Work Text:
1
April 2024
***
Hifumi Ebiko was an 18-year-old woman – barely out of high school and not enrolled in any college or university. She was a NEET, or she would have been, if her one and only passion didn’t land her an employment contract with a small publisher last September.
She lived a listless, aimless life without big aspirations, as if a part of her was missing since the moment of her birth – yet writing was the thing that kept a spark going within her. That and singing, but she never told anyone about that part and kept it to herself – in the shower, or when she was home alone.
Her debut novel was ‘The Starfaring Maiden’, a collection of short stories, connected by the consistent protagonist, a young noble called Felicia from an incredibly privileged planet in a galaxy colonized by humanity – with every star system having formed its own government and culture over the course of three thousand years.
She was quite blatantly inspired by classics such as ‘Kino’s Journey’ and ‘The Journey of Elaina’. And when she wrote those stories down, she never expected them to be picked up by an actual publisher.
Yet here she was – a published author, and she was just informed by her editor, an attractive office lady called Seika Hitoishi, that they were running a second reprint.
She didn’t quite know what to make of her fortune. She was resigned to becoming an aimless adult, leeching off her way too gracious parents until their patience ran out and she’d lead a sad life of staffing convenience store counters, all while writing online fiction on the side.
In a way she was worshipping this editor, who sifted through all the smut chapters online, found this one shining jewel and carried it out of the deepest pit of Hifumi’s listlessness. Who knew where Hifumi would be today without Hitoishi’s timely intervention? Not sitting in front of a laptop, with an opened text editor that read ‘The Starfaring Maiden, Volume 2’ in big bold letters, that much was certain.
She wasn’t lacking in ideas, but today she worried if she could keep up the quality – if she could deliver more of what the first volume offered to all the people who bought her novel. When she was doing it for free for the internet, it never mattered much to her what others might think of her writing, but now she felt the weight of her readers’ expectations on her shoulders.
She paced up and down her room, pondering various approaches. She wasn’t lacking in ideas for weird places, though maybe she would have to do some google searches to make sure they were realistic enough for her space setting.
Maybe I should do that first before I try to think about ‘marketability’.
Hifumi sat down again and opened google. There were several ideas she had, and she needed to know their feasibility.
***
Researching scientific facts for the purpose of writing science fiction could prove vexing. There were question-and-answer websites on which experts answered anything inquisitive minds came up with – but on some of them a rather elitist attitude emerged regarding hypotheticals.
‘What would the effects of a suddenly appearing vacuum in the atmosphere be if people could teleport?’ Would often be met with answers like ‘I am not even going to humor the hypothetical because it is so absurd’, usually by people whose biographies stated that they weren’t even experts in the field the question was aimed at.
“Why are you even answering a question about physics when you’re a programmer, asshole?” Was a common enough thought Hifumi had when she browsed that website.
Once she wanted to know if the pressure differentials of an opening airlock the size of a door would actually be strong enough to cause a wind or suck someone out, like she always saw in sci-fi movies or anime. Maybe she should have asked about sudden hull breaches instead, because she got five different people answering her that the airlocks of the ISS and modern spaceships were designed to open to the inside, so the internal air pressure kept them shut and made them impossible to open before the air was removed.
Still, she soldiered on and slowly gathered the knowledge she needed for her next novel.
“Ugh, really? Gas giants only exist in brown, grey, blue and dirty red?!”
Hifumi ruffled her hair as she looked over the information presented to her. Quite a few things she looked up so far that she considered interesting turned out to be nothing more than the fabrication of someone working for Hollywood.
And speaking of Hollywood, a movie she watched last month showed a planet with a black sun that turned everything its light touched monochrome – she wanted to use something like that, but as it turned out, this idea wasn’t based on any real phenomenon, not even on anything in the book the movie was based on. It was a completely original invention for the big screen and if she wrote a chapter with a world that looked like this, her inspirations would become all too obvious to her readers.
“Okay, okay, instead of a black sun I’ll use a black hole… ugh… what’s a stable orbit for a habitable planet around a black hole? Does that even exist?”
