Was this how good it could feel? It felt just as good as the last time they had s.e.x, but in a different way a more primal way. The more Reina f.u.c.ked her, the more Aiko heard the sounds of wet and skin slapping together, and never in a million years would she have thought it could sound erotic. She was so wet she probably could have taken Reina"s entire hand, but for right now three long fingers worked. Well, maybe some adjustments could be made.
"f.u.kaku!"
She f.u.c.ked her deeper.
"Hayaku!"
She f.u.c.ked her faster.
"Motto!"
Aiko"s arms dropped and she flung them behind her, bracing herself on upper body strength alone. Too much. Between her chest tingling and her pelvis b.u.mping Reina"s other hand, Aiko knew she was about to die. No, not die. I"m more alive than ever. She swore her...dare she say it, p.u.s.s.y, was made for someone like Reina to play with.
And it felt so, so good.
Aiko didn"t think it could ever stop feeling good. I"ll f.u.c.k her here forever. But then she saw herself at the bottom of that hill again, dashing up until a white light blinded her and she toppled backwards. Reina was trapped inside her, Aiko"s body clamped down and imploding.
She didn"t want Reina"s fingers to f.u.c.k anymore, so they didn"t. They stilled inside Aiko as she rode the crest of her o.r.g.a.s.m, her arms buckling and her body crashing to the bed. Reina followed, fingers still inside. Aiko watched her own uncontrollable legs shake, her toes wrestling each other as her chest gasped for air.
When she finished her high and came back to reality, Reina was still inside her, grinning. "I told you I"d f.u.c.k you."
Aiko said nothing and attempted to close her legs, prompting Reina to pull away and cross her arms. I have no idea what just happened. Aiko wrapped her arms beneath her legs and watched Reina fidget with a cigarette. No cuddling that day.
"You sure?" Reina held her lit cigarette out.
Shaking her head, Aiko looked at the clock.
Reina must have followed, for she said, "Maa. Ten minutes. I guess we should get cleaned up and get out of here." She put the cigarette in her mouth and blew smoke from her nostrils. "One hour isn"t any fun."
They took turns in the bathroom, where Aiko attempted to make herself presentable. She tore around the hotel room, looking for her clothing, and found her bra draped on a wall sconce. Reina was already dressed and ready by the time Aiko pulled herself together, and they walked out into the hallway, hand in tepid hand.
Aiko squeezed Reina"s and offered a kiss on the cheek when they reached the elevator. "Thanks for today, again."
The doors parted and they walked inside. "What"s there to thank me for? You make me sound like an escort."
"What? No!" Aiko gripped Reina"s arm. "I would never suggest that. I just mean..." Her muscles relaxed as the elevator descended. "Well, it"s something one would say to their girlfriend, yes?" She was never sure what she wanted in the long term from Reina, but she remained hopeful...about something.
The word for "girlfriend" Aiko had used insinuated something more than their casual relationship. When she said it, Reina glared at her, and said, "What"s that? Look, we"re not like that." She shook Aiko off her arm. "We"re just dating. We"re not girlfriends."
Although Aiko knew that truth in her heart, she still wished...had remained hopeful...she didn"t know. "I"m sorry." Her hand stung from when Reina pushed it away.
"Look, I still have s.e.x with other women right now, okay?" The elevator doors opened, but Reina"s frown did not disappear. She pulled out their room key and deposited it in the container by the front desk.
"Yes, I know." Aiko was still in denial about it, though. Not pleasant to think about one"s lover fooling around with other women, especially now that she knew exactly how Reina operated in the bedroom. Just imaging her teasing another girl in the ear while rubbing her private areas rose hackles inside Aiko she hadn"t felt since indignities on the playground during kindergarten. "I"m not ignorant. I know what kind of woman you are."
Reina stopped walking, standing in the front entrance as if Aiko"s words had just smacked her in the back of the head. "And what kind of woman am I?" Reina turned, her arms still barricading her body from Aiko"s affections.
