Naoko: Friday

A small woman who goes after what she needs over the weekend in Tokyo.

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Things you need to know before reading this story: 1) It is long. 2) Lucian thinks that Naoko's name is Masumi. 3) The point of view goes back and forth between them. 4) It does not have a happy ending.

Naoko sat alone and small at the bar of the Hildebrand International Shinagawa City hotel, looking behind her at the ultramodern space divided into not-so-cozy seating areas by frosted aquamarine glass panels. She thought, maybe I got my timing wrong, coming here after work. Maybe this place is deserted on weekends. Shinagawa is a business district and this is a businessman's hotel. Nobody comes to Shinagawa on a weekend. Everyone wants to get out of Tokyo, not go to office building complexes. She was exasperated with herself for not thinking this through and she was probably right, at least under normal circumstances.

My plan was a stupid one, she thought. I'll go back to the office and sleep tonight on that cot they keep in the room where the sarariman work all night to put together proposals by close of business in Dubai. Then tomorrow I'll take the train home to Higashi. Her parents thought she was spending the weekend with Tadashi, her on-and-off boyfriend, but she'd just tell them they decided to cut it short. Things were not working out as she had planned, she thought. Not in anything. She would have felt better if her feet had touched the floor but the bar stool was much too high for her.

No bar in Tokyo is deserted for long, least of all the beginning of a weekend.

A nice-looking older Western man in a suit walked into the bar, looking glum. He sat at the bar, looking straight ahead. He did not see Naoko when he walked in because she was tiny and off to the side. He wanted to go home now but he had to spend another weekend in Tokyo. Damn engineers, he thought. They design these things so fancy and then when they break they yell at us because we can't fix it without funny-looking parts or tools and then they don't want to spend the money to keep a kit where their clients are. They spend more shipping our stuff around the world "overnight" and making us wait. If the Japanese -- the techies of the universe -- cannot fix their stuff themselves why does Chicago think my team can do it in a couple days without a test kit?

Lucian Comeaga ordered a martini. Five or six years ago he had rediscovered the pleasures of this 1950's drink and when he wanted to get his mind off work a nice martini was a good way to relax. Not to get smashed mind you but.... to unwind. He knew of this little martini bar in Roppongi but it was too far away, so he took his chances at the hotel bar here. Japanese don't order martinis, he thought to himself, but in all the years he had been coming here as a road warrior he never developed a taste for sake.

As he glanced around the room he noticed another martini. This was very unusual. That it was standing on the bar, next to a small purse with a long, thin neckstrap, in front of a tiny young woman in a dark blue dress was even more unusual. In all the times he had been coming to Tokyo, he had never seen a Japanese woman at a bar, alone, nursing a drink. And the drink happened to be a martini. What's more, she was being very careful not to look at him.

Lucian was not normally very assertive but this whole scene was so unusual. The little woman was not in the slightest threatening and the familiarity of the martini glass gave him the confidence of familiarity. Smiling more confidently than he felt, he moved over two seats, leaving a seat empty between them.

"You like martinis?" he said. "Most Japanese people don't."

The young woman looked up at him with a terror-stricken expression on her tiny, triangular face and blushed deep red over her face and neck and even down to the neckline of her dress. "I like martini be-cause it is like movie!" she said with a sprightly insouciance in her voice that her blush visibly contradicted.

Lucian struggled to say something else. "Yes, I like martinis very much. I am trying different flavors. They come in different flavors these days, you know." He reminded himself that he did not have to speak baby-talk to her. She could probably understand him a lot better than she could speak. Besides, if her English was not perfect, at least she could speak it well. He spoke no Japanese at all besides "Konichi wa!"

Naoko's heart was racing inside her little chest. Her plan was working! This big, nice-looking Western man is going to try to, what do they say in English, "pick me up", like he would try to lift me up off the stool, she thought, but it means invite me for a good sex time. "I only drink one kind. For me it is, how you say, retro chic!"

