Afterglow

Ranko slipped out of bed, smiling at her still-sleeping girlfriend. When her bare feet touched the floor, her legs nearly buckled from exhaustion, causing a deep blush that no one saw in the pre-dawn still of their tiny second-story apartment. Akane had certainly taken her time getting comfortable with taking their relationship to a physical level, but once she had, she had been thorough.Back before the Cat's Tongue, she had never really had much curiosity about the new form bestowed to her by the Spring of Drowned Girl. Mostly, she had been too disgusted by it to be interested in exploring its intricacies. A part of her had secretly dreaded liking it all along, though she'd never have admitted that to another living soul. It made her feel dirty to even consider it, especially since the incident with Mikado. Not long after that, the matriarch of the Amazon tribe had turned all of her nerves up to twenty-six on a scale of one to ten, though, and Ranko began to actively fear her feminine anatomy. Just an accidental brush in the right place was enough to nearly bring her to her knees and short-circuit her brain. She'd long considered it a weakness to be kept secret and guarded against at all costs.Akane had confirmed that weakness beyond the shadow of a doubt, and exploited it. Blissfully. Enthusiastically. Repeatedly. She hadn't even given Ranko a chance to reciprocate her affections. Every time she'd tried, Akane snatched away her mind and broke her resolve with the simplest touch, rendering her entirely helpless again. It was terrifying at first, the sensation that the whole of her nervous system was about to explode and being utterly powerless to stop it. Each time, the shockwaves thundering through her very being would only just barely start to subside before it started happening all over again. She had quickly lost count of the number of times she died and was brought back to life in her bedroom last night, but it certainly explained why she felt a little like a zombie now. She felt like she could crawl back into bed and not move for a month. Longer, if Akane were in it with her.The whole of the night was a blur, as if time had simultaneously sped up and stood still. Every second had felt like an eternity she never wanted to leave. However long the moment had lasted, nothing else had mattered while it did. She would need to come up with an excuse for why her math homework wasn't finished. The towels on the bed were definitely going to need to be washed again. She didn't even recall falling asleep, and thought that perhaps she'd just blacked out at some point.Padding gingerly out into the kitchen to begin her day, Ranko beamed again. On the tiny little dining table she shared with her favorite tormentor rested a small cardboard box of assorted pastries from the little bakery around the corner, the one Ranko usually stopped at on her way to practice with her band when she walked there from the Phoenix. On the lid was scrawled a note in black marker: Don't worry about breakfast. Love you. A single, long-stemmed white rose lay unwrapped atop the cellophane window showcasing the baked goods within. Akane must have slipped out for them surreptitiously at some point after Ranko had fallen asleep. That said, Ranko was relatively certain that Godzilla could have destroyed half of Tokyo outside her bedroom window last night, and she would not have noticed a thing.She picked up the rose, brushing her nose delicately with it and smelling it with a blush and a smile. Even with all the admirers – and dare she say, fans – who had offered them at the Phoenix, it still felt so strange to receive flowers as a gift. It was such a silly girl thing. You couldn't do anything with them; they'd just sit there until they died in a couple of days and you had to throw them out. It always seemed wasteful and impractical. Might as well give a girl a pickle; at least she could eat it. But now, this morning, she felt pretty, and loved, and not at all ashamed of being a silly girl who could smile silly smiles at silly girl things like flowers. Akane had called her that a lot last night. My silly girl. Just then, Ranko couldn't think of anything in the great vastness of the cosmos that she'd rather be.No fancy dress Izumi had ever stuffed her in, nor compliment or catcall she'd ever heard on stage, had ever come close to making her feel as feminine and beautiful as she did at that moment, holding the pale and fragile token of Akane's love, wearing nothing but a silver bracelet and a contented smile, her hair still matted from a long, fitful night. She dragged the petals of the rose across her bare forearm softly, closing her eyes and reminiscing of Akane's touch with a little shudder, sighing happily.She'd always expected that if she ever allowed herself to experience physical pleasure as a girl, she would feel disgusting. Perverted. Wrong. Broken. Ashamed. Tainted. Despoiled. She felt none of those things now. What she did feel was a sense of serenity, as if Akane's assertion over her had superseded all of her other thoughts and worries and rendered them meaningless for a moment, insignificant trifles next to the sheer magnitude of her joy at being with Akane in heart, in mind, and now, at long last, in body. Her silly girl. Always. The thought filled