at the latter with shameless eyes. Youko closed her eyes, but even then she could feel Sei's stare on her exposed body.
How many times have I dreamt of this happening, Youko thought. How many times have I imagined us exactly in this manner, her hungry eyes fixed on my bare skin, waiting to lay her hands on me?
And yet she was not making a single move to yield herself.
"Please…" she murmured, but could not finish her sentence.
Sei was now sliding her hands along Youko's sides, slowly bringing her fingers from Youko's waist to the edges of her loosely-fitting bra, and then tugging them just a little aside to cup Youko's breasts in her hands, which felt soft, so soft, and Youko could not suppress a sigh of pleasure when Sei wormed her fingers around her nipples, and everything was so quickly starting to lose coherence. Youko craved for more, like a addict bereft of narcotics, and a drug indeed Sei was, subtly, yet irrevocably tying Youko's life around her with every touch of her sensuous fingertips. Youko was breathing heavily as sensations she had forgotten even existed clogged her consciousness, and at that moment Youko knew she could have promised her soul to Sei if the latter had wanted it in exchange for the pleasure Youko was experiencing.
"….scream…yet."
Some words were entering her consciousness, but right then it was filled with so much other things that she could not register them properly, and the meaningless sounds were left hanging in the air, and it seemed as if the whole fabric of language was being ripped apart as she could hear the syllables and she could see the woman on top of her speaking, but her brains could not fathom the connection between the two, and with that connection broken, gone was also the system which translated the sounds into words and words into meanings.
She could still hear and acknowledge her own, ecstasy-packed screams. Such primal ways needed little translating. Beyond that, there was only a gigantic emptiness filled with pleasure, a pleasure which intensified with every passing second, with every caress, until the world seemed to implode and explode at the same time, until the confines of time and space became nothing, nothing at all…
ooo
"That wasn't too bad, was it?"
Youko could do little else than blush heavily, averting Sei's eyes. Sei was still sitting on her lap, and Youko was sure that her own embarrassment was going to kill her at any moment.
Yes, it had not been too bad, Youko thought. Too good was more like it, and Sei knew it. How could she not, after hearing Youko whine and scream like a lunatic? And it was so like Sei to make such a comment, asserting her superiority in a situation in which there was so little need for it. Just to make sure.
"Yeah, I got it. You win", Youko replied suddenly, and the tinge of genuine irritation in her voice surprised even herself.
"Aren't we touchy, now?" Sei retorted. "Maybe you want me to teach you another lesson?"
Youko was suddenly very cold. Whether it was out of fear or hope, she could not decide.
"Just be silent, please. For once, don't ruin a wonderful moment with your witty remarks."
Sei laughed, smiling crookedly.
"Don't ruin this moment, you say? Well, can you guess what I was thinking just now?"
"Whatever it is, don't tell me."
The impish smile was still toying on Sei's lips.
"You know, it's pretty ridiculous when you think about it, this affair of ours, I mean", she began, still caressing the curves of Youko's naked figure. "We really should not have gotten together last autumn. But we did, and look at what it has put us through. So much pain, so much stress, so many gray hairs. We put in so much effort to chase that what is beyond our reach, this whole Hawaii scenario just being the peak of the iceberg, but for what? What was all the fuss for? Just to have sex? Were we really so deprived of it?"
Every word was like a hammer blow to Youko. Glass shattered, the pristine construction smashed to bits. Little earthquakes. And she cursed herself that she had imagined, she had hoped, she had even been certain that the balance between them could have lasted longer than just a passing moment. But there could be no balance between the sun and the moon, between fire and ice.
"Please, don't tell me such things. I beg you."
Sei shook her head.
"Don't fool yourself, dear. You know I will continue to say such things until the day I die, because that is simply who I am. Just like you will be silent even if your life depended on speaking. I can silence my mouth, but I can't silence my thoughts, and in the end, it won't be enough. We didn't break up for nothing, you know."
The last sentece was so heavy, said with such regret that it nearly reduced Youko to tears.
"I believed it was because I was an idiot, and I still believe it was so."
"I blamed you, too. Until I realised how childish it was to do so. Could I hold your ambition against you? Could I blame you for having your feet tightly on the ground? I guess not."
"I promised you to be there for you, always…"
"You did, with the naivete of a high-school girl. Yes, you were Rosa Chinensis, but you were still only barely eighteen", Sei sighed. " Even promises don't last forever, Youko. Few things do."
The world could have collapsed around Youko, and it would have not felt more cataclysmic. With only a few sentences, the very foundations of her existence seemed to be collapsed. Apart from the remains of her idealism and her belief that whatever had broken between them could be mended, what else did she have to hold on? What did she still have which she had not already thrown away or which had not been taken from her?
"…You say such terrible things, in such an inconsiderate way."
"For what it's worth, I'm lamely sorry. But it always comes down to this, dear. I keep blurting out unpleasant things –"
"…And I keep reprimanding you for it. I keep nagging to you about how you should clean up –"
"…And I keep shrugging and distracting you with my touch."
Their little play was conducted in a perfect rhythm, their understanding complete, one's words fading away with the perfect timing to give way to the other's next line.
If there was something Youko had enjoyed in her relationship with Sei, it had been exactly the way they had been able to perfectly attune to each other, so that right before the end, they hardly needed to speak to understand each other, barely needed to look to see the expression on each other's faces. It had been a total symbiosis, a language stripped of everything but the very essentials.
"I'll go on telling you to get your life organized –"
Youko's voice was on the breaking point.
"…And I'll just sit on front of the TV and grin as if I had not even heard your words."
Back then, it had been a game of theirs to complement each other's words, to create shows from nothing, to fill the tedious moments with witty smiles and light-hearted laughter.
"So is this what you are getting at?" Youko finally blurted, when she could not hold the words inside her anymore. "That we are hopeless? That we are doomed to repeat everything again and again?"
Sei shook her head again, but this time a weary smile crept on her lips.
"Of course not. Nothing is certain in life. I'm only talking about probabilities", she said thoughtfully. "And I don't believe we should concern ourselves much with that part, anyway. I just wanted to get things straight with you, to be on the same line with you, if you know what I mean."
"But…"
Sei interrupted by taking gently hold of Youko's cheeks, and then lowering her own head to nibble gently the latter's ears. Sei being so close, the heat she emanated was starting to purge the doubt worming inside Youko. Sei wrapped herself tighter around Youko, and the black-haired woman found it increasingly hard to concentrate on anything but Sei's warm breath on her earlobes and the firmness of Sei's legs around her own.
"You dummy, what I was trying to say was that all is not lost."
"I can't really see what you are getting at", Youko replied, and even as she said that, embarrassment was beginning to take over her again as it was harder and harder to her to maintain control. It was difficult to keep up her stance when her body was telling her otherwise. "Unless you keep doing this to me, that is."
"That's the spirit", Sei chuckled. "How many days of your holiday you still have?"
"Too few."
"Let's put them into good use, then."
"Let me take off your shirt."
"Why?"
"It feels somehow perverted for me to be the only one naked."
"Ok, ok, I got it. The dirty old man strikes again, and all that."
"Shut up."
"…"
"…"
"You know, dummy… A slim chance is still a chance, isn't it?"
