Chapter 3 - piercing

I don’t know Raana.
I’m not sure
that I know anyone,
but I know I don’t know her.
Maybe nobody does.
But I think

she knows me.
The way she looks at me. The way she speaks to me. The way she smiles when our music intertwines.
She knows something about me that I don’t know myself.

We live in the sixth floor of a cramped apartment building, not in a house. So our bathroom is really, really small. It’s way below average.
It’s barely big enough for two people to stand and use the shower in, let alone for them to sit in the tiny bathtub together.
It was obviously an absurd request. I know that. Even I know that.
But tonight, I felt something, growing inside of me. It was a feeling. A squirming writhing tugging burning feeling in my chest. A feeling that pulled me towards her, and made me want to know, to let go and jump in, so I could know.

To know just how deep in she would drag me,
and what I could pull from those depths.

The sound of the bathtub slowly filling up with hot water echoed through the hallway leading to our bathroom, like a little flowing river. I stood there for a moment, and listened. Then I walked in.
I had taken my main and spare sets of pajamas from the closet and brought them to the laundry area. Raana was there.
She was undressing.
Her body was small, and she was shockingly thin. I could see the traces of her ribs poking through her skin. My eyes lingered on them, and I wondered how she could stay like that with all the sweets and noodles she ate.
She must have noticed I was staring, because she started staring back.
“Hmm?”
“S-sorry.” I came to my senses, and turned and set the pajamas down. I felt my skin crawl with guilt.
“Fufu.”
She giggled. Then she casually threw her blouse, and then her socks, shorts, and finally her underwear on top of her shirt.
I looked at the pile of clothes. My hand reached out and lifted up her shirt to give me a closer look. I hadn’t noticed until now, but… her shirt was covered in cat hair, and stained with dirt and grime in spots, and had bits of leaves and twigs stuck in between its ragged and ripped hemline.
Her shorts, too. I usually couldn’t see them for how long her shirt was, but they were just as dirty.
She wasn’t wearing a bra, apparently. I couldn’t see one.
“You gonna take yours off?”
“…!”
My hand dropped the shirt back onto the pile.
“Your clothes’ll get wet if you don’t.”
“…Huh? N-no, I will…”

I felt Raana’s gaze on me, telling me to hurry up, pulling me towards her.
So, I took the hem of my hoodie in one and then another, and slowly started taking it off. Slowly, slowly…
“Too slow.”
I felt her bare arms reach around in front of me, and grab onto my hoodie and the shirt under it and start clumsily pulling them up. My vision was muffled by cloth before I could even react.
“A-ah!”
She pulled harder, and without thinking twice I lifted my arms to let the clothes come off. Muscle memory, I think.
The way her fingernails and the cloth of my shirt traced over my skin sent shivers through my whole body, and stood my hairs on end.

Her hands touched my bare back. They were so, so cold. I closed my eyes and inhaled and let their chill wash over me.
Then she slid them under my bra and pulled it off.
She unbuttoned my skirt and let it drop, she pulled down my underwear, she reached for my socks and took them off. I helped her along the whole time.
When she was done, I could feel the cold air in the room crawling up the bare skin on my arms and on my stomach, like a colony of carpenter ants. I stood there, rubbing my hands up and down my upper arms.
I looked over at Raana. She was looking back at me.

We went into the shower. I was covering myself as I went, but Raana wasn’t, so my eyes were jumping around the whole time, trying not to stay in any one place for too long.
I didn’t like the way my head felt when they did.

Like I thought, it was cramped, so much that I couldn’t take a single step once I slid the door closed.
Raana sat down on the little white plastic bench and started washing her arms. She picked up a bottle of shampoo and handed it to me. I took it.
“D-do you… want me to wash your hair, Raana-chan?”
“Mhm.”
“…Okay.”
I wet her hair with the showerhead, then squeezed some shampoo into my hand, rubbed it into a foam, and started working it into her scalp.
As my fingers ran through her wet hair, they noticed just how messy it was. It was tangled and matted, and I kept getting caught on it and feeling her flinch and protest with little catlike growls. Every so often I would spot some dirt or a pebble or a leaf, right before they were caught up in the foam and fell down and flowed into the drain.
“Raana-chan. You… take naps outside a lot, right?”
“Yeah. In parks, under the trees.”
“Is that… do you, like it?”
“Usually.”
Usually, she said.
“When I can find a spot under the sun.”
…That did sound nice. It made me want to try it.
“But yesterday I did it at night, so I couldn’t.”
…Eh?
“E-eh? You… spent a whole night outside?”
“Yeah. I didn’t wanna be at home. …Ow.”
“S-sorry.”
I was so stunned, I let my fingers start pressing harder into her scalp, enough to let my nails dig in a little.

I took a bucket of water and dumped it over her head. She made a noise.
“…Raana-chan, you should have… You should have asked me to stay over then, too…”
She stood up.
“I wanted to be alone.”
“…”
“Alone with the cats.”
She climbed into the tub and started staring at me, so I quickly got my shower over with and went to join her.

