All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Valentine’s Day Special

As much as we Japanese tend to have a certain… let’s just say reputation for an isolationist worldview, it is a fact that humanity shares a universal trait across all cultures, including that of otakudom: the unshakeable belief that foreign things are cool.

Just how many attacks in manga are just poorly pronounced English? How many times did Mami Tomoe embarrass herself with her (actually quite a mouthful) Italian attempts at a catchphrase? Why are so many JRPGs set in pseudo-medieval quasi-Europe?

Because foreign things are cool.

Truly, it’s gone so far as having Christmas, a foreign holiday, being celebrated in Kentucky Fried Chicken, a mostly traditional Japanese brand, become the epitome of what a family dinner should be like. Our whole country, one renowned for having it made illegal for foreigners to step foot in our islands for centuries (and for us to leave said islands, but really, who would ever want to flee the country most likely to become a cyberpunk dystopia of capsule hotels in the near future of forty years ago?), is filled with plenty of examples of such occurrences, and the fact that Westerners ever came up with the somewhat picturesque term ‘goddamn weeb’ clearly points at this not being an exception.

So. Foreign things are cool.

Like chocolate.

Chocolate on Valentine’s Day.

That… doesn’t bring up trauma-laden memories, not at all.

Such as… Why is chocolate a sign of love? Why do so many visual novel routes culminate the romance not in the tear-filled (among other fluids) mutual loss of virginity but in the exchange of (usually inedible) homemade sweets? Is it merely due to foreign things being, somewhat, enriched with meaning and nuance we can only guess at looking from the outside in? Is it because love is sweet, and tender, and melts in the mouth? Is it because KFC wants to diversify its market presence and is covertly moving to annex Belgium and Switzerland?

No. It is because chocolate, like love, is bittersweet.

And lethal to plenty of mammals.

“Take. The. Goddamn. Bag,” somebody whom I’d usually deem equally lethal to most mammals says as she pushes a small bag of black chocolate at me.

I mean, I already expected my first Valentine’s Day after graduating from high school to be somewhat of an… event. Particularly given what high school meant for me and quite a few young and younger women (I can learn, I swear), but…

“No,” I mutter in abject horror as I take a step back and cover myself with my left arm as if a vampire deciding that he would rather not get that extra tanning session after all.

“Hikigaya… you either take the chocolate or a kick to the shin,” Minami Sagami says with the kind of murderous glint that promises that violence is not only an option, but that the other dialogue choices are quickly being grayed out.

“I…” Quick, Brain-chan! Come up with an excuse!

‘… Oh, wait, you actually expected me to be helpful. You must be in shock.’

Possibly!

‘All right, let me grab the popcorn then.’

You’d desert me in my hour of need? You’d abandon me to deal with a fully armed and operational Minami Sagami? You’d betray me so cruelly and leave me to face my torment alone?

‘I mean, yes?’

Sasuga, Brain-sama. Sasuga.

‘Praise me more—look out!’

“Aaaaaahhhhhh!” I yell in not at all abject terror that turns quite a few faces on the somewhat crowded campus grounds where this assault is taking place despite the abundance of witnesses, thus pointing to Sagami’s brash dismissal of the power of the law to stop her or even attempt to do so.

“There. Done,” Sagami says, rolling her eyes as she closes my fingers around the likely-to-be-poisoned chocolates.

“Wha—wha—”

“Will you stop acting like a movie horror designated victim and just get on with it?”

“I am sorry, I can’t accept your feelings!” I say, not at all recreating past trauma from the other side of the fence as I bow deeply, my eyes nailed to the tips of my shoes as I straighten my arms out toward Sagami with her chocolates offered like an appeasing sacrifice for the kind of god reasonable enough to maybe overlook the fact I’m no longer a technical virgin.

I hate reasonable deities. They never isekai you.

“… It is an obligation chocolate, you damn moron,” Sagami says with the kind of scorn usually reserved for those without a functional shower.

“… What?” I say, still not daring to exit my defensive stance.

“Obligation. Chocolate. The kind you give to a friend, not a… romantic prospect,” she says, nearly gagging at the words.

“Ah,” I answer, nearly swaying with relief.

Oh. The grass is coming closer.

“You—!” Sagami protests as she grabs my shoulders and, somehow, straightens me up before I can faceplant like so many classic comedy mangas have told me I should.

