Tokyo Symphony Ch. 06

She slung her arms around his shoulders like a sleazy boyfriend. "Now where were we?"

He seemed hesitant this time, but she leaned in nonetheless, taking another sample of his lips. They kissed repeatedly, light butterly kisses, chaste first-boyfriend kisses that were somehow enough for them.

"Look, I don't know if this is a good idea..." said Hayato, breaking away from her.

Yui backed him up against a cupboard. There bodies were now pressed together, and she could feel a reluctant hardness straining against his boxers. "I think it's a fucking great idea."

"I don't love you."

It was brutal, as it was meant to be, but for some reason Yui didn't feel that hurt. "Look, what do you think love is? Is love just that weird heart palpitation you get when you see a cute girl and she smiles at you, and then you start obsessing over her? Is it some romantic crap about sacrificing yourself, about living entirely for your beloved's sake. Because let me tell you, that's how I feel about you, and I honestly think it's a load of shit. I know a girl that walked into the ocean and drowned because of that kind of love."

"You know, talking about dead people isn't really a turn on."

"Sorry. But, I mean... look, we need each other. I need you to keep me sane and to hold my hair back while I vomit, you need me to get you out of the house and help you get over that poor lesbian. So what if it's not the plot to a fucking shuojo comic? I think the two of us being together would be a good idea."

Hayato smiled. He ran his hand along the back of her shoulder, feeling her taut skin pulsing underneath. "You make it sound like a business deal."

"Well, if that doesn't convince you, then there's always the fact that two attractive young people having great sex is never a bad proposition."

"How do you know it would be great sex?"

"I've just got a feeling." Yui cocked her head sideways with a bemused smirk on her face. "You want to test it out?"

Hayato surged forward and kissed her on the lips again. This was unlike the cautious meeting of lips moments ago – it was a wanton, hungry, desperate kiss. They backed up against the kitchen cupboards, their tongues surging into each others mouths, exploring every inch of the foreign orifice. The two tongues wrapped around each other as if trying to suck the taste out of the other one.

Still locked by their lips and their arms around each other, the two teenagers slowly began spinning, trying to get back to Hayato's room without stopping touching each other for a minute. They knocked over a couple things on the way, but they didn't care.

Hayato tossed Yui onto his bed, which was the romantic way of saying that they both tripped over a set of dirty jeans on the floor and he grabbed onto his nightstand for balance while she fell onto the bed harmlessly. Still, he could get used to the sight of her spread out before him. Her long legs, her breasts that were just a perfect handful, and that wanton, dirty look on her face... he could definitely go with this.

She was unbuttoning her shirt, revealing that Holy Grail of the pubescent male imagination. Her toned and tanned stomach gleaned in the light. Hayato walked towards the bed as in a trance. He sunk down onto her and then was kissing her shoulder, her collarbone, licking up around her neck. She threw her head back and let out a throaty moan as he continued to feed on her. The drunken haze was gone from her voice, replaced by a lusty velvet undertone.

Hayato pawed at her bra, and she obligingly showed him how to undo the front clasp. It snapped open to reveal her pert tits with cherry-red nipples. Hayato reached out experimentally to touch them. Their warmth surprised him. It was like there was a supernova buried in her ribs that was trying to burn its way out.

Feeling that he should reciprocate, Hayato tugged off his shirt, leaving him practically nude on the bed. He wasn't sure that girls really got off on seeing guys shirtless in the same way it was in reverse, but Yui certainly seemed appreciative as she shoved him down on his back and began licking his chest. She took one of his nipples in her mouth and treated and tormented it, licking the tip until it stood up tall and proud and then biting down on it just hard enough to hurt. She ran her hands along his thighs and fondled his boxer-wrapped crotch. He let out a surprisingly loud moan. He had never been treated like this before.

His few previous experiences had been all about the genitals. But Yui took her time, kissing and massaging parts of his body that he had never thought about sexually but were now sending bolts of pleasure coursing through his body. She smiled as he saw his reaction – his rapturous expression as he hung halfway off the bed, his body twitching with each move she made. He looked like such a wanton slut. When she tugged off his boxers, he offered no resistance, and his cock sprung up hard and red with impatience.