Hifumi’s research continued and proved once again how disappointing reality could be.
“Fine! I’ll just make it an orbital space station.” She groaned and wrote down some notes.
“That’s still bleak enough to write about a culture with depressing art.”
She looked at her little pile of notes and fun facts she wrote down, among them a depressing nation orbiting a black hole, and a planet of fungus cultists on which you become one of them as soon as you take off your helmet and breathe in the spores – she had everything she needed.
It was time to write.
2
June 2024
***
Her manuscript was finally finished! Hifumi, turned 19 on May 5th, worked every day on it, with nothing else exciting her enough to divert her attention. She made sure to capture the feeling of volume 1 again, with her protagonist Felicia visiting all sorts of different places, detailing her thoughts about each of them while she interacted with the locals who ranged from weirdos to fanatics, to straight-up hostile. In one instance Felicia’s spaceship, the Poseidon, automatically activated its defense systems to protect her at all costs, much to her horror. This would bring a great contrast to the carefree atmosphere that persisted throughout most chapters, while giving Felicia some more depth and a reason to be more careful in the future.
Hifumi didn’t hesitate long to send the manuscript to her editor, Seika Hitoishi. She hummed quietly to herself and threw herself on her bed, hugging her pillow as she stared at the ceiling, grinning from ear to ear. She was aware that it was purely a work relationship, but she noticed that Hitoishi looked happy whenever she read her manuscripts – and the thought made her happy, too. Sure, there were comments on the internet under her stories, a lot of praise, and on her smut quite a few declarations how hot the scenarios she wrote about were. But seeing the light in her editor’s eyes when she read through the pages of her manuscript was a whole different feeling altogether. Hifumi got up and sat back down in front of her laptop, deciding to pass the time with other people’s yuri fiction. Mostly the erotic kind, of course.
Hifumi clicked through some stories until her eyes lingered on one specific title.
‘My superior abuses her status and has her way with me in a meeting room / OL x intern / 20-year age gap!’
Her mind went back to her editor and her thoughts turned sinful. Not that she particularly believed in the concept of ‘sin’ either way. She walked to her door and locked it with a little click – afterwards she pulled a shoebox out from under her bed and opened it – it contained a Hitachi magic wand for ‘massages’ as well as a few other, smaller toys, mostly of the phallic kind. She had something to spend her sudden disposable income on, at least.
She dropped her pants quickly and made herself comfortable on her chair, opening the fic and starting to read – as the first erotic action happened, she started to relax, massaging one of her small breasts through her t-shirt with her left hand. She self-inserted as the young intern and imagined Hitoishi in the role of her superior – the age gap in the story was larger than the real one between her and her editor, but she could still make it work. The vivid imagery she projected in her mind got her aroused and she felt a damp warmth spread in her lower body. She took a deep breath as she held the head of the massager against her panties and flipped it on.
Nothing happened.
Seriously, I forgot to charge it again?
Hifumi groaned, looking at the useless device in her hand. Being left hanging like this was one of the worst ways her relaxation could go, and she cursed her decision to go with the cordless device, based on reviews saying that the corded one could have a flimsy point of contact and stop working mid-session.
“Ugh, I’m not in the mood for using my fingers or a dildo…”
She grumbled to herself and plugged the device into the wall to charge it. She unlocked her door and simply threw herself on her bed, opting to read some yuri light novels instead.
***
She read through three whole volumes of the series she picked up recently before her body finally cooled off – a story which combined yuri, which she liked, with isekai, which she didn’t like as much. The author made it worth it, though, and Hifumi was delighted by the way the main protagonist was pursuing the relationship aggressively, only to become the bottom once the woman she liked reciprocated.
She heard a ping from her mail program on her laptop and got off the bed, putting the novels aside.
“From Hitoishi? Already? She sure works fast…”
Hifumi couldn’t help but smile a little as she sat down and read the mail from her editor.
***
‘Dear Ebiko, thank you for your fast and diligent work.
I have attached a file with corrections and annotations for the usual polishing process.
