Love Written as if Adding ‘to do’ (yaru) to the Woman Radical

TL note: The title 『女へんにやると書くような愛』 plays on the “woman” radical (女へん) and the verb yaru (やる), which means “to do” and carries a crude or sexual nuance. It suggests a love that is rough, obsessive, and far from pure.

I hold this middle school girl in my arms as if clinging to her for dear life.

Every time I trace her limbs—which seem boiled down from sweet nectar—and every time I taste her with my mouth, I am engulfed in a torrential current of scalding water, drowning in heat. My dignity and reason have snapped like the flimsy limbs of a crude scarecrow, dangling pathetically. What makes it all the more heartbreaking is that they never completely tear away to be swept off in the muddy current.

Self-loathing is perpetually pressed against my forehead, while the faces of my family and the face right before me spin at random through my vision. That a day would come when the faces of my beloved husband and daughter would feel like an intrusion was something I had truly never once imagined. It lay completely beyond the bounds of my imagination, yet here I was, having lost my footing, tumbling headlong into the abyss.

The girl, the same age as my daughter, reaches out a hand. I intertwine my fingers with hers, preventing her from touching anyone but me, and her lips loosen in a mocking smirk as if catching my drift. If she mocks my desperation, I will only crave her more. She is certain of it. And she was right. When I press my lips against hers, her tongue, cool to the touch, parts my lips as if impatient for more. While the temperature difference sends a chill shivering across my skin, another person's tongue wanders through my mouth as if taking a stroll. The moment I become aware of both that tongue and her face looming so close, I feel the manicured garden my life had built being entirely withered away, an unknown seed planted in its place.

It sprouts in an instant, blooming with vibrant colors, altering even the sky itself, completely transforming the landscape of my soul.

And that scenery, even while soaked in the continuous rain falling upon the forest, was a brilliant, breathtaking blue.

As her tongue finishes its stroll and prepares to retreat on a whim, I entwine mine against it, pressing forward until a rich, sticky sound wetly echoes and my cheeks ignite with heat. The pitch of shameful desire slices into the edges of my ears, yet by the time the sting washes away, it is already stained with pure pleasure. Our tongues seek each other out, touching in their sheer devotion.

Once the kiss breaks, I rest my hand against her porcelain cheek—so white that a mere touch feels like it would leave a mark—and feel a wave of relief that it is flushed with heat. Sensing the softening of my expression, she tries to avert her eyes and face as if annoyed that I've seen through her, but I bring my other hand up to block her escape. Forced to face me head-on, those eyes pierce right through me, just as they have on countless days before.

"Erotic Obaa-san."

In just those two words, she managed to precisely encapsulate every single one of my sins.

"...And yet you're quite the perverted brat yourself."

Even if I listed out everything she had done to me up until now and threw it in her face, she would probably only laugh.

"Aren't you lucky, then? That you're the kind of person I'm in love with."

She deliberately emphasizes that detached, objective tone, putting distance between her words and her true feelings.

Always taking the long way around, capable of nothing but twisted, sarcastic remarks...

Yet this child is so precious to me that the bottom of my stomach seethes with longing.

"You're the one... who only loves me..."

I brush back her bangs, lick away the sweat beading on her brow, and draw her body, pressing against me, even closer.

She will only ever love me.

I am enough for her.

She doesn't need anyone else in this world but me.

Her outstretched arms wrap around my back, drawing me in as warm breath washes over my ear.

"Only you."

That brief whisper bites into my ear. Tightly, as if nothing could pull her away, even if we were torn to shreds.

I want to ruin her completely.

I want to cherish and protect her.

Love and desire had both boiled over so violently that they had sharpened to a point; what an irony that they should end up taking the exact same shape.

The feeling I had when she told me, "With you, I can do it," is something I will never forget for the rest of my life.

To put it in cliché terms, it was a blessing, and it was a curse.

If only I hadn't naturally let my maternal instincts get the better of me back then.

Perhaps none of this would have ever happened.

ToC