Yui took the same circuitous route, first licking his balls, then taking the twin sacks into her mouth one by one. She ran her tongue up the shaft, curling it around the tip, but not quite engulfing him yet. Hayato groaned with the pain of delayed ecstacy. Finally, when she thought he was good and ready, she slowly eased his stiff hard-on into her mouth.

That caused Hayato to sit straight up. There she was, his old tormentor and temptress Yui, with her lips wrapped around his cock, her multi-coloured hair bobbing up and down as she sucked his dick in and out. Her mouth was paradise, a warm and wet wonderland in which--

"Oh shit!" he yelled out. The orgasm came on him suddenly, and he belatedly tried to fight it, but there was nothing he could do. Hayato's hips thrust up into her mouth on their own and he felt his seed pumping out into the back of her throat. The orgasm was rapturous, but with it came a tinge of guilt and inadequacy. Yui didn't say anything. She just spat out the glob of cum from her mouth, letting it pool on the bedsheet. It was a message: look what you did, you filthy boy.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice feeling as weak as his knees. "I wanted to hold out, but..."

Yui pressed a shushing finger to his lips. "Oh no, I'm terribly offended because you came when I was blowing you. Relax, kid. We've got plenty of time to enjoy ourselves."

"I wish you wouldn't call me kid," said Hayato. "For the last time, we're the same age."

"My bad. So, old man, you ever ate a girl out before?"

"Um..." Now that Hayato thought about it, he hadn't. When he had had sex before it was all drunken one-night stands that skipped right to the main event, like the one with Sakura (he winced at the memory of her, like he had torn a bandage off roughly and prematurely.) His actual girlfriends were too nice and proper to go beyond a handjob. So as he shifted over to position his head between Yui's legs he was in completely foreign territory.

She had stripped off her jeans somewhere, probably when he was still in shock from his sudden orgasm, and now was clad in just a set of red panties that looked positively tiny on her curvy body. Taking a cue from her he kissed her thighs and rubbed them with his fingers before starting to peel off her last stitch of clothing.

Her pussy was moist and lightly carpeted by raven-black hair. For some reason he had expected it to be the same chemical red as the hair on her head, even though that was obviously a dyejob. He lowered his face down to kiss her nether lips and then slowly began licking. It was just, he thought, like making out.

Yui began bucking her hips up and down as his tongue ventured into her cunt. With one hand she held Hayato's hair, stopping him from escaping even if he watned to, while she strummed her clit with the other. Hayato batted the hands away and kissed her emerging clit before swirling his tongue around the little nub.

She lay back, clenching the sheets, letting strange little squeaks and moans – way more high-pitched than her normal voice – escape her body. Occasionally Yui would let out an instruction in between the gasps but the truth was that the kid was a natural. For a while it felt like she was just floating, being slowly encased in pleasure, and then she felt it building up in her body. Her torso was accumulating tension like a spring, and everytime she was sure it was about to burst it didn't, just built up more and more as Hayato kept licking, sucking, and fingering.

Insane with pleasure, she ran her hand over one of her engorged nipples, and that was all it took. She let out a soprano scream that was on the verge of breaking glass as her hips pumped furiously. It was raw, pure animal satisfaction. In that moment she forgot everything that had ever troubled her, because there was no trouble, just her and her body and this hot male body that was making her feel so good.

They lay with their heads on opposite ends of the bed for a little while, trying to catch their breath again. They didn't say anything, because speech was pointless right now. Both felt as though all they needed was a raw physical ritual, unmitigated pleasure as a way of defying the darkness that was invading their lives.

Yui noticed Hayato's dick returning to a semi-hard state. She grabbed ahold of it and gave a good experimental pump. It instantly stiffened until it was a hard tower pointing straight up at the ceiling. "Looks like someone's recovered."

"Maybe." Hayato offered her a shy smile. He ran a hand along her long leg, the onely thing he could really reach from where he was.

Yui sat up and slung a leg over the torso of Hayato, straddling him. She had produced a condom from somewhere – her purse, he guessed – and was rolling it onto his erection. "You ready for me, hot shot?"

"I think so."

