Drunken Dream Untold—Somniorum vulneribus ebrius fari nequeo.7 (Nine Parts Total)

The October morning was even thinner than that of September.
The shadows stretching onto the pavement were darker, yet the temperature alone seemed to drag on, as if still clinging to the remnants of summer. As he walked toward the office, Kazuma Ishida noted a faint sense of incongruity in his stride.
It was not the stride itself. It was the length of time he spent walking.
In the past, he should have covered the distance from the station to the office a little faster. It might just be his imagination, he deceived himself in the end. Lately, 'just my imagination' had been increasing to the point where it couldn't be helped.
On Tuesday morning, he sent a short message.

"How about we grab a meal
somewhere this week?"

The reply came in the afternoon.

"I'm a bit tied up this week,
how about next week?"

Kazuma read 'how about next week' twice.

He hadn't been rejected.
A continuation was prepared.
However, he didn't really remember Michika ever writing like this before.
In the past, she would have replied within the day, saying 'How about tomorrow?' or 'If it's Friday.'
Also, because she didn't reply, Kazuma had been able to get by without worrying until now. He realized only now that he had been able to get by without worrying.
He typed briefly.

"Understood.
I'll adjust for next week."

After sending it, he noticed the fact that his own phrasing was somewhat stiff. He hadn't intended to be stiff. Even so, if he rewrote it, the next version might become unnaturally soft. The methodology of feigning softness was, for him, rather distant.

It wasn't just Tuesday.
On Wednesday night, without any particular business, Kazuma passed through the ticket gate one station early. Before he knew it, he was walking an extra station's worth of distance.
While walking, he thought about the beginning of September.
Back then, even on weekday nights, they would have a meal, however short. At a small shop near the station, they would drink sparingly and talk only about things surrounding their work—.
When did that stop happening?

There was no clear boundary.
It was just that, at some point, weekday nights had returned to being 'nights we don't meet.' There were weekends. They would enjoy meals and drinks on Fridays. Yes, those things certainly continued. Precisely because they continued, the weekday absence—as an absence—did not stand out.
Even so, no, if that were the case, I think all the more... Did I do something?
That question had also surfaced in September. The September question was about his own way of touching and his words. The October question was... just a little different.
Did I not do something?
What I didn't do—that cannot be defined as anything.

Michika Minase began her October morning with her usual precision.
Upon waking, she combed her hair and checked the condition of her mouth corners in front of the vanity. The remnants of sleep had almost completely vanished. Just because they had vanished didn't mean that an inspection was unnecessary. If she wasn't careful—she would face the mirror as if the means had become the end.
Her shapewear was just a little stronger than the one in September.
The fit of her bust was firmly adjusted by the power of the fabric. Looking down, the daytime outline of her body did not waver. Because it did not waver, there was no room for hesitation. Only the places where there was room for hesitation were... secretly increasing within her.
Work at the beginning of the month was busy. There were many adjustments accompanying the full-scale start of the second half of the year, and Michika handled meeting support, document replacement, and communication with related departments with the same precision as always. She was handling it. To anyone's eyes, it appeared flawless.

Just past noon, she passed Kazuma in the lounge.
"Thank you for your hard work."
"Thank you for your hard work."
That was all.
In the past, she might have added one more trivial thing.
"Are you busy this week too?"
"Ms. Minase, what time is your afternoon meeting?"—conversations of the level permitted around work. Today, that didn't happen. Kazuma bowed, took his coffee, and returned to his seat.
Michika followed his back with her eyes for just a moment.
After following him, she averted her eyes.
The fact that she had followed him was, to her, faintly frightening.
In the past, she wouldn't have followed him. He was there as himself, and she was here as herself. That was enough. Now, when he moved away, the depths of her body noticed it slightly. Even though she wanted to deny it, saying it wasn't enough to notice, the act of denying it made her notice it all the more.

Just as her night ritual had turned into a perfunctory inspection, her daytime self might also be starting to change into something else.
Michika did not put that premonition into words.
If she put it into words, it would be confirmed.
If it were confirmed, she could never go back.
That Friday, the two of them had a meal.
At a shop near the station, drinks were kept to a minimum, and conversation was also kept to a minimum. Kazuma looked tired. Michika had long known that he would only look that way, and if asked, he would answer, 'I'm fine.'
Because she knew, she didn't ask.
If she asked, she would know what he would answer. If she knew, she would have to return something herself. She didn't have the words she should return.

