2.36: Lessons in SkinshipFar away, shogi pieces clicked softly on their polished wood board.

  Baku’s chamber flickered with foxfire and the embers in his firepce, the air warm and oddly gentle despite the heavier atmosphere of his home.

  He leaned back in his chair, his trunk curling as he watched the mirage floating over the board. The image shimmered, shifted, then finally settled on the scene of a beach cave.

  “Hmmm,” he murmured, holding a shogi piece lightly between his fingers. “What an unexpected detour…”

  In the mirage, Sumire and her small bouquet of girls in the deepest chamber of the cavern system. Pon-chan was a trembling ball of fur pressed against her neck now, as if he wanted to burrow there and never come out.

  For a heartbeat, a sliver of time so brief it might have been a trick of the light, Baku saw something in the darkness.

  A vague outline. No, not even that, come to think of it. A thinning of the fabric of his dream world. A distortion, like a heat mirage, but strangely inverted in coloration.

  The outline that he’d seen was tall and still.

  Whatever it was, it seemed to be conscious.

  His trunk stilled mid-curl.

  “How curious…” he whispered.

  Natalia-sama gnced up from the board, her eyes following his gaze. “Hm?”

  He blinked, and the anomaly was gone. Just rocks and shadows.

  But then something else caught his attention.

  Sumire flinched and moments afterward, Yuna fshed her smartphone’s light across Sumire’s face.

  What are they doing?

  Baku stared for a long moment, then shrugged it off, his gaze drifting back to the ferret.

  Pon-chan was agitated, rubbing his scent gnds insistently over Sumire’s shoulders.

  “Nothing,” Baku said quickly, setting the piece that he was holding down on the board with a small CLACK. “Just a little stray seam in the dream’s fabric. Loose threads. It happens all the time.”

  Her brows knitted faintly. “What do you mean by ‘loose threads’?”

  “Small inconsistencies,” he said, waving his trunk as if shooing away a fly. “They appear from time to time. Artifacts of the subconscious cropping up. But then again, who does not expect a seaside cave to be dark? That’s all. The mind loves to create patterns, even in absence of stimuli.”

  In the mirage, Sumire and her small bouquet of girls emerged from the cave, blinking in the light. Pon-chan stared back toward the cave’s entrance with raw, animal dread filling his eyes.

  Baku’s stomach clenched.

  He forced a smile anyway. “A stray nightmare, if anything more.”

  Natalia-sama studied him for a moment, then the board. “If you’re sure.”

  “The dream remains stable,” he decred, perhaps a little too firmly. “Your girl is growing as desired. She’s ughing every day. Falling in love… and her martial arts training is bearing fruit. This is all within acceptable parameters.”

  His trunk curled again, this time to press against his chest. The scene shifted and Sumire and Aoi were trudging back across the sand. The boys stared openly at them, the girls clustering around Sumire as if drawn by gravity.

  “So many dear little hearts,” Baku sighed. “So much youth. It’s… wonderful.”

  “Careful,” Natalia-sama said mildly, moving her piece gently and precisely. “You’re starting to sound envious, my friend.”

  “Oh, I am,” he admitted. “Deeply, as a matter of fact. But that’s all. It’s envy, not resentment, my dear. I have a great deal of time. Centuries, if need be. I can handle waiting until I perfect my human form. That is the natural order of things for yokai that aspire to leave the yokai world.”

  The mirage showed Aoi reaching for Sumire’s hand. Sumire let her fingers be grasped and held, her cheeks flushed in the warm light.

  Baku’s chest ached with a strange, hollow longing.

  Just for a moment, the image of the cavern system rewound, fshing back to that corner and its mirage. That little patch of wrongness… There was something about it… It troubled him.

  He looked away.

  “Still,” he murmured. “Perhaps I should keep an eye on that little stray thread that keeps cropping up around them.”

  Natalia-sama pced her piece, capturing one of his. “You should keep your eye on the board as well, or you will pay for your inattention.” She beamed impishly.

  “Ah—!” Baku filed. “No fair! You distract me with your beauty and then strike!”

  “This is a competitive game,” she said serenely.

  Baku ughed, but the sound of his voice was a little thinner than before.

  He did not see everything inside his own dream clearly.

  Not yet.

  By the time the sun began its slow slide toward the horizon, the beach felt like an entirely different world.

  The crowds thinned as the heat softened. The sky shifted toward colors of gold and pink. Our cssmates drifted back toward the hostel in loose groups, their skin, hair, and swimsuits damp and salt-encrusted, their towels slung over their shoulders and wrapped around those who had just been swimming.

  Back inside the hostel in our room, the chaos of the morning pyed out again, almost like a reflection, but this time it was slower with exhaustion.

  “Ugh, there’s sand everywhere,” Hinata groaned, shaking out her swimsuit over a pstic bin. She stood completely nude.

