Chapter 6

As she pulled away, she licked my lower lip. We slumped onto the pillows and lay next to each other, looking into each other’s eyes. She didn’t even have to touch me to awaken embarrassing feelings inside me. I did what I could to hide it, but I was always super aware of her presence. “Do you want more?” I asked her. “No, no. Already got what I wanted.” She smiled at me peacefully. Her hair was tickling my cheek. “Teasing you is more delicious than anything.” “…Really?” “Oh yes. I love watching you pretend it’s not affecting you when I can feel you getting all hot and bothered. It’s like your heart is in my hands.” She had my hand in hers, our fingers interlaced. Her eyes were full of bliss as she raised them together. I didn’t like her saying that about my heart being in her hands, and I tried to pull my hand away from her, but she strengthened her grip. “You’re mine,” she said. Her fingers dug into my hand, and I could feel their heat. All of her hand felt hot. I could close my eyes to not see her, but the warmth of her body wouldn’t let me forget she was there. What was I doing? Since I’d met her, I’d started coming over whenever she called me. These visits made me feel…full. I’d told her my first name and that I was in high school. I was in my school uniform when we met, so she probably could guess which school I went to even though I’d never said. There were other things she knew—things I didn’t want anyone else to know about me, or I’d die out of embarrassment. It’s not like I’d sat down and told her, either; she’d pried those secrets out of me. I tried not to think about it because remembering what Ms. Chiki knew about me seriously made me want to die. Why had I ended up telling her? She wasn’t the type of person to force me to do anything I didn’t really want to do, though, so I could guess why I’d stupidly overshared. I’d just gotten too hot to think clearly. “Well, when you get bored, are you gonna help me study?” I asked. “Sure, sweetie.” When she called me, we didn’t only do…y’know. We talked about the most stupid things, and she tutored me. I felt a bit guilty bringing the textbook every time I met Ms. Chiki in a hotel. She was really smart and knew about tons of stuff. She could easily tutor a high schooler. Her knowledge seemed fresh, so maybe it hadn’t been that long ago that she’d been in high school herself. I could only guess, since she didn’t tell me anything about herself. She looked to me like she was maybe twenty, but when I told her as much, she just laughed at me and said twenty was what she felt like. She wasn’t going to reveal anything to me. She was a mystery, but she saw through all my secrets. That was messed up, but it didn’t ruin our relationship. After all, we hadn’t really built one, so there was nothing to ruin. “What’s on your mind, Umi?” she asked. “Huh?” “You’ve been staring at me for a while.” “And you’re surprised?” The surprising thing was that I was seeing Ms. Chiki like this. I wondered whether to tell her what I’d been thinking about. I looked away. “I was thinking I’m lucky to have met a nice person like you.” I wasn’t being sarcastic—I genuinely thought that, at least at the time. “Me, a nice person? No, you’ve got that wrong! I’m a rotten woman paying a schoolgirl to be with me!” she corrected me, tucking her hair behind her ear. “That’s true, but…” A nonrotten woman wouldn’t be paying younger girls for intimacy, but I was benefiting all the same. I sat up on the bed and dropped my legs down onto the floor to sit on the edge. My butt sank into the mattress. I was used to the firmness of a futon spread on the floor, so it felt like the mattress was pulling me in. I fidgeted uncomfortably. I felt Ms. Chiki shifting behind me. She crawled up to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I wasn’t used to that, either—the embrace was a sudden attack when I was vulnerable, like being whacked on the head—and I instinctively leaned forward away from her. “I like how your back stiffens when I snuggle up.” “Why?” “It’s cute.” She hugged me tighter. My pulse quickened in her embrace, even without her doing anything to me. Ms. Chiki was a good person, and she was gorgeous. She smelled like flowers, and she was smart, gentle, and caring. Being with her was relaxing. And of course, her boobs were huge. Actually, I lied about being relaxed when with her…or did I? I think I was relaxed, but at the same time… Ugh, I don’t know. It felt like my blood was boiling inside my chest, moving through my veins like thick goop. The heat put me on