Oh, no. What have I done? She didn"t mean to upset Reina. "You just...are a free spirit?" That"s what her parents had called those of the "free love" era, right? "You like to sleep with women. More than one. I understand. For all you know, I could become the same way."
Reina went from imposing to confused in less than two seconds. "What? Ha!" She slapped her chest with another chortle. "You! Like me! I could see it now!"
They held hands again as they went outside, Aiko attempting to not let Reina"s words hurt her. I could be. I could be just like her. She imagined herself strutting into bars and dragging women off to love hotels for s.e.x. Huh. That sounds like it could get expensive. Or maybe she would haul them off to bathrooms for anonymous s.e.x. That"s dangerous! But maybe, if she considered herself a lesbian now, that was what she would have to do with the rest of her life.
She poked Reina in the arm as they crawled down the sidewalk, the afternoon still too early to end the date but the both of them penniless to do anything else. "Are you really having s.e.x with other women still? Or are you just saying that you would?"
Reina did not look at Aiko her hand lessened its hold. "I have."
"Oh." Something clunked inside Aiko. "But I"m the only one you"re dating, right?"
"Yes, when you phrase it that way."
Aiko had to settle for that. She may be having s.e.x with other women, but it"s me she takes other time for. She purposefully left out Michiko, and any other lesbian women Reina may have been good friends with. Too much baggage in that thought terminal.
Because of the new year popping up around the world, Reina didn"t see Aiko again for over a week. They did talk on the phone a couple times, but Aiko"s end was so coded due to having her mother hover around; it both annoyed and washed right over Reina, who would have cared more if she were the type of person to get hung up over somebody else.
Thanks to those same holidays, however, she had time off work. The double-edged sword appeared when she had nothing else to do, since her home life was a bust, her friends were busy with their families, and the usual hang out spots were closed. Reina holed herself up in her room while her mother attempted to clean for the new year.
Left with nothing but her stereo, some old comic books, and a desk to keep her occupied, Reina put on a CD and attempted to read a naughty novel under her futon covers. That ended quickly, since she didn"t get anything useful from s.e.xy materials. So she sat at her desk and looked through her New Year"s postcards from distant relatives and closer friends. On top was Michiko"s, written with a foreigner"s hand; on the bottom was Aiko"s, written in calligraphy.
She would be traditional like that. Reina flipped the card over and studied Aiko"s brush strokes. The characters spelled out, "Happiness to You on The Dawn of a New Year," and below the final loop was a smaller message: "I hope the new year brings you many more meetings." Aiko had signed her name in bold, red ink with a heart on the end. The characters making up her name, "Love" and "Child," made Reina think she was dating a ten-year-old. She looked at her own name on the card and realized it was written in the phonetic alphabet.
She doesn"t know the characters for my name. For the best. Reina"s characters weren"t usual, so seeing her name written phonetically was better than seeing it written with the incorrect kanji. Yet it reminded her that she and Aiko still knew so little about each other.
Then again, Reina hadn"t sent New Year"s postcards to anyone.
No point keeping cards cluttering her desk Reina opened a drawer to shove the cards into and got another unhelpful reminder. Glaring back at her was her unfinished letter to Michiko, attempting to explain the feelings even Reina herself couldn"t understand. She pulled it out and dissected the words, her hand reaching out to grab the nearest pencil.
To Michiko, We have known each other for over five years now. You are my best friend. You are the only person I feel I can be both myself around and still be accepted. You never judge me for anything. You know all the vulnerable pieces of me. You are...
Reina bent the edge of the stationery. What was she even trying to say?
Love. Reina knew the concept, but wasn"t sure she understood it. What was love? What did it matter to her? The only things she knew about love were what the movies told her, and that same sort of "love" never translated to the real world. Girls who told Reina they loved her one day ran off with a guy the next, saying the same thing. Maybe "love" was just something to frivolously say. If that was the case, then Reina had no business being so disrespectful to somebody she cared for.
