Work Text:
Satomi's mother has hammered the fear into her ever since she was very, very young: watch out for strange men. Don't trust them, don't get in their cars. She was ten when curiosity drove her to ask why?
They never want anything good, her mother told her. They want to sell you. Do dirty things to you.
She asked what dirty things, and then she learned what sex was.
It sounded disgusting—she'd seen her cousin's thing at the community pool once. Dangly, horrible, white-brown and spongy soft like an enoki mushroom. He'd waved it at her and she'd wrinkled her nose. Wanted nothing to do with it. She'd felt relieved, then, to know she didn't have to worry about sex, not unless she got in some strange man's car, which she had no plan on doing.
—
But she freezes when the man shows up to her choir performance. Dripping rainwater, tattoos visible through the damp cotton of his shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He holds out a hand, and it reminds her of sensei's hand, of her mother's hand: Fine boned and milk white, unlike any man she had ever seen before, save for the types carved from marble in European art museums. "I need you," he said, urgently, with a too-slick smile. "I'll explain once we get out of here, ok?"
And she followed, so stupid. Did some part of her know, deep down? A buried jewel with a heartbeat, some mysterious organ inside her growing steadily heavier with blood, fit to burst, beginning to ache? Body like a time bomb, ticking towards detonation.
—
The car smells like cigarettes, and Satomi's heart won't stop pounding. She thinks she might throw up, but she doesn't. She just sits there, shotgun, waiting to be sold or raped or made to look at that horrible thing that must reside between the long, easy sprawl of this man's legs.
She tastes bile but nothing comes up. Hyperaware of her body, clutching her backpack in one arm while awkwardly tugging at the too-short hem of her skirt with the other and she follows this man into Karaoke Heaven. She's grown several inches this year, all her clothes are itchy, too tight. She hadn't thought about it before now, but they show too much leg. If the man notices, he does not let on. He just drops into the squeaky booth, and studies her. "So, the thing is, I have a favor to ask you," he says.
Satomi starts to cry. Sudden, unexpected. A hot gale that shakes her shoulders and fogs her glasses. She knows what this man needs from her, she's known since she was a kid, she's been braced for it, terrified of it. Still, he stares at her startled, like he didn't expect this particular reaction. "Please—" she hiccups. "Please don't hurt me when you do it, ok? Be gentle."
"Be gentle—what?!" The man asks, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "Kid—please don't cry, I didn't mean to—"
"You did mean to!? You kidnapped me! I know what men like you—my mother told me—you're going to—"
Suddenly, the man throws his head back and laughs. The sound of it reverberates off the walls, an echoey din that momentarily drowns out the thudding bass off the pop song filtering in from the booth next door. Satomi is so shocked by the laughter her tears momentarily shut off like a faucet, locking the sob inside her throat. This man's laugh is not what she expected—there is a raspiness from the smoke, but it's also a high, clear sound, like the peal of a bell. "You've got it all wrong! It's cute. Let me show you—" the man says, standing and shrugging off his suit jacket and beginning to unbutton his shirt with those too-deft fingers.
Satomi panics all over again and he must see it in her eyes, because his smile shifts from disarming to soft, warm, pitying. "I'm not going to rape you," he snorts. "That's what you're worried about, right? And I get it, you think I'm a man, I forget sometimes, I'm just so used to—look, ta dah!" he says, opening his shirt so it falls away from his chest. Bared, but also—covered. A tight half-shirt the same tone as his skin, a touch dirty on the edges where they cut into the flesh of his torso. "You know what's under there?" he asks conversationally.
Unable to make sense of what she is seeing, Satomi miserably shakes her head. She wishes this man would just get it over with, if he's going to sell her or do dirty things to her. The waiting to be hurt is worse than being hurt, she thinks. But instead of hurting her, he just smiles good-naturedly and hooks his long fingers under the bottom elastic of the strange undershirt, and lifts it.
Two breasts fall out. Soft, almost empty bags of loose skin, creased from being crushed under the wrappings. Wood ear mushrooms, rather than enoki. Something that is not entirely shock jolts in Satomi's gut, lower than her belly button.
"Voila, tits," the not-man says plainly. "I know what you're thinking—there are no women in the Yakuza. But the truth is, there are all sorts of women peripherally around the Yakuza. They're essential! Doing business without being full fledged members, bosses’ wives, mistresses, the occasional sister or daughter cleaning up messes or running a club, making sure things run smoothly… that sort of thing. But there are a few, very few, actually—like me—who have taken the vows. I understand why you're shocked."
"But you—you—" Satomi stammers, uncertain of what she means. The woman seems to understand.
"They take you more seriously if you look like this," she explains, gesturing to her body. Tall, slender but well muscled. Short hair. Pressed slacks, the rucked open oxford, no makeup on her handsome, not pretty, face. Tattoos over her shoulders, collar bones, back.
For all intents and purposes, this strange woman looks indistinguishable from a strange man. The disguise fooled Satomi, anyway. Or, partially fooled. Maybe this is why she, despite her terror, so willingly climbed into the passenger side of her car and allowed herself to be driven away. A deep, buried ruby that pulsed in recognition. That knew. The more she looks, the more she sees it—the cracks in this woman's disguise.
She wipes her eyes. "Then—if you're not—what do you want from me?"
The woman does not put her compression half shirt back on or button up her oxford—she just sits back down, cards a hand through her hair, and sits with her arms spread and her chest only half obscured in rain-damp white cotton. Her nipples are covered, but nothing else. Satomi cannot stop staring, remembering those tight bullets of brown skin topping the semi-deflated heft of her small breasts, now laying against a narrow ribcage. She tears her eyes away, swallows a thick mouthful of spit. "Easy! I need you to teach me to sing," the woman says.
"Sing?"
"That's what I said, kid," she says, grinning. Then she explains the situation—her boss's affinity for karaoke, the contests he holds, his expectation for her to sing female-fronted pop-songs despite her outward appearance and the life she leads. "It's so annoying," she says, "to spend every day disguising your voice, lowering it so most people don't know, smoking—and then, be expected to sing a perfect rendition of Takako Matsu? Noriko Saka? I haven't sounded that high and sweet since I was sixteen! So, I thought, I need help. A professional sweet-singer. A girl. So, I found your choir, then I found you. You were the best."
Satomi squirms, feels herself blush. "I'm fourteen," she says awkwardly. "Not sixteen."
"But you can sing Noriko Saka, right?" the woman asks.
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I can teach you to," Satomi explains, eyes darting towards the door, realizing that just because a strange man isn't going to sell or rape her, it doesn't mean she's actually safe. This woman is still a yakuza. She's still probably killed people. She's still super scary. "Your voice—like you said. It's lower, you've forced it to be lower, I can't just—"
"Look—I get it. But let's try, at least? Listen to me sing I want to be a boy, ok?" she pleads, reaching for her own chest and absently rubbing her torso, under her hanging breasts. "Sorry, just feels good to have them out. And I know it's fine by you, since we're both girls. Right?" she says, grinning that grin, and all of Satomi's guts flip over at once, hot and twisting. "Like a slumber party. Been ages since I had one of those." And then she is standing, cracking her back, queuing up the song and gargling through some horrible vocal warm ups.
And Satomi should bolt. She should get out of here, save herself the horror of having to see an old woman's saggy boobs flap around while she sings a ‘90s song Satomi has always hated. But instead, for reasons she does not have names for, she stays. Sets her backpack down. Orders melon soda, fried rice, and a parfait. Eats them all, strangely and animalistically hungry in a way she feels she's never been before.
Kyouji is the woman's name. Or, not the name she was given, but the name she took upon joining the yakuza. Crazy man, which Satomi rolls her eyes at, because only a crazy woman would want to live this way. In a world not built for her, smoking cigarettes with murderous grandpas. "You are crazy," she tells Kyouji matter-of-factly the next time they meet, and she decides she's not going to be afraid of her anymore. "You'd have to be, to get all those tattoos and…cut your hair like that," she says, gaze tripping over the neat line of Kyouji's crewcut where it's trimmed down with clippers in the back, disappearing into her starched collar.
