Waiting at the train station for Ayu, you're not exactly sure what to expect. After all, it's been almost fifteen years since you last saw her, back when the two of you were in elementary school. She used to live next door to you and the two of you were close friends, in the way that only little kids who live next door to each other can be.



When your mother suddenly asked you last week if you remembered her, all those memories came flooding back. The little tomboyish girl with the pigtails who always seemed to have skinned knees and a smudge of dirt somewhere on her face - she was always dragging you into some adventure or other, whether it was climbing onto the roof of that old abandoned house down the street or throwing rocks at a hornet's nest. They usually turned out badly, but she always made life interesting. And so, when her family moved away, you quickly found yourself missing her. The two of you promised to keep in touch by email, and you did for a while, but eventually that came to an end. You can't remember if it was you or her who stopped replying, but whoever it was, you never heard from her again.



Until your mother's question, you hadn't thought of her for years. You asked her why she was asking all of a sudden, and she told you that Ayu will be staying at your house for about a few days.



"She plays volleyball for her college," your mother explained. "Her team is playing against Kanazawa University next week, so they've been looking for people to billet the players. Ayu's mother asked if she could stay with us, and of course I said we'd be delighted to have her. I thought you two would be able to catch up on old times."



And so now you're outside the station waiting for her train to arrive. You'd hoped for a relaxing summer holiday back home doing much not at all, but the thought of seeing Ayu again is kind of exciting. Volleyball? You knew she'd end up doing something sporty. That girl could climb any of the trees in the street in ten seconds flat, even if she did sometimes fall out of them.



You wonder how you're supposed to recognise her. All you remember about her is her long black hair and her wide eyes that always had a mischievous gleam in them, but that's not really enough to go on, is it? If she was with her team-mates, it would have been easier, but since she's travelling here alone you'll just have to hope she hasn't changed much.



The train arrives and a bunch of people get off. You wait around, feeling a bit awkward looking at each of the young women coming out through the turnstiles. You see one girl about the right age, with long black hair, and she turns and smiles at you. You raise your hand, a smile flashing onto your face, when a guy come past you from behind and hugs her.



Not her, then. You feel a bit disappointed - she was really pretty.



The crowd thins out. Maybe she caught the wrong train or missed this one? You get your phone out and check it. No missed calls or messages.



When you look back up you see some consternation at the turnstiles. Someone is trying to wrestle a number of bags over them.



You walk up, curious about what's happening. Who the hell travels with that much luggage on a train?



One bag comes flying over the turnstile and lands near your feet. It's a sport bag.



No.



There's some soft feminine swearing and another two bags join the first. You're still staring at them when their owner, having struggled through the turnstiles themselves, walks up to collect them.



You look up... and then up a bit more.



The girl standing near you is easily over six foot. She's wearing a tracksuit, but even so you can tell that's she's really built underneath it; not muscly so much as that firm, powerful body of an athlete. She's sweating as she runs a hand back through her short, black hair.



"Sorry," she says. "Give me a sec and I'll get all this crap out of your way."



She bends down to pick up the sports bag nearest to you and when she looks up she finally sees you for the first time.



Her eyes are large and dark and she has a scattering of freckles across her nose. But it's when she smiles, a wide, mischievous grin like a naughty little kid's, that you realise it's her.



"Ayu?" you ask, scarcely able to believe that this is the little girl you used to play with.



Her grin, impossibly, widens some more and she nods.



"Hey! Long time no see, huh?" She looks you up and down as she hefts the bag nearest to her onto her shoulder and scoops up a second. You realise you're just standing there staring like an idiot, so you grab up the third bag - with difficulty. It feels like it's full of rocks. Luckily you've parked not too far away otherwise you probably would have crippled yourself.



Despite your shock at her transformation, you realise you should be making conversation, so you ask her how the trip was.



Ayu chuckles. "I forgot how small the seats on the train are. I mean, I'm used to having no leg room on a plane, but..." She sighs. "I ended up walking up and down the aisle the whole trip. I think everyone in the carriage thought I was obsessive compulsive or something."



