Yuri Worlds
[52] Heartbreak
Naoko expressed interest in sharing her room with Kosame or Namiko but ultimately decided to pair up with Yasha since she was the odd girl out. She sat by herself at the far end of the room with colorful threads spread over a round disc.
Yuka and Misaki recognized it as the weaving art of kumihimo. Yasha gave a long, tired sigh and a quick brush wave of her hand before stretching her wrists. She explained that the inn had a couple different activity options with a full class for learning the weaving arts, but she knew she would get so bored of that quickly. Instead, she opted to figure it out on her own. The pattern in the cords looked a little uneven, but Yuka resisted the urge to give advice and simply complimented her work. Yasha gave a noncommittal grunt. Naoko had the television on some science fiction program that neither Misaki nor Yuka recognized. It appeared several decades more modern than the other show, but it was hard to tell.
Naoko briefly explained the situation to her roommate, and Yasha casually stuck what looked like earbuds in her ears. Sitting together, the girls worked through the situation. Yuka barely resisted turning to tearful havoc as she framed her thoughts.
“I love Miss Takano. The elder sister. Obviously. Takano Misaki. But I know she’s just gonna be here for a little while. Just another week. And then maybe gone forever. It’s like that ridiculous novel we read last month in class with the melodrama and all that maudlin junk. I know some girls fawn over the idea of being painfully romantic about suffering and loss. I just want to be happy. I just want everyone to be happy. Goddess, I feel so childish. I don’t know what to do or say. At the end of the show we were watching, they had all this stuff about lunar cycles. I don’t know if it’s just all that or something else. And in the bathroom, I got this sense of all these nice things she would think of me, and it was like being buried in such love. I don’t know what to do.”
Naoko quickly responded with an allusion to cheerful dogs, knowing the perfect antidote to bring an automatic smile to Yuka’s face. Then, she proceeded to rip the novel they both read for class a new one with mocking references to laughably over-the-top moments. After that, there was an itemized reminder of the plethora of mature qualities that Yuka not only held close but fostered in others. Choosing her next words carefully, Naoko cycled her hands as though she were pumping an invisible series of pedals suspended in the air. The cycle. That slightly enigmatic biological mystery that purged and refreshed internal biology. Yuka had a hunch that in the world the travelers came from, it had more to do with reproduction than around here.
Naoko stopped, tensed, and glanced over her shoulder at her roommate, who had absolutely no reaction to what Yuka stated. Faint, fast-paced music leaked out of her ears from the buds. For not the first time, Yuka mulled, prodding this enigmatic stranger for answers. Her entire attitude projected delinquency, with a strange smattering of appreciation for their history contrasted with random, flagrant disinterest immediately after. Letting that go, Naoko focused on the final, encouraging note that Yuka rushed through, highlighting the positive, healthy feelings. Yuka deserved nice things and nice thoughts. Her possible girlfriend, if she were worth sharing time with, would gladly and adamantly express thoughts like these and so many more.
Frantically, Yuka amended that these weren’t just confined to her internal imaginings. Miss Takano said, expressed, and did so many beautiful things. She was just reserved to a higher degree than even Yuka. She was special, and Yuka’s eyes nervously wandered to her feet when she quietly admitted that she wanted to spend the rest of her life sharing all her special thoughts with this precious girl. But time felt so short—so desperately, painfully short. She wanted to make the minutes last like hours, the hours become days, and these few days spread out like an endless sea of possibilities. Naoko immediately teased the fact that her friend was sitting here and lamenting how little time she had while intentionally being away from her lady love. But they both understood that taking a breather was necessary to keep from overflowing.
Gently rubbing her legs, Naoko mused, “I thought being with Kosame for the rest of my life was all I ever needed. I know you remember how incorrigible I was during the mushiest part of my relationship, where everything had an absolute finality and a lyrical flourish, which she’s still off the deep end about. I am not saying that is the case here, but the light of love can entrance like moths to a flame and overwhelm all your senses. I know that's not terribly scientific, but it feels right. Be careful and confident in your needs, for the sake of your heart.”
Yuka pouted but also lightly nodded her head. They spent a good while just joking back and forth with little references that ping-ponged around different relationships and certainties in their young lives. Naoko’s regular advice for Yuka to go talk with her moms about this settled to the forefront while Yuka sank slowly on her back against the tatami floor.
With a sudden gasp, Yuka almost smacked her hands up in her face as she realized and harshly whispered that she just abandoned Miss Takano in their suite. A flurry of self-scolding admonishments and pained laments swirled like a typhoon at full force within her. Passenger Misaki could barely hold on. Naoko moved quickly to steady and reassure her with both of her hands on her shoulders.
