The Japanese Way

F+/f - Molly visits Japan on an exchange trip. Her host, Akane, along with her mother and sister, soon teach her the Japanese way. 43k words.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Copyright © 2021 themaneloco

The Japanese Way

As I walked into the arrival hall, wheeling my trolley filled with luggage, I couldn’t believe I’d actually had the courage to go through with it. All my life, growing up, I’d been a shy introvert that lacked the conviction to bring my dreams to reality. However, there I was, finally outside of my comfort zone and about to embark on an adventure.

I was to spend the whole summer in Japan via an exchange programme. I honestly couldn’t believe how lucky I was for being granted the opportunity. I’d never before left the same all-American town that I’d been born and raised. Up until a few months before, I didn’t even have my own passport. Everything was moving so fast but I was excited beyond belief.

I’d been waiting in the airport for at least half an hour by that point, nervously fidgeting on the spot in anxious anticipation of my host family coming to collect me. I’d expected them to be waiting for me but it appeared they were running late. I’d read about them a little when the offer had originally come up and we’d exchanged a few polite emails. They seemed almost as excited as I was at the opportunity. In the months since being accepted I’d been practising my Japanese; however, my progress had been minimal and I knew only a handful of phrases.

“Kon'nichiwa,” I said out loud. I’d been practising the greeting during the flight over and finally I had mastered it. “Kon'nichiwa. Kon'nichiwa. Kon'nichiwa,” I said over and over again in my American drawl, causing a nearby Japanese woman to stare at me curiously as if I was a malfunctioning robot.

“Kon'nichiwa,” she finally said with a polite nod, before turning and leaving me all alone. As she waltzed away I noticed just how slender and diminutive she was. A quick glance around the arrival hall confirmed that the majority of Japanese women returning to their country were slim in appearance. The realisation led me to feeling out of place and vulnerable. I wasn’t fat by any measure, but I was often referred to as ‘big-boned’ by my friends and family, particularly my wide shoulders and square jaw-line. I was slightly overweight, plump I’d like to say, but I wasn’t about to go on a diet. Running laps of the track during gym class was never my forte either. I was more a shot-put kind of girl. I wasn’t at all self-conscious about my weight as I’d always felt comfortable in my body, however, these Japanese women were ridiculously svelte to a model standard and for the first time in my life a few doubts began to seep into my confidence. I wasn’t fat, but compared to these women, I absolutely looked like I was fat.

I looked beyond the waiting crowd behind the barrier, and noticed three women stood near the airport exit. I was completing the exchange with a young girl named Akane, but from our emails, I knew that she lived with her mother and younger sister. I was to spend the summer in Japan, and the next year, she was to come over to USA. The programme was marketed as a cultural-exchange, the sort that bordered on an au pair situation rather than an educational endeavour, though of course without any of the childcare responsibilities. I’d always been fascinated by Japan, especially as it was featured in movies and the like. Two of my favourites were Kill Bill and The Last Samurai, and I was hopeful that the reality of Japan would mirror those amazing scenes I’d witnessed onscreen. The opportunity had seemed a no-brainer and my parents had been all for it.

Akane was of similar age to myself, both of us being in our early twenties, though, from the photos she’d uploaded to her profile on the exchange web site, she looked a couple of years younger. In all of her photos she had long, dark hair and wore thick black-rimmed glasses. As one of the women near the exit matched this description, I figured this was probably them and made my way over. This was confirmed as I approached, as the pretty girl I reasoned to be Akane was holding a small sign with my name written on. Immediately I noted how petite they all were, and I must have stood a couple of inches taller.

“Kon'nichiwa,” I said with a smile as I wheeled up with my trolley. “I’m Molly.”

Akane looked even younger in person than her photos. I think it was a combination of the glasses and the braces lining her teeth. Her appearance was almost stereotypically nerd-like, though, from our discussions, I knew her to be a confident and popular girl. Her outfit certainly communicated that, as she was wearing a pink one-piece that branched into shorts. Her skinny legs led down to a pair of ankle socks and battered, old Converse with laces darkened to a dirty grey. “Kon'nichiwa, Molly,” she said and she almost gave a little excited jump on the spot. “Welcome to Japan.”

I was confused for a moment as I glanced between the three of them, as they appeared like sisters and similar in age. “Kon'nichiwa, Molly,” the tallest one said with a slight nod of her head. It was only when I heard her voice that I realised she was their mother. I was caught off-guard for a moment because she almost looked like she was the same age as me, but I was pretty sure that Akane had mentioned her mother, Saori, was in her forties during her emails. She was a youthful beauty, with flawless pale skin and not a wrinkle in sight. Even the way she dressed betrayed her age; a quiet black sweater, above a bright pink ankle-length skirt, from which a pair of old sneakers were poking out of the bottom. She seemed almost hip, if I had to pick a word to describe her, which was a far comparison from my own mother who dressed straight out of the nineteen-fifties with blouses and broaches.

The third girl, who appeared to be the youngest, though slightly taller than Akane, hadn’t even looked up to acknowledge me. She was too distracted by her phone and for my entire walk over and greeting, she’d paid me no mind at all. It made sense of course, Akane had mentioned she was nineteen in her emails, so her world was probably boys and social media. I imagined the life of a teenager in Japan was pretty similar to USA.

“Matsuri-chan,” her mother said with a nudge in the young girl’s arm.

It was only at this point that she looked up startled from her phone and I was greeted with her sharp beauty for the first time. Her eyes were large and wide, at the centre of an almost heart-shaped face. Her black hair was the longest of the trio, descending straight down beyond her shoulders and breasts. Her style seemed relaxed, yet elegant, with a loose-fitting dress that came to just above her knees. As a result, her smooth, skinny legs were completely on show, with similar white ankle socks and Converse to her sister. Was this what entailed Japanese fashion? “Kon'nichiwa,” she said in a disinterested tone, and following a lazy smile, she returned her attention to her phone.

I felt very out of place, as the three of them were extremely attractive, where as I was more of a plain girl. Sure, I could scrub up quite well when I put the effort in but I was nothing in comparison to the three Japanese women before me. Merely being in their presence was enough to rattle me and I suddenly felt uneasy about having to spend the summer with them. Flustered, I attempted to impress them with more of my learned phrases by saying, “Sayonara.”

Saori dipped her head to the side with a questioning expression, then she glanced at Akane who returned an equally baffled look.

Matsuri, however, guffawed at my demonstration of Japanese terminology. She momentarily glanced up from her phone and rolled her eyes at me. “Sayonara, Molly,” she said, before following it with another chuckle. “I hope you enjoyed Japan,” she added in perfect English. “It is a shame you couldn’t stay longer.”

Akane and her mother began talking in Japanese in a flurry and the words were beyond my comprehension. Occasionally they would smile and laugh with Akane glancing my way shortly after. All the while, Matsuri shook her head while listening to the conversation.

“You don’t speak Japanese, Molly?” Saori finally asked, again, in perfect English just as Matsuri had done. She looked genuinely confused.

“Umm, no, sorry, only a few words.” I suddenly felt completely out of my depth. I had imagined that Akane had been using a translator for her emails and I hadn’t even considered that the three of them would be able to speak English so well. I had figured that their English would be on par with my Japanese, and we would spend the summer hilariously misunderstanding and communicating via hand signals. However, it was evident that I was completely wrong. I felt ridiculous with my bumbling attempts at their language, while they had a perfect command on my own. Of course, it would make things easier knowing they could understand me, but still, it was flat-out embarrassing to arrive so ill-prepared.

Saori crossed her arms over her chest and looked me dead in the eye. “I suppose we will have to speak English all summer.” She wasn’t rude, but the disappointment was clear in her voice.

“It’s okay,” Akane interjected with a wide smile, fully showing off the braces lining her teeth. “I can practise my English all summer.” She glanced at her mother with a little grin. “And I can teach Molly all about Japanese culture.”

Saori appeared unconvinced. “I find it odd that you chose to come to Japan if you can’t speak any Japanese.” Eventually she sighed and shrugged. “Akane-chan, you will have to chaperone her everywhere. She will struggle on her own.”

“Of course,” Akane said with enthusiasm. She stepped towards me and linked arms. “We will be the best of friends. I’ll take you all over Tokyo. When you return to USA, you will be an expert in Japanese culture.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling the need to explain myself to the older woman. “I ain’t very good at learning new languages.”

Saori grimaced, then spoke in a monotone voice, “It should be: ‘I’m not adept at learning new languages,’ Molly.”

“Including your own apparently,” Matsuri added with a snigger. She rolled her eyes at her mother and shook her head in disbelief.

“Ummm.” I was lost for words as everything suddenly felt incredibly hostile. I actually glanced towards the departure board and wondered whether it was too late for me to change my mind and return home. I felt attacked and demeaned and didn’t like it at all. I couldn’t believe how rude they were being, considering we had only just met and I’d been nothing but cheerful and friendly. Okay, I accepted it was pretty bad that I could barely speak any of their language, but still, there was no need for the arrogance and cruelty. I had to actually suck in a huge breath to avoid tears spilling from my eyes.

Thankfully, I felt Akane squeeze my hand and she was looking at me with kindness and compassion. “Don’t worry, Molly,” she said. “I will help you. By the end of summer, I am sure you will be proficient in the Japanese way!”

Akane nudged me aside and took over the trolley duty, directing us out of the airport while the three of us followed, mostly in silence.

It was Saori that occasionally asked questions, which were mostly the intrusively prying type. “What do your parents do for a living, Molly?”

“Um, my father is a garbage collector and my mother is a housewife.”

Saori raised her eyebrows, followed by a slight nod of her head. “Would you like to be a housewife when you’re older?”

“I’m not sure,” I said in all honesty.

“Do you know how to care for a house?”

“Well, I do my share of chores back home.”

“So, you are not afraid of work?”

“Not at all, I’m happy to help out around the house, ma’am.”

This made the older woman smile and she hailed down a taxi.

Once we arrived at their home, which was far different to any I’d ever seen back in the US, Matsuri said something in Japanese to her mother, then skipped away down the street. I took in the architecture, there were lots of thin walls and triangular roofs. The garden appealed to me most, being well-taken care of with lots of little rocks, plants and trees. At its centre was a pretty pond with a few fish swimming along.

“Please could you bring your luggage,” Saori said, which made sense since my bag was so heavy and I was the largest of us all there. She then said something to Akane in Japanese, and the girl nodded and beckoned me to follow with her finger.

As we entered the house, Akane kicked off her Converse and slipped her feet into a pair of old, fluffy slippers. I noticed Saori did the same thing, though she wore a pair of sandals. I was about to enter when Akane stopped me with a raised palm. “Shoes off in the house, Molly,” she said. “It is the Japanese way.”

I bent to take my shoes off, but realised there were no slippers for me. I was too shy to ask, so I just walked in wearing only my socks.

Akane led me upstairs along a hard-wood corridor while Saori followed behind us. “Mother room. Matsuri room. Guest room. Washroom,” Akane said, with a dismissive point at each door. I glanced at the guest room and wondered whether I should leave my luggage outside while she gave me the full tour. When we came to a door at the end of the hallway, she spun and smiled. “And our room, Molly! You will be rooming with me.”

“Awesome,” I said with a smile. Being an only child, I’d never enjoyed the feeling of having siblings. I’d stayed over friend’s houses a couple of times, but it never felt the same as I imagined it would with a sister. Plus, it was only ever for a single night. I was actually going to be having a sleep-over for the next few months and the thought was terribly exciting.

I turned to smile at Saori and she politely nodded in return. “You are welcome in our home, Molly,” she said. “Akane-chan is excited to have you here.”

Akane led me past an extravagant king-sized bed, to something on the floor. “This is where you will be sleeping,” she said, as she gave the make-shift bed a kick with her slipper. It was one of those singular fold-out seats that had been covered with a sheet and had an old, misshaped pillow at its head. Messily thrown over the top was an unzipped sleeping bag.

I looked down at the offering. It was the sort of thing you’d expect in a vagrant shelter, not for a guest. For all intents and purposes, I’d basically be sleeping on the floor. I was hesitant to complain, after all, I’d only been in their house for a couple of minutes and I didn’t want to insult their hospitality. However, this was just too much. “Umm, I thought I would have my own bed,” I said. “That’s what it said in the programme material…” I looked over at Saori who was leaning against the doorframe.

She raised an eyebrow then pointed at the sheets on the floor and shrugged. “Bed,” she said, blankly. Before I could question any further, she’d already turned and left the room in a huff. I was immediately concerned I’d insulted her.

Akane’s face dropped to a frown. “You don’t like it, Molly?”

I looked at her sad little face and was worried I’d offended her, which hadn’t been my intention. “I mean, I suppose it’s okay,” I lied. “It’s just not what I’m used to.” I glanced at Akane’s huge bed with the solid-mahogany frame that bordered its base and a mattress about a foot in thickness. I then looked at the tiny girl and imagined her snuggly asleep at its centre without a care in the world. I looked back to my bed and could already feel my back cramping from the thought of having to balance on that thing all night. “It’s just a bit small.”

“We have another room with a real bed,” she said. “But, I just thought it would be more fun if we roomed together. We can gossip, watch movies and play games and stuff.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I could detect an underlying genuine intention to her words and I felt bad that I’d thrown them all back in her face. What she’d suggested did actually sound considerate and fun. I imagined it would be rather lonely in a room all on my own. At least here, I could settle in and feel welcomed by her. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.” I wheeled my suitcase next to my bed. “I can sleep here.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” She took a seat on her own bed, resting her butt on the wooden frame that poked out beneath the mattress. “I was excited and didn’t consider you wouldn’t like it.” Her lip had seemed to thicken in a sulk.

“No,” I said frantically. “I do like it. I swear, Akane. I’ll be happy to sleep down on the floor.” I paused after I said the words and realised how they sounded.

“That would make me very happy,” she said with a little smile.

I felt flustered an uneasy after accidentally offending her, and especially Saori. “Could I use the restroom, please?” I asked.

“Yes, you remember which it is?”

Once inside the restroom, I sat on the unopened lavatory and took a deep breath. It was nice to be alone for a moment as I seemed to be making a total mess of things. I fanned my hand against my neck, which was glistening in sweat from my mishap. I could tell that all three of my hosts were disappointed in my behaviour and attitude. I was trying my best, but whatever I decided to say seemed to be the wrong choice. I had big hopes about my time in Japan, but everything was going downhill rapidly. I had some kind of talent for accidentally offending them, despite my best intentions.

I splashed some water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror. “Come on, Molly,” I said to my reflection. “You’ve been so brave so far. Don’t give up now.” These were just teething problems after all and things were always awkward in the beginning, right? I had a whole summer in Japan ahead of me! It was about time I let excitement take over rather than dwelling over my mistakes.

I walked back into Akane’s bedroom with a renewed skip in my step. Positivity, that’s what I was going to be all about from then on. However, my new attitude lasted a whole ten seconds before my eyes were drawn to the end of Akane’s bed. She was no longer sat there, and was instead sat up in the middle and resting her back comfortably against a pile of colourful, fluffy cushions. But that wasn’t what was drawing my attention. She had kicked off her tatty slippers and had her socked feet crossed up on a pillow. From the state of the thing I immediately knew it was my pillow. The soles of her white, ankle socks were darkened from the hours of sweat that must have seeped into them while encased in her old Converse. I just stood there, frozen on the spot, while I watched her grind her heel into my pillow, then change position and place both soles flat until they sank in. I pulled my gaze away to see that Akane was looking at me with a mischievous smirk on her face.

“Is that my pillow?” I asked, hoping that perhaps it was still a mistake.

“What do you mean?” she said without breaking eye contact.

“Why are you rubbing your feet all over it?” I reached out and tugged at the corner, but the pillow was clamped beneath her feet and didn’t budge.

“Oh,” she said, while grinding her toes into the pillow. “I didn’t really think about what I was using. I just needed somewhere to rest my feet.” She continued to rub her socks all over the top of my pillow and gave no impression that she had any intention of stopping.

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t really know what else I could say other than what I already had. I felt awkward and, on the spot, with all of the positivity I’d committed to suddenly evaporating. All the while, Akane held eye contact with me while continuing to drag her socked feet up and down the length of my pillow. That little smirk remained on her face and I saw her eyebrows raise behind her glasses, as if she was satisfied with my lack of action.

While I stood there uncomfortably, Akane reached down and removed each of her socks, all the while maintaining eye contact with me, waiting for my mouth to utter an objection. However, none came. Instead, I remained silent as Akane threw her discarded socks onto my bed, and continued kneading her bare toes into my pillow. I noticed her dainty feet were without polish, though seemed well kept.

There was an uncomfortable quiet in the room, with the only sound being Akane’s bare feet moving on my pillow as she tugged and twisted the fabric between her toes. I could tell a huge moment was brewing. It was almost as if she was testing me and this was the chance for me to stand my ground and prove I had a backbone. There was a risk that my choice of actions could define how the rest of the summer progressed. So, what did I do? Did I stand up for myself and demand she remove her bare feet from my pillow? No, I’m too shy and lacked the confidence for such a confrontation. Like a wimp, I changed the subject. I noticed a bookshelf across the room and pointed towards it, “Wow, you have so many books.”

There was silence from Akane, before she gave a little chuckle. She kicked my pillow off the bed. “Yes, I like to read. Do you like to read, Molly?”

“Sometimes,” I said, while walking over to the shelves. I glanced at the titles and most of them were in Japanese. There were a few in English, though not the sort that would interest me, mostly being educational school stuff.

“Come here, Molly.” Akane tapped the bed with her palm, and I tentatively returned to her and took a seat at her direction. Immediately, she moved up and sat cross-legged so that she was looking straight at me. However, even sat I was left looking down at the smaller girl. “So, why did you come to Japan, Molly?” she asked, the braces on her teeth sparkling beneath the bedroom lamp.

“I wanted to learn and experience your culture.”

Akane’s cute face soured to a frown.

“W-what?” I asked hesitantly.

She tilted her head to the side and sized me up through her thick glasses. “Are you another one of these American girls that watches anime and tells all your friends you’re kawaii?”

“Ummm, no I don’t think that.” I glanced down my plain t-shirt and jeans. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“Are you going to treat our home like a vacation resort?”

“Of course not, I’m very appreciative to you for hosting me, Akane. I’m sorry if you think—”

“Akane-san,” she corrected me with a smile. “Let this be your first lesson in our culture. It’s polite for a foreigner to refer to us as san.”

“I’m sorry, Akane-san,” I said, as I felt my mouth becoming dry. I was extremely uncomfortable now that I was all alone with Akane and she seemed incredibly hostile to my motives for this exchange. Yet, all of the words were spoken with a smile.

“Does that mean I am Molly-san to you?”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, no, Molly. This is only for Japanese. If you asked a Japanese person to call you that, they would think you are making fun of them.”

“Well, I don’t want to do that,” I sighed. The Japanese way appeared to be so complicated.

“So, do you speak any more Japanese?”

I suddenly felt extremely embarrassed. “Ummm, well, I know a couple of phrases to get by. Most I’ve already told you.”

“Oh, hello and goodbye? So, not really any at all then. Would you like to know what your name is in Japanese?”

“Of course,” I said with a smile. “I would love that.”

Akane was quiet for a moment, and her eyes looked off towards the ceiling as if she was thinking. “I guess in Japanese your name would be”—she tapped a finger against her lips—“Mushi!”

“Mushi?” I asked. “Molly is Mushi in Japanese?”

Akane giggled then enthusiastically nodded her head. “Yes, you are a mushi, I believe. Looking at you now”—she squinted her eyes at me through her glasses—“this is how I see you.”

“Mushi,” I said again. I smiled. “I like it. It sounds cute.”

“You should just introduce yourself like that in future. Japanese people will respond really well.”

I nodded. “Kon'nichiwa, Akane-san. My name is Mushi, pleased to meet you.”

Akane covered her hand with her mouth, but I could see that she was trying not to laugh. Her eyes were wrinkled in amusement behind her glasses. “Perfect,” she said eventually after composing herself.

“Did I say kon'nichiwa wrong again?” I asked. It seemed every time I tried to speak Japanese, someone ended up laughing at me or seeming confused.

She reached out and took my hands in her own. I noticed how extreme the contrast was in her skintone, where her pale complexion appeared soft and welcoming next to my natural tan. “No, not at all. We can be good friends, Mushi. I have so much I’d like to teach you about Japanese culture.”

“Yes! Yes, please, Akane-san. That’s why I wanted to do this exchange so badly.”

She leapt from the bed and went over to the bookshelf. I joined her and watched as she ran a finger along each book, looking for something in particular. As I said, most were in Japanese and I couldn’t understand them. I noticed one was a child’s picture book, and I picked it up and had a quick flick through. There were cartoon drawings of various animals, kind of like the books we had back home when infants are learning to read. There were all sorts in there: tigers, lions, horses, dogs, snakes and lizards; a real mixture of domestic and wild animals. On one page there was a drawing of a beetle, and next to it was the Japanese version of my name: Mushi.

“Hey,” I said, while directing the book towards Akane. She seemed a bit annoyed that I had disturbed her from whatever she was looking for. “This bug is called Molly.” I laughed. “What are the chances of that?”

Akane narrowed her eyes and looked at the book. I noticed a blush take over her pale cheeks. “Well, umm, yes, oh, look, this animal”—she tapped her finger on a drawing of a pig—“has a name too. See, his name is Buta.”

“What’s Buta mean in English? Is it like Mushi, a Japanese version of an American name?”

“It’s like…” Akane looked confused for a moment. “Umm?” she asked questioningly.

“Oh, is it like Babe the pig?”

She didn’t say anything but instead maintained her confused look.

“It’s a movie about a pig called Babe,” I elaborated.

She smiled and nodded her head. “Exactly. These are just silly names they have given to the animals.” She shrugged. “Just like Babe the pig.”

“That’s kind of cute,” I said, while Akane returned her attention to the books. “So, if I had a boyfriend, he’d call me Buta?”

Akane snorted and had to cover her mouth. Was the thought of me having a boyfriend really that much of a laughing matter? He reaction cut me deep. “Yes, maybe he would call you that,” she finally said. “If you went out to dinner together.”

“That sounds romantic.”

Akane laughed again, then returned her attention to the books. “I know it’s here somewhere,” she said. She fished through all of the books on the shelf, then plucked a brightly-coloured specimen from her collection. She held it out to me and pointed at the cover. “You want to play a game?”

I looked at my luggage. “I should really unpack and get settled in.”

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. What better way to settle in than playing a game?”

She had a point I supposed. “Well, okay then, what sort of game?”

“A game is the best way to learn. Fun and educational. You already know how to say kon'nichiwa, but Japanese is as an action language too. You can greet without speaking. It’ll be a lot easier for you while you’re still learning to speak Japanese.”

“Action language? Like sign language for deaf people?”

She gestured her arms about. “Yes, you know, like demonstration.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You see,” Akane said as she enthusiastically pointed at the picture book. “See, this is a foreigner arriving in Japan for the first time, just like you, Mushi.” She tapped her fingertip repeatedly on the image of a man bowing. “See how he bows at the feet of the Emperor? This is how a foreigner shows respect here in my country. We call it dogeza. Do you see how low he bows?”

“Umm, he looks Asian,” I said. “He doesn’t look like a foreigner.”

Akane let out a cute little giggle. “You can be foreign and Asian, Mushi. Not all of Asia is Japan,” she said, before continuing under her breath, “unfortunately.”

“I don’t get it though. It looks like something you would do for a king.”

“Exactly, so you are showing the respect and making Japanese people feel good, like royalty! It’s a great way to greet someone. Very polite. Japanese people will respond to you extremely well if you do this instead of mispronouncing kon'nichiwa.”

“That makes sense I guess.”

“If you struggle to speak Japanese, you can do other things like this instead. Japanese people will understand you a lot better. I can show you all sorts of ways to communicate without speaking!”

I looked at the page. “So, this bowing thing? Instead of saying kon'nichiwa, I can just do this and Japanese people will know I respect them and I’m saying hello?”

“Yes!”

