CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
猟犬
Ryouken
By morning, Nagihiko was back in his own bed. I awoke with a neck cramp from sleeping against the wall.
Why was he crying? I studied Fujisaki Nagihiko like I had never studied a boy before him. He had watched me perform my toilette a thousand times. Day after day, he was a solo audience to the unravelling of my braids, the stepping out of my nightgown. He who makes his living from women sees his muse everywhere she walks.
The feelings were one-sided. To me, men were an enigma. Nagihiko rose so early in the morning that I had never seen him dress. Now I understood why.
An inch from the mirror, lips knit in concentration, he pulled several hairs from his face and eyebrows. Then dabbed rice powder over his face, obscuring darkness under his skin that I had never noticed before. Soft, shorter hairs were brushed carefully out of his ponytail to obscure his cheekbones. Finally, our uniform, collar rolled up, to obscure the throat.
Most garish of all, he went behind the folding screen, throwing me an anxious look over his shoulder. On emerging, his skirt lay flat. The belt cinched tighter than it should have around his narrow waist. I thought I saw the shadow of two small breasts under the black cotton twill of our uniform.
Nagihiko was becoming a man and in retaliation, he became more of a woman. Nagihiko caught me staring and looked the other way.
"Are those new?" I flicked my hair over my shoulder.
He went pink under the rice powder. He did not meet my eyes. "Mashiro-san, I'm afraid I do not catch your meaning."
With all the menace I could muster, "Not my name."
He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded, jerkily. How morose he looked! I wanted to eat him alive. How ought I broach the question? Who did this to you? Why is it so difficult for you to tell me?
"Oh, come now," huffing. "I cannot joke about your overnight bosom?"
"Rima!"
Where had his sense of decency been when he was touching mine like a common street-boy? It might be bad to say, but I liked him best shy: back against the wall, looking at me through his eyelashes, lips slightly parted. I carried the secret knowledge that this tightly-wound construct of a woman came unraveled in my arms.
He may have guessed what I was thinking. He went a little pinker.
"No more jokes, then. Let's be serious." I straightened up. "Nagihiko – were we caught? Is that why you're acting like a board?"
Until that moment, I lacked the nerve to voice my worst suspicion. I glanced to the windows, expecting to see Fujisaki-sensei's nose was pressed against the glass.
My job was to protect Nagihiko's identity from scrutiny. To guard; not to touch. If his mother found out we were lovers, she would find a way to ensure that we would never see each other again. My lip quivered. We looked at each other, silent and still.
His mask melted. In one, two, three steps, he strode towards me. Suddenly, I was in his arms. His lips were so close that I could smell his flowery face powder.
"How shy of you," he pet the curve of my neck (?!). "You think Mother does not already know?"
I pushed him away. He only held me tighter. He was bloody strong. When did my soft, passive Nadeshiko turn into such a boor?
"Unhand me!"
"Old Japanese houses," Nagihiko mused listlessly against my hair, "Have thin walls. You could have had me anywhere, but you picked right under Mother's nose. I admire that about you. You're brave."
"That's not funny." I wanted to claw my own eyes out. Aaagh! I could never look the Dragon in the eye again!
"It isn't," he agreed. "We were seen missing several times. Smoke was seen from the chimney of the tea-house. And…"
A scholar's eyes. He took stock and inventory of me like a shelf full of objects, ensuring everything was in order.
"I suppose she's seen…" His mouth framed the words, delicately. "… The way I look at you."
He licked his lips, nervously. "But I do not think she has time to think about it."
"Why not?"
The mask rose behind his eyes and walled him off from perusal. His eyes were still red-rimmed. Helplessness. Then desperation. I wanted to crumble her practiced exterior back to white clay, push her hard enough to shatter again. Why are you afraid of me?
"The two men," I said slowly, "In the early morning, for your father. Is that why…"
"You see?" Nadeshiko smiled hollowly. "The walls are thin."
"I thought… callers for the New Year, surely. Friends."