“I’m gonna go over there and make sure your cute friend doesn’t worry about you. It’ll be fine.“ Yuka still spun herself into a tizzy about how this was the worst thing ever, and Miss Takano probably thought all sorts of terrible things about her just running off and suspected it was an excuse to get away. She lamented, despite Naoko’s careful reassurance that her girlfriend probably blamed herself more than anyone else. Yuka’s stomach furiously gurgled with unease and tension, but she took some calming breaths and agreed with Naoko’s sensible plan.
With just Misaki and Yuka together with Yasha, Misaki, who had to remind herself several times that she wasn’t actually Yuka, focused as much of her girlfriend’s attention as she could direct and carefully judged Yasha. She likely wasn’t the monster who destroyed Maharu’s family, but something about her still set Misaki on edge. With Yuka’s senses instead of her own, she searched for something more that Franklin might otherwise miss.
But Yuka was just a normal girl without any extra perceptions. As normal as this world considers its girls, at least.
“You’ll never see any of us again after next week.“ Yasha flicked her gaze in Yuka’s direction. She attempted a polite smile for Yasha first but barely got beyond an annoyed grimace with her teeth biting into it.
“Never is a long time”, Yuka sharply responded. Misaki wanted to hurl stronger words than that.
Yasha grunted and popped her earbuds out. “This world isn’t one of the regulars. A rare thing to get travelers to this one. Plenty of others nearby are far more popular. That’s what appealed to me. A rare taste of reality. But we each have to face the facts. It’s going to be a long time before they let any of us across the border again. From your side or ours. Better to relish and savor what you’ve got while it’s here than shed tears over what could be.”
Yuka made some non-committal noises to herself before responding, “There’s a lot out there. A lot of time and a lot of possibilities. I’m gonna be a lawyer, and maybe this company you deal with will one day need my services, or I can represent the government for them. And I’ll be able to travel. There’s no reason to discount any possibility if you’re determined enough.”
Yasha gave a harsh, crackling chuckle. “Whatever helps. I may not look it, but I’ve had enough years to know where optimism ends. And lawyers are scarcely the resource in urgent need out there. But feel free to foster your ambitions. They’re better than the alternative.”
So many things tossed and turned around in Yuka’s thoughts with Misaki as an inspirational companion, but they both kept the words inside. Verbally fighting with one of their guests was not only rude but would be fruitless since Yasha seemed solidly set in her opinion.
The alternative that Yuka settled on instead of arguing until her face turned colors was to lean back against the comfortable tatami floor with her arms folded behind her head. She had so much hair surrounding and clinging to her. It gathered so much grease despite how much time she spent taking care of it. The left side of the back of her neck always had bad skin outbreaks, but at least she could hide them underneath until they healed up. She just had to resist the urge to rub.
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Yuka crawled over to Naoko’s nearby blanket on the floor and hugged it. Misaki wished she could do the same. Yasha gave a random chuckle to no one in particular, but Yuka still felt like some aspect of it was aimed in her direction. Would Maharu sneak a laugh behind her back too? No. Definitely no.
She could still imagine it. Maharu’s cheerful, soft features twisted with cruel annoyance. You don’t want me to rely on you, so why do you care so much that I am doing exactly what you want? Maharu wouldn’t say that, but she could still hear those words ringing deep in her ears.
There was something wrong with her. She knew that. Her moms brought up careful questions about whether she felt depressed or anything else. Ayame checked in on her all the time and poked her spirit a lot. It didn’t feel like depression in any form she knew it from shows, books, or anything else. She felt things. She felt a lot. She was so excited at the start of the week to meet their guests and experience something beyond herself.
Something was missing. That’s what pressed on her the strongest. The uncertain but nagging feeling that she was missing something. The moment Miss Takano walked into her life, she was drawn into that hug, like greeting a dear friend she hadn’t seen in a long time. But it was soon after that that everything bad with her leg started.
Miss Takano told her that she saw a dark spirit—something covered in fuzzy puppy fur or something like it. It probably had nothing to do with her. More likely, some vermin from the company and whatever they did. Girls traveling across the world carried all sorts of incidental illnesses on planes. It was only natural, going from one entire world to another, that something opportunistic might sneak on board. Not… Misaki‘s fault.
Besides, yeah, she had a mark, but nothing worse than a quick bruise. The weird little snap nightmare thing was nothing. Or any of the other stuff, like the dreams where Haruka turned a nasty face in her direction. Where it felt like she wasn’t even her sister anymore. She deserved that though.
She was rotten; she was dark inside. Like a bad apple. Bright and normal on the surface but wretched underneath. Ayame took pains to reassure her that wasn’t the case. Valiant efforts, and she didn’t deserve them. She got upset quietly. She thought bad things. For all she wanted to do to help people and make things better, she felt bitter frustration to just trash the whole thing.
