Archive of Our Own

A kiss of warm pink lit the skies above Asahi-juku in a glow that bathed the town's lines of thatch-roofed buildings and dusty roads. In but an hour or two, Asahi-juku would properly awaken to greet the travelers and samurai and couriers that passed through her bustling roads with promises of food and lodging, but for now, she was content to sleep, with not even the incessant chirping of the cicadas enough to pull her out of her slumber. Merely a few residents of Asahi-juku had risen to greet the dawn of another broiling summer day, contenting themselves with the tasks of taking inventory and setting up food stalls.

Enter: A rōnin.

A rōnin of short stature and stocky body, of heavy steps and a bowed head and simmering tension beneath the ill-fitting garb decorating their body. A rōnin with a chip on their broad shoulders. A rōnin with cracked feet and sweaty skin, tanned just a hint from too many months with nary a roof over their head. A rōnin sick from their lack of shelter and had sauntered into Asahi-juku to find an inn that would avail themselves of such an illness. A rōnin with—a very bad ache suddenly flaring up, leaving them gritting their teeth and stopping in their tracks as their left hand reached over to grasp their right shoulder.

Enter: A young man, pursued by a chef.

Through the entrance flap of an eatery some couple hundred shaku ahead of the rōnin emerged a young man in a violent sprint and a cloud of dust accompanying his every step, a small bag of coin held in a white-knuckled death grip. A bag that did not seem to belong to him, if the less-young man who followed out of the restaurant and struggled to keep up with his target was of any indication.

"Stop! Thief!" cried the less-young man.

The young man was getting away. Some of the early risers of Asahi-juku turned their heads to watch, but none pounced into action.

The young man’s sprint led him directly to the rōnin's right side. Several actions proceeded in sequence as he passed:

1. The rōnin stuck their foot out

2. The young man staggered, and would have fallen face first into the dirt if not for

3. The rōnin’s right arm shot outwards, snatching the young man by the back of his kosode collar

4. The young man clawed at the hand keeping him hoisted in place

5. The rōnin's grip remained true

6. The rōnin spoke:

"That isn't yours. Give it back." A low voice, thick like gravel and sharp like jagged glass. Cracked from the burden of disuse.

"Lemme go! Lemme go right now, samurai dog!"

The rōnin’s arm yanked the young man closer, and they turned their head to meet the young man face-to-face. The show of smoldering intimidation in the rōnin's char-colored eyes was impressive, considering how they had to tilt their head upwards a tiny bit to meet the young man's gaze. He flinched. In the first second, beads of sweat began spilling down his temple, and in the second, he started trembling.

And then eyes flickered downwards, over the young man's features. Baby-faced. Scar-less. No older than a teenager. Eyes went lower still—unarmed. Harmless. An overzealous child making a mistake. Flickered again, to where the young man had come from. To the chef, running as fast as his legs could still take him, hate in his face and a knife in his hand.

The rōnin huffed through their nose.

Their free arm lunged forward to effortlessly yank the coin purse from the young man's grip—he made a whimpering, fearful noise. The bag felt like it held a mere pittance of mon.

Then the rōnin spoke, quieter, right into his ear: "Think before you steal again. The next samurai dog may not be so kind."

Their hand released the grip on his top. A second of hesitation, his terrified expression softening into silent disbelief, and then the boy bolted away.

Exit: A young man, nursing a bruised ego.

The chef, sweat-soaked and panting, caught up to the rōnin a few seconds later. The rōnin turned their head to greet him, just in time to see him doubling over to catch his breath.

"Oji-san," said the rōnin, and the man ceased his wheezing long enough to take the offered coin purse out of their hands.

"Thank you…" Huff, huff. "Samurai…" Huff. Huff.

And for just a moment, the rōnin allowed the stone-faced glare to be replaced with a hint of satisfaction creeping onto the tips of their lips. A cross of their arms. A self-satisfied shut of their eyes. They’d done their good deed for the day, it seemed. And oh, of course, such a kindness was its own reward, but if the restaurant's owner wanted to reward said kindness with a free meal, who was the rōnin to deny such a favor? Certainly, material gain of any sort was never what the rōnin sought when they did their best to do the right thing—but goodness, it would just be so awfully rude to turn this man down!

Yes, yes, well, if the man was offering, it would only be right to indulge. The rōnin opened their eyes to be sure to politely meet the man’s eye contact as he made his offer—only to be greeted by the sight of the man's back, already halfway on the return path to the restaurant.

Exit: A chef.

The rōnin's smug expression petered out into flustered befuddlement. Blink, blink. They turned their head to glance about; Asahi-juku’s few onlookers had quickly lost interest. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed.

The rōnin sighed. Their stomach gnawed at nothing.

Blink. Adrenaline fizzled away. Blink. Pain caught back up. Sweat spilled down their forehead. Glass shattered. "Owowowowowowowowow," the rōnin hissed through gritted teeth, slumping over as a violent ignition spiked into their shoulders.

Adjacent to the rōnin this entire time had been a building with the entrance flap labeled "Anma," and it was just as the "acceptance" stage began washing over the rōnin that said flap in said building parted.

Enter: A masseuse:

"Samurai-san?" said the figure that emerged. "Would you care for a massage?"

The rōnin, who was, in fact, a woman called Ryu, turned her head in the direction of the voice to bear witness to a sight that made her cheeks flush a pale pink. "…H-Huh?"

The masseuse smiled.

"I saw the whole thing through my window! Mohe-san’s always been a grouchy old cheapskate, but I can’t believe he wouldn’t even offer you a reward for stopping that thief."

"Uh—mhm."

When Ryu found the wherewithal to fight off her shoulder pain enough to stand up straight again, she’d followed the polite masseuse lady’s beckoning sweetness into that modest little building, through the front flap and past the waiting bench directly into a back room. She was greeted by summer sunlight filtering in divided rays through shoji windows and a latticed kōshi door on the back wall, and a soft-looking futon in the center of tatami flooring. Ryu didn’t exactly know what a massage room was meant to look like, but she had no reason to doubt that this was what had been advertised.

The masseuse slid the door shut before reemerging into Ryu’s line of sight. "Now, Samurai-san," the masseuse said, planting a hand on her hip. "Ready to get started?"

And Ryu didn’t mean to stare. She really didn’t—not after her first glance at this woman’s features in the middle of town had left her cheeks hot and her tongue struggling to sputter words out. When her gaze focused itself on the woman before her to answer the offered question, it should have been the same as near-every other interaction with a stranger Ryu had ever had in her life: polite acknowledgement, a little nod. But she did not nod. No, Ryu stared, openly and stupidly, at the sight before her. In particular, she stared at the immense, unmissable heft this woman carried in her chest, stretching out a simple pale blue kimono that didn’t show an iota of skin but didn’t need to with how much it strained and how little it left to the imagination. She stared at how the masseuse’s movements sent that chest wobbling a little before dramatically settling into place. She stared and thought of distracting, no-good thoughts she’d spent the whole of her post-pubescent life trying to suppress.

"Uh, Samurai-san?"

So locked into another, far-more-pillowy world was Ryu that she could not guess how long she had been trapped under the spell of a considerably-large pair of tits before that polite-but-firm vocal poke snapped her out of stupid reverie. With a start, she jerked her head up high enough to actually meet the masseuse’s eyes; brown, big, wise, on a round, soft face that was endearing and looking down at Ryu with a playful smirk on smooth pink lips. She wore pale pink hair in a long side plait that spilled over her right shoulder—simple and low maintenance and unpretentious but pretty all the same, just like the blue kimono that hugged a figure that was full-bodied, wide. Well-fed.

Ryu gulped.

A bemused little giggle. "Heehee. Anything between those ears, Samurai-san?"

Ryu was staring again. Her head shot right back up and she blinked. A whirlwind of hormones and emotions she really didn’t want to confront right now threatened to shade her cheeks an even deeper shade of red as her eyes clamped shut and she made a polite little cough, cough into a fist, an attempt at regaining her dignity and pretending every thought in her tiny brain hadn’t been the equivalent of a not-especially-well-trained dog gnawing on a bloody cut of meat. Through sheer willpower did Ryu contort her face back into her default expression of mild annoyance (in the endless barrage of unappeasable, tutting complaints from her family, Ryu's least-favorite auntie had once called it the "permascowl"), and she mumbled out a simple "Apologies."

Another rosy little laugh echoed as the masseuse gestured down to her poofy chest with an open palm (and no, Ryu remained stoic and strong and her eyes absolutely did not flick down to watch the bouncing like an overly-eager thirteen-year-old boy, thank you very much). "You can call me Kita, Samurai-san." Pride in those eyes and a shine on her teeth as her little smile evolved into a bright grin.

"Pleased to meet you, Kita… san… uh…"

Ryu's words trailed off into dimly-lit dullness as she was afforded a closer look at Kita’s face—at the knowing spark in those mature eyes and the fatigued bags beneath them, at the hint of gray in the roots of her hair, at the beginning signs of crow’s feet and warm laugh lines and Ryu was struck by the sudden realization that this woman was old enough to be her mother oh no.

"Samurai-san! How are your cheeks so rosy in this heat?"

Ryu gulped again.

"You're pretty funny, Samurai-san!" The hand resting on her chest moved to gesture towards the futon behind her. "Can you take your top off and lay down there for me?"

"Can I what."

"Your haori and kosode, Samurai-san!"

A grit in Ryu’s teeth, and an apprehensive huff of air past her lips. "Must I?"

For her part, Kita’s grin didn’t waver. A fortress of patience for curiously self-conscious samurai, it seemed. "I can’t exactly massage you with your clothes in the way, y’know!"

In retrospect, it was obvious. Of course a treatment for her muscles wouldn’t work with layers of clothing obscuring the path to them. That was simple common sense. Anyone with any amount of working brain at all should have been able to deduce that. It was the most obvious thing anyone had ever told Ryu in her entire life.

Ryu blinked dumbly as she considered it, and her eyes flickered down, away from Kita, to inspect a notch of the weaving in the tatami below.

When Ryu had been a child, a mishap with her first blade had sent its steel cutting into the flesh of her left thumb, leaving her bleeding and sobbing and with the first of the many scars that would come to decorate her dented body. During this past winter, her first not lived behind the protective walls of her family’s estate, a blizzard had ambushed Ryu in the throes of her journey, leaving her to take shelter in a half-rotted barn as she sat motionless and half-starved for days on end, conserving as much warmth as her body allotted her. There was the time a misunderstanding had led to a town’s watch being called on her, forcing her to flee with what little money she had saved up abandoned in her haste. The cousin that had demolished her in a spar in front of her family, leaving little Ryu to soak in the unbearable disappointment in her clan's eyes.

But of all these, of all the burdens and painful memories that the rōnin Ryu carried on her increasingly-stiff shoulders, the prospect of someone laying eyes upon her body was—well, it was merely the worst possible thing she could imagine.

Nngh. One of Ryu’s hands slid across her chest to grip the other side of her haori and tug it tighter across her body. Curling away in on herself, hiding what more of her corporeal form she could manage. She tilted her head back up—side-eyeing Kita. Not quite looking at her head on. "I-I’m sorry, Kita-san, but on second thought, perhaps it’d be best if I were—"

"Your blushing’s getting worse, Samurai-san."

"H-Huh?"

In a blatant disregard of personal space, Kita leaned her face in, close enough to be cheek to cheek with one stammering Ryu. "Am I making you nervous, Samurai-san?" So cutesy and soft but with an unmistakable trill to it that sent beads of anxious, cold sweat rolling down the back of Ryu’s burning neck.

"I—n-no, I just—!"

Kita covered her mouth as she giggled again, mischievous and full and warm, and it sent the swell of those kimono-straining breasts wobbling and squishing a bit against Ryu’s own chest. "You’re adorable, Samurai-san."

Ryu felt her own cheeks heating up this time.

Kita leaned away to stand up straight again—like most people Ryu interacted with, Kita was taller than her, but it was that last comment that made Ryu properly feel so small and vulnerable. "If you’re not nervous, then what’s the problem?"

"W-Well, I-I—"

"You’re tense, Samurai-san." Confident and proud, Kita crossed her arms under that huge bust, and Ryu couldn’t even pretend not to glance down this time. "You’re sweaty and anxious and hiding away from me like a stray pup who lost his mother. You look exhausted. I’ll bet you’ve been traveling in that heat without stopping for shelter fooooooor…" She trailed off, a thoughtful glimmer in her eyes as she took another look up and down Ryu’s so blatantly destitute form. "Ten days? Maybe more?"