"Yes." His long, bony fingers squeezed me like a vice. "The Special Higher Police did our family the honor of calling on us in-person."
I was familiar with the Special Higher Police, a branch of the police force that dealt specifically with… well, what they dealt with, I wasn't sure. Peacekeeping? Maintaining public and social order and morals?
They had darkened the Mashiro doorstep several times in my childhood. When I was young, they used to show up all hours of the day to ask after my father. Over and over, Mother said, he is in England. No, he has not contacted us. No, he has no intent to. No, I know nothing. After repeating it enough, they seemed satisfied.
They came once more in my teens – a portly man in an overcoat, and another weaselly with a rat moustache – to ask about the silk-mills. One of the silk-miller girls at the factory had a big mouth and had been convincing the other girls to say something to the overseer about the long hours. After they took them in for questioning, the silk-miller girls never bothered us again.
"Why?" I asked, hollowly. The Fujisaki clan were loyal Japanese. I had seen the portrait of the Emperor and Empress in their home with my own two eyes. If they were not safe, nobody was. Especially me.
"A misunderstanding."
"Yes; those vanished my father and make me cry like a child, too."
"Let's go to music," Nadeshiko let me go. I opened my mouth to argue, but it was too late. She was already opening the door.
Though Nadeshiko tabled our conversation, she could not help but let information slip. When Amu or Yaya weren't listening, she talked about her father through the day – not in the way my mother recited statistics, or Fujisaki-sensei wove a story. It was a comment here, a comment there, a passing cloud through the sky.
"My father has always danced to his own rhythm," she confided softly as we warmed up our instruments that morning, swallowed by the sound of the strings. "And his alone."
She was thinking about him, I realized. Worrying — the way somebody who has a father does.
While Amu and Yaya gossiped about Hotori's impending engagement between classes, he glanced sidelong at me. "It was he who taught me to cry on cue." A flash of teeth, quickly hidden behind her sleeve.
"It was because of Father that I got to see the world," he said over his shoulder to me, erasing the blackboard in swathes with his height. A gaggle of underclassmen watched Nadeshiko's back with longing eyes, but the boy did not notice. "He wanted to bring Japanese theatre to every corner of the Empire, because art is humanity."
Later, as she tied a knot to the end of her embroidery thread: "He might be a Kabuki actor by trade, but his troupe writes and performs their own plays, as well." A dry smile. "The plays can be... interesting."
"And he has strong convictions," he grunted before lunchtime, hauling the kettle up onto its hook over the fire to boil water. "They do not always agree with Mother's. But he would never allow it to reflect poorly on his family."
Before I could so much as touch the sack of rice, he took it from me, and ripped open the top with his teeth. I smiled, sitting on my hands.
Amu's jaw dropped. Yaya behind her spit out a dried plum so hard it bounced off the side of Amu's head.
"N-Nadeshiko?" she stuttered, looking at me. I disguised my simpering eyes in a hurry.
Neither of us told Amu. Even worse, nobody had told Yaya, who had returned from winter break to an atmosphere thick with change and tension. I think I may have been blushing. What could I say? It was better not to explain at all. Speaking of personal affairs was so tawdry.
"Yaya," I tried distracting her, plying her with another dried plum from the box. For a moment, she looked like she was going to take it; then she turned around, huffing.
Still angry with me, then.
At lunchtime, I found a moment to turn to Nadeshiko and ask, "What kinds of plays?"
"Mm?" She tilted her head.
Next to Yamabuki Sāya, I saw Marimo's large forehead pointing in our direction. She probably thought I was putting in a good word for her.
"Your father's theatre troupe. What kinds of plays do they put on?"
I used to find myself sitting next to Nadeshiko by coincidence at mealtimes. Today, it was closer on purpose. Under the table, Nagihiko's hand found mine, threading our fingers together. My stomach jumped. I outwardly kept my composure.
He leaned closer to be heard over the din. I cocked my head. His breath hesitated next to my ear.
"Russian plays. Translated, of course."
"Like what?"
