“Wh-What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It felt kinda ticklish, the way you touched me.”
“Oh, sorry...”
I thought I shouldn’t run my hands all over her, so I was reserved in my movements. That was probably why.
Still, that sound she made was so hot...
If I let the memory of it keep troubling me, the blood in my body was likely to flow into one spot, so after that, I devoted myself to being a sunscreen-rubbing machine as I thought about the thirteenth row of the multiplication table.
“Thanks, Ryuto!” Shirakawa-san said cheerfully once I was done. Then, she got up.
“Actually, I should be the one thanking you...”
“Huh? For what?”
“Uh?! Never mind, it’s nothing,” I said.
Damn. My thoughts leaked.
Simply rubbing sunscreen on her had mentally exhausted me. I had a newfound respect for boyfriends around the world who were just fine going on beach dates.
Man, I’m so creepy... It’s so obvious I’m a virgin.
Seeing the guys around us who’d come here with their girlfriends and were carrying themselves so confidently... It was crushing.
All of the guys already had slightly tanned skin—perhaps many of them were locals. Even if they were slim, they were still muscular, and their hairstyles seemed fashionable. Of course they’d be like that—they were guys leading lives satisfying enough that they could come up with the idea of going on beach dates with their girlfriends.
Seeing a guy who appeared to be a high schooler like me walk around with his hand wrapped around his bikini-wearing girlfriend’s waist, I felt an impulse to ask, “Hey, how many times have you played this ‘life’ game before?” I was so gloomy that it was simply amazing.
I was sure Shirakawa-san’s exes had been like that too... And unlike them, I...
These thoughts caused me to get embarrassed. My skin was light and pale, which made it all too clear I was the indoor type. Even my trunks were just old ones I’d bought back in my third year of middle school when my guy friends invited me to a pool for some reason to relieve some stress after studying for tests.
It was just weird for a guy like me to be here, together with such a cute girl, right...?
“Ryuto!”
At that moment, a pink orb came flying in front of my eyes, and I caught it with both hands on reflex. It was a beach ball—Shirakawa-san had thrown it at me after having made her way over to the water at some point.
“Let’s get in the water already! Come on, let’s go!”
When I saw her gushing smile, the things I’d been thinking a moment ago started to feel a little irrelevant.
“I’m coming!” I replied and headed over.
Thus, we were both in the water and tossing a beach ball to each other at close range.
“Here I go, Ryuto!”
“Okay!”
“Here goes!”
“There!”
“Agh, you got water on me!”
We weren’t very far from each other, so it appeared that when I hit the ball, water splashed up on Shirakawa-san’s face.
“Oh, sorry!” I said.
Then, a mischievous smile appeared on Shirakawa-san’s face. “Well then, I’ll have my revenge!”
“Whoa!”
Water suddenly hit my face, and a fishy, salty taste filled my mouth.
“You really did it, Shirakawa-san.”
“Ehe he.” She was looking my way like a mischievous child.
“All right...”
“Agh!”
I tried to splash her a bit, but Shirakawa-san dodged it. Immediately afterward, she scooped up some water and threw it at me.
“Whoa!” I exclaimed.
Not willing to lose, I threw more at her. I kept my attacks light at first since I was sure she had makeup on and I didn’t want to get her face wet, but since she wasn’t holding back, my attacks gradually got bolder too.
“Aha ha, stop it, Ryuto!”
“I could say the same to you!”
Under the noontime sun on this midsummer day, we played in the water, shouting cheerfully like children.
***
I wondered how long we’d been playing for. After splashing each other, we’d rented floats and tried sinking one another, and then we simply chased each other in the water. At some point, the sun above had significantly changed positions.
Shirakawa-san was a genius when it came to making people enjoy themselves. I’d used to think beaches were only for normies, and before I had started going out with Shirakawa-san, I’d wondered what there’d even be for me to do if I went to one now that I was in high school. And yet here I was, starting to fully enjoy what a beach had to offer before I knew it.
“Wow, my hair is all drenched...” said Shirakawa-san with a smile, wringing her hair while we were taking a break back on the beach. “Man, that was fun...”
