4 - Mahiru Koizumi - Secretly Slutty

Hiyoko Saionji glared at the baseball-pitching neanderthal in front of her, big orange eyes full of equal parts disdain and disbelief. The conversation was aggressive and the location was secluded, tucked away in the bottom of a stairwell, but she didn't seem afraid for her safety. "Hah? I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were speaking to me! I'm pretty sure some of those monkey grunts coming out of your mouth were an attempt to communicate. You've gotta have me mixed up with someone else, though! Your nasty body spray is stinking up the air around here, so do you mind going somewhere else?"

The red-headed young man from another class, Leon Kuwata, gave her a shaky grin, a vein popping out on his forehead as he worked to control his emotions. "Oh yeah? Well, fuck you too, then! Y'know, there's a lot of girls who'd be fallin' over themselves to spend some one-on-one time with the Ultimate Baseball Star." When he saw her glaring daggers again, he clicked his teeth and backed off, scratching at the back of his head. "Sheesh, my bad! I didn't mean nothin' by it. You and Mahiru are so close, I figured you might be up for a little cheerleadin', but-"

Before Hiyoko could subject Leon to another tongue-lashing for his stupid assumption, the second woman in question appeared from around a corner as if she was summoned. On a warpath, Mahiru stormed around Hiyoko's shoulder and got right up in Leon's face, pointing a finger straight into it. "What the heck are you thinking?! A girl like Hiyoko doesn't have the time of day for your gross fantasies! Honestly, you guys are always like this! She said no, didn't she? So scram! Beat it! And..." she added, trailing off. Her tone subtly changed it. "Don't talk to her about cheerleading, all right? She's not interested."

Leon had a funny grin on his face. He didn't look as chewed out as Hiyoko thought he ought to. Still, he slid off of the wall and backed away from the girls. "Okay, Mahiru, okay. I get it. I'll buzz off. If she learns a little bit about it and decides she wants to try it, lemme know, all right? Way I see it, there's room on the squad!" Before he could elaborate or Mahiru could shout at him more, he turned and hoofed it up the stairwell.

As soon as he was gone, the blonde-haired dancer hugged her friend warmly. Ever since Hiyoko's growth spurt, they were about the same size (in fact, Hiyoko was bigger in some areas), but she still tended to show her affection in this familiar way. "Waaah, Mahiru! I knew you'd show up and save me from that hormone-addled monkey! Honestly! Guys like that should be in a zoo."

Mahiru laughed and didn't disagree, but she shook free a little uncomfortably. "Uh-huh. I saw Leon leading you away and figured it'd be something creepy like that. Listen, Hiyoko. If a guy ever pressures you like that again, just tell him 'no' and walk the other way. There's no point in listening to what they have to say."

"Okie dokie! I'd be happy to never hear his nasty voice again. Losers like him who are only good at playing a game should play that game and keep their mouths shut. I mean, really? 'Cheerleading?' Like I wanna hear about a guy's adolescent fantasies, never mind being part of them!"

"Yeah... J-just forget about what he said," Mahiru emphasized with a fishy smile, rubbing her arm. "It's important that women like you and me exercise our autonomy on this. Don't ever let yourself be pushed into something like that if you don't want to, okay? You're a strong girl, Hiyoko."

From anyone else, especially a woman her same age, Hiyoko would recoil at being treated like a kid. From Mahiru, however, she just treated that as one of the likable parts of her ordinary nature. "Yep! I've got no intention of taking shit from shit-flies," she paraphrased.

"Good," Mahiru told her with a smile, patting her on the shoulders. "I've got another photoshoot set up with Tsumugi after school. Sorry I won't be able to hang out with you."

"Again? That four-eyes?" Hiyoko complained. She didn't remember when Tsumugi Shirogane had wormed her way next to Mahiru and become so close with her, but in the end, she had to understand and respect it. Both she and Mahiru worked in adjacent professions. As long as it was just professional and she wasn't a friend closer than Hiyoko herself, she'd allow it. "Fiiine..."

Mahiru gave her an apologetic bow, waved, and ran off.