"…"

Beat. Kita grinned. Right on the money. "And I’ll bet I’m the first person you’ve said more than a couple words to since the snow melted, right?"

Beat, again. Ryu gave a little nod, nod.

"It’s your shoulders that’re killing you, right? Your shoulders and your back?"

"How did you—?"

"Mostly the way you’ve been looking all slumped, Samurai-san! You look like you’d near start crying if I asked you to raise your shoulders just the teeniest bit."

As injured as her pride was, Ryu did not dare to move her arms to try and prove Kita-san wrong.

Kita tilted her head, closed her eyes, and let out a tiny shrug. "I won’t stop you from leaving if you want, Samurai-san. But you’re tense, and I think you’d feel an awful lot better if you let me work some of that out for you." She opened one bright, glimmering eye to peek out at Ryu. "I help people for a living. I promise you don’t have to be nervous around me."

Ryu’s pride wanted her to refute, to argue, to hold on to all the independence she could still muster—but when she opened her mouth to do just that, all that came out was a thoughtful little "Hrmmmgh." Ryu flicked her eyes away from Kita again, while an index finger rose up to bashfully scratch a pale pink cheek. Something about Kita’s words—the patience and the unabashed sincerity and the gentle, cradling warmth of it all—lit up something in Ryu’s chest that she hadn’t felt for a very, very long time.

Ryu’s lips pursed, and she peeked up at Kita out of the corner of her eye. "I… w-well, I suppose we could—"

Kita brought her hands together in an utterly thrilled clap, sudden enough to jolt Ryu out of her hesitant pouting. "Excellent, Samurai-san! Now chop chop—clothes off!"

Kita winked a wink that made Ryu’s heart bloom in her chest, and then she was gone, giggling cutely as she stepped out of the room and left Ryu to contemplate the self-aggravating mess she’d pulled herself into. Left to her own devices, all Ryu could think to do was tug at her sweat-ridden collar and fidget uncomfortably.

What is wrong with you? She’s at least twice your age.

The bite of the voice in her head made Ryu sigh. Familiar, but annoying and unwelcome. Not quite Ryu’s own voice, but closer than she’d like to admit. What lingering willpower remained in her sun-baked brain worked its way up and outwards to push it away as she shrugged her shoulders to let the haori fall into a heap at her feet, and even with just the topmost, thinnest layer removed, she immediately felt a little better in this dreadful heat. She reached an arm up to rub at the cracked skin on the back of her neck—and hissed out a choke-filled swear as the thoughtless, automatic motion immediately prompted another sting of painful venom to shock through her shoulders and sprint down her arms, through her wrists, all the way to the tips of her fingers. It was enough to make bleary tears cloud her vision, just a little bit.

She quietly writhed in pain for a few bitter seconds before she—gingerly, delicately—lowered her arms to her waist and un-tucked the lower half of her kosode from her hakama trousers. Her hand wrapped around where the garment folded over her chest, but when she lightly tugged, it wouldn’t just pull open. She was too—ugh—too hot, too sweaty. The white fabric was fitted too closely, struggling a bit with holding back a body that was a bit too big for it. Ryu let out a frustrated grumble. Death to her thrice-damned curves.

Do you really think she’d go for you anyways? Just look at you.

She huffed a frustrated breath through her nose. No, of course she hadn’t thought that, because she hadn’t been thinking about any of that, because Ryu was normal and she absolutely did not have any stray, inappropriate thoughts at all about Kita-san even if she was rather pretty.

Sweat rolled in heavy rivulets down Ryu’s neck, down her torso, her arms. Sweat so copious and heavy that hints of pale skin were starting to peek through where the garment was the most soaked—her back, her chest, her… armpits, ugh. It was uncomfortable. Almost suffocating. Sweat crawled all over her, thick and overwhelming and forcing that too-tight shirt to cling even tighter to thick flesh. Maybe if—maybe if she wasn’t so big then the heat wouldn’t be so awful and she wouldn’t be so soaked all the time.

Another heavy sigh. Ryu shook her head, and then brought her other arm up. Both hands, now, grasped at the opening in her shirt. She sucked down a breath, and sucked in her stomach, and pulled and—

"Nnnf…"

The soaked top peeled off the upper half of her torso. The single tug was enough to loosen her kosode considerably, and the rush of tight pressure from the robe pushing down on her body—her chest, to be a bit more specific—ceased, and then rebounded, now concentrated into a layer lower, underneath the thick layers of sarashi tightened around her bust. She’d looked flat as a board just a moment ago. Without that shirt to squeeze down on it, her chest, swaddled in its bindings, had room to suddenly spill forward a good three, four sun to occupy a bit more space, forward and down and out to the sides. It was a bizarre sensation—of fat shifting itself, of heavy weight redistributing to not be stuffed into quite such a cramped space—but heavens, it was so nice to have a bit more room to breathe. She hadn’t been able to keep herself from making that embarrassing little noise.

More of Ryu, drenched in sweat, spilled into the open air as the kosode was blissfully shed and carelessly dropped to the floor. Ryu was a short woman, but she was not a small one. Her shoulders were strong, and her arms were thick with rigged, defined muscle and a softer outer layer of warm fat. Her waist was well-built, heavy and thick and so, so wide, and just a little further down were plump, wide, round hips bunching up at the tightness of her hakama, sending little hints of pudgy flesh spilling over her waist line. Her belly, inevitably, was a bit soft too, tiny pools of sweat trapped in grips of fertile fat. A layer of chub that spilled forward when its own layer of compression was peeled off, just like her chest had. Ryu was stocky and muscular and looked just like what she was: a warrior who had trained with a sword since she was barely old enough to walk. She also just… happened to be a warrior who liked to feast perhaps a hint too much. Wallet permitting, of course.

She breathed in, and then out, belly rising and falling as heavy breaths quaked down her body and left her shuddering a little bit. She looked down to herself, to the sarashi wrapped around her fuller bust, cresting her eyesight and blocking a bit of the rest of her body from her own view. It was like she’d taken herself out of a vise. She was still hot—even now the heat burned at her like she was in the mushiburo back in her clan village—but all of her… her, at least above the waist, had room to spill out and breathe and be. She wanted to fan at herself, but held back at risk of agitating her shoulders once more. And so she was merely left to awkwardly stand there and suffer with what felt like a bucket of sweat spilling down her, catching into the cracks of musculature and rolls of fat, unsure what to do with herself until Kita came back.

…

Yes, so what, Kita-san was rather pretty. Nothing wrong for Ryu to acknowledge that. It wasn’t weird, even if Kita was a little bit—okay, a fair bit—older than Ryu.

It’s always the older ones for you, though! the voice bit back again, and no, that was very much not true, Ryu was completely normal and could absolutely be trusted around—

The server at that restaurant who winked at you? The tea stall lady who you could barely sputter out your order to? That daimyo’s wife?

Ryu scoffed.

You couldn’t be normal and have gone for any of the men that had been arranged for you—? No, because they were pigs and brutes and fools. And it wasn’t like Ryu possibly expected anything to happen, she was just—admiring. Kita’s face was so pretty, and her eyes were so warm and soft.

You weren’t looking at her eyes.

"Oh shut up!" Ryu barked aloud, just in time to hear footsteps enter the room behind her.

"Samurai-san?"

Ryu turned on her heel to see Kita standing in the doorframe—and a bewildered pair of warm, soft eyes staring directly back at her own. There stood Kita, with her pretty face and her round cheeks and her soft hair and her wide hips and her pudgy belly and her kami be merciful just look at those things of course Ryu hadn’t been looking at her eyes!

Kita’s eyebrows were raised high in surprise. "Are you well, Samurai-san?"

The world stopped. Seasons halted. The seas dried away into nothingness. The lights in the sky died out, blinking away one after another, with every brain cell Ryu exhausted trying to articulate a reasonable response. For Ryu, and her middling human brain, the stare she levied back at Kita was a silent eternity. In reality, it was three, maybe four seconds.

Ryu blinked, and then coughed into her fist. "Apologies."

Kita smiled—and then her inspection tilted a bit lower, to look over Ryu's upper body, and the expression of surprise returned to her face. "Oh! You're…"

"Huh?"

Kita slid the door shut as she stepped inside. Her sleeves were pulled back with a tasuki, and she carried a stick of incense in one hand. Ryu’s head turned to watch Kita saunter past to a cabinet in the corner of the room, light the stick from the burning wick of a melting candle, and set it into a burner—before spinning on a tabi-covered heel to saunter right towards Ryu, a thoughtful (Ryu would probably call it "devious") hand on her chin and a curious (also "devious") glimmer in her gaze.

(Kita bounced when she walked, but Ryu wasn’t taking the time to think of an adjective to describe that part of her.)

Ryu flinched a half-step back when Kita pushed her face into hers—and then Kita slid further down, face hovering just over Ryu’s body as she slithered about, sizing her up, taking stock of her prey before, Ryu presumed, diving right in for the kill. Ryu had to keep rotating her head to try and hold Kita in her eyesight.

"Hmm," said Kita.

"H-Hmm…?" Ryu echoed back, in the same tint of nervousness that had colored her wavering voice the first time Kita had broken the personal space contract.

Kita ceased in her snakelike movements, looking down over Ryu's body from the front once more. And then:

"You're—not a man, then, Samurai-san?"

"Huhwhuh?"

"Just—" Kita planted a palm on her cheek, continuing her curious gazing up and down Ryu's body. "The way you carried yourself, when you were walking into town. And your clothes. And the sword on your hip—"

"Women samurai aren't unheard of—!"

"I'm just—surprised!" She resumed her pacing. Dared to plant a hand on one of Ryu's powerful forearms, even, to swing around, sidle against Ryu from behind, behold the shorter woman's body by looking over her broad shoulder from above. "You certainly seem more heroic than the glorified brigands calling themselves samurai that I've had to serve before!" Speaking right into her ear. "More manly."

"I'm merely a wanderer, Kita-san…"

"No. You're a samurai-san, Samurai-san." She sounded awfully proud of her deduction as she continued to feast her eyes on Ryu's body. "Goodness, you’re so—look at you! All big and so strong." Kita pulled away, placed both palms on her cheeks, and let out an airy, melodic breath—if Ryu didn’t know any better, she might dare to describe it as a dreamy sigh—before continuing her assessment. "All those samurai that come through my doors—but they’re never as big as you, Samurai-san."

Ryu, who had turned her head to watch Kita over her shoulder, felt the weight in her gut settle at a middle point between deep-seated embarrassment and an infatuation the same sweet color as Kita’s pink, silky, so so soft-looking hair. Was she being insulted? Mocked? No, wait, was Kita… was she flirting with—? Oh, please, come on. Kita was just being friendly and teasing her. Buttering her up to loosen her coin purse a bit more. Don’t be a fool, Ryu—she probably did this with all her customers.

"You might make an old lady swoon with a body like yours."

Ryu nearly fell over.

"Hmm," said Kita once more, and Ryu was immeasurably grateful that Kita’s endless mercy led her to not say anything about the visible steam that Ryu was all but certain was spilling off her blushing face. "But why the bindings, Samurai-san?" Kita eyeballed Ryu with a curious, head-tilting gaze as she stepped back in front of her, and Ryu recoiled with her own step backwards. Apprehension flooded her bloodstream.

"I just prefer them." Without thinking, her right arm shot up to her left shoulder in an attempt to shield the noticeable bumps in her sarashi from view, only for all the color to drain out of her face and her eyes to widen into blank saucers as a hoarse, wheezing, pained breath came out of her throat. Her back arched into a half-hunch as she gripped her shoulder.

The curiosity on Kita’s face turned into panicked sympathy. She winced. "Goodness, Samurai-san. You really do need this." And then, in a softer voice that Ryu couldn’t help but find reassuring even with the spasms of hellfire shooting down her nerves: "Samurai-san, I can assure you everything I do is completely aboveboard."

It took a good dozen seconds before the bone-rattling streaks of pain slowly fizzled themselves out of Ryu’s body and she felt well enough to respond. Hesitantly, she returned to a full stand before letting out a deep exhale. "I just—prefer them." Gingerly and nervously, she rubbed at her shoulder.