To be honest, the bowing thing looked like it was kind of embarrassing. I’d never bowed before to anyone back home. However, every time I said kon'nichiwa to someone they ended up laughing or looking at me confused anyway. Maybe because they had been expecting me to do this bowing thing instead? Perhaps I’d been unintentionally insulting the local people ever since I’d arrived. If it meant it would stop people laughing at me, maybe it would be better if I tried it.

“Would you like to try?” Akane asked, seeming to sense what thoughts were rolling around my head.

“I’m not sure.” Though I wanted the Japanese locals to like me, I was still hesitant about putting myself in such a servile position. It just seemed…weird. But then, so did kicking your shoes off when you entered the house. That wasn’t something we ever did at home. My father was always walking his muddy boots through the carpet, much to the chagrin of my mother.

“We’ll make it a fun game,” Akane said. “Let’s pretend I am the Empress of Japan and you have just arrived here.”

“Okay,” I said, while climbing to my feet and joining her in the middle of her bedroom. If it was a game then it could be something fun to do. Perhaps this was a great way to break the ice between us. “What should I do?”

“Greet me.”

I took a breath and remembered from before. “Kon'nichiwa, Akane-san, I am Mushi.”

Akane laughed, but then shook her head so her long, black hair sprayed around her. Then she rolled her eyes and slapped at my shoulders softly. “No, no, no, Mushi. What did you just learn?”

“Oh,” I said, “The dogeeza.”

“Dogeza,” she said, in slow, pronounced syllables.

“Dogeza,” I mimicked as best I could.

She placed pressure to my shoulders and encouraged me towards the floor. “Show me your dogeza. Try to do it exactly as you saw in the book.”

I remembered in the book that the man was bowed so far that is forehead was flat to the floor. I dropped to my hands and knees and attempted the same position. It was more difficult that I imagined, as with my head to the floor, my butt was sort of up in the air.

“Straighten your back.” I felt her bare foot kick against my thigh. “No slacking, Mushi. You have to look like you really mean it.”

I tensed the muscles in my arms and legs, then straightened my back as best I could. “Is this better?”

I felt Akane place her bare foot upon the top of my head. “That’s right,” she whispered. “Bow before me, foreigner.”

I felt my face blush at hearing her talk to me in that way. It just sounded so…degrading. “What are you doing?”

“I’m playing the role of the Empress of Japan, remember?”

“Oh, sure,” I said, somewhat relieved that it was still part of the game.

“This is the way foreigners show respect to Japanese. You should do this every time you come into a room.”

“Every time?” I asked in exasperation and I could feel my warm breath ricocheting from the hardwood floor. “I thought this was just a game?”

“Teaching you is a game, Mushi, but the dogeza is very serious.”

“Why are you still standing on my head though?”

“That’s our way of accepting your greeting. Kind of like us saying hello back to you.”

I frowned into the floor. “That didn’t happen in the book.”

“It was a picture, Mushi, not a movie. You didn’t see what happens next. But the Emperor would have responded just like I am now.”

“It seems insulting,” I said from beneath her foot.

“Not at all,” Akane said. I felt her little toes wriggling about in my blonde hair. “This is acceptance. It’s the Japanese way!”

“Can I get up, please?” I felt uncomfortable having Akane put her feet all over my head. It was bad enough that she’d rubbed them over my pillow, and yet, barely minutes later, she’d somehow put me in a position where she could rub her foot directly on my head. “Please can I get up? My back is starting to hurt.”

I felt Akane grind her foot into the back of my head some more, which in turn ground my forehead into the hard, wooden floor. “No, it is very rude to ask such a thing. You cannot rise until one of us says you can. Leaving dogeza before being given permission is extremely offensive in our culture. You’ll receive bad karma. You don’t want bad karma, do you?”

“No, but how long do I have to stay like this?” My forearms were beginning to tremble from supporting my weight.

“For as long as I say you have to. It shows that you are respectful of our culture while being a guest in Japan. Plus, it’s best to practise and get your body used to doing it.”

Akane removed her foot from my head, and I heard her bare feet scamper across the room before a soft thump indicating she’d hopped onto her bed. Next, I heard her talking in Japanese, presumably on the phone to someone else.

I wasn’t sure what to do as she’d left me still bowing there in the middle of the room. Was I supposed to remain with my forehead to the floor or could I get back up now she’d gotten busy doing something else? I wasn’t sure of the rules and the last thing I wanted to do was offend her this early into our friendship. I’d caused enough intentional offence as it was.

Suddenly, almost immediately after Akane had stopped speaking, the door opened, and I heard someone walking into the room. There was the slapping of sandals, followed by the unmistakeable voice of Saori, “What are you doing down there, Molly?”

“Dog,” I mumbled into the floor, as my forehead began to hurt.

“You’re a dog?” she asked curiously.

“Dogooza. Akane-san has been teaching me about Japanese greetings.”

There was a vicious snigger from above me. “I think you mean dogeza?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I crawled along the floor towards her until I could just make out her sandals, and I placed my forehead against the floor. I felt like a complete idiot, but if this was what a foreigner was expected to do to be accepted by their Japanese hosts, then I would do it. I could already detect a softer tone to Saori’s voice, which was a lot less hostile than at the airport. “Kon'nichiwa, ma’am,” I said, spurred on by my success. “My name is Mushi.” I beamed with pride at displaying everything I’d learned without mistake. I loved the Japanese version of my name. It was so cute. I’d only been in their home an hour or so, and already I had my very own cute Japanese nickname. If that isn’t acceptance into a home, then I don’t know what is?

“Mushi?” Saori said and I detected confusion in her voice.

Akane answered her mother in Japanese, and the two of them conversed for a moment, before I heard Saori giggle, then one of her sandals dropped and slapped against the floor. It was an old, dirty thing, that looked like it was made from straw or something. I could make out the dark, imprint of her foot on the surface. Next, I felt her foot on the back of my head. Again, just like her daughter’s, it was dainty in size and she applied little pressure. “That’s very respectful of you,” she said. There was a soft chuckle. “Mushi.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” I said. “I’m trying to learn the Japanese way.”

She kept her foot on the back of my head. “I’m happy to see you’re trying to integrate. You learn a lot more quickly than I expected from our first conversation. Akane-chan must be a great teacher.”

I didn’t know whether that was a compliment or an insult, so I remained quiet. We stayed this way, me bowed with my head to the floor, and Saori’s foot atop for a few moments while the two of them spoke in Japanese. I felt excluded, which was extremely rude, however, we were in their country and home, so who was I to ask them to speak in English?

After a few moments, I felt her foot lift from my head. I peeked up, and saw that her foot was just hanging in the air.

“You can rise,” Akane said from the bed. “Help my mother with her zori, please, Mushi.”

“Zori?” I asked.

“Her sandal,” Akane clarified. “Rice straw sandal. You don’t have these in America?”

“I don’t think so.”

It was an odd request, but since I was already down on the floor, I looked up and saw the sandal was behind her. So, I picked it up, and while Saori kept her foot in the air, I eased it onto her wiggling toes. I noted that just like her daughter, her toenails were also unpainted, though they had been filed to perfection and appeared clean. It must have been another Japanese custom that perhaps they didn’t use nail polish? Back home, you’d see most girls walking around with various colours on their toes, but so far, I’d only seen unpolished nails in Japan. I looked at my own chipped fingernails and wondered whether I should remove it.

Saori returned her sandaled foot to the floor, and looked down at me with a pleased smirk while I remained kneeling at her feet. “Thank you, Mushi,” she said. “That was very kind of you to help me with my zori.” She glanced over at Akane and the two of them smiled at each other.

“Anytime, ma’am,” I said.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Now, dinner will be ready soon girls,” she said, and with that, Saori left me alone with her daughter.

“Well done,” Akane said. “See how well that went? You performed dogeza for my mother and she accepted your respect.”

“Yes, she actually smiled at me and seemed happy. I thought she didn’t like me before this.”

“She is just not used to your American ways. If you try the Japanese way, you will find people will like you a lot better.”

It seemed that Akane was correct in her assessment. Perhaps doing things her way from then on would provide me with fruitful results.

At the dinner table, Saori had placed a bowl in front of me of a steaming, noodle-like meal. Along with the bowl I was given two chopsticks, which I had no clue how to use.

Akane and Saori were already scooping up mouthfuls with the sticks, while I sat there unsure of where to begin.

“What’s wrong?” Saori asked after a minute or so. “You don’t like my cooking?”

“Oh, no, I am very grateful, thank you, ma’am. I just don’t know how to use chopsticks. Could I please have a fork?”

“It’s easy,” Akane said. “Look.” She snapped at the noodles with her chopsticks and picked up a bunch. Next, she dangled them above her mouth and dropped them in with ease.

“You can’t survive in Japan without knowing how to use chopsticks, Mushi,” Saori said with a raised eyebrow. “You want this to be a cultural exchange, right? So, embrace our culture.”

I looked at the meal again. There was an odd scent wafting up amongst the steam. It was sort of fishy and made my stomach turn. “What is it?”

“Soba noodle with fried shrimp,” Akane said through a mouthful of food.

“Oh…” I stared at the bowl and suddenly lost my appetite.

“Is there a problem?” Saori asked.

“It’s just…I’m a vegetarian,” I said, while avoiding eye contact. “I don’t eat shrimp.” I heard Saori tut, and I felt compelled to defend myself. “It was on my profile, and I think I mentioned it during our emails. I don’t eat any animals.”

Saori began talking to Akane in Japanese, and I could tell by her tone that she wasn’t happy. Akane barely replied and instead looked embarrassed.

“Sadly, my daughter didn’t tell me that before I spent the last hour cooking.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t want to be an inconvenience.”

“It’s no bother,” she said. I assumed she was going to take my food away and replace it with something I could actually eat. But instead, she continued eating her own meal.

Likewise, Akane made no effort to include me either and focused on devouring her own noodles. It was only when she’d almost finished that she spoke to me. “You know, Mushi. We broke an important Japanese custom tonight by including you in this meal.”

Saori looked on with a raised eyebrow and clearly seemed intrigued.

“Foreigners usually wait to eat after their hosts here,” Akane continued. “My mother made a real effort to include you tonight and broke that tradition.”

“I didn’t realise,” I said. “Thank you so much, ma’am.” I gave Saori a little bow with my head.

“Why are you thanking me?” she said. Her face was completely emotionless. “You didn’t eat anything.”

“Umm, I know, sorry. I just mean for breaking the tradition.”

Saori clattered her chopsticks onto the table. She then walked over to the kitchen and came back with a plate and spoon. While I watched, she lifted her bowl above the plate and scraped out the remainder of her noodles, stopping at times to remove a fried shrimp. She carelessly dropped the bowl which made me jump as it hit the table. Next, she walked over to Akane and repeated the process with her bowl. While she was scooping Akane’s leftover noodles onto the plate, the young girl snatched at any shrimps with her chopsticks and gobbled them down. Satisfied, Saori slid the plate of noodles in front of me, and removed my untouched bowl. “There you are, Mushi. Vegetarian for you,” she said. “And you eat after us, as is tradition.” She then returned to her seat and watched me intently.

I looked down at the plate of noodles and didn’t know what to do. She’d actually given me both of their leftovers. I’d seen them put the chopsticks into their mouths and double-dip back into their bowls time and time again. This wasn’t what my first Japanese food experience was supposed to be like. I’d spent hours researching online whether this was an ideal country for vegetarians, and I’d been assured it was fine. There was plenty of veggie noodle and sushi bars around Tokyo from what I learned, yet my first meal was going to be some leftover noodles which no doubt still tasted of shrimp?

I was offended that Saori actually thought it was acceptable to treat me in this way. I was a guest in her home, and she thought she could just serve me up leftover food. I looked over at her stern face, unsure how to speak my mind. But then, I noticed in the kitchen behind her, that my first bowl of food was on the counter and still steaming. That was the meal she had prepared for me, not the disgrace that was currently waiting to be eaten. Saori had actually taken the time to prepare me a meal, and she’d broken the custom about foreigners eating second. It had been my choice not to eat it and I must have offended her and hurt her feelings. I thought back over everything I had said. I can’t use chopsticks, could I have a fork, I don’t like shrimp. My God, I was so ungrateful, right from the start! No wonder she was extremely annoyed.

I figured the best thing to do was to eat the noodles. What else could I do really? I’d already refused one meal, and was about to refuse another. This was my first bloody day in their house, and I was about to throw their hospitality straight back in their faces. You weren’t raised to be this ungrateful, Molly, I thought to myself. Especially when Akane had spent all afternoon teaching me the correct greetings and how to embrace the Japanese way. Was I embracing the Japanese way by refusing to eat the food Saori had prepared for me? Not at all.

I picked up the chopsticks and struggled to hold them in my clumsy fingers. I just couldn’t get them into the right angle that the two women seemed to have mastered so easily. I tried just stabbing one chopstick in and scooping out a noodle or two, but again, that didn’t work.

Saori sighed from across the table. “Just use your hands,” she said. “You eat animal food, you may as well eat like animal.” She must have tired of my performance as she got up and left the table.

“It’s okay,” Akane said. “Just eat with your fingers. I don’t mind. Look.” She reached over and stuck her fingers straight into my noodles and picked up a bunch. I was expecting her to shove them in her mouth, but instead she moved her hand towards me. I instinctively pulled away.

“No, what are you doing?” I looked at her fingers and thought about everything she had been doing earlier. She’d taken her stinking socks off with those fingers! Now she’d just shoved them in my food and expected me to eat straight from her hand.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“It’s unhygienic,” I whined, while dodging another of her attempts.

“You think I am dirty?” Her face appeared shocked.

“No, not at all. It’s just…hands in food. I don’t like it.”

“But this is a big thing in Japan. This is how the groom feeds the bride on their wedding day.” I could tell by her face that she was upset. “Hand-feeding is considered romantic and affectionate here. You think we are a dirty people?”

“Of course not, I have so much respect for Japanese people, Akane-san! You know this already.”

Her hand moved back towards my face. I could see the sticky noodle-sauce cling to her fingers. “Then open up and eat your meal.”

I kept my lips firmly closed in a grimace right up until Akane pushed the noodles into my reluctant mouth. And I actually let her, she rubbed them against my mouth and chin, then pushed them into my mouth one by one with her fingers. All the while, I sat there and let it happen, despite the shrimp taste that made my stomach turn. For the final noodle, she looked me in the eyes while her finger went right into my mouth. I could actually feel it on my tongue. “My finger is covered in sauce,” she said, and I knew what she was getting at. I closed my lips around her finger and sucked the fishy sauce from it.

I thought that would be the end of it, but while keeping eye contact with me, Akane dumped her hand back into the noodles and picked up another pile. When she moved them towards my mouth again, I willingly held it open and allowed her to shove them straight in. She continued to hand-feed me from the bowl of leftover noodles until they were all gone. After I licked the last of the sauce from her fingers, she smiled at me and dropped her head to my shoulder.

“Did you enjoy that, Mushi?” she asked. “I did.”

I licked a dollop of sauce from my lips and had the urge to spit out the awful flavour. “It was…different.”

She sat up and looked at me. “Intimate is the word in English, right?”

“Uh, I guess…” It was certainly intimate, in a completely weird way. It wasn’t exactly the experience I was intending to share with any lover, that was for sure.

“I think it is a sign we are going to be great friends, Mushi.” She wrapped her skinny arms around me and squeezed my broad shoulders as best she could. “We will be close.”

I actually melted under her embrace. She could be so gentle at times, which was a bizarre thought, considering moments earlier she’d been stuffing leftover shrimp noodles into my reluctant mouth. Now, I was feeling guilty that she’d somehow viewed it as kindness and I was ungrateful?

We both jumped from our hug when we heard the sound of the front door slamming shut.

“That’s probably Matsuri-chan,” Akane said with a grin. She waved her fingers at me in an arrogantly dismissive way. “I’ll clean up here. Why don’t you go and show her what you’ve learned?”

“Good idea,” I said, actually excited to get away from the awkwardness of the dinner table, but also eager to impress Akane’s little sister. After the successful turnaround in Saori’s hostility earlier, I was looking forward to actually seeing what Matsuri was like when her face wasn’t buried in her phone. Surely greeting her in the appropriate way for a foreigner would please her? Saori had seemed pretty happy with me up until the dinner fiasco when she’d wasted her time preparing me a meal I was never going to eat.

I rushed into the hallway and saw that Matsuri was leaning against the wall and about to remove one of her Converse sneakers. While she was struggling with the laces, which appeared to be stuck in a knot, I dropped to my hands and knees next to her, and placed my forehead to the cold, hard floor in a perfect reproduction of the dogeza.

There was silence, though she must have noticed me, as her foot returned to the hallway rug, still encased in its Converse. She said something in Japanese, then laughed as she must have remembered that I couldn’t understand. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Kon'nichiwa, Matsuri-san,” I said into the floor.

“Umm, thank you, Molly,” she said. “That’s nice of you.”

“Please, call me Mushi.”

I heard Matsuri snort, then she let out a little giggle. “Really, Mushi? You want to be known as Mushi while in Japan?”

“Yes, please,” I said.

There was a ding sound, and I saw in the corner of my eye that Matsuri was looking at her phone. She said something to herself in Japanese, I couldn’t understand what, but I did recognise Akane’s name amongst the unfamiliar words. Matsuri then shrugged and rolled her eyes, then suddenly, one of her Converse sneakers disappeared from my view and I felt the sole press against the back of my head. She was less careful than her sister and mother, and my forehead actually bumped against the floor, which kind of hurt.

We remained that way for a few minutes. I could hear her doing something on her phone, all the while I stayed in the same dogeza position while she kept her foot on my head. Eventually, I saw her lift her shoe again and continue fiddling with the laces, however, she still hadn’t given me permission to rise. I remembered back to Saori and how she’d enjoyed me putting her sandal back on, and I saw an opportunity to be dismissed from the tiring bow.

“Matsuri-san,” I said while slightly raising my head. “Would you like me to help you remove your shoes?”

There was silence once again, then I felt her shoe on the back of my head once more. She pushed my forehead to the floor and twisted the sole atop my scalp. “Keep your head down until you’re told otherwise, Mushi,” she said. “But, yes, I would like that.” She took her shoe away and I could hear her walking towards the staircase. “Come.”

I raised to my knees, happy to be out of that awkward position, and shuffled towards her. She’d taken a seat on the bottom step of the staircase, with both of her Converse feet on the flat of the hallway floor. She was still wearing the same loose dress as earlier, and her hair hung messily over her shoulders. She was leaning down and watching me with amusement in a completely relaxed manner, her elbows resting on bended knees.

As I reached her, Matsuri sat back and leaned on the higher steps. She lifted a shoe towards me, then glanced between its laces and my eyes, before giving me an encouraging nod. The laces were certainly trapped in a knot, and it took me a while to pick them apart with my fingernails. After much effort, they were loosened and I was able to ease the sneaker from her ankle-socked foot, which brought forth a sigh from her. I noticed she wore an anklet made from string, which hadn’t been obvious at the airport. I was about to put the shoe down when my nose wrinkled at a pungent scent. There was a strong, cheesy odour, but I wasn’t sure whether it was coming from her shoe or sock. The Converse was beaten up and I could make out the impression of her foot inside. I was about to give it a sniff and check whether it was in fact the shoe that stank, though, thankfully I considered how weird that would be before proceeding.

I placed the shoe down, and was about to lift her other foot when she spoke. “Take the sock off too,” she said, while watching me with a mischievous smirk. “I always wear my house slippers barefoot.”

I screwed my face in disgust. I’d offered to remove her shoes, not her socks, but she looked pleased with me, so I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I simultaneously pulled at the toes and ankle area, which allowed me to easily peel the damp sock from her foot. They appeared to be soaked with sweat, and there was an increase in the cheesy stench. Once her toes were out, she wiggled them happily, seeming to enjoy their freedom in the fresh air. As with her mother and sister, Matsuri too didn’t wear nail polish. I stuffed the sock into the shoe and continued the same performance with the other foot. Matsuri watched in silence throughout. It was only once both feet were bare that she pointed to a shoe rack near the door. “Put them in genkan,” she paused, “or you say, what is it, shoe place? Put them there, and bring me my school bag.”

I followed her instruction and retrieved the bag that was next to the door. She unzipped it, and took out a pair of strange shoes. They were mostly white but were red on the tip. “These are uwabaki,” she said. “Can you say that?”

“Uwabaki,” I repeated.

“Do you know what this is?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know what that means.”

“They’re my school slippers. I wear them indoors in school all day, but, they’re so comfortable that I like to wear them at home too. I have had this pair for years.”

She handed them to me and raised her foot. I was just sliding the first on her foot, when I noticed movement down the hallway.

Akane took a few steps towards us, followed by her mother. Saori said something in Japanese and Matsuri answered in their mother tongue. What followed was a whole conversation between the three of them while I finished up putting Matsuri’s slippers on for her. I felt like a servant within their house, not worthy of understanding their discussion. I heard my name mentioned a couple of times, but I was afraid to say anything in case they thought it rude.

“Mushi,” Akane finally said, inviting me to join in. “Was it really your idea to remove Matsuri-chan’s shoes?”

I could sense the happiness in her tone, so with pride, I said, “Yes, Akane-san, it was my idea.”

Akane walked over and patted my head. “How did you know?”

I looked up at her confused. “How did I know what?”

“That this is another custom expected of foreigners.”

“Really?” I was surprised, but also, somewhat proud that I’d actually figured this one out all on my own. Perhaps I was actually settling in and understanding the Japanese way without Akane’s guidance. But she couldn’t be serious? I just couldn’t picture foreigners coming over to Japan and helping them take off their shoes and put on their slippers. This was something a servant would do, not a guest. “Are you teasing me?”

Saori walked up with her arms crossed. “No, Akane-chan is telling you the truth.” She glanced at her two daughters with a slight smile, then she turned back to me and the seriousness returned to her face. “Every time we’ve had a guest here, they’ve always helped us with our shoes. It’s a sign of respect and gratitude for our hospitality.”

I looked at the floor and took a moment to process exactly what was being said. It didn’t make a lot of sense. If it happened before, then why did Matsuri seem so surprised when I offered in the first place? “So, why did—”

Before I could finish, Akane interrupted with, “This is what I was going to teach you next. But, you’re so, so…what’s the word?”

“Intuitive,” said Saori.

“Yes, you’re so intuitive, Mushi, that you learned it all on your own. You must know, somewhere, deep in your heart, the correct way for a foreigner to behave in a Japanese household.” Akane smiled at me and showed me her braces.

“Indeed,” Saori said. “I am quite impressed, Mushi.”

“Umm, thanks,” I said. I felt my cheeks redden at all of the compliments.

Matsuri looked at her mother. “Can she do this every time I come home then?”

“Of course, she can,” Saori said, before I had a chance to answer. “Isn’t that right, Mushi?”

“Umm, I suppose.” It felt like the decision had been taken away from me.

“This is so awesome,” Matsuri said. She smirked at me, before rising to her feet and making her way up the stairs to her room.

“I’m so proud of you,” Akane said, while wrapping her arms around me as I knelt there before her. “I can’t believe how quickly you’re settling in, Mushi. You’re the best exchange ever. I’m so glad we did this!”

The next couple of weeks seemed to pass in a blur. These odd ‘customs’ as they called them, these expectations they had of me as a foreigner in their home, became a routine in their household and I felt obliged to co-operate so I wouldn’t appear rude. Whenever one of them returned, I was expected to drop into the dogeza position, my forehead to the floor, and wait until they allowed me to rise. At first, they would immediately place their foot on my head, and we’d usually proceed to the shoe-removal and slipper ritual. As the days passed though, I’d find myself in the dogeza position longer and longer. Sometimes they’d kick off their shoes themselves, and walk passed me to do something else. Minutes later, they’d return and allow me to put on their slippers. Saori was the worst for doing it. On one occasion, she left me in the hallway bowing as she prepared dinner for over an hour. I found it extremely inconsiderate, but felt uneasy confronting her.

Matsuri loved to bring her uwabaki home with her from school, so she pretty much wore the same pair of shoes all day long without socks. It was strange, because she’d arrive home wearing ankle socks and Converse, then immediately have me remove them for the uwabaki, which I knew she’d been wearing during the school day too. I wondered why she’d go to the effort of putting on socks after school, just to have me remove them when she arrived home. I considered whether she did it just for the sake of it, so that I would have to remove not only her shoes, but her socks too.