She’d bound her hair before going into the water, but it was still sopping wet, along with the rest of her body. It made sense, since she’d fallen from a float.
“You hungry?” asked Shirakawa-san.
“Yeah. Wanna go eat something?”
After that, we went to a beach hut and bought yakisoba, takoyaki, and some other things. We ate it all on the blanket we’d spread out on the beach. Once our stomachs were sated, Shirakawa-san looked up at the sky and sighed.
“It’s so nice that the weather’s good today!” she said.
“Yeah. They said a typhoon was on a rapid approach—wonder if it veered off...”
A typhoon coming together with the end of the rainy season... Japan has some really abnormal weather nowadays.
“It must be because I behaved myself! You should be grateful, Ryuto.”
I didn’t have any objections to that, so I simply said, “Yeah,” and smiled before taking a gulp of my ramune.
While I’d gotten fairly used to seeing Shirakawa-san in her bikini, the thought that she was sitting so close to me at a distance where our skin might touch if one of us stirred a bit still made my heart pound.
Speaking of bikinis...
“Shirakawa-san, I didn’t get to say it earlier, but...”
There was something that somehow had been staying in the back of my mind this entire time and I wanted to tell her about it, even if it was late.
“Mm-hmm?” Shirakawa-san gave me a quizzical look.
“Your pik...er, bikini...”
Damn. I fumbled my words. Still, now that I’d started to say it, she’d find me weird if I stopped here.
“Huh? What about my bikini?” asked Shirakawa-san, looking at me and waiting for me to speak.
Flustered under the pressure of it, I continued. “Your bikini...s-suits you.”
As I finally managed to get it out, Shirakawa-san’s cheeks turned red.
“Ryuto...” Her large eyes glistened, and she added, as though flustered, “Y-You’re saying that now?! That’s no fair?!”
“Huh?! What do you mean?!”
“I didn’t expect you to say something like that!”
After kicking up a fuss as though hiding her embarrassment, Shirakawa-san smiled. “But thanks. It’s a cute bikini, right? I went with Nicole to buy it last month! Though because I tried on like thirty of them, even she kinda got angry with me at the end. She was like, ‘Why’s it so hard for you to decide?’”
“Yeah, I totally get her...”
Yamana-san is really devoted to her friends, huh...
“So anyway, after I told Nicole we were going to the beach, she came to my house yesterday after work and did my nails! Look!” With that, she spread out her hands before me. “The design matches my bikini! Isn’t it just godlike? It’s super cute, right?!”
“Yeah, they’re incredible.”
I’d been sure she’d had a professional in a nail salon work on them. To me, a guy who was indifferent to fashion, they’d looked perfect.
“I asked her to make them sculpted since it’s summer break,” said Shirakawa-san.
“‘Sculpted’?”
“It’s, like, making them longer, I guess? You use artificial extensions to make short nails long! They’re more durable than natural nails, and they let you do a bigger range of designs.”
“Huh...”
“Since it makes your nails flashy, it’s perfect for summer breaks!”
“Oh, but don’t we still have school next week?”
There was one day in the upcoming week when we had to go in for the end-of-term ceremony. There, we’d get any test results we hadn’t received yet, as well as our report cards, and then it would be officially summer break.
“Well, think of it as a bit of a false start,” said Shirakawa-san, giving me a wink. “Anyway, I’m a huge fan of these nails! Oh yeah—I should take some photos with the sea in view and put them on Instagram!”
With that, Shirakawa-san grabbed her phone and started snapping picture after picture in various poses, like holding out a hand toward the water or bending her fingers.
I watched her in silence. Even though her face was out of the frame and only her hands were in the photos, she naturally made a cute expression for a moment every time she pressed the shutter button. It was charming, and I wondered if it was a conditioned reflex for her.
Then, suddenly, our eyes met when Shirakawa-san made a sidelong glance in my direction.
“Oh, sorry!” she exclaimed, hurriedly putting down her phone. “I’m done now. You were bored, right?”
“No, not at all.” I shook my head and pointed at Shirakawa-san’s nails. “Is that an ‘L’ on your ring finger? Is it part of your initials?”