"War and Peace. The Lower Depths."
My face did not betray my feelings. "How very eccentric."
His expression was sad, fleeting. "A sentiment shared by others, I think."
Anti-Japanese activities. Why would some Russian plays be decreed anti-Japanese at all? It must bear repeating that under the traditional system, I was eighteen. I knew nothing of war and those who resist it.
"What is with you two?"
We both looked up. Amu's brow furrowed at us.
"You two are whispering together like thieves," she said forlornly. "Are you talking about Yamabuki-san's engagement?"
First Yaya, then Hotori, now Yamabuki! I could not care less about people's sordid marriages. I looked at Yaya. Yaya was wolfing her food, pretending she could not hear.
Nadeshiko, to my surprise, smiled. "Yes," she said. "Isn't it a curious couple?"
Yaya and I both looked up, mouth full.
"Mm?" Yaya said. "Who?"
"Who else?" Nadeshiko laughed. "Our Tadase-kun, of course."
"You knew?!" Amu exclaimed, distraught.
I stared, uncomprehending. Yamabuki Sāya, engaged to Hotori Tadase? A parrot engaged to a dove! They would drive each other mad.
"Like I said last winter," Nadeshiko replied diplomatically. "I guessed. With Hoshina-san disgraced, Yamabuki-san is an excellent understudy. She comes from noble blood with a considerable dowry… and her father has done quite well for himself. I hear he and Prince Hotori are quite close."
All three of us goggled at her, amazed at the wealth of gossip she could sit on.
Amu had a funny look on her face.
"If all you need is noble blood to marry Hotori Tadase-san…" Her face flinched. Hoping to be his wife was futile – even if they clearly liked each other. "I wonder, hasn't Nadeshiko been considered? The Fujisakis are an accomplished family."
"I have wondered that, myself." I swiveled my head to face Nadeshiko.
"It would be a lie to say that I was not a candidate at one time," Nadeshiko mused out loud, as if this was a passing fancy she only just remembered. "But after a fashion, negotiations stalled, and consideration was withdrawn..."
I squeezed the hand in mine. Its fingers twitched.
"'Consideration was withdrawn,'" Yaya cut in knowledgably. "That means Nade-chin was RE-JEC-TED."
She sounded out every syllable with a wave of her finger, like a conductor's baton. How many marriage meetings had Yaya been to in order to know this?!
Amu stared. "Yaya!"
"It's true," Nadeshiko laughed, bright and pealing. "Hotori-kun and I liked each other far too much to be a good match. Ouch!"
I was crushing her hand. Gratefully, Amu was too wrapped up in brooding to notice.
"I really am a pedestrian girl," Amu stared down at the bottom of her bowl. "I would have never been considered. I see this, now. To be a mistress is all I can hope for."
Silence. Nadeshiko and I looked at each other. We each took one of Amu's hands.
"Tadase's hands were tied," Nadeshiko said.
At the same time, I said, "Men are dogs."
Nagihiko leered in my direction. I avoided it. We tried again.
"Amu-chan's heart is a treasure."
"You can do better," I added.
"I don't like bonito flakes," Yaya said, contributing to this conversation.
"His engagement to Yamabuki-san is one of duty," Nadeshiko said. "You know how these things are."
"It could be worse," I said. "You could be marrying Yamabuki, and have to listen to her laugh every day."
Nadeshiko's lips flattened into a dainty line. Amu laughed weakly. Yaya popped Amu's dried plum into her mouth. I smiled imperceptibly.
As the cold reality sunk in, my smile faded.
Yamabuki Sāya was marrying Hotori Tadase.
In my mind's eye, Hotori's helping hand disappeared. Even if he could help, why would he? His father-in-law was to be the very man who wanted Nagihiko dead on a front line. Was it a coincidence? Maybe not. Maybe they were in league with each other.
No, that couldn't be true. I quelled my suspicious mind. Nagihiko and Hotori had been friends a long time. He all but implied Hotori knew his secret.