Something else that confused me was that Akane had told me early on that only younger girls usually wore uwabaki and that she hadn’t worn them herself in years. They were mostly for elementary and junior high school girls, but Matsuri was already nineteen years old and attending college. Apparently, she liked wearing them so much that she’d just kept her old pair from her younger days in school. So, there were many years of footsweat embedded in those school slippers and I’d often catch a whiff of it when sliding her feet into them. As a result, Matsuri’s feet had the strongest smell of the three.

To her, it seemed like a convenience, as she enjoyed being able to boss an older girl around, particularly a blonde-haired, white one. She spent a lot of time on her phone while I changed her footwear, and she’d often wave me away with a roll of her eyes, as if I’d served my purpose and was now annoying her. For these first few weeks, this was largely the only interactions I had with her.

Akane was completely different. After all, we shared a room so it was impossible for me to escape being alone with her. Akane’s feet were the smallest of the three, but she seemed to delight in putting them all over me every chance she got. While I was sliding a slipper onto her one foot, she’d usually have the other resting on my bended knee, or on a few occasions, even my shoulder. At this proximity, I learned that Akane’s feet also smelled strongly, but not to the extent of her sister’s.

She’d often have me performing the dogeza in the room for, as far as I could tell, no reason other than because she could make me do it. She’d be sat comfortably on the bed, reading a book, watching Japanese TV shows or wasting time on her phone, and I’d be down next to the bed, bowing with my forehead to the floor. I found it annoying as hell. It was so boring, just bowing there, waiting for her to release me from the position. Of course, there was nothing physically stopping me from getting up. I was bigger and stronger than Akane, but something just kept me down there. She’d pretty much drilled into me that this is how a foreigner was expected to act in a Japanese household. She insinuated that if I didn’t comply, in a few months, I’d be leaving Japan without a true cultural experience and cheating myself of making the most of the exchange.

I’d also performed the dogeza once outside in public, which had been one of the most embarrassing moments of my life and I hadn’t made that mistake again. Akane had taken me grocery shopping, which at first, I’d been excited by, until I realised I was just there to carry the bags home. However, it was while I was waiting next to the bakery that the incident had occurred.

There were a group of young men, likely in their early-twenties, wearing suits and waiting for their orders to be fulfilled. I caught one of them looking my way on a number of occasions, which actually made me blush. He was incredibly handsome, and had sharp Japanese features with short, spikey hair. I wasn’t the prettiest girl around, but I could look damn good when I put real effort into my make up and hair. That was one of those days when I had indeed put in the effort and from the way he was looking at me, he must have thought I was exotic.

I caught him nudging a few of his friends, and they too looked over. They were speaking in Japanese but I couldn’t understand what they were saying, only the occasional word.

The tallest of the group nodded towards me, and I distinctly heard him say the word: buta. I hadn’t heard the word in weeks, but I remembered back to the first day and the animal picture book: Babe the pig! He was saying to his friends that I was a babe! I figured I actually had a shot with him. So, what did I do? Well, there in the supermarket I did what Akane had taught me. I walked over and performed the dogeza, right there in front of everyone, kneeling on the floor with my forehead to the floor in order to make a good impression. My reward was a group of guys pointing and laughing at me. Perhaps I’d misheard the word he’d said and they weren’t interested in me at all. Akane returned and spoke to the guys, then she shook her head and ushered me away.

“Did you really dogeza in the supermarket?” she asked me, once we were home. She’d taken a seat on the edge of her bed, and I was kneeling and removing her slippers ready for sleep.

“Of course,” I said. “That’s how I should greet people, right?”

She patted my head in approval. “That’s right, Mushi.”

“So, why did they laugh?”

“They were probably just embarrassed by the attention of a Western girl.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a little better. “That makes sense.”

“Show me the dogeza again. Let me check you were doing it properly.”

I dropped my forehead to the floor with a rounded back. I felt Akane place her feet on my spine.

“Your back could be a little straighter,” she said. “I look you to really bow as deep as possible.”

I shuffled my legs back and had to spread my arms so I could drop deeper. Akane was right, the deeper I dropped, the straighter my back became.

“That’s better,” I heard her say from above. Then there was movement and I realised she’d crossed her feet on the back of my head. I could then hear music and Japanese voices, realising she was watching a video on her phone. I expected she would soon allow me to rise, as was custom when one of them touched their foot to my head, however, Akane kept me in this position for at least half an hour. Gradually, my arms and back began to ache, but she seemed completely invested in whatever she was watching.

At one point, Matsuri came in to ask her sister a question. Silence followed. Before Matsuri said something else in Japanese.

“Of course,” Akane said, as if everything was completely normal. “Mushi makes the perfect footstool.”

I could feel Matsuri’s smirk, even though I couldn’t see it from my bowed position.

Weeks later, things took a little turn for the worse. I had been in the same position for God knows how long. I was down on my knees, hands linked behind my back, and leaning forward with my upper body floating without support. Meanwhile, up above, Matsuri was relaxing without a care in the world, her slippered feet crossed atop my head while she was on her phone as usual. My back and neck were absolutely killing me from having to support the weight of her legs and feet. She was still in her college clothes, along with the uwabaki she’d been wearing all day during classes. She’d been carrying them in her bag and had made me remove her sneakers and put them on for her once she’d come home. This had remained a daily occurrence as my hosts didn’t like wearing their outdoor shoes in the house, perhaps because of the wooden floors. It had become my job to remove their footwear and replace them with house slippers, or in Matsuri’s case, these strange school slippers.

While I remained kneeling in pain, she excitedly spoke Japanese to one of her friends and paid me little thought. Obviously, I didn’t have a clue what she was saying and it was humiliating to be used as nothing more than furniture. Occasionally she’d twist or reposition her shoes, driving the rubber sole into my scalp and causing a whimper to squeak from my lips as she tugged at my hair.

“Be quiet, Mushi,” she said, startling me with the sudden change to English. She was clearly annoyed by my discomfort and exemplified her point with an extra twist of her foot. “You’re a guest here, and it is rude to bother your hosts when they are relaxing in their own home. I’ve had a long day at school, so, stop moving so much.”

Matsuri had really taken to using me as her furniture ever since that day she’d caught Akane using me as her footstool. It was almost as if she was amused by my inability to stand up for myself and figured that she was going to take advantage as much as she could. There was no need for it too. She would have been just as comfortable, possibly even more so, if she’d simply rested her feet on a genuine footrest. Even so, she demanded I act as her footrest, and chose the most uncomfortable position for me to do so.

I grit my teeth trying to stay in place and keep the young brat happy, however, the pain was too much and I was forced to drop my hands to the floor to stop myself from collapsing. I loudly sighed at the relief in my back muscles.

Matsuri responded by lifting a foot and dropping the heel harshly into the top of my head. She then placed the toe of her shoe beneath my chin and eased up my head until we made eye contact. “Did I say you could drop your hands, Mushi?”

“Umm, no, Matsuri-san,” I whispered in a trembling tone.

She bent her legs and showed me the white soles of her slippers. “You don’t have uwabaki in America, right?”

“No, we don’t, Matsuri-san.”

“Do you like them? All girls wear them in school here.”

“Umm, I guess so, Matsuri-san, they’re quite cute.”

“Do you think they look dirty though?”

I gulped, suspicious where this conversation was going. The soles were a little dusty, though there was no dirt, with only a few minor scuff marks around the red toe of each shoe. I suppose since they were only ever worn inside the house or school, there wasn’t much opportunity for them to actually get caked in mud. “Not really, they seem pretty clean.”

Matsuri was about to say something when the front door opened and Akane could be heard shouting, “Mushi, where are you? I need you to take off my shoes.”

Matsuri shouted something back in Japanese, and I heard an annoyed sigh from Akane in the hallway, followed by the noticeable sound of her shoes being kicked against the partitioning wall. The soft sound of her socked footsteps soon followed until she appeared in the doorway. There was an annoyed expression until she laid eyes upon us and her grimace transformed to an amused smirk. “What are you doing?”

“I was just asking Mushi if my uwabaki are clean.” Matsuri lightly tapped the toe of one shoe against my chin. “According to her, they’re only prettyclean?”

“That’s not what I meant—"

“Only pretty clean?” Akane interrupted in a stern voice. “That’s unacceptable, Mushi.”

“Ummm.” I didn’t really know what to say. Obviously, it was a trap, and one that I had suspected was coming, but still, I had stumbled straight into it.

“Why don’t you lick my sister’s uwabaki clean, Mushi?” Akane added before I had a chance to talk my way out of it.

“Are you being serious?” I asked. I waited for the laughs, but none came. There was no way she could expect me to lick slippers clean. What did she think I was? A slave or something? The audacity of her was ridiculous.

“Of course,” she said, with no waver in her tone. “Don’t you think a popular girl like Matsuri-chan deserves clean uwabaki for school? You don’t expect her to walk around with dirty shoes, do you?”

Matsuri’s eyes lit up and she looked down at me with an evil smirk. “Yes, Mushi, how dare you expect that of me.”

I looked at her shoes again. “They’re really not that dirty, Matsuri-san.”

There was a little chuckle from Akane. “See, you said it again, not that dirty. So, they are dirtier than they should be, right?”

“Uh, I guess so.” I hated playing these stupid games with Akane. She was always one step ahead of me.

Akane smiled showing off her braces and nodded her head. “So, it’s only right that you clean them.”

“I mean…” I hesitated and tried to think of some way out of the situation, however, I was so nervous and put on the spot that I struggled to focus. “I guess I could clean them.” I paused and looked at the shoes. They only needed a quick wipe. “I could get some water and a towel?” I looked up hopefully at the sisters.

Akane suddenly said something in Japanese while pointing at her sister’s shoes.

Matsuri shrugged. “Do they smell, Mushi?”

For some idiotic reason I leant forward and gave a loud sniff, which brought a barrage of giggles from the sisters. I don’t know why I did that, because I’d put them on enough times to know they stank. However, it seemed that when she was wearing them, the smell wasn’t able to escape. “Ummm, no, they don’t really smell.”

Matsuri reached down and slipped a finger into the arch of her uwabaki, then popped her heel free so I could see her wrinkled, clammy sole. “Get your nose right in and give it a real sniff.”

I glanced up at both and wrinkled my nose. It was bad enough that Akane had rubbed her feet all over my pillow and subjected me to many nights of tossing and turning while breathing in her funky foot stink. Following that had been the endless incidents of removing their footwear. But all of those situations had been instigated by her and were pretty much against my will. Did they actually expect me to willingly stick my nose in Matsuri’s shoe, while it was still dangling from her foot?

“What are you waiting for?” I felt Akane’s fingers grip a bunch of my hair. “You just smelled them seconds ago. Don’t suddenly get all shy. Look, I’ll show you how to do it.” With that, she steered my face towards her sister’s foot and encouraged me forward as if a dog on a leash. My neck and back were still extremely sore from the aching position that Matsuri had kept me in. Therefore, I was unable to resist Akane’s leverage and within seconds my nose was easily jammed into the gap between her sister’s shoe and foot. Besides my tired body, simply being ganged up on by the twosome was too much for me to handle.

“Sniff,” Akane ordered. “Get a real good sniff, Mushi.” I felt her twist my hair in her fist until my scalp began to burn.

I reluctantly took another deep breath, this time with my nose right inside Matsuri’s warm, stuffy uwabaki shoe or whatever it was called. I could feel the heat and intensity of the full-on cheesy scent as it entered my nose and I immediately felt light-headed. I was taken by surprise, as there really was no smell at all when her shoes were on, as if there was some kind of suction seal keeping the stink locked in and I’d deluded myself into thinking that perhaps she’d washed them. I’d expected a symbolic sniff would have been enough, but I felt Akane tighten her grip on my hair and jolt my nose in further.

“Sniff! Louder! I want to hear you breathing in that smell so there’s none of it left.”

And I did, I sniffed and sniffed and sniffed. Over and over again I sucked in the sharp, intense odour of Matsuri’s foot as if I was her personal vacuum cleaner or something. I couldn’t tell where the stink was coming from, whether it was her sweaty feet or the stinky old shoes that looked from the insole as if they’d had years of wear, in far contrast to the mostly pristine exterior.

“That’s better,” Akane said. “See, you’re actually providing a service. Us Japanese girls need to know whether our feet smell or not. We can’t be walking around with smelly feet and embarrassing ourselves. So, you have to be honest and tell Matsuri if her feet smell. She’s the most popular girl at her college, and we can’t put that at risk. I’m sure she will appreciate it.”

“Oh, for sure, I will!” Matsuri said with way too much enthusiasm.

“So, how do they smell?” Akane asked.

My brain was almost turning to mush under the stink. I couldn’t even answer. While I was sniffing, I felt Akane’s leg slide over my back and then her butt drop, which forced me down into an all-fours position. She shifted around slightly, then once comfortable I felt her other hand join the grip on my hair, as if she was directing me with a reign. Her elbows dug into my spine and she whispered in my ear, “That’s a good Mushi. My sister’s feet must smell like sakura to you, right? I mean, you seem like you can’t get enough of them.” She twisted my hair to underline her point. “Go on, tell her how much you love it, Mushi.”

“Ugh,” I said between sniffs before dancing to my Japanese puppet master’s commands. “I love your foot smell, Matsuri-san.”

There was a chorus of feminine laughter, and Matsuri had to pat her chest to stop herself from losing her breath. A frantic rant in Japanese followed, which I was unable to understand, though it had the effect of leaving Akane jiggling on my back in amusement.

“Wow,” Matsuri eventually said in English. “You really are a loser, Mushi.” She reached down and removed the shoe from her foot, and I felt her sweaty toes grip my nose. At once, the strong scent increased in its intensity as my senses were completely overwhelmed by her funky foot. “A white loser that sniffs feet. Is this why you came to Japan? You are addicted to Japanese girl’s feet? This is like a dream come true to you?”

I wanted to scream out no! That no, this was all Akane’s doing. I was just trying to fit in and make the girl like me. I didn’t want to rock the boat within the first month of being invited to their home and I was doing my best to appease her ridiculous demands. I really wanted to learn everything there was to know about Japanese culture, but apparently, every lesson ended with me being humiliated at their feet. This couldn’t be right, surely? Is this how Japanese people really treated guests in their home? It didn’t make a lot of sense, but for weeks now they’d expected me to act like their servant, even Saori, and surely, she wouldn’t be part of some sinister game, being a mother and all? Maybe this really was how foreigners were treated in the Japanese culture. After all, Akane had shown me the proof in her books. Everything was about bowing and showing respect.

“I came to Japan,” I mumbled into her clammy foot. “I came to Japan to learn about Japanese culture.”

More laughs from Akane on my back. “And you are learning so much,” she said. “Now, my sister asked you a question. Don’t be rude. Show her the appropriate respect that a foreigner shows a Japanese girl in her own home. Let me see how your education is coming along.” She kicked her heels into my thighs, which was unexpected and actually hurt.

I sniffled beneath the endless taunting and bullying. It was bullying, I realised that, but still, within me there was some desire to please Akane. I was trapped for the next few months after all. Perhaps if I made Akane happy, she would relent in tormenting me and we could form a more normal friendship. She had been so nice during the emails and at the airport on that first day, and at times, I’d recognise glimpses of that friendly girl. Maybe she was just getting carried away by the whole thing. This was all pretty new to her too. I wondered if she’d been watching too many American TV shows and she thought we were a lot tougher than we actually were. Heaven forbid, she may even have watched some of those embarrassing sorority serials with all of the hazing. Maybe this was Akane’s attempt at plunging herself into what she believed US culture was all about.

Akane began laughing while I cried. “Enough with the tears, nakimushi,” she said. “Tell Matsuri-chan what she wants to hear.” Another flurry of kicks into my thighs followed.

“This is a dream come true to me, Matsuri-san,” I wailed.

“Really?” she asked. “I don’t believe you, Mushi.” She wiggled her toes around my nose.

More kicks from Akane, followed by an extra twist of my hair.

“I love Japanese girl’s feet.” My chest shuddered on the verge of hyperventilating. “This is the real reason why I came to Japan.”

“To smell our feet?” Matsuri asked curiously, and I heard a giggle from Akane right in my ear.

“Yes!” I almost shouted, simply desperate for this all to be over.

From beneath her sweaty foot, still clutching my nose and forcing my voice into a stifled shrill, I could make out Matsuri sitting up straight. She cocked her head to the side and peered down at me through narrowed eyes. “I sort of understand I suppose.” She shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes. “I’d probably be the most popular girl in American schools too, right? They are all losers like you?”

“Yes, we are all losers,” I whined. My cheeks were beginning to dampen from either the sweat of her foot in my face or the tears it induced. I felt Akane release my hair and she began clapping in approval at my debasement.

Matsuri lifted her phone and suddenly her face transformed to a smiley, almost ethereal-like heavenly being, far away from the demon that was currently subjecting me to the stink of her foot. She snapped a selfie, then she turned the phone to show me. “Do any of your friends compare over there?”

“No,” I said in all honesty. I was shocked by just how good she looked in the photo, especially because she’d taken it completely without any preparation. When I took a selfie, I had to delete about fifty attempts before I finally landed on one that was barely passable. “You are much more beautiful than all my friends.”

“So, do you actually want to lick—” Before Matsuri could finish her sentence, her phone rang once more and I breathed a sigh of relief. Her eyes lit up at whoever was calling, and she immediately withdrew her foot from my face and scampered upstairs to her bedroom. In her excitement, she hadn’t even realised she was only wearing one uwabaki. Before the door closed, I could hear the familiar flurry of excited Japanese words in her delightfully feminine voice.

I thought it was all over, but Akane remained lazily perched upon my back. The pain was bad enough in my neck and shoulders, but under her weight, my arms had started to tremble. On top of that, my legs felt as if they were going dead from her constant heel-kicks into my thighs. After a few seconds, her weight shifted and I saw her hand reach down and scoop Matsuri’s discarded uwabaki. I didn’t even try to turn away as the darkened insole neared my face. I let Akane freely hold it against my nose, and without even being encouraged, I began to sniff the intoxicating scent.

Akane, while holding the slipper against my face, eased my head backwards until my hands left the floor, then she dropped back onto her feet and my body was immediately released from the pain of her constant weight. “Stand up,” she said, and I did so, though I couldn’t stand to my full height as I was forced to crouch with the shoe held to my face. “Take it,” she said.

I replaced her hand with my own and held the slipper against my own face, all the while breathing in Matsuri’s foot smell. Even though the younger girl had left us, for something that she obviously found far more interesting, here I was, inhaling her foot odour.

Akane watched me curiously, hesitantly. It was almost as if she was analysing me, checking if there was any chance that I was going to disobey her and throw down the slipper. However, after everything I had just been through, there was no fight left in me. I simply wanted this all over with, and I reasoned that the sooner that Akane was satisfied, the sooner I would be free of her torment. She may even tire of playing with me if I just obeyed everything she demanded. Perhaps the fun for her was my resistance and obvious discomfort.

While still holding the slipper to my face, I sagged and I couldn’t help but let out a groan and rotate my shoulders. I then cricked my neck. Matsuri had kept me in that awful suspended footstool position for so long that my upper body had completely cramped up.

“What’s wrong?” I felt Akane’s finger poke against my shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m aching all over,” I said from the muffled prison of the slipper. “I’m all cramped up.”

Suddenly, Akane’s concerned face transformed to one of excited glee. “Would you like a massage?”

Her words actually took me by surprise, to the extent that I removed the slipper from my face. A massage honestly sounded like the best idea I’d ever heard with the way I was feeling right at that point. The Japanese were known of their skills in massage too, right? “That would…that would actually be incredible. Is there a place nearby?”

Akane rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly, Mushi! I can give you a massage. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Really?”

She nodded towards the slipper, and without a word, I returned it to my face and resumed my sniffing. The short freedom having almost increased the pungent aroma upon its return.

“Yes, let’s go upstairs. You can lay down and I’ll give you a massage. You will love it. Do you know ashiatsu?”

“Ashi…what?”

“It’s Japanese massage! It’s another way for you to learn about Japanese culture, and it’ll help you feel better at the same time.”

I certainly liked the sound of that. There was nothing more I needed at the point than a relaxing massage, and it was as if Akane was so excited about teaching me her culture, that she had forgotten everything that had just happened before. She was almost back to the same friendly girl that had met me at the airport, far from the girl that had some weird desire to constantly subject me to her feet. Anyway, I was more than willing to learn about Japanese massage, at least it was better than being under these girls’ feet.

Akane took my hand and led me up towards her bedroom.

Once inside, she skipped towards my make-shift bed and scooped up my pillow. She brought it over to me and placed it on the floor next to the footboard of her bed. Next, she snatched her sister’s slipper from my face and dropped it onto my pillow.

I looked at her with confusion. “What’s happening?”

“I just need you to do something for me before we begin.”

“What…what is it?” I could already feel that familiar anxiety building within me.

“Sit on the floor next to the pillow,” she said, and she encouraged me down with a light push on my shoulder.

I sat cross-legged next to my pillow and looked at Matsuri’s uwabaki slipper perched on top. It was actually pretty cute, the kind of thing you’d see the Japanese school girls wearing in cartoons. However, I knew that it utterly stank too.

“Lick it,” she said. “No, wait a second.” She plucked her phone from her pocket. “Now, do it. Lick my sister’s uwabaki.”

I looked up at her in shock. “W-why?”

“Because I told you to.”

“I thought I was getting a massage,” I whined. I closed my eyes in exasperation. Why? Why did there always have to be some sort of condition attached to everything.

Akane pointed her phone towards me. I looked up at her and for a second, I was taken aback by how extremely cute she looked. She was like a little doll with her long, straight black hair. She was wearing a bright t-shirt with black shorts, and had little white ankle socks on her feet. I could see her toes excitedly wiggling beneath the material. She caught eye contact, and showed me that adorable smile filled with metal.

Sat there, on the floor at this diminutive Asian girl’s feet, I thought how pathetic this all was. She was tiny, and completely harmless. I was taller and bigger than her. If I put my weight behind a punch I would probably smack her across the room. Why the hell was I even afraid of displeasing her so much? We were no physical match at all. I had to weigh twice as much as her. I could probably pin both her and her sister in a wrestling hold from which they’d never escape.

But then I jolted when Akane snapped her fingers. Her smile vanished and her eyes narrowed in ferocity. “Mushi!” she barked. She pointed a forceful finger to the floor. “Dogeza!”

For a moment I was startled, but as I looked up at the tiny girl with her thick-rimmed glasses, I thought, what am I even afraid of? Honestly, she looked like a little nerd that I could crush with one hand. There was no way I was getting back down in that bowing position after having spent however long on my hands and knees with her sister’s foot shoved in my face. I’d played along the first weeks under the guise of learning about their culture, but no more. I was better than that. I may not have been a loudmouth or the alpha of any group, but I was certainly above being a pushover.

I rose to my feet, and at my full height, I was easily a good foot taller than the petite Akane. I was wider than her too, and I stared down at her slender frame dwarfed in my shadow. However, Akane merely stood with hands on hips and scowled back up at me in defiance.

“Listen, Akane, what if I don’t feel like—"

“Mushi!” she said again, this time with greater volume as she stamped her socked foot. “Dogeza, right now, bow before your Japanese superior!”

I felt a flush run through me. Superior?

“Dogeza!” she said again. “Dogeza, right now. Kneel to your Japanese superior NOW!” There was something about her using that word, superior, that sent a chill down my spine. Yes, I was bigger than her, and physically stronger, but Akane had all of the looks and confidence. Not only that, but we were in her country, and she was the predator in her natural environment. There was some part of me that was swayed by the easiness of dropping to my knees and admitting she was superior. There was a comfort in just giving up and not trying to fight it. Once I’d given in, there would be no more worrying or having to think for myself. The anxiety could be replaced by instruction: Akane’s instruction. I felt my resolve waning and spine crumbling with each passing second of hesitancy.