  Yaiiiiiiiiiiii!!!

  “Don’t get any sand in the futons!” Megumi yelled. “Shake it more carefully, Hinata-chan! I think it might have been a mistake to bury each other in the sand.”

  “It did help to protect us from the sun… plus it was fun,” Hinata said.

  “True… but I have sand packed in too many pces.” Megumi muttered, brushing off her own swimsuit.

  I stood in the corner, clutching my towel, caught between wanting to disappear and a tiny part of me wanting to watch.

  It was a lot, to say the least.

  I wondered if this was them lowering their guard or female skinship. If it was the tter, it was something else. My cheeks were fming. This kind of thing was something that I’d only read about… or was that true? No rush of memories swooped in to reassure me. I was sure that I had only ever observed female skinship from a distance. In the gym locker room, I had always kept to myself and people tended to ignore me, changing quickly and quietly, careful not to draw attention.

  Wait… what am I even thinking? Every girl goes through this kind of thing. Changing clothes together…. It’s nothing out of the ordinary… But aren’t they taking it just a little far???!!!

  Shared showers after gym css, with me keeping my eyes down and my attention entirely on my own body. I ignored the casual towel-snapping and horsepy that reached me. A few people had tried it on me despite how withdrawn I acted, but they always gave up quickly. In the cramped locker room, bodies brushing past one another, sometimes unclothed, sometimes half-dressed, an ordinary, unavoidable closeness to others that I learned to tune out.

  But that’s not where I was now. I wasn’t back in school. I was in the middle of discovering what it meant to share a room with other girls. Eventually in a crowded hostel changing room, Girls stripped off their swimsuits and chatted naked like it was the most normal thing.

  It was very natural… for them.

  What are you so worried about? How is this any different from the changing room and the locker rooms or a public bathhouse?

  I didn’t remember the st time I’d been to one of the tter, so maybe it didn’t matter. I knew that we had to have been to a bathhouse at one point, or even an onsen, but nothing came to mind at all.

  Maybe it was the intimacy that bothered me the most. There were fewer girls in this situation, and instead of brushing past each other in a rush, we stood close, talking face to face. I didn’t have the option of looking away or pretending not to notice without seeming weird. I knew that I was being weird. I was surrounded by naked girls. My friends and other people that I cared about. And several of them were people I’d started to notice in a romantic sense, especially Aoi-chan. Something about the situation made everything feel sharper, much more troubling.

  Aoi eyed me with a tiny smile and peeled her swimsuit off with shocking ease, completely unbothered by doing it in front of others. Her body was fit and strong, marked by faint scars here and there, old traces of training accidents and fights I knew nothing about.

  My ears were steaming hot. I curled up in the corner, wanting to hide my head between my legs.

  Riko’s form was lean and toned, every movement confident even when she was just toweling her hair. Yuna, unashamed, stepped out of her suit as if she were at a medical exam, more interested in the pattern of the tan lines she’d gotten today than any watching eyes.

  I tried not to stare at anyone… but I failed.

  Why does this even matter? I’m being so… weird!!! Kind of like…

  I tore my gaze away quickly. Something deep in me insisted on it, even as other parts of me urged me to keep looking. My cheeks felt permanently overheated.

  “Sumire-chan, you’re acting like a boy, sitting there so rigidly,” Yuna observed as she shook out her hair. “You can change out of your swimsuit too. No one’s going to bite you.”

  “Yeah… she is. She’s being so adorably shy,” Megumi ughed.

  “It does feel a lot like she’s acting like a man… but maybe it’s just shyness. I know how that feels,” Hinata said softly, sounding a little sympathetic.

  “Her body is so beautiful,” Megumi said cheerfully. “There’s no way that she’s a boy. Everyone’s seen her breasts. That bikini of hers was revealing enough. I even snuck a gnce while she was changing earlier today. She’s definitely a very weirdly shy girl.”

  Hyaaaa… I wanted to curl up into a tight ball like a pillbug.

  “Stop bothering her,” Aoi muttered under her breath. “And stop talking about her body.”

  Riko smirked. “Aoi-san is the jealous type… even when it comes to casual girls’ skinship.”

  “Hells yeah,” Aoi said without hesitation. “No one gets to go near Sumire without clothes on.”

  “I am not shy… it’s just…” I lied, fumbling with the straps of my own swimsuit. It was starting to chafe with the sea salt crusted up on the inside. “I just… um… this is all just so much…”

  “We all know what your problem is,” Yuna said, giggling softly.

  “You do?” I blinked, blushing harder.

  “Yeah… rumors have been flying about you for a long time.” Megumi rocked slightly with her arms wrapped around her legs. They were parted just enough that I could see literally everything and she was even facing me.

  Hwaaaaa… I blushed even harder, noticing what was blooming between her thighs in all its glory.