And now I knew they had tried to marry, once. Marrying a man was clever, no matter how much it angered me. She would have quietly vanished onto his family registry, into domesticity and out of suspicion. Hotori would have protected Nagihiko well. He was too powerful to touch. Assuming he knew and didn't mind, "Nadeshiko" would have made a formidable wife – up until the lack of children, which could be adopted. She would have ruled the home and left Hotori free to pursue his ambitions.
Between my machinations and Amu's despair, we didn't notice Marimo watching us.
That is, until we got back to our dorm that night. I stepped on a piece of paper. I remembered the stupid letter. Ugh! I kicked it. The love letter scuffed and crumpled.
"What are you doing?" Nadeshiko laughed, taking her shoes off.
I picked it up in a hurry and stuffed it into my pocket, like it was litter.
"The floor is dirty," I lied. "You did a bad job."
"Well," Nagihiko said, "I am but a dog."
As if he hadn't said anything at all, he walked to the washbasin, dipping a cloth in it gently. He asked me once, which am I?
"Come, now. You knew what I meant."
"A different kind of dog, then, from Tadase." That was another threat, too. Tadase, Tadase. Did he want to marry Nadeshiko still? I couldn't tell. After all, some men liked that kind of thing. "He has high ideals for himself as strongly as others, even if it looks like greed to you."
"You two make quite the pair."
A hush fell over the room. With a splash, Nagihiko's head emerged from the basin, dripping. With the rice powder gone, the shadow of his jaw was back. With his eyes, asking me again: which am I?
I added, shamed. "Anyhow, I was only joking."
"I wasn't." Water rolled off his cupid's bow, and he pushed his damp fringe off his face. His deep-set, hollow eyes rested near my mouth.
I froze to the spot, like a blithering idiot.
"Would you like me to?" He pressed the cloth into his face.
"I do not follow your meaning."
He dabbed his face delicately. "Would you like it if I was your dog, Rima-chan?"
"I don't appreciate your tone." My mouth dried up.
He smiled.
If I were wiser, I would have noticed the way he suggested it to make it seem like it was my idea. I might have seen the way he pulled his hair out of his ponytail in a slow, languid fashion, shaking it out so it caught the light. Or the way he walked towards me on the balls of his feet like he was dancing circles around me.
"It might be nice," I said neutrally. I backed up against my bed. "You were away a long time."
It was the closest I came to admitting I missed you.
"I'm here now."
I liked hearing the familiar flump of Nagihiko falling to his knees in front of me. I liked it more when he looked up at me, face opaline like an angel.
Hotori's betrayal left me more powerless than before. I had yet to confide in anyone about Kirishima. Maybe Nagihiko understood: whatever this was, it was the closest thing I had to control over my own life. An emboldened shiver ran up my spine.
"Good boy," I whispered. It rippled through me to him like a collective sigh. I stroked the side of his hair with my fingertips. His hair was always silky, shining – not fine and breakable, stronger like silk threads, interlocking to form a satiny finish that mine could never accomplish. His eyes closed. His knees pressed together.
Trancelike, I cupped his cheek that rested against my knee. The familiar twinge from the tea-house came back, sly and excited. Why shouldn't I. After what I had been through – why shouldn't I?
I took his hand in mine, leaving fluttering strands of hair in his wake. Moving it for him, our entwined hands moved up, up between my thighs under my skirt. The fabric crumpled and rode up. Winter was the death of eroticism; I wore wool stockings all the way up my leg, clipped to an all-in-one.
I moved the pad of his thumb to the garter-clip and lifted the clasp. Without breaking eye contact with me, Nagihiko's breath hitched. His fingers hooked into the top of my stocking.
"Did I say you could take those off?"
He pouted, then sighed in a near-moan – but did not look disappointed. In fact, the harder I looked, the more I noticed his labored breathing, the suggestion of tongue at the corner of his mouth. When I was wearing kimono, we were able to open and touch each other without taking anything off. In Western clothes, access to my body was fettered by openings and clasps and coverings.
