Half-virgin

I woke up a changed man the day after my intimate encounter with Hanawa-senpai. A high flooded through my consciousness, suspending me from rest until deep into the night, which caused me to stay in my dreams until fifteen minutes before the first class of the semester.

It wasn’t as bad as it seemed, since I’d already settled into the dorms at the Intimacy Block. Five minutes were all I needed to get to the lecture hall at the Commitment Block. The prospect of missing the roll call would normally terrify me, as it would stain my spotless record of being on time for as long as I remembered. But today, as a brand new person, those worries seemed so trivial that even a light breeze could blow them away.

My other classmates had already taken their spots among the rows of seats, already forming their own cliques. Good for them. Not for me though, as I didn’t need… hmmm… perhaps I might. Group projects could pose an issue, so I probably should put in some, but not too much, effort in getting myself acquainted with a few of them. After identifying the strays that didn’t seem to belong to any bunch, I slipped next to a girl in a hoodie with black hair tied into buns.

“Hey-” I was about to make small talk, but the girl started coughing into her hand.

“Excuse me… sorry… I’ll sit somewhere else.” Before I could get a word in, off she went to another side of the row, ending up between two other girls. And incredibly, she stopped having any respiratory problems after that.

The brown-shirt guy that I targeted next exclaimed out of the blue that he might not be able to see the lecture slides from there, even though he was in the second row and the slide files had already been uploaded to the online platform. I didn’t bother to go for a third, since I had already realized that something was afoot. Continuing this display would only seem desperate, and that would be the worst position a man could be in, according to Professor Silva.

The best way to deal with this was to calm down and collect information. Once I oriented my awareness around me, I could sense the subtle glances thrown at me from all directions, even though they tried really hard to mask those pointed gazes. Actually, there was an exception: one person was openly staring at me, without a hint of shyness or shame.

It was Mamie, the green-haired girl, sitting in the last row. Her shirt once again had a word shoehorned onto it. Casual. But could someone who declared this to the world really be considered casual? Regardless, she might be the only person who would tell me what was happening.

I stood up with my shoulder bag and shifted to Mamie’s row, feeling the dozens of eyes following my move. They were vigilant as if watching a passing rat. No, maybe a passing tiger. The watchful attention only ceased after I plopped my ass next to the strange girl.

“Good morning. Mamie… um… senpai, right? Do you remember me?”

Her jade eyes still dug into my visage. “Yeah, how could I forget my stalker?”

“It was a misunderstanding! I thought you were helping me get to the interview room, which… sounds like an awful excuse the more I think about it.”

“Wow,” Mamie covered her mouth for emphasis.

“Which part of what I said warranted that?”

“You didn’t try to argue that looks exempt you from stalking charges.”

“I was a little too arrogant. But I’m not the virgin I was back then.”

Mamie widened her eyes. “What happened between you and Hanawa-san?”

I shot a glance at the few spectators still invested in my every action, then lowered my voice so only Mamie could hear it. “She took my virginity.”

That sentence, Mamie treated it as if I had reported a cryptid sighting, scrunching her face.

“Is it that unbelievable?”

“That’s not what Hanawa-san said.”

Not what… Huh? It took me a while to process what she had just disclosed.

“Look. You saw us leaving together. We are in a sex school for God’s sake. What do you think we did? Talk about our feelings? Well, we did do that. But not just that! You can check the sex room records, if the school lets you check them. I hope they do. The point is: there’s proof that she gave me head.” The rant left me panting, reminding me to join the gym in the Passion Block later.

“She only gave you a blowjob?”

“What do you mean, only?”

“Arguably, that doesn’t count as losing your virginity. Only vaginal penetration counts-”

This was getting ridiculous to listen to, so I cut her off. “Whatever! Then I’m a half-virgin! Does this matter?”

“And she said that you talked about some… questionable things while she was pleasuring you.”

“I was just talking about Professor Silva.”

“Who?”

Excuse me? She doesn’t know? Actually, why is she in a first-year lecture? Unless…

“Were you held back?”

She glared at me as if I had just fat-shamed her. “I’m allowed to sit in on first-year lectures.”