“Ah… sorry, it’s just… you’re Zaimokuza’s—”

“I know,” she cuts me off with the kind of glare Mom would be impressed by.

“I… Yes. Yes, you do know who your boyfriend is.”

“I do. Yes.”

We stare at one another in a somewhat uncomfortable silence before Sagami decides that, maybe, she can stop holding my shoulders and pulls away faster than somebody playing patty-cake with Nappa.

“So… thank you? Also, why?” I finally ask the girl who’s thankfully not trying to initiate a romantic relationship with me.

‘This is the kind of thought that would have made your past self complain about riajuus who should go explode.’

Screw that guy. He was an asshole.

‘Was. Yes.’

“You’re Yoshiteru’s best friend,” Sagami says.

“What?”

“The chocolates. Look, I still think you’re a supercilious, arrogant prick who’s too full of himself—”

“Really feeling the love over here—”

“—but you’re also… You’re the most important person in his life other than… I’d rather not make a ranking, just in case. But the thing is, you were there for him when nobody else was, and no matter how insufferably smug you may be at me after this… I… I think you are…”

She drifts off, looking away from my eyes for a moment as she tucks back in an errant strand of hair that was drifting in February’s wind, her cross-shaped earring glinting with the motion.

Then, fiercely, Sagami looks back at me with piercing eyes that glint like her silver, excessively chuuni jewelry.

“You were there for Yoshiteru. You helped him… become who he is. The man I love. And, for that, Hachiman Hikigaya, you shall have my everlasting friendship.”

I look at her.

Blink.

“Can I refuse?” I finally ask.

“This is a non-negotiable friendship,” she says with an arched eyebrow and her head tilted back in a way that all but implies the ‘How amusing’ paired with the gesture.

“Ah,” I say.

Then, not quite given a choice in what else to do…

I offer her my hand.

She immediately shakes it, far manlier than I would have, and nearly pulls my arm out of its socket.

“Friends,” I say.

“Friends,” she repeats with a single nod.

Then I nervously lick my lips and…

“It’s… It’s nothing to be grateful for. He was also there. For me,” I tell her.

And Minami Sagami’s piercing eyes briefly soften as she smiles at me, for the first time, without anything other than tenderness to mar the curve of her lips, finally letting me understand how Zaimokuza ended up… Well, like he ended up.

“I know,” she says. “But I will still thank you for telling me.”

And, just like that, as the wind picks up yet again and sets her long, tan coat flaring around her, she turns around and steps out of the scene like somebody who has taken notes from every single cool rival in anime history.

***

Minami Sagami Is a Good Girlfriend

Oooookay. That’s done with.

And I didn’t even blush!

…

That shouldn’t be an achievement.

Look, it’s just… aside from the awful, terriblememories he brings up just by existing in my near vicinity, Hikigaya is… I have seen the ugly side of him. I was there… Well, when he pointed it at me, and it was actually scary to be on the receiving end of so much… Not anger. It wasn’t quite anger; it was something bitterer, something that ran deep.

Something I thought could not be mended.

But… But it’s been more than a year already, and, mostly because of Yoshiteru, I’ve been there to see something else come out and replace the resentful, spiteful man that I thought I could never fully forgive, even if it was all my fault, and even after he helped me by directing all that hatred at others. I have seen him…

Heal, I guess.

Love does that, sometimes.

And others…

At other times? Love makes you stay up till the crack of dawn coming up with ever more deranged attempts at chocolate combinations for a boyfriend who’s basically a gourmet in training, and damn it, Yoshiteru, you couldn’t have made this any easier on me to—

What…

What is he doing with Mika?!

***

Yoshiteru Zaimokuza Is Sometimes Prone to Overreactions

“I refuse! No matter how lovely you are, how much I appreciate your kindness, wit, and martial might, my heart belongs to the Lady Minami!” I tell the girl offering me a bag of—gasp—chocolates.

… Before my girlfriend did, I may add.

‘Does that mean you raised Saotome’s love points more than Minami’s? I mean, hard to believe with so many accumulated CGs, but you never know how these routes turn out—’

Inner Hachiman! How could you be so base! Love is no mere recollection chamber for me to traipse through on the days I can’t meet the Lady Minami to add a few more CGs to—damn it.

