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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  "DAISUKI."

  Author Bio

  Also Available

  Preview of "HATSUKOI."

  “DAISUKI.”

  BOOK 1: REN’AI RENSAI

  Hildred Billings

  BARACHOU PRESS

  “DAISUKI.”

  Copyright: Hildred Billings

  Published: 28th September 2012

  Publisher: Barachou Press

  This is a work of fiction. Any and all similarities to any characters, settings, or situations are purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  WARNING: This book contains adult language and graphic f/f sex. It is intended for mature audiences only.

  Editor: Lindsay York

  Cover Design: Lindsay York

  Photographer: Wisky

  This book is dedicated to everyone who ever believed in me and my writing.

  And to those who didn’t.

  "DAISUKI."

  Tokyo; December 17th, 2011

  She knew Reina loved her.

  Ask anyone who knew them for who they were, and they would say, “Yes, they are so in love! I’ve never met a couple like them before. They inspire me!” It made Aiko blush as if she were a shy teenager again. It made her blush like the day Reina first asked her out on a date.

  “Do you remember?” Aiko asked her girlfriend, as they sat in a fancy restaurant and dined in celebration of their anniversary. “You came to me after your rehearsal, and told me you wanted to get ice cream with me.”

  Reina put down her wine glass and considered the floral centerpiece on their table. She rarely made eye contact with Aiko in public, even after so many years. “I guess so. It was a long time ago.”

  “Nineteen years.” Aiko smiled, the corners of her mouth bashing away her blushing. “Can you believe it’s been nineteen years since our first date?”

  “I suppose. You’re the one who keeps track.”

  Aiko cleared her throat and pushed aside her empty plate of chicken alfredo. Reina fidgeted with her utensils and her glass, as if convinced everyone waited for them to do something non-platonic. Aiko searched the room: other Japanese couples, all of them heterosexual; an upper-middle class family with two teenagers; a small group of female friends toasting to good times. She and Reina were the sole same-sex couple in there. Doubtless anyone stealing a glance at them would assume they were good friends, or sisters, maybe cousins. The fact they were lovers would never cross anyone’s mind, except for maybe a perverted foreigner.

  Reaching out to put her hand on the table, Aiko looked to Reina for reciprocation. They went easy on the public affection, but the restaurant was dim and nobody watched the quiet ladies in the center of the gallery. Aiko invited her girlfriend with a timid gaze.

  Reina studied Aiko’s hand and looked away.

  It stung, but she was not surprised. Not here. Not in a place like this. Aiko was the one who suggested they come to a nice restaurant for their anniversary. Maybe if it wasn’t in the neighborhood Reina worked in – somebody from work might see them holding hands.

  This was not Reina’s element. Aiko liked elegant things, but the fact her girlfriend dressed up in a pantsuit and combed her hair down was a miracle. She loves me. She dressed up for me. Reina would rather go to a bar in Ni-chome where the lesbian bartenders would tease them about their steady relationship. They were regulars at almost all the stops. But that was in Reina’s playground. Here was Aiko’s fantasy life.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “Do you want to leave?”

  Reina finally smiled, her eyes lighting up and meeting Aiko’s for the first time since they stepped into that stuffy restaurant. “You know what I want.”

  * * *

  They took a taxi home to avoid the crowded trains. Aiko spread a coat between them and held Reina’s hand underneath so the driver, an old conservative-looking man, couldn’t see. Reina kept her eyes on the window while Aiko fought back titters over how happy she felt. Probably from the wine. She hucked back the last of it because Reina was in such a hurry to leave.

  Everything changed the moment they walked through their front door. As if a switch flipped, Reina turned more into her “old” self and kicked her shoes off like a slob, leaving them upside down in the genkan. She grabbed Aiko’s arm and pulled her into a kiss.

