Tokyo Symphony Ch. 05

It was a strange way to fame, but he thought it could work. After all, some of the big names in manga had made their start on doujinshi. He was sure that he could claw his way from the gutter.

The sky outside was starting to turn orange, and the sun was the shade of eager lipstick. He had agreed to meet up with Mika tonight. He would pick her up at her apartment, go see a movie or something, and then hopefully go back to his place or her place for some more mind-blowing sex. There had been a long sluggish period in his life, but it seemed like finally things were coming together.

Naomichi was in the kitchen, watching a cup of instant ramen slowly rotate inside the microwave. "Hey," he said, raising a hand in greeting and quickly letting it flop back down.

"Hey." This was where most of their conversations ended.

"So Erika says that she knows this guy in manga publishing." Naomichi said, still raptly watching his dinner being irradiated. "Runs some shoujo magazine. I forget the name."

Terry was surprised that his roommate appeared to be making conversation. "Oh yeah? That's cool."

"She said that she showed him your stuff and he was pretty impressed. Got you an interview for, uh, next Thursday? Yeah, I think that was it. It's on a note on the table."

Terry was having a hard time keeping all of this straight. "Shouldn't she have told me all of this stuff and not you?" Naomichi shrugged. Oh well. Terry was used to dealing with people with weird social complexes. And hey, this was a shot at real, legitimate publication. Just another thing that was finally paying off

Even the subway ride over, a long journey through a tunnel of annoyance and collision, couldn't let him down. It was as if the other people with their too-loud conversations, the filth of the car floor and the annoying ads all faded away from his mind and instead there was only him and Mika, the two of them dancing a waltz around the big city that had been laid out entirely for their benefit.

He was humming a tune that he couldn't quite identify as he headed into Mika's apartment building. It clashed quite badly with the rattle of the elevator, but he didn't mind.

Terry knocked on her door. No response. A second knock, and still nothing. He checked his watch. It was the time she had said in the e-mail. Unless maybe he had got the date wrong? No, that couldn't be it. A third knock finally yielded a muffled shout. Well, he would take that as an invitation.

The door was unlocked. Inside the apartment was dark, so dark Terry's eyes couldn't adjust. He groped along the wall and finally found a switch to flick. The ceiling light flickered before transforming into a solid glow that illuminated the whole room in painful detail. It illuminated Mika looking like a coat someone had thrown on the couch, her body gooey and covered in sweat. It illuminated the empty syringe laying on the floor and the twine still tied around her bicep.

"Mika?" Terry said, as if hoping this wasn't actually her. "Are you okay?" The girl on the couch turned to look at him without lifting her head. Her face was impossible to read.

Terry rushed over to her, climbing onto the couch. He had to help her. He had to help her, just like the first time on that sidewalk. No time to think about what might have been in the needle, no time to judge her. He grabbed her by the arm. "Mika, talk to--"

Her other hand collided with his cheek in a resounding slap. "Don't touch me!"

Her arm fell limp. He was silent. They were both silent for a long time. The only sound was the traffic pumping by steadily outside.

Mika raised her head, sweat-soaked tresses falling down around her shoulders. "Do you know how modelling works? How the filthy perverted shit I do works? The photographers, the agents, everyone... they all want to sample the product. Because that's what I am, a product. I tried saying no at first. They didn't listen. Some of them did it in my ass, and it hurt like hell and I had to see the doctor afterwards because I was shitting blood for a weak and they didn't care about me at all, not even when I was crying and pleading with them to stop. And you know what, Terry? You know what, Taro fucking Ozaki? They all wanted to fuck my tits. They all wanted to come on my face."

Terry felt like he should say something, although the air was so thick around them he didn't know whether his lungs would work. "Mika... I'm so sorry. You should have said--"

"Shut the fuck up!" The volume of her own yell made me her cringe. "Guess what? I'm not one of the girls in your comics. I'm not this perfect little pile of flesh you can project your fantasies onto."

"I never thought--"

Mika would not be interrupted. "Well, look what you've got instead. A junkie slut who's been jacked off to by every web-surfer in the country. Just another crate of damaged goods." She looked down at the spotless floor of her apartment. She was beginning to cry.

