April 29th (Friday) – Asamura Yuuta

Even in the middle of a university lecture, I couldn’t focus.

Guilt, I think, has a particularly nasty side effect: it slowly, methodically eats away at your mind. That mental corrosion wraps around your entire body like a thin, taut rubber band. Your head and limbs grow heavier bit by bit, as if one-gram weights are being added one by one, until you’re so unconsciously exhausted that a sigh escapes your lips in an unguarded moment.

Several days had passed since Akiko-kaasan consulted me about wanting to have a child, but her words still weighed on me. In a way, these past few days had forced me to confront a wretched part of myself.

Logically, I knew it was a wonderful, happy thing for my parents to have a child together. The calm, rational surface of my brain judged it as such, leaving no room for negativity. But deep down, in what you might call my core, an ‘unclean thing’ born of instinct would float up from the depths. It was like tossing a stone into a clear lake and watching the mud at the bottom swirl into view.

In a careless moment, without any conscious thought, my mind would reflexively associate them with that act.

Of course, I wasn’t imagining it in detail or having delusions. The very idea was repulsive. I would never want to see my family in a lewd way; in fact, I wanted to instantly erase any such thought that mistakenly popped into my head. Yet, just seeing Akiko-kaasan or my father’s face at home was enough to trigger that reflexive connection. Each time it happened, I despised myself for even momentarily projecting such an image in my mind, suffocating under a mud-like guilt. She consulted me in all seriousness, so why does my brain have to go there?

If it were only about my parents, it would be… manageable. I could at least tell myself it was just a reflex and not something I desired.

The most troubling part was when that same association surfaced while I was spending time with Ayase-san—with Saki.

Just holding her hand or feeling her warmth and scent made me strangely conscious of it. I felt our daily conversations had become somewhat awkward, and I’ve been keenly aware of my lack of focus these days. Come to think of it, we haven’t really done many couple-like things lately—the kinds of things only lovers do. Between the entrance exams and the hustle of graduation and enrollment, we just never got into that kind of mood. But even now that things have settled down, the inertia from that period has remained. We haven’t even kissed.

How can I get back into that kind of atmosphere again?

I remembered the day our bare skin touched. Maybe if we start with some physical contact, confirming with each other that it’s okay, just like that time… No, but suggesting that out of the blue seems… Ugh, this is agonizing. It’s agonizing, and I hate how pathetic I am, thinking about this stuff during a university lecture when I should be focusing.

After the morning lectures ended, Nakamura and Kikuchi invited me to lunch. On the way to the student cafeteria, I was so out of it that their conversation barely registered. I placed my lotus root tempura udon on my tray—I’d ordered it several times because it’s light yet a good way to get root vegetables that I tend to lack—and headed to an empty terrace seat. While waiting for Nakamura, who was still deliberating over his choice, and Kikuchi, who was simply moving at his own leisurely pace, I slurped my noodles with an empty mind.

…No, saying my mind was empty is a lie.

I tried to empty it, but every time a couple entered my field of vision, talking and laughing, that same outrageous association would occur. At this point, I was starting to worry this might be some kind of illness.

“What’s wrong, Yuuta? You’ve been sighin’ nonstop. Yer soul’s gonna slip out and you’ll turn into a mummy, y’know?”

“Mummies have their moisture removed, not their souls.”

“Ooh, a clever comeback. Now yer talkin’, Yuuta.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

I’d gotten pretty used to Nakamura’s vibe.

After spending a few days with someone, you can generally see what they’re like on the surface. Come to think of it, it was the same when I first met Ayase-san. About a week after we started living together, we were just beginning to understand each other and open up a little.

“…………!”

One week. Recalling what happened around that time, the memory of her breath and warmth, so close to me in my darkened room, came rushing back, and I nearly choked on my noodles.

Seeing my reaction, Nakamura grinned. “Aha, I bet it’s girl trouble, am I right?”

“Huh? Why?”

“What d’ya mean, ‘why’? What else is a college kid gonna be spacin’ out over besides women or pachinko?” he said, presenting an overly biased choice of two. With his eyes shining like a little boy’s, he leaned forward eagerly. “A girlfriend? Or a club? Don’t you worry, I’m a leadin’ expert in both. The food in Tokyo sucks, but the women are decent. If you wanna lose yer virginity, I’ll help ya out. Let’s go find a good club together!”

“N-No, I’m good on that,” I said quickly. “It’s, uhm… about my girlfriend.”

After a moment’s thought, I decided to just be honest.

“Ooh! Don’t tell me… it’s the erotic kinda problem?”

“…A little.”

“For real?! Dude, ya gotta tell me—!” His forward-leaning posture became even sharper. I couldn’t believe this piqued his interest so much. I really wasn’t expecting this level of excitement, and I couldn’t help but give a wry smile.

