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The mop head drags across the kitchen tile in arcs, the scent of clean water and pine rising in the humid Okinawa morning. Through the open sliding doors, the beach glitters. The sea is doing what it always does at this hour, throwing light around carelessly, gemstones scattered across its surface all the way to the horizon. A breeze wanders in and carries the distant sweetness of the shell ginger that grows wild along the property’s edge. It lifts the edge of the curtain. It touches Haruka’s cheek.
She pauses to rest both hands on the mop handle, closes her eyes, and smiles to take it all in.
Riona is coming today.
Haruka shakes her head a little at herself as she resumes mopping, but the light’s somehow changed. It’s meditative and she thinks about the younger ones at school – Izumi, Shiro, and Eri – three souls out in the world for the day, which leaves the orphanage to Haruka and to the task list she’d made earlier on a piece of grid paper, now tucked into the front pocket of her apron.
She checks it. Front room: done. Kitchen: done. Bathroom and hallway: done. The children’s rooms had been sorted before they even left. So, the only thing left to address is… Ojisan’s.
She walks down the hall, slowing slightly at his door, a half-second of instinctive courtesy even when she knows the house is empty. His scent is there in the doorway, clean and faintly of tobacco. Even though she’s been in here countless times, there’s a sense of bashfulness that always tugs at her, and she needs that moment to get over it.
She slides the door open.
His room isn’t messy – it never is and Haruka makes sure of that – but Ojisan lives with such austere functionality that doesn’t always translate to comfort. The futon is neatly folded but hasn’t been aired in several days, and Haruka clicks her tongue softly as she gathers it in both arms, hauling it with some effort toward the backyard. She drapes it over the sturdy railing around their garden where the sunlight is already pressing in, and she stands back, hands on her hips.
She turns to get back inside the house and then returns to his room. The tatami is clean enough, just needs sweeping. And his few belongings are arranged simply – a jacket half-hazardly thrown on the hook in the corner, a trunk with a lock on it. And then his desk. She frowns at it.
Ojisan is meticulous with the children and their routines. He is less meticulous, it turns out, with paperwork. Haruka crosses to the desk and tilts her head, reading the scattered arrangement of receipts and balance sheets. The opened binder sits askew with loose pages fanned beneath it, like a paper wave had come through and simply not finished receding.
She sits in his chair and sighs, squinting at the drawing she made of him and the dog they saved when they first met, proudly hung up above the desk. “Sorry, Ojisan, I just need a few minutes to sort everything… It’s just the accounts anyway – not like I don’t already sit in here every day to do them,” Haruka murmurs to the crudely scribbled Kiryu. She giggles then, noticing how her nine-year-old self had drawn him holding up a peace sign. Whatever business he has downtown right now better not take too long. Haruka doesn’t want him to be late for dinner with Riona.
Her fingers move through the pages with care, aligning edges, paper-clipping weeks together, squinting at a column of figures that doesn’t quite reconcile. She makes a sticky note to herself in her handwriting – check bank books, Thursday, maybe Friday – and adheres it to Ojisan’s little desk calendar. Then she reaches for the binder to put all the papers back properly.
Something falls out of it.
The magazine slides free of the binder’s back pocket and lands flat on the tatami at her feet. Haruka looks down, and the cover looks up right back at her.
For a long moment she doesn’t move, a deer in headlights. It is, unmistakably, that kind of magazine.
The bikini-clad woman on the cover is undeniably alluring, and Haruka’s mind goes through several phases in quick succession: shock, the urge to look away that flushes her cheeks, and then the strange, rooting inability to.
She crouches down slowly, as though moving carefully might make the situation more reasonable, and picks it up. It sits in her hands, strangely old and fragile. She sighs with a frown.
He is the only man in the house.
It only makes sense. He’s given so much of himself to her and to children who had arrived frightened and left loved. Haruka has always been there to pick up his broken pieces, what with him carrying more than any one person should. She’s watched him absorb worry and redirect it into action, selflessly make himself into whatever was needed by someone else and never once account for the cost of that. For all his strength, he is still human, and Haruka is perhaps the only person on this planet who knows the true extent of that.
Be understanding, she reminds herself. It’s hard for us to see each other with the kids around…
But then, in the very same breath, she opens the magazine.
She doesn’t know quite what she expected… but somehow what she finds is exactly as she expected. There’s a lot of women, a lot of skin, a great deal of careful photography applied to the subject of the human body, and Haruka’s face goes warm. She doesn’t attempt to control it because there is no one here to see it. But Haruka isn’t naive. She knows this world, and has simply never had a reason to look at things like this.
The spread on the next page is of a woman so entirely, effortlessly beautiful. Beauty that is clearly cultivated and attended to. The model wears a see-through top and panties that, to Haruka, more closely resemble a bunch of strings. But what holds her attention is the posture. The quality of the gaze. The model’s absolute ownership of every inch of the frame.
There is a word for it, Haruka thinks, crouched alone in Ojisan’s room with sunlight falling across the open pages.
Maturity.
She knows well that maturity isn’t defined by age… Rather, maturity can be found in a woman who has made her peace with what she is and transformed that peace into a kind of power, worn as effortlessly as the lace that barely contains her.
Haruka thinks about herself.
She is, she knows, plain. And she has never thought to be otherwise. Her hair is functional. Her clothes are clean and appropriate and chosen for ease. She owns a few nice pieces from when she still lived alone in Osaka, but there’s never been an excuse to actually wear them out. She has spent most of her eighteen years in motion – raising kids, running from any danger Ojisan protects her from – and in all of that motion, the question of her own appearance has always arrived last, if it arrived at all.
But now, looking at the photos in her hands, her stomach twists, and it’s not envy, not quite – more like recognition that there might be a version of herself she has simply never thought to look at.
What does Ojisan see when he looks at her–?
Her phone plays a melody.
Haruka stands immediately, the magazine snapping shut in her hands. The taxi is three minutes away, says the text notification.
She puts the magazine back into the binder’s back pocket with care and closes it before untying her apron. Her reflection in Ojisan’s mirror catches her attention.
The mirror shows her her own face, unremarkable and familiar. Her hair in its usual ponytail. Her shirt, pressed and clean, sleeves rolled to the elbow. She looks… fine.
But there’s a new and tentative question forming behind her eyes that wasn’t there earlier this morning, and she’s not sure yet what she intends to do with it.
Whatever. She can carry it to the airport and back, and then she’ll have time to brood over it alone or something.
The heat outside is immediate and full-bodied, the sunlight beating down on the top of her head. Her path to the cuts across the front yard, past Mame’s doghouse and the stone bench where Riona used to sit with her sketchbook, filling pages with dresses and the future she was designing for herself in ballpoint pen. That bench is empty most of the time now.
