Hello. ^_^ Sorry this took a while, but a lot has been going on. Thank you everyone once again for following this story like you have.
It really helps to know what I do is appreciated by others, even if I mostly do it for my own enjoyment. Anyway, here's the new chapter! If certain things that happen in it worry you, just be patient, because not everything may quite be what it seems.
Life is full of events that are only
reflections of reality, after all...
Chapter 39However much fun she might have had in rehearsal with Maimi and the others, Saki still didn’t think it really held a candle to what learning the “monkey dance” was like with her Berryz. Of course she’d quietly longed for more of the spotlight ever since ZYX those years ago, but finally doing something else again just made her realize how much she enjoyed her time with those she was already with. Besides, it wasn’t like she never got attention while with Berryz. If nothing else her dancing had been featured, which was really the performing art most important to her in the first place.
It put a different perspective on those days when, after rehearsals, she’d go by herself into a mostly dark studio hall and dance on the stage, her eyes closed imagining the seats in the hall full of people watching her every move… It was something she picked up from Takahashi-san several years ago when she had passed by one of those studios by chance and seen the now-leader of Morning Musume herself doing the same. She wondered if she’d feel the need to do that any longer. Well, she probably would, as that feeling of being alone and within her imagination was something she felt she has needed more than ever recently, and that wasn’t likely to change, despite…
Despite what? What she thought she saw through the blur of the studio lights during their recording? In contrast, during their just finished rehearsal Miyabi seemed to ignore her even more completely than usual. Was her imagination running away with her yet again? Even if it was, could she keep on denying it? Perhaps it was time to take some advice given long ago.
Maimi had invited her and Momo to go to dinner after all their rehearsals were over, and so the arrival of eighteen o’clock saw the three of them laughing and walking from Shinjuku Station to one of their favorite ramen shops. Upon arrival, they unobtrusively took seats at a table in the corner, and after giving their order to the attendant, she and Maimi shared a smile.
“This really brings back memories, doesn’t it Saki-chan?” Maimi commented, picking up some chopsticks and playing with them idly as she spoke. Saki grinned. Her fellow group leader had to always be doing
something.
“Mm?” Saki asked, still grinning.
“You know,” Maimi continued. “Us being together in ZYX. I mean, we see each other all the time of course, but rarely really work together aside from occasionally at the all-project concerts. We even have the token Morning Musume members! I’ll have to admit though…” she said, glancing toward Momo with mirth in her eyes, “Yuukarin’s cuter than Momo was back then.”
“Impossible,” the petite princess peeped in response. “Nothing is cuter than me.”
“We’ll have to take that up with Sayumin sometime,” Saki said, still grinning. “Yuukarin of course would never admit it…”
“Yet another advantage she has over you, Momo,” Maimi said, eyeing the shorter girl over the rim of her teacup. “Humility.”
“Humility is overrated,” Momoko responded, now sounding slightly annoyed.
“You’re pure evil,” Saki said, gazing at her friend in mock awe.
However, her comment didn’t evoke the response she intended. Instead, Momoko’s face fell, and her eyes glazed as she stared off into space. “I wonder…” she said simply.
Gratefully, Maimi cleared her throat and gave a short giggle. “I don’t think she meant for you to take her so seriously, Momo,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. However, the other girl’s eyes remained vacant.
“Is something wrong?” Saki asked, but before she could get the other girl to respond their steaming bowls of noodles arrived, and after the mouth-watering aroma of the various mixed-in spices, as well as the noodles themselves, reached their nostrils, any serious issues were forgotten and the rest of the dinner deteriorated into rather mindless chatter of food and their new releases. Maimi was approaching a time when she would be very busy with promotion for C-ute’s new single,
Namida no Iro, so she had quite a lot to say on the subject aside from the Berryz’ comments lone comments on their own rehearsals.
Afterward the girls headed back toward the station, but Maimi left them there since C-ute was having their release celebration party. That left Saki and Momo on the Yamanote back to Shinagawa, where their hotel for this stay was located.
Momo had been rather quiet since dinner was over, but having herself forgotten what happened before their food arrived, Saki just thought the girl must be too tired, and leaned up nearly against her in case the girl wanted to rest and drifted into thoughts of her own about how she was going to proceed with her perhaps not-so-honorable plans. However, the girl eventually asked a question instead, pulling her back to the present.
“Saki-chan?” Momoko said.
“Yeah?” she responded in her usual quiet and un-excited voice.
“Do you remember when that train I was on derailed?”