Her eyes crawled down my body as I put one leg into the water, then the other, then lowered myself into it until it touched my collarbone, with my knees pressed into my chest, taking up half of our bathtub.
The steam washed over me, cleared my head and filled my lungs; the water it left behind was warm, and gentle and heavy like my blanket, and it felt like I could close my eyes and let myself drift into it. But I kept them open, and I looked at Raana, as she looked back at me.

After a minute of silent staring, Raana started looking bored, and she suddenly reached over with one hand, then another, and put them on my knees, and then she pulled them apart from each other, as much as the space would allow.
I just let her, and I looked, looked at her hands digging into the skin on my legs, at her playful face as she had them do so.
She turned herself around, leaned back, and nestled her head into me, so that my legs would straddle it. It was tight, and uncomfortable. I felt the shape of her head pressing into my chest and into my stomach, and her wet hair clinging to my thighs. The skin on her shoulders grazing mine.
She closed her eyes, and said, “Tomori.”
“…What’s up, Raana-chan?”
I said back, as I was pressed from every direction into the walls of the bathtub.
“You’re soft.”
She sounded so relaxed, like she was about to fall asleep, her voice drowning into the water.
“R-really? Thanks.”
I think that’s what you’re supposed to say, if someone tells you that you’re soft. That sounded right.
“Tomori.”
“W-what’s up now?”
“Just wanted to say it.”
“O-oh. Okay.”
I let a long, gentle, suffocating moment pass us by.

“…Raana-chan.”
“Tomori.”
“Raana-chan… What’s, what’s that on your ear?”
I’d noticed something.
Her hair was wet, so it wasn’t covering her ears anymore, and I could see it.
“Hm?”
I reached over and took her ear between my fingers, and bent it a little to let me see it better.
“T-this.”
“A piercing.”
That’s what it was. A metal piercing, going through the lobe of her left ear.
And another one, on her right.
They were both subtly shaped like cats, with little metal ears.
“…Did they hurt?” I asked, as I peered into the metal that had been run clean through her flesh.
“A little. I did it myself.”
I pictured her holding one of those plastic, pistol-like things, with a sharp needle at its tip. I heard the metallic sound of it closing, and I shivered.
“…Isn’t that, against the rules? Like, at school…”
“Don’t care. Haven’t been going.”
“A, ah…”

I sat there, sinking into my thoughts.
She hadn’t been going to school. She’d pierced her own ears, and ran away from home, and slept among the trees. And now she was here, sitting in my bathtub, with her head nestled between my legs.
Of course, I was worried about her. About what could have happened at home to make her do this, about the trouble she must be in with her school, worried about what else she’d done, about what I’d do if someone showed up looking for her. But…

“Your heart.” Raana said, sinking her head deeper into my chest.
“H-huh?”
“It’s beating. Fast.”
It was.
It was beating the same way it did right after I got done running down the street, right after singing a song on stage.
I kept breathing in, and out, in, and out, but it wouldn’t stop.

In the end, I just sat there, saying nothing, sitting still, looking at her.
Eventually, she lifted her head. She said “I’m bored,” and got up.
I stayed and watched her as she walked away.
I reached over and turned the heating off, and sank into the tub, and felt my skin slowly grow cold in its water.

The tips of my fingers were wrinkled like dried plums. I was staring at them as I walked back into my bedroom.
The light of my desk lamp shone through the gaps in between.

I looked up. Raana was sitting on my loft bed, above my desk. She was staring off, looking at nothing.
“Raana-chan.”
I called out to her.
“You don’t… want me to bring out a futon for you?”
She shook her head.
“I like it up here.”

I went to turn my lamp off. Then I climbed the ladder up and onto the bed, and sat down next to Raana.
“Um… So, are we, both… sleeping here? I can… get myself a futon…”
“No. Stay here.”
“…Okay.”
There’s not really enough room, but… I was okay with that.

I sat there, for a while, hugging my arms with my legs. Looking down at my room, trying to see what I could make out in the darkness. At Raana’s guitar, leaned against the wall. At my telescope, sitting on its tripod. Then I looked at Raana, who was rubbing her eyes, and yawning.
It was so dark, that on her face, my eyes showed me after-images, little glowing worms of imaginary light, wriggling inside the crevices.