‘Yes. Indeed. How could I be so base. Such a mystery.’

Shut up. You are a prick.

‘I’m nothing but faithful to my nature.’

Spite?

‘Yes. That. Also: praise me more.’

I may do just that if you told me how to handle rejecting the affections of an aikido dojo heir without getting any hearts or other limbs broken.

‘I mean, you already rejected her, you know?’

… I did, didn’t I?

“I swear, Yoshi, you’re adorable enough to make me rethink this, but… this is obligation chocolate.”

At the intriguing words, I dare raise my head from its humbling, defensive position to meet… The Lady Saotome’s mirthful own orbs.

“Obligation?” I ask, just in case an opportune auditory hallucination tried to offer me a viable escape from dreaded reality.

For some reason, the Lady Saotome rolls her eyes before her smile widens into the kind of smirk that only battle maniacs and hentai characters have.

Which… doesn’t quite assuage my own concerns.

“You reunited me with… somebody I thought lost. And you have helped her. You have… she’s… I recognize her now, Yoshi. I didn’t for… for quite long, I didn’t recognize the person she became. But you managed what I couldn’t, and… and… I swear I didn’t think I’d get this mushy,” the brash martial artist mutters as her grin falters and she tries to rub her eyes with the back of her wrist, the faded jean jacket she usually wears during winter contrasting with sharp eyes that are, for the second time since I met her, marred with tears.

The first time, I pretended not to notice. We were in a public place, a restaurant, and she had just read my own interpretation of what the Lady Minami’s prized earring meant for her. For the both of them. And so I sat silently as she angrily wiped her eyes and allowed the moment to pass.

Now, almost a year later?

I hug her.

She goes still, her face buried against the front of my trench coat, her arms trapped between my body and hers.

And then, slowly, almost fearfully, she hugs me back.

So I stand there, in silence, beneath the swaying branches of one of the cherry trees adorning the campus grounds, merciful that it is winter and not spring, so we’re saved from the embarrassment of a shower of pink blossoms spiraling around us and turning the moment into something it definitely isn’t.

‘Harem route—’

It would always be Minami’s harem, and I wouldn’t ever presume to get in the way of their sisterly, yuri, almost certainly Platonic relationship.

Not when even remembering their time apart can bring someone as strong as the Lady Saotome to such a state.

“You’re cuddly,” she finally says, her voice muffled and her face mushed against my chest.

“I’ve been told so, yes,” I answer with a soft smile as I look down at wild locks she usually doesn’t bother styling.

Then she goes back to her contemplative silence, and I just…

…

I am in a public place.

I am in a public place in college.

The college I go to with the Lady Minami.

Fearful that I may have drawn the ire of the romcom gods, I take a surreptitious look around in search of potential witnesses I may have to silence, and—

And the Lady Saotome holds the lapels of my coat and pushes me away, shooting a wry smile up at me.

“See? This is why you get friendship chocolate from me. Now go brag to your male friends, or whatever it is you boys do after manga-like events,” she says, her grin almost back to its full force.

Almost.

But, before I can say anything to probably spoil the moment, and with as much aplomb as she ever does anything, the Lady Saotome turns sharply enough to send her jacket flaring around her waist and marches away, leaving me to contemplate how sad it is that chocolates can’t be preserved as the valuable mementos that they are.

… Maybe I should get an earring?

***

“My Lady Minami, if you would tell me why your mood is so—” I try to say as she keeps dragging me by the sleeve of my trench coat.

Which is yet another sign of her utter mastery of moe anime body language, but it may be one of the most uncomfortable ways available for her to express her passionate tsundere affections.

She briefly pauses to glare straight into my eyes, sharp silver shooting straight into my heart like Cupid’s arrows—

“Shut up. I need you to shut up and stay shut up for the next ten minutes, or I swear to Bishamonten—”

I arch an eyebrow as she trips herself up with her own mayhap overly dramatical proclamation that some people, uneducated in the true depths of the darkness the heart of man holds, may deem somewhat chuuni.

She flushes a pleasant shade of red and briskly turns around, dragging me once again to her… abode.

That is, her one-room apartment, the one she managed her parents to pay for so she could stay closer to campus.

It’s a place I am… acquainted with.

As in, I wonder if I should start paying rent.