"Not crazy, just weird," Kyouji says, scrolling through the available songs on the karaoke queue. "I've always been different, sort of broken, bad at being a woman…I couldn't stop dressing wrong and farting too loud and getting into fights. I didn't belong there either, with the pretty girls, so, nothing lost." Then she stands, shoots Satomi a winning grin, tapping the microphone. "Are you ready to hear me sing something actually in my range?"
Satomi sighs, because she's not. Kyouji is, inarguably, a bad singer. Not totally tone deaf but the cigarettes and routine strain on her vocal cords have drenched her voice in an unshakable rasping quality. Range isn't really the issue, but when Satomi told her that, she didn't listen. So, they're back to square one. Satomi pushes remnants of her fried rice around her plate, glancing up through her glasses, "I guess," she finally concedes.
At that, Kyouji begins to unbutton her shirt again, without even having the decency to turn away from Satomi for privacy. "Hey!" she says, covering her eyes, cheeks suddenly so unbearably hot she knows (and loathes) she's turning bright red. "Could you—!"
"Jeez, you're sure a prude, aren't you, Satomi-Chan," Kyouji totes, tossing her still skin-warm button up in Satomi's direction. It hits her in the face, and she grabs it before it drops onto her oily plate and gets stained. The fabric smells like cigarettes, which makes her stomach swoop. "Don't you have to change in front of your classmates all the time for Physical Education? Are you on a sports team?"
Satomi snorts, turning even redder and discarding Kyouji's shirt onto the booth seat like it was a snake that bit her. "Do I look like I play sports?"
Kyouji makes a bit show of studying her body, going as far as bending at the waist to examine her legs under the table. All the while, she is wearing nothing above the trousers but that nude-toned compression half shirt. If Satomi squints, it's almost like she's entirely shirtless. "Well, You have long legs. I bet you could play tennis."
"I wouldn't have time for sports with choir practice," Satomi says, omitting the part where the sportier girls used to laugh at her for being a crybaby and dissolving into tears every time she got a less than perfect grade. Then she has to tear her eyes away, because Kyouji is pulling the half shirt over her head with a big sigh, exposing her breasts again. "Why are you doing that?!" Satomi barks, panicked because even though she doesn't want to look, her eyes have a mind of their own. Right now they're flicking back and forth between the angry pink creases the elastic of the half shirt left in Kyouji's narrow ribcage, and the rays of black ink fanning out across her collarbones. She must look like one of those cat clocks, ticking madly.
"Because you don't care, and I never get a chance to air them out! It feels good. Freeing. I'm around dudes all the time who forget I'm not one of them. They don't realize how annoying this thing is."
"I do care," Satomi promises, covering her eyes since they won't fucking close like she wants them to. "I'm not—I don't live in a household like that. My mom and sister don't walk around naked. I went to the bathhouse a few times with my grandma, but—"
"Then this is good for you," Kyouji says with a shrug, striding up to Satomi. For one terrifying moment she thinks Kyouji is reaching for her, that she's going to touch her or strike her or, worst of all, grab her hand and drag it to the heft of her tit in some kind of crazy experiment to expose her to the thing she's afraid of, but instead she just picks up her discarded shirt and shrugs it onto her shoulders. "But if you insist, I can put this back on then just ditch the bindings. Hey— I bet I can sing better like this, able to expand my lungs all the way! Let's see." She takes a deep breath, then starts violently coughing.
"I don't think it worked," Satomi says nervously, risking a glance at Kyouji again, now that her actual breasts are covered. They might be—hanging, under there—but she can't see them, which means she can breathe again.
Kyouji sings Crimson by Japan X, with lots of jumping around. Her shirt keeps flapping to expose herself, and every time it's like a fucking ice-pick through Satomi's brain. Every second of this is torture—the singing is bad, the air conditioning is too cold, she's lying to her parents about why she's here which makes her extra nervous, and then there's Kyouji, who she cannot wrap her head around. This woman who keeps getting half naked in front of her. This woman who dresses like a man. This tattooed, smoking, criminal woman. It's just that—Satomi didn't know women could be this way. And she doesn't know what to do with the new, prickly knowledge.
Kyouji is sweat-damp and and panting when she finishes, sauntering up to the table and leaning there, close enough Satomi can smell her: cigarettes and cologne over a deeply human and undeniably female smell, like crushed flowers or blood. Her hair has come ungelled and fallen into her face, and she looks even more dashing than she does when she's put together. "Well?" she asks, carding a hand through her mussed hair. "What did you think?"
"It needs a lot of work," Satomi says flatly, trying so hard to just focus on the Karaoke matter and not the woman walking around with her fucking tattooed tits out, like having tattooed tits is something you can just do. It makes her feel so—bad, and gross, and out of control. Like the rupturing of rules has unmoored something in her body, activated some deep-buried valve in her flesh she didn't know existed and that primarily registers as weird waves of burning heat between her legs. She really hates it. She really hates Kyouji, actually. "And I don't see why you even bothered, when you said your boss will expect you to sing a pop song by a woman."
"Well I wanted you to get an idea of what my voice is usually like when I sing in my comfort zone," Kyouji breezes, reaching out, grabbing Satomi's soda, and taking a long drag of it.
"It wasn't really what I would call a comfort zone," Satomi says, frowning. Now Kyouji's mouth germs are all over her straw. It should make her mad, and it does, but it also makes the awful heat-feeling happen, too. Maybe she is getting a fever. "You were still straining a lot."
"You're a tough critic, sensei," Kyouji says, grinning. That word, sensei, rips through Satomi, makes her stomach plummet. Maybe it's the flu, not a fever. "Nothing nice to say, Satomi-Chan? No compliments to sandwich in between the pointers?"
"No," she grumbles, crossing her arms over her chest, preoccupied, suddenly, with the sickness inside her showing somehow. "Sorry."
The lessons go on, and Satomi doesn't understand how she can dread them as much as she bizarrely enjoys them. Her efforts to be unafraid of Kyouji haven't really worked—sometimes she will think she's mastered it, killed her terror and shock, convinced she can simply feel sorry for and roll her eyes at the absurdity of a tattooed woman with a stupid fake name playing yakuza and asking her for singing lessons while taking none of her advice. But then, something will make her remember Kyouji isn't playing yakuza—she is a yakuza, for real. She's dangerous. Not to be pitied, but feared.
Once Satomi finds a severed finger in the glove-box of her car, another time she arrives at Karaoke Heaven to find their usual room hazy with smoke and packed with men. Yakuza men, also seeking her instruction.
She spends the whole time clinging to Kyouji's arm, worried about how short her skirt is. None of the men say anything inappropriate to her or even look at her very much save for when she is reviewing their performance, but still, she can't believe Kyouji would lead her into the lion's den like that. A solitary criminal woman in a room alone with a fourteen-year-old girl is one thing—but a fourteen-year-old girl in a room full of smoking, singing criminal men? It's terrible. She wishes they would all disappear, she feels betrayed, sick to her stomach. It's like there's a fist deep inside her, clenching tighter and tighter, squeezing her insides with each new, badly executed song.
Halfway through, she asks to go to the bathroom, and requests Kyouji escort her. Once they're out of earshot in the hallway, she turns around, cheeks burning. "You should have told me," she says, voice quaking. "That there would be a bunch of. A bunch of—"
Kyouji holds up her hands in only semi-apologetic mock innocence. "They were insistent! I told them I had a great teacher and they thought it would help improve their odds if they got a lesson with you, too. You're a legend, Satomi-Chan. Isn't that nice?"
"But they're men!" Satomi yelps. "Strange men! You said it was like a slumber party—just you and me. Just girls. But then—I know what strange men do," she interrupts herself with, face hardening to try and choke back the sudden deluge of tears she can feel creeping up her throat. She feels young and rotten and her stomach keeps hurting worse and worse, lower and lower.
"Satomi-Chan," Kyouji says gently, taking a step closer, making Satomi's guts lurch like a bolus of worms. "You know I'd never let them even think about touching you, right?"
Satomi sniffles, trying to suck her tears back up, prevent them from falling. She swallows a fat, salty slug of snot and says, "I don't know that," she explains, crossing her arms defensively around herself. "I don't know anything about you at all."