So many ladies out there who didn’t care. Just get them out. And then there were the weirder thoughts. Despite being seemingly intimately connected to Yuka, Misaki got no further hint of what that meant before Yuka went back to quietly tormenting herself some more.
What gave her strength was hope. Hope to do better, hope to get better. Hope that all this silliness with Maharu would just drain away and they could have their regular back and forth where she rolled her eyes and Maharu gleefully gallivanted through so many exuberant notions. She didn’t need to grow up already, at least not all the way. Goddess, she was being such a stressed-out mom about all this. It will work out.
All she really had to do was talk to Haru’s grandma. Easier said than done, considering she tended to be even more obstinate and inscrutable. She could and should talk to her moms, for something approaching advice. But Mama Fuyuki had her traditional and also vague ways of referring to something bigger in the world or dipping into all that sisterhood stuff. She just didn’t understand the complexity of things. At least she was supportive of her and Misaki. They both were. But they spread the blunted version of Yasha‘s needling reminders. This was puppy girl love.
A fleeting practice that felt more permanent than it was. Days. So few days, and she was wasting them hour by hour as much as school stole time from her too. Maybe she just won’t go to school next week. Yeah.
She would write it off as her vacation time. Break the rules a little while it was still forgivable. When she became an adult, the sparse margins of time off would barely allow her to eat. Vacation time had to be used in carefully portioned minutes and seconds to buy moments away from work. The crippling grind of life had to be gentler in the other world. Maybe she could just sneak away with Misaki, stuffed in a bag, and holding her breath.
The other world. A place of promising possibilities. Boys. Men. A way of human life she could only imagine in vague terms, like trying to articulate another dimension of space. The pokey things between their legs. Everything swapped the inside out. She still has so many questions about how they got adjusted and how they sat. And Yuka gathered the impression, even though Misaki really tiptoed around it, that the inside-out and the outside-in sides of humanity neatly fit together.
What did it feel like to touch and combine? Her cheeks felt so hot that she needed to shield them with her hands or else they were going to erupt.
“Yuka?” Ack! Yuka popped up, ready to denounce she was doing or thinking anything weird. Naoko stood over by the doorway entrance. Misaki stood right behind her with her arms folded.
Swiftly, Yuka’s expression brightened at Misaki, but oddly, hers didn’t respond in kind. Something serious?
Misaki wanted to talk with her alone for a minute. The Misaki inside Yuka screamed at her not to listen. She wasn’t inside her body—at least she didn’t think she was. But then, who was there if not her? Yuka quietly agreed and followed her girlfriend out into the hallway and around to a quiet nook off to the side.
They sat down on a bench together, a bench not too different than the one in the downstairs bathroom at home, and Yuka prepared herself.
“I don’t think this is going to work. It’s all wrong. It would be better if we broke up. No more of the silly girlfriend charade. It would never work. Beyond our age difference and experience gap, I’ve known you for just a few days, and those days will soon end. We’re never going to see each other again, because we’re from different worlds. We can’t kid one another that any of this actually matters.”
Yuka looked across the hallway at a little dusty crease in the floor that housekeeping missed. It was all she could do to hold herself together. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. She must’ve overheated in the bath again, and she was gonna wake up to Misaki probably giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and looking down with love and concern. That’s what it was. She was sure of it. But reality remained. She felt sick.
“Why?” Was all she was able to get out. Meanwhile, Misaki‘s consciousness somehow screamed herself horse trying to say that this was not her. Don’t listen to whatever this is! It’s a trick! Please!
Whether any of that was communicated, she had no idea. But Yuka shook her head and invoked the overzealously cute mind-warping that occurred the other day and the squishy physical transformation. This had to be something like that. Trying to hurt her again, trying to hurt the girl she loved. She couldn’t believe it.
Misaki of the flesh narrowed her eyes but also wrapped them in a veneer of sympathy as she logically hammered home all the realities facing them. This was going to hurt, why drag it out for either of them? She had fun for a while, and Yuka probably did too. But this was never meant to last. This was just a little crush, and she would come to understand that in time.
Yuka‘s heart beat inside her ears as Misaki, trapped within her, tried to find something to pound against that might get a message to Yuka without hurting her. But there was just an endless ether defined by Yuka’s broken heart.
Despite the pain, Yuka still couldn’t believe it. She had to do something, like last time. Left left left as a reminder. You are not this thing that cruel forces want to shape you into! She gathered together everything she had, searching an icy pit with meager embers that even the most vigorous rubbing could scarcely nurture. Please, Goddess, please! Hope! There had to be hope!