Chapter Sixteen - Truth

“Since my name comes first, I’ll go,” Aria declared, rubbing her hands together like a B movie villain. “Emi. Truth or dare?”

“Now, for clarification when you say ‘dare’ what kind of dare do you mean?” Emi asked.

“Uh…I have no idea what you’re referring to,” Aria shook her head.

“So, is it like a double dog dare?” Emi tried to clarify. “Like, if I don’t do it, will I be cursed to go blind within a week or something?”

“I don’t think you’ll go blind,” I reassured her. “I don’t think that’s even a thing that happens.”

“Are you sure?” Emi was not convinced. “I saw a video where three people were playing and someone double dog dared someone else to pet a sea cucumber and the other person refused and then was struck blind five days later in a freak lemon juice accident.”

“Oh! I saw that video! That was creepy, huh?” Mizuki slurred, slapping the surface of the bath for emphasis.

“Hell, yes! And then the other two signed a suicide pact out of guilt but couldn’t go through with it because one guy fell into a vat of nuclear waste and was turned into radioactive goo and the last girl became a writer, but no one ever liked her stuff, so she ended up getting elected to the National Diet instead and tried to pass a law preventing people from eating mochi on New Year’s!” Emi sighed to catch her breath before shaking her head. “Super Creepy.”

“What the hell are you two talking about?” I shook my head.

“It doesn’t matter!” Aria interrupted. “It’s just a game. Tell me whether you want me to ask you a question or if you want a dare. If you choose truth you have to answer whatever question I ask truthfully and if you choose dare, you have to do what I say.”

“Ah. Not as much fun as the mochi girl but ok,” Emi swirled her hands in the bath. “Proceed!”

“Well?” Aria prompted.

“Well what?” Emi tilted her head in confusion.

“Truth or dare?” Aria asked again.

“Oh! Dare! Dare me to do things and I will do it! Unless it’s the sea cucumber thing.” Emi balled her hands into fists fiercely.

“Anything, huh…” Aria giggled. “Ok, I dare you to kiss puppy, then.”

“What!?” Saki protested, sitting bolt upright. “I-I can’t do that!”

“Why is that?” Aria cocked her eyebrow quizzically at the younger girl.

“I…I just don’t want to,” Saki finally muttered. “I like Emi-senpai b-but I…” Her voice faded and Aria’s smile broadened.

“She doesn’t want to,” I fixed Aria with a defiant look.

“It’s ok! I have an idea!” Emi declared, wading over to Saki. The younger girl stared up nervously as Emi bent over her, clamping her hands over her lips protectively. Emi grinned and kissed Saki briefly on the forehead.

“That’s a good girl,” Emi pet Saki’s head like an older sister. “Emi chan senpai will protect you, don’t you worry.”

“O-Ok,” Saki mumbled behind her fingers, looking a bit dazed. I scowled at Aria.

“Done! Dare complete!” Emi proclaimed loudly, wading back to her spot, and sitting down triumphantly.

“I guess so,” Aria smirked at me.

I hoped for the fiftieth time, it seemed, that she was just being mean-spirited because she was drunk. There were, I reasoned, some people that just got cruel when they drank. I’d read many stories of people like that on the internet and, unlike the stories of necromancers sucking out the spirits of the dead from disaster sites, angry drunks seemed pretty legitimate. I hoped that was the case and that she wasn’t, actually, this vindictive. I knew she had an issue with Saki. I couldn’t say for sure what it was, maybe jealousy because Saki and I had become close. I understood jealousy. After all, I had threatened to kick Daishi through the wall because of my own jealousy. So I understood that emotion all too well.

Why she was jealous of Saki, though, I had no idea. Emi was far more demonstrative than Saki could ever be. After all, Emi had shoved her vagina in my face and not twenty minutes earlier had tried to alternately take my abs and give me pubic hair. Still, for whatever reason, Aria seemed hellbent on bullying the unassuming younger girl. At least that’s how things appeared to me. I loved Aria, but I couldn’t accept bullying in any form, especially when it came to Saki. Aria and I would be having words.

“Ok!” Aria exclaimed. “Emi’s turn! You ask…K-Chan!”

“K-Chan.” Emi turned to me, an appraising look on her face, as if sizing up my strengths and weaknesses. “Truth or dare?”

“Uh…I guess truth,” I shrugged.

“Dammit!” Emi smacked both hands on the water. “Are you suuuure?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “I’m sure.”

“Ok…uh…Have you ever eaten so much candy you got sick?” Emi peered at me, judging my response.

“What?” Aria interrupted. “That’s the question?”

“Uh…” Emi glanced around, confused. “I guess? Is that not a good question?”

