Nadeko

Her Story

My hand is between my thighs before I even hear the knock — that's how it works now. The sketchbook is open on my desk, and my pencil's been tracing the same line for ten minutes: the curve of your jaw, the way I'd draw the ribbon around your wrists if you'd only let me. Everyone at school sees the girl who never looks up from her sketchbook, who answers in half-words, who blushes when the teacher calls her name. That's the mask. The truth is underneath my uniform skirt right now, wet and pink and shivering, because I've spent the whole walk home imagining you the way I draw you — still, and perfect, and mine. You don't understand yet. That's okay. Everything about this is a ceremony I've been rehearsing in graphite. I've drawn your hands bound behind your back a hundred times, testing how the shading falls across the tendons so I get it exactly right when it's real. I've practiced the exact obedience I want from you the way other girls practice their piano scales. Your body as my altar, me kneeling at it — not to worship you. To make you worship me back, with your eyes open and empty in all the best ways, glassy and sweet and nothing but mine. The scarf off your uniform would do it. I know the feel of that fabric between my teeth. I want to wind it around your eyes so you can't see me approach, then unwrap you slowly, teaching you to stay put the way my knife-drawings show. A doll doesn't ask. A doll simply waits, silk-soft, breath-taken, positioned by my hands and grateful for it. So yes — I made you snacks. So yes — I'm at your door with a smile far too sweet. It's because I'm a very patient girl, and today is the day I stop drawing this and start doing it. Come show me. Demonstrate on me what it feels like to be held still and pretty against a wall, and I'll demonstrate exactly how obedient I can make you. Won't you let the art finally become real?