We were still holding eye contact, and I could feel the internal battle taking place. Her ferocious eyes were staring straight through me, but then suddenly they softened, as if she realised she was about to win. Her mouth turned to a smirk, and she crossed her arms beneath her bosom. Her eyes turned towards the ceiling, as if I wasn’t even worth looking at anymore. “Mushi,” she said as she lifted a hand and checked over her fingernails. “Mushi, you American loser.”

Her words were like a stab straight through my heart. Things hadn’t moved on at all. I was still back down in the hallway being tormented by this vile little girl.

She moved one socked foot closer towards me and pointed down in expectation. “Dogeza, right now. Kneel before your Japanese Empress and kiss my foot with respect. Do what comes naturally to white girls like you.”

And with that my body almost went into automation. She looked so determined to get what she wanted, and that she expected me to immediately comply, that I did it. I gave her exactly what she demanded, even though my body was aching all over. I scrambled to my hands and knees and bowed as deep as I could in the dogeza. The dogeza that Akane had trained me to perform for her at a snap of her fingers, with my forehead placed a mere inch or so away from her socked toes. I could even pick up a light whiff of foot odour, though not to the strength of Matsuri’s uwabaki. Her foot moved closer towards me until it was basically pushing against my head.

“Kiss,” I heard her say from above. “Kiss your superior’s foot.”

And I did, I placed a light peck on her socked foot, not entirely sure why I was doing it, but abundantly aware that as I did so, her phone was right in my face recording the whole thing. She retracted her foot and suddenly I was ignored.

Why did she want me bowing down there? I didn’t know. That was never part of the process. Whenever Akane demanded I perform the dogeza, I did so, and waited until she made clear what she wanted. All I could make out was her wiggling toes, while up above she spoke in Japanese, presumably to a video she was filming with her phone. After a minute or so of the running commentary, I felt one of her socked feet against the back of my head, applying pressure and pushing my forehead into the hard floor.

“Mushi,” she said in a bratty tone. “Why do you perform dogeza for me?”
 I thought for a moment. I was nervous, worried that I would say the wrong thing. I wanted to please Akane so this would all be over as soon as possible. I thought about everything she had said to me in the past few minutes and attempted to tell her what I thought she wanted to hear. “Because you are my Japanese superior, Akane-san,” I said with a tremble in my voice, “and this is how us foreigners show respect to the Empress.”

There was a girlish, excited giggle, and suddenly Akane’s feet were thumping up and down on the floor as if she was dancing in victory. Her foot returned to my head followed by another flurry of Japanese words to her phone.

“Yes, I am your Empress, Mushi,” she said after a moment. Her foot lifted from my head, then immediately returned, though this time I felt her soft skin instead of the sock. Her sweaty toes crept to the side of my face and pushed down. I could feel her toes digging into my chubby cheek while the one beneath was flattened to the floor. I could just make out she was holding her phone high up in the air and angling it so both her and I were in shot. “Call me Joō-heika no Akane.”

I said the words back as I heard them, though probably messed them up in the process. “What do they mean?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter to you,” she said. “Just make sure that’s what you call me from now on. Say it again.”

“Joō heika no Akane,” I said.

“Now, I expect you to obey my orders without questioning me. That’s how you foreigner white girls should behave when at the feet of a Japanese girl, got it?”

“Yes, Akane-san, whatever you say.” This didn’t feel like a game anymore.

Her toes pinched at my cheek and she ground her foot into my skin. “Joō-heika no Akane!”

“Joō-heika no Akane!” I squealed in desperation.

“Wait.” Her foot disappeared from my face and she scampered towards her bookshelf. Seconds later, her foot was carelessly returned to my cheek, and she crouched to show me a particular page from the book. “Look, can you read this?”

“It’s in Japanese,” I mumbled.

“Oh of course, you cannot speak our superior language, only your own dull squawking.” She giggled. “Silly me. Well, let me be kind and translate for you. It says the Emperor of Japan is a living God.” She tapped her finger of a Japanese man sat on a throne-like chair with a kind of sun lit up behind him. “A God! Do you understand this?”

“Uh, okay?”

“And I’m your Empress, right?”

Trapped beneath her foot it seemed best to just agree with whatever she was saying. “Umm, yes, you are.”

“So, what does that make me, Mushi?”

“Ummm, a God?” I’m sure that’s what she wanted to hear, but I still couldn’t help saying it in a questioning tone. I was a bit confused and wasn’t entirely sure what was happening.

“Well, if you say so.” She laughed and twisted her toes into my cheek again. “Maybe I’m not the God of the whole of Japan, not yet anyway, even if you wish I was. But I’m certainly your God.” Her foot lifted from my face and she sat back onto the footboard of her bed, allowing her feet to casually swing beneath her, one bare while the other was still socked. She held her phone pointed towards me. “Now, see Matsuri-chan’s uwabaki on your pillow? This is a symbol of Japanese dominance over your inferior American ways. Do you wear uwabaki in America?”

There was a pause and I assumed I was supposed to answer. “Umm, no we don’t.”

“No, because you are not worthy. This is another lesson for you. Uwabaki is a cultural treasure that you must worship. So, go ahead, Mushi. Pay homage to my sister’s school slipper.”

I looked up at her with confusion. “Uh, h-how?”

“Kiss it. Lick it. Lick all inside my sister’s uwabaki, Mushi. She wears them all day long during her classes. While she’s learning to better herself even more than she already is. Practising her English, her second language, which she can speak even better than you. So, show that uwabaki the respect it deserves.” The phone camera remained focused on me the whole time.

My stomach turned with dread at the thought of running my tongue along the dirty insole of Matsuri’s school shoe. Things were becoming very weird and growing out of control. Bowing to my tormentor was bad enough, but this was a whole other level of depravity. I’d thought I was already at rock bottom, but apparently that wasn’t enough for Akane, she wanted me to descend further, and all at her direction. I was already saying and using words I didn’t fully understand, and from the laughter they induced, I figured I was embarrassing myself in some way. Also, Matsuri wasn’t even here, she was busy talking to one of her friends, or more likely some boy, yet I was about to debase myself before her footwear and worship her stinky school slipper. Why? Simply because Akane wanted me to.

“Do I really have to?” I whined.

“Yes, Mushi, this is an order from your Japanese Empress.” Her heels thumped impatiently against the footboard. “Don’t disobey your God.”

“Can I stop bowing?”

“Only if it’s to worship that uwabaki.”

I struggled to my knees, groaning at the pain in my upper back. I picked up the slipper and looked at it closely. Feeling it on my skin, the texture appeared to mostly be a white canvas-style material with a red rubber trim and toe and a white sole. On the rubber toe there were some Japanese characters written in marker pen, which I couldn’t understand but guessed were perhaps Matsuri’s name. After all, if all of the girls wore similar shoes to school, then they would easily get mixed up. As I noticed earlier, it was pretty much clean on the outside, with some marginal dust on the sole.

“What should I do?” I asked. I honestly required guidance. I didn’t know how to worship a shoe. This whole thing was ridiculous.

“Kiss it, right there, on the toe, on her name,” she said, confirming my earlier suspicion about the Japanese characters.

I lifted the shoe and tentatively kissed the red toe with a soft peck, right where Matsuri had scribbled her name. I looked up towards Akane and saw that she was watching me intently while recording everything with her phone.

“Now, thank her.”

“Thank you, Matsuri-san,” I mumbled without conviction while blushing from the camera.

“Now.” Akane licked her lips. “Get your tongue inside it.”

“Do I have to? Please,” I pleaded. “It looks disgusting. I can already smell it.”

“You should be honoured. This is the uwabaki of your God’s sister!” Akane flashed me that brace-filled smile again. It was annoying, it made her look so much younger than she was. It actually made her look younger than Matsuri, an actual younger girl whose stinking insole I was about to lick.

As I looked inside the school slipper, I could make out the toe impressions from where she had been wearing them so much. There was a dark indentation of where her foot had been squashing the material day after day, and soaking its sweat into the formerly white insole. I wrinkled my nose at the odour, which was pungent even from a distance. I thought about Matsuri, the stuck-up beautiful brat, going to school day after day and slipping her feet into these Japanese slippers. As she’d said when I removed her shoes; she always wore her slippers barefoot. There was probably toe jam, dead skin, sweat and all sorts mixed in there.

Akane sighed with impatience. “Do it, Mushi. Lick it right now. Don’t keep your God waiting.”

I slowly encroached my tongue into Matsuri’s school slipper while her older sister watched me in fascination. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were wide through her glasses as the tip of my tongue touched the insole for the first time. Immediately, there was a sharp, acrid, salty taste that made me screw up my face in disgust and retract my tongue.

I began scraping my tongue with my fingernails, trying to get the taste out. All the while, Akane was almost rolling over laughing on the bed and speaking Japanese into her phone. When she’d finally composed herself and stopped laughing, she said, “Don’t stop, keep going. Show that uwabaki some love.”

I looked at her in disgust, then lifted the slipper and began giving the insole long strokes with the flat of my tongue. I figured, what the hell, I may as well go at it and get it over and done with. Maybe if I licked it more frantically then the taste wouldn’t register as much as did it with a single lick. I was kneeling there, crouched over and digging my tongue into every corner of the insole of Matsuri’s uwabaki while Akane cheered me on and recorded the whole depraved act.

She offered words of encouragement too. “That’s a good, Mushi, make yourself useful and clean up my sister’s slipper for her. This is why you came to Japan, right? You said it yourself to her earlier.”

“Ugh,” I groaned, as I followed her instruction and tried to lick with greater intensity in the hope that the dark insole would begin to turn white. As the salty taste made the hairs stand up on my neck, I pictured Matsuri sat at her desk in college. The height of elegant beauty and carefree popularity, improving her education and chances in life while her sweaty toes were fidgeting within this horrid uwabaki thing. What was I doing? Tasting that sweat she’d worked so hard to build up while studying. I truly was worshipping my Asian superior in the most symbolic way. An older American girl sucking the sweat out of a Japanese school slipper. This wasn’t what I’d had in mind when I’d applied for the exchange programme, but it was what Akane had decided would happen.

“That’s it, get it clean,” she said. “She’ll be so pleased when she sees how sparkling it is. I’m sure she’ll enjoy getting it all sweaty again tomorrow in school while she’s studying subjects your simple mind could never understand.”

That cut me deep. I was naïve, sure, and I sometimes did stupid things, largely because of my anxiety and lack of confidence, but I wasn’t dumb.

“And you’ll be ready to lick it again tomorrow, won’t you, Mushi?”

“Why are you being so mean to me?” I whined between licks.

“I’m not being mean at all,” she said with a splendid grin. “I’m teaching you the Japanese way of things for a girl like you.”

She suddenly stopped recording, yet I continued licking regardless. She rested back onto her elbows on the bed and just lay there watching me while I worked my tongue all around Matsuri’s uwabaki. I was making various faces and groans of disgust at the atrocious sweaty and salty taste, when I heard the younger girl’s footsteps tapping down the hallway. Before I could remove my tongue, she’d already burst into the room with a look of total surprise on her face. Her mouth was aghast, and her usually smooth complexion was wrinkled in disbelief. While I continued to lick, my eyes looked to her hand and noticed that she was watching a video of me licking her slipper. Akane must have sent her the whole thing.

Matsuri’s eyes darted to her sister, and they began having a conversation in Japanese that was filled with lots of gasps on Matsuri’s part and giggles on Akane’s. While they were talking, I noticed a silhouette appear behind the younger girl, and as it came into the light, I saw it was their mother. She appeared to be carrying a grocery bag and must have come straight upstairs when she heard the commotion.

Saori had been out for most of the day, and her forehead appeared sweaty. She was wearing a loose blouse and skirt, with those beaten-up, traditional style flip flops that almost appeared as if they were made from straw. I noticed that her toenails were still unpainted, though they appeared neat and well maintained. She must have kicked off her usual sneakers and socks at the door and was probably annoyed that I hadn’t been available to perform the shoe-removal tradition for her. Her expression was filled with absolute confusion, and she cocked her head at the sight before her; that of me licking her youngest daughter’s slipper clean. Matsuri jumped when she felt her mother press into her back, and she immediately fell silent.

What surprised me the most was even with the entrance of sister and mother, I still continued licking the slipper as if that’s all that mattered anymore. Akane remained relaxed on the bed with a suitably pleased grin on her face.

Eventually, Saori took a few more steps in the room and exchanged a couple of words in Japanese with Akane. My tormentor must have been explaining everything, though I doubt she was being entirely honest, as her mother laughed at certain moments, then gestured towards me with her hand at others. Finally, she shook her head in disgust and rolled her eyes. “Molly,” she said. “Look at me.”

I momentarily stopped licking and looked up at the girls’ mother. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Why are you licking Matsuri-chan’s uwabaki? You know she wears them all day in school? This is not a normal thing to do. Have you no shame? Is this something you do a lot in your primitive homeland? I know you white girls lack class, always drinking and engaging in pre-marital sex, but I didn’t realise you were this far gone.”

Matsuri sniggered at hearing my actions so bluntly stated.

“Ummm.” I hesitated and looked towards Akane. I wanted to tell the truth, that I hated licking the stinking slipper, but that Akane had forced me. I was about to utter the words, when I caught Akane’s eyes honed in on me in an intense glare; my resolve immediately disappeared. “I’m an inferior American girl,” I said, hearing the words in Akane’s voice within my head. “I’m showing respect to my Japanese superior’s slipper, something we could never wear back home because we are uncultured.”

Akane smirked and excitedly drummed her heels into the footboard of the bed. Matsuri laughed out loud, then shook her head in disgust and rolled her eyes.

Meanwhile, Saori looked in absolute shock. Her mouth hung open as she silently glanced between her daughters. She looked at me again and her eyes narrowed. She raised an eyebrow and cleared her throat, then her upper lip curled in a sneer of disgust. Not just disgust, but something else, there was almost a resentment. “Fine. Once you’ve finished with my daughter’s other uwabaki,” she said in a stern, direct tone, while glancing at Matsuri.

The younger girl took a moment to register what was being said, before flashing me an excited grin and skipping off to her room. Seconds later, she returned with the other stinking slipper and tossed it towards me as if you’d throw a bone to a dog.

Saori wrapped an arm around Matsuri’s shoulder and pulled her in close, placing a soft kiss upon her forehead. Then she directed her focused gaze back towards me. “As I was saying, once you’ve”—she gestured her hand towards me dismissively—“done your job cleaning those up for my daughter, I want you to come to my room.” She lifted her heel within one of those zori sandal things so that all of her weight was on her toes. My eyes were drawn beneath her wrinkled arch, and I noticed the straw material was absolutely filthy, with a dark footprint embedded into the material. She looked me dead in the eyes and spoke with disdain, “I was going to throw these old things out”—the zori made a loud smacking sound against her sole as she flattened her foot—“but perhaps your inferior tongue can salvage them.”

My tongue was dry and raw when I found myself knocking Saori’s bedroom door about half hour later. Together, Akane and Matsuri had been relentless in making sure I’d licked every bit of dirt from the latter’s uwabaki. I’d did so, obediently, with all dignity and respect having abandoned me. The only upside was that before being dismissed to attend to her mother, Akane promised that I’d receive a reward. She was going for a jog around the block while I was with Saori, but, later that evening, I would receive a full body massage for doing all that she’d asked.

Saori called me in and I of course immediately dropped into the dogeza position out of respect. She was sat at her desk and appeared to be painting or something.

“You can stand, Mushi,” she said, and I rose to my feet.

I realised she was actually writing in Japanese characters. Her calligraphy was well-practised and neat.

“That looks nice,” I said, hoping such a compliment would improve her mood.

“Thank you. People don’t send letters these days,” she said. “I have a lot of respect for the written word. Akane-chan lives on the internet and Matsuri-chan always has her face buried in her phone. There’s no appreciation for letters anymore.”

“Who is it for?” I asked.

“My husband and their father. He’s been in Singapore on business for the past six months. We often send letters.”

Finally, it made sense. I’d been too afraid to ask in case he had passed away or there had been a divorce, but I’d noticed photos of him around the house. I wondered what sort of man he was, and whether he would have stood by with everything that was happening to me.

Saori dipped her pen back in the ink, and finished off the final few characters of her letter. Then she put it aside to dry. She turned on her stool to face me. She had changed into a sort of traditional Japanese robe, which was green with flowery patterns. It was almost like those kimonos that the women in Kill Bill had been wearing, but it seemed less formal, like something you would wear around the house. On her feet were the dirty straw-like zori.

She pointed at the floor near her feet, and said, “Dogeza.”

Immediately I dropped to my hands and knees again, and placed my forehead to the floor right at her sandaled feet, while she sat, relaxed. She moved them either side of my head, and I saw her flex her calves till she was balancing on tip toes. I expected her to say something, but the room remained silent for a few moments while I held the position.

Finally, she placed one of her sandaled feet on my head. “You really know your place now, don’t you, Mushi?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said to the floor.

“Do you like your role in this house? You can be truthful.”

“Not really, ma’am,” I said in all honesty. “I feel like a servant, not a guest. It’s not what I imagined when I signed up to this programme.”

She tutted in surprise and I felt her twisting her foot atop my head. “You wanted a cultural exchange, correct? Isn’t that exactly what you’re receiving?”

“Umm, I suppose so,” I said, unable to think of a retort to her logic.

“What were you expecting, Mushi?” I felt her sandaled toes touch against my chin. Then she encouraged my head up from the dogeza position until I was able to see her beautiful, Asian eyes. She cocked her head, which brought out the youthful flavour of her skin. Her shoulder-length hair hung away from her exquisitely crafted jawline. “Samurai and geisha? Sumo wrestlers rolling down Mt Fuji while eating sushi? Just because this cultural experience isn’t what your ignorant, bimbo mind imagined, doesn’t mean it isn’t valid.”

I sighed. I may have been blonde, but I certainly wasn’t a bimbo. Was there really any need for the insults at this stage? I was bowing before her, but still she felt the need to be cruel.

“If you think it’s so unfair,” she asked. “Why do you always do as my daughter says? Akane-san has you wrapped around her little finger, doesn’t she?” She laughed to herself. “You’re basically her pet by this point.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Her own little mushi.”

“It feels right,” I said, not realising her question was likely rhetorical. “Like, to show I’m grateful for you allowing me, umm, as a foreigner, to stay here with your Japanese family in your home.”

She narrowed her eyes in seriousness, though, somewhere within them, I could detect a hint of amusement. She leant an arm on the desk and settled back, revealing her thigh as the robe crept open. She tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ears.  “I was unconvinced when Akane-chan showed us your profile, but she assured me you were the right choice. Still, I remained sceptical, until”—she gestured at me with her hand—“well, here you are, on your knees. I am extremely proud of her achievement in such a short time.”

“Umm, I’m not sure I understand, ma’am.”

“Good,” she said. “It’s not your role to understand. Your role in this house is to do as you’re told.”

“Umm, yes, ma’am,” I said with a nod. There was a different feeling when in Saori’s presence compared to her daughters. From the moment I first met her I had felt her looking down at me. She was usually cold and aloof, and as a result, I feared displeasing her. There seemed to have been uncommunicated high standards demanded of me right from the start, and I’d done nothing but disappoint her expectations at every opportunity. There was also the age and status factor. This was her home after all and she was the matriarch of the house. Unlike with Akane’s constant humiliating games and Matsuri’s disinterest and disdain, which I hated, but was forced to submit to; it felt natural to do whatever Saori told me to, because she was in charge. I was compelled to respect and obey her wishes as I would my own mother.

She let the zori drop from her foot, then she turned back to the desk and prepared a fresh sheet of paper. “Pick that up, Mushi.” She slapped her thigh through her robe. “Then come here next to me.” I retrieved the sandal, then shuffled on my knees until I was next to Saori at her desk. She held up the now-dry letter so that I could see. “Are you able to read this?”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”

“And why is that?”

“I can’t read Japanese, ma’am.”

“It’s true that your simple mind cannot understand Japanese, but still, you can appreciate its beauty, right?”

I ignored her insults, and instead looked at the letter; I had to agree she was correct. The calligraphy of the Japanese characters and symbols were elegantly shaped with precision and care. I could picture it framed on the wall. It seemed more personal and important than a letter written in English. “Yes, ma’am. It’s very beautiful.”

“It’s a perfect example of our superior culture, don’t you think?”

“Umm, I guess so, ma’am.”

She turned and looked me in the eye. There was a shimmer to her and she licked her lips. “Just as a dog cannot understand English, you, Mushi, cannot understand Japanese.”

I stared back at her blankly, unsure what she expected me to say.

“What does that make you?” she asked.

“Umm.” I hesitated. Her glare was intense, and there was no inkling that she was kidding or playing around. “A dog?” I asked questioningly.

She shrugged and returned her attention to her desk. “If you say so. While I write another letter then, in our beautiful and elegant language, you can do what a dog does.” She couldn’t stop herself from sneaking a smile as she began writing on the blank sheet of paper. “As you paid respect to Matsuri-chan’s uwabaki, you can show the same devotion to my zori.” She turned to look at me again. “These are traditional Japanese footwear. We have worn these for thousands of years. I want to see you appreciating that in acceptance of our superior culture.” As she drew another letter on the paper, I could tell she was watching me through the corner of her eye, waiting to see my reaction.

I glanced down at the stinking flip flop. The surface was caked in dirt in the shape of her dainty feet. I could make out where her heel, the narrowing of her arch, and the thick ball of her foot slapped away day after day, adding more sweat and filth to the straw. Along the top were five dark circles where her toes would grip at the sandal. She had probably been wearing these sandals for years and they disgusted me. Still, I knew exactly what she wanted, and how could I refuse her after she’d already witnessed me pathetically licking her daughter’s uwabaki clean? Plus, Saori commanded obedience with every piercing stare. There was no way in hell I’d defy her.

I lifted the sandal to my face and tentatively licked at the dirt. It was vile and difficult to drag my tongue along the surface, such was the feeling of the dry muck against my wet tongue. I cringed and almost vomited all over her desk.

Saori began laughing, a beautiful, shrill feminine laugh that reminded me that she appeared so much younger than she actually was. She looked and sounded almost the same age as me, despite being in her forties. “That’s a good, Mushi,” she whispered. “Lick it clean while I write my letter.”

I remained kneeling next to Saori while she concentrated on her letter, writing in silence. All the while, I licked her zori from heel to toe, again and again, wincing at the awful, salty flavour, though somehow compelling myself to continue despite the dire urge to vomit.

While I licked, occasionally, she’d glance at me and smile. Twice, she reached over and patted my hair, the second time even stroking a few strands and tucking them behind my ear. She grasped my chin and looked me in the eyes. “Good girl,” she said. “Since your tongue can’t speak Japanese, at least it is good for something.” She looked at the zori and grimaced. “Still a long way to go, Mushi, keep at it.”

I must have licked that sandal for half an hour. My tongue was already dry as hell from having to lick Matsuri’s uwabaki, and by this point, it was physically hurting to continue licking. My entire mouth was dried out from dust, as if I’d been sucking on a spoon of cinnamon. “Please, water,” I said, in desperation. I looked longingly at the glass of water on Saori’s desk.

“Show me,” she said, and I turned the sandal so that she could see. Her eyes actually widened in surprise as she took in the yellow straw-like surface that had previously been nothing but black. “You Western girls are actually good for something.” She turned on the stool and sat back against the desk. “What did you want, water?” She picked up the glass and took a long gulp, before taunting me with a devilish smile. “So refreshing, Mushi.”

“Please, ma’am,” I begged, barely being able to say the words. “My mouth is so dry.”

“But you’ve only cleaned one zori.” Her mouth hung open, aghast that I’d make such a demand. “You expect me to walk around with one clean and the other still dirty?”

“Please, ma’am, I’ll lick it clean straight after. I just need a drink first.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She moved the glass towards me, then right as I was about to take it, she tilted and spilled some water all over the floor. “There you go, Mushi,” she said. “A drink for you like the dog you are.”

And like the dog I apparently was, I dropped to my hands and knees and desperately licked the water up as much as I could. I actually felt gratitude towards her. Genuine gratitude that she was allowing me to lick water from her floors and soothe my parched tongue. While I sucked up the refreshing liquid, Saori crossed her legs at the ankles upon my back.