I gestured to my throat. "Undress me."
His nimble fingers did not need telling. Undone came my school scarf, slithering from its triangular collar. My eyes followed the flash of white, then turned to watch him undo my belt. Clink. It hung limply in the loops, away from my natural waist.
I was dressed by Emi when I needed someone to undo the buttons for me. It had been years since. Nagihiko's fingers were slower than my maid's, the way a lady unwraps glassware from its tissue. I was acutely aware of the cold air brushing between the skin and I, of Nagihiko's hesitancy. Every exhale came heavier. I was frightened, then thrilled. I shouldn't. But I should.
His finger lightly rested at the apex of the V where my collar began. One, two buttons. I pulled my skirt up and raised my arms. I couldn't help but lick my lips greedily as Nagihiko hesitated, then pulled the dress over my head.
I was left in my wool step-ins, flushed and chilled simultaneously. Instinctively, we drew closer to each other. Like I was drunk again, the room spun and turned rosy.
"Good," I murmured, praise all too natural. His chest puffed out. Oh, no. My heart sank with horror. He's cute.
I unrolled my wool stocking until it was at my knee. Seiyo's three square meals a day had returned to me a semblance of plumpness. My skin dimpled in places it hadn't before. I spent one disconcerting afternoon during winter break staring at myself from the back. My hips weighed me down like a pendulum, making me walk in a womanly sway.
That day, I mourned my death of girlhood and the body with it. Now, the cold air puckered my nipples below my chemise. My back arched. The exposed skin of my inner thigh stung with the desire to be touched. I steeled myself, lowering my knee slowly to rest against Nagihiko's shoulder.
"Rima," he whispered. "I want..."
He looked wonderfully strange like this. Nothing like Nadeshiko, who would sit perfectly in seiza and show me nothing. Haggard, he spread out on the floor like a demon in the light of the oil-lamps, watching every inch of thigh with bright eyes.
I tilted my head, drunk on the attention. Saliva collected in my mouth, and my hips reacted to my name by lifting off the bed and towards him. "You want to…?"
"... To forget everything else." Softly. "Please."
Nagihiko's father. Kirishima. Yamabuki. Tadase. I closed my eyes, I understood. Make it disappear. Make it go away.
The part of my brain that knew what to do without having done it before found my combination straps, tossing them off my shoulders and baring my breasts. I was meant to be shy, I knew. A modest girl was meant to weep as she was undressed, to plead and beg. What honor? What modesty? I let them fall off one leg and to the floor.
"Then…"
I opened my legs to him, exposing the mound of curly hair. Nagihiko's eyes widened in undisguised hunger, mouth fixed in a frightening smile. He slipped both his arms beneath my legs and hoisted them up.
I squeaked. "Eep."
"Hehe."
I grabbed a fistful of his hair, stopping his face a hand's breadth from where it needed to be. He let me. But below the dainty jawline, his neck muscles tensed with the animal drive to take me.
I instinctively knew he wouldn't. Nagihiko only pursued when permitted. Like the first time, he was unconcerned for his own urges.
It was like this, wasn't it? He liked it when I was hard on him. He liked being denied by me. I pulled his hair a little so he was forced to look up at me, and he bit back another smile. Nagihiko was good at acting domesticated. Even then, should I have guessed that I had taken something wild into my bed?
"Tell me what to do," he begged in a strange, low voice. I pressed my legs together instinctively to soothe the urge to rock my hips forward.
"On your knees?"
"That's right," said the strange, dark-eyed Nagihiko, eyelashes making long, lovely shadows on his cheeks. Power-drunkenness made my once-rational mind muddled, lips loose, legs open, propriety gone. I realized I was spread for him like a whore, hand in his hair like I owned him. Because I did. And I loved it.
"Give me your mouth," I breathed, relaxing my thighs open. As I did, everything inside me pounded at the thought of the teahouse.