"Do you never visit public bathhouses?"

"No." Rivers downstream of any nearby village and far, far away from prying eyes, usually. "It’s fine, isn’t it? The sarashi’s not covering my shoulders."

Kita bit the inside of her cheek, a twinkle of uncertainty in her eyes—before sighing and shrugging. "Alright, Samurai-san. Your precious modesty can remain for now. I might need you to take it off later, though."

The words sent fleeting relief into Ryu’s overanxious mind for at least a little while. "Thank you, Kita-san." Hands down at the sides of her waist, Ryu lowered herself into a thirty-degree bow. Immediately, the motion made the weight on her body scream, but her reserves of willpower flared up enough for her to bite back daring to let it show. "If I may ask—please f-forgive the inconvenience."

"Only if I may ask you to please raise your head, Samurai-san." Kita sounded just a hint concerned. "I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself again."

It took just a second for Ryu to fight the weight on her shoulders to push herself back into a standing position—and then she was face-to-chest with Kita, before immediately jerking her neck back enough to look upwards and meet Kita’s eyes. Another three second eternity of staring, and then Kita broke the silence with the most delightful little laugh Ryu had ever heard in her life. Ryu was certain her heart was about to beat out of her chest.

She was so polite and caring and warm and soft and kind and beautiful and

"Samurai-san?"

smelled like fresh rainwater and chrysanthemums and

"Samurai… san…?"

was so much taller than her and she had wrinkles and was twice Ryu’s age and she was fat and Ryu did not care about any of that at all one bit kami above if anything that just made her more into Kita-san what would those hands feel like when they touched her goodness what w—

"Samurai-san!"

Ryu was pulled back into the real world by a palm reaching up to wipe away at some of the beads of sweat on her forehead. Ryu only jolted the teeniest, tiniest little bit at Kita touching her—then reaching past her temple to tuck a strand of messy blue hair behind her ear. "You’ve been out in the sun too long, Samurai-san." Kita was still smiling as she said it, and as she pulled her hand away from Ryu’s face.

Can you touch me again, Ryu had to wrestle her tongue to keep herself from saying.

"Forgive the… i-inconvenience," was what she ended up sputtering out, dumb as she’d ever felt. Kita giggled again.

"You really should lay down so I can get to work while the incense is still burning."

"R-Right. Sorry."

The futon, then. A moment of hesitance—the fear of agitating something in her aching shoulders still held a knife over her—before Ryu dropped herself onto her knees at the end of the futon. When she unlaced her katana from her obi to lay it on the floor next to her, Kita spoke again: "It’s beautiful, Samurai-san."

"H-Huh?"

"Your weapon."

"Oh! Th-Thank you, Kita-san." "Beautiful" wasn't exactly the word Ryu would use to describe the state of her saya, not with the the way its wood was visibly scraped and splintering from disrepair, but if Kita found her sword impressive, well, who was Ryu to argue?

Now sword-less, Ryu lay down on her belly, just as instructed. The heft of those bound breasts squished down a little when she did, and Ryu had to hold back a squirm, a whimper.

Ryu couldn’t see Kita standing over her, but she could hear her voice coming from behind: "I’ll work all that tension out for you, Samurai-san. I promise." A moment’s pause, and then Ryu’s eyes widened as she felt a surge of weight suddenly resting on her lower back—

"Sorry, Samurai-san! I know I’m a little heavy, but you can take it, right?"

"Uh. Uh-huh."

Ryu felt a little twinge between her thighs.

Kita was straddling her, gently pressing her knees against the sides of Ryu’s waist, her calves against Ryu’s hips. That was probably normal, right? That’s how massages worked? Kita’s full weight, all that heft bearing down on her—it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling.

"You said it was your shoulders?" Kita asked, and Ryu nodded without looking up. She heard the telltale sound of Kita cracking her knuckles (goodness, why did that send a little shiver down her spine?) before speaking again: "We’ll start there, then!"

There was no pensive moment for Ryu to gather herself or brace for it. One second, Kita was speaking. The very next, Ryu felt fingers gently brushing against the skin on her back, and they were so soft and so gentle, nothing like the scraped calluses and nicked cuts on Ryu’s own swordswoman’s fingers. They were dexterous, tracing over all of Ryu’s gnarled muscle, examining the twisted, tense knots where musculature connected and built under her skin.

"Samurai-san," Kita said after maybe a whole dozen seconds of touching. "You tensed up even tighter the moment I touched you." Had she? Ryu hadn’t even noticed. "You’ll have to relax a bit or this won’t work." Ryu couldn’t see her face, but she could hear the smile in her tone.

Ryu, for her part, flinched a little bit at that. "S-Sorry." The response to hide away in her metaphorical shell was completely reflexive, apparently. Ryu couldn’t even see Kita right now, but she felt the burning sensation of the older woman’s eyes on her. Someone, anyone, peering at her at her most vulnerable—unarmed and topless and embarrassed and helpless—it was excruciating. Terrifying. The worst possible thing she could imagine!

"Juuuuuuuuuust relax…"

A finger slowly brushed down the length of her spine, and Ryu’s breath hitched in her throat.

"Be freed of your burdens for a little while, Samurai-san." Kita was right in Ryu’s ear, low and sultry and hot. Inhale, exhale, the same rhythmic thump thump as Ryu’s heartbeat. Kita’s breath tickled the beads of hot sweat on the back of Ryu’s—sensitive!—neck. "Relaaaaaax," Kita purred. "Just let me take care of you."

"K-Kita-san…!"

Kita’s palms rested on Ryu’s shoulders and then slowly, gently, pushed them downwards, until they lost their tension and lay flat against the futon. "Poor thing. It’s hard, isn’t it? To be such a big, strong warrior?"

Ryu did not dare to turn her head to dare look back at Kita, even as she felt silken locks brush against her neck—goodness, Kita’s hair really was as soft as it looked. Heat and warmth and pressure enveloped Ryu. Her face was on fire. Kita was pinning her down—Ryu was strong, sure, but Kita was heavy!

"You travel alone. Right, Samurai-san?"

"Uh… m-mhm."

"Poor thing." Despite the heat, the words made Ryu shiver. "Goodness, no wonder you’ve been so nervous. All alone. All used to relying on yourself." Palms explored once again, trailing through bumps of muscle. "You don’t have to carry that all on your shoulders right now. It’s okay. You don’t have to be strong right now."

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

It was a predator’s lunge that sank fangs into Ryu’s most vulnerable extremities. Kita was going to chew her up and spit out the bones, and Ryu wasn’t sure if she even minded.

"Am I making you nervous, Samurai-san?" It was headier and cut deeper and deeper and deeper still into Ryu’s vulnerable soul. It was so much more seductive than the way she’d said it the first time.

"Mhm," Ryu grunted in response, too afraid to try and speak without her voice quivering and shaking.

"So honest. I like honesty." Ryu felt the hands on her skin push a bit deeper, applying a bit more pressure into all the tight knots in her shoulders. "Okay, Samurai-san. Since you’re so honest, I want you to tell me how I’m making you feel right now."

Ryu’s lip quivered. She didn’t speak—how could she? How was she supposed to speak the honest answer of It’s taking every last sliver of willpower I still have to not start grinding against the futon by the kami if you could touch me more that’d be great please please please please please.

Ryu felt Kita’s gliding hands settle into two firm spots on her shoulders. "Just…" Poke. "Tell me…" Prod. "Everything." Squeeze. "Show me all that you have, Samurai-san."

Ryu felt those precise, gentle, beautiful hands suddenly tighten with shocking strength onto a taut knot somewhere on her muscles—and then something in her shoulder popped.

A wild beast buried somewhere deep in Ryu’s psyche came to life with a roar. Get out, get out! the beast said. She’s killing you. Run away. Flee, flee! Get out.

The beast was right—Ryu was dying! None on Earth could suffer this kind of pain and not immediately keel over, surely. Surely her blood was dripping onto the floor at that very moment. Surely her soul was being drained from her very body to be fed to the snakes of the Sanzu-no-kawa. Kita was no simple masseuse! She must have been—was surely!—an akuma in human skin. Fie on me! How could I have fallen for such feminine wiles?, a hypothetical Ryu thought.

The real Ryu was not thinking much at all, because she was busy floundering in agony from the flood of pain drowning her nervous system. The beast—Ryu’s—mouth opened to let loose a fierce roar to frighten the predator torturing her, and all that came out was a hoarse, choking cry of pain.

The cruel predator was even holding poor Ryu down, keeping her pressed into the dirt as the beast seized control of Ryu’s body and tried to squirm free. How was—how in the world was Kita so strong? Why couldn’t Ryu break free?

"Samurai-san!" that evil, honey-dripping voice said. "Please, calm yourself! I promise the pain will pass in just a moment," and it was the worst lie Ryu had ever heard in her life. This was it! This was the end! The foolish samurai’s life was coming to an end at the hands of her greatest weakness—a very, very pretty older woman.

…

The pain was gone, which could mean only one thing: Ryu was dead. Her soul had left its unwieldy vessel. A miserable end to a thoroughly-mediocre run.

…

There were still hands touching her shoulders and that pleasant weight on her back. Strange. Ryu always figured she’d feel less burdened without the tether of her cumbersome body weighing her down.

…

A voice graced her ear: "Samurai-san? Are you feeling better, now?"

Ryu opened her eyes. She was not dead. She was no longer floundering in the intense pain of a thousand thousand suns. She was…?

It felt… good…?

Ryu's breath hitched in her throat as she realized her shoulders felt like… nothing. Gone was the hellacious soreness that had been plaguing her, and in its place was wondrous weightlessness. In but a moment, Ryu had gone from snarling beast to a soaring bird, freed of all worldly woes to tie her down. What manner of power did this akuma possess?!

When Ryu opened her mouth to ask just that question, all that spilled forth was a pleased groan of content appreciation. Her head flopped onto the futon, boneless-ness spreading to every last sun of her body.

"Is that a yes, Samurai-san?"

Ryu's response was a groan that roughly sounded like an "Uh-huh."

"Oh, thank goodness." Kita's hands didn't stop as she spoke, and her tone had shifted back—less sultry, more sweetly curious, like she'd been when Ryu first walked through the door. "I thought I was about to lose you."

"Feels good…"

Dexterous hands glided lower, to the tightly-wound muscle of Ryu's upper back. "I wasn't trying to just appease your ego, Samurai. You really are bigger than most of my other clientele." Kita squeezed another groan out of Ryu. "And your shoulders were so knotted and tense, so I went a bit harder on you than I do my other customers—I was scared I might have gone too far!"

"Uh-uh. S'fine…"

The golden glow of heaven wrapped Ryu in its soft embrace, coaxing lingering aches out of her with each passing second. If she could see the dopey smile her face was wearing at that moment, she’d likely have been mortified.

Ryu’s sense of time gradually faded as Kita’s hands continued their journey atop that muscled physique. Slowly, steadily, lingering tension dripped out of Ryu's body with each soft little squeeze and prod, bolstered by the burning incense that was fogging her brain with a vague memory she couldn't quite place because thinking too much seemed dangerous right now.

Ryu's numb tongue tried to form words: "Agarwood…?"

"Hmm?"

"Th' incense. Agarwood, right? Smells rich. Deep."

"A monk who I treated some time ago gave me some incense sticks as payment, but I'm not educated enough to place the ingredients. Are you a kōdō enthusiast, Samurai-san?"

"No, 's just… familiar…"

A beat passed without Ryu continuing her hazy, derailed attempt at speaking. Kita spoke: "You’re drooling, Samurai-san."

"‘M'what…?"

A bemused huff of air slipped past Kita’s smiling lips.

Kita ran a finger over an old, faded scar—what looked to be the lingering memory of cold steel tracing a shallow tear through pale flesh—on the samurai's back. There were maybe a dozen others painting her skin. The samurai's face (and blushy, too-sweet-for-her-own-good demeanor) marked her as someone who hadn't even seen thirty summers. Warrior or not, how was one so young riddled with so much violence? What kind of life had this honorable samurai—this rōnin, if Kita had to guess—lived?

But by the kami was she well-built, though. Tough and sturdy to an extreme Kita had rarely seen in all her years of service. Dense and heavy with powerful musculature and a padded layer of warm fat. She was—in Kita’s unbiased opinion—a work of art. If fat-uddered Kita was an old cow (Kita sighed internally as the thought came over her), then this young samurai was—an ox. A strong, intelligent beast, warm like the sun and weathered by life.