  They scurried up the stairs, their clothing falling off their bodies as if nothing but air. By the time they reached the second floor Reina had plunged both hands into Aiko’s hair. She couldn’t breathe as her girlfriend covered her with kisses and nipped the nape of her neck; she flung her arms around Reina and asked to be carried to their bedroom.

  She may have been taller, but that didn’t mean she could whisk Aiko up and haul her around like in some romance movie. The best Reina could do was pick her up at the waist and shuffle her into their bedroom where they had fornicated every few days for fifteen years.

  Reina was intense that night. She was always intense during sex, but this time Aiko swore a new passion burst behind every kiss and thrust and guttural moan. She imagined they were like the majestic tigers she saw on the animal shows on TV, cunning cats swatting and rolling while they attempted to tame their mate. Another silly fantasy. Reina was the tiger here – here and everywhere in their relationship. All the other women thought so.

  And thus Aiko thought the same thing she did every time Reina brought her to the heights of her pleasure: She’s mine. Other women come and go in this room, but it’s me who sleeps next to her every night.

  Reina was, for lack of a better word, an onna tarashi, or a lady killer, a womanizer, or any other silly term their American friend came up with. Reina had the uncanny ability to approach any woman and at least get a giggle out of her. Given the right atmosphere, Reina could get more than a giggle. When Aiko met her, Reina was a twenty-year-old in the entertainment industry who spent all her wages on cigarettes, alcohol, and cover charges for lesbian clubs where she would pick up anyone for casual sex. Now Reina hovered around forty, and although she handed in her long hair and glittery stage dresses for a business suit and cropped hair long ago, she still spent her allowances on cigarettes, alcohol, and entertaining other women when she and Aiko went downtown on the weekends.

  To stay with Reina was to understand that’s how she lived. Reina didn’t think in terms of “monogamy versus polyamory,” or “my girlfriend versus every other woman.” But sometimes Aiko wondered if there wasn’t a like-minded woman over twenty in Japan whom Reina hadn’t been on top of at one time or another.

  But now she’s on top of me, because she loves me.

  Aiko felt her girlfriend’s skin and traced circles with manicured nails. A pleasant lull in their heated love-making. Reina was silent, as usual, aside from her heavy breaths and her curt announcement, “This is the last one.”

  “The last one” meant Reina was done playing with her lover and wanted to claim her own gratification. The only time Aiko ever heard Reina’s low voice peak high and almost feminine-like was in a split second during her climax, when she would let out a small squeal in Aiko’s ear. She had heard it many, many times, but it still made her smile.

  It didn’t take long for Reina to roll over and grab a cigarette. Aiko didn’t like smoking in the house, but she let Reina smoke in their bedroom after sex. She sat back in the bed and cradled Aiko in one arm, a cigarette passing between them. The only time Aiko ever smoked, unlike Reina who could go
through a pack a day.

  After Reina finished, she cleaned up. She wandered in and out of the bedroom, naked, her feet tripping over Aiko’s dress, thrown down on the floor when they first stumbled through the door. Reina reached up and turned off the bedroom light before crawling back into bed. Aiko curled next to her and put her own head on Reina’s flat chest, listening to her breathe and feeling the heat of her skin.

  “I love you,” Aiko said, her hand massaging Reina’s arm and her lips pressing against the cleft between breasts. Nineteen years. The weight of those years felt like feathers on her heart. Maybe Reina felt the same.

  Aiko waited for a response. But all she heard was Reina’s steady breathing and a car passing outside. The lights flashed by the bedroom window and illuminated Reina’s face, her eyes open and her lips slammed shut.

  “I love you,” Aiko said again, louder. She didn’t know what she expected. Anything, for their anniversary.

  Reina closed her eyes. A few minutes later her grip eased as she fell asleep.

  No matter. Aiko closed her eyes as well. She wouldn’t let the silence bother her.