Kyouji nods, a rare somber expression eclipsing her usually smiling mouth. "Ok, well. You should know, they are on their very best behavior around me. They know I would kill them. Literally. Plus, you're not their type, anyway, so you don't have to worry. They like lingerie and long hair and big fake tits, you're just a kid to them."
What's your type? Do you like big tits? Am I just a kid to you? Satomi thinks in a desperate trifecta of prayers. Then, she's mortified, she doesn't even know if Kyouji is like that, like her, she doesn't even know if she—She tries to stuff the thoughts down with the same force as she's stuffing her tears. Shoved to the recesses like old toys in her closet. "I don't care. I don't want to see them again," she says, rubbing at the bony juts of her elbows. She feels stupid—too young, stuck somewhere between vulnerable naivete and chronic, gross unsexiness. Not that she wanted to be sexy to these men. Or sexy, at all. Especially not to Kyouji. She thinks.
Kyouji nods. "I'm sorry," she says. Then, a hand passes through her shorn hair as she releases a big, laborious sigh, a line creasing through her brows. "I shouldn't have brought them. I maybe shouldn't be doing this at all, actually—you're just a kid. You don't need to be wrapped up in—this," she explains, gesturing loosely to the long line of her body.
"No—it's fine when it's just you," Satomi says very quickly, something painful and nameless spiking through her. "I promise."
Kyouji smiles again, but it's not the usual sharp-edged grin. There's something softer to it, almost sad. "Want me to get rid of them?"
Satomi nods. "I really do have to go to the bathroom though," she says.
"Ok, go. When you come back, it'll be just me," Kyouji says, reaching out, and gently squeezing Satomi's shoulder. It almost makes Satomi buckle—she didn't realize how tense she was, shaking with adrenaline born from setting a boundary, admitting she was afraid and, even worse, that Kyouji was an exception to that fear. She opens the bathroom stall with tremulous fingers, drops down and sits there on the toilet with her head in her hands, breathing hard, stomach in knots, cheeks burning.
When she tugs her underwear down around her knees, there's something in the crotch of them. At first she thinks it's a smudge of dirt. But when she looks closer, she realizes it's a spot of dried blood—rust brown, ugly. Her stomach plummets—she knows what this means, but somehow hoped that maybe by some miracle it would never happen to her. She was a late bloomer after all, she got tender little buds of hard tissue under her nipples a few years ago, and eventually they softened into very small breasts she hated, but the blood never came. It was like God spared her in exchange for making her awkward and gangly and all her haircuts bad. But here she was, in the over air-conditioned bathroom at Karaoke Heaven, staring at blood in her underwear. She realizes she was not spared by God, but cursed.
Satomi reaches down with a wad of toilet paper and wipes herself. There's some faintly brown tinted mucusy discharge, but not like, gushing blood. She wonders if this counts as a real period, or not. She wishes she could ask her mom, but she hates talking to her about this sort of thing. She always takes it so seriously, wants to draw the conversation out and open the door for Satomi to ask as many questions as she needs and sometimes gets weepy about her "growing up", which just makes Satomi feel so awkward. If only she had another, older woman to talk to about this. But as soon as she has that thought, she knows, already, that she does. Kyouji, a lingering shadow in her life, a secret, like the smudge of copper on cotton.
She puts a few squares of toilet paper into her underwear, pulls them up, and walks very slowly and leadenly back to their room. It's still very smoky, but there's no one inside but Kyouji, sitting there with her shirt unbuttoned over her bare chest and the electronic karaoke catalogue propped up on the table in front of her to scroll through. Satomi's stomach swoops when Kyouji's gaze lifts to her own. "See? All gone. And let me tell you—I prefer it this way, too. Can air myself out better," she says, grinning and flapping the untucked tail of her shirt, revealing one of her breasts for a fleeting, stunning moment.
"Can I ask you something?" Satomi blurts.
Kyouji smiles, reaches down and idly scratches the crease through her skin where the half-shirt bites. Her breasts shift, and Satomi feels her cheeks heat up even more dramatically. "Shoot," Kyouji says, making a finger gun and pointing to Satomi with it.
"Periods, are they—can you sometimes bleed, just a little, but not like. Actually be getting your period?" she asks, melting into the booth and pillowing her head in her arms, unable to stand the thought of looking at Kyouji while she talks about menstruation. She expects to be laughed at, but instead Kyouji coos—a flat out "awww," followed by "Satomi-Chan! Have you not gotten your first period yet?"
"No," she says firmly. "I mean—maybe? There's a little. Like hardly any, but it's definitely blood, when I wiped," she chokes out, hating the crass, bodily shame of that last word.
"Right now? Today?" Kyouji asks casually, seemingly unphased.
"Yes," she answers miserably. "And my stomach hurts."
"Well, minor spotting and cramping is normal between cycles. Happens to me all the time; I've never had a regular period in my whole life, it happens when it happens and sometimes it doesn't happen at all, just a few little dribbles…" Then she shifts closer, the booth creaking under her sliding weight. "Want me to take a look? I can tell you if I think you're actually starting or not."
"No, don't be gross," Satomi wails, positively horrified by the thought of Kyouji seeing her blood. "I was just asking."
"Hey, listen. I put you in a weird position today and I feel bad. I would feel better if you let me do something nice for you. Like buy you some chocolate and pads if you need them. And for what it's worth, a little blood isn't gross to me! Even a lot of blood isn't gross to me. Nothing is gross to me, I don't even know what it feels like to be grossed out. So you don't have to worry about that."
Satomi tries not to think too hard about any of this. Not the curve of Kyouji's tits hanging unobtrusively in her shirt, not the way Kyouji's body felt when Satomi clung to it earlier today, surprisingly soft under the fabric of her nicotine-perfumed suit. Certainly not how exposed she feels this second as she decidedly shuts her brain off and mechanically reaches under her skirt to hook her fingers into the elastic of her underwear and tug them to her knees in some sort of strange defeat. The toilet paper remains stuck to her crotch, adhered there by a wetness she's sure is just blood. She is most definitely bleeding all over everything, all over the karaoke booth, all over the panties she's kicking down to her foot, unhooking from her Mary Janes, and balling up into a fist to thrust towards Kyouji without looking up.
Kyouji takes her time unfolding the shameful little wad of fabric. So long Satomi gets impatient and glances up, just in time to catch Kyouji sniffing the tiny blood spot with a detached, scientific curiosity.
"Hey—don't!" Satomi yelps, reaching out and swiping for her underwear but missing, just as Kyouji leans out of the way. "Is that really necessary?!"
"Just checking out how fresh it is—not very fresh," she says, rubbing her thumb into the spot as if testing for wetness. Satomi is speechless, and has never wanted to die more than she wants to die right fucking now. "And your underwear is damp but there's no blood coming off, so I'd say this was from a few hours ago. I think you're in the clear, Satomi-Chan. But you might start later tonight, or in the next few days. The spotting could mean you're close…how exciting!" she says. Then she puts a long finger through the leg hole of Satomi's panties and spins them—childish, light blue, with a little bow on the hem, Satomi realizes with a stab of humiliation—around for a few seconds before handing them back. "Still, let's stop at a drugstore on the drive home for some pads, just in case."
"I hate you," Satomi grits out from her teeth as she struggles back into the panties, stomach in knots. Words keep echoing in her mind—not very fresh and your underwear are damp. They are damp, just like the toilet paper still stuck to her, but not with blood, apparently. With something else.
"Hate me, why?! I'm trying to be helpful!" Kyouji says, leaning back, shirt awry so her breasts are almost entirely exposed. "You're sure acting like you're PMSing. So moody."
"I'm fresh, I took a shower this morning, I—"
"Satomi-Chan," Kyouji interrupts, leaning forward so her breasts hang like two slabs of meat from a butcher's hook. Satomi can't look away, her mouth is so dry all of the sudden, until it is so wet right after that and she has to swallow. "I didn't mean you, I meant the blood. It wasn't brand new, bright red blood. You don't have to be so sensitive. I'm sure you're very fresh. All sweet and new and tart like sour grass. You ever chew on the stems of that stuff? I did all the time as a kid. Mmm. The taste of spring." She sits back again, folds her hands behind her head with her elbows flaring out like chicken wings, and Satomi wishes she could evaporate or else melt into the floor like liquid, crayons left out in the sun. "Should I sing or take you home? You look tired," Kyouji observes.