Haruka basks in the summer on her skin, thinking about a fourteen-year-old girl at an airport gate, waiting to come home after so, so long. She remembers the morning when Riona had stood in their dining room and explained what the school was, what the program meant, what Tokyo could give her that Okinawa could not. The girl had explained it seriously and clearly to Haruka and Ojisan with fire in her eyes.
I want to go, Riona had said. This is my dream.
And Haruka had looked at Ojisan and Ojisan had looked at Haruka, and they had both known that she meant it, and that the only thing left was to help Riona get her foot in the door.
They had called Sunflower that same evening.
The taxi horn sounds softly from the road.
Haruka picks up her step, her tote bag at her side, the morning brilliant and salt-sweet around her.
***
The airport is full of the usual sounds of luggage wheels rasping across polished floors and families in various states of reunion clustered near the arrivals gate. Haruka stands just beyond the barrier with her bag held in both hands in front of her, weight shifting from one foot to the other. She checks the board. The flight landed eleven minutes ago.
She looks back up at the doors, and then they open. There Riona is.
She is – Haruka blinks – a very different kid than who Haruka remembers. Not dramatically so, but enough that it makes Haruka’s stomach lurch at the evidence of the time that’s passed them by. Riona walks through the arrivals crowd with a rolling suitcase trailing behind her and a canvas tote of her own slung over one shoulder, her dark hair cut into a style that Haruka doesn’t recognize from their last video call.
Their eyes meet, and Riona’s face breaks into a grin. “Haruka-oneechan!”
Haruka is already moving, and they meet just past the barrier in a bear hug – arms going around each other immediately, Riona’s chin finding Haruka’s shoulder, the suitcase handle abandoned. Haruka squeezes her eyes shut. “Did you get taller?” Haruka asks.
Riona pulls back and laughs, and her face in full is bright and a little tired. “I grew like two centimeters, you’re being dramatic.”
“I’m allowed.” Haruka holds her by the shoulders and looks at her properly, cataloguing. The haircut. The small silver stud in her left ear that’s new. The confidence in her posture – the most Riona thing Haruka has ever seen. “I missed you a lot.”
“I missed you, too.” She picks up the suitcase handle again, falling into step beside Haruka as they move toward the exit. “I love Tokyo. I really, really love it. The school is amazing and everyone at Sunflower is so kind. I feel lucky." She pauses. “But I got homesick. Like, genuinely, embarrassingly homesick. I’d be in the middle of a sketching class and just suddenly think about the sound the ocean makes at night through the windows…”
“Morning Glory’s beach is waiting for you.”
“Then let’s go swimming today!” Riona cheers. “– Also Mame. I thought about Mame a lot. How is he?”
“Sounds like fun! And Mame is fine… fat and happy and completely in charge of the household, same as always.”
Riona laughs again, and for a moment the world becomes just the two of them in the bright airport corridor, the outside light beckoning ahead, and Haruka thinks that happiness is sometimes a very simple and physical thing – just a particular person walking beside you through an ordinary door.
Outside, while they wait for the taxi, Riona tips her face up to the Okinawa sky and breathes in with her eyes closed, deliberate and greedy, like she’s taking something back that belongs to her.
Then she opens her eyes and looks at Haruka. “I need to go shopping for clothes.”
Haruka frowns. “Shopping? You know we kept your boxes. We haven’t thrown anything away, so if you forgot anything...”
Riona’s expression sours, akin to mild horror. “Neechan…” Her voice is very gentle, choosing her words around this as if it’s a sensitive subject. “I love you for keeping it. But that wardrobe is–” She pauses. “It’s not me anymore.”
Haruka raises an eyebrow. “I know it’s felt like longer, but you’ve only been gone a year...”
“It’s been a very formative year! A lot can change in that time. Before you know it, I’ll be in high school.” Riona says it with complete seriousness. “I did forget my swimsuit… but I am not wearing the one you kept. I think that thing’s covered in cartoon starfish…”
Haruka covers her mouth to hide a chuckle. “Uh huh…”
“Please.”
“All right, all right.” Haruka shakes her head. “Tokyo has made you sophisticated, I see.”
Riona squares her shoulders with tremendous dignity. “Someone has to be. Actually, while we’re on the subject – Haruka-neechan, when was the last time you bought new clothes?”
Haruka’s mouth falls open.
“Because,” Riona continues pleasantly, “you are genuinely so pretty and you walk around in these outfits like you’re an old lady, and it’s a little distressing.”
“Excuse me. Did you just say I wear old lady clothes?”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve watched you mend that top like twenty times through all the years we’ve known each other. It’s okay to let things go!”
“It’s a comfortable top…”
“It’s a cry for help.”
“Riona…”
The taxi pulls up, and Riona folds herself primly into the back seat with the air of someone who’s won the argument and is being gracious about it. Haruka follows her, stowing the suitcase, already feeling the corners of her mouth betraying her.
“Hmm, okay,” Haruka says, settling back as the car pulls away from the curb, the palm trees outside beginning their slow scroll across the window. “Maybe I could look at a few things.”
Riona turns to her with a smile so bright it is almost solar. “That’s all I ask.”
***
They drop Riona’s luggage at the house. She makes her requisite circuit of the orphanage with reverence and a hunger that Haruka watches quietly, seeing the girl refamiliarize herself with the smell of the place, drag her fingers along the front room doorframe, crouch down to receive Mame’s ecstatic greeting with both hands buried in his fur. Then they take the monorail from the station near the house into Downtown Ryukyu, the city unfurling beneath them as the train rises.
The store Riona leads them to is the kind of place Haruka has walked past but never entered. She considers it fancy with its mannequins in the window wearing things that cost more individually than Haruka typically spends on a week of groceries, a level of air-conditioned quiet inside that suggests the price tags justify themselves with atmosphere alone. Haruka lingers at the entrance for just a moment. She would feel more at home in the narrow aisles of thrift shops. It’s an underappreciated skill to dig through a rack and bask in the small triumph of pulling a piece out from between two forgettable garments and seeing that it is, in fact, exactly right, and that it costs just one thousand yen. This place operates on entirely different logic.
“Come on,” Riona says, already three steps inside, turning back to hold out her hand.
Haruka sighs, takes it, and steps through the door.
Browsing the first floor, Riona pulls things from rails without hesitation, holds them up, puts some back and drapes others over her arm, consulting no one, needing no one, her eye working faster than her hands.
“I thought we were just getting you a swimsuit,” Haruka comments.
