by Misumi Kubo
“Okay, I’m off,” Ryota said, handing Takumi the empty can and making to leave. I looked up at him, not knowing what on earth was going on. “I’ve gotta make dinner for my gran. See ya round.”
With that, he left the room. Gazing at the door after him, Takumi and I listened to the sound of his feet on the stairs, stunned.
“What the hell’s with him?” Takumi said, lying back on his bed and closing his eyes.
A cool draft came in through the window, and I wondered if the rain had got even harder. I pushed the manga books aside to create space and sat down on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. From Takumi’s window, you could see the bike path by the river, just like you could from my house. A group of small kids went racing along in the rain, speaking to each other in loud voices.
“So I saw that stuff online yesterday. Your, um . . . stuff.”
I’d never expected to come straight out with that, and I surprised myself. From downstairs I could hear the woman screaming, now mixed with the sound of Mrs. Saito’s saying things like “You’re nearly there!” and “Try to relax!” in a loud, clear voice.
“You know about that, right? How the photos of you are all online and stuff?”
Takumi gave a little nod, his eyes still shut.
“They get sent to my phone every day.”
I squeezed the can of juice I was holding, and the condensation went raining down on the manga books. I took a handkerchief from my bag and wiped them off. The fan rotating its head left and right ruffled my hair, still wet with the rain.
“Ahhh!” Takumi gave a big sigh, and stretched out his arms so one of them fell down from the bed. I could see the blue veins under his skin. I went over to the bed and lay down beside him, curling myself up on my side beneath his armpit like a little mouse in its hole. Closing my eyes, I breathed in the smell of his armpits. Wow, had I missed that smell. I looked up to his face. Under his jawbone, I could see a sprinkling of stubble. I thought of Takumi’s face in the video from yesterday, all made up. I wanted to spread my legs wide and have sex with Takumi like the girl in that video. The world was so unfair.
I moved so as to press my face close to Takumi’s. My hair fell down onto his face. I leaned in and kissed him, just brushing my lips against his. I knew my face was going red. Takumi didn’t move an inch. My heart had started beating way faster, and I could hear a kind of hushing sound in my ears, like blood flowing. I climbed on top of Takumi, poked out my tongue, and slowly licked his upper lip, right to left, left to right. Then I did the same with the lower one. I realized that the groans of pain from downstairs also sounded a lot like groans of pleasure. I thought of the voice of the woman Takumi had been having sex with in the videos, and felt my lower abdomen grow heavy, hazy, and hot.
I slipped my body down and went to unzip Takumi’s shorts, but he pushed me away.
“No,” he said, and sat up. “Sorry.”
For the first time that day he actually looked at me. His eyelids were all swollen, and he had yellow crusty bits in his left eye. Was that what happened when you slept all day?
“Go home, will you?” He lay back down on the bed.
I stared at him for a while but he didn’t budge. I got up, picked up my bag, then ran out and down the stairs, slamming the front door behind me as hard as I could. It was only when I looked down that I realized I was still clutching the towel his mom had given me.
When I’d failed to get into the private high school I’d wanted to attend because I liked the uniform and only got into the three state schools that people called “the idiot league,” I’d felt super depressed. Mom and Dad had both been really nice about it, trying to cheer me up by saying stuff like “We know you tried really hard.” The truth was, though, that when it came to schoolwork, I really had not tried very hard. But that was how it was. Whenever little Nana did something that suggested she was making an effort in any way, Mom and Dad would instantly be full of praise for how hard she’d tried, what a good kid she was.
Since I was small, Mom had always said my brother was the Studious One and I was the Cute One, and as long as I smiled at people then everything would turn out all right. If I’m being totally honest, I’d been aware since I was pretty young that when I smiled, boys in my class or the adults around me would look slightly embarrassed or else really happy. If I made some kind of mistake, people would tell me to sit down, and they’d look after me. When I tried smiling at the mirror, I could see I definitely was cute. I figured that if I just kept smiling like Mom said, then lots of good things were bound to happen to me.