Before I could inquire about the ‘why’, a blonde lady clicked her heels into the room with a forlorn expression that would usually be reserved for funerals. Her face was inoffensive, not attractive per se, but not bland either.

“What’s up, everyone?” She said with the least enthusiastic tone possible, and the scantest chatter in the room blinked to silence at once. After downloading her slides to the computer, she opened with information about her background, speeding through the content to a point that I barely remembered anything besides her name, Tsuyuki Keiko.

“Welcome to intro to sexual arts. The first question on your mind might be why the rules are so strict. Why can’t you have sex on the grass lawns?” She finally slowed her pace after she was done talking about herself. Was she shy? And who the hell would want to have sex on the grass lawns?

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one asking. “You would think that people would want to make love on something actually comfortable and that won’t constantly sting on your skin, like… I don’t know… a bed? But nooooo. You know why? It’s because of the fucking hentai industry. Oh, sorry. Pardon my language. I meant the F-ing hentai industry.”

She went on to rant about how porn had set unrealistic standards for sexual interactions and how sex workers are forced to meet said standards. Her gloominess from earlier evaporated, or more accurately, sharpened into a needle that poked relentlessly at her topic of passion.

So that’s why she rushed through the first part so quickly.

I scanned the hall to find that some of my classmates had already drifted into their own worlds. Of course, there were still people listening, me being one of them. Not having a laptop, I jotted down what the lecturer had said in a notebook, except for her repeated diss on the adult video industry. But for the others, a few were studying the slides ahead, most were reading paragraphs of text that were certainly unrelated to the current lesson, and one or two were scrolling through social media. This wasn’t right…

Why is no one reading Professor Silva?

I didn’t get to think about this too much, distracted by a groan and a murmur from the person next to me. “I should’ve skipped this one…” Mamie massaged her temples while she stared ahead with tired eyes. Amazing how her energy was drained this quickly. It wouldn’t surprise me if she dropped unconscious right here.

“But then they would mark you as absent,” I whispered, directing my voice with my palm so that the teacher wouldn’t catch us chatting. It was as if I were a high school student again.

Even amidst the fatigue, she found the strength to glare at me. “First, they don’t take attendance. Second, even if they do, I’m a second-year. Remember? I don’t have to be here.”

Tsuyuki-sensei’s diatribe must have fried my brain, because I had completely forgotten what we were talking about before the lecture had begun. Our conversation was about… about… Hanawa-senpai, but how did Mamie know so much about it?

“That’s also why I can tell you that there are no group projects,” she said, like a doctor telling her patient that the strange tingle in their crotch wasn’t an STD.

A lump swelled in my throat. “Why are you bringing this up?”

She looked ahead at Tsuyuki-sensei, who was starting to heave from speaking too passionately. “Hang in there. Popularity isn’t everything.” Even though I was sure these sentences were meant for me, it sounded like she was mumbling to herself.

“How do you know…” That didn’t sound right. “I mean, how does apparently everyone know about what I said to Hanawa-senpai when I lost my… fine, when she engaged in oral sex with me. Are you happy now?” I shifted my wording in response to Mamie’s scrunched face. And spoilers, that didn’t make her happy, though she still enlightened me with a bombshell.

“Hanawa-san came back to the gathering after a while and told a couple of people what happened. And those people passed-”

“WHAT?” Cutting people off mid-sentence was rude and uncalled for. Yelling in a public lecture could be regarded as social suicide. But in my case, it probably wouldn’t matter much, because judging from how my classmates treated me earlier, I could be quite certain that my social life had already been buried in the lawns outside. Adding to the list of disasters, I was too focused on Mamie that I missed a chunk of the presentation.

Still, I instinctively turned to Tsuyuki-sensei, who had her eyes pinned straight on me. “What is your name?”

“Kuronuma Shuntaro.”

Instead of censure, her expression softened a bit, just a bit. “Kuronuma-kun. You are exactly right about the absurdity of step-sibling role-plays that a surprising number of clients would request. I had the same reaction…”

Once my safety was assured, I zoned out with occasional nods, skipping the lecturer’s new rant. I couldn’t get over how Hanawa-senpai lied about having a stomachache and that we would continue making love at a later date.

Okay, it sounded ridiculous when I thought about it so plainly.