Another Miracle (4)
The living room opened straight into the kitchen, and between them lay the dining space, a table with two chairs set to either side.
Only two people lived in the house, so it was rare for every chair to be in use at once. On an ordinary day, two were more than enough.
Just now, though, even those two sat empty. Ninomae Hitomi had perched herself on top of the table.
You may lick my feet. That was what she had said a moment earlier, climbing up.
It was winter, but the heat ran high enough that she was in short shorts, her pale bare legs left entirely uncovered. Watching them stretch toward her from across the table, Han Seoyeon sat in her chair and swallowed—a tightness wound through with anticipation.
"I... truly."
Her lips felt strangely dry. She worked her mouth around the words as she spoke, and the motion looked, somehow, as though she were already savoring a taste. Ninomae's toes curled in, just slightly.
"Would it really be all right for me to lick them?"
"I-I'm not going to say it twice."
She couldn't have managed it again if she'd tried. Even this much had her voice shaking with shame. She said it with her face burning red.
"O-only for today, all right?! It's to mark the occasion, and there really won't be a next time...!"
That, too, was the simple truth. Do a thing like this more than once, and her heart would burst and she would die on the spot.
"So... this chance won't come again, so, um, please enjoy it."
Embarrassed by her own words and pressing on regardless, Ninomae set things in motion. She drew in the plate of shortcake waiting beside the table—a single slice of fresh-cream cake, crowned with a strawberry drowned in syrup. It had come out of the refrigerator only moments ago, and a chill still clung to it. Then she held the plate out to Han Seoyeon, leaving on the table the two forks they had set aside for eating.
Seoyeon couldn't quite see the intent in it, but she accepted the plate neatly in both hands all the same, puzzled though she was.
"Miss Ninomae? Why so suddenly—"
"Hold it steady."
Seoyeon had asked. Ninomae didn't answer. She only gave the order, and shifted the leg she had been idly swinging. Drawn along by the bewitching, elegant play of those toes—though perhaps she only found it so because she was the one with the fetish—Seoyeon stared, blank.
And then it touched, with a soft tok.
She was holding the plate raised to the level of her chest where she sat. Upon it rested the cake, and at the very highest point of all, the strawberry. Ninomae Hitomi's toes met the red fruit, glazed in syrup and filmed with the thinnest frost.
It was only a cake from a shop, a ready-made thing with no meaning beyond itself. But the instant those toes tapped it, Seoyeon flinched before she knew she had, as if a faint current had crackled through her body.
Ninomae did not stop there. She wriggled her toes, ever so slightly, ever so slightly... and then pinched the strawberry between her big toe and the one beside it, and lifted it. The pressure was slight, yet even that was enough to crumble a little of the frost sheathing the fruit. The berry had been sunk a short way into the cake, so a smear of fresh cream and a few crumbs of sponge came away on its base, and a shallow crater remained where it had sat.
"Sh... Miss Shion."
It was that name that called Han Seoyeon back—she who had been watching as if possessed. At the sound of Ninomae's voice she lifted her head without thinking, their eyes met, and she saw the strawberry caught between those toes being held out toward her.
"A-aah... please..."
A sweet voice, playing lightly at being cute. Any other day she would have heard nothing in it but adorableness, but now her chest gave a restless stir. Han Seoyeon's lips twitched and trembled, and little by little they parted on their own.
"...Nn."
The strawberry touched her lips. At the cool of it, a small sound escaped her before she could stop it. But Ninomae, mercilessly(?), kept pushing the fruit into her mouth, and slowly the strawberry rolled in over her tongue.
Even so, the foot never quite touched Seoyeon's mouth itself. And yet a strawberry that ought to have been nothing but cold held, in one small place, a lukewarm warmth—and that alone was enough to make her play the moment just past over again. The sweetness of syrup. The faint taste of sponge and cream that had come away with it. And, lingering between them, the trace of someone's scent.
The contact had lasted only an instant, and it was no fragrance an ordinary human nose could have caught. For Han Seoyeon, though, it was entirely possible. Her tongue trembled in her mouth. She bit down by reflex, and from the frozen flesh came a crisp crunch and a burst of tart juice. Tasting that sourness, she let her head drop before she knew it. Surely it was not the sourness alone that did it.
"Th-there's still plenty of cake left, you know?"
Looking down at her, Ninomae murmured, choking back her rapture as best she could.
She was right. So far they had only blown out a candle and eaten the single strawberry on top. It was barely an appetizer. Ninomae fidgeted the fingers she had set so neatly on the table, then clenched them into a tight fist, and slowly drew her leg back down.
Her toes met the plate again. Tok, tok—she tapped at the snow-white crown of the cake, and each time the airy whipped cream slumped a little.
"...Ahn."
A moment later her face set, as if she had steeled herself... and she brought her foot down and crushed the shortcake flat.
