Chapter 21: Mirror

The mirror in the private bath had hung over the washing stools for thirty years.

It was a long pane in a cypress frame, wide enough for two women, and the steam fogged it the moment the water ran.

Yuzu wiped it clear with the flat of her hand.

"Sit," she said.

Sakura sat on the low wooden stool, naked and pink from the tub, with her hair pinned up and a few wet strands clinging to her neck.

She faced the glass.

The woman in it looked soft and flushed, with a mole under her left eye and a mouth that was already half open.

Yuzu stood behind her in the lamplight, small and gold-skinned, with her scarred arms folded.

"Look at her," Yuzu said.

"I don't like to."

"I know. That's why you're going to." Yuzu leaned down, and her chin rested on Sakura's shoulder. "Look at what I see every day."

Sakura looked.

Yuzu reached up and took the pins out of her hair one at a time.

The black mass slid down her back, past her waist, to the wood of the stool, and the woman in the mirror seemed to grow taller.

"Her hair," Yuzu murmured. "Look how it moves."

She spread her hands over Sakura's shoulders, and slid them slowly down the front of her body.

She cupped both breasts, and weighed them, and brushed her thumbs across the nipples.

In the mirror Sakura watched them tighten under Yuzu's thumbs.

Her breath caught.

"Her breasts," Yuzu said. "Look at how heavy they are. How they fill my hands."

"Yuzu."

"Keep your eyes open."

She rolled the nipples between finger and thumb, a little rough, and Sakura's eyes fluttered shut.

"Open."

They snapped open.

Yuzu's hand slid down, over the soft belly to the dark curls, and spread Sakura's thighs with a knee.

In the mirror her legs fell wide, and the lamplight caught the wetness there.

Sakura went scarlet from her breastbone to her hairline.

"Oh, God."

"Look," Yuzu said, very softly. "You have never seen it, have you? Twenty-eight years. You don't know what you look like when you want something."

She slid two fingers through the slick folds, slowly, and held them up for Sakura to see.

They glistened.

"That's for me," she said. "All of it. That's what you do to me."

She put her fingers back.

She circled the clit, round and round, light as a feather, with her eyes on the mirror.

Sakura watched the woman in the glass tremble.

Her lips parted, and her cheeks flushed darker, and a tiny whimper escaped her.

She could not look away.

"There," Yuzu whispered. "There she is. Isn't she beautiful?"

"She's." Sakura swallowed. "She's me."

"She's you."

Yuzu's fingers pressed, harder.

She slid one inside, and watched the mirror as it went, and Sakura's mouth fell open in a soundless gasp.

Her hips began to roll against the hand.

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