That night, the two of them spent time in Kazuma's room.
It was a night no different from before. His hands, his breathing, and the silence that didn't rush her.
Michika was certainly relieved in his arms and certainly entrusted her body to him. She was entrusted. Only while she was being entrusted could she believe that she was in order.
The next morning, as they parted, Kazuma said,
"Next Tuesday... is it really impossible?"
Michika paused for a beat.
"...If it's Wednesday."
"I'll clear Wednesday."
"Yeah."
That 'yeah' was, as she herself could tell, smaller than her usual 'yeah'.
Wednesday didn't come.
Rather than not coming, Michika brushed it off briefly, saying, 'I'm sorry, I have a sudden schedule change.' Kazuma replied, 'Understood.' That was all.

In an exchange that ended with just that, wouldn't the version of herself up until September have added more words? 'Next time, for sure,' 'I'll make it up to you'—that kind of supplementation, typical of Michika.
She could no longer prepare that supplementation.
Perhaps she should say she didn't prepare it. If she prepared it, she would see for herself what she was supplementing. If she saw it, she would have to process it as such. Michika now lacked the surplus energy to process it.

That Wednesday night, Michika was out.
It was a cross-industry seminar, not sponsored by the company. It was content related to her work in the second half of the year, and she had applied for it upon her supervisor's recommendation. When the half-day program ended, a standing reception involving the lecturers and participants was prepared.
Michika was used to standing receptions.
Being used to it meant knowing how to hold a plate, how to distribute her gaze, and how to converse at an appropriate distance. She exchanged business cards, answered necessary questions concisely, and softly brushed off unnecessary ones. She was not disordered. She was in order. She could continue to prove professionally that she was in order.

However, only that night, that order felt thin.
Thin didn't mean it was lacking. Rather, it was too much. Even though she was perfectly in order, was it the feeling that what lay beyond that perfect order wasn't connected to anything? She held a glass by the wall and slowly drank her first glass of white wine.

"Ms. Minase—it was, wasn't it?"

The man who spoke to her was an older participant who seemed close to one of the lecturers. He belonged to a different company in the same industry, and his title was manager. They had already exchanged business cards.
"Yes."
"Your question earlier was spot on. There are few people who can organize and ask about that kind of point."
Michika smiled.
It wasn't praise worth smiling about. It was within the realm of social pleasantries. However, the man didn't stop praising her even after that. The composure of her demeanor, her choice of words, her way of conducting herself at a standing reception. Each one was accurate, and each one was not excessive. But when they piled up—it was excessive.

Michika realized that a strange sensation was welling up inside her.
She wasn't being disparaged. Rather, she was being evaluated as carefully as possible. Even so, she wasn't in order.
Far from being in order, she felt as if something was being shaved away little by little.
Ah, is this it, she suddenly thought.
She thought it, and immediately denied it.
Without even knowing what 'this' referred to.
When the venue began to be cleared, the man said, 'Let's have one more, somewhere else.'
It was a common invitation.

Michika had several words of refusal prepared.
'I have an early start tomorrow,' 'The train time,' 'I have things to do at home'—all of them were natural, and all of them were like her.
She didn't choose any of them.
She did not put into words the reason she didn't choose them. She couldn't. It was just that the question of how someone other than Kazuma would see her—that question had remained without disappearing, having taken shape on a night in September. There was, at least in her head, no reason why she had to confirm that now.
Even though there wasn't, she—nodded.
After nodding... she heard her own nod a little late.

The second bar was in the basement.
The man chose a sofa seat in the back and had whiskey poured into Michika's glass. She drank it. There was no deep reason for drinking. There was no reason for not drinking either. Without having a reason, only time drifted by.
The man continued to praise several of her actions. The way she held her glass, the angle of her gaze, the softness of her sentence endings. Each one was correct, and each one was not excessive.
To the hotel, the man said briefly. She nodded. It was her second nod.

When they entered the room, the man first reached for Michika's bangs.
A touch that was neither stroking nor combing, just confirming the area above her forehead.
"Beautiful."
That 'beautiful' was different in quality from the praise until now. It wasn't social; it was a word from a closer distance. She didn't respond. It wasn't that she didn't have the words to respond. It was because some part of her body judged that the need to respond hadn't yet arisen.
Two buttons of her blouse were undone from the top.
The man's fingers were used to it. Being used to it meant he didn't hesitate. The unhesitating fingers reached the top edge of her shapewear. When he confirmed the step of the fabric, the man let out a breath.
"I see—"
Michika didn't know what 'I see' referred to. She wasn't even trying to know.