She laughed before sitting up on her haunches. Her tits were dangling in his face, and he couldn't resist taking one between his lips and giving a quick suck. While he was thus preoccupied he didn't notice her shifting until he felt the wet heat of her cunt descending on his cock.

"Oh shit," he groaned. Mounting him confidently, Yui began riding him in earnest, bringing her hips down on his at a faster and faster rate. The feeling of her tight, electric pussy slamming down on his cock was astonishing. He could do nothing but grab onto her hips and enjoy the ride.

She arched up, her tits just standing there in the air, bouncing up and down in time with her thrusts. Hayato reached out and thumbed her clit as she rode him, making her gasp with pleasure. In it's own way hearing that gasp from Yui was as pleasurable as her pussy's hot tight grip on his cock.

He was used to seeing Yui dolled up in her own quasi-punk way, with mascara and blindingly red lipstick, her pale skin contrasting againsst her dark clothes. Now her skin was flushed and sweaty, her body nude and undisgusied with all its flaws – a small ring of fat, random patches of freckles – fully visible, her voice divested of her usual arrogant smoothness and transformed into harsh gasps and breathy pleadings for more, more, more... It was a different kind of beauty. It was real and human and inviting, not the cold perfect surface he was used to. He could never fall in love with the Yui that bit back witty remarks at him, but he could just maybe fall in love with the girl tossing her head back and crying out her pleasure in front of him, the joy mixing into strange tittering laughs. Of course, maybe that was just because she was riding his cock with the force of a hurricane.

Yui was slamming her hips down trying to fuck out every ounce of frustrated lust and unreturned affection that had built up over months and months but the more she poured out into him the more there was inside her, just looking at the rapturous expression of this beautiful boy with his skinny, lightly muscled torso and those soft, almost feminine features... God, she just wanted to take him home with her and keep him in her apartment as a fuck-slave for the rest of her days.

She paused for only a moment, her hips a little tired, and then he was slamming into her, rolling her hips back and forth on top of him. After letting Hayato drive for a while and revelling in the raw endorphin pulses Yui began her own thrusts again. The two of them worked in synchronicity, bodies colliding together with their two movements merging together into one giant force between them that threatened to blow them both apart.

"Oh fuck," Yui groaned. They were chest to chest, her tits rubbing against his pectorals with delicious friction. "I'm gonna come..."

"Me too..." Hayato had his face scrunched up, trying to restrain himself from another premature climax.

Yui exploded first, although you would need a stopwatch to tell. She began laughing uncontrollably as she climaxed, feather-light girlish giggles punctuated by sharp gasps. As her cunt clamped down on his cock Hayato shuddered his release, spraying his seed into the condom's tight embrace.

The two lay against each other for a long time, spasming and crying out, until eventually they regained control of their bodies. Even after that they were laying there feeling him deflating inside her and listening to each other's heavy breathing.

"So," Hayato said finally. "How was it?"

Yui grinned. That manic taunting side of her was back, and he guessed he could live with that too. "Not bad, not bad."

"Just a not bad? It sure looked like you were having fun."

"Yeah, but I have fun with my vibrator." She scanned his face to see if he was genuinely insulted, but he was still protected by post-sex bravado. "We've got a lot of time to improve on it."

He put his arm around her and hugged her body close to him. Next to what they had just done it seemed like nothing, but there was a hidden world of intimacy and trust inside the action. "So, there's gonna be an encore."

"Now that I've finally got you in my clutches?" Yui did an evil laugh. "You bet. But seriously, as long as we don't go overboard and start thinking we're living in a romance novel... I think this could work out."

Hayato nodded. He wasn't even sure what this practical romance idea of Yui's meant, but if it meant more moments like this, their bodies entwined in a state of pure comfort, he could go along with it. "I think things are going to work out too."

--

Natsumi's gut felt like a rock sitting hard in the centre of her body. She was there, at the apartment she had visited so many times before, but now things were different. Still, she decided to knock quickly, figuring that whatever was inside couldn't be worse than standing inside this border between good and bad memories.

Sakura's mother answered the door. Natsumi had never paid much attention to her, but she had Sakura's looks, put through the wringer of age. In another world, where everything had worked out the way she wanted it to, maybe a couple decades down the line she would come home to a woman who looked like this.