I’d never interacted with someone as frank as Nakamura before. I never really liked frivolous people, and I couldn’t stand crude topics like who’d slept with whom or what kind of acts they liked. I always thought they were rude topics that showed a lack of respect for the other person. Yomiuri-senpai’s humorous dirty jokes were fine, since they didn’t hint at any real desire, but this was different.

But maybe it was because I’d matured a bit, or maybe it was Nakamura’s way of talking about such raw subjects without a shred of shame. Or perhaps it was because a university is a space separate from home and the important people I didn’t want to be misunderstood by. Whatever the reason, I felt like it was okay to expose a little of my “unclean side.” This felt like a place where I could talk about my current problem.

“Eh, what? What’re you guys talkin’ about?” Kikuchi asked, arriving with a tray smelling of European-style curry. He gave us a perplexed look, perhaps sensing the strange atmosphere.

“We’re talkin’ ’bout lewd stuff,” Nakamura announced. “Seems Yuuta’s got some problems with his girlfriend.”

That was way too frank. I wished he’d chosen his words more carefully.

“Eh, you have a girlfriend? Ugh, I’m so jealous…” Kikuchi shot me a look like he was seeing something filthy.

Honestly, from my perspective, I didn’t think he had anything to be jealous about. Nakamura was a given, since he was always boasting about his exploits, but Kikuchi had well-defined features despite his gloomy vibe. He was well-groomed and stylish; he seemed like he’d be popular. The fact that he was jealous must mean he didn’t have a girlfriend, but it felt like he could find someone anytime if the opportunity arose.

…Anyway, setting Kikuchi’s case aside.

“I’ll skip the details, but… I have a girlfriend I’ve been dating since before the exams,” I started, choosing my words carefully. “While we were studying, we pretty much didn’t do, well, that kind of stuff, and… now that it’s been a while, I don’t know how to bring it up again, y’know?”

I couldn’t be as brazen as Nakamura, so I blurred out the specifics.

“A sexless relationship!” he declared loudly. “What, man, you haven’t done it in months and yer not horny?! I get it, yer a master of self-pleasure! A master-bater!”

“Ah, yeah, maybe we should lower our voices a bit.”

“Oops, my bad.”

I was taken aback by a reply that was three times cruder than I had imagined. A wave of regret washed over me. Maybe I shouldn’t have confided in this guy about my sex life after all.

“Well, I’ll listen since it’s a serious problem,” Nakamura said, clearing his throat. “Ahem, so how far have ya gone with this girl?”

“Kissing, and, well, just touching her skin, I guess.”

“So ya haven’t done the main event yet. Well then, it ain’t a sexless relationship.”

“Well, yeah, that’s true,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s not that it’s been a while, but more that I don’t know what comes next, so I don’t know how to take that first step.”

I see. Putting things into words is important. As I talked, I felt like I was beginning to understand the true nature of my problem. The physical contact we’ve had so far and what lies ahead seem to be on the same trajectory, and yet they are probably clearly different things.

“Nakamura, you’re experienced in this sort of thing, right?”

“You bet! Leave it to me. By the time I was fifteen, I’d gone all the way with half the girls in my class.”

“Eh, gross. That’s definitely a lie…” Kikuchi muttered, having been silent until then.

“Shut it. I’m just messin’ around,” Nakamura shot back. “But hey, as yer senior in life, I’ll teach you two, the Yuu-Yuu combo. Both of ya have the kinda mentality that says, ‘I can’t do it.’”

“Mind your own business. Go die of an STD,” Kikuchi cursed at him, his eyes full of genuine contempt.

However, I was intrigued by Nakamura’s words. “In what way… do I seem like I can’t take that step?”

“Eh, Asamuu, you’re super interested?” Kikuchi looked at me, surprised. Don’t look at me like I’m a traitor. This is about me, so please forgive me. Also, my nickname had become Asamuu at some point. It was probably because his name is Yuuma and he feels weird calling me Yuuta, but it’s a nickname I’ve never had before, and it felt a little strange.

Seeing my eagerness, Nakamura grinned and raised his index finger like a teacher. “That’s a good sense of inquiry ya got there. Listen up, no one starts by sayin’ somethin’ like, ‘Alright, let’s begin.’”

“…So it’s about going with the flow? The atmosphere?”

“Yep.”

“Doing it without words… seems incredibly difficult,” I said. “You can’t just start without getting consent.”

“A single back-and-forth for final confirmation is more than enough, ain’t it? ‘Is this okay?’ ‘It is.’ That’s it! Nothin’ else.”

“Ehh…” It was a feeling I just couldn’t grasp. In the first place, when is the right time to ask if it’s okay?