“Yeah! I just wanna try these on, not buy them. I have a project coming up at school and I think I can take some inspiration from a few of these…”
Haruka trails her, occasionally fingering the sleeve of a top before checking the price and returning it to the rail. But her mind, unmoored from the familiar ritual of bargain-hunting, drifts.
It drifts, annoyingly, back to the morning. Back to Ojisan’s room and the magazine falling out of the binder. To the spread she had turned to and the woman in it. She can’t discard the image of the composed, easy authority of the model, lace falling open like it was the most natural thing in the world, like she had never once considered covering herself more than she wanted to.
Haruka presses her lips together and follows Riona up the escalator.
The swimwear section occupies a sun-lit corner of the third floor, the displays arranged in groupings by style. Riona moves through it with confidence, pulling things from the racks with the same decisive energy she’d shown downstairs, holding up a navy two-piece, a simple black one-piece, a striped bandeau set.
Haruka wanders slightly away from her.
And stops.
On the end display is a two-piece set in a shade of pink-like terracotta, the top a structured halter with a very low plunge, and the bottom small and held together only by ties at the sides. The kind of cut that has no interest in hiding anything. Haruka finds that it’s similar to the swimsuit that the woman on the magazine cover had been wearing.
“Ooh,” Riona notices with great satisfaction. “You should get that.”
“A-Absolutely not!” Haruka replies immediately.
“Why not?”
“Could you really see me wearing this?” I’m probably the last person who could pull it off…
Riona plants herself in front of Haruka with both arms full of her own selections, expression severe. “Yes! Just look at it.” She takes the hanger from the display and holds it up against Haruka. “Your body type? Your silhouette? This would look incredible on you.”
Haruka returns a skeptical look.
“I might have been studying fashion for only a year,” Riona continues and doesn’t budge. “But… you have the most amazing figure, Neechan. And you literally never show it. It makes me want to cry a little.”
Haruka’s cheeks darken. “Y-You’ve become pretty desensitized to seeing these sorts of clothes in Tokyo, huh?”
“I mean… Yes, probably. You see everything in Tokyo. Every kind of beauty, every style. You stop being embarrassed by things pretty quickly.”
Haruka looks at the swimsuit and then away from it.
When Riona speaks again, her voice has changed – softer, the teasing dropped entirely. “You know what I can’t keep my mind off of?” She sets the swimsuit down over her arm with her other things. “You were always in extreme couponing mode, for as long as I can remember living with you. Always putting things back, always making sure everyone else had enough first.” A pause. “I never once saw you buy something for yourself just because you wanted it.”
Haruka is quiet.
“But I remember watching you on TV,” Riona admits, and her eyes are distant for a moment, focusing somewhere past Haruka’s shoulder, accessing a private memory, “You were on one of those music shows, in this white dress with this light on you, and I remember thinking that I had never seen anyone so beautiful in my whole life. I thought that when I grow up and become a fashion designer, I want her to be my model. I want to make things worthy of a person who looks like that.”
Haruka swallows thickly.
Riona smiles. “I know you weren’t happy then and that the idol world wasn’t yours. But that shine – Haruka-neechan, that wasn’t the lights or the dress or any of it. That was you. And I think if you ever find the version of yourself that’s happy, and a little selfish, and dressed in something she actually chose for herself–” She stops, straightens, and takes Haruka’s hands in hers. “I think you’d become the most beautiful person on the planet.”
Haruka looks at her for a long moment, and there is nothing she can say that is adequate, so she just shakes her head and averts her gaze downward to the terracotta fabric draped over Riona’s arm, then says, very quietly: “Thank you.”
“So you’ll get it?”
Haruka laughs despite herself. “You’re impossible.”
“I learned from Ojisan.”
“Pfft. You know what? I still have to let him know you’re here. Give me a second.”
She opens the message thread on her phone. His replies, as always, are basically immediate.
Riona landed safe and we dropped off her bags at the house. We’re downtown because she wanted to go shopping.
His text comes through: Thanks for meeting up with her. Good timing… I’m nearly done. See you guys at the monorail when you’re finished?
Haruka types back: Yes. And Ojisan, I won’t spend too much, promise.
His response takes less than thirty seconds. What? Don’t worry about that. I have pocket money set aside that can cover it if you want something for yourself too.
Haruka reads it twice. A sound escapes her, small and impossible to suppress, a laugh that she presses the back of her hand against too late. Oh, when he spoils her, she loves it so, so much… It’s the only time when she can stop feeling guilty about just wanting things.
The universe seems to be sending her clear signals to get this darn swimsuit.
“What? Did he respond to you?” Riona asks and cranes her neck to see the screen.
Haruka tilts the phone away. “He’s nearly done with his errands. We’ll see him at the monorail after this.”
“Okay.” Riona studies her face with narrowed eyes. “Neechan?”
“Mm.”
“... Do you like someone?”
But of course the floor doesn’t swallow Haruka. It would be too easy of an escape.
“What,” Haruka says flatly. Her face is the color of the bikini.
“It’s not a hard question…”
“Where did you even come up with the idea?”
“Your face!” Riona replies, gesturing at it with open delight. “Your face since the airport! I see it all the time whenever my classmates have a crush, like you’re... troubled by something, I guess? I’m glad. It means you’re thinking about something other than groceries.”
“I think about a lot of things other than groceries–”
“Tell me who it is!”
“I-It’s a secret,” she says, with great dignity. “For now. You can’t say anything to anyone. Do you understand me? Not a word.”
Riona presses both hands to her heart, genuinely moved. “I get to keep a secret for Haruka-oneechan...”
“Please don’t make it weird.”
“I would never.” Riona picks up the bikini and holds it out, wiggling it teasingly in front of the other’s face. Her chin is lifted. Her case is closed. “Now buy this! Maybe the boy you like would be happy to see you in it, too.”
Haruka eyes flick between the outfit and Riona.
She thinks about the women in the magazine. She thinks about Riona at ten years old, filling a sketchbook on a stone bench with the future she already knew was hers. She thinks about Ojisan’s message, and something in her chest, some tightly held and practical thing, loosens by a single, tentative degree.
She takes the hanger. “Fine.”
After Haruka pays for their things, they step back out into the Downtown afternoon with their bags swinging. The monorail station is ten minutes down the main road. Riona walks beside her, telling her about a pattern-cutting assignment that had been the most difficult thing she’d ever attempted and the most satisfying thing she’d ever completed, and Haruka listens, amazed to see how Riona’s dreams are becoming reality before her very eyes.
The station comes into view, and there, at the base of the stairs, is a familiar silhouette, grocery bags in one hand and cigarette between his fingers in the other, looking in their direction.
Riona sees him first and breaks into a run.