When I got into middle school, lots of boys started asking me out, but there wasn’t a single one I was interested in. They were all too boyish for my tastes, brimming over with this big, clumsy energy in a way that was kind of scary. I found the whole being asked out thing a real pain, and I’d look down at the floor with a troubled expression and mumble, “I’m sorry,” and then the boy would apologize, too, saying, “No, no, I’m sorry for putting you in this position.” Then I entered one of the idiot-league high schools, and all the boys just seemed like idiots. I felt pretty fed up with the whole situation. But then, one PE lesson, something changed. The teacher had divided the athletic field into halves, the boys in one and girls in the other. Over in my half, a girl fell over mid-hurdle and sprained something, and as she was lying there crying on the ground, I watched Takumi come running over, hoist her onto his back, then run at full speed to the nurse’s office.
“I wish he’d give me a piggyback, too,” I said to Akutsu, who was standing next to me, but she just laughed.
In May, after losing to my classmates in a rock-paper-scissors game, I was given the position of one of the members of the Sports’ Day committee, together with Takumi. He was mild-mannered and quiet, but he always seemed to be surrounded by people. When the boys in the year above grabbed his head and mussed up his hair, yelling out “Hairwaaaash!” or the girls in his class jumped on his back yelling, “Hey, hey, Takumi, it’s my turn for a piggyback” (actually I wanted to try that move, too), he’d always brush them away, telling them to stop, but to go by his big grin he didn’t seem to mind too much. It looked to me as though everyone was always finding reasons to touch him.
One day, as I was struggling to reach a box on the top of the lockers, someone came up behind me, took hold of my armpits, and hoisted me right up in the air, as you would a baby or a toddler. Dangling there in midair, I looked around in astonishment to see that the hoister was Takumi.
“Quickly, grab it,” he said, looking at me.
From the hall I heard a boy call out, “Takumi, come paint this section!”
Clutching the dust-covered cardboard box with both hands, I thanked him.
“You’re so light,” he said, and then walked off.
It wasn’t just my cheeks that I could feel burning but also the place where he’d touched me under my arms. He was the first boy I’d ever had a crush on, and the first one I ever asked out. Since we were at the same school, I figured he couldn’t be any less of an idiot than I was, and he wasn’t desperately good-looking, either. To make things worse, he was always shuffling wearily down the hallways, treading down on the backs of his shoes. Still, I really, really liked him.
Even when he asked me to hang on a bit, I felt really happy at the thought that all I needed to do was wait a while, and then I’d be able to go out with him. Hearing that he’d got a job at the local pool, I went and interviewed for a job in the same place, although I’d not actually been planning to work over the summer. For some reason Akutsu started saying she was worried about me doing a job like that by myself, and got a job at the same place.
The times Takumi and I hung out by the riverbank, hugging and kissing and stuff, I felt totally sure I was going to have sex with him. I got this sense like this summer break was going to be one I’d remember for the rest of my life. But in fact, unbeknownst to me, my most beloved Takumi was off having all kinds of cosplay sex with some stranger.
It was almost too sad to be true, I thought to myself as I pedaled home, despised by Takumi, soaked through to the skin by the rain.
For once, the lights were on at home, and Mom was in the kitchen with an apron on, cooking something that was giving off a very loud sizzling sound. With her left hand, Mom dropped little flour-covered balls of meat one after another into a wok and then, with the large silver-cooking chopsticks held in her right hand, picked out the balls that were already deep-fried to a crisp golden-brown, and transferred them into a square dish. I moved behind her and said “Hello,” but there was no reply. Thinking she hadn’t heard me, I stepped closer.
“Stay back or you’ll get burned.” Her voice sounded gruffer than normal.
Mom is usually nice to everybody, but on certain occasions, when my brother’s grades slip a bit or when she’s had a fight with Dad, then this voice comes out. She never shows this side of herself to my brother or Dad, but she shows it to me. At these times, she always makes a huge amount of food—more than anyone could ever hope to eat. I glanced under the table and saw sheets of newspaper with broken plates and bits of food on them.
