4 - Kouhai's Holidays.pdf
Kouhai’s Holidays
–Bing, bong!–
The office lady rang her old friend’s doorbell, tugging on the fabric of her costume. If her scientist friend was so good at guessing her weights and measures just by looking at her, why hadn’t she bought a costume in the proper size?
The apartment door swung open in a blast of light and music, Rikei all flushed and bright-eyed. She wore a black bodysuit with an open red jacket; the can of beer in her hand explained her color and beaming expression.
“Hey! You’re here!” Rikei’s eyes darted to the front of the woman’s nightdress, going wide. “Whoa, those buttons are holding on for dear life.”
The woman felt her own cheeks grow warm. She tried to wrap her arms over her breasts, getting tangled in the strands of hair that hung from her wig all the way to the floor. “It’s your fault for buying a costume that doesn’t fit!” She hissed.
Her friend’s grin turned predatory as she stepped into her personal space. Rikei ran an appraising, accusing finger from her hip to her ribs. “It was the right size when I ordered it—you’re just such a… Growing. Girl.”
With her last two words, Rikei poked a finger into each of the woman’s breasts, which, pressed under her arms, spilled out of the unbuttoned neckline of her costume nightdress.
“No,” She cried. “Stop that!” Swatting away her friend’s accusing finger, she added, “Is that my Misato-san costume?”
Now it was Rikei’s turn to look embarrassed. “I sort of forgot to pick a costume for myself, so I borrowed yours from the manga circle.” She took a long gulp of her beer. “It’s not like you can still fit into it anyway.”
The woman stomped her foot, sending her breasts wobbling and making her buttons creak ominously. “You’re always so mean!”
Rikei ushered her into the apartment, making wordless susurrations in an attempt to soothe her. Four college girls scattered across couches and chairs cheered at the woman’s arrival. They were the current members of the manga circle at the university that she and Rikei attended nearly five years ago—the woman never could remember their names.
“Senpai, your cosplay is amazing!”
“Really, so fire!”
“Hey, should we watch Ringu after this episode?”
“I’ve never actually seen it…”
“Sorry, everyone,” Rikei interrupted. “She doesn’t like scary movies.”
One of the students tapped her index fingers together. “I don’t really either…”
“That’s okay. Come sit with us, Senpais. We’re watching Mysterious Disappearances.”
The woman let her friend drag her further into the apartment, where she squeezed between two of the students on the couch. The kotatsu table was covered with homemade treats: cookies, mochi, and dango dripping with sweet glaze. The girls seemed eager to share.
“Do you want some, Senpai?”
“I made the matcha rolls, you should try one!”
“We brought them to give the kids trick-or-treating, but we made way too much, so it’s fine…”
The woman winced every time one of the young women called her Senpai, unable to stop herself from thinking about her Senpai. To distract herself, she sampled a few of their homemade treats. One of the girls caught her up on the plot of the anime they were watching, and she settled in.
“Sumireko-san’s boobs are so big…”
“For real, for real. She might be even bigger than Senpai.”
Rikei spoke up. “Actually—“
Before her friend had a chance to quote her measurements to a room full of their kouhais, the woman threw a balled-up piece of wax paper at her head.
Unfazed by this interaction, the girls continued their chatter.
“You should cosplay as Sumireko!”
“She just wears a normal tank, though…”
“So? That’s the beauty of it.”
“Boring cosplay is boring.”
The woman tuned them out, reaching for another stick of dango.
When the end credits rolled a few episodes later, it was almost ten o’clock. It had been dark for some time.
“I really thought more kids would come by,” one of the girls mused.
“So did I,” Rikei said. “Maybe it’s because so many of my neighbors are out and have their lights off.”
“Well, there’s still lots of food left,” another girl said. “Eat up, everyone.”
With Rikei delivering her a steady supply of cold beers and focused on the anime’s plot, the woman’s snacking was automatic. When she grabbed the last dango stick, she realized she hadn’t seen Rikei or any of the girls reach for the table in quite a while. A whisper of self-consciousness fought through her giddy beer haze. She ate the dango more slowly, then resisted the urge to reach for something else.
In the break between episodes, one of the girls cleaned up the snack table, combining plates and sliding everything closer to the couch, closer to the woman. Rikei pushed up from her chair with a simple, “Beer?”
The woman nodded, because of course she did.
The girl sitting on her left picked up a plate and held it out. “More mochi, Senpai?”
They smelled delicious, but she wasn’t in her Senpai’s apartment or out celebrating a closed deal… or in her own apartment recording a mukbang. “Don’t you want to take them home?”
The girl shook her head. “I’m gonna spend half of November dieting as it is…”
The woman picked one of the spongy mochi and bit into it. A gentle moan slipped out as her teeth sank into the soft treat. The girl beside her beamed. “It’s good, isn’t it? Have as many as you want.”
She chewed and swallowed the last of the mochi, but the girl was still holding the plate up to her. The woman’s mouth watered, and her fingers itched to grab another one. “I shouldn’t…”
“Please? I worked really hard on them…”
She looked from girl to girl, finding only smiling, encouraging faces. Rikei returned with two beers, cracking one can open before handing it to her. The woman took a long swig and let out a pleased sigh. Her friend nodded at the proffered plate of mochi.
Well, if none of them minded…
***
Rikei helped her kouhais into their coats, the five of them glancing wide-eyed at the office lady in her Sadako costume. She sat sunken into the middle of the couch, her head tipped back and gently snoring. Her wig had come off at some point and lay pooled on the floor like an otherworldly spider. She looked like a very pregnant woman, though there was nothing in that belly but Halloween sweets.