Ojisan drops his cigarette and smothers it with his foot, so that he can hug the girl properly. Riona clings to him. “Ojisan! It’s been so long!”
“You look different,” he replies, “Has it only been a year?”
“I know, right?” Riona’s voice is muffled against his chest, her arms wrapped around his middle. “Tokyo is– Ojisan, I can’t even explain it to you, it’s like…”
Haruka watches from ten paces behind and doesn’t close the distance yet.
The afternoon light is amber across his tan skin, printing his shadow long across the pavement. She can sense it from here, his happiness, that it’s complicated. That he’s proud, and glad, and that somewhere underneath both of those sits the heavy knowledge that he had let Riona go because she had begged, and that he would do it again without a moment’s hesitation all so that she could achieve whatever she desired. It’s a lonely yet sweet feeling.
He loves them so much, Haruka thinks, and it’s enough to make her tear up a bit. I love him so much.
He looks up then, finds her eyes across the ten paces, and nods – the small, acknowledging nod that means hello and there you are and several other things she reads without needing words.
Haruka nods back, and closes the distance.
***
The monorail comes minutes after they reach the platform, and they board in the arrangement they’ve fallen into a hundred times – Riona between Haruka and Ojisan at the window.
Riona has not finished talking. Haruka could never get tired of it.
“–and I didn’t think I’d miss the food this much,” Riona says, her shopping bag balanced on her knees, “because Tokyo food is incredible, it really is, so I was surprised when I tried Okinawan food there… It was bad–”
“Well, you’re here now. What do you want to eat when we get home?” Ojisan responds.
Riona stops mid-sentence and pivots entirely. “I’m here for a week, so I’ll have my fill of Okinawan cuisine… What I really want right now is your curry! With the chunky onions that you cut all uneven.”
Haruka turns fully to look at Ojisan and finds him with tinted cheeks. She covers her mouth with her hand to hide her smile, to which he clicks his tongue.
“Of course I can make curry,” he says proudly. “But I’ll have you know that my cooking skills aren’t what they were before. Haruka’s been teaching me and my onions aren’t weird anymore.”
“Aw… It isn’t the same, though.”
Haruka doesn’t bother to hold back her laugh this time, and Ojisan’s eyes cut to her briefly with a long-suffering expression.
“We’ll have seafood too,” Haruka adds, composing herself. “I prepped some things this morning, so I can put snacks together before we all go swimming. That way, no one’s too hungry before dinner actually comes out.”
Riona sighs with the contentment. “Sounds like a plan!”
Ojisan glances across Riona to Haruka. “You two got everything you needed? From shopping.”
“I got a new swimsuit,” Riona says immediately, patting her bag. “Long-sleeved one-piece with a really cute print, I’m obsessed with it. Oh, and Haruka-neechan got a new one, too.”
Haruka shrinks when he quirks a brow at her.
***
The three younger children have beaten them home, and what follows Riona’s entrance into the house is jubilant chaos. Riona crouches to dig through her suitcase right there in the hallway, distributing souvenirs and embraces.
Ojisan steps past Haruka and into the kitchen to put the groceries down. She follows, and they sort through the bags together. His hand brushes close to hers once as they reach for the same package of mushrooms and he corrects without comment. “I’ll get the beach things together,” he says after they’re done.
“Alright, I’ll do the snacks and meet you out there.”
He nods, and leaves, and Haruka turns to the cutting board, for some reason with butterflies in her stomach.
***
The door to his room is open when she holds out the receipt to him. Haruka stays planted in her spot at the doorway, refusing to enter.
Ojisan takes it, looks at it, turns it over once. “This is from your shopping trip today?”
“Mhmm.” She wrings her hands together. “It should go in the binder, for accounts. I’ll update the bank book later in the week.”
He looks at the receipt for a moment longer, then up at her. “... Are you alright, Haruka? Do you wanna come in?”
“N-No! And I’m fine! Just – put it in the binder, please.”
She can feel his gaze on the back of her head as she turns to leave. She has seconds before he asks a question.
He starts, “Hey–”
But she scurries away with just enough time to pretend she didn’t hear him.
***
Haruka changes in her room before she can talk herself out of it, stands in front of her full-length mirror in the new swimsuit, and then, for a moment, freezes and just looks.
The mirror shows her a reflection she doesn’t entirely recognize. She examines it, tries to comprehend. She knows the shape. It has always been hers. She’s just never… framed it like this. Never given it this much light to stand in.
She thinks, miserably – I hope Ojisan likes it.
The heat in her face is immediate and she grabs her cover-up, tying it around herself securely.
She imagines asking him. Turning to him on the beach with her stomach held tight, asking shyly if it suits her, and she can already predict his response. He would look at her, humoring her as usual, and say “sure” or “looks fine” or some variation, brief and polite, and she would nod and that would be the end of it. Maybe he’d pat her head if she’s lucky.
The thought settles her nerves. It is also, if she’s honest, a little deflating.
She pulls the tie of the cover-up tighter and goes outside.
***
The beach is already assembled when she crossesf the road – blankets lain, chairs placed, the rolled towels stacked on the seats. The sky is doing its late-afternoon exhibition over the water, blues deepening, the light going gold where it hits the waves. The three younger children are already in the water, Izumi up to her knees and shrieking about it, Shiro with his hands in the water, Eri trying very hard to throw a shell she found on the shore as far as she can into the sea. Riona is snorkeling.
Ojisan stands to the side, arms folded and watching them. He wears his black and red swimming trunks and his shirt is open, the fabric moving in the breeze off the water, the late light printing itself along the line of his shoulders. Haruka takes her place near him and thinks with the helpless candor she permits herself only when no one can notice her face. Of course. Of course he looks like that…
She’s always liked watching him in the water. It’s a special occasion, seeing Ojisan when he goes out with his spear, emerging later with dinner proudly caught. Like a real-life merman.
Riona notices her after removing her snorkeling gear. “Haruka-neechan! Are you wearing it? Can I see?!”
Haruka laughs, unties the cover-up, and shrugs it from her shoulders.
“Pretty!” Riona claps both hands together. “You look so good! See? What did I tell you?”
“Okay, okay–” Haruka shakes her head, folding the cover-up over the back of a chair.
She is aware, with every nerve along her left side, that Ojisan has his eyes on her.
She doesn’t look at him right away. She looks at the water, at the children, at Riona doing a small celebratory motion in the surf. The sand is warm under her feet. The ocean is right there.
Then, after gathering her courage, Haruka turns to him.
“You’re the one who said to get what I wanted,” she says, keeping her voice light, conversational, tucking her hands together in front of her. Her heart is conducting itself terribly. “What do you think…? Riona wanted to show off her taste in fashion.”