Upon hearing my question, Shirakawa-san’s face lit up.
“That’s right! Nicole herself chose to write it like that! My name’s actually Runa with an ‘R,’ but she made it Luna—she said it’s like the moon goddess!”
“Yeah, I thought it might be something like that.”
I hadn’t known about the moon goddess, but I had known that the word “luna” had some connection to the moon.
“I’m surprised you noticed! Wow! I’m so happy!” exclaimed Shirakawa-san in admiration before suddenly knitting her brows. “You’re not gonna say something like ‘Aren’t your claws just getting in the way?’ huh?”
“What...?” I had no idea what she was talking about.
Shirakawa-san continued with a dark expression on her face. “You don’t think stuff like ‘How can you even do chores with those?’ or ‘Can you wash your hands properly?’ or ‘Why do you get nails like that if guys aren’t even into that sort of thing?’ or ‘It’s totally gonna hurt if those touch me, so I don’t like them’?”
“Huh?”
At first, I pondered what had made her so eloquent about this, but then it hit me: those, perhaps, were things her exes had said to her. That was probably it.
In that case, I wanted to tell her my honest feelings on the matter.
“I don’t think those things,” I replied. “And actually, even if I did, I wouldn’t say them out loud. I mean, you like getting your nails done, right? Don’t you have them like that because they make you feel great enough that it’s worth giving up a bit of convenience?”
“Y-Yeah. That’s right. That’s exactly right,” replied Shirakawa-san. She was confused, but she nodded at me.
“Then I think it’s fine.”
At the very least, I didn’t think I had a right to find fault with how she wore her nails.
I would be upset too if someone told me to stop watching KEN’s videos because it was creepy and it wouldn’t make me popular. Even if the one saying it was my beloved girlfriend.
I didn’t want to do things to others that I wouldn’t want done to me. I didn’t know much about nails, but to Shirakawa-san, they were probably a wonderful thing.
“Besides... You always look so alive when you talk about things you like,” I added.
It was easy to say these things inside my mind, but when I tried actually saying them out loud, I ended up speaking hesitantly because it was awkward.
“A-And cute too,” I managed to quietly add, then looked at Shirakawa-san.
With reddened cheeks, she bashfully pursed her lips. “Oh, come on... You’re too nice, Ryuto,” she said from beside me as though she were angry. She hugged her barefoot legs, rested her face on her knees, and gazed at me with upturned eyes. Her cheeks were still flushed. “If you spoil me like that I’ll eventually become a selfish girl. Are you okay with that?”
H-How cute...
She’s so cute I’m shaking.
“S-Sure, sure... I mean, I am,” I replied.
Enduring her cuteness had been no easy task.
“And, actually, you can get away with becoming a little selfish,” I added.
After all, she was a really nice girl. Too nice—to the point where she put other people’s feelings before her own.
“At the very least, you can be a little selfish with me. I may not be very dependable, but...I’m your b-boyfriend.”
Wow, that was so smug of me! I had no idea I could say stuff like that!
My inner voice immediately lashed out at me and my own cheeks heated right up. Still, this was the result of me trying to share my honest feelings.
“I see...” Shirakawa-san suddenly made a face as though she smelled something unpleasant. She turned her head away from me and rested her cheek on her knees again. “So that’s how boyfriends should be... I never knew.” Her voice sounded a bit nasally.
“Shirakawa-san...?” I asked, worried she might be crying. “Shirakawa-sa—”
“Hey, Ryuto,” she said in a tear-choked voice.
“Yeah?”
“Then... Can I ask for something selfish now?”
“What is it?”
As I wondered what she had in mind, Shirakawa-san turned back my way, rubbing her reddened eyes with both hands.
“Buy me another ramune? It’s so hot, I’m really getting dehydrated!” she said in a jokingly fawning voice.
“I don’t know about ‘selfish’—you’re just making me your errand boy here,” I retorted with a smile.
Shirakawa-san looked flustered. “Oh, wait, I’ll give you money.”
“It’s fine; it’s just two hundred yen,” I replied, getting up, then headed to a beach hut.
She really was crying...
Contemplating the scars left by Shirakawa-san’s past relationships, I once again swore to myself that I’d treasure her.