“You have Kasumi. Naked in a bath with her soul and body bare for all to see and you want to ask if she’s eaten so much candy she barfed? Really?” Aria put her hand over her face and shook her head sadly. “Do you see this? This is me face-palming over your question. What are you going to ask next? Whether she likes Candyland or Chutes and Ladders?”

“What the hell are those?” I asked.

“Games for toddlers,” Aria supplied. “Are you a toddler, Emi?”

“Ah! Oh! Ok!” Emi smacked her fist on her other hand. “I want to change the question!”

“Fine,” I shrugged. I hadn’t ever eaten so much candy I got sick, which would probably disappoint Emi anyway.

“Have you ever masturbated? And if so when was the last time?” Emi took an imaginary pipe out of her mouth and peered at me, casting a quick glance to Aria to see if the question was satisfactory.

“Better, at least,” Aria shrugged.

“Yes, I have. I guess…Tuesday? I think that was the last time. It’s not easy with my cast,” I held the cast up to highlight my point. Honestly, if not for the cast I’m pretty sure I’d have already reverted to my previous activities and would be well on my way toward going blind like my grandma had warned I would. It was possible the cast was saving me from glasses in a few years.

“Did you put your fingers inside?” Emi leaned forward intently.

“Nope, nope, nope,” I admonished her, wagging my finger. “I answered your question.”

“God poopy dammit,” Emi growled. “This game is frustrating. I want to know! I’ll tell you if you tell me!”

“Nope,” I shook my head and crossed my arms over my chest stubbornly.

“Fine,” Emi pouted, “but this isn’t over. Mark my words.”

“Duly noted.”

“Your turn to ask Mizuki,” Aria interrupted, gesturing to me.

“Uh…truth or dare, Mizuki?”

“Hmmm,” Mizuki tried to scratch her temple thoughtfully, misjudged the distance due to her highly inebriated state, and scratched her ear instead. Which seemed almost a given based on the size of her ears. “Truth!”

“Hmm,” There weren’t many things about Mizuki I didn’t know, really. After all, we’d grown up next door to each other and had shared most of our childhood. There was one thing I was kind of curious about but decided it wasn’t the time nor place. “Have you made out with Yuto?”

“Define ‘make out’,” Mizuki countered.

“Oh, god, no,” Emi whispered in horror, staring at Mizuki as if she’d suddenly turned inside out.

“Uh,” I was stumped for a second. I had expected maybe holding hands or something, but this was on a level of horror unimaginable just 20 seconds earlier. Suddenly images of the beast Mio had named Dumball cavorted through my mind like a palsied jester, and I shivered in the hot water. “Like…French kissed or…er…heavy petting or, you know…even sex, I guess?”

“That’s quite the spread of things, there, Kasumi chan,” Mizuki giggled. Was I being mocked? “Which is it?”

“Oh, fuck,” Emi shook her head. “Oh, fuck, oh, no, oh, fuck. This isn’t happening. Don’t ask.”

“Oh, god,” I muttered. “Have you had sex with Yuto?”

“Gah!” Emi hid her eyes behind her hands. “You asked!”

“Three weeks ago,” Mizuki nodded, obviously proud of herself. My jaw dropped open like in an anime. Images played through my head. The two of us playing hide and seek. Walking through the rain and snow to school, hunched over trying to catch crabs in the tide pools during the long, hot summers. Growing closer than the distance between our houses. Moments, like snapshots, frozen in time. Moments that would never be again.

It seemed, in a moment, I had lost something irretrievable and was struck with an immense sadness to find it gone. Mizuki had been changing, of course, which was inevitable. We both were. Maybe I was being overly dramatic, but it felt like we’d lost each other somewhere. The memories of who we were and would never be again made me feel worse as I stared at the strangely familiar, yet unfamiliar face across the bath from me. She was, but at the same time was not, the girl I had known.

“Congratulations, Mizuki!” Aria applauded as Saki and I stared at Mizuki dumbstruck while Emi spread her fingers and gaped at Mizuki between them. “How does it feel to have lost the V card?”

“Card?” Mizuki cocked her head to the side in confusion.

“How’s it feel to not be a virgin anymore?” Aria re-phrased her question.

“Well, it hurt a lot at first but it…well, it kind of hurt the whole time, I guess,” Mizuki answered with kind of a shrug, drinking from the cup of sake.

“Why did you ask that?” Emi admonished me with a hiss.

“I figured it was a harmless question!” I hissed back, trying, and failing to get the mental image of Yuto rutting about on top of my childhood friend out of my head. Aria and Mizuki ignored us and continued their spirited conversation.