As you help her put her luggage into the car, you feel her eyes on you again, looking you up and down again.



"You know, you haven't changed a bit," she says.



You laugh. "I'm a bit taller."



Ayu laughs as well. "Well, yeah. Just a bit. I think I must have stolen some of your height, though."



It's a gentle dig, and not an unkind one. The look on her face is strangely shy, though, as if she's worried she might have taken things too far.



You smile at her to reassure her and she smiles back, relieved. It's like nothing has changed. She used to tease you all the time when you were kids, too.



When she gets in the car she fumbles around under the seat trying to push it back to accommodate her legs. You watch her do it with some amusement. The frustration on her face is surprisingly childish, and you realise you can see a lot of the little girl you knew in her: the way she's biting her lip and muttering under her breath, she could be that little pigtailed girl again, trying to break the chained door to that old, abandoned house open.



She catches you staring. "Hey, you know how bad I am with this stuff. Are you going to sit there and laugh at me or are you going to help me?"



Red-faced, you lean across and do a bit of fumbling yourself. But you soon find the catch and Ayu slides the seat back as far as it will go. Your car isn't exactly small, but there's not a huge amount of space left for her. Those legs are pretty long.



You find yourself staring at them as well, and so you quickly turn away and start the car.



It's not far to your house from the station, so the two of you give each other the condensed version of everything that's been happening in your lives: school, work etc. When you tell Ayu what you're doing, she chuckles.



"Hey, didn't I always say you'd end up doing something brainy like that?" She sighs. "If it wasn't for volleyball, I would have flunked out of school years ago. Luckily, someone made a mistake somewhere and I landed that athletic scholarship. I'm still not sure how it happened."



You tell her you've heard that her team's pretty impressive. "Yeah, well," she says, "We've got a good libero, so that's half the battle already won."



"I thought the outside hitter's supposed to be the best all-rounder," you say.



Her eyes go wide. "You know about volleyball?"



"I've watched it a couple of times on TV," you say.



"Women's beach volleyball, right?" She laughs. "You letch."



That teasing again. When she was small, it was always kind of funny. But now that's she's a big girl, the effect is different. You find yourself, well, enjoying it a bit. Maybe it's the joking way she says it, that knowing smile on her face when you glance at her. Whatever it is, you decide you don't mind her gentle bullying. She's just having fun, after all.



She really has grown up a lot. Physically, you mean. The short hair is what makes her look most different from your memories, though. You decide you like it. For one thing, it shows off her ears and the lightly tanned skin of her neck.



Suddenly she's pouting. "It's my hair, right? You miss my pigtails?"



You start to protest, but she keeps going. "I kinda miss them too, sometimes. I don't know, a short hair cut is just so, well, adult I guess. I mean, it makes me feel older. You can't wear pigtails in volleyball though." She laughs. "Otherwise you end up smacking your setter in the face with them all the time."



You arrive home. Your mother's there waiting and she whisks Ayu into the living room for a cup of tea to catch up, leaving you to take her stuff to the guest room.



It takes you two trips, that heavy sports bag taking up one all by itself. At the end of it you can't help but sneak a look inside.



There are weights in there, the sort you wear around your wrists and ankles when exercising. No wonder it was so heavy. Then you hear footsteps and zip the bag back up in a panic.



You leave your mother to show Ayu around the rest of the house and sit down on the sofa. Your heart is still beating fast. Is it from almost being caught snooping, or something else?



It's a short while later that Ayu returns to the living room with the smaller of her bags. Without saying a word she plumps herself down next to you on the sofa.



"This really takes me back," she says suddenly. "I don't know how many hours of cartoons we watched on this sofa together."



Your mother smiles at the two of you on the way to the kitchen, but as soon as she's out of sight, Ayu leans across and whispers in your ear.



"I know you were going through my stuff. Did you want to see what kind of panties I wear? Or maybe you're more into spandex..."



You start babbling, trying to explain that you were only curious about why her sports bag was so heavy and that you didn't touch her other stuff, and Ayu lies back, her arms along the backing of the sofa and starts to laugh.



