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“Things look different depending on your perspective. As I see it, fighting to bridge those gaps isn't what really matters.
The most important thing is to know them inside and out, as differences, and to understand why certain people are the way they are.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake
I lie here thinking of you:—
the stain of love
is upon the world!
—William Carlos Williams, Love Song
i.
Can a person grow up to be empty?
Mika reckons that babies are born pure but full: of possibilities, of hope, of an optimism that could blow up a universe. But people lose themselves the more they live. Or worse, they fill up with garbage and debris and dark matter and whatever other scum churns out from the dumpster one calls Life.
This is a body, Mika thinks as she stares into the mirror of her bathroom. This is a face. This is a smile, teeth, eyes.
The body she considers here, was there ever a time she once called it mine? Who is the ghost that lives in between her bones?
“Hmm, Egashira-san,” Shima Sousuke tells her the first time they are alone together. He speaks to people like a splash of cold water to the face. “You should try relaxing a little more. I’m sure you’ll have fun if you do.”
Mika gets an itch under her skin. She sands down her teeth with the clench of her jaw. Her heart gallops wild like a horse with no rider.
Mukai Tsukasa sucks his teeth at Mika; he regards her the way teenage boys who place themselves above their own judgement do. “It’s up to you if you’re prideful, but you don’t have the right to look down on others.”
Her journal entry later that day, after that particular confrontation, goes: what do you know WHAT do you know what DO you know what do YOU know what do you KNOW WHAT DO YOU KNOW YOU FUCKING FUCK!!!!!!!!
Mika’s feelings never disappear. Not even if she stops eating and dresses like she is sponsored by fashion magazines. Not even if she debuts to people that have that innate sparkle she never had. Not even if she smiles at boys who once squealed like pigs at seeing her chubby face. Not even if she makes friends who feed the animal in her heart to its content.
I can’t be someone genuinely kind, she reflects on quiet moments in the evening, her body stiff like it is slathered in a giant clay mask, and I can’t be beautiful, and I can’t be okay with not being either.
“Ugh!” She screams into the belly of a cat plushie in her room. “Ugh ugh ugh!”
Is she afraid of seeing herself through the eyes of others? Does the child in her hunger for attention? What if she is only the idea of a person, one that clings—with bloodied nails and aching arms—onto the tongues of others, those people society crowns King, and she grapples onto that slippery edge with all she has because if she falls she will become someone that no one will want to know, that no one will hear about, that no one glances around a room full of people wondering where she is, that she is nothing and nobody? Can she not be a person that someone recognises and loves, even once?
If she screams and no one hears her, is she even making noise?
ii.
Mitsumi Iwakura is a plain girl. She has flat hair, a small mouth, and a face round like a panda. Her voice carries with it the spritzy brightness of an orange being peeled. Her idea of a hilarious joke regarding her career is I’m the sort of person who should stand above others. She picks the right karaoke songs and sings like she is going to lose her vocal cords tomorrow. She takes blurry selfies with her phone’s back camera. Her favourite top to wear is an old crewneck sweatshirt with a cherry print smack in its middle. She passes out two minutes into a light jog during PE. Her mind makes room to remember people’s kindness. She is barf girl and the hidden banchou. She is a good person.
She is not like Mika at all.
It is just politics at first: Mika wants to be in Sousuke Shima’s good graces, and Mitsumi is somehow a conduit for popular people. Is there anything Mika did so wrong? She just plays the game that everyone else does to move up in life. She did not have any intention of being friends with the wacky country bumpkin; what is true friendship anyways, when people wear many faces to many places? If Mika cannot have companionship, she can at least get a body to sit beside her at lunch.
Mika Egashira will not lose her place in this rat race—even if it kills her!
“Ah,” Mitsumi says to Mika, forearms blotching crimson from their secret volleyball practice together. Mitsumi’s clear eyes reflect back at Mika an unfamiliar person—someone that thrums with vigour and a desire for love. “But that’s just you, isn’t it? Doing your best on everything, always reaching for the top.”
Why did Mitsumi have to go and touch Mika’s heart so tenderly?
“But I can’t lie, Mika-chan. Your personality…” Mitsumi whispers, covering her mouth like she is divulging a secret. “You’re kinda rude.”
“I KNOW THAT ALREADY!” Mika shrieks. Her face is a burning coal, her ponytail swinging punches. “YOU’RE PRETTY RUDE TOO, YOU KNOW!”
Mitsumi is a plain girl, and yet—Mika finds bliss being her friend.
