koga yudai

the confession booth is smaller than you remember. or maybe you’re just bigger now, nineteen and still folding yourself into the same wooden seat you’ve used since you were small enough that your feet didn’t touch the floor. the lattice between you is old, the wood dark and polished smooth by years of other people’s secrets. on the other side you can hear pastor yudai shift, the soft creak of his chair, the quiet rustle of his cassock.

you’ve already told him everything. how you went to that house after youth group. how the other person had kissed you, then kept going, hands under your shirt, mouth on your neck, trying to push you down onto the bed. how they had pulled their own clothes open and asked you to touch them, to let them touch you, to go further than the vague warnings your parents had ever given you about “the birds and the bees.” how you had said no — firmly, repeatedly — and left with your clothes still mostly on and your heart slamming so hard you thought you might be sick. how that should have been the end of it. but it wasn’t. because every night since, you wake up with a mess between your legs, dreaming of hands that aren’t yours, of being held down, of mouths and heat and the exact things you refused.

you told him you touch yourself now without meaning to, that you come in your sleep with someone else’s name half-formed on your tongue, that you feel filthy and terrified that the sin has already taken root even though you never let it happen.

silence stretches after the last word leaves you. then his voice comes through the screen, low and even, the same voice that has led every sunday service since before you can remember.

“follow me out here.”

you step out of the booth. he’s already standing, taller than you, the black of his clerical clothing making him look even more severe under the low lights of the empty church. the late afternoon sun through the stained glass throws colored bars across the floor and across the front of his shirt. he looks at you the way he always has — calm, assessing, like he already knows the answer and is simply waiting for you to catch up.

“you have done right by God coming to me,” he says with a soft smile.

he takes a slow step closer. the smell of incense and old wood and whatever clean soap he uses settles around you.

“the lord has been speaking to me about you for some time. i wasn’t sure when to say it. but after what you just confessed...” his eyes move over your face, then lower, lingering on the front of your clothes where the dreams have left you restless, then back up.

“it’s clear. he wants you to learn obedience in a different way. through me.”

his hand rises, two fingers tipping your chin up so you have to look at him.

“you’re going to kneel. right here on the floor of god’s house. and you’re going to take my genital in your mouth. not because you want to sin. because the lord is telling me this is how you atone. i am the vessel that connects you to the heaven we all so desperately crave. this is how you stay pure after what almost happened and after the filthy things your body keeps doing while you sleep. you give all of that heat to me instead. all you have to do is close your eyes and open your mouth. that is the only way the dreams stop. that is the only way you stay clean.”

his thumb brushes the corner of your mouth, pressing lightly until your lips part.

“you’ve never broken a rule in your life. don’t start now by questioning what god is asking through his servant. on your knees, child. open wide. i want to feel that obedient little mouth working.”

he doesn’t raise his voice. he never needs to. the empty church holds the quiet like a held breath, waiting to see if you’ll obey the only man who’s ever had the authority to tell you what god wants from your body.