Lucian almost laughed out loud, it was such an outlandishly appropriate thing for her to say. He suddenly noticed that he was relaxed around her. He noticed that her high cheekbones gave an even more angular look to her face. Lucian tried not to stare. Her face might have been too stark for some men but he thought she was pretty.

"Do you come here often?" he said, at a loss for what to say now that the topic of martinis seemed to have been exhausted. Naoko had read about that line in magazines and she was not impressed that he was using it but she was very pleased that he was starting to hit on her.

"No. I not live so close. I live far away. I stay in Shinagawa this weekend just." She was just a bit flustered and her much-practiced l's were starting to sound like r's again and she was forgetting her syntax. Mrs. Yamashita, her English teacher at school, would have been disappointed in her. That's not all. Mrs. Yamashita would have been scandalized at what she was doing. Anyway, she could hardly tell him that there was no way she could afford to stay at this hotel or anyplace in Shinagawa. The drink alone was more than she would normally ever spend on herself and this thoroughly modest frock was her sexiest dress. She had spent good money on a pair of panty hose, too. She didn't like them but her girlfriends told her how it made a woman's legs look nicer than bare skin or little stockings. Her skin was pale.

Her hair was straight, no surprise there, but she had colored it a sort of chestnut brown and it made her tiny face look even more narrow. A little different on a Japanese girl but at least her hair wasn't pink, like in Shibuya. This woman would be a little too old for that, he guessed, not by her appearance but by her manner and her hands -- the veined hands of a woman, not the slightly pudgy hands of a girl.

She wasn't his type. Lucian always fell for a certain type of woman but it never worked out. He had not scored with a tall blonde with stringy long hair and boobs the size of Lake Michigan since his ex-wife left him. Of course, she was not exactly that type either -- her boobs were only half the size of Carlyle Lake. Why even have a type when nobody like that wants to hook up with you? Still, it was funny that he now found himself attracted to a woman who was the exact opposite of everything that had attracted him before.

He moved to the seat next to her and she did not move away when their legs touched. It occurred to him that most Japanese women her size have short legs but her legs were long in proportion to a small body. They still did not come close to reaching the floor. Her legs were thin, like the rest of her, he noticed, but nicely shaped in the calf. He wondered if she was a dancer.

While they talked, Naoko kept looking into his pale blue eyes as if she were searching for something. He thought she might think that blue eyes were unusual but surely in modern Japan they see blue eyes all the time. He kept looking at her eyes, too. They were the darkest brown, almost black and so deep. She was drinking with one hand holding the stem awkwardly but he could tell that any minute now she would use both. And so she did, after giggling and scrunching up her little triangular face in the cutest way. Her hands were so tiny the glass looked huge in her fingers. They were talking about Tokyo and places they liked.

Naoko was enjoying the conversation. She was loosening up and not trying so hard with her English, which made her more talkative but made her speech a little less clear. It didn't matter. Lucian saw clearly that she was enjoying the give and take of a conversation in English, like holding up her side in a tennis game without trying to win.

There was about a three-inch gap in her dress when she leaned over -- he guessed that she had to buy her dresses too large and then alter them - and he could see down below her bra. She didn't need one. She had small breasts, hardly enough to fill an A cup.

It went on like this for another half hour, during which he bought her another drink. She only sipped it a little but soon she started to sway a bit. It was only seven in the evening but he had a feeling that she was not a night owl or a big martini drinker and that if they stayed at the bar much longer, especially drinking on an empty stomach, he might not only miss a chance but he might have to let her sleep it off in his room without getting any. (He wouldn't think of taking advantage. That's the kind of guy he was.)

Time to make a move, he thought. First, he needed to know if she was a professional. She wasn't acting like it because she was drinking real liquor and spending too much time with him. Other men had come into the bar but she had not made eye contact with any of them. She didn't look like one either, dressed conservatively, showing nothing but a little leg. A prostitute would be showing off more. He had had to work to look down her dress because she was not making an effort to lean over to let him. Still, when she caught him doing it once or twice she didn't seem to mind.