“Of course,” Saki replied, raising a hand to pat the other girl’s comfortingly. “I’m not sure that’s something I’ll ever forget. We were all so worried about you.” Momoko was silent for a moment as if she was considering Saki’s words. “Is what happened then still bothering you?” she asked, only half-curious, mostly concerned with comforting her friend.
“No,” Momoko replied. “I mean… well… It’s strange. It feels like that whole part of my life was a dream that I just now seem to be waking up a little bit from.”
Saki frowned over at her. “What are you talking about?” she said. “I’m sure it was scary then, however you managed to survive after getting out of that train, but it was only a few days. Since then things have just been normal.”
“That’s the thing,” Momoko replied, still staring off. “I don’t think I
did get out of that train.”
Saki stared at her. “What are you talking about, Momo?” she asked, squeezing her hand. “You’re here right next to me now, aren’t you?”
“Am I?” the peach girl asked ambiguously. “But what if I didn’t get out of that train alive? Miya said she brought me back from the dead, didn’t she?”
“Of course she didn’t,” Saki responded quickly. “You and I both know that’s impossible.” However, she tried to make her voice sound more certain than she felt.
She of course normally wouldn’t believe it at all, and with how normal things have been since there hasn’t seemed a reason to think about it, but Miya had seemed so sincere about it, and at the time, she found it hard not to trust anything about the girl. Still, that had changed somewhat… She thought again randomly about her chosen new course of action, but the one thing she couldn’t betray was her own feelings.
“I’m not sure about that,” Momoko said quietly. “Like I said, those few months were like a dream, especially the beginning of it, but I do remember I was convinced that I
was dead and had somehow been brought back.”
“If that’s even true,” Saki suggested, “How would you have known?”
However, Momoko stayed silent afterward, seeming lost in thought, and Saki let the time pass like that as the train rolled on around the city. It wasn’t that long a ride, but a half hour was still a long time to just be sitting and doing nothing.
“Hey Momo,” Saki said after a while.
“Mmm?” the other girl replied dreamily.
“Would you hate me if I purposely did something that hurt someone else?”
Her words this time finally seemed to jar her friend out of her reverie, and Momoko looked up at her with birdlike eyes. “What a silly question,” she blurted out, and Saki frowned. “There’s just no chance you’d ever do anything like that.”
The rest of the train ride passed by silently as the two girls just held their hands loosely, each dwelling within her own thoughts. Neither of them knew it, but the same girl was the subject of both.
…
Miyabi arrived in her hotel room late that night tired, as well as frustrated with the day’s events. After watching High-King’s filming she’d done her best to avoid Saki during their own rehearsal, which resulted in her spending more time with Risako. The younger girl thought it a little odd that Miyabi didn’t talk to much anyone else, except Maasa from time to time, but since that meant she had more time with Miyabi to herself she wasn’t all that concerned about it. Miyabi wished she could share the girl’s carefree attitude.
She glanced over at the open suitcase on the other side of the room with a few clothes hanging off its sides. Chinami was technically her roommate for the weekend, and had left most clothes in here to keep up appearances that this is where she actually was staying, but since Yurina had been assigned to a room with Risako, the four of them had quietly decided that Chinami and Risako would trade, for obvious reasons.
Even though Risako had been blissfully unaware at first, by the new year all of the Berryz knew of both relationships. After all, they involved over half the group, which led to private discussions about whether Saki and Momo might also get together since everyone knew they were still close. Maasa impressively held herself above it all, but for some reason Miyabi suspected the girl wasn’t quite as innocent as she appeared.
The thought of Saki and Momo made her feel even more frustrated and exhausted than she already was. “I think I need to do some self-reflection,” she said as she viewed her tired expression in the vanity mirror.
She thought back to the things she had discovered through her ventures into nature’s secrets, which she had been cultivating deliberately over the months since her accident-that-wasn’t-an-accident, but that unfortunately reminded her of one of the specific things she had discovered – that of her, at the time, beloved Saki-chan kissing that devil peach.
Freezing at the unbidden thought, she walked slowly over to her bed and sat on it with her legs crossed, maneuvering gradually into a lotus position in order to attempt to calm herself.
Closing her eyes, she imagined a deep blackness within her and fed her thoughts into that void. Time passed, and she felt as if she was floating away to nowhere. She felt various powers within her grasp as she found the center of her consciousness, including the one that allowed her to completely separate a part of herself and go to another place… such as happened that one time. Such a thing was much easier for her now as she’d gained more control over herself and her environment, but she stayed away from it as if it was a wasp’s nest within her mind.
“Meditating again, huh?” came a voice from beyond the void, but in her focused calm she hardly even heard it, and was able to pay it absolutely no attention.