Mitsumi’s auntie Nao, with her ten-thousand-yen-a-month nails blood-red and hoop earrings the size of an apple, is a way more familiar presence to Mika. She is like the creamy, sweet peach perfume Mika spots on her neck’s pulse point every morning. Mika hopes she is a bit like Nao in the future—even if they are prone to stalking people at the zoo.
They sit together one day Mika is over at Nao’s apartment. Mitsumi is in the bathroom, doing jumping jacks as she stumbles out of the garish sequin bodysuit her aunt and Mika both howl at her to change. Mika and Mitsumi have a day of shopping ahead, but they pinch pennies in eating homemade food beforehand so they can splurge in Harajuku.
“You know, you remind me of a certain someone,” Nao says after snarfing down a rice-and-meat bowl.
“Is that so?” Mika replies. She holds in two hands a delicate cup of jasmine tea, and she leans forward, upper body hovering above the table. “Me? Who would that be? Oh, is it one of your flashy clients?!”
Nao clicks her tongue and waves a hand. “You, O-Mika, are as the youth say, chic—”
“As the youth say—!”
“As O-Mitsu says, then, you are chic and fabulous. But, disregarding confidentiality, no, not one of my flashy clients. It’s someone in this very room right now.” Nao closes her eyes, her sovereign nose upturned. “You remind me a bit of myself. Even more than my niece, ha!”
How weird, Mika wonders, tongue poking first into the lukewarm tea in her hands, aren’t they the ones related?
“Listen, with O-Mitsu…” Nao sighs. “I’m twice her age, yet she’s the one who grabs my hand when times are hard.” Nao’s nails click on the table, an erratic pattern that sounds like a heartbeat falling in love. “She’s such a wonderful girl. I care for her with all my heart. I’d die for her! She can be who she is unapologetically, but I grew up so…different. I've had to deny Nao to become Nao, if that makes sense. Oh, what an awful thing…this envy....”
“Ugh.” Mika finds herself with a severe scowl on her face. “Nao-san, I understand what you mean!”
“Mmm. I thought you would. The way O-Mitsu sees the world is beautiful, yes, but, well, it’s also quite different than the world we might know.”
Mika agrees with the sentiment, her chest aches with it when Mitsumi walks in the room. “Mitsumi-chan wants to be a bureaucrat to help her hometown, and—” Mika gives one final sip from her tea before setting it aside. “I mean, my high school goal was having a high-spec boyfriend to make me someone special, and that…”
Why does she maim people’s intentions towards her? Why do ants crawl under her skin at rejection when she does it first? Why does she spurn herself? What is she missing? Will she ever change? Where does the wind blow? Where does the sea end? When does a person take on the shape of love?
Who will ever take on that shape, in the face of her wretchedness?
“It’s just me,” Mika finishes, her throat spasming as she swallows a scream. She squeezes her eyes shut; in the blackness, she blots out a myriad of stars and a small, triangle mouth. It’s just me.
“C'mon now. I’m glad you’re friends with O-Mitsumi, O-Mika.” Nao smiles at her, head resting on a graceful hand. “Remember what I’ve told you: if there ever comes a time when, even for a moment, you wished you had done something that your soul desired, go back and do it. Opportunities are taken by those who jump, whether or not they’re prepared, my dear.”
Mika clutches at the fabric of her skirt. She is thankful her hair hides at that moment the twisting in her face. Nao’s eyes, they call on Mika to answer a question she cannot answer with the truth quite yet.
“Nao-san, did you know,” Mika starts after she collects herself. “Did you know that the other day, someone complimented Mitsumi-chan’s drawing of Satonosuke in art class, and when I looked at her phone a few minutes later, I saw her searching about atelier apprenticeships in Europe.”
When Mitsumi returns, Nao is still roaring with laughter, and Mika has to use her sleeve to wipe away the tears in her eyes. Mitsumi’s peculiar—and slightly confused—laugh changes the melody inside Mika from minor to major. It is a gust of sweetness that carries Mika like wind underneath wings.
“What is it, Nao-chan?” Mitsumi demands, kneeling at the seat of Nao’s chair. “W-what’s so funny?!”
“All you crazy kids will be okay,” Nao wheezes, and raises her tea cup in a toast. “Trust in Onee-san.”
iii.
“This is about a friend of mine, and totally not me,” is what Mitsumi greets Mika with on their first day of third-year. They sit near the window, the cherry blossoms making pink thumbprints across the panels.