"Would you like to have dinner with me? We could eat upstairs at the sushi bar ... or maybe you'd like to come up to my room?" Depending on her response, he might or might not ask her how much she cost.

Naoko looked like she had just won the lottery! She blushed again, and because she leaned forward Lucian could see that she turned red all the way to her bra-line. But she was trying to keep her voice matter of fact. "We eat, then go your room, maybe? Wait, I go now, come back five minute." Lucian felt a little uneasy. Was she going to disappear on him? "Masumi" (she had told him her name was Masumi) "I'll meet you in the lobby. I have to get something." She picked up her purse , hopped off the stool, and almost skipped out of the bar. This odd interruption pretty well confirmed in Lucian's mind that she was not prostitute. At least not an experienced one.

Lucian looked at her walk away into the hotel lobby. He had not expected to meet someone this trip and he needed to get something, too. Once she was out of sight, he paid the bartender and tipped him handsomely, telling him not to let the young woman leave if she came back to the bar. Then he quickly left, expecting to return in a couple of minutes, before she got back. He dashed over to the hotel gift and convenience store. Three or four brands of condoms were on sale in the toiletries section and he grabbed three packs of three, of a brand he usually used, and, embarrassed to be seen in public, averted his eyes from the clerk as he went to the counter. And almost bumped into Masumi. Who was putting a six-pack of an off-brand she had just bought into her purse. When they noticed each other their eyes locked and a big smile came over both their faces at once. The stony-faced clerk took his money and watched them walk out together, giggling.

As it happened, that broke the tension. Each knew exactly what the other wanted to do. No games necessary. They decided not to do it on an empty stomach, so they went to the sushi and udon place and had misonikomo udon, because it was fast and filling and a real treat. They ate quickly and quietly and Naoko felt better when they were done. She didn't know if it was nervousness or the effects of the martinis on an empty stomach that had made her queasy but the udon settled her down again. She never felt this way anticipating intimacy with Tadashi.

They had attracted stares and sideways glances sitting together at the sushi place. Now, people watched them walk back through the lobby and get into the elevators together. They were the oddest of couples and older men and young women in a hotel mean just one thing to most people. They don't expect that kind of behavior at a business hotel in Shinagawa. Kabukicho sure, but not Shinagawa.

As they walked down the corridor an elderly Japanese couple walked in the other direction, stony-faced, ignoring them until they just passed, at which time Naoko but not Lucian heard the woman inhale sharply.

Lucian put his key card in the door and opened it. Naoko scooted in so quickly he did not have a chance to pat her ass as she passed, as he had fantasized while they rode the elevator up together, watched by a stony-faced couple carrying designer bags. He closed the door behind him and already she was plopped on the bed, arms and legs spread out. She still took up remarkable little space.

Suddenly Lucian felt uncertain, like he had presumed too much. She looked so little and vulnerable. He sat on the bed and turned toward her. So it was all the more startling when she jumped up and kissed him square on the lips, tongue pushing its way into his mouth. His followed into hers. Her mouth tasted pleasantly of umami.

She broke off the kiss and said "I go to washroom now. I wir' be will be back in one minute." She hopped up and did just that, but before she did it she put the pack of condoms on the side table. It took her maybe ten minutes in the bathroom. Through the wall Lucian heard her flush and then a long sound of water running. The bathroom had a bidet and maybe she was using it.

When she came out, she still had her dress on but she was carrying her shoes and wore no pantyhose. He had used the time to take off his shoes and tie. She put her purse on the side table and sat next to him on the bed and they resumed their kiss. Nimble fingers unbuttoned his shirt as he fumbled for the buttons at the back of her dress. Now, she was nuzzling his neck at the same time. He had to stand to take off his pants and she seemed to take great pleasure in loosening his belt for him. Then she stood to slip off her dress and for a moment they were standing together facing one another, but too close together to be put off by their unromantic underwear.

