Yuri Worlds
[37] Amend
That probably didn’t exist. No vacation has ever quite gone the way anyone intended. The remnant husks of Franklin’s family summer trips remained. She remembered random theater stops in classic buildings with sprawling interiors and fancy façades to watch children’s movies that her parents managed to tolerate. Minor disasters, wretched motels, and wild distractions befell every step of the journey.
Still, Franklin adored their treks up and down shifting dunes along the Pacific Northwest coast that inspired entire far-flung planets, universes, and ecologies. Then quiet stays in relaxed clock towers by the sides of rivers as sprawling pines were cut down and shipped out, still only a microcosmic blemish on a wide, unending, mysterious forest. She could never understand forests. They bred mysterious forces that were strange, gorgeous, beguiling, and terrifying.
“Are you feeling better?”
A familiar voice. Misaki turned, but carefully, as the pendulum swing of her balance still didn’t quite match expectations. The figure from her dream. No. It was only Yuka. Her left eye felt sharply blurry, just like that strange dream in the blank place. Just a hair caught in the side. Massive peepers, but they could still be done in by something so insignificant.
She swiftly answered Yuka’s question with a flutter of furious blinks to clear out her eyes, paired with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Much better! Thank you so much for setting me up in… that spot. It helped so much to just take a little bit to relax. Umm… how long was I out?”
Even though she couldn’t clearly see Yuka’s entire face with the cruel blurs around her eyes, Misaki could tell her warm relief and sympathetic presence. It didn’t take long to learn that Misaki had missed the main part of supper along with the evening tea ceremony. Most of the evening was preoccupied with notes of concern for her health and vague and specific questions about the looming mystery of Miss Takano. What was she like back home? Was there any truth to the rumor, which her little sister started, that she was a famous rock star, a renowned actor, and the center of all sorts of glitz and glamour?
Misaki dodged the potential minefield of embarrassment and actually took playful amusement from Chika’s silly puffing up of her life. She initially played coy about the truth. Maybe people knew her back home, and perhaps she lived in proximity to other people who might be known.
The game didn’t last long though, as she sighed softly with melancholy reflection, “Nah. I am nothing and no one special. As a child, I was often lost and alone. The closest thing I had to a friend and playmate was… My little sister, who I often felt embarrassed to even hold hands with. She’s the one who’s anything like a celebrity. An influencer. Making funny videos and saying provocative things through the Internet. I would lose it and every rational thought inside my head by just standing in front of the cold, black eye of her web camera. My job is to take the criticism and anger of random people day after day like a machine. They’re even going to put extra equipment on me soon, so I don’t take too many breaks and make sure I think only good things. That’s who I am. No rock star, no actor, no one anyone will ever remember moments after meeting them. Sorry.”
That sounded so pitiful, even though it was sincerely true. Partially. Her friends would vehemently object to such a dismal and depressive assessment. And they cared about her; they cared about Franklin. Before Misaki could amend that she was just being a stupid downer for reasons and feelings that didn’t make sense, Yuka rushed towards her with Maharu-level vehemence. No way was she letting her be sad. Everyone downstairs was bewitched and delighted by this curious girl with slightly violet hair and hypnotic, bright eyes. They were never going to forget her. It wasn’t possible.
“And I could never forget you. No matter how separate you feel. No matter how strange, aloof, and alone. I notice you; I see you. I want to be around you as often as I can, and I hate every day I have to slog through classes to earn a few more moments. I daydream of running off together to do the silliest stuff. Having you as a friend has already changed so much of my life. Don’t you ever think that you’re nothing, that your spirit doesn’t reach out to others and enrich and alter them forever in such beautiful and impossible ways. Please. Your life is beautiful, and so are you. I am so happy that I get to spend whatever time I can with you.”
Each of them faintly courted the recurrence of tears. That stretch and close interaction were enough to tilt them over the side into ridiculous, sniffling, moist oblivion. It was stupid. It was so silly to be tearing up about a self-inflicted mass of woe that Misaki smacked herself in the face with. Tears were supposed to be reserved for real things and true pain. This was the worst kind of nonsense cry that could ever happen. She wanted to just let it go and return to pleasant thoughts and smiles. But the tears lingered, as though greater depths were pushing them to the surface. What they were, neither could put into words or quite explain.
Something rose from underneath. Untempered by anything on her wrist, she spoke truth. “Boy. A guy. A man. Male. That’s what I am in my world. Not a girl. Not like this. Not even some physically blank form we’re trying to use to explain away differences that no one here understands. That’s the big secret. But I don’t know why the company won’t let us be honest with that truth. Instead of there just being one… Girls… There are girls and there are boys, and that’s how we have children. They get together physically. They don’t need to be deeply connected spiritually. Children happen with very little effort. Just an exchange of biological fluids at the right time.” Oh, she shouldn’t have said all that. But Yuka wanted to know, and she was tired of being held back.
