“Keep after him,” Asuka advised when Hiroe appealed to them for help.
“You must be like the river,” said Rei, who was hopelessly addicted to historical dramas and fond of wise-woman sayings. “The water is soft, but patient. In time, it wears down even the hardest stone.”
“Even the hardest stone, echoed Asuka, with a grin.
But despite all of Hiroe’s efforts, John didn’t give in – not when she flirted and not when she cried and not even when she called him one desperate night after her bath.
“John, I need you.” Hiroe gripped the receiver with one hand, her other wandering. If she closed her eyes she could imagine him standing there at the common phone in the hallway at Aunt Setsuko’s.
“Aren’t you worried about your parents hearing you talking this way?”
“Mother’s having her bath, and Father’s out drinking with his colleagues. I am free to talk to my boyfriend however I please.”
A sigh from the other end. “I see. Well, you’d better hang up then, he might be trying to call you.”
“You silly…” She giggled, tracing the downy lips of her sex through a clean pair of cotton panties.
“Hiroe, I have to go. I have lots of work tonight.”
“I can help,” she offered, desperate now.
“I doubt it. My assignment is to write a poem in the style of Fujiwara no Sadai.”
“I could write it for you! On your stomach, with a brush and ink. Our lovemaking would inspire me.”
He laughed out loud. “Yes, I could just see myself untucking my shirt in front of the class tomorrow. I can hear my thesis adviser now: ‘Whose is this terrible calligraphy?’ ”
He’d meant it to be funny, but she hung up the phone in a rage.
RYOKU
Her heart was sore with the agony of yet another refusal. Still, it did not stop Hiroe from drifting past the guest house on her way to school. But when she saw him looking mussed, and as if he’d only just stepped into his shoes, Hiroe hurried past.
“Good morning,” he said with exaggerated politeness. His eyes looked small in the morning light and his shirt was wrinkled.
“Leave me alone,” she shot back.
“Well, that’s quite a change from last night.”
“I’m a changed woman,” she said airily, “one who’ll forget you by taking another lover.”
“Taking a lover, you mean.”
She quickened her pace. “There are a lot of boys at school who would kill or die to have me.” This was not precisely true, but with a bit of advertising, she could probably make it so.
“Hiroe.” He stopped walking, and after a few steps she did, too. “I told you to forget this.”
“I am.”
“No, I mean really forget it.” He sighed. “I’m tired of this.”
“Tired of what?”
“Of you trying to force everything to be the way you want it. I told you how I feel, so live with it.”
She rounded on him angrily. “I’m not going to stop my life just because you feel guilty.”
“I never told you to stop your life, Hiroe. I just want you to wait for the right time.”
“And you’re the one who gets to decide my right time? Well, forget that. I’ll just find a real boyfriend.
In two steps he was on her, hands on her upper arms.
“Don’t do this to be vindictive. All that will happen is you’ll wind up getting hurt.”
“What do you care?”
Suddenly he turned and pressed her up against the stone wall of the temple. He had an arm on either side and a leg between both of hers. His lips were close and his breathing ragged. Hiroe struggled, aghast. No one could see them now, but someone could turn the corner at any moment.
“Listen!” he said forcefully, and she was compelled to stop moving. “Maybe it’s not obvious to you, but I care quite a bit.”
They stood that way with gazes locked. Out of the corner of her eye, Hiroe could see the cherry blossoms falling to the avenue, just a few steps away.
“You want it your way?”
“It’s not -”
“Do you want it your way?!”
“If that’s how you see it, then yes!”
“Fine. Meet me at the temple after school.”
He walked off without looking back. Hiroe gazed after him, confused, her throat tight with words that had gotten stuck. The event had to be some kind of victory, yet it didn’t feel that way at all.
SHICHI
Naturally, her friends got to hear everything.
“Make sure he buys you something nice,” said Asuka, playing the role of auntie. She was only a year older, yet well versed in this type of transaction. She’d given her virginity away on four separate occasions and had found it quite profitable.
“Quiet, you girls!” commanded their teacher, and of course there was no choice but to obey.
HACHI
“You want to give me my present?” whispers Hiroe.
“That’s right.” He sweeps a hand over the table’s smooth, shiny surface. “Go on.”
Hiroe gets up, adjusts the pleats of her skirt, and then sinks uncertainly down onto the black lacquer. He is still on his cushion, gazing up at her now. She blushes furiously.
He reaches up to stroke the tender flesh of one calf, to run his hand over her fashionably bunchy sock and slide it down to her ankle so he can kiss the smooth flesh he has laid bare. The other sock promptly follows, and when both her legs are naked, he begins kissing his way slowly up one and then the other, in careful increments calculated to tease. Whenever his lips reach a new level, he pauses long enough for her to draw a breath and then switches to the other leg, starting at the bottom and moving steadily up. At the level of her knees, he feels resistance. Her legs close in on either side of his head, forcing him away.
He sits back.
She’s the very image of timidity, there on the table with her eyes closed and her head turned to one side. Her knees are together now and the last knuckle of her middle finger is pressed against her lips. It’s almost a caricature, really, and John doesn’t know which is stronger, his irritation or his mad urge to laugh.
“Come on. Don’t tell me you’re going to play the blushing maiden now, after all this.”
Her eyes flutter open. “What?”
He sighs and looks smilingly ceiling-ward. “Amida Buddha, grant me the patience to -”
“Oh no you don’t,” she laughs, ending his prayer with a kiss.
When they finally come up for air, he grins at her. “Ah, there’s my impetuous darling.”
“I’m not impetuous.”
“Of course you are,” he says, kissing her knees. “And also predisposed to theatrical displays of hyperfemininity. But you’re young and Japanese, so I’ll forgive the second flaw.”
“And the first?”
He grins. “You’ll learn that in time. Want your present now?”
“Yes,” she husks, making every effort to look at him directly.
“Then spread your legs.”
He leans into her then, bunching her pleated skirt in his hands as his questing lips find the source of her secrecy. Her nether lips are held closed by a thin cotton veil and he kisses her through the white eyelets. A moment later he feels her begin to dissolve. Her legs relax on either side of him. Her hands sink into the pool of his wavy blond hair, combing it out and stroking it as he licks her. The first touch of his tongue tip feels to Hiroe as if one of the cherry petals has alighted at the base of her mons, where the bud of her womanhood would jut if it weren’t wrapped in cotton and imprisoned between the pouting lips of her sex. The next touch is a slow, broad stroke of his tongue along her dewy furrow. After two more strokes it’s unclear how much of the dew is coming from within and how much from without. But the scent of her guides him. John breathes her in, filling himself with the scent that reminds him of an ocean breeze after the rains in late summer.