From beneath the correction, her own outline was being revealed.
Her bust. And beyond that. The man's hands did not rush. They didn't rush, but they didn't stop either. Her body changed its posture little by little in response to the movement of the man's hands. Was it responding? Was it being made to respond? Was it trying to respond? Before she could distinguish it, her body alone was moving ahead.
On the bed, the man had her legs opened, as if it were a matter of course.

Michika had no reason to refuse. The space between her legs, a place she should have kept secret from everyone but Kazuma, was exposed to the man's gaze. The man observed it for a while. The time he spent watching felt—long to her.
Long, perhaps because it was a place she herself had never seen.
A secret place was a place she herself also didn't look at. A secret place she dared not turn her eyes toward.

When she checked the outline of her bust in front of the mirror, she didn't look below it. She didn't feel the need to look.
Even during her night ritual, what she was checking was only the kind of phenomena like whether she was damp, whether she was wet, whether she was functioning, whether she was in order as a woman. She didn't remember ever checking the shape itself, the color itself.
That place, which she had never seen—.
The man was watching now.

"Ms. Minase—no, Michika-san."
It was the first time she had been called by her name.
"Your—'here' is wonderful."
The man's voice was overwhelmed.
"It is completely untouched, not even adjusted, truly just as it is—natural. That is precisely why a man is drawn to it. It is truly wonderful and... charming."

She didn't understand.
It was the first time she had never understood something so deeply. She didn't understand. The man said it was untouched. That it wasn't adjusted. However, Michika had never had such an evaluation axis regarding that part of herself. Adjusting meant wearing shapewear, and the places where shapewear couldn't reach were just 'places to keep secret.' The place she had kept secret was praised as natural. That was a word that had no place to settle in any of her recognition systems.
Even though it had no place to settle, her body responded.
The man's words slid beneath her skin. Without being tied together as meaning, they reached the depths of her body as heat. She even knew, in a way, that the space between the secret valleys was beginning to get damp.
Damp. Wet. Why—the moment she thought that, the man's fingers touched it.

"Ah, this is it, this is natural... the body doesn't lie, it can't lie."
The man said in a convinced voice.
Even though she was wet, why. Michika did not put that question into words. She didn't even form it into the shape of a question. However, only the embryo of the question was sprouting within her.
The man's fingers advanced into the depths.
Her body accepted the man. The body that accepted him responded. Her consciousness could not keep up with the responding. Without keeping up, the man's words and the man's fingers moistened her alternately. The man said 'wonderful' many times. He said 'it's natural.' He also said, 'You don't know anything.'
You don't know anything.
For some reason, only those words reached her inside and the inside itself.

They reached her, but she didn't ruminate on them. If she ruminated, something would differentiate. If it differentiated, she could never go back.
Something she didn't know was certainly in her body.
While it was there, it was responding. Without her knowing where it was responding to, only the acts were piled up. The man was watching the self she didn't know with his eyes. Only within the man's eyes did that self exist with a shape. She continued to acknowledge the self that was being given a shape only through the response of her body. Yes, as she acknowledged it... the blank space within her was being given an outline.
Just before she couldn't go back, her body... reached the end.
It was only her body that reached the end. Her consciousness... without being able to find a place to end, had declared the completion of the act.

The next morning, on the subway, Michika sat looking down.
She could remember the man's face. She could remember the man's words as fragments. However, she didn't understand what they were to her. Even if she tried to understand, she couldn't find the entrance itself to understand.
She remembered that she was wet.
She didn't understand what it meant that she was wet.
Something she didn't understand was certainly in her body. Even though she herself didn't know it was there, the man's eyes knew. What the man's eyes knew, she herself still—didn't know.
She took her planner out of her bag and checked that day's schedule. She had grasped the content without needing to check. Even if she had grasped it, the act of checking was something she had acquired. Only such acts supported her present.

That weekend, Kazuma met with Michika.
At a Japanese restaurant near the station, he behaved as usual. Behaving as usual required a somewhat unnatural effort for him. He felt he shouldn't ask anything. However, he also felt that not asking anything was unnatural. He carefully chose and connected topics surrounding their work.
Michika responded.
The voice that responded was in order. It was in order, but it was too in order. Doesn't being too in order mean that something within her is taking on too much work to be in order—Kazuma started to feel that. He started to feel it, but couldn't feel it completely. If he felt it completely, he would have to put it into words. In the end, because of that, he couldn't perceive it. That seemed frustrating to Kazuma, somehow.