  Aiko went to visit her family’s home in western Tokyo. The day was warm and a little rainy, so she took an umbrella with her; she also took a bag of mandarin oranges her neighbor, Yuri, had shared earlier that week. Aiko got off the train at the last station and shuffled down the street toward her childhood home, her bag of oranges on one arm and the umbrella in the opposite hand. When she arrived, she let herself in through the front gate without buzzing her mother.

  “Mou,” Junko, her mother, said as she passed the entryway and saw her daughter. “It’s you.”

  Aiko entered and produced the bag of mandarin oranges on the kitchen table. “They are from my neighbor,” she said, as her mother bolted around. “It’s too many, so I thought the family might like them.”

  Junko came out long enough to sniff through the bag and poke the oranges. “They’re nice. We can use these.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I have something to show you.” Junko patted Aiko’s shoulder and bade her to sit at the table. She obeyed while her mother rummaged through a stack of envelopes on the desk nearby. “Here it is. Look at this and tell me it doesn’t make you think differently.”

  Aiko took the tiny envelope and opened it, unsure of what her mother meant. Inside was a small white card with golden, embossed lettering, half of it in Japanese and the other half in English. Aiko’s throat went dry: a wedding invitation.

  “Eri-chan is getting married,” Junko said, as Aiko opened the card and read the details. “She’s marrying that boyfriend she met at graduate school. It’s been so long that nobody thought they would ever get married. Three years. Too long not to get married.” She wiped her hands on her apron and went back to finding a place to put the mandarin oranges.

  Aiko read over the invitation again. Eri was her niece, the daughter of her oldest brother. All of her four older siblings were married – one more than once – and had seven children between them. Aiko was the solitary unmarried and childless one amongst them, although she was in one of the longest relationships. Junko’s subtext cut deep, like the knife she now held in her hand to chop vegetables.

  Imagining little Eri in a wedding dress made Aiko wonder what she herself could look like in one. Growing up she often fantasized about Western weddings and enjoyed flipping through bridal magazines to get a taste of what she might look forward to one day. But that was before she met Reina. The moment she realized she loved Reina two decades ago was the moment she also let go of her marriage fantasy. They lived a married life but had no rings and no shared family registry. The best they could do was have one adopt the other, but Aiko couldn’t imagine it.

  And children…Aiko had always thought she wanted two, a boy and a girl, and she would become a perfect housewife and mother like her own. She knew there were lesbian couples who adopted babies, but again, she couldn’t imagine it. The idea of Reina as a parent was like assuming a dog would know how to care for a baby elephant outside of running around barking at it and then trotting off when most convenient. But Aiko felt life with Reina was worth losing her wedding and children fantasies. No man could ever make her feel the way Reina did.

  If only her mother could see that. But Aiko knew this was all a passive aggressive jab at her and her life. The invitation was dated from the week before, so Aiko would have received her own copy already if she were to get one. But no invitation came, and she doubted it ever would. Eri did not know her well, a feat Aiko’s brother had a hand in when the family found out about her love life. Although decorum dictated she be invited anyway, she did not doubt it was a “convenient” forgetfulness.

  “It will be a nice wedding,” Junko continued to the sound of chopping onions. “The boy is rich! Gonna be an engineer.”

  “I’ll have to send her my congratulations.” Aiko went into the kitchen to grab an apron. Cooking would take her mind off things.

  Her phone buzzed in her back pocket as she sifted carrots into the pot of curry already simmering on the stove. Aiko grabbed the phone and saw Reina’s name flashing.

  “Moshi moshi?”

  “Ah, Ai-chan? Do you know if my other suit is clean? I have a meeting on Friday and…”

  As Reina talked, Junko eavesdropped. Aiko answered vaguely, saying she could have the suit cleaned and pressed the next day. She then asked what Reina wanted for dinner and they sorted it out before hanging up.

  Aiko put her phone away. “Reina-chan says hello,” she relayed to her mother. What a lie. Reina hated Junko for the awkwardness she forced upon them.

  Junko turned up her nose as if the onions assaulted her senses. “You still live with that one.”