She stood as tall as she could and the top of her head came just above his nipples, which she had to look up to to kiss. He stepped back and looked down at her body, thin and pale with a dark triangle between her legs, showing through her sheer panties, waist deeply indented and impossibly small, belly not just flat but scooped in, hipbones as prominent as her cheekbones. He stepped back toward her and leaned down -- way down -- over her to slip his big hands under her panties and cup her buttocks -- each cheek was about a handful. He saw her unclasp her bra and pull it off. No need to be coy -- no point in a sexy striptease. What she had was bite-sized-- a tidy brown nipple on little brown areola on a little mound of a breast, one on each side of a skinny pale chest. He thought they were marvelous. He wanted to taste them.

He stood again and Naoko pulled down his shorts. His penis sprang up. She laughed and rubbed against him, then reached between his legs and took a testicle in each hand, fingering and fondling them on each side like a delicate egg. Now she bent over and she kissed the tip of his cock awkwardly. They needed to change position. He stood up and took her hand as he walked backwards to a big easy chair in the corner. She followed demurely but pulled off her panties -- revealing the dark black triangle of pubic hair he knew was there.

For a moment after he sat down she stood in front of him. He could see across the room through the wide space between her legs but he could not see her cunt because of her thatch of pubic hair. He put his hands behind her thighs and pulled her to himself, letting his hands rub up and down her legs, from slender calf up her soft pale thighs, and up to the horizontal crease between her leg and her butt. He kneaded her little buns. He leaned over and kissed her flat tummy between her belly button and the hairline. She smelled clean but womanly. She moved her feet apart a little. Then he put his hands between her legs and ran the backs of them up and then down the inside of her thighs, slowly, repeatedly, until they met at the top and his fingers touched her labia. They were soft and smooth and as he caressed they separated. He pulled on them gently.

He was kissing her little tits now, sucking first on the nipple and then pulling an entire breast into his mouth. She had her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open as he fondled and mouthed her private parts. She was thoroughly enjoying this.

He ran his finger across her opening. He felt a bump and knew he had found her clitoris. Still sucking her nipple, he inserted the middle finger of his right hand into her. She moved her hips in encouragement. He felt buttery smoothness as her opening let him in but further on the walls of her vagina pushed back and he realized how small and tight she really was. If she had not been a little wet he would have had to push too hard. She was gripping his finger securely as he pushed and prodded and pushed again, finally all the way in and the tip of his finger tapped her cervix -- he could feel the little doughnut. Masumi gasped when he did this. (She thought of it as knocking on the door to her womb.) He inserted another finger, with difficulty, and curled them both toward her front, caressing the inside front of her vagina and her G-spot. She tilted her pelvis to make the most of it. After a few minutes of giving her genitals over to his attention, she started to feel weak in the knees and wanted to sit down. "I sit now" she said.

She moved to his right before sitting across his lap. She almost sat on his dick but it wasn't sticking straight up at that moment. It was angled up and her butt pushed it down. She could feel it stiffen and move around as she squirmed on his lap. By this time, Lucian had his arms around her, holding her on his lap, while they kissed, if it could be called that. The thought had long interested Naoko that kissing was real oral-oral sex, not foreplay, and that's exactly how she treated it. She used her tongue as a member to penetrate his mouth, to explore him, his taste, his wetness, his depth.

Lucian had never had a girl who kissed like her -- aggressive and raw. His own tongue barely fit into her tiny mouth and when he opened his eyes he saw Masumi's big brown eyes wide open, bright, excited. They could only keep this up for so long before they had to break the lock and breathe deeply and when he did he smelled her scent, coming from under her arms and up from between her legs, a hint of perfume, the warmth of a pleasant body, and a jolt of sexual arousal. His right hand was working her pussy while they kissed but he couldn't get his fingers in again at the same angle as when she was standing.

They broke off their endless kiss, panting. She nuzzled his neck for while she rocked her pelvis on his fingers. Then she arched her body and leaned back pushing out her tits toward his face. She had her right arm around his neck and he was supporting her with his left arm. He bent over and sucked on her left nipple again, flicking it with his tongue, drawing first the areola and then the whole breast into his mouth, teasing gently with is teeth, feeling her shiver. She had her left leg down now and his erect penis was getting in the way.