Terry reached out to put an arm around her, but she smacked him away. He wanted to explain how wrong she was about him, how he genuinely cared for her, but he wasn't sure he could convince himself right now. He wasn't sure he could speak in his native tongue, let alone a foreign one. So silence reigned again.

Mika looked up at him, as though he was a bug that she had already swatted. "Get out already," she growled. Terry got to his feet and stumbled out the door.

He stood there in the hallway for a minute, wondering if she would open the door and apologize, rush out for the tearful reunion like this was some kind of bad rom-com. But there was nothing. She was probably just back to laying in an opiated puddle in there. His eyes stung as he stabbed the elevator's down button with one finger.

It wasn't fair, Terry thought petulantly. She had never told him any of these things, her insecurities, her weaknesses. She had gone along with everything, with a smile at least. Hell, she was the one who had initiated things the first time, dropping to her knees in his room what seemed like forever ago. If he had thought of her as a Barbie doll with working genitals, it had only been because that was what she presented herself as. And now she was blaming him for not psychically sensing her distress?

He began to tremble with sadness and rage. Just a few moments ago it had seemed like the world was a place where fantasies came true, but now he knew that those fantasies were shooting up in the backroom. It was like the rushing feeling of shame and disillusionment that came right after he masturbated, except intensified ten -- no, a hundredfold. He suddenly became convinced that he wouldn't get a job with that publisher, that School Hearts would never be recognized as anything but another drop in the sea of doujinshi, that he would continue to be a lonely smut peddler until he was forced to give up the dream and go back to America with his head hung.

The world wasn't the soft-focus fleshland of hentai manga. The world was a rotating sphere of dogshit that brought you up only to bring you crashing back down again.

He knew the ending to School Hearts now.

--

Natsumi's parents were gone to one of their resort weekends where they could drool over each other and have gross sex in Kyushu or Hokkaido or wherever it is they were this time. This left her on her own to practise her home cooking skills. Outside, it had just started to rain, but it was coming down pretty fast -- one of those sudden showers that soaked the city and then vanished before the hour was up. She was meditating on a pot full of rice, hoping it wouldn't burn like last time, when there was a knock at the door. Humming a tune, Natsume walked over to answer it.

It was Sakura. She was still dressed in her school uniform, dirty and wrinkled, and her entire body was soaked from the rain. She looked up at Natsume and shuddered. The skin around her eyes was raw like a recently carved canyon. She had been crying.

"Sakura..."

"He's gone," she said, barely more than a whisper. "Went back to America. Said his rent was up, his visa was gonna expire, blah blah blah."

Natsume pulled her friend to her and into a big hug. A part of her got a guilty thrill from the cold and wet body against her, Sakura's breasts straining against the weakened material of her shirt.

"He couldn't even tell me to my face." She was crying again. "I was just halfway to his place to see him, to surprise him, when he sent me a text saying that he was on a plane."

"Asshole."

Sakura shook her head. "I love him. I'm sure he'll be coming back."

"Listen, Sakura, it's just a dumb crush. You'll get over it. You'll get over him. A year from now we'll look back at this and laugh." Natsumi realized that she sounded like a mom, and not a terribly convincing one either. After all, how could she say that with any degree of genuineness when she was still holding onto her own dumb crush and was sure it would last forever?

Sakura moved past Natsumi and collapsed on the nearest available surface, which happened to be the family couch. She stared down at the coffee table. "God, you know, I had this big fight with my Mom. She said I was grounded for like a year for disappearing for a week, but I left again anyway this afternoon, just to go be with Ryan. God, I'm an idiot."

"You're not an idiot," Natsumi said. She sat down and wrapped her arm around Sakura. It was like talking to a brick wall.

"I can't go back there. I don't have anywhere to go. Do you--"

Sakura had turned to Natsumi to plead for a place to stay, but at that moment Natsumi had leaned forward and kissed her. It was the most spontaneous thing she had ever done.