"Take me home," Satomi demands, wiping her eyes and squirming in her seat.
"Yeah, ok, weird day, huh? I get it. Those hormones are a killer." Kyouji reaches out to condescendingly ruffle Satomi's hair, then stands and buttons her own shirt. Just like that, the terrible, infernal charge zaps out of the room like an overloaded fuse, and an ensuing exhaustion creeps into Satomi's bones like a fever ache. She stands morosely, follows Kyouji out of the booth into the hallway where the air smells like soy sauce and frying oil and lemon floor cleaner. It makes her sick.
She stays in the Century while Kyouji stops at a convenience store. She comes out with a bag full of candy, some painkillers, and every size of pad imaginable. "You won't need all of these, don't worry, but at least you're prepared," she says, dropping the bag into Satomi's lap.
She knows she should say thank you, but it feels like her throat has been ironed shut. Melted crayons, bile sour as sour grass. Later that evening when she gets home, she peels off her underwear and removes the makeshift toilet paper barrier, which is soaked through with something snotlike and translucent, somehow more damning than blood.
—
Sure enough, Satomi really does start her first period a few days later. The crimson shouldn't shock her, but it does. Like someone was shot between her legs, bleeding out, dead, raw.
She vows to not tell Kyouji about it, though she's perversely grateful for the comprehensive pad selection she bought. Satomi mops herself off, throws away the underwear she's ruined, and fastens a thick overnight pad to a new pair so she doesn't have to get up and change it any time soon. Then, she curls up in bed clutching her stomach. The cramps are terrible—she realizes she's been feeling less intense, proto-versions of them all week, but now that the real thing is upon her she's dreading her entire future. Surely no one can survive this sort of sickening pain once a month for most of their life?! It's unbearable. It's unfair. She thought it would just be like the tight, roiling tummy ache she got whenever she ate too much dairy, but instead it feels deep and muscular, climbing up her lower back and down to her thighs so she can't even stand up straight without feeling queasy. She takes two of the painkillers Kyouji bought her, and texts Wada asking him to inform sensei that she's sick and won't be making it to choir practice today. Then, she proceeds to loll around, feeling sorry for herself.
As soon as she gets comfortable, Kyouji texts her karaoke today? I'll pick you up at school, and she groans, rolling onto her back and frowning blearily up at her phone. It's crazy, how fast she just gives up on her vow.
no, she texts. I started my period for real. im sick in bed.
Kyouji texts a cat with a birthday hat and a party horn in it's mouth followed by congratulations! Satomi-chan is a woman now :))
It doesn't feel very worth celebrating, she fires back. it hurts.
awww. how about instead of karaoke we go to dinner? I know a place. I'll tell them it's your birthday and they'll bring you ice cream and sing. Only you and I know what we're really there for.
And even though she feels like shit and being sung at by clapping waitresses while she bleeds her organs out sounds like the last thing she wants and Kyouji is the last person she wants to see—there's something inside her, some terrible gnawing want made more wild by blood and pain, that an automatic reflex makes her type ok, fine. what time?
She hits send just as the meds kick in, and everything stops hurting, just a little bit.
—
Dinner is sushi and the ice cream is deep fried and has a sparkler jammed into it. Properly medicated, Satomi has a newly enormous appetite and manages to eat two entire fancy rolls all by herself in addition to the deep-fried ice cream while Kyouji sips her coffee and looks impressed. "What did you tell your parents?" she asks at some point, idly stabbing at a glob of wasabi on her plate. "About where you are tonight? Do I need to have you back by a certain hour? Is there a curfew?"
Satomi looks away to hide her blush, gaze cast obliquely into the guts of the restaurant where there are either families seated at large tables or couples tucked into small booths. She and Kyouji are in a booth like the couples, and that makes her stomach do something that is not period cramps, but is made worse by their only partially aspirin-dampened clench. She wonders if their waitress thinks Kyouji is a man, Satomi's uncle or father or something else more sordid. "I told them I'm sleeping over at my choir friend's house," she admits. "I'll have you drop me off there, if that's ok? She’s expecting me whenever. Her parents work late."
"I see. Satomi-Chan is sneaking out," Kyouji says, reaching under the table with her freakishly long leg and dragging a foot down the outside of Satomi's calf. She's kicked her shoe off so her socked sole is warm, and Satomi can feel the shape of her arch cupping her. "Already more grown up!"
"I don't think I like being grown up," she admits, staring at the table and jerking her leg away, tongue poked into the side of her cheek. "The cramps were really bad, earlier. How does anyone survive them every month?"
"Eh, they're not always bad," Kyouji explains. "At least not for all women. You'll find something that works—some of us like heating pads, some say exercise works. You know what my secret weapon is?" she says, kicking Satomi playfully under the table again.
Satomi's stomach swoops. "What?"
"Orgasms," Kyouji says quietly but without shame. "Every time, if I just rub one out, it relieves the pain."
Ears ringing, cheeks aflame. Satomi desperately sips her water just so her mouth has something to do. "That's disgusting," she announces after she swallows a painfully large gulp.
Kyouji laughs. "What?! Don't tell me you've never gotten yourself off? I couldn't stop doing it when I was your age. Hell, when I was even younger my teachers were always scolding me for humping toys and pillows during rest time. I was insatiable."
Satomi quite literally feels like she's going up in flames, a burning torch right there in the date-style booth at the sushi restaurant, catching the rafters on fire. "We can't talk about this here," she hisses.
Kyouji looks around nonchalantly, one arm resting atop the back of the booth in a casual, open, entirely unconcerned stance. "No one's listening," she says with a shrug. "Everyone is distracted by their food or their kids or canoodling. They're not paying attention to us."
"But you just don't talk about—that—anywhere," Satomi urges, heart pounding, insides doing something besides bleed.
"So, you do do it," Kyouji says, leaning closer, something like conspiratorial glee glittering in her eyes.
"I didn't say that. I don't!" Satomi half lies. She does do it, but only sort of. She's convinced herself it doesn't really count if she refuses to touch her own body unobstructed, though she has curiously cupped her mound through her panties, fingers separated from the folds with a layer of cotton. It feels ok, but what feels better is pinning a stuffed animal between her legs and rubbing on it, which she has accidentally done in her sleep a few times. Or not exactly in her sleep, but in the hazy, surreal moments before or after it, when she's not fully aware of her surroundings enough to be self-conscious. "It's—it's—" she sputters, not wanting to say disgusting for fear of repeating herself and sounding childish, but unable to really think of any other words. "Dirty," she settles on, which makes Kyouji grin.
"Yeah, that's the whole point! It's naughty and dirty and feels good," she says, cocking her head. "So good it chases away the pain, which is the whole other point. You should really try it when you go home if your stomach is still hurting. Works wonders."
Satomi squirms, pad suddenly feeling slicker and hotter and more slippery than it did a minute ago. She must be bleeding really hard. "I don't want to touch that even when I'm not bleeding, so I really don't want to touch it when I am," she explains. "It's gross, I'll get blood on my hand."
"It's not gross, it's the most beautiful and delicious thing in the entire universe, bleeding or not," Kyouji says matter of factly, drumming her fingers on the booth and licking her literal lips. "Don't talk smack about my favorite food, Satomi-Chan."
Satomi actually cannot fathom the words coming from Kyouji's mouth. She knew—well, she didn't know, but she'd suspected what sort of woman Kyouji was. It made sense, to live as a man and look like a man if you were interested in other women that way. But it's felt unbearably tender, like a bruise, so she hasn't pressed on it very much. Hasn't dedicated intentional thought to what it actually means that Kyouji is—that way. She doesn't even really know how two women…go about that. But now, based on the way Kyouji is talking, she has an idea. "Oh my god, stop," she hisses, staring down at her empty plate, stomach doing so many things at once she can't discern whether she's too full or still hungry or just cramping extra hard. "You don't really—that's not how it works," she insists, but before she can stop herself, she looks up and asks, "Is it?"