Across the inside of my eyelids, stronger than a memory, Nadeshiko's sweet mouth ruining me. My blood rushed south, hot and clamoring. A bead of wetness pearled at my opening, threatening to spill onto the bedspread below. I moved forward. I could have it again if I wanted. I could have it again, only worse. Nothing alive could stop me if I wanted to lower my swollen, aching mound onto his mouth and move where I wanted him. I could press him down, mount his face and ride it, and he would let me.
Nadeshiko's breath tickled the soft hairs, warming my already-throbbing hot slit. "Right here?"
I could have screamed. I let go of his hair, grabbing the sides of his head, and pulled his face against the spot with a muffled squeal. Like tempering red-hot metal in water, the cool relief of Nagihiko's lips against me was at once instant and not enough. I bit back my hiss of frustration and focused instead on bobbing his head up and down, like he was a puppet for my own pleasure. From between my thighs, Nagihiko groaned a vulgar oath that would have gotten him slapped by a teacher.
"Watch your mouth," I gasped. Nagihiko's face turned to the side, spreading wetness lewdly down the inside of my thigh.
"I was trying to." Ugh. To my disgust, that made me wetter. I returned Nagihiko to his work, hand absently falling on my breast to pinch and rub myself. If only there was two of him, I thought, sick in the head. Or three.
I ground my hips against his mouth to no avail, trying to scratch an itch I could not reach on my own. The longer I did so, the more my body cried out from exertion; with no stamina left, I fell back on the bed, out of breath and winded. My thigh muscles burned. Catching sight of myself in the opposite mirror, I flushed. My naked body, lying back half on my school dormitory bed. Nagihiko's dark head, buried between my legs, hands firmly wrapped around my legs.
My breast heaved. Too tired to raise my hand, I lifted my legs, and wrapped them around his head. I squeezed until his breath came short and fast. Worried for his windpipe, I un-tensed my legs and was met a resisting moan.
"No," a foreign deep voice groaned, thick with lust. "Don't stop."
"You're disgusting," I replied in a lower register than I thought I possessed. His responding sound of delight was muffled between my legs as I clamped them back around his head, surrendering to the swell that threatened to wipe everything out. I loved when the world fell away, leaving only the two of us in its embrace.
"Lower," I said, voice still strange to my own ears. "Harder." I had reached the point where lips and tongue weren't enough, and I throbbed still, refusing to be sated.
"Give me your hand."
My boy did, taking a hand off my thigh. The bemusement turned quickly to a kind of awe as I found the first knuckle on his middle and ring finger. More. Between my parted lips, to where I knew everything opened up into an emptiness I needed filled. More. I pushed Nagihiko's slim fingers past the initial resistance with my own, past the second knuckle to settle inside me, where I could feel him. Sighed. I showed him how to tilt his hand so that it touched me where I could feel every acute agonizing brush from within. His fingers, longer than mine – stronger, too, with powerful wrists that had handled more – learned quickly how to stroke and rub with the pads of his fingers, until my knees were buckling and shaking.
"And your mouth," I said sharply, grabbing his hair. "Lick me. More. Don't stop, whatever you do."
He took me over like that, filling me knuckle-deep and lapping at me until something inside me broke and released. In no time at all, my legs locked and my hips ground themselves against him like the snap of a bowstring.
"God, Nagihiko…!"
I rubbed my damp thighs together, stretching myself out to lie on the bed properly. Without asking, Nagihiko crawled next to me like a lapdog, notching my head into the crook of his neck. Our arms found each other again, resting against my sweaty skin. I looked up at him, feeling strange in my nakedness. As if he saw the way I was, not the way I was supposed to be.
"What is it?" I asked in a voice softer than the one I was used to using. "Do I look strange?"
His fingers stroked my shoulder, down the round curve of my breasts and stomach. "Yes."
Before I could recoil, he murmured, "Have you ever seen something so alien and wonderful you could not take your eyes from it?"
I was so surprised to not hear the usual stock phrases: beautiful, demure, beautiful again. "Am I like that to you? Alien?"
"What silly things for me to say to a lady. Forget I spoke it."