Sakura's eyes rendered nothing but blind suprise, wide and bewildered. Natsumi kept her lips pressed to her friends', feeling vaguely that if she released them there would be hell to pay. Eventually Sakura's body softened under her, becoming accepting, and she was just slightly -- could Natsumi just be imagining it? -- moving into the kiss.

Natsumi grabbed the back of Sakura's head, that long black hair she had helped truss up before parties, and held the girl closer to her. Sakura's lips parted just a sliver and Natsumi shot her tongue in desperately. And then the two girls were prone on the couch, making out in earnest, and Sakura was discovering how thin the difference was between the lips of a boy and a girl.

They were both running their hands along one another, Natsumi able to feel the goosebumps in Sakura's skin through her wet white uniform shirt. She felt desperate to do it all at once, to seize this possibly evanescent chance and take every liberty she could imagine with the nubile body before her, damn the consequences. It was with that in mind that Natsumi pulled her tongue out of Sakura's mouth only to fasten it on Sakura's neck at the same time her hands began to undo her top.

The wet material stubbornly resisted being removed, but between the two of them they made it work. Sakura hadn't worn underwear, maybe as an attempt to arouse Bradshaw, so her breasts just stood there, high, proud and speckled with dew. Natsumi put her face to them and drank it all in, the rain and the sweat and the chilled flesh of her best friend. Her tits looked just like she had imagined them. Not that there had been much imagining to do, all those gym classes where Natsumi had dared to peak out of the corner of her eye at an oblivious Sakura, those sleep-over parties where she had had to excuse herself to the bathroom to frantically rub herself to climax, so enflamed was she by the other girl's casual undress... God, she had been waiting for this for a long time.

She kissed Sakura over and over again on her breasts, on those cherry-coloured nipples forming into hard breasts, on the perfect roundness of that curving skin, on that heavenly valley between them. Sakura was simply lying back and clawing at the couch, taking in the sensation.

Natsumi moved downward, compelled by strange gravitation. With one smooth motion she pulled the rolled-up schoolgirl skirt down past her thighs, then her knees, and then past her ankles and into the air, where it sailed away and landed onto the lamp. And then those long slender legs opened up for her, knowing the steps even with a strange partner. Natsumi felt like she should take her time, suckle toes and kiss her way up thighs, but in the end her willpower gave out and she simply dived in for the soft pink treasure that was right in front of her.

Sakura's pussy tasted different from how she had imagined it. Not bad, just different. And with that first suckle of juices was the amazing realization that she was actually eating out Sakura, that one of her hundreds of near-identical fantasies had crossed over the boarder to the real world, and that body Natsumi had covertly ogled for so long was now spread out before her and longing for her touch. It all felt too good to be true, but she wasn't about to pinch herself.

Despite having watched a copious amount of lesbian porn, Natsumi actually a novice to the art of cunnulignus. She was, in fact, a virgin. So having fastened her upper lips to Sakura's lower ones, she wasn't really sure what to do next. In the videos this part was usually blocked off by the head of the, er, diner.

Natsumi took an experimental lick. The taste was a little salty, although she couldn't really compare it to anything else. She licked again, and Sakura shuddered in response. She ran her tongue along the pink folds of Sakura's pussy, licking up the glistening moisture. She soon fell into a steady rhythm, responding almost automatically to Sakura's body. Her world contracted to those pale thighs, and her mind could only focus on bringing her friend pleasure.

Sakura's clit sprang up, hardened and desperate. Natsumi licked it once and the other girl seized up, her body going entirely stiff. She decided to take that as a good sign and focused on the rosebud, while her fingers traipsed a past around Sakura's pussy. She was bucking against her and breathing hard, her body out of her control.

When Natsumi drove a finger into Sakura's pussy at the same time as one last flicker of her tongue on the girl's clit, Sakura let out a startled yelp and grabbed the cushions as her body was wracked by what Natsumi thought (or at least hoped) was one hell of an orgasm.

It took a minute, but eventually it seemed like Sakura had stopped cumming. Natsumi crawled up the length of the couch again and planted a kiss on her best friend's cheek. She was still slightly in a state of shock that this had actually happened, but for now she was managing to restrain herself from jumping up and down and doing a cartwheel in the kitchen. She hadn't even realized that she was still fully clothed even as Sakura lay nude before her.