***
After that, we played in the water for a while. When we were done, we took showers in the beach hut, got changed, and left the beach before sunset.
“The weather got bad, huh,” remarked Shirakawa-san.
It occurred to me that at some point, the sky above had become fully overcast. The wind felt a little cool too, and it was so humid that it seemed that a storm was on the way.
“Still, since we’ve come all this way, we might as well go climb to the top!” she suggested.
“Yeah,” I replied.
After the beach, our plan was to go up the mountains on Enoshima until we got to a lighthouse, eat some seafood, and then go home.
I was concerned about the weather, but since it wasn’t like it was raining, we decided to proceed with our plans. We climbed hundreds of steps to get to the top and took a few pictures at the bottom of the lighthouse. Then, we then stepped into a restaurant with raw whitebait on the menu.
The waitstaff led us to our seats.
“Sorry, we don’t have raw whitebait today,” they said after we’d tried to order it.
“Did you sell out?”
“No, we just had a poor catch this morning because of the typhoon. We can only serve them raw on the day they’re caught.”
“I see. Okay, then I’ll have a nishoku don with red caviar and kamaage whitebait,” said Shirakawa-san.
“And I’ll have a nishoku don with tuna and kamaage whitebait.”
After we ordered, I happened to look outside the window. That’s when I noticed...
“Oh, it’s starting to rain,” I remarked, prompting Shirakawa-san to look outside too.
“For real...? I don’t have an umbrella,” she said.
“Me neither...”
“And the weather was just fine for a while this afternoon... Guess there really was a typhoon out there.”
“But hey, at least the skies were clear while we were at the beach.”
“Yeah, no kidding! We sure got lucky there.”
However, by the time our meals arrived and we finished eating, the rain was coming down so hard that we couldn’t afford to be so carefree anymore.
“Hey, isn’t this pretty bad?” asked Shirakawa-san with a gulp, standing just outside the restaurant.
The rain was pounding on the ground with such force that I could see steam rising about fifty centimeters high.
“Still, no point in standing around here... We have to make it to the station somehow,” I said.
After waiting for the rain to abate a little, we stuck close to stores and restaurant fronts to take shelter from the rain as we walked. Eventually, we somehow made it to the station.
However...
“Line suspended...?!”
Due to the heavy rainfall, parts of the railway line were submerged, and the train we were about to board was announced to be suspended. This wasn’t just affecting Enoshima—apparently all ground lines in the Greater Tokyo Area were experiencing disruptions.
“Man, what do we do...?”
There’d been so many people at the beach during the broad daylight earlier, but at some point, even the area in front of the station had become completely deserted. People who had come here, getting wet on the way, were now climbing into taxis waiting at the station and disappearing off somewhere after learning about the service suspension.
“Should we get a taxi too?” I suggested.
“What? No way! That’d be disgustingly expensive. We’re almost as far as Saitama,” replied Shirakawa-san.
“Yeah...”
I looked it up on my phone and went pale. The estimated cost was roughly thirty thousand yen.
We decided to place the last of our hopes on the rain tapering off and we waited at the station for a while. Unfortunately, it only got stronger and showed no signs of weakening.
“It’s already six, huh...” I remarked.
We’d planned to start heading back at four, but due to these unforeseen circumstances, this was the situation we’d found ourselves in.
Would trains start moving again today at all?
Every time I checked the train status, it said different things. Even if we took a taxi to some other station where trains were still running, there was no guarantee we’d be able to transfer in a way that’d get us home.
I asked Shirakawa-san how much she had on her, and it turned out we had roughly nine thousand yen between the two of us. We had to be careful about how we used our money.
We gave it some thought and decided that we’d both call our parents and claim that we were with friends. In the end, after talking with them, we honorably accepted our fate and went looking for a place to stay. Fortunately, the following day was Sunday, and neither of us had any real plans.
We left the station, but the torrential downpour made it difficult to go very far. By the time we finally got to a suitable-looking inn after finding one on our phones, we were already completely drenched. The female receptionist even hurried to bring us a towel as soon as she saw us.
“A night for two will be six thousand yen. Breakfast is included,” she said.