She then imagined Michiko with her packet of cocaine, a bruise on her shoulder, and asking to forego s.e.x because she "hurt down there." Reina wadded up her unfinished letter and tossed it into the trash. I bet somebody"s told Mi-chan they love her before.
Love was worthless.
Reina pulled out a fresh sheet of stationery and sharpened her pencil the latter feat she swore she hadn"t done since half-a.s.sing her homework during her high school days. She blew the shavings off the end and a.n.a.lyzed her blank paper. Nothing else to do on the biggest holiday of the year.
As she pressed her pencil against the paper, she decided to let the words come to her in a stream of unguarded consciousness.
To Papa, It"s another year. I am twenty now. I will have my Coming of Age Ceremony this month. I have a different job as an underpaid stage Idol. I am still friends with Michiko.
Nothing else has changed. Mother hasn"t changed. She still looks like a ghost in this house. You know, she has been a ghost since you died. And she is still angry at me. The last time we fought, many years ago, I told her that you wouldn"t be angry at me, but she didn"t believe me. She told me that I was a dishonor on your memory. Am I? Have I dishonored you? I can"t believe you would care. I can"t believe anybody cares. You once told me I could be anything I wanted. Well, I "wanted" to be a lesbian. Is that so bad?
So that hasn"t changed. I still date women. And they still use me. And I"m the dishonorable one? Whoever taught their daughters to use others" daughters in this way should feel dishonorable. Whoever hits, rapes, and makes women carry their drugs should be dishonorable. Whoever uses women as socially unacceptable experiments to get their youth-time kicks and then ditches them should be dishonorable. That is not how you are supposed to treat people. When I went into middle school you said that I shouldn"t let any of the boys treat me dishonorably. Well, what about the girls? Is it okay for girls to treat each other this way? Maybe you don"t have the answer. I don"t expect you to. But they do. And I say it is wrong and dishonorable.
But what can I do? I don"t mean to sound so defeatist. But maybe I am. Maybe there"s no point to anything. Mother thought she found eternal love with you, but then you left us. And then she left me too. I don"t think we"ve talked in a year, even though we still live in our house.
I hope things are better for you, wherever you are. Because I wouldn"t recommend this world to anyone right now.
Reina Two sheets of stationery later, Reina had her pointless letter. She folded it up and put it in an envelope before turning off her stereo, grabbing her jacket, and heading out the door.
Her mother was in the midst of a break from her New Year"s cleaning, sitting in the living room and watching television. Reina slipped her shoes on and stole out of the front door without a sound.
The first day of 1993 was as cold as the last day of 1992. Reina huddled in her jacket and stomped down the street with purpose coming from her shivering skin. Even with long hair whipping around her face, her complexion reddened from the biting cold, and her fingers numbed in her pockets. She wished she had taken a scarf and mittens before braving the j.a.panese winter.
She rounded hidden corners and traipsed along forgotten roads. Every time she neared a Shinto shrine her walk came to a still as she fought between parishioners trying to get in their New Year"s prayers Reina had no interest in those silly affairs. Neither did her mother. Not since Reina"s father died years before.
He had been a professor at a prestigious university, until he was. .h.i.t by a car coming home one night on his bicycle. Reina had been thirteen, too young to fully understand it but old enough to remember. Once she went to her family"s grave every month to visit her father now her dishonored ancestors had to consider themselves lucky if she showed up once a decade. It"s my mother"s fault she"s the one who said I had dishonored him.
Reina jogged down another alley in order to avoid yet another packed Shinto shrine. New Year was such a bother. Between the cleaning and the faux religiousness, Reina didn"t understand why people pretended to care so much. For image. The same reason those girls act so dishonorably. But Reina had never been the type of person who understood traditions and the status quo. All she knew was that she hated both. Dishonorable.
After a half hour of meandering, she came upon a quaint cemetery stuffed between an abandoned bakery and somebody"s suburban house. In the scheme of Tokyo cemeteries, it was small, holding a total of perhaps twenty-five plots as opposed to a hundred or more. The gate in the front was frozen shut from disuse, but with a little finagling, Reina knocked the ice off and bust the gate open, tumbling through like an uncoordinated goof. She straightened herself up and looked around no one else occupied the cemetery and had seen Reina fall. Some honor saved.