every corner and cranny of her soul with a warm, soft glow, and she wanted to curl up in it and bask in its radiance forever.She walked over to the couch, tucking the flower carefully into the slightly-open main compartment of Akane's teal backpack and zipping it closed. She hoped that Akane would discover it when she got to her first class, and understand its meaning. I love you too, silly girl, she thought to herself.As quietly as she could, Ranko crept into the bathroom and started the shower. Akane's thoughtful gesture with breakfast had spared her enough time to get cleaned up before school, and she was quite grateful for it after the previous night's activities. After checking carefully to make sure the water was a safe temperature, she stepped into the garish yellow combination bathtub and shower stall, biting her wrist gently to keep from yelping and waking Akane when the cold water struck her skin.She toweled off softly and slipped into her school uniform. With her every nerve still deliriously pleading for more of the enthralling effervescence that had caused her to need the bath in the first place, the act of washing herself had been an adventure, to say the least. Every cell of her skin cried out at her individually as the fabric slid into place, and her whole body radiated with a sort of background hum, like the physical equivalent of a calming white noise that was warm and good. All of the efforts she had undertaken to train her mind not to focus on the incessantly overwhelming sensory input the Full Body Cat's Tongue inflicted had been entirely, gloriously overpowered, and it was going to take her some time to get it back under control.Using the mirror mounted above the chest of drawers, Ranko tied her hair back in a ponytail with a red ribbon that matched the pinafore of her uniform. She beamed adoringly at the sleeping Akane over her shoulder in the mirror. It had never necessarily been the case that she had needed a physical aspect to the relationship to be happy with her, but she blushed at herself in the mirror with the realization that, now that she knew how mind-shatteringly incredible it could actually be, that might no longer be true.Still, she had always had a lingering worry in the back of her mind that as long as Akane was unwilling to take that step with her, their relationship was in some measure of jeopardy. At any point, Akane could have decided that she needed intimacy, and sought it from a more traditional partner. Those worries were gone from her mind now. All of the doubts she had, erased. How could she dispute that Akane wanted her, after she'd so emphatically, so rapturously laid claim to her?Before last night, Ranko had always feared that Akane still considered some part of her to be damaged, as if she were something unclean that Akane couldn't bring herself to touch. Ranko had not doubted in some time that Akane loved her heart, and she'd never had a shortage of people interested in her feminine body, but now, for the first time in her young life, she felt desirable as a complete person. She felt whole, as if Akane had taken her apart ever so gently, repaired something deep down inside her that was broken, and then spent all night lovingly rebuilding her one sublime moment at a time.With a smile at the little glass heart-shaped frame on her dresser that held the Polaroid they took together on their first day in the new apartment, Ranko made her way back into the main room of the tiny domicile. Her stomach growling, reminding her that she and her partner had never gotten around to replacing the dinner she burned nor cleaning up after it, she grabbed a glazed doughnut from the box on the table and scooped the strap of her black leather school bag onto her shoulder. She turned the doorknob slowly and slipped out the front door, careful to make as little noise as possible. Akane's first class wasn't until noon today, so there was no reason not to let her sleep in. She'd had a long night too, after all.As she closed the apartment door behind herself and locked it with her key, she caught a glimpse of the grandfatherly man who lived in the apartment next door, collecting his morning newspaper in the corridor in a moss-green robe. She blushed bright red, giving him a small, sheepish wave with the hand that still held her confectionary breakfast. "Good morning, Mr. Gao," she squeaked mousily. Ranko scooted down the grayish-green hallway as quickly as she could without running, trying to avoid eye contact with the man. She hadn't formally met her new neighbor previously, but she had overheard him introduce himself to Akane the night before, the first of three times he'd knocked on their door to complain about the noises coming from their bedroom. Ranko knew the polite thing would be to apologize to the old man, but if she were being honest with herself, she knew she wasn't remotely sorry for a thing that had taken place. She prayed Akane wasn't, either.Ranko slipped on the headphones attached to her Walkman and pressed play, singing along with it as she headed in the direction of her high school. It felt surreal and strange, walking down the sidewalk when she wasn't entirely sure if her feet were even still on the ground."Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth? Ooh, heaven is a place on earth…"