Hearing that, Shirakawa-san and I looked at each other. We’d be able to stay here.
“Okay, we’ll go with that,” I replied.
“One room for both, yes? Individual rooms would cost five thousand each,” added the receptionist.
Shirakawa-san and I looked at each other again.
“Uh...”
Five thousand per person would mean ten thousand combined, which would put us over our budget. We could go looking for a cheaper place to stay, but that would mean walking through the heavy rain, and there was no guarantee we’d find one.
“I’m okay with it,” uttered Shirakawa-san, looking away from me.
Thus, it was decided we would be spending a stormy night together in a room at an Enoshima ryokan.
***
What is this development?! What’s going on here?!
I’m about to spend a night in the same room with Shirakawa-san... So...could that mean... Could it mean... Is it possible?!
The mere thought of it heated up a certain part of my body that shall go unspecified.
“Oh hey, it’s a nicer room than I expected,” said Shirakawa-san.
The room we’d been taken to was Japanese-style and roughly 16.5 square meters in size. There was no external corridor by the window, so it had a nostalgic feeling to it, like your grandmother’s room in the countryside.
“Shirakawa-san, would you like to take a bath?” I suggested. “You’re cold, right?”
“Huh? But what about you?”
“I’ll get changed for now, so don’t worry.”
There was a large bath at the inn, so we agreed to take turns going in and I saw Shirakawa-san off as she left the room.
Then, after changing out of my completely drenched clothes into the yukata prepared for me, I collapsed on top of the tatami flooring in the room.
I’m not okay at all!!!
What is this? Seriously, what were those words she said back there?
“I’m okay with it.”
“Okay”? “Okay” with what?
Did she simply mean us staying in the same room...or what could follow?!
I’d visited her room right after we’d started going out and given up a rare chance to have my first experience—it had been a month since then. Could it somehow, someway, be that Shirakawa-san had come to want to have sex with me? And she couldn’t find a good time to say it, which was why she’d said what she’d said back in the lobby?
I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t her, after all.
But wait... No, but still... Will I get to become one with Shirakawa-san tonight...?
I’d come into this world sixteen years ago. My time as a virgin was finally coming to an end.
I wondered what it would be like not to be a virgin anymore. Would I become more composed, and maybe mature as a person...?
Thinking about these things, I couldn’t sit still. As I waited for Shirakawa-san to get out of the bath, for whatever reason, I started doing sit-ups. Perhaps it was my jealousy at play, particularly of those slim, muscular guys I’d seen at the beach this afternoon.
“Sorry for the wait, Ryuto,” said Shirakawa-san. She returned to the room in a yukata.
By that point, I was already dripping with sweat.
“What’s wrong? Is the AC not working?” she asked.
“Nah, I was just doing sit-ups for a bit...”
“Wow, that’s unexpected! You do stuff like that? Let me touch your belly!” she innocently asked and started to approach me.
“Oh, uh...!”
I was just a gloomy guy exercising on a whim—I didn’t have a stomach buff enough for people to touch. And above all, if Shirakawa-san were to touch me now, in this room... I decided to dodge her advance.
Her hands stopped. I wondered what she thought of my reaction.
“Oh... Sorry,” she said, doing a one-eighty from being in high spirits to looking awkward. She retracted the hands she’d been holding out and looked at me with a seemingly artificial smile. “You should go in next. It’s one of those ‘iwaburo’ places, I guess? It felt pretty good.”
“Y-Yeah... I’ll do that.”
I headed to the bath to escape the awkward air that had appeared in the room.
What was that? What’s going on this time? Just what did she mean by that “sorry”...?
Did I make it look like I was against her touching me? Or was it like “I don’t want to have sex today, so I’m sorry for acting in a way that suggests otherwise”...? But wait, if that’s the case, then what’s up with that “I’m okay with it” earlier...?
I got into the bath with these thoughts coursing through my head over and over. Because I was so distracted, I couldn’t really tell if I’d washed my head or only gotten it wet, so it felt like I shampooed it two or three times. I noticed it because of how squeaky the skin of my head was when I last rinsed it down.