…

“Tomori.”
Raana said my name. I jumped - I’d been spacing out.
She inched towards me until our noses were nearly touching, and tugged on the sleeve of my shirt. The warmth of her breath tickled my cold skin.
“I wanna make you sing again.”
“Sing…? What… what do you mean, Raana-chan…?”
She opened her mouth, and pulled her cheek aside with one finger, and pointed to her canine teeth with another.
“With these.”
“A-ah…”
The blue moon light glinted off her fang, and I stared at it, and gripped my sheets.
I realized I was shivering. My arms were shaking.
She leaned in with her amber eye tilted towards me. I pulled back.
“I can’t?”
I took a long, deep breath, keeping my eyes on her, stopping myself from looking away.
My legs had started to tremble.
“…You can.”
She perked up immediately, and she grabbed the collar of my shirt. I felt her letting herself fall towards me.
“W-wait.” I panicked.
I reflexively turned away and put both of my hands between us.
“Wait. Um. Just… just stop before it, starts, bleeding.”
“Mm? I like that, though.” The tip of her tongue peeked through her lips as she said this.
“I-I know you do, but, it’s, dangerous, and… I have to disinfect it, and people will notice if I’m totally covered in bandages, and I’ll run out eventually…”
I carefully turned back towards her.
She seemed disappointed, like she did when someone told her she couldn’t have a treat she wanted. She was looking away, sulking, with a pout in her mouth.
I closed my eyes, and I thought really, really hard.
“…Raana-chan.”
She perked back up.
“Once a week. You can make me bleed… once a week.”
I set a rule for her.
An allowance.
“This one count?”
She put her finger on my shoulder, where the bandage was. I flinched.
“…Yeah. It counts. You have to wait, okay?”
She pondered my words for a moment, holding her finger against her lips.

“Okay.” She assented, and without giving me even a second to steel myself again, she pushed me down.
Her eyes were fixed on mine, with an unreadable expression,
She slid her thin, icy fingers in between the gaps in my shirt. They numbed my skin as they brushed it. Then with a single, deft flick of her thumb, she undid its top button, like it was never there to begin with.
…She is good with her hands. That much, I should know.
She did it again, and then again, down to my chest, and then she pulled the shirt down to my shoulders.

The tip of her index finger traced along my collarbone. I could feel its ragged calluses dragging against it. I yelped.
Then, in one motion, she dove down and dug her teeth into my other shoulder.
“Ah… a, ah!”
I closed my eyes and cried out.
She agreed to, but she wasn’t holding back at all. The louder I cried, the harder she dug in, making me cry louder still, in a cycle. She was treating me like a piece of fresh fruit, like my screams of pain were my nectar.
I could feel the tips of her canines, desperately trying to break me open, flooding the nerves on my skin with bright, blinding agony. My eyes started welling up with tears.
“R-Ra…st, stop, you’ll… I’ll…”
My hand tried to push her away, but my whole body was shaking with weakness, and it couldn’t put any pressure on her. It just slipped off. Her fangs dug in deeper, and my neck twitched, and I whined and kept begging for her to stop.

But right when it felt like my skin would finally break and spill my blood into her mouth, she let go. She looked at me, panting, with the trail of saliva from my shoulder still hanging off her lip. She was smiling. Actually, she was grinning, cat-like.
She pointed at the mark she left behind.
“See? Not bleeding.”
“Ah…”
I looked at the ceiling, and caught my breath, and soaked in the mingling aftershocks of pain and chills.

Raana backed off, and wiped her mouth with her sleeve.
When she did, I felt a pang in my stomach. I felt a wave of fresh, burning anxiety run through my veins up to the tips of my fingers.
I grabbed her arm with the little strength I had.
I looked at her, my eyes clinging to her desperately, like I was trying to pull her back in with them.
“…R-Raana…Hey…”
I whimpered, as quietly as I could manage, through the tears still running from my eyes.
“Mm?”
She tilted her head.
“…Don’t stop.”
I saw a glint in her eyes.
She pounced, and sank her teeth into my upper arm, right where it was the fattiest. The most… sensitive.
A sudden shock coursed through me, electrifying, making every muscle in my body tense up with its voltage.
This time, she didn’t linger. She waited for just long enough for my skin to take her shape, and then she dragged her teeth up an inch and bit down again, and then again. I cried out in a different, ragged, wavering note with every bite she took. But I didn’t try to stop her. No, I had my hand curled around the back of her head, clinging to her hair, digging into her scalp.
She climbed up my arm, my shoulder, my neck, using less of her teeth as she did, but biting harder to compensate.
She was painting a picture on the surface of my skin.
She jumped up to my ear, and she took it between her teeth. I could hear her breath; it burned through my thoughts like static.
Then, her mouth reached my cheek. But she didn’t bite it.
Something warm, and wet, touched it instead.
Her tongue.
She started moving it along the contour of my face, leaving a trail behind.
I could smell traces of chocolate and vanilla on her breath.
My skin started crawling and my whole body froze in stasis, but my grip on her hair only tightened.
She slithered up, slowly, so slowly. I could feel every crevice on her tongue and every pore on my skin as they pressed against each other. The skin she went over turned from warm to freezing cold, once the air touched it.
She reached my eye, and I felt her slip into its corner, its tear duct. I flinched.
She lingered for a moment, then pulled away.

“Salty.”
“U-uuu…”
I curled up, and ran my finger along the line she left on my face.
“You satisfied?”
I didn’t respond. Instead, I crawled away from her, and took my pillow between my arms, and buried my face into it.

I felt the tears still in my eyes soak into the pillow case, and my ragged warm breaths bounce off it, and I stayed there, until my consciousness started to fade.
As it did, I felt her presence at my back, then an arm sliding around me, and I heard her whisper in her raspy, monotone voice.
“…Tomori. You play well.”