Returning to the room, he held her.
In the usual order, with the usual breathing. She responded, and the body that responded didn't change. It should not have changed. However, Kazuma stopped at a certain point during the act. Perhaps around her waist.
Traces of fabric friction remained ever so slightly. They were not new traces. They were not old traces. Something in the space between—.
"—Ms. Minase."
He had inadvertently spoken with the way he addressed her at the office.
"...Yeah."
"No, it's nothing."
Saying only 'no, it's nothing,' he continued. While continuing, he thought again about what he had wanted to ask. Even if he thought it through... he didn't understand.
Without understanding, his body responded to her body. While responding, the question within him, without forming the shape of a question, was just drifting—.

It was a weekday night in late October.
Michika entered a bar in a neighborhood a little far from her workplace, alone. She couldn't explain to herself why she entered there. It was a shop she had visited only once during a company reception. Today, it wasn't anyone's flow. It was just that the circuit to go straight home didn't function tonight.
At the corner of the counter, she ordered a highball.
When she had drunk about half, a young man sat in the seat next to her. She didn't know his age. A man probably in his mid-twenties. The man operated his smartphone screen for a while, and then turned his face toward Michika.

"You're alone."
It was a short question.
"...Yes."
"I see."
It ended with 'I see.' The man returned his eyes to the screen. However, after about five minutes, the man raised his face again.
"I'll treat you... to one more."
It wasn't 'Shall I treat you?', it was 'I'll treat you.' Before the confirmation, the decision had already been made.
Michika nodded.
There was no conversation that could be called conversation. The man revealed a little about his work, and he didn't ask about hers. She felt a faint relief that she wasn't asked. Regarding the fact that she felt relief, she immediately denied it, within herself—.

When the second drink was finished, the man said briefly.
"Shall we go?"
The destination of 'shall we go' was not specified. Without being specified, the two left the shop.
The room was inorganic.
The man processed the procedure of taking off Michika's clothes efficiently. Efficiently indicated the fact that he didn't give meaning to the process. The man's hands didn't show off like the first man's. However, he didn't confirm like the first man either. Only as a procedure, he traced her body.
The man said nothing.
He didn't praise, he didn't disparage, he just proceeded.
On the bed, the man's movements were skillful. Skillfulness is a technique. Technique has no temperature. Her body, in response to the technique, became damp. It was a fact that she became damp. It was a fact, but what lay beyond becoming damp didn't connect within her.

The first man confused her recognition with words.
The second man didn't offer words themselves.
In a place without words, Michika observed the reaction of her own body just as a fact. She had no choice but to observe. The responsiveness of the body being observed, even though it should be responsiveness... had nowhere to respond to.
And one more thing.

The first man gave shape to the self she had never seen within his eyes. The self that was given shape was outlined by the man's words. She didn't even know if the second man was watching or not. The man's eyes moved only as a function. Where he was watching her body didn't reach her. Without reaching her, the act was carried out. The self within the man's eyes—tonight, she couldn't even confirm its existence.
Suddenly, she realized.
Kazuma's hands were not like this. Kazuma's hands had breathing that didn't rush. Not rushing meant he was waiting. What was he waiting for? She didn't know. Even if she didn't know, the fact that she was being waited for was something her body certainly knew.
Hands that are not waiting just proceed.

The body that was proceeded with responded. Responding was nothing more than responding. The poverty of meaning was there. Just as she was about to realize it, without it becoming a realization, she reached the end.
Rather than reaching the end, the man simply finished. Because the man finished, the act, with only ejaculation, had merely ceased.
On the way home, she didn't take the subway. She hailed a taxi and rested her cheek on her hand in the back seat. Outside the window, the lights of the night city flowed by. It's flowing, she thought. Only the fact that it was flowing remained as her recognition that night.

In the last week of October, she received a message from a classmate.
It was a connection of the level of having taken lectures together in the same department during university. They had met a few times. They had also spoken a few times. After graduation, they walked separate paths. That classmate said he was planning a small gathering of about ten people.
Usually, Michika would have refused.
She had plenty of reasons to refuse.
'Work is piling up,' 'Recently, my physical condition'—that kind of plausible brushing off was possible as much as she wanted.
However, she replied that she would go.
To the self that replied—.
She was slightly surprised. However—.
The surprise didn't deepen.
Before it could deepen, she shifted her consciousness to the next task.