He scans her.
His eyes meet hers and she realizes this is not the reaction she anticipated. He holds her gaze for precisely one second and then turns back to the ocean, his brows furrowed.
“... It’s pretty small,” he mumbles. “But it’s for swimming, so I guess it can’t be helped.”
Haruka stares at his profile. She doesn’t know what to do with this information.
“Right,” she says. “Swimming!” She reaches over and takes his hand, because the kids are waiting and the water is right there and she needs to move before she makes a complete disaster of herself just standing around. Walking him toward the shore, she feels him come without resistance, matching her stride, the warmth of his palm against hers ordinary yet incandescent.
Haruka wades in to her waist and feels the day’s tension release and melt away. Shiro tries to splash Ojisan, which goes poorly, because Ojisan’s reflexes are way too sharp. “Nice try,” he teases the boy, before countering perfectly with a huge splash of his own (more like a wave), taking down not only Shiro but everyone else, as well. Eri and Izumi scream in delight.
Izumi tries to tackle Haruka without warning and is launched back into the water, which earns Eri’s teasing. Haruka ducks under once, fully, and surfaces, pushing her hair back, and everything is just – good. Simply, cleanly good. She wouldn’t trade a day at the beach with her family for anything else.
“Doesn’t she look like a mermaid?” Riona asks the others.
Eri nods and plays along, though obviously more invested in getting a reaction from Haruka than being genuinely encouraging. “Mhm, and now she’s even sparkly thanks to the water.”
“I–” Haruka stammers, “I should go start dinner. The fish needs time to grill and I still have to prep the–”
The other teenagers register her departure with the standard chorus of complaint – already? but the sunset! – and Shiro attempts a negotiation for fifteen more minutes.
Ojisan goes nearer to her and joins their hands, making her startle. “I’ll help. You kids can have at the snacks Haruka made in case you get too hungry. Just don’t ruin your appetite.” Unsurprisingly, this is well received. The snack announcement is always well received.
They cross the beach together after quickly drying. In their front yard, Haruka wrings the saltwater from the ends of her hair and forces herself to focus on the next task: dinner. She is focused, darn it. She is not distracted by anything else. She is absolutely not thinking about Ojisan’s initial reaction to her new outfit.
“You can shower first. I’ll get started on prep while I wait,” he says.
Haruka chews on her bottom lip, her damp cover-up clutched in both hands. She looks down at herself, at her outfit.
Dinner will take an hour at most, between the seafood and the curry and getting everything out to the table before four hungry teenagers stalk the kitchen asking if it’s ready yet. That’s an hour in which she will be in an apron, behind a stove, entirely and definitively back to being the practical version of herself that does not own a bikini and doesn’t care about whether she’s in any way comparable to the models in a gross magazine.
… But she had bought this thing with Ojisan’s money. She had stood in front of her mirror with Riona’s insistence and that magazine in her mind, imagining what it might feel like to be looked at with that kind of attention, and worn it down to the water. None of it – not one moment of it – had been for no reason.
And she has until she walks through the orphanage’s front door.
“A-Actually!” Haruka stutters out. Her reasoning assembles itself around the truth, “We’re making a lot of food tonight, so taking turns will hardly make a difference and we’ll have lost time, even. It’s not very practical… It’d be faster if we just went at the same time so we can work together straight after. Everyone’s busy playing, anyway…”
Her explanation is sound, but it’s also the thinnest cover she’s ever made up by herself, and Ojisan probably sees right through her.
She keeps her eyes on her feet. Infuriatingly, his smile can be heard in his words, “Alright, then.”
***
The bathroom door closes behind them. Ojisan turns the water on, steam begins to rise.
He turns away from her to pull his shirt from his shoulders, and the dragon on his back reveals itself in full, the great coiled body of it commanding the entire breadth of him. Haruka understands, watching him strip himself of his clothing, that he’s letting her take the lead on this.
She goes to drop her own cover-up in the corner where Ojisan’s shirt’s been discarded. The water is hot as it cascades on her, and she doesn’t think twice about closing the distance between them then, wrapping her arms around him from behind, her cheek pressing to the space between his shoulders where the dragon breathes. She feels him absorb the contact, his moment to bask in it.
Haruka presses her lips to the dragon’s face, just on his left shoulder blade. “You don’t have to turn away from me,” she says softly into his skin, the tattoo she has looked at her entire life and never, until now, kissed. “Are you being shy?”
“The swimsuit,” he sighs, and his voice has already changed – lower, almost breathless. “I was being strange about it earlier. I’m sorry.”
Haruka keeps her cheek against his back. “... Do you actually like it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure? It’s not too–”
“Yes, Haruka. I’m sure.”
She giggles, and she feels the way he reacts to it, the slight shift of his shoulders. “Are you worried about me?” she asks into the warmth of him. “All that skin showing?”
He replies in a whisper, “... Of course I’m worried.” His hand comes up to cover hers where they rest on his chest. “I worry about everything that has to do with you…”
He turns around, takes her face in his hand, and tilts it up. Ojisan kisses her smiling mouth.
This is their secret, this stolen seam in an ordinary evening – the children some meters away on the beach and dinner still unmade, the two of them here in this small and precious window of opportunity they’ve learned to take without apology.
She is greedy about it and lets herself be, pressing into him rather than waiting, her mouth opening beneath his with a willingness that she’d have blushed to death over in any other context. Her hands slide up his chest and she tilts her chin, asking for more angle, more access, giving him every inch of it in return – the softness of her tongue, the inside of her mouth, and he obliges her. He has always, in his way, given her exactly what she reaches for.
“I didn’t think,” he says against her cheek, his thumb tracing along her jaw, “that you’d go this far for my attention.”
Haruka stares at him.
His attention?
The warmth in her chest catches a different kind of heat and she brings her hand up to swat his chest – flat-palmed, unambiguous, the same gesture she’s deployed on him for years when he is being specifically, pointedly insufferable. “You’re… Ugh! You’re so dense!”
Surprised, he gives her back her personal space, trying to search her expression, genuinely clueless.
Haruka is already flushed from the steam and the kiss and the afternoon and she is aware that she is not, right now, the composed version of herself. She is the version who has been self-effacing for a long time, has looked at herself in mirrors and decided she was fine without asking if she could be more. She is that Haruka, and she is also the Haruka who bought a skimpy bikini today and meant something by it, and right now those two sides of herself are in complete, unambiguous agreement.
She just wants him to want her.
That’s the whole thing. That’s all it has ever been, ever since she learned for the first time that he had the ability to leave her. Haruka wants him to reach for her even with the way she is, plain and practical and in love with him since before she had a word for what that meant.