However, what came next she could not ignore, as she felt something very soft and damp pressed up against a similarly sensitive part of her own body evoke sensations that her brain couldn’t help interpreting and alerting her to.
Not having any idea how long she might have been within the void, she opened her eyes to see her vision blocked by something, and that something’s lips were pressed up tightly against her own.
As she awoke, the kiss ended, and she saw Risako’s sweetly smiling face draw back in front of her. “Funny how that always seems to work,” the girl said with a giggle, and Miyabi smiled in return.
“I would imagine few powers, whether from this world or another, could resist the touch of those lips,” Miyabi said, her smile fading into a grin, and the other girl’s pale face blushed a light pink.
“I wouldn’t know anything about another world…” Risako said. “Or even about any ‘powers’ from this world.”
“Well that’s a surprise,” Miyabi responded, encircling her arms around the young girl’s waist. “You sure wield quite a few of your own.” She raised a hand to touch a finger against those soft lips. “And these are very deadly weapons. You’d better watch what you use them on.”
“I only use them on you, Miya,” the gentle girl responded, and hugged Miyabi tightly to herself, snuggling her face into the crook of her neck.
“You’d better,” Miyabi grinned. “I’m not sure anyone else would have the strength to handle them.”
“Oh I’m not so sure about that…” Risako hinted, and Miyabi felt the full force of those weapons again, this time against her neck. She closed her eyes in the delight. “You’re not so high and mighty as you think you are, Miyabi Natsuyaki-sama. Why, if I can turn you into nothing more than a puddle of goo by just a hug and a few well-placed kisses, I’m not sure how you could stand up against the real demons of the world.”
Despite her urge to remind the girl of a certain encounter she
had with a real demon, very soon she realized a puddle of goo was beginning to be a very good description of her current state. Between the girl’s hands roaming carefully over her and the kisses seeming to sear her neck in multiple spots, she was quickly beginning to lose herself in the moment, something made much easier by the casting off of everything else she had just been attempting.
Soon she couldn’t help herself either and pulled the girl closer, her own hands beginning to wander, and she rubbed her cheek slowly against the lightly almond-scented black hair before her. She noticed Risako begin to breathe heavily almost to the point of making noise as she continued tending to her neck, and Miyabi slid her hand up into the girl’s hair, intending to use some leverage to pull her back into a now much more desired kiss, but instead as Risako’s face rose it pulled away, leaving Miyabi leaning forward into thin air.
“Miya…” the girl said between breaths that were now quite audible. Not wanting to hear any words, Miyabi attempted to lean forward again to claim her sweet rose, but a soft finger against her lips forced her back once again.
They were still holding each other almost impossibly close aside from their faces, but the last unresolved connection of their lips left Miyabi wanting. “Just hold still…” she told the younger girl, a mite impatiently.
The finger still against Miyabi’s lips, Risako shook her head. In response, Miyabi parted those lips and sucked the tip of the finger into her mouth, barely realizing what she was doing. Risako’s breathing halted momentarily, but she made no move to retrieve her finger.
“Miya…” the girl breathed again, lighter and more desperately this time.
“Mmm…?” Miyabi murmured around the captive finger.
“I want you…” Risako responded, and after a moment Miyabi paused in her tender sucking.
Raising her other hand, she grasped the one at her mouth and pulled it back to remove the finger from it, holding it just between them. “What did you say?” Miyabi asked.
Risako looked at her with eyes more earnest than she’d seen in a long time, eyes also filled with desire that she knew must be directed toward her. “I want you, Miya,” the girl said solemnly. “We’ve been together a long while now, and I want…” She paused a second, and a bit of the sincerity seemed to leave her eyes before returning quickly in full force. Along with what she saw reflected in the girl’s eyes, she noticed a new, flowery scent mixing with the almond that was still at her nostrils from before. “I want to feel you against me as you never have been before… I want to feel you
inside of me.”
The two stared into each others’ eyes for a long moment before Miyabi slowly pulled away just the slightest bit. “Do you know what you’re asking?” she asked in a low voice. “After everything you’ve been through… If we would do… that… there’s no going back, Risako. The consequences might be different, but they’re no less serious or severe.” Unwelcome thoughts were welling up within her mind again as she spoke. So much for the exercises she had just done earlier.
“No, I guess I don’t know what I’m asking, because I’ve never done anything like it before,” Risako responded. She tried pulling Miyabi closer again, but the older girl resisted and instead pulled further back, releasing Risako’s small hand to fall into her lap. Her voice seemed to take on a tone of desperation once again, though this time it wasn’t so subtle. “What I do know is I want to be close to you. I want to be close to you like…” She broke off again, and her eyes glanced down slightly, almost imperceptibly, but Miyabi caught them.