Somehow, Mitsumi looks different. She has a shy brightness to her face, like a peeking sunrise. Her small hands are a welcomed touch to the blue sleeve of Mika’s uniform. There is a rouge to Mitsumi’s cheeks, and with the sweat going on here, Mitsumi’s head is like a newly waxed apple. Her whole attire is not unusual, Mika affirms, and yet, and yet—
Whatever. They are high school girls after all. They can afford to dream about their friends in soft ways.
Except—in a few months, they will be girls no more. The thought brings a rush of anxiety to Mika, like missing the last step going down a staircase.
“Of course,” Mika hums. Although it is the most obvious ‘anonymous’ confession here, Mika’s chest is airy with the trust Mitsumi has for her.
“Well. Hmm. Say if you think you…” Mitsumi blanks out then, eyes glazing over. The only movement is her scratching off seashell-pink nail polish with a jittery thumb.
“Uh.” Mika waves a hand in front of Mitsumi’s robot face. “You good?”
Mitsumi reboots. She blinks hard, and pokes her tongue against the inside of her cheek, puffing it out like she just had a tooth extraction.
“Sorry! It’s just hard to put into words this—this thing.” Mitsumi’s eyes shift around, nose red, and Mika can see her delicate throat bobbing as the girl strains to a whisper. “Mika-chan, have you ever…have you ever liked someone who could change the entire world if they loved you back?”
Mukai finds her that afternoon, after the rush of Hungry Hungry Students following the final bell ring, inside the 7/11 across from their school. They walk the same streets, so they establish a routine since first-year to stop by the convenience store before the long commute home.
He stands there watching her—useless!—as she seethes over chips and strawberry-flavoured pocky.
His eyebrows raise up as she whips her head around like a barn owl.
“Woah,” Mukai begins in that deadpan way of his. “No offence, but you look a bit unhinged right now. Did a guy breathe too close to you again?”
“I’m writing your name down in the Death Note of my heart.” Mika grips onto the aisle rack, watching with a sick glee at how the display trembles underneath her power.
“Alright,” Mukai says. “I didn’t take you for an otaku, Egashira-san.”
“You have seconds before you die of a heart attack,” Mika says. “Shouldn’t you take this time to get over your fears of chatting nicely to a girl, instead of assuming you know anything about the one you’re talking to, hmm?”
“I saw you talking with Iwakura-san earlier,” Mukai responds to her threat with unease, showing Mika two rows of his teeth grinding side-to-side, and—ugh, he is such a GUY. “I’m not a hyena sniffing out people, y’know, but you’re usually in a decent mood after hanging out with her, so…”
“It’s just—it’s just girl talk,” Mika stammers. “Mitsumi-chan was asking about, or rather, she was talking about a friend who might have someone they like and—wait a minute, why am I telling you anything?!”
Mukai plucks two Pocari Sweats off the rack and hands one to Mika.
“Okay, sorry if this sounds rude, but I feel like we might be kicking a dead horse on the subject of crushes here.” Mukai raises his hands up, palms out in a cringe show of peace, water bottle dangling precariously between a sliver of fingers. “Besides, I think Sousuke is actually dealing with, like, some serious personal stuff currently that any romance there is—oh God, sorry, I just got lightheaded for a second. Good grief, is this déjà vu? The room was seriously spinning, I’m not even—hey, why are you looking at me like that?”
“Are you kidding?!” Mika exclaims—have you ever liked someone who could change your whole world—and slaps him on the shoulder. “Get with the program, Mukai-kun! If I thought Mitsumi’s inquiry was about Shima-kun, I would’ve started with Shima-kun. But…but this time, I think…”
Is Mukai blatantly incorrect at reading people in the mood of love, or is she jealous once more? Horrible girl. She feels sick that she cannot decide who she is more jealous of: Mitsumi or Shima. She wants to change someone’s world like that, she wants someone to think of her that way. How bright, and perceptive, and beautiful her friends are—and then there is Mika.
Let the others cheer Mitsumi on, Mika decides. I’d never be able to forgive myself if I ruin things. Not with Mitsumi.
“Mukai-kun, am I…” Mika mumbles, the hum of the convenience store almost drowning her voice out. “Am I someone disgusting?”
Mukai stares at her. He grabs her bottle of Pocari Sweat, a bag of chips, pocky, and a deluxe-packet of matcha KitKat the size of Mika’s head. He waddles, stiff and musing, to the checkout line.
“Whatever rabbit hole you’re going down right now, stop.” Mukai tilts his head to her when she reaches behind him.
Holy shit, Mika thinks, are all teenage boys allergic to having tact when they speak?