edge, but it also brought pleasure with it to every part of my body. Yeah, it left my fingertips numb, but it wasn’t a bad feeling, either—just a strange one. “Anything worrying you besides money lately?” Ms. Chiki asked me, resting her chin on top of my shoulder. I wanted to turn and look at her and tell her she was my main worry. But then I thought about my mom, and about the people who owned that little apartment where we were staying. “…Not really.” God, what a lie. The things I was worried about outnumbered the things I wasn’t. “That’s good. Remember, if there’s ever anything on your mind, you can tell me. I might not be able to do much more than listen, but sometimes, that’s better than nothing.” “Thanks.” I don’t think she was just curious—she was being caring. And I was starved for kindness. “You can always fall back on me. I’ll be your sugar mama.” “I’ll…think about it.” If I could leave everything behind and wake up in a soft bed next to her every day…I’d only be able to hold out for three days, max. I wouldn’t ever be able to go back. “High school girls are your thing, right?” “You know it.” She had told me about it when we’d first met. No change, then. “So you only pay for girls in school?” “At the moment, I pay only for the company of the one I like most.” I twitched with a rush of excitement. I pressed my fists to my shoulders, telling myself to calm down. It was humiliating how happy Ms. Chiki made me. “But that doesn’t extend to…her family?” I managed to phrase it so I wasn’t asking explicitly if she’d financially support my mom. “No. Why buy the whole farm if you just want a glass of milk?” “Well, it won’t work, then.” I sat a little straighter. Not too straight, or my back would press harder against Ms. Chiki. Her scent became stronger, as if I was stuck in the middle of a flower bouquet. “Not that I like my family, but I wouldn’t abandon her.” My mom probably felt the same way about me. We’d always been together, after all. And all we had was each other. “I love that about you, Umi.” She put her fair-skinned hand on my left cheek, her fingers reaching from my neck to my eye and forcing it shut. “I want to make you so obsessed with me, you’ll burn all your bridges for me.” Her breath brushed against my shoulder like a gentle caress. It gave me goose bumps on the back of my neck and behind my ear. The fingers of her right hand danced up my neck until she covered my right eye, too. With her alabaster-white fingers, she covered my world in black. “I want you to crave me until you stop caring about anything that mattered to you before I came along. Your sense of values, your roots, your motivations and priorities, even your sense of what’s normal and what’s not—you’ll give it all up for me,” she said. She made me think of a child trying to get a grown-up to buy them sweets. I imagined the threads of her sugary voice spinning into something bigger, like clouds of cotton candy—storm clouds of cotton candy that blocked out the sunlight. I could almost hear the rain pouring down. “Ms. Chiki…” “Ha-ha, gotcha. Made you think I was actually evil, didn’t I?” She pressed her soft body against me. I could tell she was looking at my face, but she was still gently covering my eyes with her fingers. Being unable to see her made me nervous, but my body was melting in the pleasure of her closeness. She always made me respond to her in ways that felt entirely beyond my control. Her softness had this overwhelming effect on me, and I didn’t just mean the touch of her breasts. “It makes me feel sorry for you when you call me a nice person,” she said. “…Isn’t that a sign you really are a nice person, though?” If she wasn’t lying about feeling sorry for me, but I didn’t say that. She was nice, but she was also evil. About half of what she said she wanted had already come true, and it didn’t disturb her in the least. She just kept smiling at me like she was totally innocent. “Enough about that. Time for studying, isn’t it?” “Okay.” My mind switched gears, but then she suddenly pressed her lips to mine again. My eyes were still covered, and I thought my chest might explode with another surge of that hot sensation. She toyed with me like this all the time, and it was always just as effective. My breathing turned rough. I was too vulnerable to her. Ms. Chiki was a good person. She was beautiful, smelled of flowers, and was smart, gentle, and caring. Being with her was relaxing. And she was beautiful, and her boobs were to die for. As for her hobbies, she liked playing sugar mama to high school girls.