Most schools had their class trips for the second years in exotic locations like Okinawa to teach a thing or two but, mostly, to give their students one last chance to relax before the whirlwind of senior year and college and, as Emi pointed out, the eternal suckage of adult life. Our class, however, was going to Hiroshima, which though a beautiful city, I supposed, wasn't exactly the height of relaxation. In my opinion the choice of destination was due to a perverse intervention by Ichikawa Sensei for the abuse we'd put him through.
Normally I would not be overly excited about this trip. At barely over 4 hours by train the city was hardly a faraway place. Not to mention the entire first day was to be spent going to monuments and museums examining the bombing in 1945. Watching newsreel footage of thousands of people being snuffed out was not exactly an uplifting way to spend a school trip. However, Aria wasn't going due to her late addition to the class and, honestly, I needed the time away from her.
After throwing up in Emi's mom's gardenia bush, I felt marginally better and had gone back inside. Emi steered the conversation to her book but, even Saki's face being apple red hadn't relieved the mood in any meaningful way. I regretted my role in the awkwardness but Emi and Mizuki understood and apologized later for taking things so far. Only Aria remained blissfully ignorant or, possibly intentionally playing at being ignorant, of what had pissed me off.
Once my anger had dulled, I was left with only a strange, gnawing emptiness. Aria couldn't be blamed for images my own imagination had dragged up on its own, I reasoned. She also couldn't have known the raw nerve Jun was for me. I imagined the situation was like being mauled by a wild bear. You couldn't be angry with the beast for not knowing the degree of rudeness achieved by savaging someone. The bear did what came naturally and, though of small comfort while exsanguinating, you shouldn't have been that close.
Though she had been the impetus, Aria couldn't be blamed for the lewd visions of her which had given me a push toward seriously questioning my own sexuality. Honestly, I'd always questioned where my preferences lay. While other girls my age had squealed and fawned over whichever cute boy was on TV or in an anime or manga, I had sneered derisively at them. I had no use for boys and, honestly, I had no idea what made a boy handsome or not. Boys never really did anything to sate my rapidly blooming lust. Girls curved in the right places, their bodies were soft and pleasant to look at and were meant to be held, fondled, and protected.
Perhaps I was bi-sexual, though? I mean, the chances of finding a date for bisexuals had to be exponentially higher than those either straight or gay people could hope for. I didn't really care for dates, but once I did, I had a wider variety to choose from. It was like when my sister was little, and she was a sworn carnivore and wouldn't willingly touch a vegetable. Having that variety enabled humanity to move further along evolutionarily and meant more rice for me. Wins on both a macro and micro level.
I glanced over at Daishi and found my lip curling into a sneer unconsciously. I surreptitiously studied him as he laughed with his friends a few seats ahead and to the right of us. He'd been mentioned as someone attractive, but what made him attractive? For that matter, what made anyone attractive or unattractive? Although, scientifically, a universal broad standard of beauty had been agreed on, the concept felt too subjective to whittle down to a mathematical formula.
I thought Aria was attractive. Her lips were full but not overly prominent, her nose was small and petite, and her eyes were large and a very sultry shade of blue. Her body was sexy with big breasts and a narrow waist and wide but not overly-so hips. She had long legs and supple thighs. She ticked every box in the attractive category for me. Daishi was…I glanced at him again as he smacked his friend on the back boisterously and scowled. Daishi was repugnant. Could I ever date him? I shook my head slightly. No. Not a chance in hell.
My eyes grazed over the other male students and adults on the train. No, I finally decided, none of them ticked any of the boxes in the attractive category. Admittedly, the sample size was miniscule so to completely discard the notion I wouldn't find a boy attractive was premature, but it wasn't looking good for having multiple choices for a date on a Friday night. I then turned my eyes to the girls on the train, specifically the ones I was sitting with.
I glanced at my seat companions as the countryside sped by outside. Emi had come prepared with more snacks than any one person had a right to carry. Emi and Mizuki and the other person in our group; a glum, melancholy creature named Momoka, were exploring the inner crevices of the monstrous bag Emi had dragged her snacks for the train ride in and I was able to ignore them. Did I find any of them attractive?
Mizuki was a hard no for me. She was a wonderful friend and a sweet girl but there was nothing in either her looks or bearing which attracted me to her in the least. Momoka looked, honestly, a little like if the grudge girl had gotten a bit of a tan. Though her face was pleasant enough there was nothing in either her bearing or physique which attracted me to her so…no. Emi was more complicated, though.
She was bright and cheerful and always fun to be around. Though her body had few curves the ones she had were pleasant and her small pink nipples were kind of sexy. Yes, I finally decided, Emi had a cute face and decent body, and I found her attractive.
I looked through the rest of the car and there were quite a few girls I found at least marginally attractive. Some for their face, others for their body. I'd not gotten close to most of my classmates except in the most arbitrary of ways so I couldn't speak to many of their invisible traits such as intelligence or personality. Still, there were roughly half of the girls on the train that I found to be attractive to varying degree.
Attraction, whether gay or straight or somewhere in between was all perfectly normal. Everyone had a type and, just because I had no interest in men, didn't mean I wanted to have sex with anyone with boobs, either. Though the conclusion was commonsense, I was more relieved than I should have been. Still, my undeniable preference couldn't be denied.
The question had never been asked. "Kasumi, are you gay?" I would have cocked my head to the side and, before meeting Aria, said something pithy like; "I've never thought about it. I don't think so. Who cares, though? What are you, the gay police?" Now? It was extremely likely I was a lesbian, and I had no idea what that meant.