“You being thoughtful and concerned about someone you care about, it’d make anyone happy…or so I think. Besides, Egashira-san, you’re…ugh, you’re actually nice.” Mukai nods to the cashier, and takes out his wallet with a grimace. “Uh, I can pay?”
This horrid phenomenon tacks onto Mika like a burr into summer. The group have one last youthful vacation together, spending it once more in Mitsumi’s hometown. There, the sun looks like an orange, and the seaside horizon frightens Mika—the cusp of the unknown looms closer, but she cannot gauge where she will land come spring.
“Oh, before I forget to ask, I’ve wondered about this for a while. Mitsumi told me she met a cute, fashionable girl on her first day of school,” Fumi—Mitsumi’s comely childhood friend—says to Yuzuki. “Was that you?”
The green-eyed monster that lives in between Mika’s ribs bawls.
Mika tries to laugh at the jokes Mitsumi’s mom makes to her, but it comes out tinny and breathless. You are trying too hard. The smell of oil that drips from the tempura churns Mika’s stomach, and she is unable to swallow the piece in her mouth. You are trying too hard. She wants nothing more than to throw up all over her lap and run away out from the house and past the beach and through the mountains and out of the country and out of her body and she is trying too fucking hard.
What does effort matter in the presence of an unabashed beauty; Mika knows the answer to it—not much—and still, a small voice deep inside her asks: is there someone in the world who would choose me?
“No, Fumi-chan!” Mitsumi laughs. There are panko crumbs at the corner of her mouth, yet she grins, proud and a little flushed. Mitsumi turns to Mika, a hand over her chest. “That was Mika-chan, who sat behind me in the homeroom. She’s really fashionable, right? Like a model!”
Fumi moans, covering her mouth. “Oh my! Everyone from Tokyo is so cool, I had such a hard time deciding who to ask first.” Fumi bows her head, “My bad, Egashira-chan!”
“Yeah!” Mitsumi torrents tea in her mouth, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Listen, Fumi-chan, Mika-chan here also helped me choose my outfit that I’m wearing today! She’s amazing. I wish I had her eye and her perseverance with shopping. Did I tell you I once passed out at the Uniqlo at Ginza in the changing rooms, and—oh, wait, before that, let me tell you how we went to Shinjuku together, and, get this, when we got to this one store, she—”
Fumi comes to her after everyone tidies up after lunch. She describes to Mika a restaurant that nestles in the bosom of their neighbourhood, one that serves a mean platter of gyoza. She implores Mika to take Mitsumi there one day, especially if times are hard. When Mika inquires about her being singled out for this demand, Fumi smiles like spring.
Mika’s unending distress over Mitsumi is a magnet for others quips, it seems, as the next day, Yuzuki bumps shoulders with Mika while getting ice-cream together.
The group splits up in the shop: the boys weigh meticulously their soft-serve on the scale—putting sprinkle by sprinkle to measure out the cheapest, most fulfilling portion possible; Makoto and Mitsumi are in the washroom washing out stains in their shirts; Fumi and Mitsumi’s siblings talk to the store owner, who is a sister’s cousin’s uncle’s driver instructor’s niece’s great-aunt's half-brother’s barber’s son’s godchild’s former college roommate of Mr. Iwakura—which makes them nothing short of strangers to Mika, but she keeps that to herself.
Mika and Yuzuki wait as steadfast companions to the wheezing fan in the corner of the shop. They sigh in relief, shoving their sweaty faces in its whirring mouth.
“Mika-chan?” Yuzuki breathes, her voice distorting from the air vortexing in her face. “Do you help Mitsumi plan all her outfits for this trip?”
“Well, I tried to, at least.” Mika huffs. “What am I supposed to do, watch her go around in neon green pants thinking it’s trendy?”
Mitsumi, when they shop together, is like Mika’s little doll: who is anyone to deny Mika the pleasure of her efforts making someone shine?
“I’m actually somewhat of a romantic myself. I wanted to match with Makoto since we’re…you know…” Yuzuki's eyes sparkle like a sunshower while she gives a squeal. “Girlfriends!”
Man, Mika reflects, it is impressive how couples form. She believes it to be no less than a goddamn miracle. She hates to still be wondering how people do it, but she desires her friends’ happiness to an almost unbearable degree, so she laughs along.
Until—
“Wait, Yuzu-chan,” Mika says, drawing back. “I don’t get why…I mean, you and Makoto-chan are different from me and Mitsumi, you can’t really compare!”