Incidentally, the “iwaburo” that Shirakawa-san had mentioned—a bath or onsen made of rocks—turned out to be a normal bathtub that was only slightly larger than what you’d find in an ordinary household. It was just surrounded by walls decorated like rocks. It was a fair kind of place where even two high schoolers could afford to stay out of a sudden necessity, so I had no complaints.
When I returned to our room, Shirakawa-san was drinking tea and watching TV.
“They say the typhoon will pass overnight. Great, right? We can go home tomorrow,” she said.
“I-I see... That’s great.”
I’d completely forgotten about the typhoon despite the fact that even indoors, I could tell how strong the rain and wind were outside. The windows shook violently every now and then, which I found pretty scary for a brief moment whenever it happened.
At that point, I stepped inside the room and my eyes were drawn to the two futons lined up beside each other on the floor.
“Oh, a staff member came by earlier. When I said we ate already, they got these beds ready.”
“Huh...”
Of course they’d put them next to each other—we’ll be sleeping in the same room...
“Ryuto, want some tea?”
“Yeah, sure...” I nodded ambiguously to that and sat beside Shirakawa-san at the square table.
There was a teapot and some other items on the table. She opened the small teapot and the lid of a cylinder with a hole near it. Then, she removed used tea leaves from the teapot and threw them into the cylinder. Finally, she put new tea leaves into the small teapot and poured water from an electric kettle into it. Shirakawa-san was skillfully using tools I probably wouldn’t have known my way around, had it been just me.
A gyaru proficient at making tea... It was quite a gap, and I liked it.
“Here you go, Ryuto.”
“Thanks...”
As I took the cup of green tea from her, I stared at Shirakawa-san with surprise.
“What, Ryuto?” asked Shirakawa-san. She looked at me but quickly got embarrassed and turned away. “And actually, don’t look at me too much. I don’t have any makeup on.”
“Huh...?”
Now that she mentioned it, she had taken a bath. I hadn’t noticed she wasn’t wearing makeup since she looked mostly the same. When I inspected her face, there were just a few minor differences. I could tell that the ends of her eyebrows were slightly shorter, and her face appeared younger than usual.
When I carefully observed the bare-faced Shirakawa-san like this, she resembled Kurose-san a bit—an impression I didn’t normally get. You would certainly have been hard-pressed to find someone who could tell they were twins from the way they normally looked, but it didn’t feel so out of the question now.
Speaking of Kurose-san, ever since we’d exchanged LINE IDs, she’d been sending me messages frequently. Just like she’d said at first, she’d asked me to help with her studies. I’d figured I’d do it “at some point,” but when she’d asked to study on specific days, I would refuse with answers like “I have stuff to do that day” or “I’m taking summer courses during the break” (which hadn’t been a lie). But at that point, she’d started pressing me for an answer on when I did have time. I’d been holding out on replying for a bit.
Was it okay for me to see Kurose-san in private? I didn’t want to be cruel to Shirakawa-san’s blood-related sister, but she was still someone of the opposite sex. It also didn’t look like she and Shirakawa-san had completely fixed their relationship, so it would’ve been weird to invite Shirakawa-san and meet up as three. And while it had been in the past, I’d used to have a thing for Kurose-san—but Shirakawa-san didn’t know that, and explaining it would probably take a while. Speaking about it honestly might actually create misunderstandings... Thinking about it all made me not want to bother with the whole thing, so I ended up being vague in how I dealt with Kurose-san.
“I-Is my face that bad without makeup? Don’t look at me so much!” exclaimed Shirakawa-san, getting embarrassed from my absentmindedly staring at her while thinking about Kurose-san.
“Huh? Oh, uh... Not at all. It’s barely any different. Still...”
“Still?”
“You look a bit younger... It’s c-cute.”
I decided to keep quiet about her resemblance to Kurose-san for now.
“Whaaat? For real?” Shirakawa-san blushed and gave me a highly skeptical look. “That’s kinda embarrassing! Don’t look at me after all.”
“Huh? I think it’s good, though.”
“No, stop! Come on, let’s watch the news on the typhoon!”