But that would be too presumptuous of me! It’s not every night that the Lady Minami and I spend entangled in wild passions, nor every morning that we shamefully look at the recently installed soundproofing boards covering the walls it took us too long to discover may have been too thin for her neighbors’ peace of mind. I, sometimes, still go back to my legal residence, if only to acquire more provisions with which to resupply the small fridge set in the corner of the room, and…

…

I may have to get a job.

Or, you know, sell a damn book.

Or win one of those literary prizes the Lady Minami keeps finding for me, or seal a deal with that nice editor who gave me his card but that Sister deemed inadequate for arcane reasons I’m too afraid to inquire upon, or finally gather the courage to get something up on that webnovel site that offers royalties if—

Oh. We are already here.

At our—her apartment.

And she’s fiddling with her keys, studiously averting her eyes from mine, and blushing like she wants to have her cheeks match the precise shade of her hair.

Truly, such a mysterious, entrancing creature.

‘Say that out loud. I dare you to say that out loud.’

Your attempts to murder me are growing ever more obvious, Inner Hachiman.

‘Frustration dries up the river of creativity. As you should well know.’

I refuse to write the bird-people novel until I get a proper plot for it rather than a collection of waifus!

‘You fool! What matters plot when ‘plot’ is the main selling factor?! How can you call yourself a light novel writer when you fail to grasp such an utterly elementary concept—’

“Go sit on the futon—ah, wait, I’ll take you there. Just… don’t open your—why are your eyes open?”

I… blink at her.

Then point at my, as per her own orders, closed mouth.

She blinks back, then looks at my lips, quickly looks away and down, then slowly turns back to face me with her own lips set in a thin line as her arms, once again, cross under her prodigious hopes and dreams—darn it.

I swear, if she hits yet another growth spurt, I may have trouble restraining my… urges.

“Close your eyes,” she whispers before nervously biting her lower lip as her fingers clutch at the elbows of her coat.

And I…

Well, first of all, I swallow, because it feels like my throat is currently unable to process anything but the urge to yell ‘Moe!’ at the top of my lungs.

And then, I close my eyes.

The darkness is not complete, as there’s still some daylight filtering through my lids, tinting my world in shifting tones of red and orange, but I still feel a change in my own senses, in how the scent of her apartment, that of a rose air freshener mixed with the straw of tatami mats and other, subtler nuances that I have come to learn over the past months, envelops me as… As the Lady Minami takes my hand and slowly guides me into her… our…

To the futon.

That I don’t remember laying out this morning.

I do, in fact, remember storing it in the closet, so she must’ve come back during my classes and prepared something, and the idea of my girlfriend doing so today, of all days, is—

“Just wait. It will only take a few minutes,” she whispers in my ear, her breath as scorching as the hidden promise in her words.

I clench my teeth to avoid speaking, to avoid breaking my unstated vow of silence (are all such vows unstated? I think they should be), and I…

Wait.

Or, rather, I start going mad.

Because I can hear her fiddling around in the kitchenette, putting something in the microwave and…

And, if my memory doesn’t fail me, which I rather doubt it will when it comes to this particular set of sounds, she undresses.

The rustling of the clothes, first against one another, then against her bare skin, makes a rush of heat waft from the collar of my shirt and up my spine, and I have to clench my fists just to avoid moving, just to try and anchor my mind on something other than Minami undressing in front of me, standing with her proud stance, her hip slightly cocked to the side just to offer me greater insight into her curves, in how they shift at her whim, the very whim that captures my breath and attention powerfully enough that I don’t even think about anything other than—

…

I am missing Precure. There was supposed to be a new character reveal today.

…

Totally worth it.

‘Lost a bit of the lyricism, right there.’

Well, excuse me, Inner Hachiman, but there are only so many ways in which I can be captivated by my girlfriend doing a silent striptease without my pants getting uncomfortable.

‘…’

More uncomfortable.

‘I’m pretty sure the current circumstances account for getting a black belt in Hidden Weapons Style.’

All right, first of all, Mousse was Chinese, so he wouldn’t have used the belt-ranking system—

There’s another sound.

That… I…

Silk. That’s silk.

That’s silk being tied, sliding against itself, and it’s Minami in front of me, and…

Damn it.

“You can… unzip yourself,” she breathes out, her hair swishing against my cheek before she nibbles on my ear. “I am almost ready, and I don’t want you to hurt yourself while you wait.”

