A/N: Hello, all... It's been a while, huh! I'm trying to get back in the swing of things, but thought I would put this up in the interim.
This story is set in Japan, so there may be a few cultural differences (i.e. putting shoes away, the acute feelings of shame, the use of the "-chan" suffix as a term of endearment).
It's also a bit more rough than my other stories, so I advise against reading this if you're not into that sort of thing.
All characters are 18+ years of age.
As always, enjoy!
*~*
I knew something was wrong when I walked through the doors of the school that morning. There were two other girls standing at the shoe lockers. When they saw me they covered their mouths with their hands and began to whisper to each other. I lowered my eyes and let my hair fall into my face, walking up to my locker and pretending as though I couldn't see them. I slipped out of my shoes, the cold from the floor seeping through my socks.
I pulled out the slippers and bent down to place them on the floor, picking up my shoes and standing back up to place them in the small space. As I closed the door, I heard one of the girls call out to me, tentatively.
"Hey, Reiko..."
The girl had glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She had stepped slightly forward, one of her hands clutched to her chest, her eyes wide. The girl behind her was staring at me, her eyes narrowed and judging.
"Is it true?" the first girl asked.
I blinked slowly, my brow furrowing slightly. "Is what... true?"
"What they're saying about you? What you did with Ken?"
I felt the heat rising to my face, and could imagine the splotches of red color blooming on my cheeks. My heart started beating faster, and I felt the breath hitch in my throat - how the hell could they know about that? Ken wouldn't have dared to say anything, would he?
I smiled weakly and answered her, my voice soft and high-pitched. "I... I don't know what you're talking about..."
"Forget it, Kaoru," the other girl said suddenly. "We already know how her kind is. There's no use trying to get the truth out of a whore." She shot me another filthy look, turned on her heel and began walking away briskly. Kaoru glanced hesitantly at me before following the other girl down the hallway.
I stood alone at the shoe lockers, my fingers white from clutching the cold metal, the sharp edge of the door cutting into the palm of my hand. But I couldn't let go. I needed to hold on to it, to keep from reeling from the notion that rumors of what Ken had done to me were now spreading throughout the entire school.
It's not like it was even my choice, my decision. I wasn't even thinking about it. I was just excited to be spending time with him, happy to know that after so many months of pining over him from afar that he had finally returned my affections. It was the most painful thing, the day I decided to confess to him. I managed to catch him alone just after classes had ended. I was red in the face, and I could barely breathe, but I had had enough of these emotions, welling up inside of me for too long, and I was afraid that if I didn't tell him that I would burst.
Suki da yo, Ken. I really like you.
And amazingly he smiled at me, asked me if he could walk me home and if I would like to stop for dessert on the way.
I couldn't smile wide enough to show how happy I felt.
And so we spent the next few weeks together; Ken would walk me home, and sometimes we would go to a café to get something sweet to eat. Eventually he started to invite me out at night, and we would go to restaurants and walk around the city until it was time for him to walk me home.
He kissed me on the mouth one night, and my eyes flew wide in surprise. I had never been kissed before, but what I was more surprised about was the small jolt I felt shooting to that space between my legs. I had felt it before, but never as strongly as I did then. And I wanted to feel it again. So I kissed him back.
That night I lay in my bed, lazily running my fingers over my lips, imagining Ken kissing me again, and every time the scene replayed itself in my mind's eye I would feel the little shock lighting me up.
And so Ken would kiss me. Never in public, never when other people were around. That was not acceptable. He would kiss me in the hallway between classes, or on the empty streets in the middle of the night, or outside my house when he had walked me home. And I would kiss back, tentatively, because I knew I wasn't supposed to enjoy this, but I couldn't help but yearn for that feeling of desire that shot through me.
Ken seemed to pick up on this soon enough, and that's when things started to go bad. One night we were walking along the streets of the city, taking the long way so I wouldn't have to go home so early. Ken had been acting strangely that day, touching me more than usual, and something dark and predatory had come over his eyes. I wasn't sure what to do, so I didn't say anything, and tried not to upset him. At one point I noticed that he wasn't walking beside me anymore, and I turned to see that he had stopped a few feet back, his face downturned.
"Ken...?"