She took her letter to the middle row, center tomb. The name "YAMADA," emblazoned in j.a.panese characters, trailed down the front obelisk, and to either side were the names of those interred.
There must be a thousand "Yamada" graves in this city alone. But this was the one Reina had been brought to all her life, and the one she stood at when her father was interred. So she stood there now, staring at a tomb that hadn"t been cleaned in months.
Her jacket sleeve brushed off the dead leaves, but she didn"t wash the stones, nor did she burn incense. She just sat in front of her father"s name and stared into the etchings, the cold breeze kissing her face and her hand fumbling over her letter.
In the end she left it in the slot where people could leave their business cards. Reina clapped her hands together, not in prayer, but in an effort to get blood flowing through her limbs. She never said a word since everything she had to say was in her letter.
I"m sorry for being dishonorable.
But she didn"t believe her father would think that about her. In the years they had known each other, Reina knew a liberal man with radical ideas about modern traditions and their futures in society. So when she found herself on a non-traditional path in life, her confusion was great when her mother told her it went against everything her father"s memory stood for. My s.e.xuality has nothing to do with my father. That"s what she wanted to believe.
Reina slumped in front of the tomb and knocked her head against the marble. At the rate she was going, she would die and be interred next to her father and other ancestors, since all those dishonorable women wanted nothing to do with her when it came to adopting her into their families.
f.u.c.k them all.
Screaming children ran up and down the hallway while Aiko attempted to find her oldest brother somewhere in the house. She checked the living room, the upstairs bedrooms, the toilets, even the j.a.panese-styled room downstairs, but never thought to look out in the tiny front yard where she eventually found him. He stood with the other Takeuchi son and the two brothers-in-law, discussing the changes to have occurred in the neighborhood since they last lived there.
Aiko gestured into the house and out popped one of the screaming children, her oldest brother"s daughter named Eri. She was seven that year, the oldest of all the grandchildren, but still commanded her father"s attentions as if she should be the only person in the world.
With one of the louder children settled, Aiko slipped back into the house and attempted damage control in the hallway. Eri had knocked over the ceremonial New Year"s decorations, leaving Auntie Aiko to clean it up while the other children wailed for their mothers and the adults pretended not to notice. These family get-togethers on the first Sunday of the new year were always nice in theory, but in practice, Aiko usually found herself wishing everyone would just go home.
She was rearranging the shoes in the genkan when Shizuka appeared. Her and her mother, Junko"s younger sister, were the only members outside of Aiko"s immediate family to show up that day. Shizuka took one look outside and quipped, "It"s s.h.i.t like this that makes me glad I"m an only child."
Good for you. Aiko pushed past her cousin. On the table next to the genkan was a stack of postcards, mostly from extended family and some friends. She thumbed through her own, but once again found nothing from Reina. Before Shizuka could disappear into the toilet, Aiko asked, "Do you get New Year"s postcards from your coworkers?"
Shizuka left her hand on the door handle. "Hm. No, I don"t think so. Why would you want to know something like that?"
Aiko gulped. Shizuka still didn"t know about her and Reina. "Well, erm, one of my friends said that it"s not popular to send New Year"s cards in non-corporate atmospheres so... I was curious..."
Shizuka hesitated a little longer before opening the door to the toilet. "Nope. Oh, wait!" She swerved before putting on the toilet slippers. "Now that I think about it, I think I got a basic one from..."
Aiko stopped breathing.
"Mi-chan." Shizuka hustled into the toilet, slamming the door behind her and locking it before a cousin could follow her.
A sigh rippled through Aiko. She hadn"t heard anything from Reina since December and though that was a few days before, it was starting to feel like torture. Maybe she"s playing with me. No, she"s just busy. Everyone was busy at New Year"s. But Aiko would have to go back to cla.s.ses soon, which meant less time on any day not Sunday to spend with her...girlfriend? Aiko still didn"t know what to call Reina.