Other than those I like the manuscript as it is and if you say you want to have it published like this you will hear no objections from me.
However, given that we now have quite some time until the deadline, I’d like to encourage you to experiment a little more with your manuscript. Have more thematic connections between chapters and their resolutions, think over if you want to create some really shocking twists maybe or tug a bit harder on the heartstrings.
Keep up the good work!
Seika Hitoishi’
***
Hifumi pondered the mail for a moment.
Make a thematic connection, or start a plotline through the volume? Hm…
There weren’t many of those things she could think of – except one. Romance.
She saw a new character in front of her mind’s eye – a red-haired beauty who travels with Felicia for the duration of the volume.
Yes, this might work!
She immediately sent her response – she was going to implement the corrections first and keep a safety copy before reworking her manuscript. Hitoishi’s response was quick, and she got the green light to go ahead with her plan.
She spent the next two hour fixing her typos and oddly structured sentences – excessive repetition of words was an especially annoying issue of hers which she still overlooked in her first drafts all the time.
Once her work was finished she got to working on her actual draft for a proper rework.
She examined her chapters – they were all narrated through internal monologue, but this gave a biased view of only Felicia’s opinion of these places. It also caused a majority of her novel’s content to be only descriptive, with not much dialogue, save for the few encounters with locals and discussions with Poseidon, the ship’s AI. She felt that it was arrogant to already think about the possibility, but how would an anime adapt her light novel with barely any proper dialogue in it? Narration by Felicia? Just quiet scenes with music while panning over the breathtaking landscapes of alien worlds?
She shook her head – she needed to bring a little bit more life into it, and the new character she just envisioned would fit perfectly.
***
After an hour of deliberation, she finally came up with a character profile.
A young woman with red hair, green eyes and pale skin from her own life as a Starfarer. Hifumi spent some time writing down a few more details – height, age, blood group, favorite food, all those little things that she might want to reference during the course of writing.
She started by writing a wholly new prologue: Felicia picks up a distress signal from an immobilized ship. She arrives an hour later and fears the worst, as the ship looks like it floated in the cold void of space for an extended period of time already. After checking every corner of the ship, she finds a single cryo pod with a beautiful young woman inside.
She has to spend considerable time nursing the woman back to health, who apparently was stuck in her pod for a decade, running entirely on emergency power.
With no functional spaceship and no resources, the woman has no choice but to ask Felicia to let her tag along – and is even so bold to ask Felicia to get her back to her home system, so she can get a new spaceship of her own again. Felicia is hesitant but agrees.
Starting from this the two share the living space of the Poseidon. At first, they quarrel a little, especially when Tiana gets annoyed with Felicia’s high-born naiveté when dealing with strange cultures on unknown planet nations. Other times the two share a tender moment – they accidentally touch each other’s hands while reaching for a wrench during ship maintenance – fluctuations in the ship’s internal gravity cause them to bump into each other, and on one occasion, Tiana crawls into Felicia’s bed – not for lewd reasons, but because that night she has nightmares about her decade in the cryo pod and needs a warm body next to her to remind her that she’s not frozen, or alone for that matter.
However, Hifumi wouldn’t be Hifumi if she could resist the allure of two beautiful women rubbing their bodies together, so…
3
July, 10345 UCC
***
The little starship passed a cloudless azure gas giant on its lonely travel.
Space distorted ever so slightly around the ship’s silver frame, as its Alcubierre drive propelled it forward. Currently it was going at sub lightspeed to allow the woman at the helm to take in the wonders of the galaxy right in front of her.
She was a beauty – slender and with a small stature, reaching only 149cm in height. Her hair matched the azure of the featureless orb her ship, the Poseidon, was passing in this very moment; it was freely flowing down to her hips. She had a mischievous twinkle in her eyes as she looked from the gas giant to the interior of the ship behind her.
Who was this beauty, steering a spaceship to an unknown destination?
You guessed right. She’s me, Felicia.