The mother embraced Natsumi desperately. Despite feeling a bit like she was being smothered, Natsumi returned the hug. "Thank you for coming. It's just been such a nightmare these past couple days, and we have no idea what to do..." There was, of course, no manual for how to bury your child.

Natsumi was there that day to sort through everything Sakura had left behind and figure out what to do with it. She had surgically removed her parents from her life like every teenager, living outside the house and behind locked bedroom doors. Now they found a room full of foreign objects and had to turn to someone else for expertise.

Most of it was junk – fashion mags and dime-store erotica, clothes that felt sacriligeous to save. There were a couple keepsakes that Natsumi dropped into her bag. She had a right to cling to objects like these, she reassured herself. She had a right to grieve, to not get over it.

Finally, she checked Sakura's computer. The password, predictably enough, was "bradshaw". She hadn't seen the teacher at the funeral – she wondered if he even knew. On the computer was the first real surprise. In a private file, concealed from the rest of the world, Sakura had been quite the writer. The computer was filled with poems, stories, and unfinished fragments of novels. She had told Natsumi once or twice about the book she was writing, about the gaijin hentai artist, but Natsumi had assumed that was just to impress Bradshaw. How had she missed an entire secret, creative life in the girl she had called her best friend and would have called her lover?

The work was of varying quality, but there was a certain magic to the words, Sakura's command of language, that had Natsumi tearing up a couple times. It wasn't just from what she was reading, but the ever-growing sense of loss – the loss of a girl who was so much more than even she had known.

And then, finally, there was Taro Ozaki. It was the longest thing Sakura had written, but it still ended abruptly, at the narrative's lowest point. The romance between the titular hentai artist and his ero-model girlfriend was in shambles, due to a confrontation involving heroin and titfucking. Some of the passages made Natsume's ears turn red, but she pressed on.

At the end was a simple blank page. Maybe Sakura had wanted to get to it later. It definitely seemed like the last few doom and gloom pages were composed in a rush, bearing an unusual number of spelling mistakes and run-on sentences. Maybe sometime during that fateful night she had floated back here to try and vent her grief onto the characters.

Natsume pulled up Sakura's rolling desk chair. She couldn't save Sakura – she had magnificently fumbled her one attempt to do so. But she could save Taro Ozaki. She could make sure at least one aspect of Sakura's life had a happy ending.

Natsume started writing.

--

And that was it. Taro removed his pen from the final page, a full-page spread of Natsume sitting in the midst of Sakura's abandoned room. It was ended. The ending wasn't that great but it was, after all this turmoil, finally over.

There was a sense of disbelief inside him, something that wanted and fully expected to move onto the next chapter. He had always had trouble with finality. When he was younger he had read shounen comics that went on forever, revelling in the fact that they could always be relied upon, that he would never run out of them. He guessed he had come to assume that School Hearts would now be a constant presence with him but, like everything else, it had ended.

Terry sighed. A kind of depression began to creep into his mind. He knew he needed to but the ending behind him and replace it with a beginning. He needed to start something new. But what?

What did he want to create?

The idea came to him like divine intervention. It was so perfect, he wondered why it hadn't been obvious. He grabbed his cell phone, found Mika's number with quick-moving fingers, and hit call. He desperately hoped she would answer. She had to answer.

After three rings, there was the abrupt silence of a pick-up. "Mika?" The word rushed out of his mouth.

"Oh, hi Terry," said the silky but tired voice on the other end of the line. There was the sound of a man barking orders in the background. "I'm at a shoot so I can't stay long. I just want to say that I'm really sorry about the other night, I was out of my mind and..."

"No. You were right. I haven't been treating you like, you know, a person."

"I was high. You shouldn't pay attention to what I said then."

"Look, the thing is... I feel like I don't really know you. Like I know the surface you, but I think there's a lot of deeper stuff, and some of it isn't pleasant, but I want to explore it anyway. Even if it takes years. I'm willing to put the time in, or whatever you want me to do."

A long pause. "Is that all?"

"No." Terry realized that the back of his throat was sandpaper-dry. "I'm starting a new comic. It's going to be hentai, but it's going to be about a girl like you, and since I don't really know anything about you... I want you to write it."