Yuzuki cocks her head to the side. She tucks some silky hair behind her ears, and her lips pucker in a way that makes her sage-like.
“Well, you’re right that we’re different, we are our own separate persons after all, hehe! It’s just, Mika-chan,” Yuzuki says, her voice lowers then, slow and careful, “You two have been matching this entire trip with your outfits. Every single day. And not only that, but when I see you two together at times, I think—oh, there’s something special I shouldn’t interrupt right now. Do you…get what I’m saying?”
When they return, Mika takes action. She finds Makoto tidying the literature club’s recommendation corner in the school library.
“Oh, hey Mika,” Makoto greets her with a little nod. “What—”
“Are you able to describe those mushy-gushy thoughts and feelings about Yuzu-chan before you guys got together?”
Makoto’s mouth hangs open, stays open long enough that Mika worries a fly will make its home there before she shuts it again.
“Why are you saying it like that?” Makoto hisses. Her braids frizz up like someone rubbed a balloon all over it. "You make me sound like some lovesick cretin!"
“Do you mind answering the question,” Mika pleads, hands clasping together. Her voice drops low, “It’s um. It’s serious.”
Makoto sighs. Her glasses fog up from her blushing that she has to wipe them not once, but twice on the hem of her sweatshirt. Mika waits with an itching patience.
“Er, I have to admit that maybe I…” Makoto gives a short cough, “judged Yuzu when I first met her. A bit.”
“Understatement of the year,” Mika says. She ignores for the moment how she did the same exact thing.
“Can you just—ughhhhhhhh!” Makoto pushes up her glasses with a violence. “Okay, it still bothers me that I did, but I grew up with girls like that making fun of me, and I didn’t want to start some shitty high school career with the gaijin types looking at me in a shitty type of way and sometimes people aren’t raised to be cordial with a grace that others clearly have and don’t look at me like that, you hypocrite! But, I don’t know—we just messaged each other on and off, and talking to her was fun. I liked…I liked how interested she was in me, and she would be really aware of stuff, even if I didn’t mention it to her right away. She was considerate, even when I got full of myself or dug my foot in my mouth. It felt good, like, being aware that I was on her mind. It’s human nature to be selfish, right? And then one day I thought…I thought—”
Makoto pants a little at this point of her ramble. Out of the corner of Mika’s eye, she sees Mitsumi skipping to the Council Room, her papers in a neat bundle and a whistle waiting on her lips.
She is a good person, not like me at all, and yet, and yet—
“I thought that even if we’re different,” Makoto declares, “or I can’t understand what she’s going through, or that I might not even be able to help her, I still want to be the one she relies on. More than anyone else.”
iiii.
Mitsumi rubs at her eyes and beholds the paper in her hands once more. “Wait, can you repeat that again?” Mitsumi asks.
It is the night before Mitsumi’s interview with Tokyo University’s Law program. This is the time of year where the gang charts themselves a scatter plot across Japan. Mika wonders if the Gods have a sense of humour making her the sole available friend—at least, one crazy enough—to be last minute practice for Mitsumi’s interrogation.
Even dear Nao is away for a photoshoot—though, her video calls are full of forlorn wailing and, along with the wailing Mitsumi’s family back in Ishikawa, gives Mika a mosquito-buzzing tinnitus.
“What are you wearing tomorrow?” Mika asks, taking a swig of water for her sore throat. If she does not put the brakes on the practice interview—at this very moment—she is going to die.
Mitsumi grins. She is still charming with greasy hair and purple eyebags. She does a little dance, like a cat that got the cream, as she flings open her closet door.
“Feast your eyes, Mika-chan!” Mitsumi yells. “This is what trendy future Tokyo Law students slash bureaucrats wear!”
It is a exquisitely horrendous outfit: bright yellow houndstooth pants, a large bow-shaped bag, both silver and gold jewellery, a frumpy blazer with huge shoulder padding, oh no her hair is in a topknot—
Mika tears through the closet with her feracious claws. Mitsumi stumbles back from the frontlines, but slips on a rogue sock and plummets to the floor.
“Man down!” Mitsumi screams as she crawls away from the trenches Mika fights in. “I repeat, man down!”
Mika wonders if people could ever understand the simple delight in how Mitsumi is her little doll, a sublime plaything for her to dress and coo at. Mika tucks and zips a mid-length cream skirt on Mitsumi’s figure. She pats down the butterfly lace collar of a short-sleeved blouse. She ties back Mitsumi’s bangs with a pearl barrette, and smooths down, careful, so careful, the flyaway hair from the face of Mika’s delight.