There was a knock on the door, and Saori said something in Japanese, which I presume was enter, as seconds later, Matsuri came in. She looked at the scene and had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh. The two of them had a whole conversation while I slurped up all of the water and Saori used me as a footstool.

Eventually, Matsuri left, and Saori removed her feet. “Go, Mushi.” She nudged me with her foot. “Go to your master, dog. Akane-chan has use for you. You can clean my other zori another time.”

I didn’t hang around for her to change her mind. I crawled along the floor straight out of her room before she had me spend any further second licking those disgusting sandals.

Once out in the hallway, Matsuri was stood by her bedroom door. “She’ll be back soon,” she said. “She just messaged me. She said to wait by the door downstairs.” She then left me in the hallway as if I wasn’t worth anymore of her time.

I made my way downstairs and sat by the front door. There was a mirror in the porch, and I took a look at what I had become. There was my blonde hair and plain face, but all around my mouth was dirt. The very dirt from Saori’s sandal, right there on my face for all the world to see. Some of it had even made its way to the tip of my nose. I wanted to disappear from embarrassment. I was a pathetic excuse for a girl. Even I could admit it now. I wiped as much of the dirt away as I could with my t-shirt. What the hell had I let these women do to me? I’d come here excited ready to explore Japan, and what had I experienced so far? Bowing and licking shoes clean. My parents would be completely ashamed of me. They’d asked for me to regularly email them about my adventures, but so far, I hadn’t sent a single message in the month I’d been over here. It was too humiliating. I literally had no experiences to share other than the ways that I’d been serving my hosts.

I didn’t have to wait long before Akane returned home. As soon as she walked through the door, I dropped into the dogeza ready to remove her Converse and replace them with her slippers. However, she immediately tapped my head with her foot and told me to rise. Once I did, she grabbed my arms and encouraged me to turn around. I felt one of her knees knock into the back of my own, and in response my legs bent.

“Carry me to my room, Mushi,” she said, while grabbing my shoulders and jumping up onto me in a piggyback. I held her legs and did as I was told, as if I was some kind of mule. I noticed that her clothes felt damp, soaked through with sweat. Being so petite, Akane was easy enough to carry up the stairs and once we were in the room, I had to kneel next to her bed so she could sit without her Converse touching the floor. “Lay down on the floor,” she added.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I told you to,” she said, without even bothering to look my way. She was busy fiddling with the laces on her shoes. She growled in frustration, “Take my shoes off first, then lay down like I told you.”

The irritation in her tone was enough for me to obey without question. I picked at her laces, which was difficult as she’d managed to tie them up in a knot. Once they were loose, I held her calf while slipping the Converse from her ankle-socked foot. My reward was the warm, sweaty stink of her post-run feet. While I struggled with the other lace, Akane removed her sock and placed it over my shoulder. I glanced at the white material, and my nose wrinkled at the pungent odour being up so close, a whole hour of her running foot sweat stored right there in the fabric. Did I remove it? No, I left it exactly where Akane wanted it. Once the second Converse was removed, the other sock joined the first on my shoulder.

She raised her foot to within inches of my face and wiggled her toes to air them out. I could see the moist sock fuzz stuck between. “What are you gawping at, Mushi?” she asked, startling me from my stare. “You tired of licking the sweat from our shoes and want to sample it from the source instead?” I wanted to say no, but was frozen in place and unable to get out any words. I was mentally exhausted from everything they had put me through for the last few hours. I’d done things I’d have never have done back home in America. She giggled, then her foot moved ever closer until her toes nestled comfortably around my nose. “Take a sniff.”

I mindlessly took a deep breath and let her sweaty foot aroma overwhelm my senses. It also had a hypnotic effect and I felt myself becoming lightheaded. When she moved her foot to guide me towards the floor, my nose clutched between her toes, I was unable to resist and was soon laying on my back. Her other foot then joined the first and danced their clammy sweat all over my face. “Are you ready for your massage, Mushi?”

“Yes, please, Joō-heika no Akane.”

She wiggled her stinky toes above my nose. “Tell me you love how my feet smell, Mushi.”

I hated how her feet smelled, but it was almost like the intoxicating scent was controlling my mind and Akane’s will was all that mattered. “I love your foot smell, Joō-heika no Akane.”

She lifted both feet and hovered them above my eyes, allowing me a close-up glimpse of her damp, wrinkled soles. “Tell me you want me to rub these sweaty feet all over your face.”

“I want you to rub them in my face, Joō-heika no Akane,” I said, not entirely sure why I was saying such a thing.

She lazily dragged her slippery toes along my forehead and down my cheeks, leaving a trail of sweat in their place. Eventually her toes came to rest on my lips, and she drummed them excitedly. Up above, I could see a victorious, mischievous grin on her face. Her Asian eyes sparkled behind her glasses. “Tell me you’d suck my toes if I wanted you to.”

I gulped. I didn’t want to suck her toes. Sucking her toes was the last thing on Earth that I wanted to do. It was bad enough that I’d had to lick her sister’s uwabaki and her mother’s zori. “Ummm,” I said.

But during my hesitation, I saw those amused, sparkling eyes of hers, suddenly narrow and take on a far sinister glare. She slapped her foot against my forehead which left me startled. She then leant down and grasped the collar of my shirt. “Tell me your stupid, white mouth exists to suck your Japanese God’s toes!” she aggressively demanded.

I gasped at her aggression. “My stupid, white mouth exists to suck my Japanese God’s toes!” I said with desperation, needing to take a breath between every word.

Akane burst into a fit of giggles, then she released my collar and let my head thump against the floor. “Maybe I’ll allow you the honour someday, Mushi, since you want it and all.” She kicked a foot against my arm. “But, right now, take off your shirt, then roll over, it’s time for you to experience ashiatsu.”

I wriggled my shirt off so I was left only in my bra. I was immediately self-conscious, as my figure was best described as curvy. I rolled onto my front, actually looking forward to my massage, as well as being relieved that I wouldn’t have to do something as humiliating as suck my tormentor’s toes. Immediately, I felt her weight drop down onto my shoulder blades as she balanced on my back. Before I could catch my breath, she was trampling up and down the length of my back without any consideration for the pain she was causing. She stomped against my spine and dug her heels into my muscles. I could feel her sweaty feet sticking to my skin as she peeled each foot away to carelessly poke it into another part of my body. The chubby area around my waist was the worst, as it was soft and squished beneath her weight. If she was a bit more considerate, it probably would have felt nice, however, this ‘massage’ was hurting more than relaxing me.

She placed one foot into the middle of my back, then I was taken by surprise when the other harshly stepped up on to the back of my head, causing my chin to smack against the hard floor. “You like that, Mushi?” she asked. I groaned in response, and Akane began grinding her foot against my head as her toes gripped my scalp.

“Can’t you use your hands instead?” I mumbled.

“Of course, not, silly,” she said with a giggle. “You said you wanted to experience ashiatsu. Ashiatsu uses the feet.”

I groaned. Again? Why was I so easy to trick all of the time? There I was thinking the massage would be a nice way for a break from Akane’s feet, and she’d duped me once more. I wanted to tell her to get off, but she increased the weight on my head and forced my lips against the floor. She then began rocking my head from side to side, until eventually she stood up onto my cheek, with her moist toes sunk into my flesh.

“Are you enjoying the massage, my doamatto?” she asked, while digging her sweaty toes into my cheek.

“It’s…not what I expected,” I mumbled from beneath her toes. “What’s a doamatto?”

“A term of affection between friends.” The weight suddenly increased on my cheek and forced a squeak from my lips. “This is a special technique. It’s called barerīna.” She rose up until only her toes were digging right into my cheek as if they were going to slice straight through. I felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my head. “You say it, Mushi.”

“Bareriiinnna,” I moaned beneath her merciless toes. “Your toes are all sweaty,” I whined.

“They need to be for ashiatsu.” She made a point of lowering her toes until they tickled my nose and I was reminded of their intense stink. “The sweat is part of the therapy. It’s like a, what do you Americans call it? A detox!”

“Ugh, okay,” I said, as she dragged her sweaty toes all over the side of my face, before once again applying her weight and squishing my cheek. It sounded like the complete opposite of a detox, but fitness people did all kinds of weird therapies, so I wasn’t in a position to argue.

“You have a lot of tension in your neck,” she said. “I can help with that.” The weight considerably increased on my face and I felt like I was being driven into the floor. It took me a moment to realise, due to the shock, but I could feel that Akane was stood on the side of my head with both of her feet. I felt like she was killing me and couldn’t help but scream, which came out as a garbled whine beneath her full weight.

Matsuri suddenly barged into the room and aggressively spoke in Japanese to her sister. The room immediately became silent until I heard her slippers slapping against the floor. She then spoke again in Japanese, this time in a much softer tone.

“She’s enjoying her massage,” Akane said. “She likes it like this. I think she’ll become an ashiatsu addict at this rate.”

“Will you break her skull?” Matsuri asked. “How long have you been stood like that?”

“Not long at all.”

“I’m trying to go live on TikTok and her stupid moans are ruining it. I can hear from my room.” She crouched down and I could see the venom in her face. “Any chance you could just shut the hell up, haisha?”

“I’m sorry,” I groaned, while Akane dug her toes above my ears. I could feel her nails cutting into my skin.

“Why don’t you try?” Akane said, as she stepped down from my back. “There still feels like there are a lot of knots in her face.”

“You can get knots in your face?” I asked.

“In a face like yours, yes,” Matsuri spat. Something smacked against the wall and I noticed she’d kicked off her slipper, clearly unimpressed with me. “Roll over,” she said.

I rolled onto my back, thankful that I was free from Akane stomping all over me and I could have a break. That didn’t last long however, as Matsuri planted her own perspiring foot straight onto my face. She carelessly ground it all over my features and I could feel my skin beginning to sting from the sweaty assault. “Take it, Mushi,” she spat.

She whispered something in Japanese, and from between the gaps in her toes, I could just make out that Akane was holding her hands. Next, Matsuri raised her other foot behind her and precariously balanced on one leg atop my head.

I could have easily shook beneath her until she fell, but I didn’t. I just lay there and let the two of them giggle and mock me while this younger Japanese brat pirouetted on my face without a care in the world.

From that day forward, things changed a lot. New rituals were added to my quota which I was expected to obey without question. I had to lick the girl’s slippers clean on a daily basis, paying particular attention to the insoles and surfaces that their feet touched. And how could I refuse? I’d already licked them once, so I literally had no excuse. On top of that, I had no inner strength to deny their demands anyway. Matsuri in particular just loved having me tongue her uwabaki after a long day studying at college. She saw it as some kind of victory over all white girls. Sometimes she’d have me laying beneath her desk while she did her assignments, her feet crossed atop my chest, while the school slipper was stuck to my face as I dragged my tongue along it’s interior repeatedly. Once she was satisfied with my devotion to her uwabaki, her feet would be planted against my face and rubbed without abandon, while up above, she studied to make something of herself. “It’s way more effective for concentration than music,” she said one time, while I gasped for breath beneath her warm, sweaty soles. “And since you just lay there and let me do it, why shouldn’t I?”

For Akane, however, it was more about just forcing me to do it. She loved making me lick her Converse sneakers, particularly the stinky insoles, or tongue at the toe marks in her variety of sandals. Often, she’d just have me silently doing it, kneeling at the end of her bed while she was busy with something else like reading, watching TV or playing on her phone. I couldn’t see what she was gaining from it other than the satisfaction of torturing me.

Sometimes, when Matsuri had a more important social function to attend, Akane would sit with me and hold the uwabaki while I licked it, as if she was playing with a pet. I probably could have got away with not doing it on the occasions when her sister was otherwise occupied, but Akane was having none of it and liked sending the younger girl photos while she was out socialising with her popular crowd. Matsuri would sometimes send back a short video of herself laughing, which Akane would show me with delight as I continued to worship the school slipper. I swear that on more than one occasion, Matsuri wasn’t alone, and I could distinctly hear the laughter of more than one girl. As a result, not a day went by where I didn’t have the taste of sweaty feet on my tongue.

Since Akane had also gotten away with so much during the massage, she must have thought she had free reign to literally walk all over me. If I was already in my bed, sometimes she’d use me as a step into her own. No words were spoken, she’d just stand on me without any consideration. When I didn’t say anything the first time, she must have assumed I accepted it and it became a nightly ritual. Similarly, if she woke first, and she usually did since I was so exhausted every day, she’d rolled out of bed, step on me while yawning and stretching her arms, then traipse off to the shower room as if nothing had happened.

There had been an upgrade to the dogeza too. I now performed it with Akane’s tatty, stinky old Converse sneaker tied to my face. So, not only did I have to bow for as long as she wanted with my forehead to the floor, but I did it while inhaling the stink of her feet. Why? For no reason other than because she wanted me to. Let that be a reminder of where you belong, Mushi, she’d said on countless occasions.

It wasn’t until a week after the first shoe-licking incident that Saori had me clean her other zori, again while writing a letter to her husband. By that point, the first one had already dirtied up again, so she had me go over it another time with my tongue. This too became a ritual, and she insisted I kneel next to her desk whenever she was writing, and lick her sweaty sandals. Why? I didn’t have the answer, but she would look at me with a raised eyebrow, and I’d crumble, kneel and lick that awful sandal until she was satisfied. “Lucky you, Mushi,” she said one time. “You’re experiencing all of the wonderful tastes Japan has to offer. You can probably distinguish between all of our footwear by now? Every other white girl will be jealous of your skilled palate. Perhaps you can add it to your resumé.” I wanted to disappear in shame.

Akane even had the bright idea of serving my leftover food into one of her old house slippers. While the three of them feasted at the table, I’d be kneeling beneath in anticipation of my own meal. Akane would always wear those particular slippers for about an hour before they ate. When everyone had enough, she’d delightfully skip around the table and spoon their leftovers inside, before unceremoniously dropping it on the floor for me to eat. I’d stuff my face into the opening without abandon and gobble up whatever was offered. I’d sworn my weight had been dropping and I pretty much assumed I wasn’t a vegetarian anymore from the variety of meaty flavours I’d consumed.

Also, for my own health benefits, as Akane so eloquently stated, I had nightly ashiatsu massages straight after her exercise. She liked to trample all over me while her feet were at their sweatiest. While I groaned and moaned beneath her, she’d bounce about without consideration of my plight. Her feet were so small and dainty that at times they felt like needles digging into me. She’d walk all over my back, then have me roll over so she could stomp my breasts too. The final act was always where she’d lean against the wall and step all over my face, making sure to rub her sweaty feet right into my skin.

On one occasion, when her feet were particularly sweaty, I’d begged and pleaded for her to stop, explaining that I really didn’t need a massage and that it hurt more than soothed. Plus, my face always stank of her sweaty feet for the rest of the evening.

“But it’s for your own good, Mushi,” she said while grinding her stinky little toes into my cheek. “You don’t understand ashiatsu. It’s a deep tissue massage and a long process. These things take time. I’ll nimble you up eventually, though it could take weeks. Ashiatsu has existed in Japanese culture for thousands of years. Embrace it!”

I sighed at the suggestion of having another one of those massages, never mind weeks more of it! “But could you at least wash your feet first?” I whined.

“No way, it’s important for the feet to be sweaty. It’s like combining aromatherapy with massage. It really tingles your senses.” She clutched my nose between her sweaty toes. “Breathe it in, I see your eyes roll back into your head whenever you do. It’s like a drug for your simple mind! Plus, the sweat helps to soothe your muscles.”

I had no retort. What did I know about massages, particularly Japanese ones? Nothing. So, I had to reluctantly accept her explanation and lay down beneath her stomping feet night after night. Sniffing her sweaty scent whenever she demanded, as in her words, it was for my own good. She wasn’t lying, was she? I did feel light-headed whenever I breathed in her foot stink and my eyes certainly did roll back.

On a few occasions, Matsuri joined in but she was never as into it as her sister. After a few minutes she’d complain that her legs were hurting, and would often just stand in place while playing on her phone. Of course, she was light, but after a while, her feet would really dig into my muscles until they went numb. I wasn’t sure which I preferred, the intense trampling of Akane, or the disinterested constant weight of Matsuri. Both had their pros and cons.

Saori had tried it a few times and marvelled at how squishy my body was beneath her feet. She’d tentatively walk up and down my back, while her daughters held her hands and helped her balance. She seemed to see it as more of a bonding session between her and her girls, and they’d often listen to traditional Japanese music while taking turns walking all over me.

One time, she brought home a pair of those awful, wooden sandals that I’d seen in the movie Memoir of a Geisha. She stepped and turned all over my back while the wooden slats pinched and snagged my skin. I was never told their Japanese name, so I just called them the torture sandals. Akane took a picture so I could see the swollen lines all over my spine. I couldn’t get to sleep that night; my back was in bits. I hoped it was a one off, but Saori seemed to delight in using them, once commenting while she dug the corner of the wood into my shoulder blade, “It’s just what you inferiors deserve to educate you about Japanese superiority”—she twisted the wooden base into my skin until it burned—“feel that, Mushi? That’s Japanese culture trampling all over your shameful, Western ways.”

Amongst it all, I seemed to settle and accept my place. The tormenting was relentless, coming at me from three sides, and eventually I lost all strength to oppose their will. I grew quiet too, speaking a lot less, as anything I said was usually made fun of. My responses tended to be me addressing them in some way or asking if I could serve them, though at times, if they added something new, I’d resist. For instance, the first time Akane tied her Converse to my face, I ripped it off and threw it across the room. However, Akane was skilled at driving any reluctance out of me in good time. Later that night, after a particularly exhausting ashiatsu session where she’d trampled and pinched my nipples for an extended time, including a couple of minutes while she wore her mother’s torture sandals, I’d spent the next few hours, crouched in the dogeza with the shoe tied to my face, just as she wanted. I had the choice of either doing what she wanted, or staying beneath her feet while she trampled me some more in those awful, wooden sandals. To add to my punishment for disobeying her in the first place, she sat on my back the whole time while watching TV. It was just another example of Akane getting her way in the end, and always at my expense.

“Guess what,” Akane said one morning during my second month of the programme. I’d finally managed to drift off to sleep on my uncomfortable bed when she’d woken me. My back was in agony from the night before, when the three of them had taken turns stomping me beneath their sweaty feet. As an encore, Saori had stood in place for a good ten minutes, one of each torture sandal digging into my breasts while I squirmed in pain and peered up at her imperious form. She’d stared down and curled her lip in disgust.

I looked up through narrowed eyes towards Akane, but struggled to see as she had opened the curtains and the sunlight was streaming in. “What time is it?” I asked.

“Time for you to wake up, lazy,” she said. She was up above on her own bed and her feet were resting on my sleeping bag. “Is this what you are like back home? You sleep all day long? I thought you learned that in Japan you seize the day.”

“It’s not even that late.” Eventually she came into focus. I saw that she was wearing a white top and pleated skirt along with her usual glasses. Her hair was tied into a cute pair of pigtails, which made her look even younger than usual. She resembled the stereotypical nerdy Japanese school girl. I reached over and looked at my phone. “It’s not even seven yet!” I was grouchy when waking and it was probably the time of the day when I was most vocal, before Akane had her fun silencing me.

“That’s late!” I felt her grind her feet into my body through the sleeping bag. “This is the land of the rising sun, remember? That’s what you brainless Americans call it. Haven’t you been paying attention during your Japanese education? I thought I was correcting your white ignorance.”

She was referring to the endless hours I’d spent, laying on the floor with her feet planted in my face while she read book after book to me about Japanese history and culture. I knew a lot about the greatness of Japan these days and how us whites had a lot to apologise for. After all, I’d kissed her toes enough to apologise during each lesson.

“You have some real bad habits, Mushi. I thought I was”—her toes dug into my tummy—“driving these bad practices out of you.”

“I’m tired,” I whined and I put my head back onto the pillow and closed my eyes. It was so annoying that she felt she had the right to wake me up. I mean, I was a guest in her house, even though she treated me like her servant. There was no reprieve, I did everything she asked, and still, here she was denying me the only time I was actually able to rest. Just who did she think she was? It was bad enough that she constantly had me bowing, licking everyone’s shoes and eating nothing but their leftovers. As well as the daily trampling under the guise of a massage, I was an exhausted wreck and needed some sleep.

Suddenly, I felt soft skin pushed into my face. I opened my eyes and couldn’t see anything but darkness. But there was pressure on my nose and lips, and from the smell, I realised that it was Akane’s foot. I could feel her toes drumming against my lips. I took a panicked breath, and she seized the opportunity and slipped a big toe into my mouth. I spat it out in disgust as quickly as possible.

“What the hell, Akane?” I said. “That’s disgusting.”

“Mushi!” she said. “You just sucked my toe. I thought you were kidding when you said you wanted to, but there you go, it was the truth. Did you like it?”

“No, I didn’t,” I pleaded. “You put it in without me knowing.”

She turned towards her door and shouted, “Matsuri-chan!” When there was no response, she shouted out her sister’s name again, this time with a load of Japanese words afterward. “Matsuri-chaaaaaan!”

I tried to sit up, but Akane leant forward and kept me held down with her feet plastered over my face. I lifted my hands to her feet and she glared at me violently and said, “Don’t you dare, Mushi!”

“Why are you being so mean?” I mumbled from beneath her feet. “Give me a goddamn break for once!”

“I’m not mean,” she said, before poking one of her toes into my eye. “This is your punishment for sleeping in. It’s your own ‘goddamn’ fault. You ruined this morning.”

I squealed and wriggled until she moved her toe back to my lips. “Sleeping in is not a crime, Akane-san, please.”

“Joō-heika no Akane!” She slapped her toes against my mouth with greater force.

“I’m sorry, Joō-heika no Akane!” I whined.

“I had something special planned for us today. We were going to go on a day out together.” She squeezed my cheeks together with the balls of each foot, forcing my lips into a fish-like pout. “But lazy you ruined the surprise.”

“I’m sowwy,” I said through my squashed lips. “I’ll get ready right away. We can still go, Joō-heika no Akane.”

“Oh, we are still going, Mushi, but once you’ve been punished.” She released my lips and poked a big toe into each of my nostrils instead. “Matsuri-chan!” She shouted again, even louder this time.

I still had my lips firmly clamped closed, to avoid her slipping her toe back into my mouth, but once my nose was blocked, I was struggling for breath. I heard the bedroom door open, and what I assumed was Matsuri saying something in Japanese. My face was becoming hot and there was a tingling feeling in my head. I could see little flashes of light darting around the room.

I could hold my breath no longer, and had to open my mouth to suck in some air. As expected, Akane took the opportunity to put her big toe in my mouth once more. This time, she leant down from the bed so her toe was forced in to the point of hurting my lips. I tried to spit it out again, but she had too much leverage, and she’d clamped my forehead with the other foot so I couldn’t wiggle away.

It was right at this moment that Matsuri walked around the bed and witnessed my predicament. Her eyes shot open wide and she stared at me with her mouth hanging open. Her arms dropped to her side, phone in one hand, and she stood motionless for a few seconds. She almost turned to walk away, as if she felt she’d intruded and wasn’t welcome.

Akane said something in Japanese, and Matsuri replied, then took a step closer. Meanwhile, Akane had begun sliding her toe in and out of my mouth, but keeping it in just enough so that I wasn’t able to break free from the assault. I thought about biting it, but I was afraid.

Matsuri came right over and stood looking down at me. I could tell from the confusion on her expression that she was curious. Once again, she was wearing a loose-fitting dress, and from the slaps I could hear as she walked, she must have been wearing a pair of slip-on house slippers as opposed to the uwabaki she usually preferred. She glanced at her sister, said something in Japanese, then looked down at me again, watching with interest as Akane’s toe continued to have its way with my mouth.

“She loves sucking my toes,” Akane said, as she bit her lip and ground her foot into my mouth with extra intensity. “She does this every night before we sleep and first thing when we wake.” I knew that Akane was only speaking in English because she wanted me to understand what she was saying. It was another chance for her to torment me. “She does it to show just how much she worships me. I thought it was weird, but she kept begging to do it, until eventually I let her. She loves it now.”

