It was almost embarrassing how easily he entered her. Almost.
Wrapped in Reina’s arms like that, Aiko was able to give herself wholly over. Her hips bounced against his; his hands supported his wife from beneath the knees as she reached down and stimulated her other sensitive spot. “Take me,” she muttered, her husband’s lips hungrily kissing the flesh of her throat.
Reina found the strength to tip Aiko onto the bed, her hands catching her fall so her torso angled up, legs spread out, and Reina claimed her while his hands clamped onto her waist.
It did not take them long to find a mutual rhythm that nearly sent Aiko through the roof. Her innermost spot was touched; her entrance was pushed to its limits. Her fingers rubbed her nub and made electricity shoot from her erogenous zones.
“I’m coming,” she whispered, and this time her husband let her lead.
The world was black and compressed as Aiko squeezed her eyes shut and moaned so loudly that the neighbors probably heard. Let them! She wanted them to know how her husband fucked her.
Her body strained to get through her plateau. It seemed that every passing second was another source of strength. Reina did not help the moment when he shot the last of his sei so deep inside of her that she later claimed she felt it in her chest instead of her loins.
When she crashed, her body crumpled to the bed, and her husband’s phallus slowly, slowly slipped out of her. Reina pulled his wife into his backward embrace; Aiko situated her legs and dozed in her husband’s arms.
Their room was silent, minus the heavy breaths passing between them. Reina kissed his wife’s throat and stroked her arm with the back of his knuckles.
“Well?” Reina asked, his voice deep enough to drown in. ‘What do you think of being with a man? Still a lesbian?”
Aiko smiled, her face nuzzling into the crook of her husband’s arm. “I’m okay if it’s you.” Why would she need any other man?
“I’m glad.” To Aiko’s disappointment, her husband rolled away, breaking their embrace. Is it over? Reina fiddled with the straps around his waist and tossed his phallus over the side of the bed. It’s over.
That didn’t mean Reina’s arms around her meant less. On the contrary, Aiko pushed her legs between her spouse’s and caressed the side of Reina’s face. “My love,” she whispered. Something wet hit her finger. It was the only tear Reina shed that night.
For Aiko’s spouse had nothing to cry about. Reina knew who she – or he, depending on the night – was. Even though Reina resumed her life as a woman in this instance, it didn’t mean she was chained to it. I’ll help her. It wasn’t a cross for Aiko to bear; it wasn’t a nuisance for her to whine about. She had married this beautiful person and loved the heart within the shell. Man or woman, her spouse’s gender never mattered to her.
She was happy that Reina was free from her pain. Here, in this room, anyway. This is our sanctuary. Aiko turned over and buried her head against her spouse’s chest. When they were together like this, they could be whoever they wanted to be. Right now they were a married couple sharing an intimate moment together. “Daisuki no yo,” Aiko said. “No one brings me the joy that you do.”
Reina kissed her wife’s forehead and wrapped her arms around her. “I love you too. Thank you for falling in love with me.”
Although Reina only shed one tear that night, Aiko shed many. But they were tears of love and fortune, for no one in the world was as lucky as her.
The sun shone on a midwinter’s morning, inspiring Reina to stand out on her bedroom balcony while enjoying a cigarette with her view. What there is of one. On a clear day she could see Sunshine 60 in Ikebukuro many kilometers away. Today was not a clear day.
Then what should I do today? She awoke that Saturday morning feeling restless. She blamed the season. Winters had a tendency to give her cabin fever if she wasn’t careful. The rain, the cold… illnesses. Aiko had just gotten over a cold that nearly ruined their Valentine’s Day. For once Reina hadn’t forgotten.
While her cigarette smoke kept her warm in the frosty air, she checked her phone messages and saw one from Mayumi.
