there was one other time when someone touched his face in that way.

it happened when he was 12 years old, and his cousin from Japan was 11. both he and she were "encumbered" by younger siblings, him his younger sister, and she her younger (and, as it would turn out, mentally challenged) brother. but the "youngsters" were occupying themselves with the television in the other room, and while they were an open doorway away, they might as well have been in another world.

he didn't know why, but he had been lying on the hotel floor, absorbing the smell of a strange room in a strange place. the ceiling above was dark (the lights of the bedroom were off), and his face no doubt looked strange from above, a landscape shadowed by the scant light streaming in through the doorway. she was on the bed itself, bathed in darkness, and he wasn't certain of it, but it seemed as though the silhouette of her head, creeping over the edge of the bed, held eyes intent and quietly curious.

he had closed his eyes for just a moment it seemed, and then he felt it. a touch like warm rain, tracing the contours of his face, running across the high places (the summit of his nose), draining into the valleys (his canthuses, his mentolabial groove), ending, and staying, on the kissing point of his lips. there, the fingertips (for fingertips it was) pressed softly but insistently, as though desiring entrance.

he opened his eyes then, and broke his lips into a nervous smile. he couldn't tell clearly (her head just a silhouette), but he imagined he saw her expression, not smiling in kind, but simply watching, waiting, like a cat, curious...

so as other fingertips traced the same lines, in the same way, he instantly remembered that half-forgotten time, that strange seduction before he or she knew what anything meant...