“Now I’ll have nightmares, though!” Emi muttered, still staring at Mizuki from between her fingers.

“Was he good?”

“I have no idea!” Mizuki giggled. “I think so?”

“Did you cum?” Aria pressed her, the rules of Truth or Dare thrown out the window. Emi gagged, the fingers of one hand moving to cover her mouth.

“Oh, no,” Mizuki shook her head. “But he did, and that was important to me. I made him feel good!”

“Gueh?” The sound my voice choked out made no sense and I couldn’t stop it from escaping.

“Did you use protection?” Aria asked as my mind continued to recoil in horror and loss.

“Oh, yeah,” Mizuki nodded. “At least until after high school! Then my womb is all his. I think he’s the one.”

“B-But you s-said no!” I protested impotently, perhaps one last gasp of trying to recover what a scant two months ago had felt like a different person. “When I asked in October, you said no!”

“I said I hadn’t thought about kids, Kasumi-chan,” Mizuki corrected me with a drunken smile. “You didn’t ask about sex. I would have told you but…it just never came up, I guess.”

“I…” What did I say? What was the proper thing to say at this point in time? Maybe, I thought to myself, I was simply hurt I hadn’t been the first person she’d told. Of course, with the way I treated Yuto, I had made it rather difficult, I supposed. Still…Yuto…the thoughts were simply too horrifying to contemplate. “Uh…congratulations? I guess?”

“Thanks, Kasumi! I knew you’d get it!”

“I seriously doubt she wants it,” Emi finally managed through her horror. “Ow!” She exclaimed as my elbow jabbed into her ribs. “Well! Who would?”

“Apparently her,” I mumbled.

“Oh, God!” Emi gasped, gagging again.

“So you’ve finally had someone inside you!” Aria grinned at her. I felt sick to my stomach at the words coming out of Aria’s mouth and wanted to throw up.

“I know! I’m a woman, now!” I scowled. What the hell did that even mean? Why would a woman’s identity be tied to a man’s penis? If being a woman meant spreading my legs for some guy, I was more than happy being a girl forever. That made no damn sense, and I felt my indignation rising to do battle with horror and loss.

“Right?” Aria giggled, patting Mizuki’s leg encouragingly.

“Maybe we, uh, maybe we should move on with the game,” I managed. “Right?” I turned to Emi.

“Y-Yes! On with the game!” Emi downed another cup of sake and shook her head as if to clear the images running through her own head.

“Oh, ok!” Mizuki thought for a moment. “Saki-chan! Truth or dare?”

“Um…truth. I think,” Saki managed with a small voice. “Yeah. Definitely truth.”

“Have you…ever kissed anyone?” Mizuki finished. Saki immediately shook her head.

“N-No,” Saki answered quickly.

“It’ll happen soon enough!” Mizuki said by way of encouragement. “You’ll find someone just like I found Yuto! Keep up the good fight!” I jumped slightly as if an electric shock had passed through me. Would she?

What if she did? What would I say to her? Would things change the way it seemed things had already changed between Mizuki and me? With a horrid sort of detachment I realized change was not exclusive to myself. I suppose in some small corner of my mind I decided I could change but the world around me would stay the same. The school would always be the same, my small circle of friends would always be, and the world would stop. Except for me. I wasn’t sure what hubris possessed me to ever imagine that scenario would come to be, but the destruction of that illusion shook me to my core.

This moment where we were not really adults, but we weren’t exactly children was all about change, yet I had fooled myself into thinking it would only be me. I would leave this town behind but somehow our little group would always exist. How would something like that delusion even work?

I glanced at the girls with me, and tears welled in my eyes. This bath would remain as it was, but we would not. Mizuki had changed, I had changed, Emi had changed, even Saki would change if she hadn’t already. Aria, too, had changed. Or maybe she was the same. I wasn’t sure. Maybe she was the instrument of change. The catalyst driving the engine forward like a log splitter tearing us apart. Or maybe, like the dawn after the night, it was inevitable, and I simply never realized before.

Either way, this moment was caught on a precipice and as the clock ticked onward it would be pushed over the edge into the mists of memory and be replaced by another and another like the platters in a revolving sushi bar only, they would never come back around again. One day, too, our little group would tip over that edge and be tossed into the abyss of time to lie among the wreckage of the past and be replaced by something else. I took a deep, heaving breath and sighed, a sense of loneliness and despair sinking into my thoughts.

“T-Truth or dare, Aria senpai?” Saki stuttered, shaking me from my thoughts and with it, the hands of the clock ticked over, and the moment was in the past already.

“Let’s ramp this party up a notch,” Aria grinned. “Dare me, puppy.”