Thus, Shirakawa-san and I watched TV for a while, drinking tea. Eventually, by 10 p.m., we were tired of the fully repeating information on the typhoon, so we brushed our teeth and started getting ready to go to bed.
I still didn’t know what Shirakawa-san had planned for tonight.
“Well, I’m killing the lights,” I said.
“Okay.”
Since we were ready for bed, I pulled on the string and switched the overhead light to night-light mode. Getting into the futon beside Shirakawa-san’s, I stared at the ceiling’s texture in the dim light.
I can’t sleep...
How could I possibly get any rest with my heart pounding and in such an aroused state?
“Hey, Ryuto,” suddenly came a voice from the bed beside mine.
“Y-Yeah?”
“Are you okay? Will you be able to sleep like that?”
As I looked beside me, wondering what she meant, I found Shirakawa-san with her face half under her blanket, giving me a worried look. Then, she sat up all of a sudden and swiveled her knees toward me.
“Wh-What?!”
“Also, sorry about earlier,” said Shirakawa-san. “That rain was really strong and my head got super wet, my makeup was running, and I was tired of walking... I don’t have much money, so I thought we could walk around and look for another place to stay, but I really didn’t have the energy for it, so I wanted to relax already and agreed to stay in one room...”
“Right...”
So that was what she meant earlier. There was no deeper, sexual meaning behind her words, I guess...
I was ashamed of getting ahead of myself. My arousal waned.
It seemed like this was going to take a while, so I sat up in bed too.
“But after I took a bath and calmed down, I thought—there’s no way you’d be okay, right? I mean, you’re a guy and my boyfriend.”
As I kept silent, wondering what she meant, Shirakawa-san drew even closer. There, in this dim room, her large upturned eyes were looking right at me.
“Wanna...have sex?”
I was shocked by her words.
She was wearing a yukata from the inn, and it was falling open a little bit, letting her cleavage peek through. Her slim waist was wrapped in a deep blue sash, and the lines of her body leading down to her rounded hips were beautiful and sexy. She almost looked like some kind of mermaid. The flame in my chest had settled down before, but now it flared up with renewed vigor. I could tell my body was quickly growing hot and stiff.
“A-Are you okay with it?” I managed to get out in a hoarse voice out of my parched throat. “You yourself didn’t want to have sex yet, right...?”
I was already eighty percent set on doing it, but since I’d taken the moral high ground with her at the start, I had to make sure of this one thing.
“Yeah...” timidly replied Shirakawa-san, nodding. “But I’d feel bad making you put up with it.”
“But if we did it, wouldn’t that just make you the one putting up with things?”
“Well, I’m not sure I’d call it that... I love you, so I’m not really against doing it with you.”
Hell yeah!!! Another version of me inside my mind shouted in joy. I was perfectly ready on the physical front too.
I gulped and started to prepare myself, but...
“It’s just...” began Shirakawa-san, casting her eyes down and smiling. “Before going out with you, I never really felt like touching my boyfriends. But when we rode that boat the other day... It was the first time in my life that I wanted to kiss someone. And I wanted to hold hands before that too... I definitely like you more than I did a month ago.”
“Shirakawa-san...”
So this is how she’s been thinking of me... I’m so happy, I’m moved.
“And when I thought that, I started looking forward to things a bit,” continued Shirakawa-san. “I imagined how I’ll grow to love you more and want to touch you more... And if we had sex when I really wanted to go all the way, maybe I’d actually feel good both in mind and body, for the first time in my life,” she said with a happy smile on her face.
“I see...”
While I was elated, the ferocity inside me was gradually fading.
Damn it... If she says stuff like that, then...
I won’t be able to do it tonight...
Damn iiiiit!!!
Shouting and crying tears of blood inside my mind, I was forced to step on the brakes.
“Okay. Then let’s go to sleep now,” I said, showing off and swallowing my tears, desperately trying to fake composure. “We got up early and traveled far, and then all that stuff happened. I’m sure you’re tired.”
“Huh...?” Shirakawa-san looked up at me in surprise. “Really? You don’t wanna have sex?”
“It’s fine; we can do it another time... When you feel like doing it.”
