I sat quietly, letting her do as she wished. It kind of felt like I was getting a massage. I didn’t anticipate anything more, nor did I resist the soft, steady movements of her hand. Well, of course: All we were doing was wiping the sweat off of me. There was no ulterior motive involved here.
Nanami ran the towel not just over my back but also my neck, shoulders, arms, and also sides. It tickled when she touched my neck and sides, and I couldn’t help squirming a bit.
“Ticklish?” Nanami asked with a chuckle.
“Just a little,” I admitted, feeling no need to claim otherwise. Nanami must have been focused on wiping me down, because she didn’t approach that spot again to try to get me to laugh. I felt just a tad bit bummed about that, but that sort of thing probably had to wait until I was fully recovered.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized there was no need for me to take all my clothes off. I could’ve just pulled up my shirt, even, though continuing to wear a damp shirt would probably be pretty unpleasant.
Though the parts of my body that were sweaty felt gross, the places Nanami had cleaned seemed almost purified. It was refreshing, and even though I hadn’t taken a shower, I was feeling cleaner than I had moments ago.
“Ah!” I suddenly let out.
“Jeez, why do you have to sound so sexy?” Nanami asked.
“Huh? That was sexy?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Almost like you wanted me to attack you or something,” she mumbled in answer.
What in the world? That’s super scary. I didn’t think I was doing anything particularly sexy; if anything, I thought I groaned like my dad did whenever he got a massage. To Nanami, though, I seemed to have sounded like I was panting or something. But when I tried to stay quiet and keep from making any more noise, my body compensated by quivering more instead. Nanami seemed to enjoy my struggle; she kept changing the motions of her hand as if testing things out.
The only thing was that, the entire time, neither one of us said anything.
After minutes of the only sound in the room being the nearly silent glide of towel over skin, Nanami finally opened her mouth to speak.
“You know,” she murmured, “when I was unlocking your door earlier, I was super nervous.”
“Really? But you’ve been here so many times before,” I said. “Is it because it’d be just the two of us?”
“Oh, um, yeah. I guess there is that,” she replied noncommittally. As if hesitant to say more, Nanami gradually came to a stop.
For a while, she moved her hand slowly, then became still. Then she moved her hand again, then stopped again. Her moves were a reflection of her inner conflict—though why it was occurring on my back, I wasn’t sure.
Since I had no intention of rushing her, though; I just waited for her to continue.
After a while, Nanami finished wiping my back. I thought that that was the end of things, but then Nanami grabbed hold of my waist.
Like, with both hands. As soon as she did—and as though it were no big deal—Nanami said, “Okay, now it’s time for the front.”
“F-Front?” I repeated.
For a brief moment, I couldn’t understand what Nanami was trying to say. The words entered my brain, and yet they didn’t sink in at all.
Still holding on to my waist, Nanami sensed that I wasn’t moving—so she put some force into her grip.
The move was that of a potter turning her wheel in order to mold a new vase. The strength in her hands genuinely had me thinking I was about to start turning.
I didn’t, of course. Even if I was sick, it probably wasn’t possible for Nanami to turn me like that.
“Yo-shin, come on! Turn, turn!” Nanami insisted regardless, not giving up, her hands still at my waist. Even though I didn’t really need her to clean my front, I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to hear the rest of her story unless I relented.
I still had my pajama pants on, so even if she was going to see me without my shirt on it was probably okay. If we were in a bath, though, there was no way I would’ve turned around.
As if she could tell I was about to give in, Nanami let go of my waist. I guess if I’m the one turning, her hands would only get in the way. Okay, well...here we go.
When I turned—slowly and still hesitantly—and sat down on the bed again, I locked eyes with Nanami. She was all smiles, ready with the towel in hand.
Yeah, this is pretty embarrassing.
I looked away from her, but Nanami didn’t seem to mind; she just resumed wiping, starting with my stomach. Why was it okay for her to wipe my back, but my front suddenly wasn’t?
“So, back to the thing about unlocking your door,” Nanami began, continuing her story from earlier as though nothing was out of the ordinary—despite the fact that sitting face-to-face with her and having her towel off my body was anything but.
I did relax upon realizing that I would be able to hear what she had to say, and yet at the same time it seemed strange to listen to her while we were in this position. It felt more ticklish, even itchy, compared to when she had dried off my back. I couldn’t resist twisting my body a bit in response.
