The Harunobu Face

I did not know what I could do apart from wait. I believed now that Yuki cared for me, even if I no longer could fantasize that we were destined to be a couple bound by perfect, monogamous, love, till death parted us. She intended something for me, with me, and I could only continue to have the strange faith that since she intended it, it was good. I could not comprehend what it was, but my faith in her meant that I did not feel the compulsion to understand it or to guess what it might be.

After my breakfast, feeling slightly too restless in my apartment (how often would I have gone to listen at my glass if I had stayed there?), I decided to have coffee in my neighborhood coffee-shop instead of at home. And instead of studying, which I somehow could hardly bring myself to think about, it occurred to me that it might help me to start setting down something about Yuki: about what had happened since the fateful day that she became my neighbor. I tossed my laptop into my rucksack, and went out the door. To find Yuki and the man, who must have emerged together from her apartment seconds before I left mine, just a few steps away.

Yuki was wearing a green and white dress, and her elegance and beauty almost took my breath away. (Had she dressed so beautifully for him? Or could it have been, in part, for me...?)

- "Oh, hi! Um, Jan, this is my wonderful neighbour Louisa, she's a student too, Art History, isn't that lovely? Louisa, my friend Jan..." (She said friend, not boyfriend... )

I was afraid he would want to shake hands, but luckily he only grinned at me and said "Hello, Louisa". His eyes on mine looked as if they read everything, perhaps with more interest than I was comfortable with. Again I couldn't read very much from Yuki's expression.

- "We're just going out for some quick errands. Maybe I'll see you later?" (Not "Maybe we'll see you later?"; that seemed to me significant, hopeful.)

- "Yes, I may be out for a bit too, but I'll be back before long, definitely before noon. Let me know if you'd like to hang out." I felt that there was something risky in saying that, but I couldn't stop myself. Jan's eyes were still on me, and he grinned again; Yuki murmured "yes, sure," and "later then" and they turned--Jan turned her, rather. I didn't want to walk with them, and instead used double-locking my door as an excuse to look away and stay behind.

When I turned again they were moving towards the stairs. As I watched, that big hand of Jan on Yuki's ass (as usual!) moved swiftly down and then up; he pulled the hem of her dress far above her waist and held it there for perhaps just two seconds or less. Yuki was wearing no underwear, and she was still close enough that I could clearly see the welts on her hips and thighs. She must have been in quite some pain, even though the marks were actually less severe, I noted, than what I had heard would have led me to imagine. Yuki made a slight sound (perhaps of protest or annoyance, though I could not really tell), and Jan let her dress fall again, just before they turned to descend and went out of eyesight.

I couldn't move for a minute; what had happened so quickly somehow affected me in a way I couldn't understand or label precisely. It had been done for my "benefit," there could be no doubt about that. Was it a hint (I asked myself, as I slowly walked to the stairs, and then down them), a warning, that Jan knew, they knew, that I had overheard them last night? Saying "I don't care that you know that I caned her hard in the night?" Was it meant as a seduction, to draw me further down the rabbit-hole of a sexual involvement with both of them?! Or something else?

I walked slowly to and down the stairs. By the time I reached the bottom, incredibly, I was no longer worrying or thinking at all about what message Jan had been sending me. I was only thinking with tenderness of the pain Yuki must have been in, of the beauty of her welted bottom and thighs, of how I wished I could tend to her and help her heal...

Walking to my coffee shop, I was again aware of a kind of euphoria. It had never completely left me since Friday, I realized wonderingly; not even at the worst times of the shock of seeing them together, of my short-lived dream imploding--I remembered the brief moment when I had wondered if I was having a heart-attack, actually a broken heart...

And sitting with my coffee, I took out my laptop and began--this account. Of the first time that I saw my new neighbour Yuki, moving into the next door apartment, on a Saturday morning just over two weeks ago. And a lifetime ago.

I did not write very much though. It was too much in the forefront of my mind that I had told Yuki that I would be back "definitely before noon." Whether she really would be interested--or free--to hang out, I didn't know. But I knew that if she was I didn't want to miss her... After I had the feeling that I had really made a start at least of writing about her, I put away my laptop, drank the last sips, and set out back home, more than usually alert in case I might again bump into her, or them.