“Ryuto...” She looked at me with glistening eyes and a worried expression. “Why are you so kind?”
“Huh...?”
Did this count as kindness? I thought anyone would have to do the same in my shoes...
Still, if it looked like kindness, then I only acted that way because I was thinking of Shirakawa-san. Because I...
“Because I love you.”
As I said those words, Shirakawa-san’s eyes sparkled. Immediately afterward, she covered her face with both hands and her shoulders started going up and down.
“Shirakawa-san?”
Is she crying...?
She sniffled. “Uugh...” Sounds escaped her pursed lips as she couldn’t contain her sobbing. “Sorry... I was just so happy...” she said as though defending herself, sobbing convulsively.
“Huh...? Y-You okay?” Naturally, I was getting flustered.
“Yeah, sorry...”
After a while, she calmed down, wiped her tears, and smiled awkwardly.
“Sorry...” she said. “It looks like I cry easily when I’m with you. Sorry.”
“That’s not a problem... Not at all.” There was no need for her to apologize so much.
“Sorry,” said Shirakawa-san, again. “But, like, isn’t it just annoying? We were just talking normally and all. Doesn’t it bother you? You don’t think I’m not right in the head or something?”
“I don’t.”
Why was she saying these things? Was it because of her exes? I didn’t know if these were things they had actually said to her or something she’d picked up on from their attitudes. Either way, it made me want to free her from these chains as soon as I could.
A clear realization had finally hit me: I wasn’t the only one shackled by her ex-boyfriends.
“I don’t think that at all. I’m happy, actually,” I added.
“Why? Are you a cinnamon roll?”
“‘A cinnamon roll’...”
A person too good for this world.
High school girls use internet slang in regular speech nowadays, huh. Granted, I was a high schooler of current times myself, but I was on the otaku side of things, so it was surprising to hear it so normally.
I cracked an amused smile. “No,” I replied. “That means your heart moves a lot when you’re with me, right? I think that’s because you’re coming close to that ‘like’ you feel for me turning into ‘love.’”
Shirakawa-san’s eyes shook again. “Ryuto...” Then, her cheeks flushed a little. “Hey, Ryuto. Can I ask for something selfish again?”
“Hm? Sure.”
As I nodded...
“Could you hold me?” she awkwardly asked.
“Huh...?”
“Is that okay?”
“Well...”
I wasn’t against it, but to be in such close contact with her in a room with just the two of us, in a situation where I’d already decided not to do anything tonight...
“C’mere!” said Shirakawa-san, smiling at me and spreading her arms.
“Okay...”
Nervous, I gently brought my arms around her body for our first hug.
She was softer and warmer than I’d imagined. Her hair smelled like the shampoo from the inn, just like mine did—perhaps she wasn’t wearing her usual perfume. I could directly feel her soft, springy breasts through her thin yukata, which in turn raised my pulse.
“You’re warm, Ryuto... It’s calming.” Her soft voice by my ear made my heart beat so fast it gave me the chills.
This was dangerous. If I clung to her any longer, the fire deep inside me was at risk of reigniting.
“Hey, can we sleep like this?” said Shirakawa-san, startling me.
“‘Like this’...? Wait, what?! Like this?!”
Did she mean holding each other in bed until morning?! I was flustered, but then...
“Aha ha! I’m kidding!” she said and moved away from me. “Ah, but hey, how about sleeping while holding hands?”
“Oh, sure...”
I might be able to handle that somehow.
Thus, Shirakawa-san and I lay down in our beds and linked hands. The hand I was holding was warm, soft, and delicate... It was Shirakawa-san’s hand.
“Hey, Ryuto.”
“Yeah?”
No reply came. As I looked her way, I found her gazing at me...but for some reason, she looked worried.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head. There was a smile on her face, but it seemed forced. “We’ll still be together like this on our two-month anniversary, right?”
“Like this...? I’d rather not get stuck somewhere because of a typhoon again.”
“Aha ha, yeah, good point.”
My reply hadn’t really been funny, but she laughed anyway.
I ended up being nitpicky about her words, but perhaps I should’ve given her a proper answer. At that moment, I had no idea that later on, I’d come to regret what I’d said tonight.
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