I got up from the helm, setting the Poseidon on autopilot to orbit the unknown gas giant for a while longer. It would make for a pretty sight for today, and with the push of a button multiple observation ports opened all across the ship to make the best use of the vista.
Someone stirred in the guest bunk as the shutters opened. The girl laying there blinked into the reflected light of the gas giant’s dayside.
“Good morning…” she mumbled.
The woman lying in my guest bunk was no one else but Tiana, the woman I picked up after following a distress call a couple of weeks ago. I stood in the corridor for a few minutes, just to take in the sight of her – fiery red locks fell down to her shoulders, and her green eyes were a pretty sight to behold. Conflicting feelings arose in me and part of me wanted to turn the ship around, rather than fly deeper into this solar system, where her home planet was located.
I recalled the planets we visited together this past month. We almost met our end on a planet covered in giant spore spewing fungi, as the cult living there tried to remove our helmets to make us one of them.
Or the time we visited the nation located entirely on a space station orbiting a black hole. The constant view of the hungering maw that devours even light shaped their cultural development in rather interesting ways – their art was a little bit too depressing for me, though.
“Are you awake yet, Tiana?”
I sat down next to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. A strap of her top came loose and the way it was sliding down her arm was rather exciting to me. My eyes kept looking at her skin, a little paler than mine due to her having spent more time in space than me.
“Just enough.” She yawned and looked out of the window.
“Ah! That’s Chernoglav!” Naturally she would recognize her own solar system’s planets.
“Yes. We are in your home system. Which means that today we’ll reach your home and… well, we’ll have to say goodbye.”
Tiana looked at me with big, sad eyes.
“Can’t I just keep traveling with you like this instead?”
I knew this question was coming. But as a Starfarer I couldn’t take someone along with me indefinitely. Familiarity builds attachment and attachment means that one day I will want to stop traveling to enjoy more time together standing still. To settle down.
And the time I spent with her already made me yearn for it, so I needed to harden my heart if I wanted to see more of the galaxy.
“I’m sorry, Tiana.”
She shook her head in response.
“No, no, it’s alright Felicia. I understand. Attachment between Starfarers and all that.”
She sat up right next to me and leaned her head against my shoulder.
“I enjoyed our time together.” She whispered just loud enough for me to hear.
“Me too.” I replied.
“I may have fallen in love.” She whispered a bit quieter this time, but I still heard her.
“Me too.” I replied again, without hesitation.
“….”
“….”
There was an awkward silence between us for a good long while. In a way, it even continued; at least we didn’t exchange words. At first our lips touched, and a moment later our tongues probed each other with clumsy curiosity. Then I lifted up that pesky loose top, and freed Tiana’s small chest to be admired by me. I’ve seen her nude before – it was impossible to share the small living space of the Poseidon without running into each other in the middle of changing, or showering, or maybe even secretly masturbating, after all.
But this was different. This was Tiana baring herself to me, with the intent to have me see her. To have me touch her. Seeing her in this context was a whole world of difference, electrifying all the skin on my body with a tingle of anticipation. Her cute pink nipples stood up as if to invite me to have a taste. And I accepted.
I leaned in and grabbed her small breasts with both my hands, massaging their soft surfaces with my thumbs as I cast a quick glance towards Tiana. Her face was a little flushed and the only sound she made was a little moan, but she nodded, urging me to continue. I leaned closer to her breasts and poked out my tongue to flick her left nipple. A shiver went through her body, telling me exactly what I needed to know. I leaned in further, now gingerly taking her nipple between my teeth. With her next moan, Tiana sunk back onto the bed, with me on top of her like a ravenous beast. My left hand let go of her breast and slowly slid down her toned stomach, all while I made sure to keep eye contact as she looked down at me.
We still didn’t exchange words as my fingers slid under the hem of her panties and slowly circled on her pubic mound. Another shiver went through her body - she liked it. I could feel a little bit of trimmed hair brushing past my fingers as I slid them further down. My mouth now released her nipple, and I pulled myself up to her side, with her beautiful green eyes on me as I leaned closer towards her neck and peppered it with kisses.