…Like Captain was, Miyabi finished within her mind, and along with the misgivings she’d already alluded to, she realized that the girl was at least partly requesting this of her with less than pure intentions, whether she could help it or not.
“Risako,” Miyabi said again, reclaiming her partner’s attention. “Something like this only happens when it’s natural. It’s not something that can be forced, and if it is, especially for the wrong reasons, it can only result in something worse in the end. And like I said before, there’s no going back…”
As Risako continued staring at her with those big dark eyes, Miyabi noticed suddenly that she could see her reflection a bit easier from within them, and a moment later the tiniest teardrop began forming in one corner. “But when will it become natural for us, Miya? When will it be time when… when I can finally really have you?”
“You have me now,” Miyabi said, attempting to muster as sincere a voice as she could offer.
Risako looked back at her as if considering her words for a long moment, but in the end looked down and away, and Miyabi noticed the tears begin streaking slowly down her face. “But I need more…” she said very softly.
Miyabi stared at her girlfriend for another long moment, feeling her mind blank, before shifting across the bed to slide off it and stand up, walking off to the side toward Chinami’s suitcase. “I can’t give that to you right now...” she said to the wall, her eyes staring now unfocused down at the scattered clothes.
When she heard nothing but silence and eventually the sound of soft sniffling from behind her, she began walking woodenly, and slipped out of the door, letting it swing shut by itself behind her. The last thing she wanted to do right now was leave Risako alone, but she was afraid of what the girl would do if she returned and let her pull her into her arms.
Worse, she was afraid of what she would let
herself do…
It just wasn’t time. With Saki it was… it was different. With Saki
she was the one who was being pulled along tenderly in the other girl’s wake. She knew she was definitely not the most mature person yet, but there were things happening inside her, changes, both emotionally and physically, that when the older girl had opened herself to her and made her the same offer she’d just now received once again, she let herself ride along the wave breaking in the other’s wake.
However, in this instance, she didn’t feel she was strong enough to be the one blazing the trail and creating those waves. She’d certainly sailed along that course, but her new mate was far different from her last one, her
Captain. And she also didn’t think Risako was in the same place she had been herself at the time. After all, the girl was still innocent, and she… she was the one who had stolen it. Well, she wasn’t about to do it again so unthinkingly, and for good this time.
“Miya!” exclaimed a high-pitched voice from further down the hall, and she looked up to see a bird-like face peering at her as the new arrival neared.
“Momo,” she responded, in half-deadened surprise. She quickly tried to compose herself, hoping she didn’t show any signs of what she had just been doing.
However, the shorter girl scrutinized her with that astute look she’d developed so well. “You look tired,” she said finally. “I’m surprised you’re not in your room trying to get some early rest.”
“I…” Miyabi stuttered, obviously not keeping her composure as well as she’d hoped.
Momoko reached up and patted her shoulder. “Go get some sleep,” she said. “We have a long day with the PV filming tomorrow. Plus I hear we get to dress up in monkey costumes!”
Miyabi stared at her. What did the girl just say? Monkey costumes? How degrading… They would never get her to do that in a million…
“Hey Miya!” Maasa called as she exited her own room, looking slightly surprised but not unhappy at seeing the activity in the hallway. One look into Miyabi’s face apparently told her something, and her expression changed in a flash. “Want to come to a vending machine with me? I think I could use a late evening snack…”
“Um…” Miyabi said, looking at the taller girl and then once again at the shorter one. Quickly her eyes returned to Maasa. “Sure,” she said in a noncommittal tone, though the word still being enough to acknowledge commitment. She brushed past Momoko and smiled at her friend.
“You two have a good snack,” Momoko said, waving after them. “I might even have one myself in my room while I wait for Captain to get back. That baka girl really does keep herself too busy…”
Miyabi’s smile turned crooked at the girl’s grumbling, but at a raised eyebrow from Maasa she followed her toward the elevator. As they turned a corner she caught sight of the devil peach girl still in the hallway with her back turned to them. Even though the view quickly disappeared behind the wall, Miyabi halted suddenly and stepped back carefully, just enough to peek around the corner once again.
Momoko stood still in front of the door to the room Risako was currently occupying, her head turned halfway to the door as if she could sense something behind it or was even thinking about going in. However, after a few seconds, she began walking normally again and eventually disappeared through her own door.
“You coming?” Maasa called from ahead of her. She turned to see the girl standing impatiently in front of the elevator.
“Yeah,” she replied, and with one glance back down the other hall, turned once again to join her friend.
Topic: Berry Beautiful [Volume 2] (Read 113141 times)