"What, eating? I mean, it's not all you can do. But it's what I like to do," Kyouji says wistfully. "It's what I think about when I get myself off to relieve those cramps. A nice, pretty girl sitting on my face. But the possibilities are endless. You think about whatever you need to think about. Whatever gets you in the mood, so to speak."
Then, as if nothing has happened at all, she flags the waitress over for the bill while Satomi smolders and withers across from her, thighs squeezing together so tightly she feels as if she might snap her own femurs like toothpicks, like wishbones, not that she has any wishes.
—
Satomi is not feeling well inside the Century. Outside it rains in intermittent bursts, heavily but briefly, so Kyouji keeps having to turn the windshield wipers on and off again when they start to squeak.
The sickness won't go away. Something about the piss-yellow spill of the streetlights cutting through the windows in tiger-stripes, something about the smell of smoke clinging to the upholstery, something about the way Kyouji hits the gas and brakes too abruptly every time, so that Satomi is always lurching towards the windshield. But mostly, her own guts churning, her own stomach twisting. Her maxi pad feeling swollen, sodden, heavy with how much blood has come out of her, more squeezed out every time she clenches when she remembers, against her will, the things Kyouji said at the sushi place: it's what I think about when I get myself off…a nice, pretty girl sitting on my face. She shivers, even though she's not cold. It's a primal motion, coming from somewhere deep inside of her. Hidden away, in the charnel houses where she is changing, gushing, shedding layers of clot.
"Could you show me?" she says, very quietly at the next red light, when she can't stand it a second longer.
Kyouji turns down the radio, some old jazz song she was humming along to, off key. The color of the stoplight has flooded the car, stained her face crimson. "What? Did you say something?"
And Satomi could lie. So many times along the way, Kyouji has provided a way out of this thing: an excuse to quit teaching her, an escape path back to her formerly mundane life of choir and school and home and unripe strawberry picking. And every time, Satomi has stayed. Why? Doesn't she supposedly hate Kyouji? Doesn't she want to run?
Instead of lying, she swallows thickly and repeats herself. "Could you show me how to do it? For my cramps?" She doesn't know where the conviction is coming from—probably the blood. The way it won't stop coming out of her. The filthy, sloshing feel of her pad jammed up between her lips as she rocks up against the fold of it there, shotgun in Kyouji's car.
Kyouji takes a deep breath, widens her eyes like she's surprised, maybe even scared. When Satomi turns to study her, track the emotion, it's already gone. Wiped clean like the fat summer rain droplets off of the windshield, replaced by her usual flat grin. "Are you sure?" she asks.
"Yes," Satomi lies. "I want to feel better."
Kyouji nods, flicks her turn signal on, pries her way into a turn-lane. "Ok," she says. Then she finds an alley tucked beside a park along the river. Teenagers come here to make out—teenagers who are not Satomi, who forgets she is a teenager too, sometimes. Kyouji pulls over and turns the car off so they sit together in darkness. "How do you want to be shown?" she asks and Satomi shrugs, because she hadn't thought that far in the future. Kyouji was the expert—she was the one who knew about this sort of thing, who apparently did this all the time, every month, since she was young. Kyouji nods warmly at her ambivalence. "I could show you what I do to myself, or I could… talk you through doing it to yourself," she says, wincing halfway through like she's not sure if this is a good idea. That only thrills Satomi further, her heart picking up in her chest. This is part of it: why she hasn't run from the trap, even though she's had the opportunity. It seems, deep down, she likes to be in danger, if it's Kyouji's danger she gets to be in.
"Um, the first one," she grits out, making an awkward fist in her skirt. She'd much rather have an excuse to look at Kyouji's mysterious, compelling body than be forced to touch the still mysterious, but considerably less compelling and inconveniently bloody bits of her own.
Kyouji's grin widens, a sharp white slice in the darkness like a crescent moon in the sky, knifing through Satomi's intestines. "I thought so—cheeky girl! I've noticed you looking when you think I'm turned away." Satomi's eyes widen behind her glasses and it makes Kyouji laugh. "It's ok! That's normal, Satomi-chan. To be curious about a woman's body when you're just a girl. You're not being rude, I understand."
And at that, she reaches down and untucks her oxford, unbuttoning it and shrugging it off with her jacket so that she can remove the compression shirt beneath. It's just like at the karaoke room but…heavier, somehow, because Satomi is not sneaking looks, she is being invited to look. Plus, it's dark, and private. There are no pop songs filtering in through the walls on either side of them, no fried rice or disco balls or scattered neon lights or glaring florescent overheads or freezing A/C. Just the Century tight and smoke-scented around them like a blood-filled womb, a buried time capsule. Satomi is dizzy at the way Kyouji looks slouched there in the driver's side, tits dumped out and laying against her ribcage, nipples tight. She tosses her shirt aside and puts her jacket back on, chest still exposed between the yawning lapels. "Can you see?" she asks.
"Kind of," Satomi says faintly, blinking through what might be a sheen of weird, overwhelmed tears. She blinks, but very quickly, afraid she might miss something or else wake up from a dream. She can feel her heart pounding in two places: the usual left quadrant of her ribcage, and then, between her legs, which she can’t stop rubbing together like a cricket's. "It's dark in here."
"I'd turn on the light but I don't want anyone to peep in here," Kyouji says, reaching into her jacket pocket and rifling through it before coming out with a Zippo lighter. She offers it to Satomi between middle and index finger. "Here, you can use that. More covert."
It takes Satomi three tries to make it work, her hands are shaking so bad. But finally a flame erupts and Kyouji's lanky body comes into stark, sudden relief in the flicker of orange light. She drinks her fill, gaze driving up and down the length of her. Despite all the afternoons they've spent together at Karaoke Heaven with Kyouji in partial states of undress, she's never really had a chance to study with the level of scrutiny she craves. It's all been shameful furtive glances she has to follow with compensatory outrage, like, how dare you make me witness your body. But this time, she has permission, so she just—stares, as much as she can, until her eyes sting. The full picture is not at all what she expected: in her suits Kyouji seems tall and rail thin, almost bony because of her spider hands and sharp clavicles, but there's actually a lot of padded places on her torso—a soft, aged tummy paunch over the cut of her belt, a width to her hips where they spread out from her narrow waist, and of course, her breasts. Hanging there, moving slightly in time with her breath, mushy, pillowy. Not like a brand new pillow, but a well loved pillow. One of Satomi's plushies she's had since she was a little kid, cuddled for so many years it's gotten flat and its fluffiness has worn down to skin smoothness. Satomi's fist tightens in her skirt so she doesn't reach out and touch.
"You ok, Satomi-Chan? Your mouth is hanging open," Kyouji teases, breaking the spell.
Satomi she snaps her jaw shut, glaring up at Kyouji for a second before she releases the lighter, casting them both into sudden darkness so she can hide her subsequent blush.
"I'm fine."
"I'm flattered. Didn't think I was much to look at anymore. Don't worry, you won't be this saggy for a long time."
You're not saggy, you're so beautiful, Satomi thinks but does not say, because she knows Kyouji would only make fun of her. Plus, it's not entirely true—Kyouji is sort of saggy, she's just also so beautiful, at least to Satomi, who is probably going crazy, because in what universe are tattooed women with men's haircuts and flat deflated tits beautiful? Is that even the right word? Would Kyouji want to be called that, or something else? Handsome, maybe? Is this still purely instructional? Something an older sister would do? Is Satomi making it weird?
There's a rustling sound as Kyouji reaches down and unbuckles her belt, sliding it from the loops, coiling it methodically, and tucking it into the glove compartment. Satomi hits the lighter again so she can watch as Kyouji unbuttons her mens trousers, and tugs down the fly to reveal the top part of her bush.
Satomi has never been drunk before but she imagines this is what it's like to be drunk. She's dizzy, hot cheeked, swaying on the spot with the Zippo growing sweatslick in her shaky palm as Kyouji lifts her hips and wiggles her pants and what looks like boxer briefs down her thighs, low enough she can see the pronounced V of her mons, hidden in thick black hair. Then she combs her long fingers through it like she's idly petting a cat. "So," she says. "First thing you need to do is turn yourself on a little. It's not going to feel good if you're not already wet. Do you know how to make yourself wet, Satomi-chan? Is there anything you ever think of that gets you worked up? Some boy at school, maybe, or an idol, or a TV star?"
