Aya squeezed her legs together, covered her chest, and turned away, hiding her naked body from Jiro. Her bun had come loose from her time in the pool of water: strands of wet hair—black and blonde—hung haphazardly over her sleek, muscular shoulders, glistening in the band of sunlight. Jiro could see the muscles in her neck clench up tight.

Aya’s mouth opened and closed, trying to find the right words. “G-get away, y-you …”

“Pervert?” Jiro finished helpfully. He crawled forward toward Aya. “Aya, you don’t understand…” His words came out slurred, like he had drunk too much rice wine. His eyelids felt heavy like fishing weights. “It wasn’t me that … undressed you …”

“Wh-What did you to me?” Aya said, regaining her voice.

“No, I …”

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?”

Jiro continued to crawl forward over the cave floor toward Aya. He needed to crawl forward to explain himself. To tell her he had done nothing wrong. At the same time, he needed to bury his head between her firm cantaloupe breasts, squeeze them, balance them on the tip of his nose. He needed to squeeze his head between her muscular thighs and wear them tight like a pair of high-fidelity headphones. In his head—a pea soup of lust and sleepiness—this perverted logic made perfect sense.

It didn’t seem to make any sense to Aya though. She screamed as Jiro approached and tried to push him away with her legs. The sole of one foot, dirty from the cave floor, caught Jiro in the chin. Another hit him straight in the face, compressing his nose. He could smell the sweat on the arch of her foot. They were feeble, panicked kicks though and did nothing to knock Jiro off his hands and knees. All they managed to do was make him sneeze.

“Achoooo!” Jiro’s head snapped forward, spraying a stream of compressed air from his nose and mouth, which sprayed forward and landed … directly between Aya’s legs.

Aya screamed again and began to back away frantically from Jiro, propelling herself with little awkward hops of her bare buttocks. She was almost hyperventilating. With each butt hop, her heels dug into the cave floor, scrabbling, searching, trying to find some purchase on the slippery rock. Bits of cave moss and lichen flew up and landed on Jiro’s face.

“It would be easier to stand up,” Jiro murmured sleepily.

Suddenly, Aya let out yet another howl as she tumbled backward into the pool of seawater, her legs splaying out in an awkward V. Jiro saw a flash of dark pubic hair … and yawned. Very neatly trimmed, he thought, without interest. Drowsiness had begun to overpower desire. He was too tired to even think of how terribly Aya had misunderstood him.

Too tired to even crawl now, Jiro lay down on the cave floor and put his head on a pillow of moss. He saw Kaori coming towards them from across the cavern. But he didn’t care. He just wanted to sleep. The last thing Jiro saw before his eyelids drew shut was something long and pink that slithered by his face … heading in the direction of Aya’s flailing body …