A pitiful noise comes out of my throat, and the Lady Minami takes my lips before I can disobey her, keeping my protest wordless as her own hands slide down my heated, pulsing neck and undo the buttons of my trench coat, then the tied belt, then…

Then she slides her hands under the lapels and over my chest, spreading the coat open before she traces twin, symmetrical scrollwork motives down the front of my body before reaching my leather belt, tugging at it…

Undoing it.

And then she pulls away, almost touching me, my open lips breathing ragged, desperate gasps that mingle with her own as her deft fingers first pull my fly down, then undo the button atop it.

And, with freeing relief, she shifts me.

“There,” she breathes out in a way that makes my closed lids flutter. “That should be a… relief.”

I swear I can hear the smirk in that word.

But, as I go to answer, the microwave dings, and Minami stands up, close enough that the motion brings me a wave of her fragrance, of the perfume she sometimes wears when she deems the occasion arbitrarily special.

I restrain the need to blindly follow her as if a hound after the elusive Ceryneian hind, and I almost tremble as I keep hearing the tinkling noises of metal on glass and a single, prolonged hiss from Minami that does nothing to soothe my passions.

And then… Then I hear soft steps on tatami mats and the futon shifts beside me.

“Yoshiteru?” she says. “You can… look at me now.”

And I immediately do.

I jump to my feet and turn around to find her lying on our often shared bedding atop the blue covers. Almost naked.

Worse than naked.

Because her pale skin is adorned with crimson silk, with a long, wide ribbon that circles her neck like a collar and goes down the middle line of her body to sink between her thighs, hiding her sex from me. And above…

Above, it splits into two elaborate, decorative bows: one along her collarbone, the other below her breasts, with parallel lines of red silk framing the twin, delightful orbs I’ve kissed, and caressed, and tasted, and…

And there’s liquid chocolate covering her nipples.

“You can speak now,” she says with the kind of impish grin that tells me I just amused her.

It… takes me a moment to find the words.

“Why?” I ask before sinking to my knees as if approaching a sacred altar.

Her smirk widens, dimpling her cheeks, as she remains lying down and only moves her head to follow my eyes.

“Because Mika may have stolen from me being the first girl to give you Valentine’s chocolate, but I am definitelythe first girl to give you one like this.”

I… blink.

“The… The Lady Saotome merely offered obligation chocolate—”

“I know, but I still wanted to be the first to… what is it?”

I nervously lick lips that are now dry for two very different reasons.

“My Lady Minami, I… I dohave a sister.”

She blinks at me thrice in rapid succession, as if trying to process a notion her mind wasn’t prepared for, such as, for instance, publishing companies having a policy against explicit material.

Then she closes them, points her head back up, and proceeds to slam the back of it against the futon.

“I can’t… She doesn’t count! Your sister doesn’t count as a girl for the purpose of chocolate-giving, obligation or otherwise!”

“I can most definitely assure you she felt obligated!”

“Not! A! Girl! Your sister is an otherworldly demon who merely adopts the guise of an earthly woman to further her ineffable machinations!”

“I keep telling you and your suicidal brother!”

“What—oh, damn it!” she yells as a thin rivulet of chocolate slides down the side of her left breast, and I…

Lick it.

Because of that damn thing about ‘my body moved before I realized it.’

So I look straight into the Lady Minami’s wide eyes as my tongue follows up the trace of dark, milky chocolate exploding across my tongue intensely enough to almost mask up the flavor of her own skin, the flavor I memorized during our first time and that I never forgot. That I’ll never forget.

I… I keep moving up, deviating from the path of the rivulet to circle around the patch of chocolate hiding one of the Lady Minami’s ever-delectable nipples from me and thus earning my eternal enmity.

So I pause. I pause to just rest my lips upon a breast that is moving up and down faster than usual, yet not faster than they often do whenever we two lie on this one futon, and I shrug my trench coat off before throwing it to the corner of the room, the tan clothing flapping in an almost animalistic way that would send a surge of pride through me at any other time.