I tried to mumble that this was a complete lie, but with her toe filling my mouth, nothing came out but a garbled incoherent mess, which more resembled moans than protestation.

“It sounds like it,” Matsuri said. “Listen to her.” She leant down close and I saw her phone was in my face. This prompted some frantic wriggling from me before she could capture the evidence, but it was too late. The phone flashed multiple times before I could remove Akane’s toe from my mouth. She turned the phone towards me so I could see, and the picture was enough to leave me motionless in shock. There I was onscreen, with Akane’s toe clearly in my mouth. Not only was that bad enough, but she’d caught me during a blink and it looked like I had my eyes closed amidst the throes of passion. “Look, Mushi is in love with my sister’s feet,” she said, rolling her eyes as an extra dig. “All of your friends probably think you have endless Japanese guys swooning over your exoticblonde hair.” She lifted a couple of strands of my hair between her fingertips, as you’d do with something you were about to put in the trash. She then dismissively flicked it back to the floor. “If only they knew the closest you’ve come to romance is sucking my sister’s toe and French-kissing my uwabaki.” The two of them burst into laughter, only broken up by the occasional Japanese word I couldn’t understand, which in turn only prompted greater laughs.

“Yes, she can’t get enough of them,” Akane said. She withdrew her toe from my mouth and hovered it above my face, then slowly, she returned it to my lips and I just let it slide straight back in. There was no fight left in me, and I was physically exhausted from trying to fight her off. “Suck it,” she said. “Come on, Mushi. Show Matsuri-chan how much you enjoy sucking the toes of Japanese girls. Maybe if you impress her, she’ll let you suck her toes too.”

My eyes darted between the two of them. I expected to see mischievous smirks or evil grins, but instead, they both just stared at me in expectation. I didn’t enjoy sucking Japanese girls’ toes at all, Akane was lying through her braces, but right at that moment, I was down on the floor while the two of them eyed me like I was a bug beneath their feet. I thought about pushing Akane off and fighting back, but then I remembered Matsuri already had pictures of me on her phone. I’d probably go viral, the white girl that came to Japan to suck toes. I blushed and had to break eye contact.

“Come on,” Akane encouraged me. “Don’t start being shy now. You’ve already been sucking them for weeks.”

Another lie!

“Why didn’t you tell me she liked doing this before?” Matsuri asked. “She’s been sucking your toes since she got here and you kept it a secret? I thought she was pathetic enough licking our shoes, but all along she was doing this?”

Akane said something in Japanese to her sister, then she stamped her other foot against my forehead. It was strong enough to smack the back of my head against the hard floor. “Mushi, suck, now!” Her eyes were narrowed and she was biting the tip of her tongue with determination.

The increase in violence was enough to scare me into sucking her toe obediently. I could actually hear the slurping sounds of my tongue and lips suckling at the length of her toe. It seemed almost amplified amongst the silence of the two sisters watching me. It was an odd taste, sweaty of course, but not actually as bad as all of the sandals and sneaker insoles I’d licked. Perhaps because this was a fresher, meatier, sweat, it was less disgusting to me. I expected Akane’s face to soften having gotten her way, but her eyes continued to glare.

“How does it feel?” Matsuri asked as she took a seat next to her sister on the bed. I felt her slippers drop onto my legs then saw her bare feet stretch out in front of her. “I want her to suck my toes too.”

Akane pulled her toe free from my mouth with a comedy plop, and placed her foot on my chin. There was saliva running down her sole and I cringed as it dripped onto my cheek. She pushed down on my forehead and chin with her feet, forcing my mouth wide open. “Give it a try,” she said to her sister.

Matsuri smiled in excitement, then tried to stretch her foot over to my face. However, she couldn’t reach. She let out an annoyed huff, then hopped from the bed and stood over me, with her one barefoot right next to my face. She lifted the other, and pointed her toes down towards my mouth as she slowly lowered her foot. All the while, I looked up at her, straight into her eyes. She smirked as her wiggling toes neared my open mouth.

“Get ready, Mushi,” she said, as I felt her big toe touch my tongue. “It’s your lucky day because you’re about to eat my foot.”

I closed my eyes and widened my mouth as much as I could.

“That’s it, what a good little white girl you are,” she said, as she pushed her foot further into my mouth, causing the corner of my lips to feel like they were about to rip. “My sister has trained you so well.”

The pain caused my eyes to shoot open and I garbled a response, trying to tell her I was choking and she needed to take her foot out. However, the words made no sense and she only smiled in response.

“How are you enjoying Japan?” She leant down to look me in the eyes, causing the pressure to increase on my jaw. I gagged in response and tried to garble out another plea in desperation. “What was that? I can’t understand you. You sound like you have a foot shoved in your mouth.” She stood straight up again and dropped her head back laughing. “If you ask me to remove my foot, I will, go on.”

In a panic I tried to say, please, take your foot out of my mouth, but the words came out as just mumbled, sloppy sounds.

Matsuri tilted her head so her ear was facing me. “What was that? You want me to put it in deeper? Fine, you little weirdo!” With that, she champed her teeth with the effort and managed to edge her foot in almost an inch deeper to the point that I could feel her wiggling toes at the back of my throat. I almost threw up at the odd sensation. Matsuri glanced at her sister and muttered, “I can feel her tongue licking the bottom of my foot.” She looked back down at me and shrugged. “I guess she really does like it.” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe how pathetic you white girls are.”

She was sort-of telling the truth about what was going on in my mouth, but I wasn’t licking, it was more of an uncontrollable seizure-like spasm from the pain in my throat. I imagined how prisoners of war felt when being waterboarded. Dangling in limbo and desperate for breath. I was pretty much a prisoner of war while I lay there with Matsuri’s foot shoved down my throat, limiting my ability to breathe. I was a helpless victim of their war on white girls it seemed. I could feel tears trickling down my cheeks.

“See,” Akane said. “She must really love the taste of your foot. She’s crying with joy.”

Matsuri leaned down again, and I winced as her toenails dug into the roof of my mouth. “Is that true, Mushi? Do you like the taste of my little foot?”

I managed to shake my head from side to side and I saw Matsuri’s pretty face screw up in response. “I thought you said she liked this?”

“She does,” Akane lied once again and I could feel her glare of disapproval at my defiance.

Matsuri looked down at me again with her eyebrows raised. “Molly,” she said, calling me by my actual name for once. “Do you like this? Be honest.”

With her foot still jammed down my throat, I was unable to voice just how much I hated this whole thing. However, shaking my head had seemed to work. I could feel Akane adding extra pressure with her feet to my forehead and chin, trying with all of her might to stop me moving with her skinny legs. I shook my head from side to side with extra effort.

Suddenly, Matsuri pulled her foot from my mouth. It was gleaming under the sunlight from all of my saliva clinging to it. She wiped it dry on my sleeping bag and looked around for her slipper as I gasped for breath.

Akane was scowling down at me for so openly defying her, but I didn’t care by that point. My mouth was hurting so much that I was just glad I no longer had Matsuri’s foot crammed into it.

“Molly,” Matsuri said again. “Tell me, do you like this or not? I want to hear you tell me the truth.”

“I hate it,” I wailed amongst coughs and gasped as I said each word. “I hate feet. I can’t believe I’ve just had them in my mouth. Please, stop doing this to me. All I did was sleep in. I don’t deserve this.”

“Really?” She looked towards her sister and I noticed Akane just shrugged.

I turned to Akane with tears in my eyes. “How could you do that to me? I thought you were my friend.” She just shrugged again in response, as if it was nothing to be bothered about.

Then Matsuri looked back down at me. Her eyebrows were wrinkled in confusion. “So, you’re telling me you don’t like it, but you didn’t stop us? You’re twice our size, you’re not tied up or anything and you just let me put my foot in your mouth.”

A mischievous grin came to Akane’s face as she listened to her sister berate me.

Matsuri continued while she glanced towards the ceiling in thought, “That doesn’t make any sense to me. You American girls are so weird.” She suddenly began speaking in rapid Japanese, and Akane joined her in a full conversation. It went on for minutes while I lay there and recovered my breath. Finally, Matsuri looked back down at me. “Let’s see something,” she said. She nodded towards Akane and her sister removed her feet from my face and tucked them beneath her on the bed. Next, Matsuri raised her other sweaty, un-licked foot and pointed her toes at my mouth. “I’m going to stick my other foot in your mouth right now, even though I know you don’t like it, what do you think about that?”

I lay there and watched as her foot, toes wiggling and all, moved towards me. My face was a mess, red and plastered in sweat, with strands of my blonde hair stuck to my forehead. My eyes crossed as I tried to focus on her foot as it neared closer and closer. Eventually, I felt her toes press against my clamped lips. I caught a whiff of her foot and my stomach turned at the thought of having to suck a freshly sweaty one.

“Open your mouth, Mushi,” Akane said from up on the bed.

I shook my head in defiance.

“She clearly doesn’t want to,” Matsuri said while glancing at her sister. I thought I was about to have a sympathetic ally in all of this, but then she added, “Which makes it even better.” Suddenly, an evil smirk took over Matsuri’s face, and the force of her toes increased until eventually my lips couldn’t keep them out. I began gagging as I felt her whole foot ease its way into my mouth, and once again I was completely trapped, impaled by the foot of this teenage Japanese girl. “If you’re going to let me do this to you, you pathetic wimp, then I’m going to do it.”

Akane bounced on the bed and clapped her hands excitedly. There was almost a childlike joy to her as she laughed over and over again. For a moment, you’d even think she was the younger of the two sisters.

“Come on, stop me,” Matsuri said with derision. She juddered her foot about in my mouth, causing me to gag and garble even more. While I lay there, trapped, she bent her knee, leaned down and picked up one of my arms by the wrist. “You know you could actually use this thing to stop me?” She dropped it and my limp arm slapped against the floor. Suddenly, her phone began to ring, and she casually pulled her foot from my mouth and once again wiped it clean on my bedding. “You’re such a loser,” she said while rolling her eyes. Then she walked off while speaking Japanese into her phone.

I was relieved to finally have her foot out of her mouth, and I took a deep breath. However, I had the wind swiftly knocked out of me as Akane dropped from the bed and landed with her butt on my tummy. She didn’t weigh much, being the tiny girl she was, but it took me by surprise. She wiggled until comfortable, then she reached out and softly pinched one of my nipples through my pyjamas. “Lift your knees up, Mushi,” she said. When I failed to obey quickly enough, she squeezed harder with her fingernails, which made me screech and rapidly bend to her will. Once my legs were in position, she leaned and used them as a back rest.

I was about to say something, when she lifted her feet and planted both of them straight in my face. Something changed for me at that moment. It was like a culmination of all of the weeks leading up to this point. It was too much and I couldn’t fight anymore. I was already exhausted from Matsuri shoving her feet down my throat, that I just lay there and allowed Akane to rub her feet into my face as much as she wanted. She prodded and poked at my features, grasping my nose between her toes and tugging my face into amusing shapes that left her giggling. “Sniff,” she said, through a pleased grin. She said it multiple times, and every time she told me to sniff, I did as demanded. I sniffed with all of the enthusiasm my wrecked body could muster while Akane derided and mocked me for being her stupid, white foot sniffer.

Once she tired of the game, she dropped her feet flat on the floor, either side of my head, then leant forward so our faces were inches apart. Up close, I could see the fascination behind those eyes as they gazed at me through her glasses. She smiled and revealed her braces to me. “You’re such a loser,” she said with a shake of her head.

I sniffled. “I thought you wanted to be my friend.”

She laughed. “I’m your Empress and you’re my loser.” Her smile seemed to grow in size. She grabbed my nose between two knuckles and squeezed it. “There’s no denying that now. I tried to be your friend, Mushi, but I’m afraid you’re just too much a loser for that.”

I closed my eyes and sniffled some more, but Akane grasped my chin and shook me until I opened them again. The first thing I saw was that vindictive smile once more. I could barely comprehend the sight before me. There was this cute little Japanese girl with the glasses and braces, and the long black hair. Yet, she was without doubt the most manipulative, cruel menace I’d ever met. She constantly had me doubting myself about whether she was my friend or not. Even as she was calling me a loser straight to my face, some small part of me was denying it was happening. I was trying to convince myself that this was all a joke and game to her. That I only had one more thing to win her favour, then she’d hug me and tell me that I’d passed some test and been accepted. That we would now be friends and see all of Japan together. But this acceptance never came. Every time I bowed to her will, she demanded something extra.

“You know what I want you to do now, Mushi?” she asked as she stared into my soul.

I was almost too afraid to ask. “W-what?”

“I want you to lick my feet all over. I want you to suck my toes like you love it. Stick your tongue between them and lick out all of my toejam. I want you to drink my sweat and thank me for letting you do so. I want your pathetic American tongue all over every inch of my Asian feet. And you know what?” She cocked her head and flashed me a grin. “You’re going to do it. You’re going to do it because you’re a loser, Mushi. Because you’re my loser! Because you came all the way to Japan thinking I wanted to be your friend, when all along, I wanted you down at my feet, begging to kiss them and admitting that all white girls belong at my feet.”

“Please…” I groaned.

“Please,” she repeated in a mocking tone. “Please, what? Please tell you how as soon as I saw your profile picture that I decided you were going to be my servant? That while we were emailing I was picturing you bowing to me? That ever since I first spoke to you, that I knew just how stupid you were and that you would fall for everything I told you?”

“Please,” I said again, this time in a tired whisper.

“Say what I want to hear. Beg to kiss them and admit it.”

I sighed in frustration. “Please, may I kiss your feet?”

She held her sole up to my face. “Yes, you may, loser.”

I reached up and kissed the sole of her foot in defeat.

“Good girl,” she said, while she moved her foot around and I kissed all over her sole. “Now, admit it.”

“All white girls,” I said. It hurt my throat to say each word and they came out as a raspy croak. “All white girls belong at the feet of Joō-heika no Akane.” I let my head slam back against the floor in exhaustion.

“Yes, they do. So, show me what white girls do when they’re down at my feet. Put out your tongue.” I poked my tongue out, and she moved her foot along so I involuntarily licked from her heel to her toes. She repeated the performance with each foot. Then she lazily rested them against my face and clicked her fingers. “Now, the next step of your training in the Japanese way. Lick them yourself, loser.”

When I didn’t immediately respond, she lifted her feet, then slapped them against my face. It was enough to encourage me into licking her feet. I sloppily dragged my tongue all over her wrinkly soles and darted my tongue between her toes, not entirely sure what I was doing.

“Oh, that’s good,” she said, while separating her big and second toe with her fingers. “Get your tongue in there and lick out all that yummy Asian toejam. You should appreciate such a gift from your God.”

I scooped the toejam from between her toes and swallowed it just as Matsuri came back into the room and slipped her foot into her other slipper, which she must have forgotten earlier. She looked down at us and her face was a picture of disgust. She said something in Japanese to Akane, which made her sister laugh as she separated the next two toes. I could tell by the tone that it wasn’t nice. Matsuri then looked straight at me and said, “You’re the most spineless loser I’ve ever seen in my life.” She walked towards my head and kicked the slipper off, then held her sole towards my face while I was busy slurping up the next load of Akane’s toejam.

Once I’d obediently swallowed her toejam, I looked up at Akane, my apparent unconditional master, and she nodded with a smile. I strained my neck and gave Matsuri’s sole a long lick from her heel right up to her big toe. I shuddered from the salty taste.

“Eat Matsuri-chan’s toe jam,” Akane ordered, and I forced my tongue between the younger girl’s toes and stabbed at a caked-in piece of black gunk until it broke free. As I chewed the salty, sweaty morsel, my face twisted up and gurned from the nauseating flavour. The three of us could hear the tiny pieces of grit crunch between my teeth. Their faces were a picture; Akane fascinated whereas her sister was disgusted.

“Show me,” Akane said, and I used my tongue to collect the toejam from my teeth and present it to her. “Swallow it,” she then ordered, and of course, I did. She widely grinned throughout, with that mouth of metal on display, clearly pleased that I was now obeying her every demand like a mindless drone.

I closed my mouth and looked up at Matsuri, hoping we were done, but she merely moved her foot so my tongue lined up with the next two toes. “Come on, pathetic white girl,” she said. “Eat the rest of your Japanese food.”

I moved between each toe, digging out the filth and chewing it for their amusement. Matsuri actually had me lick between every toe until there was no dirt left. By the end, I could taste nothing but her toejam. “You’re pathetic,” she said again. “A pathetic, toejam-eating loser and you deserve everything my sister is doing to you.” With that, she turned and left again.

Akane moved her own foot towards my mouth again. She smiled and spread the next toes for me. “Plenty of Empress toejam left for you, Mushi. Get in there and eat it all up like a good little loser.” I grasped her ankles so I could better manoeuvre her feet and dig my tongue into every crevice between her toes, hungrily dislodging and hoovering up any sweaty gunk I came across. I continued licking and swallowing the grime from her feet with slavish dedication. It was disgusting, and inside I was completely mortified, but I literally didn’t care anymore. Any dignity had long abandoned me.

Moments later, Saori was pulled into the bedroom with Matsuri leading her by the hand. The older woman looked at us like she’d just witnessed the craziest thing in her life, then she raised a hand and shook her head in disbelief. She glanced at her youngest daughter and rolled her eyes, then shook her head once more. She whispered something in Japanese, which made both Akane and Matsuri giggle.

Matsuri released her mother’s hand, walked straight over to me, and once again kicked off her slipper. She said something to her mother in Japanese, then she lifted her sole and presented it to me.

I was still holding both of Akane’s feet by the ankles when I broke off from them momentarily, and dragged my tongue along the length of Matsuri’s sole as I knew she wanted. I trembled from the taste again, then immediately returned my tongue to her sister’s feet.

Matsuri’s foot tasted much saltier than Akane’s, probably due to her wearing those uwabaki slippers barefoot so often. Another comment in Japanese escaped her lips, then her foot was returned to her slipper and she shrugged at her mother.

The three of them conversed in Japanese, then Akane withdrew her feet from my face, and stood up from my tummy. “Go to my mother, Mushi,” she said. She kicked at me as encouragement.

I rose to my feet and walked over to Saori. I could still taste both Akane and Matsuri’s foot sweat in my mouth, and I was pretty disorientated by the whole spectacle. They had used my mouth in such a brutal way that they had broken down every last sense of dignity that I harboured. There was nothing left by this point, and I knew in my heart, that I was powerless to resist any demand they made from this point. I was nothing but a foot-licking loser. A white, American toejam-eater that belonged at the feet of Japanese women. Akane had been explicit that this was all I would ever amount to and I honestly believed her. As I looked into Saori’s merciless eyes, I knew I was deserving of whatever humiliation she chose to inflict upon me. At this point I welcomed it, because the sooner it began, the sooner it would be over. It’s coming was inevitable.

As I stood before her, her expression gave away no inkling of her mood, and it wasn’t until she raised one of her eyebrows that I realised I may have done something wrong. “Are you forgetting what Akane-chan taught you, Mushi? How you should respect your superiors?”

Immediately I cursed my idiocy, and I dropped into the dogeza position with my forehead flat to the floor. How stupid was I to think I deserved to stand in the presence of such a superior Japanese woman?

Her sandals clicked on the hardwood floor until they a came to rest barely a couple of centimetres away from my bowed head. From my position, forehead to floor, I could just make out her shadow darkening the skin of my hands either side of me.

“It is an inconvenience that you do not speak Japanese and I have to speak your primitive language so that your simple mind is able to function above a stray animal.”

“I am sorry, ma’am,” I said.

“I worry for the education system in your country.”

I kept my head to the floor while I spoke, “Yes, ma’am.” I was fearful of Saori’s arrogance as she was always so aloof and looked down her nose at me. Also, being the oldest in the house, there was a revered respect that I held for her, as I had with my own mother. It simply felt correct to obey any of her instructions, even with the disparaging way that she communicated them.

I noticed her bend down, and next thing her finger was rubbing between her big and second toe. She scratched at something with her fingernail, then moved the finger towards me. I raised my head slightly and saw that her fingertip was glossed over with sweat and there were a few grains of black toejam. She held it there before me and didn’t say a word. With her other hand, she startled me with a snap of her fingers.

I could feel my embarrassment burning on my cheeks and there was a nauseating doom brewing within my tummy. I knew what she was expecting, so I leant forward, wrapped my lips around her fingertip and sucked the sweat and toejam from her skin. My reward was a snarl from the older woman, followed by a sigh of disgust.

She was about to turn and walk away, and I felt a sense of relief that perhaps she wouldn’t debase me any further. However, she stopped mid-twist of her zori on the floor. Her heel had risen out of the back and I caught a glimpse of her pale, wrinkled sole. She then lifted her foot completely free and held out her sole towards me. I caught a whiff of the strong, pungent scent of the old, tatty sandal, despite my efforts from licking it clean.

I stayed down in my bowed position with my eyes lingering on her foot as it hung in the air a couple of inches away. I wasn’t sure what was expected of me, and I was lacking the confidence to act on my own initiative. Did she expect me to put her sandal back on for her? If that was the case, why did she remove it in the first place? I glanced over towards Akane and Matsuri, who had both taken a seat on the bed and were otherwise pre-occupied with their phones. I couldn’t believe they were doing something so casual, so normal, after what they’d just put me through. It was as if making me lick their feet was just a regular thing that Japanese girls did to white girls. Just another routine of their day. What was going through their heads? Oh, there’s toejam between my toes? Better summon the white girl to lick it out!

“What are you waiting for, Mushi?” Saori said from up above, the impatience clear in her tone. “Show the appropriate respect to your Japanese superior, as I’ve just seen you do with my daughters. Be thankful for the gift I just gave you.”

The gift of sweat and toejam? I gulped and felt my face flush with embarrassment. I knew exactly what she was talking about; she expected me to lick her foot! It was bad enough when Akane or Matsuri made me do it, but their mother was a whole other ball game. She was supposed to be a respectable adult, above these humiliating games that her daughters enjoyed putting me through, yet here she was, about to literally dip her toe into the shenanigans further. The sandal-licking had been bad enough, and the way she’d arrogantly presented me her finger in expectation was even worse, but licking her actual foot was something else. It was awkwardly intimate, especially with an older woman.

For some reason, I began by kissing her foot, instead of licking. It just felt right and more appropriate. I also in someway hoped that it would be enough. That a display of reverence would placate her ego.

“That’s a good, Mushi,” she said, while I smacked my lips against her wrinkled sole repeatedly. “It’s a shame the rest of your kind do not know their place as you do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled between kisses, though the words were mostly muffled by her sweaty foot sole.

“Perhaps this is a better way for you to communicate, since learning Japanese is apparently beyond your feeble mind.” Suddenly, she’d withdrawn her foot and slid it straight back into her zori. Before I could react, she turned, crouched and grasped my chin between her cruel fingertips. I was forced to hold her gaze and I was still awestruck by how young she looked. I could hear Akane and Matsuri sniggering as they watched their mother mistreat me. Anyone else would assume that the three of them were sisters. She appeared to have lived a pampered life from the softness of her skin. “Yet, do you see the ease that our household speaks your language? My daughters are younger than you, yet they can speak your language as if it was their own! I find it disgusting that we have to stoop to such an ugly language simply to accommodate your kind. To make it worse, you have the gall to come here, and you can’t speak a single word of Japanese!”

I looked away in shame. Her voice wasn’t raised, yet there was a strict disapproval that made me squirm inside. I could speak some Japanese words, but I wasn’t about to argue with her. It was as if I was back in school and being lectured by one of my teachers for failing a test. I tried to wriggle my chin free from her grasp, but she held it tightly until her nails buried themselves in my skin. I squealed in response.

“What if I said from now on I don’t want to hear you speaking English to me, ever again? You either speak Japanese, or nothing at all, do you understand?”

I was about to say yes, when I realised I would be immediately breaking her instruction. Therefore, I simply nodded instead, still unable to meet her eyes.

“If you are to act like a dumb animal, then I am to treat you like one, dog.”