For weeks she had been trying to get Reina to rejoin them for more video productions. The first two releases were a hit, and Mayumi tried to convince Reina that she had a huge hand in that. Reina wasn’t interested – but they could use the money. Aiko was nagging about going somewhere for Golden Week, but all of the cheaper places were booked up. Jun had offered them a hotel room in any city she had a branch of her family’s chain, but Reina and Aiko still had to figure out where and how.
She received a new message – from Shio.
“My girlfriend and I had a fight,” it said. “I want to see your handsome face tonight. Let’s go somewhere. Bring your wife if you want.”
Reina was quick to reply. “I’m not your damned rebound.”
“Who said anything about sex? Although, I mean, if you’re offering…”
“Don’t cheat.”
“It was a joke.”
This time Reina waited a bit before punching in another message while she continued to smoke her cigarette with her other hand. “I wouldn’t mind hanging out. There’s something I want to talk about anyway. You know… that stuff.”
It had been three weeks since Reina made peace with her inner man – and it had been three weeks since she gave her wife something she had been meaning to for a long time. That weekend was both informative and lustful, with the married pair exploring certain parts of their sexuality they had yet to discover, let alone share with one another. But Aiko still could not fully understand what the dysphoria did to her spouse. Shio was the only one Reina could open up to.
“Ah, the weeds are early this year!”
Reina looked out into the street and saw Yuri ambling toward her house, husband in tow. They walked hand in hand as if nothing were ever amiss in their relationship. A few days ago Reina overheard Aiko and Yuri giggling about sex with their “husbands.” Yuri babbled that her husband had been doing raunchy things with her, and of course Aiko one-upped everything. Because I’m better than that lameass jerk.
Yuri fumbled for her key to the property gate while Hiroyuki stroked her hair and whispered something into her ear. Only a few meters away an auntie who lived at the end of the street came walking by, watching the two love birds before glancing up at Reina. She immediately scowled and hurried on her way. Yup. Reina still had it.
She also had a sense of unease that did not let up as the minutes wore on, long after she extinguished her cigarette.
Another message came into her phone. It was Haruka. “Hey asshole, we haven’t seen you around lately. My girlfriend was thinking about meeting up with you and your wife, if you know what I mean. What are you doing tonight?”
Uh huh. Because none of that was Haruka’s initiative. Reina replied that she was thinking of going into town that night, so it was her lucky day. Even so, Reina was still restless.
She pushed herself away from the balcony and back into the toasty bedroom. She searched for a pair of shoes she could take downstairs and then outside. There was someone she wanted to see.
***
Aiko was sweeping the kitchen when she saw her spouse walk by the window.
Where is she going? It was not the direction of the convenience store or even the market. Instead Reina was heading in the other direction toward the neighborhood Shinto shrine. Aiko highly doubted she was going there.
Sweeping continued. Aiko picked up her mess and dumped it into the trash. Outside a couple of children rode by on their bicycles, ringing their bells and laughing at a game they played. Aiko looked through the window and wished she knew where her spouse went unannounced.
In time, she knew.
She couldn’t explain how she knew. It wasn’t like Reina went there all the time anymore. Nor did she have any reason to go that day, such as an anniversary or a particularly trite conversation with her mother. But as Aiko put on her sho
es and grabbed her wallet and a satchel, she knew the time had come for Reina to reconcile the final stray pieces of herself.
I should let her do it on her own. Aiko walked down the now empty street still covered in last night’s rain. The sun peeked through wispy clouds as they rolled by, but the air smelled of late winter as opposed to early spring. But I…
She couldn’t explain how she knew. Maybe it was knowing Reina for so long – knowing her habits, fears, and the way she thought on drizzly, boring Saturdays. Reina would either be busy with plans or sitting around melancholy at home. As much as she liked to relax, Reina could not be left alone with her thoughts for more than an hour. They ruined her otherwise good moods, and Aiko was often busy with chores on the days they did not go to therapy.