Hiyoko watched her go up the staircase, crossing her arms pensively. Why did she have this weird feeling? Maybe it was just that she wanted to be closer to Mahiru... Maybe it was that she wanted to somehow repay Mahiru for her gallant rescue. She had some restless feeling, however, like the normal Mahiru she respected would drift away from her if she kept letting her hang around with Tsumugi... "Well, duh," Hiyoko thought to herself. "There's no way a booby monster like that blue-haired friend-stealer, the kind of weirdo that dresses up as characters from cartoons, won't rub off on Mahiru and turn her into a weirdo, too! Don't we have enough detectives at this school for somebody to look into this? Welp, can't be helped. Just like dancing, close friendships are another tradition that need to be protected! Time for Hiyoko, the Ultimate Dancer/Detective, to get on the case!"

---

When Mahiru left with Tsumugi in the afternoons, they tended to drive off the campus grounds. Tsumugi had a car she used to get to events. Hiyoko knew Mahiru would be out of her room for a while, and as a trusted friend, she knew where the photographer kept her spare key. Without wasting time, Hiyoko unlocked the door to her friend's dorm room and hurried inside.

She turned on the lights to find everything mostly as she remembered it from her most recent hangout in Mahiru's room. There weren't all kinds of creepy cosplay costumes, nerdy otaku merchandise, or anything else to indicate Tsumugi was having an outsized influence on her friend. Good.

Still, Hiyoko was determined to do a thorough sweep of her friend's privacy. After all, the two of them were friends! Hiyoko didn't have anything she hid from Mahiru at all, and she assumed that relationship worked both ways. So, she spent her time going through drawers and closets. The secrets she did manage to turn up ended up being pretty tame... There were some old photos from when Mahiru was still developing her talent. There were a bunch of sentimental photos taken with a less-than-steady hand of her friends at parties, Hiyoko included. There were a small handful of photos of Mahiru herself, always looking slightly uncomfortable. Mahiru never liked photos of herself, but it seemed like a photographic record was important to her, in any case.

There weren't any photos of Tsumugi, Hiyoko noted. That was good... And it made sense! Those two were only close as professionals, after all. They weren't best friends like she and Mahiru were.

Just as Hiyoko felt she'd done her detective best and cleared up the urgent case of whether her buddy was getting too chummy with her work acquaintance, Hiyoko satisfied her curiosity in one last place: Mahiru's equipment cabinet, next to her personal dark room. The dancer hadn't seen most of this stuff, let alone touched it. Mahiru had been firm but fair in letting her know all of these things were carefully organized and even recorded on a stock list.

Sure enough, as Hiyoko opened it and peered inside, it was as clinical and boring as one would imagine. Rolls of unused film in boxes. Spare camera parts and backups of different kinds. Envelopes of photos for clients, all neatly marked and shelved. Empty binders for cataloging. A video camera. An equipment list taped to the door, all filled out to date. Totally anticlimactic. Hiyoko respected her friend's interest and loved her photos, but she had no desire to get any closer to the world of photography that Mahiru seemed to take so seriously herself.

As she was thinking that, she found her eyes blankly scanning the equipment list again, trying to imagine how Mahiru didn't fall asleep keeping track of all this boring stuff. At least there wasn't any of that in traditional dance! But in being a detective, probably...

The detective Hiyoko noticed something funny. That video camera was missing from the list.

Actually, what was a video camera doing here, to begin with? Now that Hiyoko thought about it, Mahiru was pretty vocal about her preference for still photography over video recording. It only made sense for this to be here if...

... "It was related to her work with Tsumugi..." Hiyoko muttered to herself, finding herself pulling the camera from the closet. On closer inspection, it was a fairly recent, high-end model. If Mahiru had paid for this herself, it probably set her back. Most importantly, it was the kind with storage in a memory card. If that card was still in here, she'd be able to see the contents played back on the small screen of the camera itself.

"Bingo!" Hiyoko declared with a cheeky grin. "I should see if they'll let me be one of those Ultimate Detectives, too, if they let that dork Shuichi be one. Oh, God..." she suddenly paused, frowning. "Am I about to see Mahiru in some dorky anime costume? If I do... well, that's up to her! What she does in her free time is totally up to her, even if it's a weirdo hobby like that. I'll... respect her privacy and her boundaries." Remembering she was sneaking into her friend's room and going through stuff without her permission, Hiyoko corrected that last statement. "I mean, uh, I'll keep her secret! Now, let's see..."

