FOR over half an hour, the barely audible sound of the shower continued. Figuring it was about time he brought Satsuki her clothes, Shindo was suddenly struck by the realization that he didn’t hear any splashing. All he heard was the spray of water from the showerhead. But whenever a person moved in the shower, water was bound to make at least a little noise!
Shindo put down the clothes in the changing room outside the shower. Standing in front of the clouded glass door, he called, “Miss? Are you all right?”
No response. There was nothing but the sound of water.
“Miss?” Shindo tried again. He knew good and well she was inside. He could barely make out the figure of a person through the clouded glass.
“Forgive the intrusion, Miss,” he said and quietly opened the door.
Satsuki had not budged an inch, sitting on the floor exactly as he first left her under the drizzling shower. But the cloth that once embraced her body was now on the shower floor, billowing on the currents of warm water. Satsuki probably allowed the shower to pound on her this whole time as she sat unmoving, her back facing the door. It washed away all of the crusty blood that once covered her body like clothing.
Thoroughly drenched, Satsuki’s pitch-black hair shined with greater radiance than ever as it clung like silk to her white skin. The pelts of shower water turned into droplets against her flawless, porcelain-white skin as they slowly slid down. Even a view of her from the back was truly beautiful...absolutely breathtaking...and terribly sensual.
“...!”
Feeling a heavy weight in his heart, Shindo turned his whole head away to avert his eyes and was about to shut the glass door. But he was stopped by the sound of Satsuki’s voice.
“Come here...” she bade.
Every muscle in Shindo’s hand tightened. Satsuki’s voice mercilessly backed him into a corner. “Come here...Shindo...”
If his mistress ordered him to come, Shindo had no choice but to obey. He proceeded to enter the shower room and stood at Satsuki’s side.
“Come in front of me...where I can see you...” Satsuki said weakly, apparently still unable to face reality.
Kneeling on both knees before her, Shindo looked down upon Satsuki. His suit started to grow wet under the shower’s lukewarm water.
“Look...at...me...” Satsuki said as she slowly raised her head to meet Shindo’s gaze. “Am I weird...? Strange...?”
He couldn’t pull away from her eyes made moist with tears. Those wet eyes that could see through anything held him transfixed as they begged for help.
“I...” Satsuki choked out. She was filled with paralyzing fear at the thought Shindo wouldn’t answer.
But Shindo looked at her with such kindness it was pitiful before he placed his fingertips on both of her cheeks.
“No, you aren’t,” he answered and offered Satsuki his usual smile. “Nothing about you has changed. You are still my brilliant and beautiful Miss Satsuki.”
Among the cascade of droplets, some slid down Satsuki’s cheeks. It was as if the shower water was hiding the tears she shed.
“...Shin...do... It hurts...” she whimpered.
“Huh?” he gasped. Where does she hurt? If that bastard went the whole way, so help me—Wait, aside from the suit jacket, his body was fully clothed.
While Shindo was reeling in confusion, Satsuki tilted her head to one side and somewhat embarrassedly pulled aside the hair covering her bosom exposed by her ripped clothes. He feared the gasp that escaped his unwitting lips may have reached Satsuki’s ears.
It was clear the reason why her cheeks were flushed wasn’t due to prolonged exposure to the lukewarm shower water. The marks extended from her left ear, tracing her neck down to the collarbone. The purple-red bruises made for a horrible sight against her otherwise porcelain skin.
“It hurts...” Satsuki whispered in a tiny voice.
Shindo realized the scumbag probably made those hickeys when he was about to rape Satsuki. And now they were hurting her.
“I...can still feel his lips slathering all over me... I can still feel his weight pinning me to the ground...” Satsuki repined on the verge of breaking into tears.
“Make it go away...” she ordered with flushed cheeks, her sad eyes piercing. “Make his weight...go away...”
Shindo sat upon the floor like Satsuki and gathered her hair together with trembling fingers. He placed his hands on the cuff of either shoulder, and then...Shindo gently kissed Satsuki behind her left ear.
Twitch... For a brief second, her whole body quivered slightly. As if tracing over the red-purple hickeys, Shindo lightly slid his lips along the curvature of her neck. Upon reaching the stopping point at her collarbone, he began to retrace his steps back up.
Her whole body jolted, trembling as if it were quivering at his touch. It was nothing like when she was trembled out of shock or cold. This was clearly the quivering unique to when she was being satisfied as a woman.
Shindo wrapped his arms around her waist as he laid her against the shower room floor and laid on top of her. With his body on hers, he caressed Satsuki’s head with both hands before kissing fiercely along her neck this time.
“...Mmm...ph...” The sad, nasal sound that instinctively came from Satsuki sent quivers running through Shindo this time. Although it should go without saying, he had never heard Satsuki make such a sound before, even after spending nearly eighteen years at her side.
“Shin...do...” Satsuki breathed his name as she wrapped her arms around his back. The showerhead pelted warm water upon him.
“Shindo...” As her sweet, happy voice reverberated throughout his body, filling him with agony, Shindo had to desperately fend off the sadness that filled his heart. By saturating Satsuki’s body with the sensation of his own weight, he overwrote the pain she suffered with new pain.
“Miss...” he whispered.
The downpour of shower water soaked them in its wet embrace. The sound of the water drowned out their hushed whispers. It almost seemed as if the water was trying to wash away their hearts on the verge of truly becoming one. As if it was trying to prevent them from ever interlocking. The shower’s warm water tried to wash away their feelings for one another as it drowned the whispers—the words that spilled from their lips—in the sound of its drizzle.
“Does...does it still hurt?” Shindo asked after a while. He pulled away from Satsuki’s neck, his cheeks flushed as he gazed upon her.
“No...” Satsuki answered with a smile that was both embarrassed and sad. “It doesn’t hurt anymore... You made the pain go away, Shindo...”
Her arms still wrapped around him, she grasped tightly onto the back of his sopping wet suit.
“All I can feel...is your weight... And that’s all I want to feel...” she added.
“Miss...”
Satsuki clung tightly to Shindo and began sobbing.
“Thank you...Shindo...” she whispered, her fingers clinging onto Shindo so tightly it looked as if they might break.
✦ ✦ ✦
SOMEONE tried to assassinate the president of Tsujikawa Corporation’s only daughter. A bomb planted by the culprit resulted in one fatality. The company would lose face if the public heard about the death of a bystander. With that in mind, they humbly requested the situation remain confidential... Between the lawyers and attendants pulling all of their strings, the “bombing” at the school’s Student Council Room never received mass media coverage.
It was believed this incident was brought to a close with the life of a man who allowed lust to consume him. However, Narusawa Holdings’ stock prices crashed shortly thereafter, putting the company in crisis. As everyone frantically tried to determine the cause for the crash, perhaps Satsuki Narusawa expected it as she trembled in fear.
Everything disappeared into the darkness. Along with Satsuki’s heart, everything was hurled into the thick cloying fog of war...