“You see, Mitsumi-chan,” Mika remarks in her fussing. “Wearing bottoms that cut off above your ankles here,”—she holds her breath as she caresses bare legs—“it makes you look shorter, but if it falls here,”—she wills her hand to stay still, to not tremble for a single moment at the feet of this strange, splendid person—“your legs look elegant.”
“Huh,” Mitsumi says, eyes wide like dinner plates licked clean.
“Nao-san isn’t here right now, so it’s my responsibility to take care of you.” Mika inhales sharply through her nose. The way she says it is so audacious. Foolish girl! Can she truly care for such a precious thing? “I mean, only if you need me. Or want…it. My help.”
“I always want you around Mika-chan,” Mitsumi proclaims, turning to Mika. “You were the first girl I saw that made me think ‘wow, so this is where my life changes here in Tokyo’. Even once our schedule changes, I want to keep in touch with everyone no matter what. I want to remember each person that was important to me.”
Mitsumi reaches out and grasps onto Mika’s hands.
“And this moment with you, Mika-chan,” Mitsumi says, eyes shining like obsidian. “I think I want to feel this way forever.”
Mika swallows. Closes her eyes. Now is the time. Now is not the time. Now. Now. Now.
No.
She takes a hand out of Mitsumi’s clutches, and lets a finger trace the side of Mitsumi’s face, curving at the apex of her forehead before she taps on the pearl hairpiece.
“That barrette is important to me,” Mika says—she is different from you and yet, and yet—“so remember to give it back someday.”
Mitsumi’s nose turns pink. She lets go of Mika’s hand to touch the hairpiece. There is a depth to her face, like someone is shining a light from the inside, when she looks up through sparse lashes at Mika again.
“Thank you for making me a refined city lady.”
“Don’t mention it,” Mika says, then her face splits with a grin. “Hey, you can take a deep breath. You can’t sleep if you’re that worried.”
“...Is it that easy to tell?!” Mitsumi clutches at her chest with a violence that sends chills up Mika’s spine. “Mika-chan, you’re so observant, it’s like you’re a mind reader!”
“No way,” Mika waves the compliment off. “It’s just normal to be nervous about big things. I mean, this has been your dream all these years, right?”
They look at each other in the mirror. Mitsumi and Mika. Mika and Mitsumi. Mika and Mitsumi and Mitsumi and Mika and Mitsumi and Mika and Mitsumi and Mitsumi and Mitsumi and—
“...I find it scary that all these years of hard work may not get the results that I wanted,” Mitsumi says, lost in their reflection. “Since I was a wee kid, I wanted to be a respectable person, and help my hometown.” Mitsumi looks down at her feet, and links her fingers together. “How strange that a few words have the power to change me so deeply.”
“There are lots of things that can change you that much,” Mika replies, then, with a catch in her throat, “It's kinda stupid, but I’ve always wondered how love could change a person.”
Mitsumi—of all things—laughs.
“Funny thing, I used to worry if I could recognise if I fell in love with someone in that way!” Mitsumi says.
“Uh, how is that remotely funny?”
“Well, think about it: I grew up in such a tiny place. A kind speck on the map, you may say. Did you know that my middle school had twenty-six people? Everyone knows everyone there! Conditions like that make you like family, so I’ve never had much of a strong chance for it until coming to Tokyo. Or like, I didn’t realise I would grow up in a way that love could find me.”
Mika hums.
“Mika-chan,” Mitsumi says, voice tight like a violin string about to snap, “Please refrain from telling anyone else yet, since I think this is the type of stuff to tell people over drinks—as big adults—but I fell in love with, um, Shima-kun. Once.”
In a rush, Mika remembers her first impression of the duo: popular guy and country girl. She remembers the pinch of her eyebrows at the discrepancy. She had a morbid curiosity, wanting to learn if Shima was an airheaded player, or a boy with sinister intentions.
Mika knows now: Shima is just a boy. She acknowledges how boys, even glamorous, kind boys like Shima, learn about themselves through the heartbreaks of girls in love. She is an awful hypocrite for this fact disappointing her.
“I…” Mika voices dies on her. There is a darkness weighing like lead on her heart. Is Shima Mitsumi’s true love?
Fucking hell! Mika rips apart her sanity from the inside out. I CAN’T CATCH A BREAK, LIKE, EVER?