So Aiko was confident that she knew where Reina was as she weaved through streets, crossed busy intersections, and wondered more than once if she should have brought an umbrella. But she knew she followed her spouse’s footsteps from their home of Kita Ward to neighboring Adachi Ward twenty minutes away.
It was another ten minute walk to get to the area Reina grew up in. By then the sun was fully out, shining upon shimmering streets full of aunties doing their daily shopping and students bantering about pop stars and the latest dramas on TV. She asked one auntie sitting on a bench if she had seen someone who looked like Reina come by, and the auntie nodded. “About fifteen minutes ago,” she said. Reina was always a faster walker than Aiko.
Sure enough, as Aiko rounded a corner, she found her spouse.
The street lining the cemetery was empty, save for some leaves blowing in short bursts. The cemetery was covered in them. They stacked between unkempt markers and were wedged within the fence bordering the sacred grounds. Aiko stood outside the gate and watched her spouse in front of her family’s gravesite, sullen and alone.
Every week Sachiko cleaned the grave, but Aiko could see where Reina had done some cleaning of her own. Reina was not a spiritual person. Through many conversations over the years, Aiko understood that her spouse was a staunch atheist who didn’t believe in an afterlife. Many people were like that, but they still kept up the appearances of going to shrines and temples when they were supposed to. Shinto for life; Buddhism for death. The cemetery was adorned with statues of the neighborhood deities, each one overlooking the dead on the other side. If there was one.
The Yamada family plot was in the center of the cemetery, not because they were once an affluent family, but because of happenstance. They used to be in the back before the cemetery was expanded to make room for more families with more remains needing interring. Aiko picked up one of the communal brushes and approached the gravesite. Reina glanced up, but did not bother to feign surprise at her wife’s presence.
“You don’t have to do that,” was all she said as Aiko knelt by the pillar and began brushing off debris.
“I married you, so I do, in a way.” Aiko put her satchel on the ground; Reina picked it up and kept it in her lap for safekeeping.
While Aiko cleaned, Reina continued to sit and stare into the distance before her. So many names. Aiko traced them, beginning with some old forefather from the Meiji Era named Ichiro, the same name as her eldest brother. Whoever this Ichiro Yamada was – probably Reina’s great-great-grandfather – he must have had enough means to buy a family plot that would be used for over a century.
There were other names. Names that Aiko did not know, since neither Reina nor Sachiko talked about the history of their Yamada branch. These names were written in white, meaning that they had passed on and were interred beneath this monument.
Two names were written in red, meaning they were still alive. The first was Sachiko, wife of Kenta, who was the last name to be whited out on the monument.
Reina was the second. Aiko’s fingers curled into the etchings of her spouse’s name and channeled her sadness.
“Will you be buried here one day?” Aiko asked. Reina was sitting on the ground, her legs sprawled into the walkway before her as her back leaned most rudely against the memorial. “I mean… your name is here.”
“I guess so.” Reina snorted. “My mother had my name put on there a long time ago. I guess she thought I was going to die young. Definitely not get married.” If she had married, she would be interred in her husband’s family plot.
Aiko wondered if her name was on the Takeuchi grave. Did my mother give up on me marrying a man and had my name put on there? A horrible thought occurred to her.
“Ara, Reina, we won’t be buried together!”
She rushed to her spouse’s side, snatching Reina’s arm and sharing her despair. Reina patted her wife’s hand and leaned in against her scalp. “I never thought about it.”
An unexpected tear rolled down Aiko’s cheek. Not be with my Reina for all eternity? Her spouse? Her love? The main reason she got up every day? Reina was one of the defining parts of Aiko’s life. How could they not be together until the world no longer existed? “I’m scared to die now. Reina-chan, I want to be with you even after we stop breathing.”
“So dramatic.” But Reina brushed the tear off Aiko’s cheek. “You can be buried here.”
“I can’t. We’re not legally married. Besides…” Aiko looked around the neighborhood. “This isn’t my home.”
“Then what do you propose? I’m not going to your family’s.