I was home by 11:30, without having seen Yuki. With no sign of her, I felt unsure what to do; it is a strange thing when a quiet blissfulness of the sense-perceptions is combined with this slight hollow ache of missing her. But I did not have long to wait. I had just sat down to try to write a little more of this account, when there was a quick double-knock on my door; my heart seemed to do a double-beat in answer. I opened the door, and fell into her eyes.

Yuki is almost the same height as me (I'm small for an English girl, though taller than my Japanese grandmother, who is one of those very small people), and she was standing very close to the door, to me. But no doubt it wouldn't have made a difference if she had been seven feet tall and standing two metres away. It was as if in that short time of less than forty-eight hours we had lived through a novel's worth of romance: first thrill of love and of an evening and night together, followed by unexpected separation, the appearance of a rival, the tease of the possibility of a ménage-a-trois... and now, re-union. The happy ending? At least what I saw in Yuki's eyes seemed like an inexhaustible ocean of love and tenderness. Something that would make every suffering, all the suffering of the world, seem insignificant. I don't know how long I stood there in the bliss of drowning in it.

Nonetheless it was I who spoke first. Some sense that I was being uncourteous penetrated my euphoric haze, and I said or stammered "Will you come in?"

I had forgotten that the glass was at that moment again taped against the wall, or else I might not have said that. But Yuki replied "Come to me instead, will you?" And she took my hand. So I went with her.

In Yuki's living room the sofa and tea-table had both been moved against the wall, to free the maximum floor-space. I wondered briefly what she and Jan had been doing: dancing, as she had done with me, but more exuberantly? But in any case, after letting me take off my shoes, as she did too, Yuki led me directly to the bedroom. To her futon.

She undressed me first--I was passive, almost unable to act. I felt helpless with no wish to be otherwise; hers. She made me lie down and then pulled off the green and white dress, and was naked too.

We lay there for about two and a half hours, facing each other, often touching, all of that time. But what passed between us was almost like years, or a lifetime, of teaching.

For that was the difference now. It had been there Friday too, but I was not really aware of it then. Now it was very clear, and it was as if it had always been this way. From my side, love, devotion, infinite openness to her; from her side love, and infinite generosity. Everything that she did now was teaching me. Words were a part of it only.

What she taught prepared me in part for the ceremonies to come. I could not set down all of it here; I lack the words, especially for the part which was not taught by words. And many things should not be told, as I have already written.

Some of what she taught was not for what was directly to come, but for the time after, for now. I had thought that I knew quite a bit about pain, and how to find pleasure in the right kind of pain. But of course the pain that I had used for this was always inflicted by my own hands. Yuki taught me with her fingers on my left nipple: first the most feathery of strokes, caresses, then gradually or suddenly tightening till I felt her full strength, greater than mine, greater than seemed possible of a girl as slight as she was. And she taught me how to immerse myself in the pain and find ecstacy in it. Not the most important of what she taught me then, but lessons that I am also grateful for.

There was one moment when I wanted to see her welts again and to tend to them if she would let me. I was so deeply bound to her now that when I saw that her hips and thighs bore not a single sign of the merciless caning I had heard, it was joy, awe, and admiration I felt, more than surprise and the cognitive dissonance that seeing something so miraculous would usually produce.

When we rose (Yuki first, helping me up), something had again changed, and this time I could understand what. For the first time since she had moved into the next door apartment and into my life, then into my heart, I knew, approximately, who Yuki was and what she intended with me. And I accepted it. Though it was so different from the fantasy I had had when I first entered her apartment.

She was more joyful than I had ever seen her. I think that was because she knew (of course) that now I understood. And what she had learned--the teacher learns too, not only the student; even a teacher who already knows so much, almost everything--made her, I believe, more certain that what she wished would be accomplished. That I would be what I now am.