“Did something happen with Yusuke?” I asked, going up behind Mom and addressing her back. A glob of boiling oil came flying and landed on my arm. “Owww!”
“See, I told you!” Mom shouted. Not knowing what to do, I went to the foot of the stairs and called up for my brother, though I figured it was probably useless. Sure enough, there was no response.
“Just leave him. There’s no point. He only eats what he wants to, and he only eats it in his room. Come and sit down at the table before it gets cold.”
She heaped a small mountain of rice into my bowl. When Mom had this expression on her face, I got so scared that I just started talking about whatever came into my head, often giving away things I really didn’t mean to be giving away.
“So there’s a guy named Takumi in my year who’s working at the pool with me, and the house he lives in is also a maternity clinic. I went over with a friend on the way home from school.”
“I always wonder if those maternity clinics can really be safe,” said Mom. “I just can’t see why anyone would go and choose to give birth in a place like that when there’s plenty of good hospitals around.”
Mom wasn’t even touching the food. Instead, she watched me fixedly. I bit into the fried meat, only to find that it wasn’t the chicken seasoned with garlic, ginger, and soy sauce that she usually made, but plain liver, which I loathed.
“Mom, is this—”
“Yes, it’s liver. I know you don’t like it, but young women like you lose blood every month, so you have to make sure to eat these kinds of iron-rich foods.”
The aftertaste was super disgusting. I did my best to wash the rest of it down with barley tea. Watching me eating my rice and drinking from my miso soup bowl, failing to reach for any more of the liver, Mom started to get irritated.
“By the way, Nana, you can use up all my sanitary towels. I won’t be needing them anymore. Come on, eat some more liver. I’ve made plenty.”
I had no idea why Mom was feeling the need to be so horrible. Her face was swollen, she had black circles under her eyes, she was wearing no makeup, and she was glaring at me in a really menacing kind of way. I knew the food on the table was stuff that she’d made with love, but I couldn’t help feeling like I’d rather have had a ready-meal, even if it contained no love whatsoever.
“Come on! Eat it!” Mom suddenly reared up over the table and slapped me across the head. This was something she’d done very occasionally since I was small, but it had never particularly hurt, and I’d always felt that if it helped her feel better, then it was fair game. Now I’d reached high school, though, I’d assumed it was over. In my surprise, I shouted out.
“Stop it!”
Then I went on. “I know I’m not clever like Yusuke is, I know I’m stupid and stuff, but my head isn’t here for you to use as some kind of punching bag to take your stress out on! Why did you have to go and make so much food if you knew nobody was going to eat it? It’s nuts. If you’re that keen on making something, why don’t you try something that won’t just disappear when people put it into their mouths?”
I hadn’t finished speaking when I heard a loud slap and my left cheek started to burn. For the first time in my life, Mom had hit me in the face. I reached out my arm and pushed the plate with the deep-fried liver off the edge of the table. It smashed on the floor with a dull sound. I had the feeling that my brother had done a similar thing not long before. Treading pieces of battered meat underfoot as I went, I ran up the stairs to my room and shut the door.
Idiots, I thought, they were all idiots. Takumi, my brother, Mom, all of them. And Mom was a stupid liar to boot. You could go around giving people cute smiles all you wanted, but nothing good came of it. Nothing at all.
Three days after Mom slapped me, I found myself, for reasons I couldn’t really explain, in a love hotel with Hinata. Or rather, I could kind of explain. I’d sent him a message saying “This is the worst summer vacation ever,” and so he’d offered to take me to the aquarium I’d been wanting to go to forever. We stood for so long staring at Hinata’s favorite jellyfish, which twinkled like Christmas lights, that I started to feel dizzy and then got all faint. Even after sitting on one of the benches in the aquarium for a while, my head was still spinning like crazy, so we left, with Hinata propping me up. He helped me into a taxi with a super-serious look on his face, and told the taxi driver a place-name I’d never heard before. When we arrived, I saw it was some kind of hotel district.