Yuka focused on her and listened diligently throughout that entire spiel. Her mouth wiggled and shifted, looking like it was constantly being drawn and redrawn. It was clear that she had a flood of questions she desired to ask and clarifications she needed. Instinctively though, she paused and reached up to touch her upper lip, around her nostrils. It was like she expected something there but was quietly surprised to find nothing. That triggered a memory for Misaki—a foggy visual of Yuka in pain. The details refused to clear, but she was certain it was recent. What the hell was going on?
They sat down on the bed, and Misaki used the blanket to cover and push her wristband as far away from her flesh as possible. It still felt like a probing porcupine wanting to put down penetrating tendrils despite the layers separating them.
Yuka placed her hands at her side. They wanted to go up and grab Misaki, and they also wanted to reach up in the air. This left her in a nervous, shifting routine where her arms couldn’t settle once she found words to speak again.
"Boy. Man. Male. I have this weird sense that I almost know what those are supposed to be. Did one of your friends mention it or those books? I don’t remember reading them, but I remember them being there, and something happened. Physical contact means babies? That’s why you’re so nervous! Oh my gosh, how do the people in your world even deal with all that? It sounds like you could just stumble into someone and oops...having babies. Boys and girls. What are boys like? Is it close or far away from what you said with this chuuisei thing, and what is it?"
Misaki mentally regrouped and did her best to organize all the different quandaries and thoughts that Yuka spilled out. She couldn’t be sure if her friends had mentioned something or not, but the censorship that Naoko encountered seemed likely to have suppressed anything about it aside from the terminology they tried to work around to get close. She apologized for the chuusei deception, but Yuka waved her off. “Your travel company or whatever from your world are the ones to get mad at. They forced you to talk in euphemisms about an entire part of your society.”
Touching upon the aspect of physical contact, Misaki resisted the urge to pull her hands away. How could she possibly talk about sex in a normal situation, let alone one as crazy as this? It would be easier to explain the use of a double-ended dildo to her mom. She had to put it in some terms though.
“There are things that two girls do together to make themselves feel nice or…invoke pleasure on a physical level, right?” She put that out there in the hopes that some helpful commonality might be the stepping stone out of the awkwardness and into a field of…even worse embarrassment.
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Why couldn’t she just go back to relaxing with a hairbrush and the playful prospects of sharing a shower and bath with his cute girl? Why did she have to say more than anyone really wanted her to? Just stick to the path laid out for her. Follow the directions. Don’t make ripples. Don’t try to change anything. Don’t bring on the prospect of thunder. Things didn’t go well for the troublemakers.
Yuka repositioned herself on the bed. She smiled and referred back to their time on the roof and recent brushing. That was a start for Misaki, but it still left the awkward next level of trying to express the differences between that and what she was trying to get at. She probed the possibility of touching that crossed certain physical boundaries. It wasn’t unheard of, but Yuka expressed that that level of intimate physical contact was more closely associated with what Misaki learned about from Rei. The poor girl dodged around a lot of the details in the same way. Misaki found it kind of cute and quietly comforting to know that she wasn’t the only one so embarrassed.
Misaki dispelled the myths about easily getting a baby. Pollen, or something like it, existed in this world, and she shaped the details in that direction. Boys… Men, as she relayed, were much different in shape from girls and had a harder natural structure. She fumbled with the exact physical details while excavating a stretch of scientific information buried in embarrassing class lessons.
The clitoris. It existed here too. Yuka just had to envision that several inches of it weren’t submerged within, with just a tiny section reaching out. Instead, it was exposed and looked like a dried-out mushroom with the curve of a banana. Along with it, the ovaries popped out and dangled like a set of aged, fleshy meatballs. And that expressed gooey, salty human pudding pollen that needed to make its way to the baby place. Misaki somehow kept a straight face. Yuka’s eyes were freakishly wide in surprise and stunned contemplation as she processed all that information. Misaki had some regrets.
They sat there together, in silence, for a long stretch while Misaki did more than her share of worrying. That silence finally broke when Yuka took a sharp breath and exclaimed, just holding back her full volume, "That’s so cool! That’s like some science fiction fantasy imagined posthuman weird reality-bending thing. Naoko knows more about this than me, but she’s talked about it. Like a mega-size inside-out girl, super furry but not an animal. So, if everything‘s opposite, then does that mean these men don’t have all the weird biological things to have babies, or is there something extra inside? I can’t even imagine the untold rainbow of possibilities for what girls plus men would be like. Double the possibilities! Soooo cooool!" She giggled deliriously, as though the mere ideas were intoxicating.