The buttons on her costume nightdress only ran down to its elastic waist. That elastic was stretched to its limit, and the bottom two buttons were straining even harder than the ones over her robust bosom.
“I can’t believe she ate it all,” one of the students whispered.
By the end, the girls had taken turns sitting beside her friend and hand-feeding her their homemade treats.
“Have you seen her YouTube? That was nothing.”
“She has a YouTube!?”
“Shh,” Rikei chided. “It’s supposed to be a secret.”
“Sorry, Senpai…”
“I’ll send you a link.”
“Will she… be okay?”
Across the room, the office lady hiccupped in her sleep. The button at the apex of her breasts popped free, clattering across the kotatsu.
“She’ll be fine,” Rikei said. “She can sleep on my couch. You girls better go before she has a full-on wardrobe malfunction…”
***
Beads of sweat ran down Rikei’s brow as she hefted a glistening, golden-brown turkey from the oven. She’d never considered herself much of a chef, but cooking was just another field of science. Centuries of humans had hypothesized, experimented, and published instructions that were simple enough for any housewife to follow. Rikei let out a soft chuckle at the thought of her friend trying to make these foreign foods for herself. Okay, maybe not any housewife.
The traditional American Thanksgiving mukbang stream had been Rikei’s idea, so she’d had no valid excuse to get out of cooking it all. That man, her friend’s coworker, with whom she was so obviously smitten, possessed superior kitchen proficiency to Rikei’s, but as she was the only one who knew about her friend’s YouTube channel—as far as her friend knew—she’d had no choice but to volunteer to cook.
“That smells soooo good,” her friend said from behind the bar counter—Rikei had banished her friend from the kitchen after the third pilfered dinner roll.
“It’s just about done,” Rikei said. “We just have to wait for this last casserole.”
“I thought that was the casserole,” she said, pointing at a pan of something dark green topped with crispy dried onions.
“That’s green bean casserole. The one still in the oven is corn. Are you all set up for the stream?”
Her friend nodded. “If we’re almost ready, I’ll go change.”
Rikei carved thick slices from the turkey and arranged the various dishes on the table in front of the camera. Mashed potatoes, both casseroles, fluffy stuffing, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, and a pumpkin pie. It was a modest version of the meal compared to what Rikei had seen in American films, but it could have easily fed a party of ten Japanese, perhaps more if they were all women. Instead, there were only two of them, and Rikei’s portion would barely make a dent.
Her friend’s “costume” for this stream was supposed to be traditional American clothes, which apparently meant a large fuzzy sweater and a denim skirt. The sweater was bright pink with English letters across the chest that took Rikei a moment to parse. It read, `, which made her laugh.
“What’s funny?”
Rikei was laughing too hard to explain. She pointed at her friend’s top, the embroidered letters stretched across her abundant breasts. The thick, fuzzy wool made them look even larger.
Her friend pawed at her chest, trying to read the lettering upside-down. “Whaaaat?” she whined.
Recovering herself, Rikei wiped a bit of moisture from her eyes. “Never mind…”
Her friend pouted as she set up for the stream. Rikei left her to it, fleeing to the kitchen to clean up as quietly as possible.
When the sound of her friend signing off her stream distracted Rikei from her laptop screen, nearly two hours had passed. She waited until the apartment fell quiet and walked into the other room. Over half of her meal was gone, and her friend leaned back in her computer chair, massaging her middle. Her oversized sweater wasn’t nearly as loose around the waist as it had been when Rikei first saw it.
“All done?”
Her friend smiled at her drunkenly, though there had been no alcohol with her meal. “Thanks for making all this. It’s all so good…”
Rikei picked a piece of meat from the untouched side of the turkey and popped it into her mouth. “I’m glad you liked it. Did the stream go well?”
She nodded. “So many people joined. I wish I could have kept going…”
Rikei sat opposite her friend and filled a modest plate for herself. “Why didn’t you?”
“Two hours is my longest stream yet. The –hic– numbers on rewatches start to drop off if a video gets too –hic– long.”
Rikei filled a glass of water and pushed it into her hands. “Drink this.”
She noticed her friend hadn’t said anything about being too full to keep her stream going. Testing a theory, she sliced more of the turkey and refilled the empty plate, adding each of the sides, complete with sauce and gravy. As if on autopilot, her friend sat up in her chair and continued eating.
Rikei took her time cleaning her own plate while never letting her friend’s plate get empty. More casserole, more potatoes, more turkey. At one point, she had to help her friend undo the buttons on her skirt to give her belly room to stretch.
One by one, the pans and platters were emptied. Her friend’s pace slowed, and her moans increased, until she dropped her arms in defeat. But Rikei was not a quitter. She scraped pans and poured the last drops of gravy. She picked up her friend’s spoon and held it to her lips.
“Just one more plate. Do your best…”
Her mouth opened, her jaw worked, and her sweater stretched its knit until it started to look like a net. Bite by bite, the mounded plate was laid low. Rikei squatted beside the chair and rubbed her friend’s stomach, feeding her the last piece of pie, piled with whipped cream.
The office lady leaned back in her chair like a beached whale. Her sweater pulled so tightly that bits of skin showed through the strands. Unable to resist, Rikei gave her friend’s tummy a fond pat.
–Uuurrrrrp!–
Rikei stood and stacked the dishes, smiling down at her.
“You did so well. You can rest now.”