But what claim does Mika have to Mitsumi’s heart? All they do is just hang out with one another: they paint each other’s nails, video call when they eat, try on each other’s clothes, compare hand and shoe sizes once a week, jump in rainbow puddles together after a rainy day, pat down each other’s uniform skirts when they ride a bit too high, and huddle in the corner of karaoke rooms, breathing the same breath, singing the same breath, wanting more than anything else someone to yearn for and hold close and—anyways, how in the world could Mitsumi like Mika when Shima is right there?
Well, a voice inside Mika moans, why did you like him, silly girl?
“I did once, too,” Mika whispers. Perhaps part of a truth is better than nothing. Guilt ascertains acceptance and understanding. Maybe.
Mitsumi jerks, mouth wide open like a whale shark. She then gives a wistful smile, one that curls her lips into an isosceles triangle.
“Huh. I truly don’t understand what’s in people’s hearts.” Mitsumi laughs, and nods to herself. “That's it though, what I can do is learn little by little. You, Shima, Mako-chan, Yuzu-chan, everyone else. Even me.” Here she nods even harder, “Yeah, especially me!”
You pearl, Mika thinks.
They sleep in the same futon, feet poking one another, bodies hugging against an invisible line between them. With Mitsumi lying across her like so, Mika gazes at God.
“You know what’s funny, Mika-chan,” Mitsumi says, voice pale in the night. “I can’t stop thinking about the first time we met.”
“Ah. That was…”
“I get it, I get it, you said you weren’t very nice, and that’s true, yet…”
“Yet what?”
“I still remember your face back then, so cute. I kinda wanted to be like you. You were really good at getting people’s numbers, and talking with them about stuff. I’m speaking as someone who threw up on themself during the entrance ceremony.”
“You—you wanted to be like me?”
“Eh, what’s this? Why do you sound so surprised? Who wouldn’t want to be a little like you! Mika-chan, your passion…it moves me.”
When morning yawns awake, Mitsumi rushes to the door, grasping onto Mika’s arm as she fumbles her shoes on one foot at a time. Mika slathers on Mitsumi’s hands her peach-vanilla hand cream, and blushes as Mitsumi brings them up to her nose, smelling them.
“Mmm,” Mitsumi purrs, eyes crescent moons in delight. “Smells like Mika-chan!”
“I’m a coward,” Mika says to the soon empty apartment, lying upside down on the couch. “Oh well, at least I liked someone.”
She sobs rivers on the couch. She grips the cushions until her knuckles turn white. Mika Egashira is on the cusp of that far horizon of adulthood, and she wants someone so deeply, and she wishes to know that even if she is a coward, even if she is disgusting, even if she is the worst person on the planet, that someone out there needs her as much as she does them.
When Mitsumi returns from her interview, blue drenches the apartment, colouring everything inside it like the sea: the TV, the table, the half-eaten food on the table, the shoes littering the doorway, Mika’s arms, Mika’s legs, Mika’s eyes, Mika’s mouth. Everything is a perfect blue.
Mitsumi walks inside like a fading dream.
Perhaps beautiful is a word to describe the Mitsumi Iwakura she sees here—but the sight of the girl fails words, and Mika has to tuck the memory away, deep inside her, to later see what words could describe this moment. Or if there are any words at all. The only thing Mika could do now is live to witness it.
“How did it go?” Mika asks.
Mitsumi stares at her, hair all wayward and her shoulders drawn to her ears. She unravels like a boiling ramen noodle, and grins.
“What, it went that good?” Mika inquires, snorting.
Mitsumi drops to her knees.
“EVEN JUST BEING ALIVE…” She warbles into the floor. She pounds at it, even. “JUST BEING ALIVE IS WORTHY OF ADMIRATION…!”
Mitsumi throws herself on the couch. She cradles Mika’s arm. Mika moves to pat her shoulder, but it lands on Mitsumi’s head, causing Mitsumi to look up at her with that predator-stare of hers.
“Mika-chan,” Mitsumi murmurs, “you’re blue-based, aren’t you?”
Mika chokes, and throws her head back on the couch, shrieking with laughter. When will that strange girl stop pulling out fashion jargon out of nowhere? Oh, how wishes she could carry Mitsumi around in her purse—take her everywhere Mika goes. Oh, how she wishes this girl wants her back.
Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it oh come on and just—
“Mitsumi-chan, you’re a weirdo, and a pretty rude girl,” Mika grabs Mitsumi’s face, squishes it like a marshmallow between her hands. Mitsumi’s eyes bulge, and she almost turns purple from the near lack of oxygen in the position.
“Urughoeauuggh—?”