I sat up on one elbow. "Tell me."
He hesitated. I pressed, sinking my thumbs into his white skin like I could crack him. "Tell me," I repeated.
"I want to."
"Then do so."
"How like Rima-chan, to do what she wants in spite of everything." I would have raised my hackles, had his voice not been so thick with dammed-up emotion. "Telling does not come easy to me."
"Why so?"
"Because… the closer something is to one's heart, the more it obstructs the throat. Because words cannot render what can only be felt."
"Nagi," I said softly. "I think you are too metaphorical."
"The first time I laid eyes on you was springtime. Do you remember?"
One had to take Nagihiko's pivots on their toes. He was changeable as the sea for which he wasn't named. From back then, I only remembered Nadeshiko's skinny legs and how much she annoyed me.
"Not well," I lied.
"The peach-blossoms were blooming. I had barely found my land-legs again after disembarking the ship home. I thought, I've never seen a girl who looks like her before. Long-lashed. Golden-eyed." His finger touched the corner of my mouth, murmuring. "Small lips. Round chin. Like a doll. I thought, I want to wrap her up in paper and take her home." A self-deprecating laugh. "You hated me, of course."
I didn't deny it. "Did you know, even then?"
"Of your mixed blood? Maybe a little. But that isn't why."
"Then how?"
"Alien in the way you spoke. In the way you looked at me."
I was about to interrupt him when I realized that though he was staring at me, he was seeing a memory I could not. "As if you want to pick every stitch free on me like a temari ball and read everything written inside me."
Nor did I deny this — but I was embarrassed he could tell. "Only because you saw through me so easily."
"Rima-chan thinks so?"
That surprised me, until I remembered how easily he had missed how much I wanted him.
"Nobody's looked at me like that before." He leaned over me, and I put my arms around his neck, walling us back in. "It makes me want to let you."
"Let me what?" I breathed, enchanted despite myself.
"Let you open me."
"I wish you would," I whispered.
He wound some of my hair around his finger, hesitating. Nestled close to his body, I could hear his heartbeat again. He ran cooler than I did, almost clammy. When I pressed my thigh against him, his legs were warm. This morning… this morning…
"Is that why all the questions, Rima?"
"You are terribly indirect. One of your many failings."
"Your lists of my failings. Another thing you are unique in making." His warm papery hands held me around my waist, then down to my hips, then lower to squeeze me lovingly. "Tell me some more."
I scoffed at the squeeze, squirming. "You are saccharine, falsely humble, and tease cruelly."
"I was taught that a woman must always credit her accomplishments to another. That anger is an emotion reserved for men who are permitted to be men." If I looked hard when he talked, I could see one of his back teeth was chipped. "But on the last, I cannot dispute you — except to confess I liked your attention."
I swung a leg over him, squirming a little. He laughed. "Don't do that."
"You do not issue edicts here."
Nagihiko's mouth made a pleasant o of surprise. "… Ah?"
"I think you like it."
His face took on an expression of self-sacrificing maternal martyrdom that was a dead ringer for Fujisaki Tsubaki. I made a face of revulsion.
"I love to please you." Nagihiko must have mistaken my face for something else. "To do anything to you for my own gratification is perverse."
"Liar," I whispered. "Let me open you."
His eyes met mine. My pout deepened. I lifted his skirt. He squeezed his eyes shut, hips bucking. Like me, he wore wool stockings for winter. Unlike me, he wore fundoshi like a peasant-born girls: a strip of cotton wound around the legs and secured from behind with a knot. I could tell something was different. I reached between his legs longingly. I had been raised far from men, fatherless and cloistered, but I fancied myself worldly enough to know what to expect. The cotton was wrapped a few more times around each leg to give a slight illusion of wider hips. Between his milky white thighs, the cotton stretched taught and high the same as mine would, like a woman's.
I stared. Nagihiko's knees bent behind me, propping me up slightly astride him.
"Is this an onnagata trick?" I whispered, visibly out of my element.