Tiana’s moans were like music to me, causing me to slide my finger from side to side over her still hidden pleasure nub to play her like an instrument.
She squirmed and breathlessly stared into space before she managed to speak the first words since we kissed.
“Have you done this before?”
“Nope!” was my quick answer as I gently bit her shoulder. She gasped and dug her fingers into my hair as I kept working her lower regions. I couldn’t very well tell her that I read dirty novels and played even dirtier full-dive games when I was still a teenager back on my home planet.
My efforts appeared to be working, as I felt my fingers being coated in something wet and warm. I made a point to bring them to my mouth and lick them clean in full view of the terribly embarrassed Tiana. It was a sweet taste, fitting for her cute appearance. I wanted seconds.
I kissed my way down her body, giving special attention to both her nipples as I passed them, before I stopped at her pubic mound. I took a deep breath of her scent as my hands caressed her thighs and I made eye contact again. Tiana was shivering in anticipation, so I waited much longer than intended.
“Nh… why did you stop?” Even her complaining voice was adorable.
To answer her question I extended my tongue downwards and licked over her now exposed clit, making her moan again.
“Beg me,” I answered after pulling my tongue back from her nethers, reaching up with my hands to let my fingers draw little circles at the sides of her navel.
“Wh… did you lose your mind down there?” her voice was unsteady – her being so flustered aroused me even further, and I could feel myself getting damp between my legs as well.
“Beg me!” I insisted, and Tiana’s face grew even more flushed.
She looked away and began to stammer.
“P-please uhm… l-lick me…”
“I can’t hear you.”
“Please lick me!”
“That doesn’t really sound like you want me to do much… see?” I lazily lapped against her labia and shot her a smug look over her pubic mound.
“You’re the worst… f-fine… p-please, eat me out! Is that what you want to hear?”
“Mh, again, with less complaining.” I gave her another lazy lick and she shuddered. She brought her fist to her mouth, hiding her expression as she looked at me, her eyes darting from side to side.
“F-fine…” she cleared her throat.
“…please, Felicia… eat me out. I want to feel your tongue inside me.”
My heart skipped a beat as she gave me the most adorable look I’ve ever seen on her face – she was red up to her ears and I could see tears from the embarrassment in her eyes. I didn’t even hesitate to fulfill her request.
I prodded her sex with my tongue as I kept my hands on her inner thighs and tasted more of that sweetness I had on my finger before. Bit by bit I opened her up and finally entered her with my tongue.
***
She was like putty in my hands. I could flick my tongue from side to side and watch her bend her body accordingly. If I wanted to play rougher, I could let off with my togue and suck on her clit, while pumping two of my fingers into her – despite her claims that she never slept with anyone, she was surprisingly accommodating to penetrative play.
“You’re so cute when you’re squirming like this.” I teased her as I went down again. My tongue entered her, and I flicked it up and down, waiting for her response. Usually, those responses were an arched back and another cute little squeal or moan. Right now, she dug her fingers into my hair and pulled it a little as she squirmed. I rotated my tongue and caressed her inner thighs while doing so, then I pulled back enough to be able to kiss and lick her clit.
Another shiver went through Tiana’s body before I heard her voice again, quiet and ashamed-sounding.
“I- I’m gonna…”
Those were the only words of warning I got before I heard her let out a scream as she climaxed – and I felt a wetness all over my face. I blinked in disbelief and peeked over her crotch towards her, finding her covering her face with both hands.
“You’re a squi- “
“Don’t say anything!”
“And you cum so fa- “
“I told you, don’t say anything!!”
***
I wiped my face with a towel before we continued. We simply kissed again – and I made a point to have her taste herself as we did, which she noticed. She punished me with a light punch in the arm.
“Do you want a turn now?” I asked her with a little smile, while rubbing my aching arm.
“I, uhm…” Tiana looked to the side with a small, embarrassed smile.
“I have a toy…” she admitted sheepishly and pointed to the crate with her belongings she brought aboard after we salvaged her own spaceship.
I followed her gesture and opened it, finding a long metal object with a flat base and a round tip inside.