And there was a quiet delight thrumming through Kita’s heart at the privilege—and the sensations—of getting to touch and feel such a work of art. With every second that Kita’s fingers ran through the solid peaks and valleys where hard muscle met warm flesh, improper and irresponsible excitement flooded Kita’s mind. Both at the way Samurai-san’s perfect skin yielded and molded beneath that massage—and the way Samurai-san was reacting. Her relaxing. Her drooling. Her… moaning.

"MnNNf…! K-Kita-san…"

Kita could tell herself it was cute, merely cute, but goodness, who was she fooling? This guarded, nervous little puppy—or perhaps calf was more appropriate—of a samurai had folded into kneadable dough with mere minutes of loving attention to her aching muscles. And it was absolutely cute. Downright adorable even. But those irresponsible thoughts were poisoning Kita's mind with each passing second she had this samurai squirming under her touch.

Samurai-san was the most arousing thing that had ever walked through Kita's door.

Sure, yes, all those muscles and pudge were wonderful. So was the—well, everything else. Those scars, so rugged and tough but skin that was so pliable and warm and soft to the touch, yielding so easily to her squeezes. Kita had touched maybe thousands of bodies in her line of work—but squeezing down on this samurai was a sensation that was unlike anything else Kita had ever felt in her life.

And there was the samurai's face too—the sharp angles and strong cheeks framed by the ragged, thick hair, tied back into a messy ponytail whose loose strands spilled down into bangs of deep blue. That neat cut on her cheek, tapering off just before reaching her eye—it looked like the youngest of those many scars riddling her form. What was the story behind that, Samurai-san? What were the stories behind all of her scars? Goodness, did Kita wish to know!

It'd be fine to call the samurai simply pretty—it wouldn't even be inaccurate!—but she was so much closer to… handsome. Sharp and ruggedly masculine in a way that had made Kita (internally!) swoon from the first moment she'd caught a glimpse of the samurai's features. Molten heat, chiseled and shaped into a noble beauty that was all but tailor-made to leave Kita weak in the knees.

But just like all that indulgent pudge meeting disciplined muscle, there were softer sides of the samurai's body, too. Kita had only just been able to tell through the baggy hakama, but those thighs looked so thick. When the samurai's top had come off, Kita had been able to grasp a better appreciation of that sturdy, finely-built waist, and those wide hips and that—attractive, lar- er, w-well-shaped…

Something cracked when Kita squeezed down a bit too hard.

"Ow!"

"Sorry, Samurai-san!"

Kita tilted her head from her vantage point atop the samurai's back to glimpse a little lower. Samurai-san’s ass was full-figured and wide and fat. Plain as day even with the ragged, unflattering hakama in the way.

And then there were those lips. Kita bemoaned that, with the samurai face down with said face buried into the futon, she couldn't see them right now and had to rely on the memory of how they had looked so full and plump. Such a wonderful contrast on that chiseled face—and such a wonderful complement to it, too, with the little nicks and healed cuts Kita had just been able to glimpse on their surface. Even when Samurai-san had gotten past her gawking enough to try looking all disaffected and tough-like, those pink pillows had been pouting just a little bit. Were they just so plump that they always looked like that? What would they feel like under her fingers? How would they taste? So badly did Kita want to grab the samurai's face and just—

…Heavens. What an irresponsible thought.

So—sure, yes. Every last little thing about Samurai-san’s looks was a beauty that looked as if it belonged in the halls of Edo Castle, an indulgence unlike anything else Kita had ever seen in her life. All of the above was pretty good. But what had really caught Kita’s attention within those first few precious moments of seeing Samurai-san for the first time was…

"Samurai-san?" Kita asked. "You’re traveling, right?"

Almost instantly, the slackened, relaxed muscles beneath Kita’s fingers jolted with the same bite of tension she had felt the first time she’d laid hands on the samurai’s form.

"Um. Y-Yes," said said samurai.

"Where ever to?"

Tense. Kita felt the bastions of the fortress build up directly under her fingers.

"Um. Uh…"

Her fingers crept to the edges of the samurai’s strong upper back, and pressed in from the sides. The samurai gasped.

"Sa-murai-san…" Kita drew each little chunk of the word out, bouncy and sing-songy on her tongue.

"O-Osaka…"

"Hmm?"

"I was… t-traveling to Osaka."

"Ahh…"

…It was that. The real reason Samurai-san was sending Kita's heart fluttering so was her attitude. All the sputtering and blushing. The way she'd so desperately been trying to hide her blatant staring at Kita's body. The way this big, bad, strong samurai was so—so meek! So shy and cute! Even just the tiniest, most innocent personal question had her wilting away into a stuttering mess. Why the secrecy, Samurai-san? Up to something naughty? Do you need to be punished for it?

Kita licked at her upper lip.

Samurai-san was beautiful. Powerful and strong and perfect. This anxious, wandering stray that had shown up on Kita's doorstep so desperately just needed to be held and spoiled and treated like a princess.

The only problem, Kita considered with a bite of her inner cheek and a huff of air out of her nostrils, was that said anxious stray was an idiot.

"Samurai-saaaaaaaaaan," Kita chirped in the sweetest voice she could muster. "You're so big and strong! How long did it take to get so built as you are?"

For several long, long seconds, the samurai was silent as her face remained buried in her folded arms. Eventually, a quiet, muffled response leaked out: "Awhile."

Kita blinked.

Goodness, she's clueless, thought Kita.

Oh no no no no no she thinks I'm fat, thought Ryu.

What, did Kita have to garb herself like one of those twiggy oiran floozies and hold up a sign reading "Please sleep with me" to make this samurai see more than two steps in front of her? Those bashful little blushes only made Samurai-san cuter, sure, but it could only go so far before Kita’s patience started waning a little. Where was her fighting spirit? It was obvious she was into Kita so much it hurt, so why wasn't she putting those strong arms to use and making Kita see stars?

Did she just need a bit more encouragement?

With considerable reluctance, Kita slowly peeled her hands away from the muscled expanse of Samurai-san’s back and stood up. Samurai-san gasped a bit at the sensation of all that extra weight shifting and being removed, and after a second's wait, she turned her head to peek back at Kita out of the corner of her eye. "A-Are we done, Kita-san?"

The lick of words from the samurai's tongue burned a grin (if she could see it, Ryu would describe it as "devious") in Kita’s mind. A salacious heat that warmed her gut and spread outwards, to the tips of her toes and the length of her spine until it tickled her scalp and pumped her brain with worrying amounts of liquid dopamine. It was a heat that riddled her skin with goosebumps and spiked a shuddering chill in the back of her neck. Goodness, goodness, Samurai-san, please keep talking, that husky voice was so good, so hot.

But none of that mounting arousal dared creep onto Kita’s generically-pleasant expression as she stepped with a practiced daintiness befitting an experienced caretaker (alas that it would have been much daintier if her heft wasn't bouncing with every step she made, but Kita had resigned herself to that ever since her diet had resigned itself to filling her out in all the right and wrong spots) to the incense cabinet that had been silently burning away. So hot did her fingertips run that it was a wonder that she had to make the effort of manually lighting a fresh stick.

"No, Samurai-san, not quite yet." Kita slid open a shelf and her speedy fingers rummaged about; it took but a second to find what she was looking for. "I’m afraid you're far more tense than my initial inspection led me to believe." It wasn't even a lie, just—a different kind of tense than what Kita was usually tasked with relieving.

In her hands, Kita held a jar of a cream-colored liquid. One of the oils she’d splurged on during a rare trip to Kyoto. The good stuff.

"Samurai-san?" Kita spoke with the sweetest tone she could speak. Kita wore the sweetest smile she could wear. "Could you roll over onto your back for me?"

Blink, blink. Ryu blanched. "Oh. Um…"

"I need to massage your front, Samurai-san. I can't reach everywhere I need to unless you roll over."

Ryu took a moment to plant her palms flat on the futon and push herself upwards (and heavens, doing that without a shoulder cramp was liberating beyond belief. She'd never felt so light!) to rest on her knees. Uncertainty writ on moody features, her head craned up to meet Kita’s eyes. "Oh. Kita-san, I—I already feel great, I don't think—"

"I’d hate to leave you unsatisfied, Samurai-san!"

"I wouldn't wish to inconvenience—"

"You're the furthest thing from an inconvenience, Samurai-san."

"Kita-san, I promise I'm fi—"

"Ryuko-chan."

Ryu’s breath hitched in her throat—and then did it again when Kita's gentle fingers began stroking through her hair.

"Please," Kita said. "You poor thing. You're more wound up than any other customer I can ever remember." Sympathetic eyes, soft and brown, looked down at Ryu, and Kita's hand slid to gently cup one of Ryu's rosy cheeks. "You’re not a weapon or a tool, Samurai. You have to take care of yourself or your body will give up on you."

Ryu's immediate instinct was to argue, but the embrace of those fingers was too distracting for her to find her words.

"But if you won't take care of yourself—then let me take care of you? Please, Samurai-san? Let me help you feel good…?"

Kita's fingertips brushed against the back of Ryu's neck, and then both hands reached to unlace the little white strip of cloth Ryu used to tie her hair back. The heated incense smell dulled Ryu's muscles.

Ryu lay on her back, futon below her, hands above her head as shaky breath after shaky breath exited her. Her hair, shoulder-length now that it'd been pulled out of the ponytail, splayed about her in a little puddle of blue surrounding her head. She had to remind herself to manually take those breaths; if she didn't, she was genuinely a little worried she would forget and suffocate.

Atop her was Kita, full-bodied and beautiful. On her knees and straddling Samurai-san's thighs. And utterly savoring a feast for the eyes.

Blushy, bashful Samurai-san had her head turned ninety degrees away, looking fixedly at the wall instead of daring to look upwards to Kita. Beads of sweat raced down her bobbing throat, to spill over her chest and then soak into the tightly-wrapped bandages binding her breasts. Her stomach, wide and full with muscle and fat, rose and fell with each anxious breath. Kita’s gaze slid downwards a little more, and for the first time she took notice of the thick, blue trail of hair climbing out of the modesty of the samurai's hakama, spilling over the soft roll of her lower stomach and nearly reaching her bellybutton at its apex. Undoubtedly crude, by any normal measure of femininity. So why did Kita find it so appealing?

"You're very pretty, Samurai-san," Kita said, gently brushing a thumb under the samurai's chin—who stiffened a bit in response.

"Kita-san…!"

"Relax, sweet thing." Hands, made slick from diluted oil, rubbed together before reaching down and touching the samurai’s skin. One hand on each of Samurai-san's broad shoulders, and then she pressed in and squeezed.

The reaction was immediate—another hitching of breath in Samurai-san's throat and a tense swallow of struggling unease. Kita had to mask her own pleasure at how good it felt to press her fingers into those beautiful muscles again. Getting to touch the samurai like this again was—it almost felt gluttonous. Like she was indulging too much in something sinful and delicious—in this case the beautiful, squirming young thing she had beneath her.

Hands went lower, then, smearing oil everywhere they went. Past the samurai's densely-muscled underarms (complete with their own untamed bushes), the sides of her bound breasts. Further down—that full, plump middle jiggled a bit as fingers brushed against it—and then Kita’s hands were forced to separate further out as they reached hakama that could only barely fit around the samurai’s thick, wide hips.

Kita hesitated. She gave a squeeze to that distinct width, and then pulled her hands up and away without breaking the length between them. When she examined the remarkable distance between her two hands, tracing an invisible path between her open palms, her eyes went wide.

"Goodness, Samurai…"

(Ryu's cheeks had reddened to the point one would be fair in assuming she'd imbibed an entire bottle of sake. Unfortunately for her, she was decidedly sober for this experience.)

Smooth fingers, moistened by a mixture of dripping oil and samurai sweat, grasped the samurai’s shoulders once again (said samurai sharply inhaled). Release. Examine the gulf between her hands again. Grasp, again (sharp inhale, again). Trail hands down the length of the samurai’s sides again, until she reached the span of those deliciously wide hips and—

No doubt about it. As big and broad as the samurai's powerful shoulders were—goodness, somehow her hips were even more broad. It was Kita's turn for cheeks to flush a beautiful shade of red. This woman—this beautiful, cowing creature built of shyness and fat and muscle—was simply unreal. Kita wanted her. Wanted to wrap her arms around all the fat in those enormous hips. Wanted to dote on her and spoil her and work out all the aches and pains and the secrets that she was hiding beneath the surface to leave her so shuddering and meek. Wanted to—Kita’s eyes glanced at the extra hint of heft in the samurai’s middle—wanted to feed her, to sate her surely-impressive appetite and make sure she was satisfied.