Satomi is so shocked by the mention of a boy at school she almost makes a sound. She totally forgot boys and music and TV even existed. But she definitely, absolutely knows what she can think about to get wet. "Yeah," she says, swallowing thickly. "Sure."
"Ok, good," Kyouji says, voice a little husky but otherwise even, like this is a totally normal thing to do. "Then you dip your fingers down, where you get wet—the opening—just to slick them up. But don't start there, just fucking yourself. Men will tell you it's all about penetration but they don't know anything. You want to start right up here, this little bump," she explains, hooking her fingers up in herself for a moment with a slight hitch of breath. Satomi's oxygen stops along with her, throat constricting, cheeks as hot as the lighter metal in her palm. Then she stops breathing all together as Kyouji drags her fingers back out, lengthwise up the crease between her outer labia to rub then at the apex, grinning lazily in the flame-flicker as she does it. Parts herself, splits along a seam. "Ahhh, right there, the sweet spot. Mine is all swollen right now because you're looking at me. You know what it's called?" she asks, flicking it. Candy pink, jutting out from darker folds, glistening slick in her juices.
"The clitoris," Satomi whispers, hating how clinical it sounds, all her terminology stolen from biology text books. "Right?"
"Mmhm," Kyouji murmurs, circling it with her fingertip teasingly. "If there's a God, this is the best thing God ever created."
Satomi nods, totally agreeing in this moment. She might agree to anything Kyouji were to say, actually. Her brain is clouded, her body tilting forward towards the flame like a moth drawn to its own demise. If she ever had any doubts before about what she felt around Kyouji, it's achingly clear now: it was arousal, all along. Powerful, sickening, mortifying arousal. She's pulsing between her legs, her clitoris is also swollen, and she doesn't want to touch it, but she wants Kyouji to touch it, that's for sure. She wants to be sitting against Kyouji right now, head lolling back against her shoulder, legs spread so Kyouji can pet her sweet spot in little circles like that, all careful and tender. "I call it a clit," Kyouji says, using her middle and index fingers to pull back the surrounding flesh of her mons to expose it further, the pearly head of it winking in a sheen of slippery fluid, waggling back and forth between Kyouji's knuckles. "I think that's cuter."
Without realizing it, Satomi has begun shifting back and forth in her seat, grinding herself against the bunched ridges of her soaked pad. The pure, base want in her body has finally succeeded in overriding her self-loathing and embarrassment, her hyper-awareness of the inadequacy of her own body that would normally make her slouch and clam up. She's not thinking of the picture she's painting, because she's so fixated on Kyouji: the lazy, utterly shameless, almost insolent way she's touching herself. The wide splay of her thighs, the heave of her ribcage, the dark ink of her tattoos radiating across her shoulders. The hand she had resting on the steering wheel moves to her tit, twisting one of the nipples, making it gather into an even tighter point. Satomi's overt gaze must travel because Kyouji grins, and lets go of herself. "You want to touch? You've always been pretty curious about them. I don't mind." And then she leans back against the driver's side window, arm draped over the dashboard invitingly.
Satomi doesn't waste time taking advantage of the offer. The hand not clutching the lighter twitches out of her skirt, knuckles feeling almost electric as they unlock from the death grip she had on the fabric. She reaches out, smoothing her palm very gently down the heft of Kyouji's tit, astounded by the softness. Kyouji's eyes flutter shut, her head tilting back to expose the line of her throat as it bobs with her swallow. "Mm. There you go. You know, they used to be really cute and perky, back in the day. Now they're sad from being crushed all the time."
"They're fine," Satomi says stupidly, brushing her fingers over the nipples, squeezing then dropping so she can grab the other tit, testing its weight greedily, mouth flooded in spit. "I mean. They're bigger than mine."
"Size doesn't matter," Kyouji jokes, fingers working faster on her clit, so vigorously there's a wet snicksnick sound reverberating through the cab. Satomi looks down, mouth getting even wetter at the way the formerly translucent fluid is getting frothy, more viscous and white from friction, strings of it clinging to Kyouji's coarse black bush, matting some of it down against her outer lips. This close, Satomi can smell Kyouji—her men's cologne, her cigarettes. The coffee on her exhalations and the spice from her underarm sweat and most maddening of all, the salty, spicy notes from between her legs. "It's shape that makes the difference—and I'm sure yours are perfectly shaped under all the layers you wear."
Satomi blushes, wondering how long she can get away with touching Kyouji like this. Not long, apparently—at some point Kyouji's slick hand moves from her pussy to grab Satomi's wrist. Not the one attached to the tit-feeling hand, but the one holding the lighter. "Be careful with this," she tuts, fingers slippery against Satomi's skin, that musky, humid, mouth-watering scent wafting up from the space between their bodies almost unbearably strong as she shifts. "You're gonna light me on fire."
"Sorry," Satomi says, springing back, dizzy and buzzing and so desperate to keep touching and grinding on her pad she can hardly stand it. She releases the lighter again to cop a brief feel of herself in the darkness—one hand, thrust under her skirt, just squeezing the burning hot maxi pad into herself, compressing her hard little clit for a few wonderful beats of pressure before releasing. Kyouji can either discern what she's doing in the darkness or simply sense it, smell it on her, feel it in the storm-tightness in the air as the rain starts to drum down on the windshield again.
"You want to try, now? On yourself?" she asks, reaching down and tugging her pants up a few inches, like the show is over. Satomi tries not to be too openly disappointed, realizing she could have happily watched Kyouji touch herself forever. "I don't have to watch, we can sit in the dark like this if you'd prefer your privacy."
"No—I. I want you to watch," Satomi confesses, the admission easier to choke in the shadows, where she can't examine Kyouji's reaction. "To see if I'm doing it right."
A low snort, the sharp intake of breath. She can make out Kyouji's silhouette carding a hand through her hair and rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Lucky for you, there's no right or wrong way to do it. You can't mess up, as long as you feel good," she says eventually, voice a bit tight. Satomi wonders what she's thinking—if she's bored, if she's tired, if she wishes she was at home doing whatever she does there instead of out in the car in the rain with a fourteen-year-old weathering her first period. Satomi realizes she doesn't care—she's given so many hours of service to help Kyouji, maybe Kyouji owes her a few back.
"Ok," Satomi says shakily, subconsciously moving into the position Kyouji was in, one knee bent on the seat, the other leg extended down into the wheel well. "I just—I don't usually like to touch it."
"You don't have to touch it, that's just how I like to do it. What do you usually do?" Kyouji asks gently.
"I guess like. Rub on things?"
Kyouji laughs, but not unkindly. "A humper! I was a humper too. I don't think I started using my fingers until middle school. It's good to learn, but there's nothing wrong with humping. Here," she says, reaching for her discarded oxford shirt and tossing it to Satomi. "You take that, make it into a little ball to save my upholstery, then give me the lighter."
The exchange is abrupt, transactional, even as Satomi's heart is going fucking crazy in her chest. Their fingers brush, the shirt still warm and the lighter still hot. Satomi sneaks a desperate inhalation of the shirt before Kyouji flicks on the lighter—buries her face in it, huffs the combined hints of sweat, cologne, and smoke in a desperate gasp before wadding it up to straddle.
In the flame light, Kyouji looks her up and down, assesses her as she arranges herself. "Oh yeah, you've got that big pad on—it will feel nicer without any barriers, won't it?"
Satomi's brain stutters, tripping and catapulting into a fiery inferno. "Yeah, but—I'll bleed all over your shirt."
Kyouji swipes her free hand through the air, two fingers puckered from her own fluids, which makes Satomi's stomach lurch so powerfully she whites out for a second, vision nothing but static. "You think that's the first time I've gotten blood all over my shirt!? Please, Satomi-Chan. It happens all the time. I'll just take it to the dry cleaners."