---

FILE 1/4

The setting looked like some kind of storage room, with high windows filtering in sunlight. Otherwise, the lights seemed to be off, but Hiyoko could see what she thought of as gym equipment in the background. There was no subject in the frame. Immediately, Hiyoko recognized that the shaky cam going on in this video didn't seem to be Mahiru's steady photo-taking handiwork.

"Hey! Careful with that." Mahiru's voice, from off-screen, was chiding someone in a familiar tone. "I paid a ton for this thing. If there's even a scratch on it, I'm not going to let you get out of paying me."

"Oh? I thought ya said 'no payment' for this." A male voice, also off-screen. Hiyoko didn't recognize it, but she thought it was someone familiar.

"Oh, shut up. You know the difference. 'You break it, you buy it,' that's all I'm saying. And I'm gonna have this on camera, so go ahead and speak into it."

"Okay, whatever, hell. I, Leon Kuwata, agree to pay for Mahiru Koizumi's camera if it gets dented or scratched while we're... Y'know, actually, you bring up a good point. I've got a little somethin' I want you to say for the camera, too. Here. I wrote it down."

A pause of silence.

"... Seriously? Is this supposed to be a legal statement?"

"Well, yeah. I barely know ya, and most of what I know is that you're a man-hatin' stick-in-the-mud, so forgive me if I wanna be a little careful. I was talkin' with a buddy about this and-"

"You were WHAT?!" Mahiru's voice screeched at him in offense. "Leon, you seriously cannot tell ANYONE about this! If I'm gonna agree to this malarkey you wrote up on camera, I want you to agree to that, too."

"Fine! It's between us. It's not like I told anyone you know, anyway! This was one of my old teammates, we tell each other everything. Like you and that blonde-haired shrimp, I guess?"

"Don't talk about Hiyoko here, either! Gosh, you're an idiot," Mahiru's voice chided. "All right... Ahem."

Finally, a woman stepped into focus. It wasn't Mahiru; it was a third person, with long blonde hair in two pigtails and a cheerleader uniform from a place Hiyoko didn't recognize. Actually... Hiyoko didn't watch sports at all, but were cheerleader uniforms normally like this? The fair skin of the woman's pale belly was totally exposed, and the short skirt seemed to risk flashing the camera every time she shifted. Furthermore, despite otherwise fitting the image of a peppy, blonde cheerleader, the woman's face didn't: she had freckles and dark, olive green eyes, paired with a disapproving frown on her unusually reddened face. Her chest was also a little smaller than the bombshell image one normally associated with the character.

"Not that anyone should ever be watching this, but I'm Mahiru Koizumi. I hereby state that the actions that take place in this video are consensual unless Leon Kuwata or I break character and use the safe word, 'rock n' roll', we agreed upon beforehand, at which point... Ugh, this is a bit much, you know? I'm pretty sure tapes like this don't normally have a legal disclaimer like this at the start. Anyway, yes, if at any point the action becomes **** and-"

---

Hiyoko turned off the footage, covering her shaking mouth with a hand and trying to avoid saying anything.

This was...

Mahiru was...?

Hiyoko's brain finally landed on a conclusion. "This is... evidence! That asshole, Leon... blackmailed Mahiru into doing something with him! And this tape will act as the smoking gun, right? She gets Leon to agree to this part, then she says the safe word on tape, escapes, and retains the tape. And... she's working up the courage to present it to someone she trusts, like me! Therefore, I should, uh... w-watch the rest of this, right? I have to find the moment she protests and says 'rock n' roll.' Mahiru needs me to."

---

... Mahiru, wearing her blonde wig, was standing with her back to Leon. With a shaky smile that Hiyoko was working hard to interpret as scared and not aroused, Mahiru was doing a poor woman's version of a cheer routine, rocking her hips back and forth in alternating pumps of her pom-pom-toting arms. "One, two, three, four! Leon's always gonna score! Five, six, seven, eight! In the bed or at the plate...!"