Heavens, this samurai was something else.

"You're beautiful, Samurai-san."

If the hand the samurai brought up to her mouth was an attempt at hiding the blooming blush welling in her cheeks, it was a remarkably poor showing. The samurai—with her matted bangs and her smoke-colored eyes and her scars that told of wars her mouth would never speak of—craned her head to the side to shield herself from the unbearable heat of Kita’s gaze. "P-Please don't say such things…"

"Are you afraid?"

"Afraid of what?"

Kita's right hand, now only the faintest hint slick, gently cupped the samurai's cheek. Kita nudged her into looking back up, directly at her. The samurai did not protest, even as her eyes kept flickering away.

"Afraid of this," Kita said. "Of attention. Of praise. Of me." Kita’s strong fingertips, intimate and warm, glided over the samurai’s cheek. "Those scars in your skin aren't fresh, Samurai. You've been dealing with so much for a long time, haven't you?"

"…"

"Can you look at me? Please?"

A second of hesitance, and the samurai complied. Their stares met; the samurai's was smoke and ash, charred melancholy writ plainly over the cracked and broken mask of stoicism.

"You're beautiful," Kita said again.

"I’m too big," the samurai shot back, ugly bitterness creeping into her tone.

"I’m big too, Samurai-san. That didn't stop you from staring at me."

The samurai’s lips pursed, and her jaw clenched. "But I'm meant to be a warrior. I look nothing like samurai should. On you, it looks g—"

She cut herself off, lips still dumbly parted as she considered what she'd said. Her mouth clamped back shut. A vile, salacious grin embedded itself onto Kita's face, and she pushed in closer—pressing her face closer to the samurai’s, pressing down more of her own weight into the wide, muscular, fat girl beneath her.

"It looks what, Samurai-san?"

The blush had spread to the tips of the samurai’s ears.

Kita brushed a thumb over the samurai’s lower lip. Their noses were almost touching.

Seconds of silence before Kita spoke again: "Tell me."

"It looks good," the samurai croaked, nearly approaching a whine. "You look good. I—g-greatly appreciate your appearance, Kita-san."

The tips of Kita's well-groomed nails gently stroked the samurai’s cheek. Her face pressed closer and closer. "You admit it."

"You f-forced me."

"You're far too strong to be forced into anything you don't want to do, Samurai-san."

In lieu of words, the samurai’s response was a quivering of her lips.

"You're beautiful." When Kita said it, her lips gently brushed against the samurai's own. "Samurai-sama."

Chu.

A chaste, quick little thing, over in the blink of an eye. Kita had to restrain the inner temptation screaming at her to do more, to drag the kiss out into the wanton cocktail of love and lust intoxicating her mind right now—she was worried it might make this meek samurai break outright. But even just the fluttering peck was more than Kita had done in sixteen long years.

Kita pulled away, until their foreheads were no longer exchanging heat and she could take a proper look at the samurai’s blushing face.

"Buh… but I’m a woman!" the samurai sputtered out. Not as a statement of protest, but disbelieving uncertainty. Incredulous surprise.

"Is that a problem?" Kita asked.

"N-Not for me. I-I like that you're a woman. I just didn't think you—"

Kita had to fight back the urge to roll her eyes out of her skull. She settled for a throaty groan of frustration before speaking: "You’re right, Samurai-san! You didn't think!"

The samurai responded with an expression of visible confusion as righteously infuriating as it was adorable. Damn this woman.

There was nothing more to be gained by fluttering her eyelashes and hoping this meatheaded swordswoman would learn to take a hint. Clearly, Kita just hadn’t been bold enough. Warriors preferred action to words.

Kita dipped her head low once more and pressed her lips into the crook of the samurai’s neck, right along the line of strong collarbone. The samurai gasped.

"K-Kita-san…!"

She was so warm. Kita’s lips parted, to better taste heated skin and let her tongue lap at the beads of sweat pooled into the crooks of the samurai’s body. She kissed that little space where neck met shoulder, slow and heavy and lingering, before speaking up once more, letting her lips vibrate right into the samurai’s skin. "Should I stop, Samurai-san?"

"N-No…"

Kita pounced, then, and Ryu was at the mercy of Kita's downright corpulent body pinning her down to take a feast of her flesh. A lick that turned into a kiss that turned into a bite that turned into Ryu squealing and kicking her leg beneath all the considerable weight blanketing over her.

"Ah—h-haah!"

So crude and rough. Was this part of what Kita had mentioned before—that Ryu needed to be handled with a bit more force?

Stinging pressure filled the spot where Ryu’s wide neck met her strong shoulder—surely those teeth must have left a mark!—and then Kita was back to peppering kisses and loud, wet sucks on Ryu's skin. Curious tongue soothing the shock from where those teeth had clamped down, before pulling her lips away with a wet smack.

A hot breath, two, three, four, a rhythmic pant, pant of cinders that caressed Ryu’s ear to flutter down her burning cheeks to her sensitive neck. Kita’s voice, low and dripping with hot wax that threatened to make Ryu burst into flames then and there, spoke once more: "Too much, Samurai-san?"

"No…!"

"What can I do to make it too much?"

Again did Ryu blanch. And again did Kita steal a kiss. No chu this time—she was far too hungry and far too impatient with this handsome fool for another chaste little peck. She stole Ryu's mouth with her invading tongue, to reach out and plunge down this pillowy samurai’s throat to feel every iota of this woman's insides (and alas that her normal human tongue could only reach so far, but devouring Samurai-san’s mouth to leave rivulets of wet drool rolling down both their sweaty, reddened cheeks was pretty good too). Soft, pink hair entwined with gritty blue, and for every moan—more felt than heard—that escaped Kita’s mouth, three slipped from Ryu's.

30 kanme of woman had Ryu helplessly pinned to the floor, sucking the life out of her through a borderline-violent make-out session. It wasn't an unpleasant experience.

Not that Ryu, for all her flustered whimpering, was entirely passive in it. A moment passed, and Ryu was returning the kiss with as much strength as she could mount in such a defensive position. A few more moments, and her powerful hands were all over Kita, feeling and squeezing pudgy hips and delightful love handles—even with the fabric of a distracting kimono in the way. Wasn’t Kita a little overdressed for this?

It hurt for Kita to lean away and break the kiss with a mutual panting of breath, but much as both may have wished it, they couldn't lay there and sloppily make-out until the end of time. Not when she still had a job to do. Kita's hands finally wandered to the one spot she hadn't yet touched on Ryu's upper body: the soft handfuls of breasts bunching up under the tightly-bound sarashi. Ryu jolted at the sudden spike of sensation.

"Samurai-san," Kita said in that damnably-smoky tone. She stole a tiny squeeze, enough that it would have left Ryu furiously aflame if her cheeks weren't already blushing so badly. "These. I need to see these."

The unceasing ache between Ryu's thighs was attacked by Kita's words; the blunt instrument of human modesty struck Ryu in the temple hard enough to crack her skull. Scars were tugged taut as Ryu's expression tightened in uncertainty. "I—I don't know if that's a good—"

"Please?" Kita still wore the air of confidence that had turned Ryu into moldable clay beneath her expert fingers, but there was something else there, something fighting with that confidence the same way Ryu's desperate arousal was undermined by her humility. She saw it in Kita's eyes, the way they darkened and glazed over as her own lingering humility funneled its way out of her brain to be replaced with something entirely unbecoming of a woman Kita's age. Something hellacious and primal:

Desperation.

"Please? Please, Samurai-san. I want—I need them. Need you." Kita's index fingers traced a path through Ryu's slick skin, sliding upwards from her breasts to run the length of her collarbone. "You're so strong and protective of them a-and anything worth such a strong samurai's protection must be magnificent." Kita's voice was lilting upwards with unabashed ache, and her words were coming faster. Almost stumbling over herself a little. One finger traced a little circle in the center of Ryu's chest—just over the screaming rhythm of her nervous heart. "I said I wanted to help you feel good… I can keep doing that…"

"I thought everything you did was 'aboveboard'…?"

"It is!" Kita fired back, louder than she'd been all day and so sudden—so whiny, almost—it made Ryu uncertain if Kita even knew what she was saying. The finger poking into Ryu's chest flattened into a palm, gently pushing down into Ryu's skin. "I've never done this with a customer before! I promise! You're just—you're an exception, Samurai-san. And I don't remember the last time I've been with anyone and you kept looking at me but you wouldn't say anything—"

A brush of embarrassment rolled over Ryu's scalp at that.

As Kita spoke, she brought herself closer to the floor. Dipped lower atop Ryu's body, bringing her softness and warmth closer and closer to her handsome Samurai-san. "And I know how desperate I sound right now but I promise you're really pretty and I really wanted you to do something but you wouldn't so now I'm on top of you and I—really want to fuck you. Or at least touch you more and make you feel good."

And Ryu's head kept tilting downwards to keep Kita in her line of sight, to watch Kita's full-figured body squish against her own and her fat chest to flatten against Ryu's abdomen. To feel all of the mounting softness and warmth of Kita's body against her skin—and the wonderful sensation of Kita's heavy weight pressing down onto her from above. A warm embrace completely covering and burying her in love. Like submerging her entire body into a hot spring. Like an especially-heavy blanket.

Ryu looked straight down to her body, to the sight of Kita laying parallel atop her. Resting her chin on Ryu's muscular middle, right below the strips of sarashi. Steaming. Blushing. Blinking in a wide-eyed plea for attention and sympathy as both women made eye contact.

"Please? Samurai-san…?"

Horny as fuck—

There were small kisses on Ryu's chest, warm lips gliding up to her neck, coupled with the rocking weight of Kita beginning to blatantly roll her hips against Ryu's waist. They held each other; Ryu's hands resting snugly on Kita's wide hips, and Kita herself needily clinging to her big, strong Samurai-san.

"I wanna—want to…" Another chu, this time. "Please, Samurai," Kita said, lips brushing soft against Ryu's. A needy, clawing ache in her tone. "All I want is to help you…"

"All I want is to help you, Ryuko," said a voice lodged deep somewhere in the back of irrepressible memories. "Why won't you ever let me?" A voice that was familiar, annoying, and unwelcome—

A chill icy enough to suppress the summer heat blazing through the windows crept down Ryu's back. She stared up at Kita—at the aroused red in her cheeks and the way her lips puckered. The plain pleading in her eyes. The signs of finely-ripened age on her face.

Ryu did her best to pretend she hadn't heard the voice, until the chill left her spine and she was alone with Kita again.

"I—If you really want to, Kita-san, I suppose I could—"

"I really want to."

"Okay. They, um. Their size is a bit—I don't know if you'll like them."

That prompted Kita to give a curious little tilt of the head at her Samurai-san. Her eyes slid down, to the stretches of thick, sweaty sarashi wrapped taut around the solid lump of Samurai-san's breasts—a delightfully-modest looking pair, albeit likely compressed a bit by the bindings. Internally, Kita frowned a smidgen at the samurai's words. She pictured a nice handful, something she could press her fingers into and cup in their entirety.

(Must be nice, Kita thought glumly, trying to ignore the ache in her back.)

Kita pushed herself back up off Ryu's body, returning to a proper seated straddle to look down at the half-naked woman below her. Kita smiled. "Do you really think I mind if they're a little small, Samurai-san?"

"Um. That's not exactly—"

Her words were interrupted by Kita brandishing a kaiken pulled out of her sleeve, sunlight flickering off the thin, palm-length blade. Ryu's eyes widened.

"May I cut it?" Kita said.

"Why do you have that?!"

"May I cut it?"

"M-My bindings are expensive, I tend to reuse—!"

"Samurai-san, I have more sarashi you may take with you when we're done. If I have to roll you back over onto your front so I can spend several minutes carefully freeing your chest of its overly-intricate bondage, I may be driven mad enough to march to the capital and assassinate the shogun myself. Please, may I cut it?"