  “She is my girlfriend,” Aiko said for the hundredth time in twenty years. She used a word insinuating a romance between them, in case her mother hadn’t gotten the message yet.

  Junko said nothing, but Aiko knew what she thought. She had heard it all from her mother before. “She’s a pervert!” “What did she do to you to make you this way?” “Is she a man inside?” “Why is she so ugly? Does she not care about herself?” “Her parents must be so ashamed.” Thankfully she never said them in front of Reina – oh no, Junko had more tact than that. But Reina got the message without the words and now avoided the entire Takeuchi family as if they carried a plague.

  When lunch was ready they went to sit in the living room while they watched an afternoon drama on TV. Junko liked the taiga dramas depicting ancient warlords and their gallant battles, but Aiko couldn’t care less about another period production.

  Her eyes wandered around the living room as she ate the spicy curry. Not much had changed over the years since her childhood, except for the shelf on the far side of the room holding various pictures accumulating like dust with every addition to the family.

  Pictures of her siblings and their spouses and children were there, lining the shelves amidst knick-knacks and other trinkets. Aiko looked harder. Four years before she and Reina went on vacation to Okinawa and took a picture in front of the sea. Aiko had wrapped it in a pretty frame to give to her mother as a souvenir, but now she didn’t see the picture on the shelf alongside her siblings and siblings-in-law.

  “Where’s the picture I gave you of me and Reina-chan?” Aiko pointed, interrupting her mother’s view of the drama on TV. “The one from Okinawa?”

  Junko took her time to eat another bite of curry and contemplate the air before her. “It’s a shelf for married couples. You are not married.”

  The sting was there, as always. “You are not married, and never will be married. And thus I don’t have to pretend I care.” Aiko lowered her arm and felt her heart sink through her chest. Nineteen years together, and it means nothing to my mother.

  Aiko resumed eating. She wondered if there was an “I love you” shelf in her mother’s house…she couldn’t be on that one, either. Nineteen years together, and it means nothing to my Reina. She assumed.
She could only assume.

  Reina opened her bento lunch to see Aiko had arranged the food in the shape of a heart.

  She laughed to herself and began to eat, the rice jumbling and the egg splitting as she broke Aiko’s heart to feast. She liked to get creative with the boxed lunches she made, and with no children to make them for, Reina got the brunt of the ideas.

  A coworker looked into her lunch and smiled. “Oh, it’s cute!” She futzed with the coffee maker. “Did you make it? I saw something similar on a blog for bento the other day.”

  Reina coughed on a carrot. “No. I don’t make these. My gir…my friend does. We live together. Like roommates.”

  “Oh, well, tell your friend she’s really talented!” The woman left the staff room.

  Reina shoved some of the rice around in her bento box with her chopsticks and thought about what she implied. Best if the company never found out she was a lesbian, and as of yet they had never pried into her personal life. Still, rumors were best quashed before they began. It had been two months since she and Aiko had an anniversary dinner in the same neighborhood as her business building, but she could still remember the tension of eyes watching them.

  Reina finished her lunch and texted Aiko about somebody admiring her handy work. An “I make the best for you <3” came in return. They then sent a trail of flirtatious mails back and forth, until Aiko sent an “I love you,” and Reina decided to go back to work. “I love you” was such a final sentiment, she assumed it meant the end of the conversation and Aiko had to get back to her chores and errands. They could continue flirting later.

  That thought became the impetus to get Reina through the rest of her work day. As she ran errands for her section chief, cleaned out her keyboard, and then avoided having to give all her male colleagues coffee – that’s what the office lady was for – she thought about going home, eating one of Aiko’s fantastic dinners, taking a hot shower and bath with or without her girlfriend, and then going wild in the bedroom until she was too tired to fuck anymore. No better lull to sleep than Aiko’s pretty little moans and squeals of pleasure echoing in Reina’s dreams.