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  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  "JOSHOKU."

  About the Author

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  “JOSHOKU.”

  BOOK 6: REN’AI RENSAI

  Hildred Billings

  BARACHOU PRESS

  “JOSHOKU.”

  Copyright: Hildred Billings

  Published: 27th June 2014

  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 those who managed to change their lives for the better.

  "JOSHOKU."

  Tokyo; March 27th, 1994

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  The beautician held Reina's ponytail so she could see it in the mirror. “Do it,” Reina said, gripping the chair beneath the drape. “Starting today I'm a new woman.”

  Behind her sat her girlfriend Aiko. I can't watch her do this. She covered her eyes, then lowered her hands, then covered her eyes again. The beautician shrugged and held up her shears.

  Zzzssshhttt. Reina's ponytail was cut from her head. Aiko clasped her hand over her mouth and held her own locks close to her body.

  Nobody said a word as the beautician set aside the chunk of black hair and began styling what was left on Reina's scalp. It's so short! Aiko pretended to read a magazine, but only had eyes for the pieces of hair floating toward the floor with every snip of the scissors. Reina continued to smile at herself in the mirror.

  When she said she was thinking of cutting her hair, Aiko had no idea her girlfriend was this serious. Since she met her Reina over a year ago she had only known a woman with lusciously long black hair that came down to her waist. It was a part of the mystique that originally drew Aiko to her. I thought she looked like Cleopatra. Long dark hair and darker eyeliner. A feminine terror with a masculine attitude. Now Reina wanted to trade in her hairstyle for something “more mature,” as she put it. Certainly not to follow trends. Straight long hair was back in again after the years of perms and springy bobs.

  “What should we do with these bangs here?” the beautician asked, blocking Aiko's view of her girlfriend. “Go shorter?”

  “Make sure it's even, at least.”

  By the time it was over, Aiko had bitten down one of her nails. The chair swiveled around and revealed her new girlfriend.

  She was nigh unrecognizable.

  “Oh my...” Aiko stood, gasping at the transformation her girlfriend had undergone.

  Without the long hair to frame her face, Reina sported features that Aiko had never paid attention to before. Full cheeks, a round jaw, and a pair of ears that detached at the cartilage. How have I never noticed that detail? Reina went for a straight pixie cut, the angular slices to her hair tapering above her neck and immaculately groomed in front of her ears. Sparse bangs graced her pale forehead. “Well?” she asked, arms akimbo as the beautician swept up the hair on the floor. “How does it look?”

  Aiko cocked her head and tried not to frown. Like a completely different person... This was going to take some getting used to. “It looks good on you!” The truth, at least. The beautician gave Reina a flattering cut to match her charming cheekbones and thin eyes. Reina took the compliment with a smug countenance and went to pay at the desk up front.

  The cherry blossoms were beginning to fall outside, a riot of pink petals floating down onto the sidewalks wherever Aiko and Reina stepped. “This feels weird,” Reina said, grasping her girlfriend's hand as they walked side-by-side. She touched her shoulder, where her hair used to rest. “My neck feels cold and bare.”

  They stopped at a crosswalk. Aiko looked up at her girlfriend's short hair and saw a petal already resting atop her scalp. Reina flinched when Aiko plucked it off. “At least these won't get stuck anymore.” Last year Reina would walk around with cherry blossoms trapped in her free-flowing locks. Every time she walked into a building she would shake them off like a dog coming in from the rain. “What do you want for dinner?”

  Reina treated her girlfriend to burgers and fries at a nearby restaurant, where they sat across from each other in a booth next to the window. While Reina rambled about her usual topics of music and sex, Aiko swirled a fry in a helping of ketchup and stared at her girlfriend's new look. The make-up was the same – that daring thick eyeliner Aiko fell in love with over a year ago – and the clothes what Reina always wore, but there was something bizarre about the way she looked now. Well, of course it was the hair. Reina could have dyed it blond and it still wouldn't have looked as different as it did now.

  “You know what I wish they had,” Reina said, munching on soggy fries, “they should make handheld phones that you can carry around with you.” She held out her empty hand and mimicked dialing a phone. “Like a little portable phone. Not like those huge ones they have now. Would be super cool. Could call anyone.”

  Aiko smiled. We would spend even more time on the phone. Her mother often joked about getting Aiko a phone since she had a habit of hogging the family one in the front hallway.

  “You know what we should do tonight?” Reina pulled her legs up into her seat, knocking her knees against the underside of the table. “Let's go to Ni-chome. I want to show off my new hair.” She pretended to fluff it, large bangle bracelet falling down her arm.

  “I don't think partying would be a good idea tonight.” That's what Reina meant by going to Ni-chome, the large gay bar and club district. Ever since Aiko turned twenty that previous September, she was old enough to go into bars and party like Reina did. Except Aiko didn't like partying as heavily as her girlfriend, who could down alcohol like a tank. “I need to rest up for the new semester. And so should you! You start on Thursday.”