I mean, what did lesbians do that was so different than girls who weren't lesbian? I had, of course, seen depictions of lesbians in manga. Usually one of the characters exclaimed "but we're both girls!" as if no one could figure that part out. But what did they do differently? I mean, they went on dates like everyone else. They had sex like everyone else. They cooked and cleaned and worked and went to school and lived and loved like everyone else. So…what was different? No matter how I wracked my brain trying to figure out, besides loving someone of the same sex, they did differently. Yet, there it loomed, the word, like some demon spreading its wings across the horizon in front of me.
Not only did I have no idea what differentiated a lesbian from a straight person, I also had no clue what to do about being one. Obviously, I couldn't tell my parents. If my mother found out all of her carefully laid plans for my future had been ruined due my lack of desire to partake of any d, regardless of size, she would most likely kill me in my sleep. That was, of course, mostly hyperbole. Mostly being the key word.
She may not murder me, but she would absolutely disown me. There was no room in her world for anything or anyone which ran contrary to her plans. In her world I was going to get married to someone locally, probably a fisherman or even a low-rent politician or, better yet, a doctor. I would give her grandchildren, two boys and a girl, be active in local charities and finish the remainder of my days catering to my family's every whim like a good wife and mother. There was absolutely no room in that scenario for pushing a girl against a wall and sticking my tongue in her mouth or anywhere else for that matter. It disturbed me that thinking of places my tongue could be pushed into made me tingly.
The irony of her dominating her husband and treating her daughters like the garbage the son she coddled had become was wholly lost on her. In her mind she was the ideal. She was the perfect wife and mother who steered the familial ship through the rocky shoals of life with a calm and steady hand. No, mother of the century would not forgive me. Retribution would be swift and merciless.
I lay my head against the cool glass of the window and closed my eyes. I had never really paid much attention to the future. It was far away, and I had trouble enough dealing with today without worrying about tomorrow. Yet, suddenly, tomorrow loomed monstrously huge indeed, and it was not filled with bright and cheery promise, though whether it ever had been was debatable.
I didn't have to deal with the whole thing at this exact moment, though, right? It wasn't like the trajectory of my life had veered wildly out of control. After all, I wasn't dating anyone. I didn't have to hide something which wasn't happening and so long as I continued my life of studied disinterest things would just amble on as they had always been. Still, I chewed my lip anxiously, there was Aria to contend with.
I gritted my teeth at the thought of the American. She had flirted with me. Right? I mean, I hadn't imagined things, I didn't think. She had caught me in some sort of weird web of charisma a harem protagonist would have to possess. I scowled at the notion. Could I be a part of someone's harem, no matter how attractive I found them? I shook my head slightly. Hell no. I was either the harem master or not interested at all. My personality allowed no other options. I didn't share well with others.
This was all assuming we were interested in each other. Before Emi's party I would have said the things were mutual. Now? I wasn't sure. I mean, our relationship hadn't changed too much in the five days since, except in very subtle ways. I no longer rushed to text her back or call her. My answers to her questions were curt and to the point and I did everything in my power to avoid being alone with her and talk to her about anything beyond every day humdrum activities we shared. Huh, now that I thought about things, I guess our relationship had changed quite a bit. Or, possibly, it had simply gone through some sort of metaphysical self-correction and returned to the way it was supposed to be.
Though things had changed, she hadn't noticed or, at least, hadn't seemed to notice. Her texts had gotten shorter, but they sounded the same as before for the most part. She spoke to me the same and smiled as brilliantly as always. I guess the possibility existed the change had been from my end only. To be honest, that idea hurt more than it should have. The idea the feelings had been unrequited were painful to adequately grasp.
As the buildings of Okayama hove into view in the distance, the idea I may have been wrong as well occurred to me and I grew more frustrated. Though Emi and Mizuki and even Saki had assured me I wasn't in the wrong for reacting the way I had, I couldn't help but shake the suspicion I had been, at least partially, wrong. Had I over-reacted? The question was one I couldn't honestly answer. What I did know for a fact was that if I hadn't been interested in her the conversation wouldn't have upset me as much.
The fact she wasn't a virgin didn't bother me too much. Hell, I didn't know her before she moved here so I couldn't judge her. No, it was the cavalier way she'd been so dismissive of being a virgin. Like having sex with other people were simply badges of honor to be displayed like participation trophies placed on a shelf to be looked at when you were feeling nostalgic.
Yes, I was a virgin, but I didn't view that as a negative thing. The reality was the reality. I wasn't doing anything like "saving myself for marriage," it wasn't the Edo period after all. I just wanted my first time to mean something. I wanted my first sex to be meaningful and something I could look back on, whether I was still with that person or not. I wanted to be able to think "that was kind of scary, but special." I didn't want it to be used as something five years from now to make fun of other people like Aria had.
Her sudden interest in my brother? No, that was unforgivable. Maybe she had just been playing around but for me it was something much deeper and infuriating. I would love to say Jun wasn't a bad person. But he was. There was simply no way to navigate around the fact. He was a sub-human creature who looked like a real person but clearly was not. He was, in a word, an asshole of gargantuan proportions, and how anyone might be attracted to that sort of creature was beyond me. Though she'd given the impression she was playing around I could see in her eyes she was curious, which repulsed and infuriated me.
My thoughts were, obviously, all over the place and, once again, I wondered again if I had a right to even be in this state. We weren't dating, after all. I really had no right to complain or be jealous. In fact, I had no rights at all in this situation. She could think what she wanted, do what she wanted and say what she wanted, and I couldn't do jack all about it. I sighed and let my head drop onto the window as Okayama rushed past. I hated this. More than anything except, possibly Jun.
I had decided many times the whole thing wasn't Aria's fault but some feeling deep in my stomach kept telling me it didn't matter who's fault it was at the end of the day. The whole thing hurt, and I hated it.