The Tokyo Guide Who Wasn’t in the Contract

Landing at Tokyo airport was a relief after sixteen hours of flying. I’d had a layover in Bangkok, a stop of almost ten hours that had left my body wrecked. Luckily, my frequent-flyer card got me into the VIP lounge: a shower, a hot dinner, a couple of whiskies, and an armchair where I slept for three hours straight. By the time the final flight took off, I was almost human again.

I was traveling on half-power in Business Class, so I was one of the first to get off. I crossed the terminal, dragging my suitcase over the immaculate floors all Japanese airports seem to have, with one thought in my head: taxi and bed. The company had booked me into the Sakura Hotel, right in the middle of Shinjuku’s business district, so I wouldn’t waste time commuting. It was the typical Japanese four-star: quiet, minimalist, with that almost monastic energy good hotels have when everything is exactly where it ought to be.

And there, at the entrance, just as I was paying for the taxi with my phone, I saw her.

It was hard to guess her age, although from her gaze and the way she carried herself, she was clearly a fully grown woman, the kind who already knew exactly what she wanted. Very fair skin, petite, but with a figure that drew attention without being showy. She wore a grayish-blue dress, soberly cut, clinging to her hips in a way that made it impossible not to notice her. Our eyes locked for barely a second, something electric, and when I entered the lobby and turned my head, she was gone.

I didn’t think much more of it. I went up to my room, drank a whisky from the minibar, and fell asleep on top of the bed without taking off my shoes.

***

The next morning, a phone call woke me. A woman’s voice, with a pronounced Japanese accent but surprisingly fluent Spanish. Mr. Tanaka wouldn’t be able to meet me until the afternoon. I had the whole day free.

I showered, put on the most comfortable clothes I could find in my suitcase, and went down to the lobby.

There she was.

Sitting in one of the café’s armchairs, this time in a dark-gray pantsuit, perfectly pressed, very corporate. As soon as she saw me, she stood and walked toward me with a restrained smile that didn’t quite become a smile.

Her name was Aiko. She was Mr. Tanaka’s granddaughter, and her grandfather had sent her to accompany me on my day off. Fifteen minutes later, we were in a black van with tinted windows, on our way to the Meiji Shrine.

Sitting beside her in the back seat, it was hard not to notice her legs. She crossed them with a naturalness that seemed practiced. Her skirt had ridden up enough to reveal the lace of a black garter belt, just for an instant, before she noticed and quickly tugged the fabric back down. When I raised my eyes, hers were waiting for me. We both looked toward our respective windows. The silence inside the van had a weight of its own, and beneath my trousers my cock began to move on its own, that image of the black lace fixed in my mind.

The rest of the day was a wordless negotiation. At the shrine, our arms brushed as we walked. At the fish market, her fingers grazed mine when she pointed something out on a sign. At Harajuku’s busiest crossing, amid all the chaos, Aiko moved close to me to avoid being swept away by the crowd, and her shoulder pressed against my chest. Neither of us moved until the light changed.

It was a strange tension. Not aggressive. Almost ceremonial.

At dusk, while we drank green tea in a garden I wouldn’t know how to find again even if someone paid me, Aiko looked straight at me for the first time without looking away.

—Daniel-san, have you ever been to an onsen?

I hadn’t.

—There’s one nearby. It’s konyoku, mixed. If you want to experience the real Japan... —She left the sentence unfinished. But the message was clear enough.

***

We arrived by way of a path of uneven stones lined with paper lanterns. The place was discreet, almost invisible from the street. An elderly woman greeted us with a bow and led us to separate rooms to undress. I was given a small towel, and they explained with gestures that I had to shower before entering, then pointed me toward the outdoor pool.

The water was at a temperature hovering on the edge of tolerability. I eased myself in, rested the back of my neck against the stone rim, and let the steam envelop me. Night had fallen, and between the trees, the sky was that deep indigo shade seen only far from the cities.

I heard the sound of water shifting.

Aiko entered without the slightest hesitation. Completely naked, with the same naturalness she’d shown when she sat in that lobby armchair that morning. She stepped into the water without looking at me, settled at the opposite end, and closed her eyes.

I didn’t close mine.

She had small, firm breasts, with large, dark areolas, nipples already hardening in the cold air before the hot water swallowed them. The figure hinted at by the pantsuit was exactly what I’d imagined: a narrow waist, genuinely curved hips, long legs that took on an almost dazzling whiteness beneath the water. A short, dark strip of hair, trimmed nearly flush, framed the slit of her pussy, which the water never quite managed to conceal. I felt my cock hardening beneath the surface, thick and taut, pointing toward her like an undisguised compass.