---

... Mahiru was... straddling something, shaking her pompoms with enthusiasm, no longer looking deniably aroused as her entire face was flushed and she leaned in towards the camera, her small breasts bouncing beneath her top with the movement. "One... two... three... f-four...! Leon take me on the floor....! F-five, six... seven eight... s-sex with Leon's really-"

---

... Mahiru's face was right in the camera. Her red bob of hair also appeared, as it seemed her blonde wig had come off somewhere in the action. Her eyeliner was running. Her tongue was hanging over her lower row of teeth, which was exposed in a sloppy grin. Her body occasionally rocked from being pushed, and male legs were visible on either side of her in the frame. "R-rock... rock... r-rock star! You're a rock star, Baby! All the girls want you, just like me! So come on, superstar, and come in... unf...! C-come in my-"

---

Hiyoko stared at the camcorder. She rewound the footage and **** herself to watch the parts she had skipped. The words she was waiting for never came out of Mahiru's mouth. There was no sign that the footage was edited, nor that the woman was anyone but who she claimed to be.

... But something was up, right? Leon... was a huge asshole. Mahiru had even agreed to that in front of her, right? So Leon must be extorting her somehow, making her keep this footage as **** material.

In fact, there were three more videos...

With a red face of her own, Hiyoko gulped down her nerves. She had a responsibility to see this through, even if she suspected she was going to find more compromising footage of her friend with Leon.

---

FILE 2/4

Sonia Nevermind, the blonde-headed Ultimate Princess from Hiyoko's class, appeared on screen, looking up into the camera with her drab olive-green eyes and her freckled face, her face hot, red and ready, that same smile that looked both eager and befuddled at the same time returning from the previous video. "I, the Princess of the Kingdom of Novoselic... I can no longer resist the deep, burning lust I have for you, Kazuichi. Even though you are a simple mechanic, your... manly musk... has overpowered me! Now, in spite of my dignity and royal bearing, I... Geez, Kazuichi! I'm getting paid extra for this script."

"Extra?!" the young man's high-pitched voice yelped in surprise from off camera. "Hey, no, you agreed to read the lines and pretend to be a character!"

"I agreed to be a CHARACTER, not one of my friends and classmates pretending to submit to you just because... she can't resist your dong..."

"Hehe. You gotta admit, though, it's a pretty good dong, right?"

The dong in question, already engorged, thicker and longer than Hiyoko could have possibly guessed, slapped into the picture, hitting Mahiru between the eyes. For a moment, she was staring at it cross-eyed, looking surprised. Then, she shut her eyes and bit her lip.

"C'mooon... Say it, unless you don't want it?"

"It's... a pretty good dong," Mahiru replied with a frustrated twitch of her eyebrows. "Can we just cut to the part where I suck-"

---

FILE 3/4

A big, freckled ass took up the entirety of the frame, covered in someone's reddened slap marks. Hiyoko wasn't used to looking at anything like this, so it took her a moment to recognize exactly what the business she was looking at was. Twitching, in the center of the frame as if artistically composed, was a curled replica pig's tail, attached to a vibrator. She could hear it loudly buzzing, so loudly she could hardly make out the voices. Hiyoko thought it was her duty to try, though, so she turned up the volume and tried to apply focus...

... She suddenly regretted it as Mahiru's **** voice cut through the noise with a squeal. "Oink, oink!! I'm a dirty, filthy little piggy! Oink oink, I'm too dirty to eat, but... i-if it's a skillful chef like you, Teruteru, I'm sure that, with the right preparation... I'll make a fantastic fuck-"

---

Hiyoko was feeling overwhelmed. She lay on the floor of Mahiru's red-lit dark room where she'd retreated just in case anyone else came in. She wasn't up to the task. "Leon... Kazuichi... Teruteru? All those..." she paused, not wanting to use the word "pigs" after what she'd seen. "All those animals?! This is what she's been up to... This is what she thought she couldn't tell me... Why? She was ashamed... w-well, duh, all this stuff is... really nasty... Like she's picking just the grossest guys in our class with the creepiest fetishes... Or they're picking her...?"