In the few minutes of silence punctuated only by their breathing Natsumi began imagining a life together with Sakura. It was a lot like their old life, but difference: they would go clothes shopping like always, but duck into the change rooms to make out periodically; they would take the train to college hand in hand, damn what anyone else thought; they would go to parties just to turn down boys, laugh at them, and go home to fuck each other time and time again. She was sure it would be glorious.

All the same, she was slightly surprised to discover hot tears on her face. At first Natsumi thought she was the one that was crying, but when she opened her eyes she discovered it was Sakura, now shuddering for a completely different reason. Natsumi wasn't sure how to respond. Was she one of those people who cry after sex? She just put her hand on Sakura's cheek and tried to wipe away the tears.

"Natsumi... why..." Sakura gestured down to her glistening nakedness, not quite able to speak the question out loud.

"I love you," Natsumi said. The words came easier than she would have thought. "I've always loved you, Sakura."

Sakura smiled, although there was a strange tinge of bitterness to the grin. "All this time, I thought you were the one person who didn't want to fuck me." Natsumi didn't know how to respond to that.

Sakura rolled over and started putting her clothes back on. She stood up and tried to smooth out the wrinkles in her skirt. Natsumi reached out for her hand, which jerked just out of her grasp. "Don't go. Please." She felt like if Sakura went this whole moment would vanish like a soap bubble, and it would have never happened. Plus, underneath all of her emotional turmoil she was now the horniest she had ever been in her life, and was hoping Sakura would reciprocate.

Sakura didn't respond, just walked towards the door. Natsumi wanted to jump at her, to hold onto her and prevent escape, but she seemed so far away. And then she was out the door, leaving the room still and quiet.

A second later Natsumi found her feet and started to run after her friend. The elevator was already engaged, going down. She instead ran to the stairs and started running down as fast as she could. She was five floors up.

She knew it wasn't going to work. When she got to the lobby, the elevator was still once more, and Sakura was nowhere to be seen. All she had done was exhausted her out-of-shape body.

When she got back up to her apartment Natsumi smelt smoke. In all the excitement her rice had quietly burnt. "Shit!" She rushed over and yanked the pot of the stove, but the damage was already done, and black specks of what was once food were clinging doggedly to the pot's interior.

--

Sakura had took the train out to Odaiba, more out of instinct than any conscious decision. It was late now, so the families and tourists had mostly thinned out, leaving a hulking pack of deserted tourist attractions. The hulking ferris wheel still glowed its sickly-sweet colours. Sakura remembered being a kid and being shocked that anything could be so big. She refused to ride it, trembling at the sheer size. The replica Statue of Liberty, a cockeyed younger sibling of the American icon, was another thing that flabbergasted her with its hugeness. Now they just seemed ungainly and a little sad, overgrown hunchbacks who clumsy hands belied their gentle souls.

She walked over to the artificial beach and sat down there. Swimming was forbidden, but there was no one around. Like everything else around her, it boasted of so much but was ultimately so ordinary and frail.

It wasn't that she wished she could be a kid again. Sakura had never believed that ignorance was bliss. Even if she could regain those childish illusions, that superheroes were real and grown-ups could be and do whatever they wanted and people could care about her for reasons other than wanting to fuck her -- even if she managed to believe those again, the illusions would still be punctured eventually.

What had happened was that Sakura had written a book of her life. It very much resembled the paperback romances she loved. In it there was a young but confident student, and a moral but attracted teacher, and the wise-cracking helpful best friend, and there would be complications of course -- what plot doesn't have those? -- but they would end up together in the end. The hero would never just vanish with only a text message of explanation. Sakura looked at that book, that ink that looked so solid hours ago, and it was just blank pages. You have to understand, she was never very good at coming up with endings.

Sakura walked into the water, heedless of the signs. As she got further in the water flowed up and underneath her skirt, pushing it up until it hung around her waist like a fin. She kept walking.