She surges forward and takes his mouth with hers, crowding into his space until his back is against the wall. This kiss is the product of a morning spent on her knees cleaning his room and finding that magazine and understanding for the first time what he looks at in private, of an afternoon in a clothing store with Riona’s voice in her ear and the universe sending her signals she’d decided, finally, to receive.
She bites his lower lip, feels him exhale hard against her mouth and good – good – he should know exactly how little patience she has left.
She breaks from his mouth and goes to his jaw, his throat, the flat of his collarbone. Her lips drag down his sternum. This is what Haruka can take back, what she’s been leaving on the table for years out of an excess of patience and a deficit of selfishness, and she is done being patient, she is done being last. His stomach tightens under her mouth as she descends, muscles contracting, his breathing audible now over the run of the water, stripped of its usual architecture.
Her knees find the tile. Haruka looks up once just to see his face, because she’s decided she wants all of him and she has the universe’s permission. He looks back down at her, totally open and undefended in his expression, and Haruka, who has spent eighteen years being sensible, reaches for his waistband and pulls.
She knows the theory, and because it’s all she has, figures that it will have to be enough. Her mind conjures the memory of those pages, the frank and unflinching photography, and alongside it comes a fresh wave of irritation.
Haruka wraps her fingers around his cock. He’s not yet fully hard and this is, she realizes, information that’s intimate and specific, the kind you can only receive this close and on your knees. She pumps the shaft slowly, the way she’d seen demonstrated in the magazine, and feels the response travel through him like a current finding its path.
“Haruka.” His voice has dropped to something she has never heard before – a register below his usual low, pleading, at her mercy. “What are you… Where did you learn–”
She shoots him a glare and keeps moving her hand. Can’t he see that she’s concentrating?
The change beneath her palm is extraordinary. She finds herself genuinely transfixed by it, how warmth becomes weight, the translation from pliancy to something insistent and solid. Her grip has to adjust to accommodate what she has, apparently, done.
Haruka leans forward. Her lips find his tip first, a tentative press, getting her bearings. The magazine had been instructive but it had not accounted for the taste. It surprises her at first, making her pause, but it doesn’t take long for her to realize that she could get used to it.
That’s why she goes on to use her tongue, swirling around his cockhead, flicking curiously at the slit. Learning as she goes, Haruka feels Ojisan’s hand tighten in her hair.
Above her, his breathing has abandoned all pretense of composure. The understanding that she’s doing this to him is unexpectedly dizzying, a vertigo that isn’t unpleasant, that she leans into rather than away from, and her own pulse is thunderous in her ears as she finds a pace that makes him press back against the shower wall with a sound that he catches too late. “Fuck. You’re so sexy, Haruka.”
She almost rolls her eyes. As if there’s any universe where a young woman on her knees and in a bikini isn’t considered sexy. Haruka stops what she’s doing only to say one word to him through her teeth: “Pervert.”
“Yeah…”
Haruka lowers her head once more. She takes him past her lips, pushing aside the last vestiges of her hesitation, and closes her mouth firmly around his straining length. Her cheeks hollow as she draws inward, attempting to apply the demanding pull she had only ever conceptualized from those glossy pages and pure instinct. It’s clumsy at first, less controlled breath and wet friction, but she’s able to press her tongue flat against his underside and create a tight seal.
The slick sound of her efforts is nearly swallowed by the roar of the falling water. She works her jaw, pulling at the heavy, pulsing heat of him with a steady suction that finally draws a ragged, chest-deep groan from the man above her. Steaming water runs over his rigidly tensed abdominal muscles as his fingers tangle desperately in her wet hair, anchoring himself against the sweet, suffocating pressure of her mouth.
“Your hand. Please,” Ojisan groans, his voice a fractured, guttural rasp as his hips twitch helplessly, minutely forward, seeking friction she isn’t quite providing while trying to restrain himself. The gentle, instructive plea, though gasped out in pure need, hits Haruka like a splash of cold water, instantly shattering her carefully constructed facade of worldly seduction. A violent, searing heat floods her cheeks, burning far hotter than the scalding spray of water over her shoulders as acute embarrassment twists in her gut; it is painfully, humiliatingly obvious now that she has never done this before, entirely out of her depth with a cock this huge and demanding.
Yet, driven by the stubborn, prideful streak that’s motivated her to this point, she absolutely refuses to pull away, her face flushing a dark crimson around him as she maintains that wet suction. Swallowing her humiliation along with his salty and slick precum, Haruka blindly wraps her delicate fingers around the thick base of him, her grip sliding tight against his skin.
She begins to stroke him in a clumsy but earnest tandem with her mouth, her fist pumping hard up and down the throbbing column while her lips and tongue continue their ministrations on the sensitive head.
“That’s it, Haruka, that’s good,” Ojisan rasps, the unfiltered praise tearing from his chest as his hips begin to involuntarily chase her hand and mouth. The gravelly vibration of his voice cuts straight through the steaming air, striking a sudden, violent jolt of pure arousal down along her spine, bypassing her lingering embarrassment and pooling as heat right between her thighs. Beneath the wet fabric of her new bikini, a slick ache blooms, her own body fiercely responding to the intoxicating realization that she is this unbreakable man's undoing. Her breath hitches through her nose, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, entirely consumed by the primal thrill of his validation.
Driven by that white-hot rush of confidence, Haruka decides that simply tasting him isn’t nearly enough; she wants to take all of him. Tightening her fist around his base, she tilts her chin further up to straighten the fragile column of her throat and pushes herself forward. She slides her slick lips down the thick shaft, forcing the blunt head over the back of her tongue and past the sensitive arch of her palate. A quiet, stifled whimper vibrates in her throat as her body’s natural instinct fights the deep intrusion, a hot tear pricking the corner of her tightly squeezed eyes as she suppresses a soft gag. But rather than retreating, she stubbornly swallows around him, stretching her jaw to sheathe the unyielding length of his cock as deeply as her inexperienced throat will physically allow.
Ojisan moans and cradles Haruka’s full cheek. She can’t take it for very long and she sputters around his dick, her saliva thick and glossy, before she falls back on her butt. She’s coughing, clearing her throat, trying desperately to catch her breath.
He comes back to his senses immediately and kneels to check on her. “Are you okay?! You can’t push yourself too hard–”
“You’ll be sorry if you keep talking,” she snaps back, her entire body heaving, “I-I can’t do it by myself and we don’t have time. I’ll sit against the wall and you can– you can just use my throat…”
Haruka wants to laugh at him, seeing clearly how his mind short circuits at her suggestion. But he shakes his head. “What are you talking about? We’re stopping here.”