"Hey, I was only joking. No need to get so defensive." She looks at you with a dark glimmer in her eye. "I wear hi-cut panties, by the way. Plain old cotton, no lacy bits. Lace chafes."



You stare at her. Is she really sitting there talking about her underwear? She seems to be waiting for you to say something, but the situation is interrupted by the sound of a car's horn out in the street.



Ayu leaps to her feet. "That'll be the girls to take me to training. I've got to go, but we can catch up properly later." She winks at you. Then she calls out to your mother, thanking her and runs out through the front door. You get up yourself and duck your head out. There's a little minibus there, and Ayu is just in the process of getting in it when a girl with sandy blonde hair and freckles leans out of the front passenger side window and spots you. She turns to Ayu, a teasing grin on her face.



"Hey Ayu, that your boyfriend? I think he wants to say goodbye!"



Ayu turns around in surprise. She beams at you and waves.



The blonde watches with amusement glittering on her face. "C'mon you guys. No long goodbyes. We've got a training session to get to."



The smile falls from her face when Ayu leans across and slaps her arm. "Stop teasing my friend, Michi." She gives you one last wave and then, turning and laughing with someone inside, she closes the door and the bus drives off.



-



It's late in the afternoon when Ayu returns to your place. When she comes in her hair is still wet, fresh from taking a shower. She says hello and throws herself back on the couch.



"Man, coach was working us really hard today," she tells you. "He's always like this when we play away. He thinks we're messing around every moment he doesn't have us in the gym or on the court." She put her right foot up on the edge of the cushion she's sitting on, lifts the tracksuit leg and starts rubbing at her bare shin. "Damn leg," she mutters. She sees you watching and she says, "My old wound. The doctor says it gives me grief 'cause the bone's still bruised from that time I broke it. Remember?"



You nod. Of course you remember. The two of you had been climbing that tree in the old abandoned block - it's not there anymore, since the block was bought and a house built on it maybe ten years ago. Some of the other neighbourhood kids were there, egging you on. You decided to quit once you got up about halfway up, and the kids jeered you for being beaten by a girl, since Ayu, as usual, had decided to see how far up she could get. As she neared the top of the tree a branch she grabbed broke and she lost her balance. The next thing you knew she was lying screaming on the ground. The neighbourhood kids took one look at her and scattered in every direction.



You swung yourself down to the ground and ran to her. She was on her back and clutching her leg, biting her lip to stop herself from screaming while tears streamed down her face.



She was wearing shorts that day, and just below her knee, jutting out of the red mass of blood, was a sliver of pink bone.



You pushed your own panic down and made her as comfortable as you could then ran and got help. While the adults argued and messed around with her leg, she took hold of your hand and you held it until the ambulance finally arrived.



Wait. The two of you had held hands?



You'd forgotten all about that until now.



Ayu notices you blushing. "Hehe. Is my bare skin turning you on?"



You shake your head and she pouts. "You saying I don't have nice legs?" She runs her fingers along the scar. "I guess the scar is pretty gross."



She looks up at you from beneath those dark lashes and you detect something in her eyes, a look of sudden vulnerability in direct contrast to that arrogant grin. Maybe she really is self-conscious about it.



You don't really know what to say, and the moment seems to pass. Ayu pulls down the leg of her tracksuit pants and places her foot back on the floor. Then she starts talking about the old tree and some of the stuff the two of you got up to as kids.



"Hey, remember how we used to wrestle all the time?"



You laugh. Yeah, you do. Back then you beat her most of the time and she used to get pretty annoyed by the fact.



Ayu pouts. "You had better upper body strength back then. I could kick your ass now, though."



You shrug. "Yeah, but you're a professional athlete."



"I'm not professional," she says. "Anyway, no excuses." She peels up the sleeve of her top and flexes her bicep. There's definite muscle there, superbly toned. "This is all the product of hard work. You know, I could show you a few pointers if you like." She grabs your arm and shakes it. "Like I thought. Soft as blancmange. Don't you ever get any exercise? And no, masturbating doesn't count."



You start to say something and Ayu just laughs. "You're so cute when you're flustered." Then her face grows serious. "But I am going to have to teach you a lesson, you know. You hurt my feelings earlier."