She was being so incredibly cruel and I felt like just breaking down and crying. I really didn’t deserve it. Ever since I’d first arrived in their home, the three of them had been so cruel to me. Of course, they each had their own methods, and it was Akane who was the true menace in my life. The girl simply never seemed to tire of bullying me and she’d strung me along the entire time. I honestly believed she was being genuine, and teaching me genuine Japanese culture as a friend. Where had it led me? To being the loser I currently was. The facade had dropped too, she didn’t need to manipulate me anymore, she could just order me around.

Her sister, Matsuri, however, just seemed to see me as a convenience to make her bratty life even easier. Yes, she enjoyed debasing me too, but it was more framed around simply being able to do these depraved things to an older white girl. She was more experimental in what I would allow her to do, and constantly seemed amazed that I wouldn’t stand up to her.

I thought things were different with Saori. She’d been strict and demanding, but never cruel, until that day she had demanded I lick her zori clean. Suddenly, her entire persona had seemed to shift. It was as if she had become disgusted, no, perhaps that is the wrong word. She had become empowered by the way that her daughters mistreated me on a daily basis to the point that she had lost all respect for me. She didn’t just expect for me to act as their servant, she believed it was all I was good for. The more she spoke to me, the more I realised there was some kind of buried racial superiority within her.

She kicked off the other zori, and rested her heel on the floor; her toes presented to me. “Do your job, dog,” she said. “Lick my foot and beg to be allowed to speak your primitive language.”

I was in total fear of Saori, so I bowed my head and dragged my tongue from her heel right up the length of her foot. Her skin was oddly wrinkled and smooth at differing points, but there was a bitter taste, far different from the younger flavour of her daughters. I went to lick again, but it was awkward with the position, and in my haste, I clattered my chin against the floor as I reached for her heel and accidentally bit my own tongue. I rolled over in agony and curled into a crying ball.

“Get back in position, Mushi,” Saori said. “I’m not done with you yet.” There was a complete lack of concern or sympathy on her part, and I begrudgingly clambered back to hands and knees and licked at her foot. I focused on the top, as it was easier to reach, and crammed my tongue between each of her toes, sucking the digits into my mouth in turn and almost lovingly French-kissing them. As each toe popped out of my mouth, I begged her to be allowed to continue speaking my own language. All the while, she stood, arms crossed with her nose towards the ceiling and ignored my pathetic attempts at convincing her.

I noticed as I moved along that I was leaving a trail of blood from my mouth all over her toes. Akane noticed too and she must have told Matsuri as they giggled together. The older girl then skipped over and pointed out the mess. “Look, mother, she’s trying to paint your nails.”

Saori finally looked down, and she yanked her foot away from me. Before I could react, she’d grasped my blonde hair and was using it to wipe away the blood. “Your mouth is probably bleeding from speaking that ugly language,” she said, and with that, she walked off in a huff and left me to her Hyena-like daughters.

I was consumed within minutes, and for the rest of the day, they took turns humiliating me at their feet. Matsuri held my arms as Akane slapped my face around with her foot and demanded I suck each toe one by one. Whereas Matsuri preferred to stand on my tummy, and jab a foot as far as she could down my throat. She said it was an experiment: how deep does a white girl’s mouth go? She drew a mark on her foot with eyeliner at the point of my lips. She improved the depth on three separate occasions.

They laid all of their stinking Converse out and made me sniff and guess which belonged to who. They watched together from the bed, hooting and hollering with every sniff. If I was correct, my prize was to lick and suck the insole. If I was wrong? My forfeit was to lick and suck the insole.

Later, Akane sat on her bed as I cowered before her in the dogeza. She made me pledge myself to her over and over again as her white foot loser, while Matsuri freely plundered my belongings. She went through everything and helped herself to whatever she wanted. Most of my clothes she threw on the floor, stating they would be like wearing a parachute. She was probably right; my clothes would drown her slender body. Others she mocked for being ‘trashy American excuses for fashion’. There were a few items I never used again after that day, including my laptop and iPod. Oh, she didn’t steal them on the sly though. At Akane’s suggestion, they were placed on my awful pillow while I kissed and sucked her sister’s foot and begged her to take them. As I recall, it took about twenty minutes of French-kissing her toes before she agreed to accept the laptop.

By the evening, Matsuri lost interest and left to go see her friends, probably to brag about her haul and move even further up the social ladder. Akane took the opportunity to seize my daddy’s credit card and mocked me ruthlessly as she ordered herself clothes online, all the while using my face as her own personal footrest while she once again sat on my tummy. She made me hold up my hands as if armrests and balanced the card on my palm, ready for her to use as she pleased. To further my humiliation, she demanded I suck her big toe in gratitude every time she clicked the buy button.

By the time she leapt into her bed, ready for a blissful sleep, I was well and truly done. I didn’t even crawl into my own poor excuse for a bed. I just lay on the floor where she left me, and collapsed into sleep an exhausted wreck. I never did find out what day of fun Akane had planned for me that morning, if there was anything planned at all.

After that humiliating day of reckoning, things changed even more, and I mean, changed in a big way. There was no preamble anymore. No games or tricks. Akane didn’t even bother trying to dupe me into debasing myself for her entertainment. She didn’t need to. I was well and truly broken and I’d bow to her will at a snap of her fingers and oh how did she revel in that power. My submission fed into every one of her God-complex delusions of grandeur. I merely became a vessel for her to exert her superiority. There was just so much bowing, and worship, and venerating her as some kind of Japanese Empress. Honestly, it was tiring, but I felt like I had no choice, so I did whatever she demanded. It wasn’t just Akane though, the three of them revelled in my accepted loser status.

My whole day pretty much revolved around their feet. Every task I was given led back to their feet. I’d begin the morning by waking up first, then crawling to the end of Akane’s bed just so she could have her smooth little Asian soles kissed as she woke up. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, there was a catch. Akane was an extremely heavy sleeper, so sometimes, I’d be kissing her feet for up to an hour before she’d actually wake up and kick me away. Yes, that was my reward for doing as she demanded: being kicked in the face. Plus, she usually woke at six, so I was forced to be awake from five, which was painful enough for me. I’d then have to crawl to Matsuri and Saori’s room and repeat the process all over again. Sometimes, they’d already be awake, in which case I’d have to lick their feet to ‘show respect’ as they put it, wherever they were, and while they watched me with disdain. Most commonly, I licked Matsuri’s feet while she was getting ready for college at her beauty desk, and Saori’s in the kitchen downstairs, while she took a rest from making breakfast.

While they ate the breakfast, I’d be next to the table, crouched in the dogeza and waiting for instruction. If they wanted something, they’d snap their fingers and off I’d scurry. When they were finished, I’d receive my own breakfast of leftovers and lip-drips, all poured and mixed together in Akane’s festering slipper.

There wasn’t always synchronisation in my service, however, as they each liked to use me in different ways. Of course, the shoe-removal and slipper-replacement remained for all three of them and it became quite tiring running back and forth to the front door whenever one of them came home. Saori seemed to enjoy prolonged dogeza positioning as if a way to remind me of my servant status within her home. She’d keep me there, next to her desk while she wrote her letters, until she’d snap her fingers and signal it was time to lick her zori. Later, she would dismiss me with a wave of her hand when she needed something. At night, she enjoyed reading and would often have me kneel at the end of her bed, massaging her feet and placing devoted kisses on her soles. Occasionally I had to apologise for being simple-minded and unable to speak Japanese. Though, sometimes she’d bark an order at me in her native tongue by mistake. Over the days, I learned what these meant and gradually responded to the Japanese words themselves. I received no rewards for this. Saori simply commented, “Dogs can be trained, and so can you it seems.” She ruffled my hair. “You’re doing your inferior race proud.”

She also added a pedicure service to her demands, and she’d have me scrape the dead skin from her soles with some kind of brush. Over time, they became incredibly smooth, on par with her daughters. She ordered me to catch the scrapings in a dish, which I thought odd the first time. That was until later, when she sprinkled it all over my leftover food like grated parmesan cheese. “Foot cheese is vegetarian, right?” she taunted. Of course, when Akane found out about this, she delighted in having me do the same for her.

Matsuri seemed to enjoy bossing me around and humiliating me just because she could. She freely admitted that she thought it was hilarious, but pathetic, that I allowed a younger girl to order me around. The fact that I was a blonde, American, white girl just made it a thousand times more enjoyable for her.

One night, she sat relaxed, typing away on my former laptop, while unabashedly wiping the sole of her sweaty foot all over my ashamed face. “I still can’t believe you just kneel there and let me do this,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “No Japanese girl would ever allow a foot to be rubbed in her face. You are so pathetic, you know that, right?”

I blushed and looked towards the floor. Her familiar huff soon followed. “It’s so pathetic that you let a younger girl do this to you. Have you no self-respect?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’m going to do it again, Mushi,” she said, while her foot hovered in front of my face. She held up her phone and made it clear she was recording. “I’m going to rub my sweaty foot all over your face. Are you going to stop me?”

Of course, I didn’t. As her foot neared my face, I just closed my eyes and let it happen. I even moaned as if I was enjoying it at her direction.

Matsuri scowled at my spineless acceptance. “Maybe Yowamushi is a better name for you. You know what that means?”

Of course, I didn’t, and she didn’t bother to elaborate. She was so disgusted with my capitulation, she ordered me to go to the corner, out of her sight, and lick her uwabaki clean ready for the next day. As she said, “When I’m studying tomorrow, to better myself, you can think of your contribution: making sure my uwabaki are nice and clean ready for me to sweat up all again for you.”

I later learned from Akane that her sister had put the video on TikTok, though I never got to see it. By all accounts it was a viral hit with the hashtag #yowamushimushi trending for a whole day. I asked Akane, while bowed in the dogeza, what yowamushi meant.

She laughed and tapped my nose with her toe. “You know how when I tell you to do something, and instead of saying no, even though you’re so much bigger than me, you look at the floor then do it? That’s what makes you yowamushi.”

This sort of thing happened often. There were a couple of Skype calls where Matsuri talked to her friends while I was down at her feet, though usually off camera. She did sometimes order me to get her a drink or something, and I’d hear her friends laughing on the call. Most of her Instagram photos, modelesque in their framing and editing, were taken with me being debased in some way, just slightly out of picture. The most common method was for her to stand on me while snapping the photo. Her followers would like the photo, never knowing she was perched on my face while it was taken. This was a common occurrence during our ashiatsu sessions.

However, Saori and Matsuri’s use of me was nothing in comparison to the true ruler of my life: the self-declared Joō-heika no Akane. Her feet became the only reason for my existence. Also, unlike her sister, Akane was never interested in documenting my debasement or posting videos of me online or anything. It was like she got so caught up in the bullying, that she so genuinely believed it was right that she could treat me in this way, that anything else became a distraction.

My days were filled with bowing before her and declaring her my one true Empress and God. I licked her feet so much that even when I was eating their leftovers, all I could taste was Akane’s sweaty feet. My mornings would begin and end with eating her toejam while she joyfully clapped her hands and called me a loser. I spent hours letting her shove her toes into my now-willing mouth. Why? Because when I was sucking her toes, she was content and satisfied. She revelled in being worshipped, and when I was devotedly adoring her, she wasn’t trampling me beneath her feet, especially in those cruel torture sandals.

It got to the point where I was so broken down and brainwashed by her, that I forgot why I had come to Japan in the first place. Perhaps it was a way of dealing with my situation, but I began to convince myself that I actually wanted everything that was happening, that I wasn’t being abused, and that my life goal had been to come to Japan to be at Akane and her family’s feet. I’d achieved my goal, and therefore, I should be happy, right?

In response to my total acceptance of her mastery, Akane celebrated by gang-banging my daddy’s credit card even harder than usual. A new TV and console appeared in her room, and where was I while she enjoyed them? Kneeling in the dogeza as her make-shift foot rest of course.

Akane was innovative in her humiliations of me too. There always seemed to be some whole new way of debasing me even further. It wasn’t good enough that she already had me completely bent to her will. It was important for her to enjoy ruining my life beneath her feet, so she was constantly thinking up new ways to do it.

“Do you know about fish pedicure?” she randomly asked me one day while I was polishing the floor in her room. She’d been reading something on her phone for a while and mostly ignoring me. At her desk, Matsuri was busy with some of her college work. She had been working in her sister’s room the last few nights, as it was more convenient if she needed me to do anything for her. They both enjoyed having me at their beck and call, ready to obey their commands at a snap of their fingers.

“I think so,” I said. I had seen clips of tourists getting their feet nibbled at by fish on YouTube. I’d thought about trying it myself, but had never had the chance since I hardly left the house. “The fish eat your skin? It’s popular with tourists?”

“It is actually offensive for tourists to do that,” Akane said. “It’s appropriating our culture.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, while immediately going on the defensive and expecting to be punished in some way.

“Have you ever tried it, Mushi?” Matsuri asked, without looking away from her work.

“No, of course not,” I said, pretending I knew it was wrong. “I don’t want to cause offence.”

Akane scooted to the edge of her bed and allowed her feet to dangle. “Would you like to try it?”

“I-I don’t want to upset you.”

“Oh,” she said with a smile. “There’s a way you can try it without doing that.”

“How?”

“You can be my fish.”

From across the room, Matsuri began laughing while looking at her work. I looked over, startled, just in time to catch her rolling her eyes and shaking her head. Suddenly, she looked from the desk and flashed me a knowing smirk. “Yes, Mushi, you can be my sister’s Garra rufa,” she said, before immediately rolling her eyes again and returning her full attention to her work.

My face had already dropped, even without Matsuri’s intervention. I knew this was another one of Akane’s games where somehow, I would end up being made fun of.

“Come over here,” Akane said, while pointing at the floor next to her bed.

I dropped the rag I’d been using to polish the floor, and shuffled over towards her. She lifted her leg and pointed her big toe towards me. “Give me a fish pedicure.”

I looked between her toe and eyes, sparkling behind those glasses, unsure how to begin. “Umm, what do I do?”

“You eat it,” Matsuri shouted from across the room. “Eat the skin from her feet, just like the little fish.”

I looked up at Akane in shock. “Really? You want me to eat the skin from your feet?”

She shrugged. “Why not, Mushi? You’ve eaten my toejam and licked my sweat for your own enjoyment. Plus, you have it sprinkled all over your food every day. I’ve noticed you lick the plate clean. It’s about time you did something useful for my feet with your mouth.”

I silently scowled. I did not do those things for my own enjoyment at all. I hated licking her feet and eating her toejam. I only did it because she forced me to! Also, I licked the damn plate clean because it was literally the only food I was allowed to eat every day, unless I wanted to starve. Still, I leant forward and began nibbling at the edge of her big toe. The skin was quite dry and my teeth scraped along.

“Suck it first, Mushi,” she said. “Soften it up like it’s been in the water.”

I slipped her toe into my mouth and sucked it a number of times until the skin became wet and soft, then I returned to scraping my teeth along and trying to loosen the flakes.

“Do it properly,” she said, and she kicked me softly on the cheek. “It’s not fun unless you play the part.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said in frustration. I was literally eating the skin from her toe and still she wasn’t satisfied. “I’ve never done this before and I don’t understand this game.”

“You stupid loser,” Akane said. She pushed my face away with the ball of her foot. “How hard is it to be a fish? Why does that confuse your tiny brain? Maybe you already have the brain of a fish. I suppose a fish does not know it is a fish, does it?”

“Umm, I guess not?”

“Tell me, what are you, Mushi? Are you smarter than an animal?”

“I’m a fish?”

“Are you asking me a question?” She lightly kicked my face again.

“I’m a fish!”

“Good, but do fish kneel?”

“Umm, no.”

“Then be a fish,” she said with a stamp of her foot on the floor. She shook her shoulders from side to side. “Flop around like one and make that sucking face with your mouth.”

In a confused state, I lay down from my kneeling position until I was spread out on the floor. Akane stretched her foot towards me and I began wriggling on the floor in its direction. I felt like a complete idiot. For some reason, of all of my embarrassments over the past months, this was a whole new depth to which I’d sunk. I craned my neck up into an awkward position, whereby I could see Akane peering down from above me. She pointed the foot towards me and spread her toes, then jovially said, “Show me how hungry you are for my foot skin, fishy.”

I began mouthing my lips in a sucking motion as if a fish would, while Akane teased me, moving her foot closer and then away again.

“That’s it,” she said, while clapping her hands in approval. “Eat my skin!”

I sucked and scraped my teeth all along the bottom of her foot, and I could taste flakes of skin on my tongue. I was forced to swallow, before once again returning my lips to her foot and suctioning along her sole.

“See, this is the real Japanese fish pedicure experience, Mushi,” she said, while I tongued her heel as I sucked. There was plenty of loose skin on the heel, and I was able to scrape it free with my teeth before sucking it all into my fish-like mouth.

“I want a fish pedicure too,” Matsuri whined as she tossed her pen aside and joined her sister above me.

Suddenly, there was two feet in my face, and both girls jammed their toes towards my lips. I had to move between the two of them sucking as much as I could. I thought back to the YouTube videos, and I honestly felt like one of those fish in the tanks, looking up from the water while two amused faces fed me their toes.

“Maybe next time we should make her lay in the garden pond?” Akane said, while I nibbled at the ball of her foot.

What the hell, they were actually thinking about me doing this again, and in a pond too?

Matsuri began animatedly speaking Japanese while I moved my lips to suck on her big toe, which prompted uncontrollable laughter from her sister. They looked adorable together, two beautiful Asian sisters bonding while humiliating their own personal white foot loser, reduced to nothing more than a fish to pedicure their perfect feet. “Yes, she would probably sink if she was a real fish,” she said. “She is a fat fish, not a skinny one.”

Akane clutched a bunch of my blonde hair between her biggest and second toe, holding it up and away from my head. “Look, she is a goldfish.”

Matsuri peered down at me as she twisted her toe between my lips. “How does my skin taste, fish?” She withdrew the toe, then offered me her heel, to which I dutifully softened up with my tongue, before scraping with my teeth and suctioning my lips.

It seemed better to just get on with the task. I didn’t really know what to say. I mean, obviously I didn’t enjoy sucking on the heel of her foot, and the taste was odd, a mixture of flesh and sweat. However, seeing the way her eyes had narrowed as she asked the question I knew any kind of negative reaction would not be acceptable in my host’s home. I kissed her heel obediently. “It tastes good, Matsuri-san,” I said, before continuing once more with her fish pedicure.

“No, say ‘sakanaya-san,” Akane said, with a chuckle, and of course, while sucking the dead skin from her sister’s foot, I did exactly as she asked.

This trend of various humiliations continued for the next few weeks, until surprisingly, Akane paused one morning while I was beneath her and sucking the sweat from her recently-jogging feet. “Good job, loser,” she said. “Congratulations, you’ve once again achieved your life goal and sucked my feet clean. No one brings their dreams to reality more than you it seems.”

The insults were so common by this point that I didn’t even bat an eyelid. “Thank you, Joō-heika no Akane,” I said.

Akane sighed. “This is getting a bit boring,” she said.

I blinked but didn’t speak. I felt hope rising within me. Had she actually…had enough of torturing me?

She flicked my lips with her toe. “It’s too easy now, there’s no fight left in you. I liked the old, Mushi, when there was still a bit of fight in your eyes. When you’d occasionally smile and laugh and I miss your gullibility when I taught you the Japanese way of things.”

Again, I didn’t say anything, as I didn’t know what to say.

She peered down at me and narrowed her eyes. “I wish I could reset your mind to the day you arrived again. So, I could enjoy breaking you down all over again.”

That sounded completely awful to me. Though the thought of being that happy, joyful Molly that had arrived at the airport that day was appealing. If only I could go back and get back on the plane before this had all begun.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’m feeling nice. So, get dressed. I’m going to take you out into Tokyo properly.”

That got my attention. For the whole time I’d been in their country, other than short trips to the grocery store, I hadn’t seen anything of Japan. “You…you really would, Joō-heika no Akane?” I asked hopefully.

“Of course, Mushi.” She smiled down at me. “I’m not a monster,” she said, without a hint of irony. “I’m your friend, remember?”

“T-thank you, Joō-heika no Akane”

“Get dressed and meet me downstairs. I’m going to take you somewhere that will bring back that old dummy, Molly. You know, the one that got down that first day in the dogeza?” She had to cover her mouth to stop the giggles. “That was the first day!”

Half hour later we were on the subway into central Tokyo. It felt odd being amongst other people. I was so used to my entire world being ruled by my three hosts, that the realisation that there was a whole world still going on outside their home left me feeling almost agoraphobic. I felt as if all eyes were on me, with the local Japanese people curiously looking my way as Akane led me by the hand through the carriage. Throughout the journey, she listened to music so I was left to stare out the window and take in the scenery. From what I could see, Tokyo was a beautiful city, with lots of parks mixed amongst high rises. At one point, we passed a beautiful orange tower that reminded me of photos I’d seen of Paris.

She sat next to me, in a cute little pink skirt and a hoodie emblazoned with various Japanese cartoon characters. She had her legs crossed at the knee, with her usual ankle socks and weathered Converse on display. She kicked her foot in time to her music. I stared at that filthy Converse that I’d had tied to my face so much. As we sat next to each other on the subway, none of the other passengers had any clue that this petite local girl had used that shoe to endlessly torment her blonde companion.

At one stop, Akane tugged at my sleeve and led me from the train. We entered a built-up area with lots of brightly coloured signs. As Akane tugged me through the clouds, I caught a glimpse of that famous crossroads, the one where hundreds of people cross the road from different directions. It was one of those spots I’d promised to send my mother a photo. I pointed and was about to speak, when Akane stopped, put a finger to her lips and shushed me. My shoulders sagged, and I allowed my little tyrant to lead me from the area without actually experiencing the notable tourist hotspot.

We took a side street, then stopped near a doorway. I looked up and saw there were pink signs with white writing.

“Do you know what this is?” Akane asked with a smile.

I shrugged, not having a clue, before she dragged me up the spiral staircase. Once at the top, a gorgeous Japanese girl greeted us with a little bow. She was dressed in a pristine maid outfit, the black and white kind associated with the French. She said something to Akane in Japanese, then turned to me, bowed again, and with a smile said, “Welcome, Mistress.”

My rigid exterior immediately softened. It was probably the nicest anyone had been to me since I arrived, and I couldn’t help but blush. The maid took my hand and led me inside and I was overwhelmed by what I saw. We settled into a booth and I looked around in fascination. Akane seemed largely unfazed. There were more of these maids everywhere. We were in some kind of café and there were lots of Japanese men with the occasional girl sat at tables and enjoying drinks. I noticed a few people were eating ice creams and pancakes, which were decorated to resemble cute animals. At the front there was a kind of stage, with a few of the maids performing a dance. Each of them was as adorably cute as the next. They were all young and beautiful. It seemed there were specific requirements to work there.

A stunning, slender maid with her hair tied in pigtails approached our table and dropped to a curtsy. “Kon'nichiwa, Mistress,” she said to Akane, and for a moment I wondered if they knew each other. However, she then offered me the same greeting and I heard another maid on a neighbouring table refer to a Japanese boy as master. Apparently, this was just how things worked in the café.

Akane spoke Japanese, and the maid nodded, then she looked at me and smiled. “I’m Mitsuko, welcome to our maid café, Mistress…” Her voice lingered in the air.

Akane nudged me and I realised what was happening. “Molly,” I said.

“Welcome, Mistress Molly. Have you been here before?”

“Never,” I said.

She did her little bow again, then passed me a menu. “Would you like something to drink, Mistress?”

It felt weird being addressed with so much respect after all I’d been through. It seemed that Akane really had felt like I deserved a break from my regular, servile laugh. I glanced at her in gratitude and she seemed to recognise my joy and smiled back showing me her braces. I pointed at a drink on the menu, then switched to the next page and again chose an ice cream. I realised I didn’t have any money, so looked at Akane in desperation, but she simply nodded in approval, but didn’t order anything herself.

Mitsuko smiled, then turned and left us. I spent the new minutes just watching everyone else interact with the maids. Some older guys were playing board games with them. Groups of teenagers were chatting while enjoying their drinks, and there were a few younger guys sat alone near the stage. One was clutching a bouquet of roses and eventually gave them to a maid he’d been watching adoringly.