When I voiced my question, Nakamura looked bewildered. “Ya’ll know when ya touch her, won’t ya?”

“Touch her… like her hand?”

“Her hand is fine, or her hair, legs, neck, face, back, butt, whatever. When yer flirtin’, ya touch her, right? Normally.”

“Even if you say touching is a prerequisite…”

“That! That’s the kinda thing that’s characteristic of guys who can’t do it,” he interrupted. “Touchin’ a girl is a given, ain’t it? Touch her somewhere on her body, and if she doesn’t seem to mind and her eyes get all hazy and she stares right into yours, it’s usually an OK! Everyone does it.”

“No, no, no.” To speak so assertively about something that surely had countless other viewpoints. There weren’t any guys like this at Suisei High, so he was such a rare specimen that I was genuinely impressed. Narasaka-san was the closest, I suppose, but she had a bit more consideration than she let on. The very existence of Nakamura Hironobu, who seemed to have left the word ‘delicacy’ back in his hometown, was truly refreshing.

“Look, there are a lot of women who don’t like being touched, right?” I argued. “Especially their hair or face, because it can mess up their hairstyle or makeup.”

“Well, that’s no good,” he conceded easily. “Doin’ somethin’ yer partner dislikes is out of the question. It’s the worst.”

“…Right? So in that case, you can’t touch them without confirming first…”

“No, no, no, that’s wrong. If she doesn’t like it, ya say sorry. That’s the end of it, ain’t it? She’s yer girlfriend, after all.”

I felt a strange sense of déjà vu at his casual words. I had encountered a similar set of values somewhere before. That’s right—it was on the day of the first parent-teacher conference after my father remarried, when Akiko-kaasan and I talked in the school hallway. I had been pondering whether she could really read a man’s ulterior motives as she claimed. What followed were her words:

“If I make a mistake, I just have to say ‘I’m sorry.’”

How calculating, I had thought at the time.

“Of course, ya can’t go around touchin’ some random girl walkin’ down the street,” Nakamura added jokingly as I was lost in thought.

I remembered the day Ayase-san and I first kissed. With the jack-o’-lantern’s candlelight between us, how many words did we exchange in that moment as we stared at each other and drew our faces closer?

“I shall cast a spell on you overachievers to make you idiots, too.”

Associate Professor Kudou’s curse came back to me. What if, at that time, we were truly affected by that spell? The reason we were able to move forward without needing many words… And the reason why, as Nakamura said, most couples can start their nightly activities based on the atmosphere, without anyone having taught them…

“An idiot, huh? …That’s right, because we’re idiots…”

“Huh?”

“………………Pfft.”

When I looked up from my epiphany, Nakamura had a stunned look on his face, and Kikuchi had burst out laughing.

…Huh?

“Did I just say something weird?”

“Asamuu, you’re the best. Kh, khkhkh,” Kikuchi choked out between laughs.

“Hey, that’s not cool! I was even givin’ ya heartfelt advice!” Nakamura protested.

“Ah, sorry. I didn’t mean that you’re an idiot, Nakamura.”

“Khkhkh. Ahahaha.”

The more I tried to explain, the funnier it seemed to be for him. Kikuchi just hunched over, trembling with laughter. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, just a little. I still hadn’t found a clear breakthrough, but just having an atmosphere where I could talk about this honestly was a blessing in itself. It might be an exaggeration, but I even felt like I’d been saved.

Ah, to think that I’m not the only one who’s a terrible guy.

It was a bad way of thinking, I know. To feel relieved that I’m terrible because everyone around me is, too—someone with ambition would probably scold me for it. My own mother certainly would have gotten angry, saying that stooping to a lower level was out of the question. But I couldn’t lie to myself—the me who was being healed by this idiotic conversation right now. There are times when, inspired by Akiko-kaasan’s words, I find myself imagining Ayase-san in that way… and that is, without a doubt, the true, unadulterated Asamura Yuuta.

After that, the three of us continued our sexual banter until the next class began. As payback for being called an idiot, Nakamura started threatening me in the tone of a ghost story teller, “Besides, ya gotta do it while yer still all lovey-dovey. If ya leave her hangin’ too long, another guy’s gonna steal yer girlfriend away.”

Apparently, that was based on his own experience, and even though he was the one who brought it up, he ended up taking mental damage from it himself. From there, the conversation turned into me and Kikuchi just listening to Nakamura’s tear-jerking breakup stories while we chimed in with teasing remarks.

His stories were too specific to be lies, but there were so many of them that it was hard to believe we’d lived for the same amount of time. I had felt he was a bit mature for his age, but maybe he’s older and has been held back a year or two?

I was curious, but I never found a good time to ask. I figured I’d ask him some other time, when the opportunity felt right.