"You're so gross," Satomi pants, wrinkling her nose to disguise what quick work she makes of shucking the panties and pad, which she's shocked to find is not positively doused in blood, like she suspected. There's a crease down the middle that's bright red, but everything else is just wet with her own slickness, pink-streaked but mostly clear. "Period blood is different."
"Yeah, and a lot less nasty than whatever other blood is getting on my clothes, trust me," Kyouji promises, gaze burning into Satomi as she adjusts, knees spread, hips lowered. She hovers there over the shirt for a few seconds feeling utterly surreal—she's not exposed because her skirt hangs long enough to conceal everything, but she's still about to lower her bare, bleeding, extremely wet pussy onto Kyouji's snowy white shirt, with Kyouji right there, bare chested, shirt unbuttoned, staring at her. The self-doubt rears its head again but it's a far away flicker, easy enough to drown out in the tide of pulsing, desperate want. Her cramps are already gone, so whatever guise she began this under has dissipated, washed away like a sand castle in the tide of her own very real, out of control hunger. Kyouji must be able to sense her hesitating, because she moves her free hand back into her pants, long fingers tucked into the maw of her open zipper to pet her pubes away from her slit. "Go ahead, Satomi-Chan, make yourself feel good. You can pretend I'm not here, would that make you feel better? Or do you want me to join you, so you're less alone?"
"You—you too," Satomi grits out, her grasp on language rapidly slipping as she drops those final few inches, pressing into the gathered folds and divots of Kyouji's shirt. Texture wise, it's no different than her sheets which she's historically preferred slightly less to the softness of a stuffie or pillow. But the fact it's Kyouji's—smells like her, was recently on her body—makes it easily the best thing she's ever ground against. A reflexive little sound escapes her without meaning to, a snagging half-grunt from deep in her throat. She hardly notices, too fixated on the spectacle of Kyouji idly touching herself again, hand tucked into her pants, nothing but her narrow wrist and expensive watch jutting out. Just seeing the covert motion of her knuckles trapped beneath the fabric makes Satomi rock back and forth shamelessly, rubbing her clit against the bunched white cotton. She can feel how smeary-wet she is, can feel the way her inner lips part and spread wide, everything slick, messy. She's never orgasmed in her life to the best of her knowledge and has no idea what to expect, but already it feels like too much, like the pleasure is building towards some unhinged, explosive ending. Normally this would terrify her, but she feels safe in the Century, illuminated only by the unsteady flicker of Kyouji's zippo, bathed in the steady, half-lidded heat of her gaze.
Kyouji is definitely looking at her. It's an unreadable expression—nothing Satomi can register with certainty as hunger or desire, she's not looking at her like she wants to eat her alive (don't talk smack about my favorite food, she'd said), but like she's studying her, tracking her motion, trying to discern whether her suggested methods are working or not. Because of course—that's why Kyouji's doing this—this isn't the sexiest moment of her young life, the day she transitions into becoming a woman—this is just another Thursday where she's hanging out with her flat-chested, socially awkward, teenage singing teacher, paying for those lessons in weird favors. It would be absurd for her to find Satomi attractive, really attractive, attractive enough to reach for her, touch her, crave her. Satomi knows that. She's not a pretty girl, she never has been. She doesn't wear lingerie or have big tits or know how to do her hair. But still, none of this stops her from imagining things: Kyouji saying, fuck it, actually, let me show you how it's done. Pouncing on her, kissing her, spreading her out on the backseat and feeling her body with those still-puckered fingers. Reaching down to flick her clit like she's flicking her own, then guiding her up to her knees again, making her straddle her face and murmuring Go ahead, lower it down, I don't mind the blood, I like that coppery taste, you know I always order my meat rare, Satomi-Chan.
Just like that, Satomi is imagining the wadded shirt between her legs is Kyouji's mouth. That she's grinding onto the slick heat of her lips, that the bunched folds of her shirt parting her inner lips is the muscle of Kyouji's tongue. Something pulses and her thighs quake, she chokes out an involuntary "uhh," sound, glasses fogging with the heat of her body.
"Oh, Satomi-Chan!" Kyouji says, breathlessly encouraging. "Look at you. Getting close?"
"I don't—I don't know? I—Ah—" she says, pitching forward with a hand on the gear shifter, hips madly rocking to get the angle just right on her clit. She looks up, needing to see Kyouji to do it, to push herself over the edge into the unknown. "I feel. Like I could pee."
"That's good," Kyouji urges. 'It feels like that sometimes. Chase that feeling, you're doing good."
"But what if I just. Actually? Pee?" she asks, teeth grit, sweat beading on her temples.
Kyouji shrugs. "You can pee all over my car, it's due for a detailing."
"I don't want to pee in your car, that's—you're really gross," she pants out, gaze trained on Kyouji's hand and the strands of wayward pubic hair sticking out from her waistband.
Kyouji ignores the insult and withdraws her hand, lifting her hips to yank her trousers and underwear down further, exposing the whole of her mound again, like she knows Satomi wants to see it, needs to see it. "How about this—if you pee, I'll pee too, so you're not alone, and then we can laugh about it."
"Ok," Satomi says, not even sure what she's agreeing to because she is so drooly-fixated on the slick junction between Kyouji's legs. It's so messy she feels insane. Her own vulva is a single crease with a few pitiful wisps of hair above the fold, girlish and boring and embarrassing to look at in the mirror. But Kyouji's—it's mature. Plump and swollen and dimensionally colored, bruised purple-brown on the periphery before giving way to a violent pink deeper inside. She's a many-folded folded vortex, sacred geometry. Satomi stares at the super-soft looking flaps of her inner labia, at the puffy hood surrounding the pale bubblegum of her clit. Everything so sloppy, all that wetness matting the hair away from the gash, open and slick and as she tucks a finger easily into her slit and drags fluid from it up to circle her thick, juicy clit. Automatically Satomi thinks, my favorite food, if there's a God, this is the best thing God ever created. Her mouth waters, and with a clarity she doesn't think she's ever been able to apply to anything else in the whole of her floating, aimless, jellyfish-floating life she thinks: I want to suck on it.
The precipice lurches closer with that thought. She lashes her tongue against the crooked row of her lower teeth, imagining crazy things, hips snapping as she humps Kyouji's shirt with increasing desperation. She doesn't just want to suck on it—she wants Kyouji to want her to suck on it, she wants Kyouji to want to suck on hers. She wants Kyouji to be looking at her with more than instructional guidance but with the same pathetic, maddening hunger she feels for Kyouji. Gazing at her mouth with longing.
Like a hibernating beast waking up ravenous to storm and devouring everything in sight, a mandate lurches to attention inside of Satomi, beyond logic, beyond self preservation. To make Kyouji really look at her. She braces herself with the single hand on the gear shift and reaches for the hem of her shirt, pulling it up to her teeth to expose her chest. Her pitiful little tits, nothing more than a child's fistful, like two cleaved and flattened halves of a lemon. But her nipples are hard and there's sweat beaded on her sternum and she wants to look nice, and pretty, so maybe she does.
It doesn't matter why Kyouji looks, or what she's thinking, but she does look. First to Satomi's tits, one after the other, and then, to her eyes. Her own are all pupil, black as the night, but then again they always are, so it might mean nothing. Still, the electrical pang of her gaze holding Satomi's goes straight to her clit, makes it pulse and spasm. She becomes rigid, hips locked, it's not enough, not quite, so in one final act of desperation she holds her shirt up with her clenched jaw, and reaches down to lift her skirt, and show off her little humping pussy.
She shows Kyouji her puffy, sparsely haired lips spread over the shirt, her hips jerking in seismic quivers while the rest of her freezes like she's been shocked, her mashing clit, her tensely corded thighs.
The feeling is unmistakable. It's probably called coming because it's like coming apart, like dying, like arriving on an entirely separate, too-bright, too-brilliant plane of existence. Satomi cries out and sobs, groaning into her mouth full of shirt, teeth grinding, hips grinding, everything around her dust.
"Fuck," Kyouji says, very quietly, so maybe she doesn't say it at all. Satomi doesn't know because her eyes are closed and her head is thrown back and the blood is pounding in her ears and so it feels like she's drowning. Then, as suddenly as it all washed over her, it drains out of her too. She slumps against the divider between the driver’s and passenger's side, and hyperventilates.