Hurt her feelings? How?



"I was obviously fishing for a compliment and you just sat there acting like you didn't know what I was talking about." She leans closer, her eyes flashing dangerously. "There's no way you can be that clueless about women, so I guess you were just trying to make me feel bad."



You shake your head but Ayu is already getting up off the sofa. "Get up and try me on for size."



What is she talking about?



"It's time for a rematch," she says. "I think I can have you on the ground in under ten seconds."



Ten seconds? You just need to outrun her, surely?



Ayu laughs. "No, you can't leave the circle of this rug, okay?" She pushes the sofa back against the wall. "If you do, it's an automatic win for me."



You shrug and ask her what the wager is.



"If I win, you have to go running with me tomorrow morning. If you win, you can do whatever you want to me."



Is she being serious?



Ayu chuckles. "Hey, I need to give you a real incentive, right? Anyway, there's no chance you'll win, so my chastity is pretty safe, I think."



You laugh and agree to her terms. It's a pretty stupid game, but you find yourself not really minding the idea of roughhousing with her.



She grabs your arm and pulls you off the sofa. "C'mon, quick bout is a good bout."



You face each other off and you feel faintly ridiculous. It really has been over fifteen years since you've done something like this. You know you're going to get your ass kicked, but you figure, hell, you should be able to last at least ten seconds, right?



The two of you wait until the second hand of the clock on the wall reaches twelve. Then Ayu moves, faster than you would have given her credit. Her hands are already gripping your shoulders and she leans all of her strength and weight to the left. You find yourself stumbling, trying to keep your feet, and somehow you manage to. You grab her around the ribs, but it's exactly what she was expecting. She leans backwards and this time you really do lose your footing and she makes you pay for it by lifting you off the ground and slamming you sideways onto the floor. Winded, you're struggling to get back onto your feet when she spins you onto your back and straddles you, her left arm pressing down on your chest.



You struggle to sit up, but it's useless. It feels like there's a cinder block weighing you down.



You gasp for air and she moves her weight off her arm a little."Hehe, sorry," she says. "I guess I should have gone easier on you. I had no idea you were that out of condition."



You try and say something, but it's difficult with that inexorable power pressing down on your chest.



Ayu sees you suffering and she smiles. "Oh, this? Old trick. If you press down hard enough on someone's centre of gravity, they're basically immobilised. Usually you can't manage to get in the right position to do it with someone who knows what they're doing, though." She shakes her head. "You didn't even last five seconds. I'm starting to wonder if you wanted to lose..." She leans down over you until her face is about an inch away from yours, her dark eyes glistening. You can feel the warmth of her breath on your lips, smell the sweetness of it over the hot scent of the rest of her body. The corners of her eyes crease and you realise she must be smirking, even though you can't see her mouth. "Wasn't the thought of doing whatever you liked to me incentive enough?"



You try to say something, but you just barely have enough to breathe. She sighs and sits up while still straddling you and this time she takes her arm fully off your chest. The explosion of fresh air is paradise. She looks down at you, her expression one of disappointment. "You used to win against me most of the time," she says. "Except when you let me win. You've really let yourself get out of shape. And you still have no clue about women."



Between gasps of air you ask her what she means.



Ayu sighs again. "Every time you beat me at wrestling and got on top of me, I was waiting for you to lean in and kiss me. And you never once did it. I thought maybe you'd have worked it out by now."



You really have no idea how to react to what she's just said. You've also got another pressing problem: you're hard as a rock. Was it having her face so close to yours, that rich, hot scent of hers, the weight of her pressing down on you? Maybe it's being in her power that's making your heart race and your blood run fast.



Ayu has a look of confusion on her face, probably wondering what the hell is wrong with you, but then her eyes glimmer and she smiles. She moves her hips forward and you gasp as the weight of her pelvis rubs against your erection. "Ah," she says, the smile becoming a smirk. "That used to happen all the time when we were kids, too." She sits back again, and now her weight is right on top of you. You can feel the heat of her through her tracksuit. "I guess part of you grew up, at least."