Just as she went to crawl into the living room, the phone rang.
Since she was the closest one to the hallway phone, Aiko ambled up and answered with a casualness her mother would have scolded her for.
"Ai-chan?"
Aiko almost dropped her phone; then she almost squealed. She managed to keep her composure by facing the wall and pushing the receiver to her lips. "h.e.l.lo! Happy New Year!"
After waiting a whole grueling few days to talk to her again, Aiko thought she and Reina could have a proper conversation, full of "What have you been doing?" and "What are you doing next week?" But instead Reina was only interested in flirting, completely unconcerned over Aiko"s protests that she was surrounded by nosy family. When Reina trekked down "I can"t wait to kiss you again" territory, Aiko just knew half family heard it via inconvenient ESP. How could she even respond to that? In the end she said "Me too," as if Reina"s following "I also can"t wait to f.u.c.k you again" could be responded to without causing an explosion in the hallway.
The more children ran by and brothers and sisters conglomerated between all the rooms, the more Aiko wanted to run out and find Reina or just hang up. She couldn"t handle both. If any of them knew she was having dirty talk with a girl, then...
Shizuka sauntered up like she was drunk. "Who are you talking to, eh?" She covered her mischievous mouth. "Is it a booooy?"
"Kora!" Aiko then gasped and said into the receiver, "No, not you!" Her voice descended into a whisper. "I like the way you talk to me."
"Ah! I heard it! You"re talking to a boy!" Shizuka waved her arms around and shouted at all the family members pa.s.sing by, "Little Ai-chan is flirting with a boy on the phone!"
When Aiko thought she would finally die, Reina asked, "Is that Shi-chan? Does she think I"m a boy?"
"Er, yes..."
"Ha! Well, in that case, next time we meet I"ll be sure to f.u.c.k you like one."
Oh, dear. Aiko mumbled a request for Reina to call her back later and then hung up before anything naughty could pa.s.s again. Completely inappropriate to get wet in the middle of the hallway while cousins burped and aunties bemoaned their incontinence.
Shizuka hovered near Aiko, hair tumbling out of its bun. "Since when do you have a boyfriend, Ai-chan? This is new!"
Aiko averted her eyes and scooted away from the table. "I don"t have a boyfriend." True, at least. She stuck to the wall as the male members of her family shuffled by and filed into the living room to watch TV and talk about baseball.
"Not your boyfriend? There"s something going on though, huh?"
Ignoring her cousin, Aiko escaped into the j.a.panese-styled room where her mother and aunt, Noriko, sat at a low table and played the slap card game karuta. Better than her brothers and father infesting her with testosterone in the other room.
"Ah, Ai-chan." Junko gestured for her daughter to sit beside her. Aiko slumped down at the table and stared at the cards spread out across the table. "We need somebody to read the poems. Your auntie keeps cheating."
Shizuka followed and sat next to her own mother. The pair of them looked nothing like Junko and Aiko, aside from the full cheeks that ran down their mutual maternal line. Otherwise, Aiko and Shizuka were both products of their unrelated fathers more than their related mothers. "Ma," Shizuka said with a slap to her mother"s arm, "give me that and I"ll read them so you"ll stop cheating."
"I am not cheating." Noriko flipped her cards over in resignation. "I"ve never cheated in my life."
They cleaned up the cards while Junko got up to get tea for everyone. The table was clean by the time she returned with four cups and a streaming pot; Aiko stood to help serve the familial guests before taking a sip herself.
"Yesterday I saw a program on TV about New Year"s in America," Junko began, her aged know-it-all demeanor dominating the room. "It said Americans only have one custom at New Year"s, and that"s to make a wish for the new year. Apparently it"s a very big thing."
Noriko snorted into her teacup. "What"s the point of only making a wish? Anybody can wish for something at any time! You have to make your wishes come true with good fortune."