“I know. I don’t want that either.” Aiko leaned her head against Reina’s shoulder and hooked their hands together in her spouse’s lap. “I wish we could be like the Westerners who get buried wherever they want.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works. But maybe we could get a plot together. There’s that cemetery one neighborhood over from ours. It’s as close as it gets.”
The one in Takeshi’s neighborhood? Aiko lifted her head. “Buying a plot like this would be very expensive. Not just the masonry, but the land itself…”
“I guess we have something meaningful to save up for then.” Reina squeezed her wife’s hand. “It won’t be for a very long time now anyway.”
Now there were more tears, but they were relief, happiness, and the profound love Aiko felt for her partner. “Promise me you won’t leave me. Ever.”
“Only if you do the same for me.” Reina lifted their conjoined hands and kissed them. “I would rot without you.”
A cold breeze passed through the cemetery, reminding Aiko of where they were. It also chilled her, and she snuggled up closer to her warm, still breathing spouse. “Don’t say rot in a place like this. It’s too much to think about.”
“Gomen,” Reina apologized. “But it’s true. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even be alive today. I would be right here, nothing but dust in the ground.”
“Reina…”
“You think I exaggerate? If I had kept going the way I was when I met you, my life would have had no meaning. My friends would leave me one by one. I probably would’ve drank more. Depression. That sort of thing. I probably wouldn’t have made it past thirty. It’s because of you I became a happier person. You gave me an ikigai worth having.”
Aiko shielded her face from another cold burst of air by rubbing her skin against Reina’s cotton shirt. “You shouldn’t put so much of yourself into another person, though. You have your own ikigai, and I have mine.” Granted, mine has a lot to do with you…
“Why can’t they intersect? Why can’t we make one together?”
“What is our ikigai?”
“You know what it is. It’s why you followed me here.”
“It’s why you knew I would follow you.”
Reina smiled. “I hoped you would.”
I will always follow you. One day Reina would be gone. Someday. Far away from now, but a day too soon. Eventually Aiko would follow her into their grave. Our grave. It was the sort of thought only a woman so sure in her relationship could find romantic. There was no rush to get there, however. Not when they would have many more years to build tog
ether. Years to forge their ikigai as it weaved with other people, the occasional vacation spot, and of course the home they created over the years.
Reina told her that she had many messages from friends that day, all of them wanting to see their favorite couple. It was an invitation to go to a lesbian bar later that day. Right there in the cemetery, in front of her forefathers and mothers, Reina asked her wife to go have a hedonistic time that would make most of those ancestors turn in the grave beneath them.
“Let’s stay here a while,” Aiko said, content to share the crisp air with the love of her life.
So many people didn’t meet theirs. Some people probably didn’t even have one in this great world. But Aiko had found hers. One day, long ago, when she stumbled into the dressing room of a seedy theatre and found the stunning, caustic woman who would one day become her Reina. The one in her arms right now, sharing her breath and one day her grave.
“Do you remember our anniversary a couple of years ago?” Aiko asked softly. “We went to that restaurant, and you were so standoffish that I wondered if it was the end. I’m glad you are feeling better now.”
“I couldn’t have done any of it without you.”
“Reina!” Aiko flung herself into her spouse’s lap and reveled in her warmth.
“Ai-chan.” Gentle fingers touched her head and then her arm. Within seconds, Reina began to sing quietly. She rarely sang ever since she was in that group years ago. Since then her voice had deepened and cracked a little, thanks to the cigarettes. But she still had a lovely alto, and when Aiko realized she was singing the song they enjoyed at karaoke in which they kissed for the first time… she smiled like a stupid girl. Eventually, however, Reina stopped singing. “Why does loving someone hurt so much?”
“Because the human heart was not meant to hold so much emotion.”
“Then let’s make that our ikigai. Because I shouldn’t be overcome like this when I look at you and touch you like this. I should only be happy.”
Ikigai Page 31