“I think it’s a good idea if you lie down for a while. I won’t lay a finger on you, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
I didn’t believe Hinata for a second, but I lay down on the bed in that small air-conditioned room, looking as exhausted as I could. In fact, I was feeling totally fine by that point, but I had this feeling of not really caring about anything anymore. I felt like even if I ended up losing my virginity to Hinata right here, that wouldn’t be such a terrible thing.
“Are you okay?” Hinata placed a towel that he’d soaked in cold water and wrung out on top of my forehead. I grabbed hold of his arm and stared into his eyes on the other side of his black-framed glasses. Hinata stayed looking at me like that for a while, then brought his face closer to mine, and kissed me. He was trembling a little bit.
“You’re in love with someone else, aren’t you?” he said.
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” I said, then sat up and kissed him. The wet towel dropped down from my forehead onto my chest. I picked it up and wiped away the beads of sweat on Hinata’s forehead.
“I think you’re more feverish than I am.”
Hinata’s hands grabbed at my boobs through my chiffon dress. Underneath I was wearing a really cute polka-dot bra I’d bought especially for losing my virginity to Takumi. Hinata lifted my dress, moved my bra aside, and took one of my nipples in his mouth. Then, as if something was hurrying him on, his cold, skinny fingers slid inside my panties and began kneading my crotch. He took off my dress and undid my bra. For whatever reason, he didn’t remove my panties completely, but left them hanging half off my left foot.
“You’re so sexy,” Hinata said in a high-pitched voice, grabbing both my ankles and pulling my legs wide apart into an M-shape. The same position that the girl having sex with Takumi was in, I was thinking to myself, when the cold tip of Hinata’s nose brushed against the hottest part of my body, and his rough tongue started moving up and down between my legs. Being kissed and having my nipples sucked, I’d felt nothing at all, but now I felt my breathing growing heavier. The tip of his tongue kept going up and down the sticking-out place between my thighs. I felt so embarrassed I thought I was going to die, but it also felt really, really good. The two feelings swirled around whirlpool-like inside me, like milk stirred into coffee.
“Mhhmm . . .” My mouth was closed, and the sound came out funny.
How were
you supposed to moan in a sexy way, like that woman in the video with Takumi had? I couldn’t seem to make any good noises, only heavy breathing sounds. I shut my eyes and imagined it was Takumi who was going down on me. Not cosplay Takumi, but the normal, droopy-looking Takumi, wearing normal clothes. I felt myself getting wet between my legs right away.
“Is this where you like it?” Hinata said, climbing on top of me. As he kissed me, he touched the sticky-out part, moving it round as if he was drawing circles. I shut my eyes and carried on imagining it was Takumi doing this to me, Takumi who was giving me all this pleasure.
All of a sudden, I felt Hinata break away from me and heard him unzip his jeans. I opened my eyes just a crack and saw Hinata’s thingy pointing straight up toward the ceiling. Was it really possible that something that big was about to make its way inside my body? Would it hurt like crazy? What hurt more, doing it for the first time or childbirth? With his T-shirt still on, Hinata opened my legs wide and draped himself on top of me. As he did so, I felt something splash fast and hot against my thigh. Hinata buried his head on top of my left shoulder and lay there for a while, his breathing heavy.
What were you supposed to say in these kinds of situations? I had no idea, so I kept quiet and patted the back of his head. He breathed a basically silent sort of sigh.
“Sorry,” he said, as he stretched a hand toward the tissue box on the bedside table and hauled it closer toward him. He wiped the liquid off my thigh. Just a minute ago it had been so hot, but already it felt cold.
“You were thinking about the guy you like, right?”
I felt so uncomfortable that I found it impossible to look him in the eye. He placed his palm on top of my head.
“I’m not blaming you. I think . . . I think everyone does it.”
He rolled up the tissues he’d used into a ball and tossed them into the wastebasket.
“To tell you the truth, I . . . I’m really into someone at the moment as well, and as I was touching you I was imagining it was her. Wishing you were her, I guess.”