She told me I should shower, and because I was so passive (bliss-drunk, and drunk on what I had begun to realize), she took me herself and showered with me, washing me with a tenderness that caused the water to become mingled with my tears. That was the first time that she touched me between my legs. The touch of a mother, more than a lover, but I melted for her... She made a little tisk sound when she stroked my hair there.

She pulled on that glorious dress again; made me put on fresh clothes, her own. We are almost the same size... For a moment it was as if we were girlfriends, girlfriends who had known each other forever. "Now," she said, "we're going out. There's something we have to do," and there was a smile different from any I'd seen from her before. A mischievous smile.

That was the only time that we went out together, in public. What can I say? Even though I knew it wasn't true, I imagined to myself that we were going out as a couple. As new lovers, with the fresh openness of the greatest love of our lives, not caring who might see it. And she generously allowed me that little final self-deceit... When I think about that, tears come yet again.

She took me quite a way. We passed a coffee-shop; she sensed that I would have liked to go in, but shook her head: no. We boarded a bus and travelled almost half-an-hour on it; sitting next to each other, often leaning against each other. Then we disembarked, in a district where I had never been, and Yuki took my hand and led me. To a place called Wax4Beauty, a place that somehow looked brighter and cleaner, more cheerful, than one expected in what seemed otherwise a rather rundown neighborhood.

In a metropolis like this one there will be some such places which are open on Sundays, and Yuki evidently knew this one, and knew the people there. Knew them? She had them eating out of her hand.

- "Miss Suzuki, wonderful to see you again! Yes, we were expecting you, of course... So this is your young lady, how very nice... And you want to be there to reassure her? Her first time, is it? Well, you know that it's absolutely against our studio policy, but, for you... Don't tell anyone, mind you, please, or we'll have other people begging for exceptions to be made... "

With almost no time at all spent waiting, I am in a small treatment room with an esthetician, a pretty, slightly plump, lady not much older than Yuki and me. I do what she says, and bare myself from the waist down, lie down on a table. She talks with Yuki (I am never asked what I want); Yuki is confirming that she wants everything removed...

Yuki holds my hand as the esthetician prepares herself and me. When the wax is poured (the pain of that less than I expected), first on my upper inner left thigh, Yuki leans forward and lays her cheek against mine. And when the first powerful rip comes, bringing a kind of agony I'd never imagined, forcing a cry from me, she puts her tiny mouth on mine and bites with her white teeth sharply into my lower lip.

*****

The esthetician is doing her work, the pain moving from place to place. On my vulva it is the worst, and I make a tiny whimper into Yuki's mouth--my first sound since the initial cry of surprise; I am being so brave, and also trying to show how well I had learned what she had taught me. I feel the grip of her teeth on my lip strengthening in response... Another rip, another whimper... The pain is like a white shockwave, but at least the waves seem to fade quickly, though not to a pain-free state, only to one where the pain does not wipe over everything else. My heightened senses are very aware, between waves, of that subtle fragrance of Yuki's...

The esthetician knows that this is the worst part, and she is trying to help, I think at first, by becoming chatty. To Yuki: "She's really pretty isn't she? I think she could easily... Ms. Suzuki, may I...?" Yuki nods, with a small sound of approval. "Sooo pretty... " (Here the esthetician touches me in a way that I immediately feel is the opposite of professional... But I'm beyond protesting.) "Especially here... " (Another utterly unprofessional touch; and another... If I had been in my old state, before Friday, I would be shouting protest, or be already grabbing my clothes, getting out of here. and another... what on earth... Right in front of Yuki she is taking me, with terrible skill, to very close... ) "And she's completely yours, I can see." (A circling caress of my clit, another... god, the pleasure-pain combination makes me make a pathetic little animal sound and Yuki, continuing to nip, puts a calming hand on my cheek as well.) "You're a lucky lady, Ms. Suzuki! Deservedly of course..." (Hot wax, rrripp, white pain through my sex again, through my whole being; another sly caress of my clit; what is this? she's blowing gently on me, touching me with her tongue, flicking, and and and... no, no, I don't want this, no... but I suddenly cum, bucking helplessly for seconds that draw out endlessly against the hand that she is pressing against me; looking with panic into Yuki's eyes which are telling me that all is well, that I'm a good girl, not a bad one, that I may cum... yes... cum, it is for her, for Yuki, even if it was another woman's fingers, breath, and tongue that had forced me to... )