A small part of Ryu thought about responding to that with something about sedition, but the rest of her waited a few silent seconds before acquiescing with a tiny nod.

Slowly, carefully, Kita lowered the dagger, facing the bladed edge downwards, away from Ryu's face. Her left hand took a grasp of the sarashi, and the right punctured the cotton with the tip of the blade. Cautious as could be, Kita slowly sawed downwards, not penetrating an iota deeper than absolutely necessary. Dexterity from a lifetime of working with her hands? Or had she just done this before?

When the blade fully tore through, cleaving the sarashi fully in two down the middle, the connection in her chest was severed and a number of sensations flowed into Ryu all at once. That dull pressure in her chest, that she always carried when her bosom was bound, increasing for a split second, and then pushing further, out and away from her body, no longer chained by any layers of compression. The heavy weight that had been crammed into a space far too tight for it not lessening in the least, but suddenly given room to expand and spread out.

And spread out and spread out and spread out and—

"Mnff—!"

The room nearly felt like it had shaken.

Kita stared at the sight for a few silent seconds, the red arousal of her expression sobering up into unreadable nothingness. She stared. She stared some more. When she tried to access her mind to process what exactly she was staring at, it was like there was a barrier somewhere in her skull preventing the thought from fully reaching her brain. She still stared.

That was—

That can't be—

Her mind couldn't accept what her eyes bore witness to.

Huh?

There was no way.

She stared. She blinked. Blinked again.

That wasn't possible.

It just didn't make any sense.

In a slow sequencing of thought, Kita began processing the sight before her. Her slack expression tightened into shock, and her knife spilled out of her loosening fingers, falling to the tatami floor with a dull thud.

"'A—A bit'?" Kita said, not accusatory so much as in disbelieving awe. "'A bit' what, Samurai-san?"

There was nothing about Samurai-san's chest that "a bit" would have been an appropriate adjective for. Their size was not "a bit" small, despite Kita's initial assumptions. They were far from "a bit" big, either. They were well beyond it. The simplicity of a word like "big" was nowhere near enough to come close to even remotely describing it.

In all her years caring for the many that had wandered into her little establishment, Kita had seen more topless bodies than there were stars in the sky, and she had loved every single one. To make a living in a career that allowed her to admire the beautiful canvas of the human body was a gift that Kita felt she did not deserve. She had aided muscular carpenters and beautiful geisha. She had massaged the scrawniest peasant and the most indulgent of daimyo. Her fingers had worked their magic on bodies tall, short, barrel-chested, scrawny, motherly, fat. And in that time, she'd seen women with chests flatter than boards—and women blessed enough to stoke envy in the most famous of Yoshiwara's oiran. Breasts heavy and sagging, light and perky, squished, mismatched, wide, round, jutting. Women whose size outdid even Kita's own rather esteemed bust. In her decades (plural) of work, a span that outstripped the reign of multiple emperors, Kita had seen it all.

And Samurai-san put every single one of them to shame.

Samurai-san's breasts were enormous. Kita's mind had been so stunned because they were beyond belief. Obscene in the way they fell from that heavy body as they spilled upwards and downwards and outwards—particularly outwards, with the way gravity pulled down at all that obviously-incredible weight. Samurai-san on her back as she was, all that fat squished and flattened a little as their heft splayed out on either side of her body past the span of her underarms. Cup in their entirety? Goodness, Kita wouldn't be able to even get close. Her hand would barely make a dent. Both her hands on just one of those breasts wouldn't even be enough. More than staggering in their size—they were impairing. How did she even function with a chest like this? H-How did such a strong samurai carry around such an incredible burden?

"That's, uhm…"

Samurai-san finally speaking up again reminded Kita that there was still a person attached to those incredible breasts. It was enough to finally rip Kita out of her blatant staring long enough for her head to jerk back up to meet Samurai-san's face. Her face dripping with cold sweat over glowing-hot redness. Her face that was turned away in a desperate attempt at maintaining her dignity, a hand over her obviously-shaky lips while her eyes bashfully avoided meeting Kita's own gaze.

"That's why I… prefer to wear the bindings…"

Kita's jaw clenched at the sight. This samurai was so heart-achingly adorable it was making Kita feel aggressive. Inhale, exhale, deep breaths through her nose before she felt her increasingly-poisoned mind finally stabilize itself enough to try speaking again: "How in the world are you tying back something that big…?"

"Ofuda."

Kita waited a moment for an elaboration that did not seem to be forthcoming. "Onmyōdō," she prodded, and Samurai-san gave a small nod in response.

"I slip an ofuda to—suppress them in the layers of my sarashi. When you cut my bindings, the ofuda couldn't couldn't channel into them anymore, so…"

"Heavens, Samurai-san. What a waste. To restrain a gift like these…"

"Don't say that," the samurai said. The wavering embarrassment lingering in her tone was undercut by the tension of subtle annoyance. "I've been hearing that from my family ever since they grew in. That they're a gift. But they're too big. Far too big. I hate them."

What a heartbreaking thing to hear. Self-consciousness was one thing—and Samurai-san's self-consciousness clearly went far, far deeper than Kita had imagined when she'd first seen how much trouble Samurai-san had with disrobing—but to be told time and again that she was wrong for daring to think such things about her body, when she was the poor soul that had to deal with such heavy burdens? Kita regretted her words near instantly. "I'm sorry, Samurai-san."

"I tie them back so people don't stare—"

Another queasy spout of guilt flooded into Kita's gut, yanking her eyes up once again from examining the other woman's body.

"And because they—get in the way. All the time."

"But—you're binding so much. You looked flat. That can't be healthy—"

"Maybe."

She'd gone too far, hadn't she? She'd nudged Samurai-san well out of her comfort zone, and now she was paying for it with the silence blanketing the room, a painful ache dulled only by the chirping sounds of summer leaking in from the outside. Samurai-san still wasn't looking at her.

Kita, finally, spoke first: "Maybe it'd be best if we stopped—"

The samurai bowled right over her: "I don't mind if you look at them, though. Kita-san."

"Huh…?"

Silence, again. What lasted for only a moment dragged on for what felt like a thousand thousand years of Kita being unsure if she'd heard right.

The samurai's blush had spread to the tips of her ears. It was so bright that Kita swore a heat haze was coming off the poor girl. "C… Come on. Don't make me say it again…"

Like a stray pup who'd lost his mother, finally beginning to open up to his new master…

It felt like little hearts had infected Kita's vision as she stared down at her stammering, self-conscious little Samurai-san, desperately trying to make herself look smaller even as she admitted in no uncertain terms just what she wanted from Kita.

She was so cuuuuute!

Kita was atop Samurai-san once again in a flash, to straddle her from above so she could look down and take a proper eyeful of all that… that. All that obscene size spilling out from that form in sheer testament to excess. Was this samurai truly a samurai, a blood-stained warrior of regal bearing that could extinguish a villain's life as easily as she drew breath? No. Impossible. As impossible as the obscene size she carried on her chest—how could a warrior ever look like that? She must be inhuman. A yōkai. A kitsune temptress who had traveled down from the mountains to wrap Kita around her finger and lead her astray from her earthly duties.

And yet Samurai-san had stopped that thief with a practiced ease that could only have been earned through a lifetime of thankless training. And yet the look in her embarrassed steel eyes was far too warm—far too human to be anything but.

Not that Kita was able to solely concentrate on the samurai's eyes.

Huge. A vast expanse that Kita could only just barely keep in her complete field of view. Pale skin—a shade lighter than the light suntan that kissed her face—just a little bit marred with redness and cotton indents from where cruel compression had dug in just a little too deeply. Capping both breasts, in the center of soft-looking areola, were pink, pudgy, horizontal little slits. They were inverted? Kami above, this woman's bosom was so prodigious it was swallowing her very nipples!

Kita didn't notice the way her breathing had sped up, or the way her pulse had quickened or the droplets of cold sweat forming on her temples. All she could feel and see was the beautiful samurai before her, cowing under Kita's hungry gaze. She peeked up towards Kita with a shy little side-eye, too afraid to make proper eye contact.

She was so, so cute.

Kita's fingers, soft and dainty, twitched, flexed. What she was about to do—it was no different than a massage, right? No, yes, that's right, she wasn't a hopeless pervert preying on a customer, she was just helping a pent-up samurai who had come through her doors for some desperately-needed rest and relaxation. This was normal. This whole situation was normal. Kita was normal.

Kita brought her hands forward, forward, closer and closer to Samurai-san's chest. The look in the samurai's eyes made it intensely clear she knew exactly what Kita was aiming to do—but she didn't say anything. Didn't make any move to stop her with a strength that exceeded Kita's a hundredfold. She wanted this—needed this—just as badly as Kita did.

The tips of Kita's fingers brushed against each of the samurai's enormous boobs—

"MmnFFH—!" cried said samurai.

And then a bit further, until her fingers were able to press in properly and her palms were occupied by all that size.

Oh. Oh wow.

Mochi. Was that at all a flattering description? Kita had the feeling Samurai-san would be even more mortified if she'd said it aloud, but it was the first word to spring to Kita's mind when she grasped those tremendous breasts. Like—like mochi. Silky smooth and pillowy soft. Wobbling a little when fingers took hold of it. Indulgent and doughy. All like mochi.

And—a lot of mochi, at that. The bunnies on the moon must have worked hard to make such a moon-sized mass. Merely seeing that enormity and properly feeling it were worlds apart. Kita's eyes shifted to one of her hands, spread her fingers as wide as they could go, and the sheer difference in size, just how little she could really take a hold of, would have been nearly comical if it wasn't so… really, really hot.

She pushed, and properly grabbed. Softness yielded beneath her curious fingers, billowing over in a warmth even softer than they had felt with just her palms taking hold. Samurai-san let out another shaky moan she clearly struggled to suppress, and it only encouraged Kita all the further to see what other noises she could squeeze out of this straining samurai. How far could she take it? How malleable was her little Samurai-san?

Very, apparently, from how deeply Kita's fingers were able to just sink in and feel.

"Oh. Oh wow," Kita said, tone obscured by a fog of hazy need. "They're real? That's all you. Isn't it, Samurai-san?"

Samurai-san, head still tilted to the side to avoid the burning weight of Kita's gaze, nodded a little too quickly.

"I thought I was… big." She was still slow, exploratory in her touches, gentle with the way her hands glided over the twin peaks of Mt. Samurai-san before she dared to plunge a little deeper and curl her fingers into warm, expansive flesh for a soft squeeze. "But you're—goodness me, Samurai-san." When she let go, that boob wobbled, little fleshy waves on a pale sea as all that heavy, fat weight settled back into place. "Now I understand why your shoulders were so stiff…"

The tips of Kita's nails traced over the enormous round swell. Sliding downwards, and downwards and downwards and downwards and further, until her fingers reached the underside of a breast so unbelievably enormous it was spilling past the samurai's body to rest on the futon beneath her. From below, she pushed up, into sweat and silken-soft skin just to try, to see how it felt on her insatiable fingers. Entirely unsurprisingly—it was heavy. Incredibly heavy. Kita's hand could barely even get it to budge. "What strength, Samurai-san. To carry around such a burden, all by yourself, day after day…"

And Kita's gentle words were sweet. An attempt at appeasing a sheepish samurai of the ails of human modesty that plagued her mind. But for that same samurai who'd spent so much of her life living in the shadow of a body that mocked her every step of the way—those touchy fingers and feasting eyes made her feel akin to a piece of meat. No, not merely a piece. It was as if she were the entire prized boar, being sized up by a successful hunter to cut away the tastiest morsel of her body.

(Ugh, wait, shishinabe sounded nice. Ryu's stomach roiled at the thought of food; she'd never gotten that meal she'd been longing for.)

If meat was too distracting a metaphor, then maybe Ryu was a plaything. A toy. Something for Kita to touch, to manipulate and mold into what she wanted while forcing cute little noises out from that quivering mouth all the while. It was so—humiliating! For Ryu to know that all it took was a pretty older woman saying just the right words to leave her completely weak in the knees, on her back, getting groped. Because that's all this really was, wasn't it? They'd gone far past the plausible deniability of a mere massage—that Ryu was a customer receiving a transactional exchange. She was a shameless pervert who'd been sweet talked into stripping topless so a woman she barely knew could feel her tits up. It was pathetic enough in itself. It was made more pathetic because there was that feeling buried deep inside Ryu, crawling up out of her gut to pierce her straight through the heart, that she didn't especially mind the idea of being Kita's plaything—

"Nnfhh—! K-Kita-san—!"