But now I sit back, carefully take off my glasses, and unbutton the collar of my shirt before pulling both it and my sweater off as fast as I can before diving back down, one elbow on each side of the Lady Minami’s delightfully small frame—at least when compared to me—and I grasp one breast in each hand, my fingers sinking into soft flesh as the round orbs surge up, the liquid chocolate disturbed and running into more slow rivulets that I hurry to catch on my tongue, to scrub pale skin clean of all but the barest of traces of sweet, brown confectionery as she writhes beneath me until she can’t hold herself back and tugs my ponytail undone before, once again, burying her own fingers on my hair, pulling my head harder against her, smearing the chocolate on my lips and cheeks as I dive into her cleavage.

She moans and whimpers, squirming below me, and I keep circling both nipples alternatively, licking up any fleeing rivulets as I narrow the coverings atop her breasts until nothing but faint coloring remains, her areola darker than usual even as I suck her flesh into my mouth and slather her with my saliva, trying to melt any traces of the first Valentine’s chocolate my girlfriend has given me.

And the thought strikes me as I meet her eyes, see her smile, and…

And she tugs at my hair, pulling me to her lips, her tongue coming out to lick around my mouth, slowly and carefully cleaning me of any remaining hint of sweetness.

Then she pulls back, her head sinking into the futon beneath her, and she smiles something soft, radiant, and triumphant among a corona of blazing fire atop cerulean blue.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Yoshiteru,” she says, making my heart clench.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, my Lady Mina—”

“No Lady. Minami. I keep telling you to… just Minami,” she protests with a moue that makes me…

That makes me a lot of things, actually.

So I…

I lean down, kissing the tip of her nose and making her giggle until I squeeze her breasts and turn the giggle into a moan as I meet her not-quite-affronted eyes with a smirk of my own.

“Minami… You will always be my Lady,” I tell her.

And then I sink down into an open-mouthed kiss that has our tongues meet in something still tasting of milky chocolate as her hands travel down my body and tug at my pants, finally making me capitulate and let go of her left breast to help her with her task that she quickly turns into stroking my member, gathering as much lubrication as she can from my tip before slathering the whole length of it with a twisting motion that would make me clench my teeth if our tongues weren’t in the way, our lips still pressed to one another with ardor and…

And…

Well, it is Valentine’s Day.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that our kiss is, most of all, loving.

She opens her legs, and I slide between soft, smooth, yielding thighs, resting the head of my member atop red silk already drenched with her own warmth as she undulates her hips up to meet me. But she’s…

The damn thing is too wide.

She moans in frustration as she tries to push it aside, but it bunches up against the divot her tendon makes right beside her sex, and there’s just not enough space for me to push past it without hurting at least one of us, so…

So I let go of the other breast, to my eternal regret, and grab her below her knees.

Her eyes fly open, and I can feel the surprised gasp she tries to let out. But I swallow it rather than heed it.

And then I push her legs up, bending her body before I spread them as far as I know she can go, her wonderful breasts framed by no-less marvelous thighs. I take the chance I’ve been given to keep her left leg pointed straight out to further slide the band of crimson, shimmering silk over the divot of flesh and down into the middle of her thigh, the cloth taut from below her breasts to where it sinks into a leg that’s grown ever more toned since she restarted her training with the Lady Saotome.

Training that has also increased her flexibility.

… I truly owe the Lady Saotome a great deal, but mayhap now is not the time to contemplate how to better repay her.

Not now that the Lady Minami’s sex is uncovered fully, that her heat wafts in waves that drift up to tease my rigid member, to beckon it back into her folds.

I let go of her lips and lean back just to watch her. Just to see how she opens her eyes fully and tilts her head further back, exposing her throat to me as I rest my cock on her entrance and push forward.

Her free, right leg snaps around me, pulling me forward.

The other trembles as the band of silk strains.

And I shift her, pulling her leg up to hook her knee on my shoulder so that her binding slackens as I fully sink inside of her, as wide eyes unfocus and roll back, and her mouth opens in something silent that nonetheless calls to me.

Then I lean down to kiss the side of her neck as I allow my body to rest on hers. To feel all of her sprawled below me, sinking farther into the yielding futon as her curves flatten to accept me, to spread on my skin and have our touch become as intimate as physically possible.

Then I kiss up. Up along that pulsing vein I’ve kissed, and licked, and nibbled on so many times before. Up toward an ear that I have tasted and whispered sweet nothing into more times than I care to count, even if I tried to engrave every single one into my memory.

And so I do it one more time:

“I love you. And no matter how many chocolates I ever received… yours would be the only ones that could ever matter.”