“Why would this dumb travel company want to keep all of this as some ridiculous secret? The expansion of knowledge and human possibilities shared between our worlds could open up new medical science for treating maladies and understanding physical development. Ayame would totally eat this up! Maybe… Maybe because all this travel stuff is so new, they want to sell this information and not have everyone who visits just spread it for free. That would be so typical of certain groups around here too.”
Sadly, Misaki concurred. It made sense and disappointed her that greed was an equal vice, even in this place. That dour sentiment soon shifted as she struggled to provide clear answers to Yuka’s next round of curious questions. She envisioned this yanked-out clitoris as having prehensile capabilities. Were these external ovaries really bouncy? How thick did the body hair grow? What was the most muscular man she knew? What was walking with boxy, square hips like? Being bigger meant a heavier voice, so what did these men sound like? Round and round it went as she shot down the craziest notions and struggled for an appropriate context.
Yuka eventually slowed down, even though it seemed she hadn’t yet had her fill. They both acknowledged that this would have to be a secret. A pinky oath bound them together. To seal it, Yuka started getting undressed as she stood beside the edge of the bed. Misaki laid bare her truths, and she wanted to reciprocate. She left poor Misaki completely dumbfounded.
It wasn’t much more than the span of a few seconds and what felt like several thousand heartbeats before Yuka stood there in a simple light blue bra and matching panties. And those were soon gone too.
Naked. Sasaki Yuka was one hundred percent, totally, absolutely stark naked in front of her. And it didn’t feel like such a big deal. She had a simple, sloped, subtle beauty to her body. At the same time, Misaki was troubled by how young she looked. Maturity existed and persisted in her shape with a reserved calm. Misaki thought at first that the girl appeared comfortable with her own body. But the presence of shy uncertainty wobbled through her like a miniature, shifting sea. Yuka gave voice to these traits.
She thought it would be nice to be bigger. To have a face less like a child's. To project strength and confidence without having to wrestle so much of her determination together to get there. To push out rather than recede in. Although she wasn’t sure about an even flatter chest than she sported. Even getting this far took such patience. The silly analogy of fried eggs poked Misaki in the head. Out out, foul thought! Yuka was pretty, she was cute, and she deserved the kindest words for her body. Despite stumbling over them at every stage, Misaki heaped those words on her friend.
Yuka gently pranced over to her folding door closet and extracted a pair of long and luxuriously soft towels for them. For them, Misaki emphasized. She’d be naked too. That was the point of a shower. Clothes off.
She took the entire procedure delicately, as though there were a spider web of sensitive tripwires encircling her body. Those cramped and microscopic default shorts were buried underneath her soft and sheltering wind-rattled pants. Seeing her bra, no matter the angle, managed to give a little extra spin to her recovering inner ear crystals. Knowing, feeling, and owning the weight and softness within took an additional balancing act. Being naked was surprisingly easy, and the room felt warm enough that the shivers hadn’t started yet.
Since Yuka let her see her most vulnerable layer, Misaki stood there with her arms stretched over the edges of her sloping hips and presented her own truth. She received a few curious looks from Yuka, but most of her attention was focused on returning to the half-open closet and holding out a couple of her outfits towards her companion as though she were a special paper doll. Wearing exactly the same clothes as Yuka wore was another threshold of woozy realization.
Far from being chilly, Misaki’s body felt like a supernova at peak burn. The towel highlighted this, as it managed to cool her down rather than warm her up. Looking back at the frozen sea wave ripples of the covers, Misaki knew that her wristband was somewhere under there, and she frankly didn’t care. If she was going to Melt, then so be it. She would Melt with truth.
Yuka covered soft titters behind her hands as she secured her towel. While Misaki’s companion laughs were more of a struggling echo to the vibrant joys that existed with Yuka, she soon started to feel them beyond surface imitation. This was fun. Sneaking out in the hallway. Doing something that felt silly but bad. So many bad things covered in delight. No one was around, and no one could see them, yet she could imagine this as a skillful sneaking mission full of frantic energy while the destination was never in doubt. The bathroom was all theirs.
The remaining scattered questions preceded washing up. Did it feel really different to shower like this as opposed to being a man? Since there was so much fur, how did they keep the drain clear? Were baths and showers bigger to accommodate this enlarged swath of humanity? Did the inside-out parts between their legs complicate washing? What about walking? How on earth did they pee with all that stuff turned around? Was it easy to sneeze and just spray their pollen goo? Some of these questions slotted into logical answers for Yuka as soon as she spoke them. But not all of them, or the answers were not quite what Yuka wanted.
She took a break from plumbing the depths of what it meant to be a man and eagerly washed Misaki. Though the notion of showering with someone else would have felt crazy at any other moment in her life, Misaki found it perfect.