—
It's a weird, rocky road out of the pit. The lighter has gone out, and Kyouji is gently rubbing and patting her back, and it's really fucking embarrassing because Satomi can't stop crying. She keeps dripping all over the console and cup-holders while her bare pussy spasms against the now painful shirt jammed up against her. She needs to move, but she sort of can't. She feels naked and wet all over and way too young, but at least she didn't pee.
"At least you didn't pee," Kyouji says eventually through poorly masked laughter, shooting her a thumbs up. This is probably supposed to be encouraging, but only makes Satomi cry harder. "And hey, how are your cramps? Better?"
Satomi sniffles and nods miserably. The cramps, at least, are entirely gone. Replaced with some other, possibly worse stomach-feeling.
"Ok, then mission accomplished, right? Look—I'm sorry it was sort of intense. I don't think I really understood that you had, like, never never had an orgasm before."
"I can't—can you find my underwear?" Satomi manages to say, not at all ready to discuss the orgasm. The force of it, the insane pleasure and riotous high, followed by what she could only describe as some sort of adrenaline crash. She felt bereft, shaky, ashamed. She couldn't believe what she'd done. Revealed herself, showed Kyouji her stupid board-flat body, lifted her skirt like a clueless kid on the playground or else one of those nasty subway flashers in the trench coats. It was so embarrassing. Kyouji was regarding her with barely concealed amusement, and she should be. She was a disgrace.
Satomi wipes her eyes and nose on her shirt while Kyouji ruts around in the cab until she reemerges with the underwear, still stuck with a huge, barely-bled-on pad. "Ta dah!" she announces, examining it a bit before handing it back. "I admire the cautious choice of thickness! No leaks for Satomi-Chan," she observes. "Though I think you could have gotten away with something a little more demure and girlie. A panty liner, maybe."
"Shut up," Satomi says miserably, snatching it away from Kyouji and finally, painstakingly peeling herself off of the shirt. "It's my first time, I don't know."
Kyouji is quiet for a moment, and she politely looks away as Satomi struggles back into her panties. The pad is uncomfortably cold and clammy against the fever-hot of her still-pulsing clit, and the sensation makes her wince. "I know it's your first time," Kyouji says eventually. "Lots of firsts today. I'm sorry. I should have gone a lot slower, but it's easy to get carried away when things feel good, right?"
Satomi frowns, pressing her cheek to the cool, condensation-clouded window, arms curled around herself. That isn't what she wants to hear. She doesn't want to be treated with prudence, or slowed down for, she wants to be pushed, she wants to be wanted. The reminder that she's just a kid and Kyouji is humoring her stings, heavy in her gut like she's swallowed a chunk of raw dough. "You didn't do anything wrong," she mumbles.
Kyouji's laugh is more of a bark, it ricochets off the windshield, too harsh. "The fact you think that proves I did," she says. "I'm sorry, ok? I was a really hypersexual kid, I forget not everyone—"
"I'm fine, don't say sorry," Satomi snaps, because she doesn't want an apology for the things Kyouji did, she wants one for the things Kyouji didn't do. Say you're sorry for not kissing me, for not wanting me, for not losing control and taking me like I wanted you to. For not raping me like the dirty old men my mom always warned me about. She wipes her nose on the back of her hand, leaving a long, shining snail trail that eventually dries into a crust in her fine arm hairs. She stares at it while Kyouji sits beside her, flicking her lighter on and off, creating a dull, shaky orange strobe in the driver's seat.
"Do you need to smoke or something?" Satomi asks dully.
"Or something," Kyouji says around a shaky laugh. "Ahhhh. Satomi-Chan. I should really take you to your friend's house, shouldn't I? "
Satomi nods, even though she doesn't want to go. She worries deep down that this will be the last time she sees Kyouji, after what happened. That she told on herself, made everything weird and tense in revealing what a big, stupid, fruitless crush she has on Kyouji. "Here's your shirt" she says glumly, unable to meet Kyouji's eyes. "I'm sorry if—if I got blood all over it."
"Psh, I told you, don't worry," Kyouji says easily, taking the shirt from her and setting it on her lap. She doesn't handle it like a bomb or something she's disgusted by, luckily, but Satomi is still profoundly squeamish over the fact there's evidence of how badly she wants Kyouji, and wishes she could keep the shirt. To hide said evidence, but also to forever possess something of Kyouji’s, in the event she disappears from her life forever after this. It would be fair if she did—Satomi cannot imagine how they could sustain this friendship? Mentorship? Teaching relationship? Whatever outside the constraints of the boss's Karaoke contest, which is only a few weeks away. A yakuza and a fourteen-year-old girl have no reason to be friends. They have less of a reason to be anything more, and she knows it.
They drive, and the rain comes down more consistently, streaking down the windows as drops chase each other in lengthy pathways. Satomi traces them with her eyes, and bleeds. "Congratulations again, Satomi-Chan," Kyouji says as they pull over in front of her friend's house. "I promise, every other time will be easier. That's how it goes, when you get older."
"Do you buy your own bullshit?" she spits back at Kyouji, who laughs there in the driver's side, wearing nothing but rumpled trousers and an open suit jacket buttoned hastily and incorrectly over her bony sternum, a bloody shirt curled up on her thighs like an injured animal.
"Not a chance," she says, flashing a peace sign, smile blade bright again, aching in its insincerity. "See you tomorrow!" she says with false cheer. Satomi nods, forces herself to leave as the rain mists her face, disguises her tears, drips down into her collar like that singular blade cut right through her jugular.
—
The bad feeling doesn't stay. It's a knot that loosens each time Kyouji shows up to one of their scheduled meetings, as put together as always. A black slash at Karaoke Heaven, hair gelled back, voice too low and raspy and shot to sing the songs she keeps trying to sing. Inevitably, she defaults back to Crimson, and inevitably, Satomi reminds her the boss won't let her sing it. It's a rote old script at this point, but Satomi is grateful for it because Kyouji is there, saying her lines, coughing, scratching at the hem of her compression shirt (though she hasn't taken it off again, not since that night in the car). Her period lasts four days, then peters out to nothing. It's almost like what happened did not happen at all.
"I can't sing anything else," Kyouji mopes one day, flopping back into the booth. "I'm doomed."
"Thrashing your voice with Crimson isn't helping," Satomi reminds her, swirling her straw and ice cubes through her melon soda. "You should be drinking honey tea every day and inhaling steam in the shower and only practicing I want to be a boy, ok?"
Kyouji rolls over and pouts at her, chin pillowed on her fists. "It's a stupid song. I'm gonna end up Sucky-Song-King and the boss is gonna stab me and I'm gonna have a shit tattoo."
"Don't talk like that," Satomi says, rage lifting in her like a flash flood. She's come to terms with the terrible, mortifying fact that she loves Kyouji—but in moments, it is also so easy to hate her. "Like you've already given up! Why do you keep coming to meet me here if you've already resigned yourself to being the Sucky-Song-King?" she snaps.
And Kyouji smiles at her—not a blade, or the crescent moon, or the cotton-white curve of a panty-liner pressed to the stained crotch of her panties to bleed into, but something so, so much softer. It makes her mouth fall open, it makes her insides all shudder and swoop. "Satomi-Chan—because I like to see you twice a week, duh. And because you seem to have faith in me, you know, and that makes it a lot easier to have faith in myself."
Then she sits, fires up I want to be a boy, already humming the melody.
Two weeks from now, Satomi will get her period again, and miss her final choir performance because her cramps are so bad. She will see the Century crashed on the way to school, she will sing Crimson in Kyouji's place, she will bleed through her pad and her underwear and her school skirt in rivulets down her leg in a room full of Yakuza men who will not touch her or even look at her because Kyouji isn't dead but watching the performance from the wings with a black eye, and a dislocated shoulder. After that, she really will disappear, and Satomi's heart will break, and she won't be able to grind herself to climax without thinking about that now-totaled car and the smell of smoke seeped into its seats, and coming will still feel like coming apart, and like dying: too much, too young.
But right now, she's in Karaoke Heaven. And everything is fine, even if she hates this song.