A softness, and beneath it a faint slickness, tickled her sole. Once for the chill of the cream, still cold, and once more for the guilty thrill of the taboo—grinding food beneath her foot. Her shoulders jerked. But what sent a deeper shudder through her was what would come after. Breathing out a heated sigh, she slowly raised that leg and held it out to Han Seoyeon.
It was only a bare leg. Even so, shame and liberation crashed over her together, as if she were baring something far more private. Without thinking, Ninomae wriggled her toes, smeared all over in fresh cream.
For a moment, neither of them made a sound.
Han Seoyeon stared at the leg. Then she pressed her lips to the top of the foot and took the ankle lightly in both hands.
"The top of my foot doesn't even have cream on i—hyah?!"
"...Slrrp."
Gazing at the foot she held raised, Han Seoyeon set her tongue to the sole and licked upward from the bottom, as if wiping the cream clean.
"Hnn, ah... uu..."
She stretched her tongue and lapped at the heel, then crept slowly higher. Over and over she did it, until the sole was clean.
"Haaah..."
Clean, that is, if one were willing to call something gone slick with saliva clean.
"...Kh."
Having finished marking her territory so meticulously, Seoyeon lifted her gaze, watching Ninomae's every reaction, and this time licked carefully between each toe.
"Hik, nngh... ah, Miss Shion..."
She seemed deeply satisfied by the way Ninomae flinched each time; Han Seoyeon smiled with her eyes. Held by the ankle and all but forced straight, the leg trembled.
"Haa... hhh..."
Only once even the last crumb of cake was gone from her foot did Ninomae Hitomi let out a long, hot breath and slump forward.
"Hyik?!"
An instant later the wet flick of a tongue at her ankle bone arched her back again. If she hadn't braced a hand behind her on reflex, she would have toppled over flat.
"M-Miss Shion?! Nn, the cream's already all—hyaaak...?!"
Protest or not, Seoyeon's tongue climbed that leg, leaving a trail of saliva in its wake. It traced the ankle and did not stop, crossing the calf and advancing little by little. The short shorts ought to have kept her well short of the groin, but the higher Han Seoyeon climbed, the more Ninomae felt something electric running up her spine.
"Hnnnngh...!"
And the moment Han Seoyeon, sweeping up along the inside of her thigh, finally drew her mouth away, Ninomae shuddered at the crawling tingle and fell backward. Her body gave out, and she sprawled across the table.
"Are you all right, Miss Ninomae?"
Seeing her like that, Han Seoyeon rose, as if out of concern.
Not that Seoyeon was calm herself. Her cheeks were flushed deep, and her unsteady breath shook her voice. Her lips gleamed wet with saliva, and a little fresh cream clung at the corner of her mouth.
"Miss Shion. Y-your face..."
But setting every bit of that aside, her face was much too close. From Seoyeon's side of it she had only leaned in, worried for Ninomae where she had fallen; Ninomae startled at the nearness and looked away.
"Ah—I'm sorry. Without thinking..."
Only then did Seoyeon seem to notice, and she started to draw back.
"...Miss Ninomae?"
Or she tried to. She would have, had Ninomae not caught her by the nape at the last instant—as if to pull her into an embrace—and drawn her in.
"I wasn't telling you to pull away... you know..."
Seoyeon said nothing.
Ninomae still looked mortified, but this time she met Han Seoyeon's eyes head-on. The two of them lay overlapped upon the table, gazing at one another in silence. Ninomae's lips worked, once and then again. In the quiet, a heart pounded.
"So... um, Miss Ninom—mmph?!"
And then, as if pulled by some impulse, she moved. She licked the fresh cream from the corner of Han Seoyeon's mouth... and, smooth as running water, laid her own lips over those.
For an instant Seoyeon's mouth was sealed, and her eyes flew wide. Wide enough that the whites showed nearly all the way around, they looked down at Ninomae, bright with bewilderment.
Their lips had not stayed together for any very long time. Objectively, it was rather a short moment. But the shock the two of them felt in it was by no means small.
"...Ah, no, I mean..."
Ninomae herself was no exception. Even after they parted, the soft sensation still resting on her lips went on circling through her head. She could not begin to believe what she had just done. Her eyes darted wildly, this way and that.
"A-ahhh... I'm sorryyy...!"
In the end she couldn't bear the air between them, and she fled. Rolling sideways, she slipped free of the table and of Han Seoyeon and bolted straight up the stairs.
Han Seoyeon stared blankly at the place she had left, her mind still failing to catch up. Slowly, she raised a hand and touched her own lips, worrying at them.
It had lasted only a fraction of a second, and still the moment would not leave her.
"...Huh?"
The sound left her at last, vacant and far away. She lowered her head, slowly. At the end of her gaze lay her own chest.
Something was wrong.
"Huh?"
Wrong past all accounting—her heart was hammering, thrashing inside her.