"Yes," he whispered back. Nagihiko seemed torn between pride and humility. "It may turn your stomach. Some men find it painful."
"I am not a man."
"No," he relented. "You are not."
He arched his back. His shoulders pressed back into the bed and I rose up on his lap a few inches.
"The knot at the back," he said, face red. "I can't…" reach, from his luxurious position pinned to my bed.
A silk-miller's daughter makes quick work of knots. The cotton came undone in a crazy twist, loosening around his legs until I was able to slide it down his thighs. I exposed white skin and pubic hair that was blacker and straighter than mine, like hijiki seaweed.
He pulled his member from between his legs, where it was pinned by cloth. Even if I had wanted to look away, I couldn't have. He was maddeningly beautiful, naked but for the tangles of cotton around his knees like an illustration from a missionary's Bible.
"Father always told me to use a cloth soaked in warm water…"
"Your father taught you to do this, too—?!"
He blushed. "That's right."
"Does it hurt?"
"Only when one is careless."
"It wasn't like this last time." I put my hand behind his length, where the skin was smooth and featureless. As Nagihiko's hips relaxed, my palm met the delicate skin of his sac, unfolding from where it was pushed up inside himself. I liked how fragile the skin was, how soft the insides of his thighs were; his skin was so cool toned that the flushed skin looked almost mauve. I stroked his leg with my pinky and fondled the one, as if to coax the other out.
He moaned. "When I am away from Seiyo, I can be less careful. In Japanese clothes, too, I don't have to."
"But the skirts…"
"Yes," he sighed, melting into my hand a little. "In the uniform, it's safer to conceal manhood like this." A flowery way to put it, to be sure.
"There's only one," I observed, cradling his testicle in my hand.
"R-!" He clapped both hands over his face, rolling violently to the side so his face was in my pillow. "B-because I'm tense!"
I looked down at him with thinly veiled delight. Slowly, "Do I make you nervous?"
"Like this, you do."
"So don't be." Though I was practically half-trembling from excitement, sliding my thumb over the wonderfully wet tip. He tried to, muscles softening. I thought it would be alien, large, frightening: but instead, watching Nagihiko squirm, I felt as if I could get to know his body better than my own. He liked the same stroking pattern I used on myself. His toes curled the way mine did, and he grew wet and slippery the way I did. His eyes glazed over, knees quivering.
"You're beautiful," I whispered, awed. "I'm jealous."
Before Nagihiko could reply, I kissed him. I'm sorry to admit I was brutish about it; Nagihiko's submissiveness brought out a bestial kill-cute instinct that drove me to ruin him. I wrenched his chin to me and pressed my tongue against his teeth. His legs fell open helplessly as I fell back on top of him, pressing my body against where he was sensitive. He grew hard in so few strokes that I thought he must have been more desperate than he was admitting. The more I pet him, the more messy it got – quicker – sweatier – I wanted to watch him finish and spill his spoiled seed over himself, more than I wanted anything else in my entire life.
"Do it," I whispered. "For me."
He grabbed a fistful of the sheets, then froze.
"Or don't," I added, annoyed.
Nagihiko shushed me, then put his hands over my breasts as if to shield my modesty. His eyes were fixed on the door, petrified.
I suddenly knew dread. A strip of light came from the door, now slightly-ajar.
"Somebody's there," he whispered, confirming my worst suspicions.
"No," I said in a low, menacing voice. "At this hour?"
I wrenched myself from Nagihiko's arms. His fingernails clawed at my ribs, trying to stop me.
"Don't!" he begged.
I stormed from the bed naked and snatched the closest kimono off the side of the mirror. I tied it haphazardly around my waist and stormed into the hallway in a cloud of silk. My vision was blurry with rage, embarrassment, shame, fear— If it was Amu, I chanted to myself, if it was even Yaya, I could explain – I could explain it all away. Threaten. Coerce. Maim. Kill.
I met Hatanaka Marimo's round, terrified eyes. In her hands, she clutched a crumpled love-letter that never reached its recipient.
