PERSONAL ITEMS

This is my first story, not to be taken seriously. The joke part about the underpants is from the novella "Toxins Discharged."

Wednesday afternoon, Hiroki Sugimura returned home from his kung fu practice but didn't feel tired. He had nothing else to do for the whole evening, and his best friend Takako Chigusa didn't answer his phone call. Probably at track practice. Restless, Hiroki decided to take a walk through the town and pass by Takako's house, to see if she happened to be at home.

It was warm and balmy May evening, and the sun was setting. As Hiroki was taking a shortcut to the place and walking up the empty street that ran near his school, he bumped into Shinji Mimura.

"Sugi! What's up?"

Hiroki cringed inwardly at the nickname, but said "nothing much" back at Shinji. The star athlete of the class was a friend, after all. The king of basketball and sexism, Takako had once sneeringly called him. He had talked Hiroki into joining his basketball team a while ago.

"Just came back from practice, bro," Shinji said. He wore jeans, basketball jersey and his ever-present sunglasses. "And where you headed to?"

"Takako's place. I've nothing else to do."

"Me neither, now think about it."

And before he knew it, Shinji had invited himself over to the Chigusa home and started walking with him down the street. Hiroki had a hunch that the all-star jock had set his sights on Takako and would try to get into her pants. And he's nothing if not persistent, Hiroki thought. As the two were walking on, he started telling Hiroki about the last of his conquests. Chisato Matsui, from their Third Year class. "She was in love with me for the longest time, you know. You think Chisato's shy, but she really is smoking hot," Shinji smiled. "Small round tits. Long hair, down to her ass."

For some reason, Hiroki started thinking of Kayoko Kotohiki. They had been in the same class for two years, but he noticed her for the first time after his kung fu practice last week. On the floor below his dojo, there were classes in flower-arrangement. And there she was behind the window, a girl tending to her flowers, with her adorable large eyes and a smile that seemed to glow.

Hiroki had awkwardly started to talk to her yesterday. I'm hopeless with women, he had told himself again, for the hundredth time. Hanging around playboys like Shinji Mimura made him feel even more pathetic and inadequate. He asked Kayoko how her flower-arranging was going, and told her funny stories about Shuya's and Yutaka's antics, sanitizing them tastefully. He never mentioned Shinji at all, because women liked Shinji and he had an urge to keep all women he met as far away from Shinji as possible, even in conversation.

"…and here we are," the man himself said. Hiroki hadn't even noticed they were at Takako's house already. It was a small suburban house, like most in Shiroiwa, but had a shady green garden. This place was practically a second home to Hiroki. They rang the doorbell and the door was answered by Ayako, the little sister.

"Hi there, is Taka at home?"

It turned out she was at her track practice and would return home in a few hours, so Hiroki and Shinji walked upstairs. The dog Hanako was barking somewhere in the house. They decided to hang out in Takako's bedroom, where the walls covered with music and movie posters, track shorts were strewn on the carpeted floor, and the whole room had that sweet smell of Takako.

"Sugi, look at this," Shinji smirked. Lying on Takako's bed with nothing to do, Shinji had started rummaging through her drawers. Unsurprisingly, he had located the underwear drawer with an uncanny speed, pulling out a pair of pink panties and sniffing at the crotch.

If the owner of those panties was here, Hiroki thought, she'd castrate him and feed him his own balls.

"Now, where's her dirty laundry baskets?"

"I don't know."

"That's bullshit, Sugi." He smacked him playfully. "I bet you do."

Suddenly inspired, Shinji walked out into the hallway and opened a few presses. He soon gave up and returned to the bedroom. "Nothing there. Still, some nice panties in here, huh?" Shinji raised one eyebrow in that casual way he always did. Hiroki rolled his eyes but said nothing. He continued rummaging through the sexy collection of underwear. Soon he held up another pair, a black thong this time. Shinji stared at it, as if he was mentally trying to visualize the image of Takako's ass in it. Hiroki refused to comment, looking in the other direction.

"Ever seen her wearing it?" When no answer came, Shinji sighed and looked him in the eyes. "Alright, I'm sorry, Sugi. I know, you and her are really close friends." He patted him on the shoulder as a gesture of token apology. "Sorry about that."

Hiroki uneasily tapped his nose. He could almost hear Takako going, stop that goddamn tapping. He was not sure whether he was more ashamed of Shinji for leering like this at his closest friend's private things, or of himself for sitting there passively and allowing this behavior. Instead of answering, he went over to Takako's music collection and put on a song on the speakers. It was an old rock song from the eighties, now banned in the Greater East Asia Republic.

"Doesn't she have any real music? No jazz, no soul classics, nothing American? Nope, only brain-dead Japanese rock."

Shinji began mock dancing to the sound of the guitars, rolling his eyes and shaking his hips. Jazz was his thing; he was often a snob about music (he could argue with the aspiring rocker Shuya for hours about this). He then picked up Takako's panties and put them on, over his own jeans.

"Mim, stop it, I mean it – "

There was a noise through the music, but Shinji was making his sarcastic dance moves to the rhythm, wearing the girl's panties, until the door swung open in front of him.

"What's going on?" A man was standing in the entrance. It was Takako's father. "What the hell are you two doing?"

The smug playboy of Shiroiwa had no words to explain himself with now. Shinji's eyes widened in shock and his mouth dropped open, before he put on a careless (but unconvincing) it's-a-joke-between-us-guys expression. He began slowly pulling the panties off himself. "I'm sorry, Mr. Chigusa…we're just having a joke here. Haw haw haw." He added a forced stage laugh.

"Is this your idea of humor? Going through someone's personal items? ACTING LIKE AN ANIMAL IN MY DAUGHTER'S UNDERPANTS!"

It was that part that got to Hiroki. He felt his knees give way as he collapsed to the floor, laughing. He had never laughed harder in his life. Hiroki couldn't control himself; he could feel his face go redder than a tomato as he was wracked by hysterical spasms of joy.

"And what the hell are you giggling at, Sugimura?" Mr. Chigusa turned to Hiroki, snarling with anger at how his daughter's best friend had tolerated this obscene behavior. "You're Takako's friend! You think this is fucking funny? Watching this sick, cross-dressing queer dancing around?"

Once more, Hiroki was in tears of laughter and could hardly breathe.

"I'm sorry…" Shinji said again, timidly, both trying to suppress a laugh of his own and blushing scarlet with genuine humiliation.

"Fucking sorry, are you? Get out, both of you. I thought you were better than this, Sugimura." He glared angrily at Shinji again. "And you're lucky I'm not reporting you to the cops."

They didn't wait for Takako to come home from track practice.

Instead, they got up and left the house, getting barked at by the dog and Mr. Chigusa following them to the door and urging them out. The man was completely oblivious to the fact that he was carrying Takako's panties around with him the whole time, clenched hard in his fist.

And I'll be the one to face Hurricane Takako's rage tomorrow, how fun for me, Hiroki brooded.

He and Shinji went to the only burger joint in Shiroiwa, which lay down the street. As they sat down at a table and finished drinking their sodas, Hiroki finally stopped tapping his nose and broke the awkward silence: "Sorry I didn't warn you, Mim. It was the music. One minute no sign, the next he's standing there and watching your little dance. But at least you got into Taka's pants…in a way."

"Good for a laugh, though," Shinji shrugged. "Did you see his face?"

"No. Did you see yours?"

"Right!" They both exploded with laughter once again.