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The first time Sayu had looked at another girl and felt a blush creeping up her cheeks, she’d been thirteen, and the girl in question had been a close friend. They had been sitting in Sayu’s room together, looking at a magazine, and the other girl’s breast had brushed against Sayu’s arm, and she had just noticed how soft they were. And then she’d glanced in her friend’s direction, and she’d seen a long length of exposed neck, and she felt herself go just a bit red.
But attraction is a nebulous thing, and Sayu, who had been deciding that she had a crush on whatever boy her friends thought was “cute” since she was eight years old, because she thought that was what everybody did, didn’t realize what was going on at the time.
-
The first time she realized that what she felt was attraction was two years later, when she was playing out a conversation with an acquaintance in her head, and it somehow ended in making out. She’d never kissed anyone before, but she had an idea about what it probably felt like, and she spent the next five minutes fantasizing before her realization of the implications jerked her out of happyland. She flushed bright red from head to toe, and was filled with supreme gratefulness that she was at home in her room instead of in class, where she did most of her dreaming. Still, the door was open, and she leapt out of her desk chair to close it, paranoid that her mother, or her father, or her brother could read her thoughts. Every muscle in her body was tense enough to snap, so much that when she moved, she shook.
Then she’d opened it again, and dashed to the bathroom, because her face still felt hot and it made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want her face to feel hot. She didn’t want to be red. She didn’t want to have spent the past five minutes fantasizing about kissing another girl.
She buried her face in a handful of cool water and imagined that she was drowning all those things she didn’t want.
-
The first time she made good on these fantasies was six months later. She was at her friend Emi’s house, and Emi had asked her, just bold faced come out and asked her, “Hey Sayu, have you ever liked a girl? Like, like liked a girl?”
Sayu had not answered, but the blush that had spread itself across her cheeks and the way she’d looked down was answer enough.
“Hey, hey, Sayu,” Emi had protested, “You don’t have to be weird about it. I was just asking because… because I think I might too. I think I might like you.”
Sayu had panicked ever so slightly at that moment, because there was a distinct part of her that had decided that if she never acted on this… weirdness, it would go away on its own, but Emi had big dark eyes and dainty, beautiful hands and plush, full lips and hair that Sayu knew from many a sleepover makeover was really soft and… well, Sayu realized she might reciprocate. So she said so.
They sat in silence for about five minutes, just looking at each other, before Emi said “So… do you wanna go on a date or something?”
-
The first time Sayu got dumped, (by Emi, ten months after they’d begun to date), she was destroyed. She hid in her room, listened to depressing music, and failed her math test even worse than usual. But the worst part wasn’t the break up, it was that three days into her sadness binge, her mother had smiled knowingly at her and said, “Boy trouble?” and Sayu had nodded silently along, a lump in her throat and a knot in her gut.
-
The first time Sayu called herself a lesbian was jokingly. She was messing around with a group of friends, and Kiko had said: “Sayu, you always tell us how pretty we are, you’re such a lesbian, I love it!”
And Sayu had said: “Totally. Number one lesbian, that’s me,” and laughed, and her friends had laughed with her under the comfortable presumption that it was a joke, that every single one of them was Normal, that none of their number could possibly be so alien as to prefer the company of women.
But when Sayu was locked safely in her room, (and she did lock her door; now that her brother was gone off to university, her parents no longer trusted her as they once had, since Perfect Light was no longer there to care for his baby sister, and she’d responded by giving them as much trust as they gave her), she had time to reflect. She rolled the word around in her mouth, testing it, trying it.
“I… am a lesbian.”
“I am a lesbian?”
“I’m a lesbian.”
Sayu grinned and glanced at the mirror on her dresser. She liked labels.
-
The first time she well and truly seduced a girl, without knowing she was gay first, it was one of Light’s girlfriends, and she was seventeen, hanging out in Light’s college dorm room. Their mother had sent her over with cookies, and Sayu needed to escape the oppressive atmosphere of home. So she stayed. Light had had his current girlfriend, Aika, over, and he’d introduced them, but then he had quickly departed, saying that he had to speak to the dean, and left Sayu and Aika to fend for themselves.
Aika was a year younger than Light, two years older than Sayu, and very pretty. Her hair was curled in soft ringlets, and her lips were painted a dark red. What really drew Sayu, though, were her eyelashes. They were so long and dark they looked fake, and Sayu could just imagine them brushing over her cheek. Why Light deserved to have this beautiful creature on his arm when he couldn’t enjoy her, Sayu would never understand. Light was totally disinterested in women, he only dated to seem more normal. She’d never seen him have a girlfriend he actually liked. And of course, the girls he dated wound up the worse for it.
“You know, sometimes I think he doesn’t care about me at all,” Aika sniffed after about an hour of conversing.
“Look, Aika-chan, Light is an ass. I’ve known him my whole life, and he’s an ass. Okay?” Sayu looked Aika in the eyes, trying to assure the girl of her frankness.
“But he was so sweet…” Aika looked away.
“Until you’d been dating for a while, and then once he was sure you were tied down, he stopped wooing you, yes?” Sayu asked, listing off Light’s usual pattern.
