Your pulse throbbed in your skull, deafening, as you tried to crawl along the spongy, sweat-soaked foam of Nuki’s flip-flop. The surface clung to your hands and knees like damp flesh, tacky and saturated with her sweat. Each crawl forward left your palms glistening, your fingertips pruned from the brine seeping out of the sandal’s pores.
The world shook constantly. Her restless toes drummed and flexed above, each twitch of those pale giants throwing you off balance. The thong of the flip-flop loomed ahead—a rubber tower slick with condensation, glistening under the harsh interior bus lights. The black strap reeked of her skin: sour salt, old rubber, faint grime.
You didn’t get far.
Her toes stirred. A shadow fell across you.
The digits descended with casual inevitability, the weight of skyscrapers dropping onto an insect. You screamed, but the noise was lost under the soft, wet thud of her toes closing around you. In an instant you were plastered against the thong, the rubber rod grinding into your spine while her flesh—warm, damp, oppressive—pressed in from the front.
The air left your lungs in a wheeze. Sweat smeared over your face, your lips, your nostrils. Her skin was slick, pliant yet unyielding, the ridges of her toeprints digging into you like rolling hills. You tried to squirm, but her toes flexed lazily, tightening around you, squeezing until your ribs creaked.
The stench was unbearable. Every inhale dragged in the acrid, sour musk of her foot. It coated your tongue, filled your throat, stuck in your lungs like glue. It wasn’t just a smell—it was a taste, a texture, a suffocating presence that replaced the very air you needed to live.
Overhead, the muffled thump of bass leaked from her headphones. She wasn’t listening to you. She wasn’t even aware of you. To Nuki, you weren’t a person—you were lint wedged in her sandal, something she would never notice unless it irritated her.
Then the floor shifted.
Her foot lifted. Your stomach lurched. For one dizzying moment, you were weightless, pressed tighter as her toes clung unconsciously to the thong. Then—SLAP!—the sole of her flip-flop hit the bus floor. The shock rattled every bone in your body.
Again. SLAP. The bus stop. SLAP. The pavement.
She was leaving.
The sunlight outside was merciless, pouring heat onto her pale skin. Sweat beaded instantly, running in rivulets down the sides of her toes. Each bead swelled, swayed, then broke loose, rolling down her skin and onto you. Warm droplets spattered your face, sticky and briny, soaking your clothes until they clung to you like rags.
Her stride was steady. Deliberate. Each step was a cycle of torment: lift, squeeze, slap. When she lifted her foot, gravity dragged you deeper into the hot crevice between her toes. When she slapped the sandal down, her flesh compressed, crushing you into the thong. The rhythm was maddening—inescapable, endless.
The sound of it filled your world. SLAP-squelch, SLAP-squelch. The sandal suctioned faintly each time it peeled from the ground, wet with her sweat. The thong groaned against the foam, pulling taut with each flex of her toes. The fleshy creak of skin rubbing against skin echoed in your ears, magnified by proximity.
You begged silently as her toes wriggled absentmindedly around you, scrunching and releasing, grinding you deeper against the damp strap. Each flex mashed your face against her salty skin until your lips, nose, and eyes burned from the sting of salt and grime. You swallowed instinctively, only to gag as her sweat slid down your throat like sour brine.
Minutes became hours.
The sun climbed higher. The heat grew suffocating. Her toes glistened under the assault, her skin sheening with sweat that pooled between them. You were bathed in it, drowning in it. Your body stuck fast to her flesh, every attempt to move dragging sticky strings of perspiration that snapped back against you.
She walked without hurry, each stride an eternity. The slap of her flip-flop echoed off storefronts, concrete, asphalt. To everyone else, she was just another pale figure with headphones and a cigarette dangling between her fingers. To you, she was a living prison, and you were forgotten inside her step.
Sometimes she paused at a crosswalk, shifting her weight. Those moments were worse than the walking. Her toes would clench instinctively, wringing you against the thong like a rag, forcing more sweat over you. Sometimes her big toe pressed harder, mashing your ribs against the strap until you saw stars. Sometimes the second toe twitched, rubbing the side of your head against its callused skin, the friction scraping your cheek raw.
The smell never faded. If anything, it deepened as the day burned on. A dense, sour fug of sweat, skin, and rubber that lodged permanently in your nostrils. You breathed it because there was nothing else to breathe. The air was hers, soaked in her scent.
Hours bled together. Steps, pauses, shifts. Sweat, salt, suffocation.
When the sun finally dipped lower, cooling the air slightly, you realized with horror that she hadn’t even thought of you once. You weren’t part of her day. You weren’t a secret. You weren’t anything.
You were just there—trapped in the humid, salty canyon between her toes and the thong strap of her sandal—carried along with her without a flicker of awareness.
For Nuki, your suffering was less than nothing.
un: 
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