“You said you felt nervous, even though you were just unlocking the door,” I said in order to take my mind off of the sensations I felt.
“I know, but coming to my boyfriend’s house with a spare key...”
Nanami paused mid-sentence, but then she slouched and looked up at me shyly.
I looked down at her, and we looked into each other’s eyes.
“It was like we were living together,” she said finally.
“L—?!”
I only managed to get the first sound out, albeit very loudly. My exclamation gave Nanami pause, and I also ended up freezing at the same time.
My body stopped moving like some glitched computer, but on the inside, my thoughts were churning fast enough to break the sound barrier.
L...l...? I couldn’t finish the thought, and my head filled itself with just that single letter. If I’d been in a manga, the background of my panel would’ve been filled with a bunch of Ls.
L-Living together?
Finally, my mind could conjure up the phrase, but my body was still unwilling to move.
The phrase suggested at least two people occupying the same address. In this case, it would be a guy and a girl, unmarried, sharing the same domicile. Wait, even if they were married, would they still be considered living together? Or would that just be how they lived, since, through marriage, their lives were already implied to be intertwined and making a distinction was redundant? Were these just different ways of pointing to the same thing?
This is not the time to get into semantics.
“L-living together, huh?” I muttered.
“Yeah, I just thought of that when I unlocked the door. Like, ‘Oh, is this what it’s like?’ kind of thing. And then I got all excited,” Nanami continued, then added, “And that’s why I came straight to your room.”
Nanami seemed to be excusing herself as she blushed and resumed wiping my body again. The sensation of the towel against my skin helped me unfreeze my body as well.
But, I see—living together, huh? Hmmm.
“Nanami, do you remember when I talked about the possibility of living by myself?” I asked.
“Yup. It was before summer break, right?” Nanami answered.
“Right. And back then, we talked about maybe living together in the future, and you said you would be willing to do that.”
“Yeah, I did. You remembered, huh?”
The last time we talked about it, it had just been an idea—mere chitchat about something that would be nice to do one day. And yet, I remembered that conversation so clearly.
Well, either I had remembered it, or I recalled it now.
“But when you live by yourself, getting sick and stuff is pretty tough, isn’t it? When you think about that, it’s probably nicer to be living with someone else,” Nanami remarked, drying my stomach area, her mood lifting to such an extent that I almost thought she would begin humming any minute. I thought that she would finish soon, but I felt embarrassed by the situation nonetheless.
“You’re totally right. I never thought it would take getting sick for me to realize how nice it would be to live with someone else. I mean, it feels weird and unlike me to say, but I was getting pretty lonely here on my own,” I commented.
I had said that it wasn’t like me, but it was all thanks to Nanami that I even became able to say, honestly, that I felt lonely. Before, I would’ve put up a front and claimed that I was fine being by myself.
“I see, you felt lonesome, huh? Aren’t you glad I came, then?” Nanami asked.
“Of course I am. In fact, you even showed up in my dream—”
That was when, even though it was too late, I covered my mouth with both hands to try to stop myself.
For a moment, Nanami looked taken aback—but then her expression immediately changed, the smile of a naughty child coming over her face. Her lips even formed a shapely crescent.
She seemed so delighted that I could almost hear her smiling.
“Well, well, well. You dreamed about me, huh? Were you feeling that lonely? What were we doing? Where were we?” she fired off.
“Uh, well, um... You know.”
I really didn’t want to tell her that in my dream I had reverted to an elementary school student, and that I was holding hands with a normal, high school version of Nanami. I couldn’t begin to explain what kind of desire such a dream suggested.
As I glanced away and remained silent, Nanami tilted her head...and then turned slightly pink.
“Was it a pervy dream?” she eventually whispered.
“N-Not at all!”
That wasn’t a pervy dream...I was pretty certain. Yeah, it was a combination of an elementary school version of me and a high school version of Nanami, but even though it was quite age gappy, it definitely wasn’t pervy.
It wasn’t, and yet explaining it in full still felt pretty awkward. If I didn’t, though, Nanami would continue to assume that I got sick and then had a naughty dream about her. Maybe it was better for me just to tell her the whole thing.
So when I finally gave up and told her about the dream...
“You can call me onee-chan if you want,” Nanami said to me.
See, I knew this would happen. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. I just knew Nanami would say something like that.
After that, once all the sweat had been wiped off my body, I changed into a fresh set of pajamas and lay in bed as Nanami-onee-chan continued to take very good care of me.