“Is that…?”
“Yeah…. a vibrator.”
I let out a little whistle.
“No wonder you could take two fingers just like that.”
Another punch in my arm. I deserved that one, admittedly.
***
The toy vibrated enthusiastically, and I looked at it in contemplation. By now we both ditched our clothes and enjoyed each other’s company in the nude – but the question was – how would I use this new tool?
Tiana was lying on the bed and squirmed a little in anticipation – a sight I would love to look at forever, if I could.
I got an idea. I leaned over Tiana and held the vibrator downwards, holding its side flush against her clit and her still wet pussy.
She immediately threw her head to the side and arched her back with a moan, holding onto my sheets for dear life. This was when I joined her, pushing my own lower body against the metallic rod and making us share the vibration. We looked like we were having missionary sex like this – and Tiana wrapped her legs around my waist to complete the visual. I leaned in for a kiss, shifting the angle of the rod every time my body moved, alternating the vibrator’s pressure against the various parts of our genitals with each movement.
Our breasts rubbed together, and we enjoyed this deeply intimate contact between our bodies until I suddenly noticed that we were floating away from the bed. My eyes widened and I looked to the ship’s console in panic as I noticed that the gravity generator stopped working again – but before I could separate myself from Tiana, she grabbed my cheeks and turned my face towards her. We were floating through the ship’s small corridor, with all the observation ports still open, and in that moment, with her bright green eyes on me, her red hair floating in the air like we were underwater, and the beautiful blue shine of the gas giant behind her – I fell in love with her all over again.
I leaned in for a deep kiss and kept grinding my hips against the shared vibrator, eliciting stifled moans from my lover. She held on to me with her thighs for dear life, while stretching out her arms and holding onto the handrails by the observation deck. We continued to rub against each other, with her home system’s azure guardian tinting our skin in a blue tone as it watched over us. I’ve never felt as connected to another human being as I did in that very moment – and with our connection I felt the rising heat in my lower abdomen, the electric tingle all over her body. I held her face, kissing her deeply, causing us to muffle each other’s moans as we reached climax together and waves of electrifying pleasure washed over me.
***
“This is so embarrassing! Kill me now!”
Tiana covered her face with her hands again as I worked on the console to reboot the artificial gravity – the system truly was due for a good long checkup once we landed, the way it’s been randomly turning off in recent days.
The cause of Tiana’s mortifying embarrassment was floating all around us in this moment. Since she was a squirter and we were floating midair when she came, all the liquid she ejected collected in small orbs around us. Having orbs of water floating in zero G hadn’t been a novelty in thousands of years, but doing the same with a girl’s cum definitely was.
“Don’t worry. I think the way you cum is charming.” I winked playfully at Tiana – which didn’t help her embarrassment at all.
“Please don’t try to make it sound cute!”
All the droplets fell down as the gravity came back, splashing against angled observation ports and steel flooring. This didn’t help in the slightest with Tiana’s embarrassment, as her girlcum was now splattered across every inch of the spaceship.
“I won’t tell anybody, don’t worry, Tiana.”
“Really?”
“I wouldn’t betray the woman I love, now, would I?”
Her blush didn’t fade in the slightest, but I could definitely see Tiana smile.
After a few more moments of silence she cleared her throat.
“I never imagined you would be a devil in bed. You’ve been nothing but a naïve, sheltered girl since the moment I met you… talk about a big surprise!”
This time it was me who was blushing.
4
August 2024
***
Hifumi grinned as she finished her final read-over. This was it! This was surely going to get Hitoishi flustered, she could feel it in her bones.
She immediately sent her a mail and requested a discussion of her new manuscript in person. She got a quick response, naming a time and place. It appeared that Hitoishi chose a café with few customers at that time of day.
Hifumi printed her manuscript and hummed to herself as she left the house.
Of course, the sex scene was rejected, but she got to see Hitoishi a little flustered and got to tease her.
And even better, she got permission to post smut chapters for her own work on pixiv FANBOX, as a bonus for loyal fans who want to support her.