There was one left. If Hiyoko was making a shitlist of who she needed answers from, she needed to see the last face that would appear...

---

FILE 4/4

A familiar looking face appeared on screen, smiling fondly at the camera. It took a moment for Hiyoko to recognize her. Part of that was that, at this point, she was expecting to see Mahiru; this was someone else. The second reason was that she had never paid attention to Tsumugi Shirogane, the Ultimate Cosplayer, without glasses. The third reason was the framing was weird...

She eventually put together that what she was looking at was from a bare woman's POV, not a man's. It showed a fair-skinned belly, some nice legs with freckles that were ordinarily hidden, and a patch of red pubic hair right below Tsumugi's smiling lips.

"How's it been going, Mahiru?"

"I don't... really wanna talk about it..."

"Oh? I figured you'd been having a good time," Tsumugi replied with an apologetic look. "Remember, this is about you, okay? You're the one who asked me to introduce you to some people. They've been good to you, right? Or, um... good in that weird way that bad things are good, right?" She gasped, raising her eyebrows. "Don't tell me they haven't been paying you!"

"Well, yeah, after the first one, I've been getting them to pay. I can't have... guys like Kazuichi and Teruteru... thinking I'm doing this kind of thing for fun."

"So you are having fun! Well that's plain great to hear," the cosplayer replied with a smile. "I told you, doing it on a camera in costume is totally different. It's incredible, isn't it? You can feel how much the guy wants your character... It's one of the greatest expressions of character love there is! Even if you don't like guys too much... you like to be liked by them, right?"

"Mmm..."

"And you like to be liked by girls too, right, Mahiru?" Tsumugi's ordinarily plain face broke into a surprising, devilish grin. "It seems like you and I don't even need to use the costumes. You're already so wet down he-"

Hiyoko paused the video.

She prepared herself, then hit play.

"-re. Well, as your sponsor, I'll take responsibility and help clean you up." Locking eyes with the unseen Mahiru, Tsumugi's big, round eyes creased into crescents as her tongue fell from her mouth and her face lowered between Mahiru's legs.

Hiyoko heard the sound of the tongue of the plainest girl from their class, transformed into a devil on camera, and the erotic, escalating cries of the second-plainest girl, the one Hiyoko respected as an anchor of normalcy in their class of perverts and weirdos.

---

Hiyoko re-tied her obi like Mahiru had once taught her, then she did a quick sweep of the floor to make sure she hadn't left any evidence, herself. Relying on her own shaky understanding of technology, she tried to make sure there was no fingerprint of her presence in the videos, like a timestamp of when she'd stopped watching. Satisfied, she returned the camera to its spot on the shelf, hoping that she remembered exactly how it had been.

She checked her phone and realized she'd been here for longer than she thought. It was... weird that Mahiru wasn't back yet.

Or, maybe, knowing what she knew now, that was normal.

She went back to her room, feeling exhausted enough to go to sleep after the activity- "Investigation," she reminded herself, actively burying thoughts about what she had just been doing in Mahiru's room. The young woman went to her bed and reclined, intending to call it a night...

...

She opened up her phone, reading over her recent messages to Mahiru.

She had to admit to herself... it hurt. She had thought she was the closest person to Mahiru. It turned out, in terms of things two women could do with each other, she was pretty far from the most intimate friend the photographer had. And she'd kept it a secret.

With a furrowed brow, she tried writing a message. There was no way she'd be able to treat this as a secret, something she didn't address.

Mahiru, what are you and Tsumugi doing

Delete.

Mahiru I dont want you and Tsumugi to

Delete.

I know you and Tsumugi are

Delete.

Pause.

Mahiru you can talk to me about anything. I won't think you're weird even if you're doing something really weird. I get that you love casual sex with

Delete.

If you want we can I want

Hiyoko sighed. She had no idea what she was trying to write. The young woman, groaned, kicked her feet out, and rolled over on her bed with the message unsent. Pouting, she wrapped her cover around herself, then herself around her cover, trying to find some comfortable way to fall asleep at the too-early time she'd set for herself.

"I guess everyone's a pervert at this Academy, huh?! Even Mahiru..."

She stuffed her pillow over her face and spoke into it.

"Even me..."