Aiko opened one eye, then the other. She said nothing. Bracing her hands against the edge, she gently propelled herself through the water until she was half a meter from me. It wasn’t a questioning look. It was an answer.

She moved closer, slipped her arms around my neck, and kissed me with a calmness that belied the tension accumulated throughout the entire day. Her tongue entered my mouth unhurriedly, tracing my teeth, playing with mine. Beneath the water, her hand found me without searching, as if she knew exactly where I was. When her fingers closed around my cock, rational thought evaporated along with the onsen steam. She began to jerk me off very slowly, her fist tight, sliding the skin up and down at a rhythm that forced me to breathe through my mouth against her lips.

—You’re very hard, Daniel-san —she whispered in my ear, and that “hard” spoken with her accent went straight through my back.

I slid my hand beneath the water, over her flat belly, and down until I found her pussy. It was hot even inside the hot water, slippery in a different way. I spread her lips with my fingers and searched for her clitoris. When I found it, Aiko gave the slightest start and tightened her fingers around my cock. I began rubbing it in circles, first with my thumb, then sliding two fingers inside her while continuing to stimulate her clit with the base of my hand. She was incredibly tight. Her inner muscles squeezed my fingers as if they didn’t want to let them go.

—Mmm... —she made a sound for the first time, brief, swallowing it as soon as it escaped.

I lifted her slightly and sat her on my thigh, continuing to work her pussy with one hand while she kept jerking me off. I licked her neck, bit her earlobe, sucked one nipple when it surfaced from the water, and felt her entire belly contract in a wave. She didn’t come yet, but she was close. She knew how to hold herself back. She pulled away, smiled at me with that restrained smile, and climbed out of the water, tugging me along by the hand.

We stayed like that for a long while, barely moving, exploring each other with our hands while the hot water made everything slower and more intense. I caressed her nipples until I felt them stiffen beneath my fingers. I traced her waist, her hips, the insides of her thighs. She responded with that same economy of movement she’d used all day: no excess, no hurry, with a precision that left me not knowing what to expect.

***

A woman who appeared without making a sound led us to a small room, as if this were part of the usual service. The room contained a futon on the floor, candlelight, and nothing else. The temperature was exactly what a body needs after leaving hot water.

I lay down. Aiko knelt between my legs with the same calmness she’d brought to everything else. Candlelight outlined her curves and left a wet sheen on her skin. I saw her pussy open between her thighs, still glistening from the onsen, and my cock stretched hard again, pointing toward the ceiling.

She started with my abdomen. Slowly, with her mouth, she moved downward, without the slightest hurry. She licked my navel, barely bit the skin beneath my hip, and licked my groin as well. When she reached where she had to, she first ran her tongue along the entire length of my cock, from the base to the glans, very slowly, looking at me. Then she sucked my balls, one by one, taking them completely into her mouth. Finally, she wrapped her lips around my head and sank down until I felt the back of her throat.

What she had was a technique that didn’t try to impress. It was attentive. She sucked with her whole mouth, not just her lips, her tongue wrapping around the glans every time she rose, one hand working along the base. Slow when I tensed, deeper when I relaxed. She pulled my cock completely from her mouth to spit a strand of saliva over it, then lowered herself again to my throat, without gagging, without drama, with an efficiency that had my heels digging into the futon. She gently pressed my hands against the futon, as if asking me to stay still, and I obeyed without thinking about it. From time to time, her eyes rose to meet mine, dark and bright in the candlelight, and that look, with my cock sliding in and out of her mouth, was almost more intense than everything else.

—Aiko, if you keep that up, I’m going to come in your mouth —I told her in a hoarse voice.

She stopped, pulled my cock from her mouth with a wet sound, held it in her hand, and licked the tip as if savoring something sweet.

—Not yet —she replied.

Before I lost control, she sat up.

She knelt over me, looking straight at me. Carefully, she positioned herself, gripped my cock with her hand, ran the glans several times over the lips of her pussy to wet it, found the right angle, and slowly lowered herself. The sensation was so intense I had to clench my jaw. She was very tight, and her body took a moment to adjust to mine, drawing me in inch by inch until her ass settled fully onto my thighs and I felt completely buried inside her. She tipped her head back, revealing the line of her neck, and began moving in slow circles.