“Y-yes…” Aika was looking back at Sayu now, beginning to sound less sad and more confused, “But why would he do that if he didn’t like me? It’s not like he’s using me for… he’s never wanted to…”
“That was more than I ever needed to know about my brother’s sex life, Aika-chan.” Sayu frowned a bit, and Aika blushed and looked away.
“I’m sorry, Sayu-chan, please forgive me. I wasn’t thinking…” Aika’s voice was small. Sayu was quick to reassure her, worrying that Aika would dislike her if she embarrassed her too badly.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. And it’s an understandable thought to have. I know if I liked boys that would always be my worry.” Sayu held her breath. Would Aika understand? She’d found that people tended to work very hard to avoid acknowledging that women could like women. If she understood, would she be okay with it? Or would she kick Sayu out of the dorm and throw a fit? Would she tell Light? Sayu had a feeling he might suspect, they knew each other pretty well, but Light was good at ignoring things he didn’t want to face. If it was pointed out to him… Sayu watched Aika intently. The girl’s blush deepened, and she looked away from Sayu again.
“You, ahhh….” Aika blinked, “You… like girls?” She looked back at Sayu, eyes very wide, but Sayu couldn’t tell what emotion lay behind the expression. Was it fear? Anger? Disgust?
…Interest?
“Yes. Yes I do.” Sayu nodded for emphasis. She was glad her hands were in her lap, hidden from Aika’s view. They were shaking.
“Oh. Alright, Sayu-chan.” Aika smiled at her. Sayu was a bit taken aback.
“Alright? That’s it?” she asked. Aika giggled, and leaned forward to whisper in Sayu’s ear.
“Well it’s not like most of us can’t relate, at least a little bit.” Aika giggled again and withdrew, a coquettish little smile on her face. Sayu had to stop herself from smirking. There was only one reason to make a confession like that in this situation and in that way. She mentally thanked Light for being such a total dick.
-
The first time Sayu officially, publicly outed herself to a group of people, she was in college, far away from her parents, her brother, or anyone else who might think the worse of her. But still, when she introduced herself in the first meeting of the campus LGBT club for the year, and she introduced herself not just as “Hi, I’m Sayu,” but as “Hi, I’m Sayu, I’m a lesbian, and I’m joining this club because this is the first time I’ve found a community that I can feel comfortable being myself in,” her knees shook. The head of the club, a girl with dyed blonde hair and a smile just a little too sympathetic clapped for her before she could sit down, and Sayu hated it, because of course the rest of the club also began clapping, and Sayu wanted to sink into the floor. She felt so pitied. Just because she was closeted before didn’t mean she was some kind of charity case. She wasn’t pathetic.
But then a girl across the table caught her eye, and they exchanged a look. That look said lots of things. “I know how you feel.” “This sucks.” “She sucks.” “Why are we here?”
After the meeting, Sayu introduced herself to the girl, whose name was Eriko. Neither of them attended another LGBT club meeting, but they ended up as the best of friends.
-
The first time Sayu fell in love – like really fell in love, not some kind of teenaged infatuation – she was 21, and she’d been asked on a date by a girl she’d never met before in her life. She’d accepted because the girl, Naoko, had been reasonably attractive. Besides, she’d been so overjoyed that her recent haircut had done what she’d intended it to do, namely, ping other people’s gaydar, that she would’ve said yes to a lot of things in that moment.
So they met at a corner coffee shop which Sayu frequented because it was out of the way and ended up being quite private. She ordered her green tea, and Naoko ordered a coffee. Sayu made a small face at her, as she hated coffee, and Naoko responded by sticking out her tongue. From there, things escalated to a staring contest, which escalated to poking, which would have escalated to tickling if they hadn’t been getting strange looks. Sayu had never been so comfortable with someone on a first date before. Things with Naoko just… clicked.
Sayu had also never been so excited for a second date.
-
The first time Sayu got her heart well and truly broken, she was 27, and Naoko had been living in China for two years, working at a technological research company while Sayu finished her doctorate in Japan. That morning, she’d woken up totally normally, made herself a cup of tea, and checked her phone, only to see a text from Naoko. She hadn’t heard anything from her in a few days, so she was excited when she opened it. But the contents of the text were not the usual cheery (or occasionally annoyed) updates on how her job was going, they were as follows:
Sayu -
I know we’ve tried, we’ve tried very hard, but I can’t handle this long distance relationship thing.
I need someone I can see and touch.
I love you, and I know you love me, but I’m putting myself back on the market. I hope you’ll do the same.
Sayu drew in a sharp breath and held it. When she couldn’t anymore, she let it out, and took in another one. She attempted to continue this for a three minutes, but for all her efforts, she ended up hyperventilating anyway. She realized she was still holding her phone, but holding was the wrong word. She was clutching it, and her fingers were white with pressure. She decided that that was probably a bad thing, and loosened her grip on it, but unfortunately, she overshot, and dropped it. She didn’t follow it with her eyes, but when she heard the clunk of it hitting the floor, she looked down, noticing the large crack across the screen. She picked it up without really thinking, and let her hands fiddle with it aimlessly. Before she knew it, she was dialing a number, one of three that she could rattle off by heart. She put the phone to her ear.
“Sayu? What’s happening? Are you alright? Why are you calling me at eleven am?”
“Hey… Hey Light. I just… I’m having a really bad day, could you tell me about your cases?”
“Oh. Alright.”
“Thanks.”