  Reina wrinkled her nose. “What is there to rest for? That's four days away.”

  “Don't show up on your first day of classes hungover.”

  “Maa, I would certainly leave an impression.”

  “The wrong one!”

  Reina tried sucking out the last drops of soda from her cup, making enough noise to grate Aiko’s nerves.

  You idiot. When Reina first announced months ago that she was going back to school to get a degree, Aiko thought it would be a turning point in her girlfriend’s maturity. Sure, she loved Reina’s wild and free spirit, but she wasn’t the most future-conscious or responsible woman around. Yet it seemed Reina did not take any precaution or pride in choosing a school or course of study. I would say it’s admirable she’s going to the school where her father taught, but she’s only going there for the free ride. Aiko mused over the booklets from the school, encouraging her girlfriend to take something “interesting” as a scholar. Reina chose Japanese because, “I speak the damn language, so how hard could it be?”

  “Anyway, I was thinking the other day,” Aiko said, pushing aside her basket of paper wrappers. “Since you’re doing a two-year program and I’m going to be a junior this year, we’ll be graduating right around the same time. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Reina stared at her from above her cup. Don’t look at me like that with those
big brown eyes. Surrounded in devilish eyeliner. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself. Let’s focus on what we can do today.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Reina waggled her eyebrows.

  Even though she knew what that silliness meant, Aiko still feigned surprise when she went to Reina’s house and was almost immediately propositioned with sex. I knew I was staying the night... I knew this was what would happen... And yet the moment the lights came down and Reina embraced her from behind was one in which Aiko gasped like a virgin. Which she could hardly say she was now.

  Reina made sure of that. For over a year now they copulated whenever they had the chance, sometimes in love hotels, but as their relationship grew they were more likely to roll around Reina’s futon. Tonight it’s like making love to a new woman. Without her long hair creating a veil around them, Aiko was convinced that Reina was a different beast than usual. Yet the way she bit Aiko’s ear and thrust her fingers into her was the same as always.

  “I’m going to miss your hair,” Aiko said, curled around her girlfriend in the futon. A single light shone in the shuttered room, creating dancing shadows on the wall every time Aiko moved a naked limb. She stroked her girlfriend’s bare shoulder, where flecks of cut hair were still shedding from Reina’s scalp. “I loved running my fingers through it. Do you think you’ll grow it out again?”

  Reina shrugged. “I’m not sure why I would. I wanted to change everything. So I did. No point going back to the past. Maa, you’ll get used to it.”

  Aiko supposed so.

  “Besides...” Reina rolled on top of her girlfriend, kissing her cheek and nuzzling a nose against her. “It’s not like this is changing.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Aiko let her legs open again so Reina could slide between them. Her endless sexual energy could be exhausting at times, but Aiko had nothing against it. “But we might be busy once classes start.”

  “Eh?” Reina interrupted herself from sucking her girlfriend’s throat. “If we can make it through your classes and me being a performer, I think we can both handle similar schedules.”

  Aiko hoped she was right. She couldn’t imagine her everyday life without Reina, kissing her softly before plunging into the depths of her body.

  Reina took one look at the campus and had a mind to turn and never come back.

  This is some crappy TV drama shit. The cherry blossoms scattered across the insular campus, where first year students arrived with their parents for orientation. Reina came stag. Dad dead and mom too loaded with work and booze to care.

  “Here, stand beneath this tree with your sister.” One woman in a heavy sweater crammed her daughters together, one wearing a high school uniform and the other in the trendy fashion of the day. It was the latter who sported a brand new backpack and a face reflecting the easy college life. Mom snapped some pictures beneath the cherry trees and lamented about “new beginnings,” as adults tended to do.

  Reina had no one to take pictures of her, and she was glad of it. All she brought with her was a jacket and a canvas book bag to loop around her chest, full of pens, pencils, and the files she was requested to bring for orientation. She almost felt responsible. If any of her old party friends saw her now, they would laugh so hard their spleens would burst.

  “This way to the lecture hall!” A woman holding a megaphone waved her arm around. Young people filed by her, and Reina readjusted her strap before stepping into the fray.

  The campus was small, but still impressive for an inner-city learning institution. Reina was used to the large, nondescript buildings on street corners housing entire universities. For a junior college to have three buildings surrounding a large courtyard was a testament to its beginnings as a Catholic missionary property. A small chapel still stood to the side of the courtyard, now a mixture of unused religious services and administrative offices. If it weren’t for this iconography and the “St.” in the school’s name, Reina would have never guessed it was a Catholic school.

  Until she saw the Sisters gliding by in their black habits.