The gathering was at an izakaya near the station.
There were several nostalgic faces. They exchanged greetings and asked about each other's recent situations. The conversation flowed. Within the flowing conversation, there was a man's face.
She could remember his name. They were in the same department, but the seminar was different. She had sat in front of or behind him in the lecture room, she was sure, a few times. They had almost never spoken. Since becoming a working adult, they hadn't passed each other even once.
That man sat next to Michika, as the flow went.
At the second party shop, the seating arrangement changed before she knew it, and the two were driven to a corner table. It wasn't anyone's judgment. It wasn't anyone's judgment. It just happened to be that way.

"Ms. Minase—long time no see."
"...Yes, long time no see."
The conversation was harmless. Work talk, the recent situation of a common classmate, trivial memories of student days. The man drank quietly and spoke quietly. There was no being overwhelmed like the first man, and no messy business-like nature like the second man. He was just sitting in front of her as a man who had once known her.
At one moment, the man suddenly said.
"Ms. Minase, you've changed."
You've changed, the man said, just that.
He didn't continue what had changed. Without continuing, the man reached for his glass.
That night, the two headed to a hotel as the flow went.

It was unclear who invited whom. Without being clear, both had a common understanding that it was fine either way.
In the room, the man touched Michika's body with a touch different from the first man or the second man.
It didn't feel like he was used to it.
It didn't feel like he was hesitating either.
It was just that it was a touch that was confirming... that might be certain.

The man knew her from her student days. He must have seen the adjusted Michika of those days in the hallway, in the lecture room, several times. The man was confirming in his hands that the woman he had watched and the woman now under his hands were the same person.
"...It's different from what I imagined."
Briefly, the man said.
Different, but what it referred to was not specified. Without being specified, the man continued.
"The Ms. Minase from student days was more—"
With 'more,' the man's words cut off.
The man swallowed the continuation of 'more.' The swallowed continuation began to proliferate within Michika.

She was more in order.
She was more distant.
She was a woman who couldn't be touched more.
All of the continuation the man didn't say formed an image on its own within Michika, and on its own called up the past her. The student-days her. The her who didn't know Kazuma. The her who hadn't been told 'Aren't you not normal?' The her from when adjusting still had meaning.
That her was now, beneath her own body, being touched by the man.
The her who was being touched and the her who was likely remembered were connected as the same person. However, that connection caused something to creak deeper than ever before within Michika.
And another connection was also secretly happening within her.

The man had kept the student-days her within his eyes. The man was now comparing the kept her with the current her. The her within the man's eyes and the her within herself were not lined up in the same place. The her within the man's eyes had a clearer outline than the her herself.
Since when had Michika not been watching her own outline? The self she wasn't watching had certainly continued to exist only within the man's eyes.
Her body responded.
Even though it responded, deep in the responding body, another her was crying. Nevertheless—she didn't admit that she was crying. If she admitted it, it would be confirmed. If it were confirmed, she couldn't go back. However, even in the interval of not admitting it, the self in the depths was certainly crying.

After the act ended, the man quietly raised his body and lit a cigarette. The smoke rose lazily to the ceiling. The man said nothing. Michika also said nothing.
There was nothing for them to say to each other.
The fact that there was nothing was the only thing 'shared' between the two that night.

On the last Friday of October, she had a meal with Kazuma.
At a shop near the station, drinks were kept to a minimum, and conversation was also kept to a minimum. Kazuma looked like he wanted to ask something. Michika knew he looked like he wanted to ask. She knew, but she hesitated to be asked, she didn't want it. She didn't show the fact that she didn't want it on her expression.
Kazuma also didn't ask.
If he asked, something would differentiate. If it differentiated, what he asked would be confirmed. What was confirmed could not be returned. He kept the something he wanted to ask within himself, in the shape he wanted to ask it.

In the room, the two held each other.
In the usual order, with the usual breathing.
However, at one moment, Michika realized the reality that she couldn't be perfectly in order beneath Kazuma's hands. She started to be in order. She approached being in order. However, at the very last point... she wasn't in order.
She hid her lack of order from Kazuma.
She thought she had hidden it.
Kazuma might have noticed that it was hidden. Even if he noticed, he didn't say it. If he said it, something would differentiate. He, too, was afraid of differentiation.

Finishing the act, she was wrapped in Kazuma's arms.
She could hear his heartbeat slowly. The heartbeat she could hear hadn't changed. Beside the unchanging heartbeat, she—suddenly, closed her eyes.
Behind her closed eyelids, various nights of October floated up as fragments. The first man's 'It is natural.' The second man's silence. The third man's 'More—'
The three fragments didn't connect. Without connecting, they blinked separately and disappeared.
After they disappeared, only Kazuma's heartbeat was echoing.
She—failed to receive what remained.