A plaything that was in the process of being kneaded like dough when both of Kita's hands suddenly honed in a bit deeper on one tit, pushing in and squeezing. A sudden bit more aggressive. A sudden bit more handsy than she'd been in the passing minutes she'd spent exploring Ryu's chest. Both hands roamed around either side of puffy areola—as big as the fancy porcelain plates Ryu had eaten her suppers off of when she was still trapped under the thumb of her family—to press fingertips in, stroking in little circles that left Ryu quaking. S-Sensitive! Her hips roiled, rising from the futon in some desperate attempt for finding purchase as every little press and pull Kita made of her chest sent little sparks of levin jolting through her body.

And it was only getting worse. Both thumbs pushed in, drowning in an ocean of thick fat to squeeze and pry and leave Ryu crying out with girly little noises that were gradually growing higher and higher in pitch, before pulling away, letting all that heft wobble and clap against itself in a warbling chorus. And then untouched for a few precious seconds, just long enough for Ryu to begin staggering down from her panting high and ponder if wait, huh, is she finished already?—before Kita dove right back in.

Her fingers splayed apart as wide as they could go and plunged. Rich, fatty meat spilled between the gaps in Kita's fingers, before most of her hand vanished into a sea of fat deep enough to drown her down to the wrist. It was unreal. Unbelievable. Like nothing Kita had ever felt before in her life. It was warm and sweaty and softer than the softest softness Kita had ever had had the privilege to indulge in. If only Kita could sink her whole body into such a supple surface! I-If only this incredible specimen of a pudgy, full-bodied samurai could just swallow her up, then and there!

"M-mhmm—!"

That desperate mania remained bubbling up under the surface, boiling Kita alive from the inside out. Samurai-san's whimpering moans and the way the blush in her cheeks continued to darken and spread over that aroused, overwhelmed face—it was just too hot for Kita to bear!

"You like it," Kita said, tone slipping, shakiness in her voice, like she was on the verge of collapsing right there and Samurai-san was the only thing supporting her upright. Her tongue felt numb; senses were failing her. "I've never seen anyone wound so tightly—" She punctuated it with her right hand taking a thick squeeze strong enough to make Samurai-san cry out and for weeping red streaks to mark her pale flesh. "As you. But you like it."

"Kita-san… puh-please…!"

"You're so big." It came out as a hazy, shaky laugh, a fogged over mind still unable to completely process the sight before her even as it was actively getting groped by her hands. "It's unbelievable. You deny yourself and keep it all bottled up…" A fingertip traced around silken areola before poking right against the center, the barrier of one inverted little bud. Samurai-san let out a hoarse groan at that. "But you like it more than you even know. Getting felt up like this."

It took a moment for Kita to work up the restraint to finally cease in her groping—though not without her fingertips taking one last fluttering brush of a silk-soft breast that sent it dreamily jiggling before settling back into place. She leaned away from Samurai-san, pulling herself back up into a proper seated position straddled over that wide waist.

"You're selfish, Samurai-san. To hide your body so."

"You're selfish, Ryuko," said a memory that Ryu may have just imagined.

"But—" Kita's hands trailed up the path of her own thin kimono, until her fingers rested on the obi tied around her back. "I saw the way you kept undressing me with your eyes even though you were too ashamed to make a real move." Fabric rustled as Kita's steady fingers worked at untying her own obi, loosening layers until the robe was spilling low enough on her body to expose her shoulders. She reached for the folds of the fabric. "So if you won't do anything about it—then I will."

She tugged, and her robes fell into a heap around her.

Where Ryu was hard, Kita was soft. She was fat, fatter than Ryu, but where Ryu's fat intertwined with rooted muscle sowed from bloody harvest, Kita was plush and nurturing all over. Innocent, with smooth skin that had never once felt the touch of a blade or the stain of another's blood. Yet she was not completely devoid of scars: stretchmarks of discolored, thinner skin dotted the heft and weight around Kita's hips, her heavy waist, cresting over to her stomach and around her navel. It all sat on that pudgy belly, heavier and spilling further forward than Ryu's burgeoning, dango-fed paunch.

And—yes, by any reasonable measure, Kita's bosom was rather huge. But in the presence of dearest, bustiest Ryu, it hardly bore mentioning.

"I haven't done this sort of thing for anyone in many years, Samurai-san." She took deep breaths to steady herself, controlled and slow, and each inhale, exhale was enough to get wide-eyed Ryu tearing her gaze between lightly-wobbling breasts and the rhythmic rise, fall of that rounded belly. "Consider yourself lucky. And—special."

It was a sweet sentiment that might have come off as sweeter if Ryu was at all capable of actually meeting Kita's eyes as she said it. There was just too much woman for Ryu to bring herself to look away from. Too much expansive curvature on thick hips to map out. Every upward flicker of her overwhelmed eyes to actually look at Kita's face, like Ryu was pretty sure she should be doing right now, lasted for but a fraction of a second before she slipped right back down.

After several long, silent seconds of it, Kita giggled at the sight. That was enough to strike Ryu with shame enough to throw a hand over her eyes, to finally force herself to stop staring like some gross pervert. "F-Forgive me," she said, gazing into the abyss of her eyelids. "You shouldn't have—I-I'm worse than any man could ever be."

Ryu stewed alone in crushing, infinite darkness for a moment—and even when she was trying her best to not be a pervert she still couldn't escape the thought of how good it felt to rest under all of the weight sitting atop her—before she felt a hand grasp one of her own and give a squeeze. And then she felt her other hand being gently pulled away from its place covering her vision.

Ryu opened her eyes to a blush on Kita's cheeks that matched the pink in her hair. A smile on Kita's lips warm enough to light Ryu's heart aflame and burn it down to cinders.

Kita intertwined her fingers with Ryu's. A pair of hands that had never known violence squeezed snug against a pair of hands that been molded and abused and broken and reforged from birth to deliver tragedy upon its foes. They were hands that had committed unspeakable acts and would never know a normal life—and hands that could protect those they loved. Scarred weapons of war and regret that were beautiful in their own right.

"No shame, Samurai-san," Kita said. "I want you to stare."

Kita pulled her fingers away to scoop up the nearly-forgotten bottle of oil laying next to the futon. She made a show out of tilting the glass to let it exit in a slow flow; some of it spilled onto her open palm, but most of it fell through the gaps in her fingers to splash onto Ryu's body below. Onto her tits, mostly, and the sudden chill made Ryu gasp and nearly flinch, just a little.

"And I want you to watch this."

Watch her turn the bottle on herself and cover her own chest in dripping golden slickness. Gravity pulled the mixture down as it glided over pale skin, curving over the swell of her fat breasts and then falling forward, spilling down onto Ryu's body from below in separate little streams. Waterfalls. Waterfalls that were forcing shaky little breaths out of Kita as she held the little glass bottle on herself long enough to slowly empty the whole thing. Waterfalls that were stimulating enough that Kita's nipples—darker and more matronly than Ryu's youthful pink—were stiffening up, sending little dribbles over the pert bumps.

Ryu stared at it all, just as requested.

Kita carelessly dropped the bottle on the floor to better mount Ryu; to lean in and shift all that considerable heft around and deliberately bury more of Ryu's body in a heated embrace of blanketing width and weight. Their stomachs touched, slick with sweat and Kita's dripping oil, and it was hard for Kita to reach far enough to press her lips to Ryu's when, between the two of them, there was a frankly obscene amount of woman in the way, squishing against one another and struggling for space. She managed, though, stealing another quick peck before pulling away to look right into Ryu's blushing visage.

Well, they were both blushing.

They were also both big, in both the same and different ways; where Ryu was warm fat over well-built muscle, all melding together to create a perfect specimen of warrior, Kita was sheer inviting softness, pudgy and proud and, dare Ryu think it, motherly. The kind of gorgeous fat that only built up on a body that had been content and happy with itself for years on years, who had a life that wanted for little. It made Ryu some amount of jealous that Kita was so utterly unashamed of who she was, but the little spike of envy was mostly weighed down under Kita's considerable heft (and the feelings Ryu was getting between her legs from having all that heft on her).

That heft was moving too, with Kita slowly starting to rock her hips and the rest of her wobbling body following suit as she pressed deeper into Ryu. Press. Grind. Skin-on-skin made all the easier by all that mutual slickness.

Skin-on-skin. Warm. It was warmth that Ryu had rarely ever gotten to feel before. Nobody ever touched her like this even when she'd so desperately—

"Your face," Kita said, a little huffy. She was looking right into Ryu's eyes, pale pink hair battered with sweat and hanging down in curtains to brush against Ryu's cheeks. "It's cute like that. The way your lips are shaking."

Attention back to one of Ryu's breasts, one hand palming gently, where even tracing little lines was still enough to make Ryu squirm.

"Be honest," Kita said. "Am I the first person to treat you like this?"

"M-Mhm…!"

Seconds of rhythmic breathing right into the crook of Ryu's neck, exchanging the heat and scent of skin, of their shared sweat. "Then I'm even more honored you've opened up to me so," Kita said, again speaking with her lips pressing right into Ryu's skin. "Let me spoil you and give you everything you've been denied." The vibrations were soothing, though not exactly relaxing with everything Ryu was feeling between her legs.

Through the fabric of her hakama, Ryu could feel Kita wrap and tighten her thick legs around one of Ryu's own. There was a shifting weight starting to slowly grind against her thigh.

"How much have you been through? All these scars. You poor thing." The hand that wasn't toying with Ryu's breast instead slid up to her face, to run a thumb over that young scar on her left cheek. When Kita touched there, Ryu remembered a woman she hated with hair the same shade of blue as hers and a face so much like her own bringing the tip of a blade through the flesh of her cheek. "You deserve better," Kita said, something the woman Ryu hated would never dare let slip from her gorgeous lips.

Ryu caught thin wisps of smoke trailing from the incense burner out of the corner of her eye; the smoke turned to foam and the foam floated in a bathtub where Ryu was little and the woman she hated (but didn't hate when she was little) was washing the skin on her back, far less scarred then. A stick of agarwood incense burned while she bathed, because the woman-she-hated-now-but-didn't-hate-then would always light one before their baths. Oh. That's where she'd smelled it before.

Ryu's breathing sped up a bit.

She was only pulled out of blurry memories by the sound of Kita quietly groaning in time with her hips rolling, pressing weight down into Ryu's thigh before rising again. Slow, steady rhythm. Their eyes linked again, but Kita didn't look to be all there; a twinge of heat tickled the back of Ryu's neck at the glazed-over glassiness that was rapidly returning to that beautiful brown gaze. Ryu felt Kita's wetness soaking through her hakama's fabric, and there was no elegant way to narrate that Kita was humping Ryu's thigh.

Not that she was so selfish she was neglecting Ryu to focus on herself. "Poor thing. I'll give you all that love you've been denied. I'll take care of you, Samurai-chan."

"Gyu-chan," Ryu said before she could stop herself. The desperation clawed through her vocal cords, violent and strained.

"Hmm?"

"Call me 'Gyu-chan.' Please."

Just a second of consideration before Kita let out a small, amused breath. "Gyu-chan," she obliged. A kiss on the neck. "Sweet little Gyu-chan." Another neck kiss that turned into a slow dragging of her tongue to lap up salty drops of sweat. "My Gyu-chan."

Heavens. Fuck. That was so much worse. So much hotter and so much more painful and overwhelming than she ever thought it would be.

Another lick, striking tender skin that made Ryu's body suddenly uncontrollably jolt in place.

"Sorry, Gyu-chan. I left a mark here when I bit down and suckled earlier…"

Ryu's breathing sped up rapidly.

Kita took another proper, two-handed grope of one enormous breast and Ryu cried out, head arching backwards to dig into the futon. Kita's own desperate grinding was slowly speeding up, punctuated by the increasingly-shaky breaths she was letting out with each roll of her hips.

"Is this—haah—is it all good? Gyu-chan?"

Please keep touching please keep touching please don't stop please please please please.

Ache was slowly welling up in Ryu's belly, rising in pitch with every little shift Kita made atop her. Every grope of her chest and every sweet nothing whispered into her ear.

"I'll p-protect you. Keep—keep you safe, Gyu-chan."