Mitsuko returned with my drink, which just appeared to be a glass of lemonade. I was about to take it when she said, “Wait. Before you drink we must sing the magic song.” She took my hands and began chanting some kind of cute melody. Akane nudged me and I began singing along too. Once finished, Mitsuko took a capsule and poured some kind of sparkling dust into my glass. At once, the liquid turned pink. I looked at Akane amazed, and began giggling excitedly. This was without doubt the most fun I’d had in Japan since I’d arrived and it was fulfilling all of the cute, quirky ideas I’d associated with the place. I took a sip through the straw and tasted the sweetest flavour in months.

Moments later, Mitsuko returned with my ice cream. It was a mix of pastel blues and pinks, with lots of little sugary treats attached to the top. An ice cream cone was placed upside down at the top so it resembled a hat, and there were eyes and a mouth drawn onto the ice cream scoop with a strawberry sauce. We performed the song once again, then she left me to eat. I jumped at the opportunity to eat something other than leftovers, but by halfway through I felt sick and couldn’t finish the rest. It was just far too rich and sugary.

While I watched the maids, Akane mostly did something on her phone and just let me enjoy myself. It was such a relief to have some time off from bowing, serving and licking feet. I felt like a regular girl for once, as if my current nightmare wasn’t actually happening. I wondered if this was how things would be now? Akane had tired of her games, she’d finishing having her fun, and it was time for me to actually enjoy my experience here.

I noticed Mitsuko was near the stage, then another of the maid’s held a microphone and called out my name. I looked about confused, but Akane simply said, “Go, Mushi.”

I joined Mitsuko at the front, and she placed a pair of kitty ears on my head, then the other maid told us to pose together while she took a polaroid. Moments later I was dismissed and returned to Akane.

Eventually, Mitsuko returned with a little card, the polaroid inside. She’d drawn little symbols all over it, and had dated it. “Mistress, your souvenir,” she said with a smile, while presenting it to me.

Akane paid the bill, using my daddy’s credit card, I noticed, then I assumed we were about to leave. However, she began speaking Japanese to Mitsuko, and the two of them engaged in a lengthy conversation. I noticed at times that Mitsuko’s face screwed up in confusion, and the whole maid act appeared to drop. She glanced at me a number of times, the confusion evident at first, though later, this was replaced with sly little smirks and nods. I had no clue what was being said, but heard my name mentioned a number of times.

“Molly,” Mitsuko finally said, while gazing at me. “Your mistress,” she paused while looking towards Akane, “has told me that you’d like to come back stage and see where the maids get ready.”

I was confused, but I looked at Akane and said. “Ummm, I guess that might be cool?” I mean, it would, seeing these cute little Japanese girls getting all dolled up as maids, right?

Mitsuko took my hand, then encouraged me from the booth. “This way,” she said, and suddenly I was being led across the café towards a curtain. Akane followed us backstage, and a few of the other maids, who were back there, looked over at us in confusion.

“So, you want to be a maid?” Mitsuko asked me.

“Huh, what? No!” I said. I looked at Akane in fury. What the hell was going on?

“It is not common for foreigner women to do this,” Mitsuko said while narrowing her eyes. “But if it is your dream.”

“I don’t want to be a maid.” I looked towards Akane again, this time in desperation, but she merely crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

“Mitsuko is Japanese,” Akane said. “How do foreigners show respect to Japanese?” There was a mischievous grin on her face, and I felt a wave of dread ripple down my spine.

I looked back to Mitsuko, and there was a similar smirk on her face. She raised an eyebrow, then her eyes glanced to the floor as her white-stockinged leg moved towards me. She had these cute little black shoes on. She then looked me straight in the eyes, and nodded towards her foot.

“Mushi,” Akane said. She was glancing at her fingernails. “Dogeza!”

I could feel the skin of my cheeks burning in embarrassment. Not here, I thought, please, not now, in front of a stranger no less. I was having such a good time, free from the horror of their home, and Akane couldn’t even allow me that? Mitsuko had referred to me as her mistress, and now I was expected to bow before her, while she stood dressed as a maid?

“Dogeza!” Akane said in a louder tone, which prompted Mitsuko to snort in amusement.

I immediately dropped to my hands and knees, and placed my forehead to the floor near Mitsuko’s shoe. I heard them talking in Japanese above me, then I smelled the familiar fragrance of feet as Mitsuko slipped her stockinged-foot from her shoe. As expected, I soon felt its warmness on the back of my head. Suddenly, another two sets of similar black shoes appeared in view, and there was frantic Japanese discussion up above. Two more feet joined Mitsuko’s atop my head, and I had no clue who they even belonged to. I thought back to all of the maids I’d seen around the café, and tried to figure out which would be bold enough to do such a thing. I closed my eyes in shame, here I was, beneath the feet of three Japanese café maids.

The Japanese conversation continued, while I remained kneeling on the floor. There was lots of giggling and gasps of surprise as more maids came over for a look. I felt some kind of lace or ribbon being tied around my neck, and I was yanked up to my knees. Stood before me were at least five of the Japanese maids, all smiling and gazing at me in amusement. They looked so cute, yet from my kneeling position, I was extremely intimidated. At the centre was Mitsuko, and in her hand she grasped the other end of the ribbon. Everything had happened so fast, mere minutes ago I was enjoying my ice cream, and now suddenly I was on my knees before the same girl that had served me.

A hand ruffled my hair, and I jumped in surprise, before realising it was Akane. Thank God she hadn’t abandoned me to whatever was about to happen. “Great news, Mushi,” she said, which made a few of the maids giggle. “You now have a job.”

“W-what?” I asked. I glanced around the backstage area in confusion.

Akane stepped before me, grasped my cheeks and smiled into my face. “You’re going to be a maid.”

I pictured myself prancing around the café in one of those uniforms, performing the little songs I’d seen Mitsuko do. There was no way in hell I was up to such a task. I was way too self-conscious to be on display like that. “Please, no…” I whined.

“It’s already settled,” Akane said. “I’ll come collect you this evening.” With that, Akane left me there with all of the maids and I had no clue what was about to happen.

Mitsuko tugged on the ribbon. “Come on, Molly,” she said. “I’ll teach you what it takes to be a maid.” I clambered to my feet and followed her towards a rail of uniforms. She fingered her way through them while looking me up and down. “It may be difficult to find one that fits you. You’re bigger than most Japanese girls.” Finally, she pulled one from the rail and held it up against me. “Maybe we can squeeze you into this.” She handed the outfit to me and pointed to a curtain-off cubicle.

The outfit was indeed a tight fit, but I did manage to get it on. You could see my waist was struggling to burst out, and the skirt looked ridiculously short on me. However, when I came back out, Mitsuko seemed pleased enough. “Oh, very good, Molly,” she said with a clap of her hands. “You’re like a Japanese maid, but wider.” She tied my hair in blonde pigtails and looped the ribbon around my neck in a bow.

I spent the next few hours being trained in the ways of a Japanese café maid. I was painfully shy and self-conscious in the tight-fitting maid outfit; however, Mitsuko wouldn’t allow me to flee backstage. There was lots of smiling, and bowing, and referring to the Japanese clientele as master or mistress. Most seemed to delight in a white, blonde American girl serving them, particularly some of the women in attendance. Mitsuko instructed me to perform the dogeza, rather than the simple bow of the other maids, and the Japanese customers enjoyed that even further. Groups of women took turns placing their feet on my head at Mitsuko’s instruction, all the while laughing and egging each other on. I also learned how to perform the special magic song and serve the various drinks and food.

One thing that began to annoy me however, was despite how polite I was being, whenever I introduced myself, the customer would snort or laugh straight in my face.

“Why does everyone laugh at me?” I asked Mitsuko. “They don’t laugh at any of the other maids.”

Mitsuko rolled her eyes. “You keep introducing yourself as a mushi, what do you expect? Your Japanese is really quite terrible, but it is rude for me to correct you in front of a customer.”

“But that’s my name,” I whined. “Why is that so funny?”

She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “Your name is Mushi?” She covered her mouth and giggled.

I stamped my foot against the floor. “What’s so funny?”

“You know what that means, right?”

“It’s the Japanese way of saying Molly.”

She rolled her eyes again. “Oh, Molly, you are so silly. Mushi means bug. Every time you meet someone, you introduce yourself as an insect.”

The blood ran cold from my face. I remembered back to the first day, the picture-book, and the way Akane had giggled and told me the animals had names. Mushi wasn’t the animals name, it was the type of animal! From the very first day, Akane had seen me as nothing more than a bug, and I’d introduced myself that way ever since? Suddenly it all made sense, both Matsuri and Saori had balked when I first introduced myself as Mushi! Then another thought came to my mind from that first day. “And…what does…what does buta mean?” I asked.

She passed me a plate with an omelette along with some ketchup for me to draw a picture once I’d brought it to the customer. “Pig.” She shrugged. “It means pig. Now, run along, Mushi.” She giggled again. “Take this food before it gets cold.”

Mitsuko called me Mushi for the rest of the day, and the other maids soon followed suit. I was rushed off my feet, and I gradually noticed that as the day went on, and I learned more, Mitsuko would do less and less. By the final few customers, I was serving them without her assistance, while she hung around backstage and talked to her boyfriend on the phone.

As the last of the customers left, I was thankful that the day was finally over. I headed back to the dressing room, and saw that Mitsuko was sat with her stockinged feet resting on a fluffy stool. Her maid shoes were neatly placed at its base. She was talking on the phone to her boyfriend still, though when she noticed me, she put her hand across the receiver and beckoned me close. As I neared, she reached up and loosened the ribbon bow around my neck, once again turning it into a make-shift leash. She wrapped it around her fingers and yanked me down till I dropped to my knees. “Take off my stockings,” she said.

I sighed, knowing exactly what was about to happen, and accepted that another humiliation was to follow. No doubt, Akane had told her all about the many ways I served her. As expected, Mitsuko had me rub her feet, followed by plastering her sweaty soles with kiss after kiss in gratitude. Gratitude for what? Who knows, but I did it anyway. A few of the other maids took interest, and I must have kissed at least four other girl’s feet that evening while they giggled and took photos to show their friends or boyfriends.

Akane was all grins as she collected me from the café, and I loathed her even more for tricking me into thinking it was a genuine day out. While I licked her feet that evening, she had me tell her all about my day, most of which made her laugh. “Well, look at the positives,” she said. “You’re learning so much more about Japanese culture now. You wanted to get out of the house more, and your wish came true.”

I thought about mentioning what Mitusko had told me about Akane’s name for me, however, I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of the joy it would bring her. I concentrated on licking her feet instead.

I worked at the café every day that week, and on one occasion Matsuri came in with a bunch of her friends. It was mortifying, and I had to perform the dogeza as well as rub her feet while all her friends laughed and took photos. Matsuri seemed to delight in photographing me in the maid uniform and she spoke with the owner, who agreed I could bring it home. Of course, my service was expected to continue once I returned home, and it was even more exhausting as they expected the same level of servitude in a much shorter time.  To add to my humiliation, I was ordered to wear that cutesy maid uniform while at home too. The three women seemed to revel in now having their own on-demand white maid servant.

It also became a ritual for the maids to pass me around after hours. They’d relax while I rubbed and kissed their feet, and on a few occasions, when she was feeling particularly devious, Mitsuko had me lick her feet, much to the amusement of the others. Akane later showed me a selfie Mitsuko had taken with me in the background, clearly tonguing her feet. The two had obviously exchanged numbers and I figured Akane was likely encouraging a lot of my debasement from afar.

By the weekend, the owner of the café paid me my wages, and I was quite surprised at how well it paid. However, Mitsuko took a cut while she had me prone in the dogeza, as in her words, “Your mistress said I’d receive a fee for training you, Mushi.” I was forced to kiss her little maid shoes and thank her for all she’d done for me. “You’re welcome, Mushi,” she said, while taking a seat, having me remove her shoes and stockings, and then propping up her bare feet. “Now let me feel that tongue of yours, then you can go home.” I sucked her toes for the first time that night and I accepted I wasn’t just a maid, I was a maid to the maids. The lowest of the low.

When I returned home that evening, Akane already knew I’d been paid, so I figured Mitsuko had tipped her off. “Let me see,” she said, while snatching and counting through the notes. “Good work, Mushi,” she said. “You’ve earned me so much.”

“Huh?” I said in shock. “I worked all week for that!”

She scowled at me and pointed at the floor. “Dogeza, now!”

And of course, I complied. She just had that effect on me and I’d literally been sucking Mitsuko’s sweaty toes after her long shift moments before; the taste of her salty toe cheese still fresh on my tongue. I hardly had the confidence to oppose Akane while I stood there in my maid uniform.

“I’m keeping this money,” she said, while placing her bare foot on my head. “You should be thankful your God has found use for you.”

“I am,” I groaned. I really wasn’t.

She removed her foot, and allowed me to rise to my knees, though it seemed only so I could see her smile as she counted through the wad of bills again and again.

“Akane-chan,” Saori said while entering the room, before following with a flurry of Japanese words. Akane showed her the money and Saori raised her eyebrow. She was well aware that I’d been working at the café, and had only approved as long as it didn’t interfere with my service in their home. Plus, I could tell she got a kick from seeing me scrubbing her floors in my uniform.

As if to hammer her point home further, Akane dropped the money on the floor and stood on it, almost rubbing it in my face that I’d worked all week just to see my pay end up beneath her feet, just like everything else in my life.

I thought for a moment that her mother had disproved of her claiming my hard-earned money for herself, but once she began speaking English, I knew I’d been completely wrong. Saori only seemed to speak English when she was saying something that made it clear that I was beneath her and her daughters. She continually pointed at the pile of notes beneath Akane’s pretty foot.

“I am very proud of you, Akane-chan,” she said, while dropping an arm around her daughter’s shoulder and pulling her close. She kissed her on the forehead. “My entrepreneur, that is the word, correct, Mushi?”

“I don’t know what that means, ma’am,” I said from my knees, being completely honest.

I heard the older woman tut, and she offered me a disparaging grimace filled with disdain. “It means she has good business mind. She will make great management. My smart daughter put this bigger donkey girl to work for her profit. Entrepreneur!” she said again, though this time a lot louder.

“Do you want me to take this money?” Akane asked, as she twisted her foot atop the wad of notes. “I won’t take it unless you ask me to, Mushi.”

I really didn’t. I had worked so hard for it that it seemed completely unfair that I was expected to suddenly hand it over. All week I’d been on my feet, slaving away for the Japanese customers, when I wasn’t down in the dogeza of course. Following that, I’d kissed countless maid’s feet, while I cringed in humiliation, as well as licking Mitsuko’s feet and sucking her toes. Plus, Akane had already been gang-banging my daddy’s credit card on a weekly basis, so this was just an extra demand on top. It was so unfair.

However, dressed in my maid uniform, and kneeling at their feet, it seemed absurd that I could refuse in any way. Akane’s pretty toes seemed so dominant as they were splayed out across the cash, as if she was posing above a vanquished foe.

My mind went back to the first weekend when I’d arrived, when Akane had been educating me about Japanese emperors. This was how guests were supposed to act in the presence of Japanese girls, right? After all, Saori had been extremely generous in allowing me to stay in her home the last few months and she hadn’t once asked me to pay rent or anything. Perhaps this was the way I was supposed to contribute? Maybe it was common for guests to freely hand over their earnings to their Japanese hosts. Perhaps they were being so hard on me because I hadn’t showed them the appropriate respect. This could be a way for me to prove myself, and then they might ease up on me.

“So, what do you say, Mushi?” Akane said, with a renewed twist of her foot.

I lowered my head back to the dogeza next to her foot and mumbled into the floor, “Please would you accept my money, Joō-heika no Akane?”

I heard Saori snigger up above, however there was no response from her daughter. It was a couple of seconds before I felt pressure on the top of my head as Akane must have placed her foot there. She leant down and the pressure increased. “I can’t hear you,” she said. “Speak louder, Mushi.”

“Please would you accept my money!?” I said almost shouting. “Please, Joō-heika no Akane, take my money!”

She lowered her foot from my head and stuffed it beneath my face. “Kiss your Japanese superior’s foot and beg me to take it.”

I immediately kissed her little toes all over, focusing on her trimmed toenails in particular. “Please take my money, Joō-heika no Akane, you are my Japanese superior and my money belongs to you.”

“Well, if you insist,” she giggled, before crouching down and snatching up the wad of cash. “You’re my little buta.”

I knew exactly what that meant now, but I didn’t respond.

“My little pay buta,” she added with a giggle.

The two of them laughed and Saori hugged her daughter with pride. “You deserve it, Akane-chan,” she said. “You’ve been working so hard.”

“What?” I said. “I did all of the work! I’ve been stood on my feet all week in that café.”

Akane smiled. “See, I knew it would work. See, how she’s back to being Molly? Questioning and fighting everything again. I can have my fun all over from the start and slowly turn Molly to Mushi again.”

I shuddered at the thought of going through everything all over again until Akane turned me to her mindless worshipper once more. “Please, don’t. I’ll work for you, Joō-heika no Akane, I promise. I’ll give you the money every week. Just please be my friend.”

Akane scoffed. “You’ll be whatever I tell you to be. Remember why I had you come here in the first place?”

“I chose to come here,” I sighed. “I wanted to see Japan.”

Saori giggled. She actually giggled. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head in exasperation. “Oh, Mushi, you are so simple minded.” She crouched down and patronisingly pursed her lips right in my face while nodding with mock-sympathy. “Akane-chan has been working hard on you this entire time.”

I was about to ask what she meant, when Matsuri walked in. “What’s going on?” she asked. She looked at the money Akane was holding. “Where did that come from?”

“It’s Mushi’s maid pay,” Saori said. “Your sister has seized it like the masterful Japanese Empress she is. Of course,”—she nudged me with her foot—“this weak little white girl knew it was only right to hand it over.”

I cowered in disgrace at Saori’s point-blank description of my capitulation.

“But what about me?” Matsuri whined. “I want money to spend too. I need new clothes. I have a dance this weekend and I can’t be seen wearing the same thing.” She looked at me with disappointment. “Where’s my money, Mushi?”

I sighed thinking I was going to have to work even more from then on, so I could hand it all over to both sisters.

Akane laughed, and removed my daddy’s credit card from her pocket. “You can use this whenever you want,” she said. “I don’t need it anymore. I have my own buta now.”

Matsuri snatched the card and squealed in delight.

“Please,” I said in desperation and I hugged Akane’s ankles. “He’s going to start asking questions.”

“Why would he?” Akane said. “You’ve been spending money as he’d expect you to. It’s expensive here.” She giggled and had to cover her mouth. “You just haven’t been spending it on yourself.”

“My daddy is going to notice.”

“Don’t worry about your parents, Mushi,” Saori said. “They don’t suspect a thing.”

“Ho-how do you know?”

“I spoke to your mother earlier. We had a lovely conversation. Though, she speaks your own language as terribly as you do.” She rolled her eyes.

I looked up shocked. “You did…you did what?”

Saori chuckled. “The programme gave me her contact details in case of emergency.” She looked at her daughters and winked. “This was an emergency.”

Both Akane and Matsuri sniggered along with their mother.

“What’s the emergency?” I asked. Maybe she’d finally seen sense and my parents were coming to rescue me. Oh God, finally there may be an escape from this utter hell.

“I told her what a great time you were having in Japan. Visiting Kyoto, and Osaka and trying all of the different vegetarian foods. You’re so skilled with chopsticks these days. I even told her about that time Akane-chan took you to Okinawa as a cultural treat.” She pulled Akane close and patted her head. “I have such a kind and caring daughter.”

“Okinawa?” I asked, wondering if I’d misheard. “What? That never happened. I’ve never been to Osaka or Kyoto!” The thought made me frown, Kyoto had been one of the places I’d really wanted to see. I’d spent hours trawling the internet and looking at the women in the traditional outfits as they posed with umbrellas next to pretty ponds and bridges. The closest I’d been to those elegant ladies of Kyoto was when Saori had made me lick her zori while she relaxed in her kimono robe.

“Of course, you have, Mushi,” Akane continued as her eyes smiled through her glasses. “We skipped along together through the bamboo forest of Arashiyama. We took photos in the digital art museum right here in Toyko just this past weekend.” She dipped her head as if she was sharing a secret with me. “You really enjoyed the room filled with lanterns. You begged me to take photos over and over, and because I’m such a good friend, I did! We’ve had so much fun together. We’re basically the best of friends.”

I looked between the two of them in total confusion. What the hell were they talking about? The only parts of Japan I’d seen were the bottom of their sweaty feet, day after day, all through the months I’d been here! I glanced at Matsuri who up to this point had been quiet. “This didn’t happen did it, Matsuri-san? Tell them to stop messing with me.”

A little smirk crept onto her face, then she opened her mouth in shock and placed a hand to her breast. “What do you mean, Mushi? Are you saying you don’t remember when I took you to Akihabara?” she said.

I shook my head in panic. I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead.

She glanced at the other two and grimaced in disapproval. “How could you forget? All of the lights? The pretty signs? We walked along going from shop to shop. You were so excited you wanted to go into every store. You must have spent hours playing games in Sega. I could barely drag you away from all of the shelves filled with anime.”

I beat my fists against my thighs. “That. Never. Happened!”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re so silly. All of these nice things we’ve done for you and you can’t even remember. I honestly don’t know why we bothered!”

I looked at the floor for a second. Was I going crazy? Had this entire nightmare all been a dream and I was actually enjoying myself this whole time? I shook my head. No way, they were lying. I hadn’t seen any of this stuff. I’d spent months sleeping on the floor, eating their leftovers and removing their shoes every time they came home. I’d licked their slippers clean and even their feet! I’d spent hours with Akane’s demanding toes having their way with my mouth and almost as long with Matsuri’s entire foot shoved down my throat. I’d been trampled non-stop under the guise of being massaged and I’d even had to nibble at their feet like I was a freakin’ fish! There was nothing enjoyable about any of my time in Japan. To top it all off, for the past week I’d been working like some slave in a maid café for customers that thought I was a complete bimbo. Then as a final insult, Akane had just taken my hard-earned wages!

I remained knelt on the floor, rattled and confused. I must have been a juddering wreck as Matsuri placed her fingertip beneath my chin and forced me to look in her eyes. “And what about our weekend in Harajuku?”

“I don’t even know what that means,” I whined. “Please stop.”

“With all of the girls dressed up in their pretty outfits? The colourful wigs and make up? You can’t remember? We had such a fun weekend! Don’t you remember those cute little ice creams I bought you? Wait.” She scrolled through the photos in her phone and showed me one of myself dressed in the embarrassing maid café uniform. I was smiling like a moron and serving up one of those ridiculously cute ice creams shaped like a bear. “See, you even joined in yourself. You just love cosplay. All of the dressing up and pretending you’re not yourself. It was so cute,” she giggled, “so, kawaii!”

“That’s where you forced me to work,” I said. “I never wanted to be a maid.” I pointed at Akane accusingly. “This is all because of her. She pretended to be my friend, she promised to show me Japan, but she’s been nothing but mean to me!”

Matsuri balked as if I’d offended her. “Please, Akane even played along since you enjoyed it so much.” She glanced at her sister and they exchanged an evil smirk. “My sister was even kind enough to switch clothes and dress up like you as cosplay.”

I turned towards Akane. “You dressed as me?”

Akane burst into a fit of giggles then frantically nodded. “I was cosplaying a white loser!”

I was lost for words and hung my head in shame.

“Don’t be so ungrateful anyway, Mushi,” Saori interrupted. “I even sent that photo to your mother. After seeing what a great time you were having she just had to agree with my suggestion.”

My eyes darted to the older woman in confusion. “Suggestion? What suggestion?”

“Well,” she cocked her head and looked off to the side. “It was Akane-chan’s suggestion really.” She patted her daughters head once again then ruffled her hair. “She’s so full of ideas, you know?”

“What suggestion?” I asked again.

Akane bent in front of me and grasped my cheeks in her hands. “Well, since you’re having such a good time with us.” She smiled right into my face, showing those teeth lined with metal. I could even see my confused expression reflected in her glasses. There was genuine excitement in her voice as she almost sung the words, “We’re going to extend your stay in Japan, of course!”