“Your sense of fashion is cringe. You’re indulgent, and take each opportunity with a enthusiasm that is exhausting, especially when it’s at the crack of dawn. I’m worried you’re going to have a heart attack every single time you run. Sometimes I feel like you don’t get angry enough, and am so relieved when you’re not. When I see you being civil to people who are unconventional, even unkind to you, I think it’s ridiculous how you even bother with them.”
“Ah, but that’s who I am, though,” Mitsumi manages to garble out between tender fingers squashing her. “My dream is to be an upstanding person, Mika-chan. To me, that means that I wanna know people, all kinds of people, and be there for them when it counts.”
Mika swallows. She draws her face near, and she wills herself, just this once, to speak with her utmost honesty.
“That’s why I like you,” Mika whispers into darkness, tongue unfurling around the English. Will Mitsumi even understand her? Will she see Mika Egashira for who she is, and stay? “You’re so open-minded to everything and everyone. Even to me. I’m glad it’s me here with you right now.”
In the blue, Mitsumi’s eyes shine like volcanic glass. Her cheeks stream the salt of her hometown, those Ikajima seas catching and spilling down from precious eyelashes.
Mitsumi grabs Mika’s wrist. She gives a clumsy kiss on the open palm of Mika’s hand—her hand, in the place no one ever pays any mind to, that place that no one treats so gently, so lovingly, until now.
Mika’s eyes fill with tears.
If Mika is a hare on the mountain, here is someone who would hunt her; if Mika is a pearl in the ocean, here is someone who would dive after her; if Mika is a berry on a bush, here is someone who would pick her; if Mika is the question, could Mitsumi be her answer?
Who the hell knew, Mika thinks as her foreheads meets Mitsumi's own, that the world could be so wonderful?
v.
What frugal creatures humans can be, opting out of convenient plane rides to save a buck or two. This is what Mika and Mitsumi choose to do, going for winter break to Ikajima after their first year of university. Mika wishes she could snip the land between Tokyo and Ishikawa out, sew them together with red thread, and melt it all down with an iron.
But for now, there is the Shinkansen.
Mitsumi Iwakura is a girl of beautiful mountains and shining seas and the moon and the stars and the sun. Mika is a girl of flowers that hug a mountain valley, of fish that tread the ocean, of the dark side of the moon, of the innumerable galaxies that hurtle to the sun.
They look at abandoned buildings eating away at the city. Mitsumi writes down notes in a small book on what to bring to her classes as a case study for the next semester. Mika writes down notes in the Death Note of her heart—er, she means, the book currently dubbed as her Love Note, for even a mountain changes after a millennium against the ocean’s crashing waves—on how she wishes she could cut open this girl and step inside her.
“This is the fourth time you’ve looked at yourself in a mirror, Mika-chan,” Mitsumi comments as they eat a mean platter of gyoza, in a restaurant at the bosom of Mitsumi’s neighbourhood.
“I just want to look good when we have dinner with your family later,” Mika mutters as she dabs on a tiny cloth at the oily parts of her face. The furious shloop of her lip gloss wand is louder than the clanging wok in the kitchen.
“Ehhhhhhhhh?” Mitsumi slams her hands on the table. She shakes it with her laughter, and Mika gasps as her tea spills over the cup's lip to the saucer beneath it.
“What?” Mika cries, drawing back in shock and—yes, she admits to herself, a little vexation. “Ugh, what?!”
“No, no, don’t misunderstand me Mika-chan,” Mitsumi fans at herself, cheeks ruddy and full. “This side of you being self critical, and um, somewhat insecure—”
“Do you have anything called a filter—”
“I like those parts from you, too.”
They will watch movies with the fan on, eating caramel popcorn until their stomachs burst. They will light fireworks at the beach. They will make red bean rice with Mitsumi’s granny for dinner. They will sit at the table across from each other with Mitsumi’s family, ramune bubbling on their tongues. They will fight over pillows to cover their eyes when watching a scary video together. They will shop at boutiques and get each other matching pins. They will make hotcake’s true to Nao’s recipe. They will cry at seeing their friend’s faces on video chat, and make plans up to the next decade together. They will play each other's strings and make music. Mika will scream from the rooftop of her heart that she is someone, someone’s, and even if it is only for a moment, God only knows how it is a moment she will fight to live in forever. That she knows now why people say love is the fire within—that love is the silver of the moon underneath her skin.
But for now she holds out her hand to the girl that wants Mika Egashira.
“Take me home,” Mika says, and smiles when Mitsumi kisses her for all the reasons they love each other, one by one.