She never told Ryu that no matter how much Ryu begged and pleaded and wished for it. Kita was a better she than she could ever be.

The breaking thoughts boiling in Ryu's head threatened to crack her skull from the inside out and rip through her flesh but her mouth could not find the words to speak them, and so she merely grunted and gritted her teeth and moaned beneath every ministration Kita placed onto her. Both of Kita's hands on one breast each, now, thumbs toying with those inverted little barriers, exposing Ryu's pretty pink nipples to the outside air. She wouldn't ever have touched her like that no matter how much Ryu wished she would.

"You're so strong."

Please.

"You deserve to be praised."

Ryu didn't hear Kita's voice anymore.

"You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

Things that Ryu could only pathetically pretend she had ever said.

"You're a good girl."

Don't, please—

"I love you."

Ryu came with tears in her eyes and a name on her lips, in an orgasm akin to frozen suffering and the sensation of her own hands clawing into her womb to bleed herself dry. It was better than anything she had ever felt in her entire life and knowing that made her want to die.

A hateful, choking sob from the back of Ryu's throat accompanied her bodily spasms and her vision losing focus and then flittering, stuttering, senses extinguishing one after another as they all overheated past what she could ever be expected to carry and her brain had to focus all efforts it could on keeping her tied down to mortal coil.

"Samurai-san—!" said Kita, the flirting and praise in her tone having vanished to leave only genuine concern. Ryu wept hot tears against Kita's bare shoulder as she rode out that orgasm that threatened to eat her alive; Kita wrapped her arms around her, tight as she could, and leaned her head right against Ryu's ear.

She was hyperventilating. "Imsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryim—"

"Shh shh shh. It's okay, Ryuko. Hey, it's okay. I'm right here. I promise you'll be okay, Ryuko."

"I'm so sorry-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y…"

Ryuko-chan bawled like a child, grasping at her womb and wishing her sword was in her hands so she could carve it out.

"Hmmm-hmm-hmm-hmm-hmmmm. Hmm-hmm-hm-hm-hm…"

Samurai-san lay atop the futon, curled onto her side with a sheet draped over her from the neck down to protect her modesty. Her sleeping breaths carried a rhythmic serenity thoroughly unlike her dense, unwieldy form, and Kita watched closely at the troubled beauty in her expression, the gentle contortions of her face and how those scars twisted and rolled over her skin. For awhile, the anxious aura was gone; the constant storm of Samurai-san had finally found a moment of still.

Kita, dressed once more and hair arranged back into something resembling neatness, sat beside her, gently stroking fingers through her exhausted client's messy hair as she hummed her soft lullaby that'd soothed the wailing beast. Even with Samurai-san coaxed and calmed and too asleep to appreciate it, Kita continued with the tune for her own benefit; singing it was relaxing for her, too. Gentle beams of light coming through the windows—the sun had risen in full and it was nearly the Hour of the Horse by now—warmed Samurai-san's face, yet she still slept like a baby, and Kita sadly found herself wondering when the last time this poor girl had been able to sleep on a futon was.

The agarwood had burned away along with Samurai-san's tears. Samurai snot soiled a small square of the sheet, but it had been a worthy sacrifice in the effort of soothing Samurai-san's sobs. Kita could always wash it off later anyways. Next to the futon and the stained sheet sat a tin pitcher of water and Kita's favorite ceramic cup.

Dull thuds on the wooden floor, rapidly increasing in volume, suddenly snapped through the reverie, and Kita dragged her eyes away from looking down at her beautiful Samurai-san to look towards the figure bursting through her door:

"Kaa-san! Mohe-oji-san gave me a job cleanin' up around his restaurant! We'll have some more money comin' in soon!"

The young man who'd been busy nursing a bruised ego, now beaming with a proud smile.

Without ceasing in her stroking of Samurai-san's hair, Kita looked over her son with suspicion in her narrowed eyes. "Kind of him after the stunt you pulled this morning, Sensuke."

"Y-You saw that?"

"Yes. And I was going to tell you to go prostrate yourself and beg for his forgiveness, but it seems you've already seen fit to do that."

"I told him I was really sorry and that it wouldn't happen again and I think he took some pity on me, so—"

A huff of her nose was all it took to interrupt a son well-aware of the potential of his mother's wrath. "Well, he's got my permission to use that knife he was flailing around if you ever even think about trying to steal from anyone ever again."

"Yes, Kaa-san." He bowed. A beat passed, and then he rose to his full height again to look down to the slumbering woman in his mother's hands. "Um—who is that?"

"A very special client that I'm finishing up with." Her expression softened into a smile as she glanced down to Samurai-san again, and then back up to Sensuke. "I'm proud of you for apologizing, Sensuke. Go give Mohe-san my thanks and I'll start preparing our lunch."

"Yes, Kaa-san!" And he sprinted right back out of the building, leaving the door wide open.

Kita watched him leave with warmth in her heart, and a few moments later, a quiet, half-asleep voice spoke up from below: "You're his mother?"

Kita looked down, to Samurai-san gazing up at her through messy bangs.

"How long have you been awake?" said Kita.

"Enough to hear all that… What were you humming?"

Kita's palm slid forward to pull back Samurai-san's bangs, so Kita could get a better look at those half-lidded eyes struggling to blink away sleep; hints of puffy, red regret still lingered in them. "A sweet little lullaby my mother used to sing for me, and that I used to sing for Sensuke. I was happy to have a chance to sing it once more, Samurai-san. Thank you."

"It sounds beautiful…"

"And consider the massage my way of thanking you for stopping him from doing something stupid," Kita said with a starry wink and a cant of her head. "He's a good kid, really. Just inherited his stupidity from his father and wants to save up money to move to Edo. Gets a little stir-crazy living with his family, I suppose."

"I can sympathize with that last part, at least…" Samurai-san's voice was moving a bit more towards proper lucidity. "Wait, h-his father? After we—"

Kita snort-laughed. "Calm down, Samurai-san. Last time I saw that boy's father was right after we lay down together the first night I met him." Kita placed her other hand on her tummy, and she caught Samurai-san's eyes tilting downwards to glance at it. "He was gone before the morning, but left Sensuke to remember him by."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

Kita shrugged. "I was young and ignorant then. And he…" Her hand slid downwards, cupping Samurai-san's chin from below and gently stroking with a thumb—thankfully the mood was relaxed enough that Samurai-san's beautiful blush was still capable of making its presence known. "Was a young, ignorant, handsome, dark-haired, idiot samurai who walked through my doors for a massage on a hot summer's day." She took a long, lingering look at Samurai-san's handsome face, to engrave it into the grooves of her memory as best she could. The palm slid up and embraced the cheek that held that scar; Samurai-san stared back with warmth in her eyes. "In the end, I suppose I'm still a helpless young woman with a type. Ah well."

"You said you hadn't done this with a customer before…?"

"Would you believe me if I said my infatuation for you was so severe I'd misplaced my memories of that fool entirely?"

"Y-You flatter me, Kita-san."

Kita stroked a few fingers over Samurai-san's cheek—"My better samurai," she teased—before pulling away. "You should drink something," she said, gesturing to the pitcher of water. "You—sweat a lot, Samurai-san. I wouldn't wish for you to dehydrate."

"Th-Thank you…"

She sat up, legs crossed and sheet still pulled over her shoulders, filled the cup, and downed the entire thing in two enormous gulps. She filled it once more, and sat the pitcher back down before taking another, thankfully more modest, drink. She swallowed, then spoke: "My head is pained. I—remember crying, and…"

"I'm sorry, Samurai-san. I fear that it's my fault. I might have pushed things too far."

"Not at all. I wanted you to." She took a sip, and then spoke again: "Did I—say anything strange?"

"No," Kita lied, responding a little too quickly. "You just finished, and… and started crying."

Samurai-san cringed a little. "I'm sorry." Beat. "Oh. You didn't get to—"

"It's fine, Samurai-san," Kita said with a smile. "It's more than enough for me that you got to feel good."

And for awhile longer, they sat in a silence broken only by the incessant chirping of the cicadas and Samurai-san's quiet sipping.

Silence only broke again another minute or two later, when Samurai-san finally finished the water cup and set it down on the floor next to the jug. "Hold on," she said, and Kita felt like she could practically hear the gears grinding between Samurai-san's ears. "You—called me by my name." Blink. "Once or twice. I don't think I ever told you my name."

"You're the girl on the posters, right?"

"Huh?"

Kita pointed a thumb over her shoulder, to one of the windows, and Samurai-san grabbed her sheet to keep herself modest as she sprinted to the window with inhuman speed. There, in Asahi-juku's little community square, on the government noticeboard, hung posters for wanted criminals—among them was a black ink illustration of one frighteningly-glaring Tsukinaga Ryuko, wanted alive. It was a crude but close enough approximation of her upper body, though the cheek scar was missing, and the hair was a lot longer and neater in that traditional hime cut, and the bosom was—about right, actually.

Samurai-san—Ryuko—wore a face akin to a corpse with a pallor to match as she turned around to face Kita. "How long has that been—?"

"Since the seasons changed, at least."

"But you aren't—?"

"Of course not, Samurai-san. Anyone who's upset the Tokugawa's likely to have done something right. I can't promise everyone in town will agree with me, though."

Ryuko exhaled a relieved sigh as she turned to look at the ugly glare from the woman in the poster again. "Why was I drawn so angry?"

Kita giggled. "I wasn't so sure it was you until I saw you with your top off and realized you were a woman. But then when I saw you all bound up and figured out who my client was, I just thought the artist had been a bit too overeager to draw your assets." She rose to her feet to stand next to Ryuko's spot by the window, pressing in from behind while resting gentle hands onto Ryuko's hips. Her voice lowered, softer and gentler. "Samurai-san. Would you rather I call you 'Tsukinaga-san' or 'Ryuko'?"

She didn't look back to Kita as she answered: "Um. I usually prefer 'Ryu,' actually."

Hmm. "'Ryu.' Ryu. What a handsome name."

She pressed a cheek into the back of Ryu's neck. Soft and embracing rather than poisoned by lust. "Though you're going to have to leave soon, aren't you, Ryu? Osaka awaits."

"…"

Excitement never lasted. Not for Kita, at least. She had her business and her son and enough money to keep both him and herself healthy and there was little she would ever wish to change about it.

Her voice stayed calm, soft. "You're going to tell me it's too dangerous to stay in any one place for too long. And you're going to be just like Tamezō and leave me before I can really get to know you. Leave me here with no one to hold at night. Aren't you?"

"I—I'm sorry, Kita-san."

But that didn't make it hurt less when the excitement fled. Every day, a quiet part of Kita missed when Sensuke was young and sweet and needed his mother's protection—and when Kita took a look at Ryu, she felt, among many other things, that same motherly twinge in her heart as she had with him. Sensuke didn't need her any more, but she thought maybe Ryu could—

"I understand. It's okay, my sweet Ryu." As Kita blinked away the tears spilling into the corner of her eyes and did her best to keep her voice from cracking, she was thankful Ryu was still looking away, out the window. "It would make me happy if you visited sometime, though. Just whenever you get the chance. If you're in the area."

"Of course."

"And if you'd like to stay for lunch, a-and maybe spend the night before continuing on, I have an extra futon and I'd only be too happy to accommodate you!"

Ryu glanced back over her left shoulder, giving Kita a glimpse at her scar, her pain, on her cheek. For the first time, Kita got to see Ryu give her a smile—a real smile, the kind where the light shone in her eyes. It was pretty, just like everything else about her Samurai-san. "I'd be honored, Kita-san."

Kita's heart cracked, but did not break, at the thought that she'd never get to see that smile again.

Ryu turned her head again, and they spent some more time gazing out the window in warm embrace, to the bustle and love of a fully awakened Asahi-juku. The gentle summer breeze brushed against Kita's hair.

"Hmmm-hmm-hmm-hmm-hmmmm. Hmm-hmm-hm-hm-hm…"

And as Kita hummed her mother's lullaby and clasped her fingers together over Ryu's middle, the thought of the name—the title, really—that had been on Ryu's lips in her sobbing throes of ecstasy remained lingering in Kita's thoughts even as she did her best to clear her mind. She leaned forward to rest her soft cheek into one broad shoulder, silencing her song for just a moment.

Kita whispered to herself, too quiet for any other soul to hear:

"'Okaa-sama,' huh…?"