“Really? Even when you’re like this?”
She reaches out to touch him again, the tip of her pointer finger rubbing along the special bit of skin under his cockhead. It twitches, and this time she doesn’t stop herself from chuckling.
It sets him off. Ojisan hauls her to the wall, letting her sit, and positions himself over her. He guides his hot length over her face, rubs against her cheek, and the flush staining her skin reaches all the way down to her chest.
He pushes his tip past her plush lips. “Okay, we’re doing this. You’re gonna tap me twice if you need me to stop. You got that?”
“Mmf,” she nods, then braces herself.
With a ragged exhale, Ojisan drives his hips forward, burying himself past her lips and deep into her throat. Haruka’s eyes widen instinctively, her hands on his thighs to stabilize herself as he begins to move. He starts off agonizingly slow, a dragging friction that forces her jaw to its limit, but as her warm, wet compliance envelops him, his restraint begins to fray. The pace accelerates, turning into thrusts that batter against the back of her throat.
The sheer size of him holds her mouth completely open. Haruka tries desperately to keep up, swallowing hard and forcing herself to breathe through her nose, but his stealing her air proves to be too much. A brutal, reflexive gag hitches in her throat, cutting off her oxygen completely. Panic abruptly claws at her burning lungs. Her vision swims as she begins to choke, and with one hand, she slaps his thigh. Once. Twice.
Ojisan yanks himself out instantly, his chest heaving with exertion as he puts his weight back on his heels. “Shit, Haruka– I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he gasps out, his voice laced with immediate guilt. Stripped of his cock, Haruka slumps against the wet tile, coughing violently as she gasps for precious, burning lungfuls of air. A long, string of saliva connects her bottom lip to his glistening shaft before snapping, splattering messily across her collarbone. The physiological strain, combined with the sheer crushing magnitude of what she is finally doing with the man who’s supposed to love her, crashes over her all at once.
She brings a shaking hand to her mouth, letting out a soft, fractured sob as tears spill over her eyelashes, carving clear paths through the wet mess on her face.
Seeing her cry shatters him. He reaches out, his hands hovering over her shoulders, terrified he’s pushed her too far. “We’re done–”
“–Please be quiet and stand,” Haruka interrupts hoarsely. She drags the back of her hand across her spit-slicked chin, smearing the mess further, and looks up at him. Her eyes are red-rimmed and teary, but burning with an absolutely feral and unyielding stubbornness. She refuses to be treated like a fragile child, not here.
With a renewed, fiery enthusiasm, Haruka shifts off the wall, gets him on his feet. Her hands wrap tightly around the base of his twitching, leaking cock.
Before he can protest, she pulls herself forward and descends on him again. She abandons her attempt at deep-throating for a ravenous and sloppy suction. She uses her hands to milk the thick base while her tongue swirls aggressively around his sensitive slit.
“Shit–” Ojisan lets out, his hips involuntarily snapping upward to meet her frantic yet beautiful desperation. His fingers tangle in her soaked hair, not to push her down, but to hold on for dear life as his control entirely disintegrates. She works him harder and faster until every muscle in his towering frame locks up.
He finally breaks, his hips bucking wildly as he completely surrenders and again takes himself out of her mouth, pumping thick, hot waves of his release onto her face.
And again, she takes him back in, not wanting to waste a single drop more, but the taste surprises her and she flinches. Haruka continues to suck on the tip even as Ojisan eases himself out of her mouth.
His cum coats her tongue, the texture foreign and the taste sharply alkaline. Haruka squeezes her eyes shut, trying to force the muscles of her throat to work. The printed manifesto she’d studied that morning dictated this specific finish. She wants to swallow. She needs to, if only to crown this clumsy, desperate performance with perfection.
But her body fiercely rejects it. A harsh and involuntary shudder wrecks her frame, her windpipe seizing.
“Spit it out, Haruka,” he urges, his tone gentle but strained. He lowers himself to the floor so he can be with her.
She shakes her head. Saliva and water from the shower streak down her flushed cheeks as she stubbornly clamps her lips shut, refusing to fail him.
Then, the air in the small enclosure shifts. The timbre of his voice drops, turning into the ironclad tone of her protector.
“Haruka. Let it go.”
Against that, Haruka is entirely powerless. Her newly minted rebellion simply dissolves. A lifetime of tying her survival to his word, of her very soul being coded to align with him, overrides her pride. A dizzying, narcotic surrender washes over her brain.
Her lips part. She lets the heavy burden fall to the slick tiles, watching numbly as the water chases it down the drain. Before Haruka can even process the lingering sting of defeat, his hands frame her jaw, and his mouth crashes against hers.
His tongue plunges deep past her lips to claim the ruin he just made of her. Haruka whimpers into his mouth, her fingers curling helplessly into his wet shoulders as he devours her breath. The intoxicating pressure of his lips demanding everything she has left – it consumes her completely.
When he finally tears himself away, they are both gasping, chests heaving against one another in the humid air. Ojisan rests his forehead against hers, his thumb tracing the swollen curve of her bottom lip.
“You’re in no condition for anything but rest,” he murmurs, his dark eyes scanning the dazed, blissed-out haze lingering in her expression. “I’m taking you to bed.”
“No…” Haruka protests weakly, though her limbs feel like liquid lead.
“I’ll handle everything,” he interrupts, brushing a wet strand of hair from her cheek. “Riona and the others will understand if you’re resting. She’s here for a whole week, Haruka. You’ll get plenty of time with her. Tonight, I’m bringing your food to your room.”
She lacks the strength to argue further. He pushes himself up and cracks opens the bathroom door, peering out into the hallway. The house is still steeped in quiet; the beach hasn’t yet relinquished its hold on their family.
Moving quickly, he turns back to the spray, undressing themselves and quickly washing the remaining mess from her trembling body before rinsing himself. The water shuts off, and he wraps a large towel securely around her shoulders, secures another at his waist, and scoops her effortlessly off the floor.
Cradled bridal-style against his chest, Haruka leans her heavy head into the crook of his neck, breathing in the clean scent of soap and warm skin. He carries her down the quiet hallway and slips into her bedroom.
The soft cotton of her futon yields beneath her as he lays her down, pulling the blanket up to her chin. He lingers over her, which is comforting.
“I’ll be back,” Ojisan whispers, his gaze softening into something fiercely tender. “I’ll make up for this. I promise.”
She desperately wants to pull him down, to lock the door and keep him trapped in this secret world with her, but the distant, approaching chatter of teenagers from the yard grounds her. This is their reality. Little stolen moments stitched together in the margins of their life. She will simply have to wait for him, as she’s done for most hers.