  “Like what?” I asked quickly, tearing my eyes away.

  “You do act like a boy sometimes,” Megumi continued, amused. “It’s like going into the changing rooms completely terrifies you on the inside. You always avert your eyes, and you barely talk to anyone.”

  Aoi frowned. “That’s just how Sumire-chan is.”

  Megumi tilted her head. “And then there are the rumors about you two.” She puckered her lips and made exaggerated kissing noises.

  Riko, and Yuna giggled with Megumi. Hinata frowned.

  “You two have a thing going on,” Megumi added, winking.

  Aoi flushed faintly. “So what if we do?”

  “It doesn’t bother me. I think that it’s kind of cute, y’know,” Megumi said easily. “But does that really make a girl act so bashful around other girls in moments like this?” She tilted her head again, genuinely curious. “Does liking another girl make a girl act like a boy sometimes?”

  “I don’t know…” I fidgeted, my fingers twisting together.

  Aoi moved closer to me, lifting her towel and holding it like a makeshift curtain in front of me. “Here. I’ll block for you. Change behind this.”

  “Oh, come on!” Megumi ughed. “We all want to see all of Sumire-chan, even though I saw it all in the changing room… that bikini is fairly daring too!”

  Everyone but Aoi and I ughed and nodded and I folded into myself. Yuna smirked.

  “See… that’s just making it worse, Aoi-chan,” I hissed under my breath, my ears burning. “I appreciate what you’re doing, but I still know that everyone’s naked around me. And they would know that I am too when I take mine off… and you would be looking at me too. And honestly something feels off about how I’m acting… I need to just rex and be a normal girl…”

  My voice dropped. “Maybe Arisugawa-san and Hanawa-san are right about me… maybe I’m just a weird little boy on the inside…”

  Aoi-chan sighed and shook her head. “As much as I hate admitting this… you’re right.” She hesitated, then spoke more quietly, “I don’t want to share you with anyone else. I don’t want to share the sight of your naked body with anyone else… That’s me being selfish.”

  I turned scarlet, clutching at my chest as my heart pounded.

  She wants to see my… n…nak…naked b-body… that badly… and wants me for all hers…

  DOKI-DOKI BADUMP

  All the girls giggled.

  “But…” Aoi-chan continued, her voice tightening, “I think I need to let go just a little. Even if it irks me.”

  I gasped. “What do you mean, Aoi-chan?”

  “I just realized something.” She met my eyes steadily. “Your training is about making you stronger. And I didn’t just mean teaching you how to punch jerks in the nose or break free from grabby hands.”She tapped her own chest, then gently touched mine.“I meant in here too. Growth isn’t just physical.”

  “But… but…” I murmured, overwhelmed.

  Aoi-chan dropped the towel and crawled closer, bringing her face near mine. Her voice softened. “But what? You’re a girl. A girl with a gorgeous body.”

  “Beautiful!” Megumi giggled, gesturing dramatically like she was pying Romeo in a stage py.

  Aoi shot her an annoyed look. “Shut up, Hanawa.” Then she turned back to me. “Anyway… you’re a girl. You’re not some old man on the inside. No one is forcing this on you, but…”She hesitated. “Facing this fear… looking at other girls, and being looked at, that might actually help you grow stronger.”I gasped, fidgeting helplessly.

  “Maybe it’s too much all at once for her,” Riko said mildly, smiling faintly. “Why does it matter if she hides and scrambles into her pajamas?”

  “Because,” Aoi-chan said, lifting her chin and fixing everyone with a fierce look, “as much as I hate it, she needs to unwind.”Her gaze sharpened. “Is everyone okay with the fact that she looks at other girls and feels more than you do?”

  Hinata blushed deeply. “Then… it’s kind of like having a boy in the room after all.”

  “Well,” Aoi-chan said dryly, “I like girls too. Riko and Yuna clearly do as well.”

  Hinata gasped and covered herself. Megumi burst out ughing, filing her arms with amusement.

  “Oh, come on!” Megumi teased. “Don’t start acting bashful too now, Hinata-chan! We’ll think that you’re a boy too.”

  Riko and Yuna ughed along with Megumi. I was gd that they weren’t ughing at me anymore. That helped a little.

  …

  …

  I kept blushing for a long moment with everyone’s eyes on me. Finally I swallowed nervously and almost angrily yanked off my top. Hinata looked away for some strange reason, blushing herself. It was almost as though she saw me as a guy that decided to fsh himself at them.

  Riko and Yuna examined me closely, almost memorizing every detail about my breasts. I fidgeted, taking deep calming breaths, my skin crawling.

  Megumi nodded. “There you go, girl. Just rex. It’s not a big deal. How about we chill out with a game for a bit? Uno, au naturale maybe. I brought a deck.”

  Relwing