From the corner of my eyes, I catch hers closing as a soft smile spreads on her lips.

“Gods, you are so corny…” she mutters.

“I don’t want to hear that from you.”

“Oh? I thought you would say something like, ‘I care to hear every single one of your words, my Lady Minami, for each one of them carries a hint of your essence that I would never dare dismiss.”

Her eyes are open, and she’s turned her head to face me with a mocking, teasing grin.

I raise an eyebrow.

“You seem to have given a lot of thought as to how I would word such a thought,” I tell her with narrow eyes and a tone somewhat dryer than I would ever expect to be able to muster while fully inside her body.

But, given the pretty way in which her cheeks flush with a pink tinge that quickly deepens as it spreads down her neck and to the top of her breasts…

Well, I deem the effort worthy.

“I swear, you are contagious,” she mutters with both embarrassment, regret, and the hints of a repressed, silly smile.

That I fully return. Except without the embarrassment and regret.

“If that were the case, Minami¸ I’d expect you to be fully infected by now.”

And, just to make clear what I’m talking about, I pull back and slowly yet forcefully sink back into her body.

The leg around my waist tightens, pulling at me, and I take the hint for what it is (a demand, what else?), and do it again, faster, the thrusts shallow as I keep gathering speed until I finally allow our bodies to crash with every downward motion even as Minami manages to swing her hips up to meet me, to add her own strength to our lovemaking as beads of sweat mar her brow.

Except that’s the wrong word because, on her, sweat may as well be a shower of sparkling diamonds.

Diamonds that I sometimes lick off her, to her giggled protests that never amount to much as she kisses and licks my own body in turn.

So I embrace her with my free arm, lifting her shoulders off the futon as the arm upon which her tied leg rests holds us both up, and she latches on the nook of my shoulder with her lips, sucking and yet again marking me like she’s prone to when at her most riled up.

I don’t quite manage to hold back my own moan as I answer her passion with mine, with growing strength in my thrusts as I pull her tighter and closer to me, as her breasts dance against my chest and her hips quiver around me now that the way I hold her impedes her own upwards swinging.

And I…

I pull back. Look into silver eyes that sometimes match her earring and are sometimes matched by it.

And I…

“I love you,” she says. “I love you, and I want you, and I never want this to end, but I really, reallywant you to fill me up, Yoshiteru.”

She bites her lip at the end of the line, both with embarrassment and with pleasure, and I push her back down, her body under mine, sinking into the futon with both our weights as we redouble our thrusting, the loud meeting of our flesh as Minami finally reaches the point where she can no longer hold back her pleasured cries, and I join her in far less melodic moaning and roaring of the ecstasy her touch alone can bring me.

And I, looking straight into her eyes, heeding her stated and unstated demand, allow the fire inside of me to pulse once before I unleash it inside of her, my cock grinding inside of her as I try to keep moving despite the overwhelming waves of sensation, each renewed jet of ejaculate coinciding with her eyes opening or closing, with her silence or screaming, with her clenching or relaxing.

Finally, exhausted after an insufficient lifetime of Minami’s ever-shifting expressions of pleasure, I lower myself to rest on my left side, turning her around to face me as I slowly shift down her left leg and bring the red band of silk down to her sex before I exit her.

And, struck by the kind of inspiration I usually pray to get at four in the morning, I fully slide the ribbon back in place to seal my seed inside of her.

Minami blinks down at where the crimson is darkening further, then back at me with an impish smile.

“You pervert,” she says.

“I do want to hear that from you,” I answer with my own devilish grin.

Or, well, I hope I do.

Given the way she blushes before hugging me and burying her face in my chest, it may be a safe bet.

***

Minami Sagami Is Happy

His scent fills me, his heat is still inside me, and his arms are around me.

And his chest is still as… as comfortableas I discovered it was that first night I woke up in the same bed as him, surrounded by him, hotboxing myself with his smell under soft, warm covers.

In my handbag, there’s a bag of homemade chocolates, the ones I first intended to give him before Mika forced me to improvise. There are a few made with pistachios, a couple with chillis, others with mint, candied orange peel, or almond slivers. With everything I read that goes well with chocolate and that he may appreciate.

I will give it to him.

Tomorrow.

Because there’s no way I’m going to leave this futon until he does.