  Reina stopped in her steps, bile surfacing in her mouth like bad water. The crows! Stern. Sterile. Mean. They ran Reina’s high school, filling almost every administrative and teaching position. Most of the Sisters there were Japanese, aside from the language instructors, but the woman in charge was a surly American who...

  Who looked right at Reina and frowned so hard her face almost fell off her head.

  “Miss Yamada,” she growled, stopping in front Reina on her way by.

  Reina inclined her head. “Sister Angela.”

  “Come with me.”

  Not the first time Reina ever heard that phrase uttered by such a raspy voice. The black and white habit shuffled away, and Reina knew better than to start her college experience by not obeying a Sister. Some things never changed from high school.

  Sister Angela led her to a small office on the first floor of the primary administrative building. Back at St. Francis, Reina’s high school, Sister Angela was the principal, running her sub-Kingdom of God with an iron fist. I made her life hell. The thought made Reina smile as she sat in a chair in front of a barren desk in a barren room. “I see you’ve moved up in the world. I didn’t think the clergy was that involved in their junior college.”

  The nun sank into her chair with a look sour enough to purse lips. “I’m here helping with a research project,” she said with a thick accent. Like most of the Sisters who followed their spiritual calling to the Pagan souls of Japan, Sister Angela learned the language well enough to understand, but never cared to get the accent down. We speak like heathens anyway. “But I admit when I saw your name on the new student roster, I almost went to meet the Creator.”

  Reina was haughty, but not haughty enough to think that her mere presence would give Sister Angela the gift she always wanted. Meeting that Jesus guy she has such a crush on. The principal’s office at St. Francis had been covered in Jesus pictures, Jesus statues, picture books of Jesus, and Jesus Jesus Jesus. Reina didn’t understand why these women were so in love with a man who didn’t shave. She knew they were in love because they called themselves the “wives of the Lord.” She supposed that made Sister Angela First Wife. “I’m sorry to hear of your ill health,” Reina said with another smile.

  Sister Angela leaned across the table, her brows furrowed so deep that her nostrils flared. Reina was used to that cold stare. It was the same one she got every time she fell asleep during catechism or was caught smoking outside school grounds. And every time I didn’t hide my disgusting homosexuality. Had she gone to a normal high school, most teachers would have turned a blind eye to Reina’s unorthodox sexual explorations. Sister Angela made it her mission in life to give Reina Hell during high school.

  “I thought I was rid of your heresy when you left St. Francis three years ago. And yet here you are, come to make my life miserable again.”

  “I missed you too.”

  Sister Angela sneered. “His Holiness knows the only reason you even got into this pristine institution is because of your father, God rest him. If he weren’t former faculty here, why, you wouldn’t have stood a chance. I looked at your admission papers. You could barely pass the entrance exam!”

  “Excuse you. I aced the math portion.”

  “And nearly failed everything else.”

  So what? While most of her peers spent hours of their lives studying for college entrance exams, Reina brushed up ten minutes before sitting down to bullshit her way through filling in circles and writing nonsense essays. She didn’t fear being rejected by the college connected to her high school with its elevator system. While about half the students there were from other high schools, St. Francis was notorious for automatically approving most graduates. And then there’s my father. The venerated Professor Yamada, who taught history before his death. Her school connections made it easy for her to get in. Her heritage meant a free ride.

  “It’s a travesty t
hat you’re here polluting our academic pools, but I suppose there’s nothing that can be done.” Sister Angela flipped open a book and shook her head. “But I asked you in here to make myself clear about one thing.” The book was The Holy Bible, and the verse she pointed to was one Reina was intimately familiar with. The same one Sister Angela shoved in her face every time Reina came into her office at St. Francis. “While you are here you will not fraternize with any of the other female students. Look at you, with your unfortunate hair! Have you no shame as a woman? I am quite sure that there is no saving you from Satan’s clutches, but I won’t let you take another poor girl down with you. Not like you did to Miss Kawazama.”

  She was the one who corrupted me. Reina’s dear friend Michiko, who she met in high school what felt like so long ago. Their acts would live on in infamy as St. Francis legend, especially the time they were caught having sex in an empty classroom. Sister Angela’s empty catechism classroom.

  “I’m assuming you’re still a disgusting sinner.”

  “The worst. I even have a steady girlfriend now. I’m in deep.”

  “The Eastern Star burns bright within you!” The fist pounding Sister Angela’s desk pulsed red from impact. “Swear to me that you will not harass the poor young women of this college. Normally I would prefer our ladies to not touch the men, either, but in your case I might fall to my knees and thank the Lord.”

  As much as Reina loved being around and flirting with women, she admitted that she did not come to college with intentions of doing much of that. Not that she was old enough to go to bars and clubs now. There was no need to do most of her flirting at school. Besides, the girlfriend. Aiko would not be impressed to know her lover was flirting without her. “I came here to study. Might blow your mind, but there it is.”