My hands found her hips on their own. I squeezed her thighs whenever the movement drew a sound from her that she tried to suppress. I looked up at her: her breasts moving only slightly with the rhythm of her hips, her erect nipples pointing at me, her belly contracting every time she rose and fell over my cock. I pinched both nipples at once, and she bit her lower lip.

The room was silent except for that: her ragged breathing, the faint creak of the futon, the soft, wet sound of our bodies every time she let herself drop completely and her pussy sucked my cock all the way to the root. I watched her slit open around my cock whenever she rose, shining with her juices, then swallow it again when she descended.

She leaned forward and sought my mouth. The kiss was different from the one in the onsen. More urgent. She dug her nails into my shoulders, and the rhythm of her hips became more direct, more determined. She fucked with her hips, not her whole body, with metronomic precision, rising until only the tip remained inside and dropping herself all the way down.

—Don’t stop —she asked in my ear. Her voice was low, that accent which had seemed charming to me all day and which, at that moment, was completely undoing me—. Fuck me, Daniel-san. Harder.

I turned her carefully and ended up on top of her. I raised her legs, those white legs that had kept me awake in the van that morning, and rested them on my shoulders. From that angle, I drove into her all the way in a single thrust. Aiko closed her eyes and arched her back off the futon. I pushed harder, setting the rhythm this time, watching my cock enter and leave that tight pussy that completely enveloped it. I gripped her hips and lifted her slightly off the futon to drive into her from above, letting my entire weight fall with every thrust.

Aiko didn’t scream. She clenched her teeth and breathed through her nose with the restraint that had already become a defining trait, but her body didn’t lie: it tensed and relaxed in waves I could feel from inside her. I slid one hand from her thigh to her pubis and found her clitoris with my thumb. As soon as I rubbed it in time with my thrusts, I saw her fists tighten in the sheet.

—Yes, there, there —she said, and it was the first time I’d heard her lose control of her voice.

I released her legs, lay down over her, and slipped an arm beneath her back to press her against me. I fucked her like that, body against body, my mouth at her neck, feeling her breasts flattened against mine and her nails digging into my back. She moved her hips beneath me, meeting me with every thrust, with that silent surrender that was a thousand times more obscene than any scream.

When she reached the limit, she did so in almost total silence. A tremor ran through her legs, her hands clutched the futon fabric, her eyes squeezed shut. Her inner muscles contracted around my cock in rhythmic spasms, squeezing me so tightly I could barely keep moving, and that was enough for me to surrender too. I pulled out of her just in time, gripped my cock, and came over her belly and breasts, thick, hot jets of semen falling between her nipples and into her navel. Aiko opened her eyes, looked at her covered body, and for the first time all night she smiled without restraint as she gathered some of my come with two fingers and brought them to her mouth.

I let myself fall beside her with a sound I made no attempt to control, feeling my own heartbeat as each residual spasm passed through both of us on that futon in the heart of Tokyo.

***

We lay still for a few minutes. The wooden ceiling. The smell of the onsen and candles. Both our breathing gradually settling into something resembling normal.

Then Aiko got up without saying a word, brought two glasses of water from somewhere, sat cross-legged beside the futon, and looked at me with an expression that was neither entirely serious nor entirely a joke.

—Mr. Tanaka is a very traditional man —she said—. If he knew how I’d spent the afternoon, he’d fire me as a guide.

I laughed. It was the first time I’d laughed all day.

—Do you do this with all your grandfather’s clients?

She looked at me for a moment without answering. Then she smiled, and it was the first completely open smile I’d seen from her in twelve hours.

—You’re the first one who hasn’t asked my age in the car.

I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing. I returned her gaze, and she held it without looking away, and at that moment the silence was not uncomfortable at all.

***

That night I had dinner with Mr. Tanaka, signed the papers I needed to sign, and shook the hand of the man who had sent me his granddaughter as a tour guide. Aiko was present throughout dinner, translating, serving tea, impeccable in a kimono that gave away nothing.

Not once did she look at me more than she should have.

In the taxi back to the hotel, I watched Tokyo’s lights pass by the window and thought about how much can fit into a day when you begin without expectations. Business meetings last as long as they last. Cities are forgotten when you’ve taken too many trips.

But some things remain etched with an inexplicable precision. The edge of a black garter belt in the back seat of a van. A look from the opposite end of a thermal bath. The taste of my own come on the lips of a woman who barely spoke my language.

I still think about it sometimes.