A soft sniffle escapes her, and Ojisan’s expression melts. He reaches out to let his hand rest atop her damp head – a familiar pat that bridges the gap between the man who raised her and the man who loves her. Leaning down, he presses a reverent kiss to her cheek, sealing the promise before quietly making his way out the door.
***
Ojisan leaves behind a vacuum where the fading daylight retreats, casting the room in cool twilight hues. Without his presence, the chill of the evening finally sinks into her bones. Loneliness coils around her, hollow.
She doesn’t bother getting dressed. The damp towel lies abandoned in her hamper and she settles bare beneath the crisp cotton of her bedding. Lying there, heat crawls up her neck, painting her cheeks a fiery crimson. The sheer audacity of what she just did in the bathroom infects her consciousness and she buries her face in her pillow.
Her mind unspools the memory, playing it back in vivid flashes. His kiss. His flavor. The weight of his palm resting on her head. Outside that door, daily life at Morning Glory resumes – teenagers laughing, plates clinking, and beneath it all, the resonant, familiar baritone of Ojisan directing the chaos.
That voice serves as an anchor, sending a fresh, heavy pulse of heat straight to her core. Slipping a trembling hand beneath the covers, Haruka traces the residual ache between her thighs. The friction is a poor substitute for what he could do to her, but she closes her eyes, matching the rhythm of her fingers to the distant cadence of his words, letting the fantasy tide her over.
Time blurs into a hazy mix of twilight and longing until footsteps approach her corridor.
The door glides open, ushering in a sliver of golden hallway light and the rich, complex aroma of spices. Ojisan steps inside, balancing a steaming plate, only to freeze mid-stride. Hearing him enter, Haruka had pushed herself upright, completely forgetting her lack of clothing. The blanket pools uselessly around her waist, exposing her flushed chest to the cool air.
His posture instantly snaps rigid, dark eyes averting with a sudden chivalrous panic. Haruka scoffs, entirely unfazed by his sudden bout of modesty considering where they were a while ago.
Pulling the fabric up to her collarbones, she silently accepts the dish he offers. He settles onto the floor beside her futon, his broad shoulders relaxing as the initial shock wears off. The silence between them is comfortable as Haruka takes her first bite of the curry and grilled fish, the unevenly chopped onions a perfect pairing for the savoriness of the meal. A quiet hum of approval vibrates in her chest as she compliments his steadily improving culinary skills, which earns his small yet proud smile.
Once the plate is empty and set aside, he doesn’t hesitate to pull her close. Settling against his chest, enveloped in the safety of his arms, the remaining tension drains from her.
“Did you apologize to Riona for me?” she murmurs against his shirt.
“I already told you,” he replies, a soothing vibration beneath her cheek. “Everyone understands. They know you just needed to rest for the night.”
A beat of quiet passes, heavy with unspoken observations. His hand gently strokes her back. “You surprised me earlier, Haruka.”
She shrinks, hiding her face deeper into his embrace.
“I’m not used to you being so assertive,” Ojisan continues, his tone lacking any judgment, only gentle curiosity. “Actually, you were acting unusually since before we even went to the beach. Did something happen?”
Caught completely off guard, her heart performs a frantic stutter-step. She considers brushing the question aside, but the earnest concern in his voice dismantles her defenses. Swallowing hard, her cheeks burn with a renewed and excruciating fire.
“I… I found it,” she confesses, the words tumbling out in a rushed, embarrassed babble. “The magazine in your room this morning while I was cleaning. It’s really not a big deal! I understand, I do, it’s completely natural, but… for some reason, I just felt a little negative about it, and then Riona took us shopping, so I thought–”
“Wait.”
The absolute horror in his voice forces her to look up. Ojisan’s face is a portrait of pure, unadulterated panic. The stoic Dragon of Dojima looks as though the floor’s just vanished beneath him. “It’s not what you think.”
She blinks, thoroughly confused.
“You probably won’t believe me,” he starts, his words tumbling out with uncharacteristic urgency, “but I found that damn thing on the beach yesterday morning. I couldn’t just leave it there for the kids to find or throw it in the orphanage trash because they could have found it there, too. And I couldn’t just waltz downtown carrying it out in the open!”
He runs a stressed hand through his hair, exasperation bleeding into his explanation. “I was just waiting for a moment of free time. I needed a bag, or some excuse to take it into town to dispose of it properly. Hell, I was considering burying it in the yard. I’m so sorry, Haruka.”
To anyone else on the planet, this would sound like the most pathetic and transparent lie ever constructed by a caught man. But Haruka has spent her entire life at Kazuma Kiryu’s side. She knows very well the gravitational pull he has toward stupid situations like this. Narrowing her eyes, she searches the microscopic shifts in his expression – the tension in his jaw, the frantic sincerity in his gaze.
He is telling the absolute truth. “What...?” is all she can respond with.
The brooding self-reflection, the purchase of a new bikini, the tear-soaked blowjob in the shower… all of it sparked by a piece of literal beach trash he was too socially awkward to throw away.
She had let him use her mouth like that over actual garbage. She had pushed herself that far. Even now her throat still hurts. It hurts. Ojisan, I only did it because– because–
“I’m sorry,” Ojisan repeats softly, catching her wrists and gently pulling her hands away. His expression softens into profound guilt. “I must have really hurt you.”
She shoves him hard in the chest. “I seriously can’t with you!” Haruka exclaims in disgust, burying her burning face in both hands, wishing she could disappear. “You couldn’t let the kids find it so you bring it inside the orphanage?!”
He wraps a secure arm around her shoulder, pulling her frame back against his side. Leaning down, his breath dusts her ear even as she pouts at him. “Listen. You’re the only one I look at.”
But that wasn’t really the issue...
Before she can muster up the courage to speak, he continues, “I got concerned seeing you push yourself so hard. You don’t have to do that.”
Haruka shakes her head. “... I wanted to. And you liked it, right?”
“I-I did.” So it was worth it.
“Pervert,” she mutters weakly, though the corners of her mouth betray her with a smile.
“How about you say that louder for everyone else in the house?” He chuckles, a low, rich sound that settles deep in her stomach, before leaning in to press a kiss to her jaw.
He asks then, against her skin, “Can I stay here tonight? I’ll wake up early and sneak back to my room before the kids are up.”
“Yes,” she breathes, entirely robbed of her ability to deny him anything.
Ojisan shifts his weight, gently pressing her shoulders back until she lies flat against the softness of the futon. The blanket slips away entirely, forgotten in the shadows, as he replaces the chill of the room with the scorching heat of his mouth, trailing adoring kisses down the length of her body.
Well, he did promise he’d make up for earlier.