If I had been the old Louisa I would be burning with shame after cumming like that in front of the two of them, but now I almost don't mind that both of them are touching me rather as if I were a little animal, a female animal... They let me come down gently, and then the esthetician, making sounds like a vet might make to calm a cat, pats me dry (had I really gushed that much? somewhere I still feel a touch of shame at realizing that), resumes her work... Now without the inappropriate touches, and she is almost finished--I am exhausted and let myself drown again in Yuki, only able to think that the esthetician was right: I am completely Yuki's...

*****

Yuki inspects the work when it is finished; at first very closely but without touching. When she hears (I fancy) my body screaming silently for it, she caresses my vulva with the slightest of touches, causing a brief burning pulse that is followed, amazingly, by a cooling feeling that almost takes away the pain. Esther (the esthetician) then applies a cream which is soothing, pleasant, even blissful, though not with the ecstasy of that touch of Yuki's.

*****

The staff fawned on Yuki till the last--and did she pay them? I didn't see it if she did. When we left, I was surprised I could walk that well still. Yuki seemed happy, light-hearted; I felt her approval of me as a balm...

When we approached the bus-stop again, there was a homeless man by the corner, with a bed-roll, a shopping bag full of clothes and whatnot, and a cup with a single coin in it. I was a little surprised that Yuki seemed to look at him closely. She stopped, found a coin, and put it in the cup. She smiled at him, and that grimy man (perhaps 50, though he could have been younger; life on the streets is so hard) touched his cap with a mumbled thanks, and smiled back at her, and then at me too, with a look that affected me in some way I could not understand.

*****

We were evidently heading back to the building we lived in. I felt a little light-headed. There was the heightened state in which my senses had been since Friday; the subtler changes brought about by what Yuki had taught me as we lay side by side; the after effects of the intense pain and pleasure of my visit to Wax4Beauty; the euphoria of Yuki's being still by my side... Perhaps also hunger, I thought? And just then Yuki stopped us to enter one of the small Turkish shops that is open every day of the week, not far from our building. She bought a large container of plain yoghurt, and a little Turkish bread, nothing more. I was again silent, passive; everything was in her hands.

She took me to her apartment. A lot had changed there. A large part of the living room was curtained off behind a makeshift curtain, and there were several bags and boxes, and a small case, placed against the wall. I thought it must have been Jan, and remembered the low conversation I had overheard. He was not there however. I was curiously devoid of any curiosity. I knew in part what the things would be for; and in any case nothing else mattered much while I was alone with her.

She sat me down on the sofa against the wall, brought us the bread and a bowlful each of the yoghurt. I hadn't eaten since the morning (it was now after 5pm); I don't know when Yuki had eaten last (not at all that day). It was a strange, light, plain meal, and yet strangely delicious, and after it I noticed that Yuki seemed stronger. She would need the strength.

Yuki washed our couple of dishes, telling me not to help her. She sat down again with me. She seemed very serious now, almost sad. I was reminded of the first impression I had had of her; and of the first time I had seen her in a vivid vision before sleep (it seemed like years ago, though it was only ten days). She held me; we hugged. We were like that, leaning against each other, arms around each other, when Jan came in.

Jan had a couple more full cloth bags, and a rucksack that looked heavy. He muttered a brief greeting which seemed aimed more at me than Yuki, but otherwise ignored us. He set down what he was carrying against the wall, and went out again. Yuki let go of me; stood up. She took the small case in one hand, reached the other out to me. I took it and let her lead me to the bedroom.

"Not much time now," she said, and there was that trace of sadness still. "But let's just... for a few minutes..." She set down the case and again pulled off that dress. Glorious though it was, her nakedness was much more glorious. The light was begining to change as the sun sunk lower. She helped me take off the dress (hers) that I was wearing, and once more we lay down. This time she took me directly into her arms and we lay in close embrace.