15. Let Me Show You The Night
Sometimes your life has you loitering in front of these oversized fish tanks with their dignified but distinct signage, their bright light spilling into the night. Narrow stripes, broad stripes, in blue or green or orange, always on white, running around the whole box of the building or only a part, like a bow around a present. A clear demarcation of ownership, announcing that if one were to cross the threshold, to step out of the night into manicured perfection one would always find the same rehearsed smile, the same rehearsed phrase, a greeting like a plastic bag, from the same roll. Every day, every night, every hour.
I’ll wait out front. We texted, Katsumi is still finishing her shift.
This drags up memories of waiting on ▒▒▒’s older brother. He'd always gotten us alcohol. Its been years and yet they seem so fresh.
I hope our girl is good company.
She's a good addition that’s for sure. I saw her the first time and caught a glimpse of her dance second time around. She didn’t flinch. Most newbies flinch, it’s what gets them nicked or killed. That or they have the delusion that they're invincible. New girl is free of both. Enough fear to have the respect one needs to survive and the tenacity to not be governed by it.
She is fragile, both Hotaru and Haruki are in agreement on that and they're right. But they're wrong in their restraint. They think they're being respectful, giving her the time and space she needs to discover herself, they'll wait for her… and they're wrong.
Chie says she's seen it before, thinks she knows and yet she is wrong too. I may not have experience with trans girls, not like Chie, but I know queer girls, queer girls with that kind of emptiness.
Girls who only ever live in their dreams, who will retreat inwards instead of claiming what they yearn for. Desperate balls of isolation who will never find the courage to fight what they have been taught their whole lives; how it isn’t their role, not for them, not the right time, they can do without. They’ll cut all contact, or their flesh, or drown their sorrows in alcohol and eventually the in depths of a river. They’ll give up on life, telling themselves this is easier than to endure on dreams alone.
I saw it in her eyes the moment she was so willing to chase an impossibility in full disregard of her own wellbeing while not even understanding who she is. Dreams are a comfort, they are pure motes of innocence.
A-rank.
Even Haruki thinks that’s within reach. I let her dream. It isn’t though. If we're able to keep our little band together long enough, we’ll all make C-rank sooner or later and if Katsumi grows to the ferocious whirlwind she can be, we might even reach B-rank in a few years, but that’s it.
There will be no A-rank. Chie will think she can find an exploit, and Hotaru will hold strong in her belief in the power of friendship, and yet we will remain what we are. Girls like us don’t make A-rank. Even if we became that powerful somehow—they’ll never let us have it.
And the moment this dawns on our new girl, she'll fall apart. If she even makes it that far. The comfort will fade.
But I’ll save her too, I’ll save them all! Even if I have to drag her kicking and screaming off that ledge, I'll save her.
I will never again watch.
I’ll rend, I’ll claw, I’ll fight the very darkness until there is nothing left.
My nails dig into flesh.
What would I not give for a cigarette right now.
It’s gone.
I have to keep reminding myself of that. It’s gone and will never take again. We killed it. It’s dead! I had the last laugh, held its cold gemstone heart. It’s over. And I’ll kill the rest of them too. Every single one I can take, until there is nothing left.
They come out when the sun goes down, the hard working people. Eager little ants that spill into the night same as the demons. Both governed by hunger.
I hear her approach, the hesitant gait, sneakers on pavement that come to a rest just shy of me, out here in the well-maintained asphalt desolation of the konbini's moat. My private messages weren’t illuminating anyway. No new clients.
I put my phone away to look at her.
Could she appear any more uncomfortable? Plain slacks, plain t-shirt, plain face, one hand wrapped around her other arm as if she's trying to cradle herself. A greeting, "Hi Mayumi." An awkward smile.
Chie thinks Katsumi is butch. Sometimes that adorable egghead fails to read the most basic things. Our new girl has herself playing boy. Nothing butch about that.
She says something about needing to get ready, says her flat is close by.
I gesture to her that I’ll follow.
With me hanging on, she bubbles away. Something about her co-worker and the cute charm she bought for her phone and that she’ll get one for her too. A short retelling of an encounter with a memory demon she hunted for some old folks.
I give her a smile. Her mood is infectious. She is genuinely adorable, and clearly happy she gets to use that trained voice of hers. There's no need for her to hide with us. I'm happy she got that message.
She turns to beam at me, “So we gonna do a patrol or do you have a specific target?”
“We aren’t hunting tonight.”
That has her grind to a halt with a shocked expression.“What!?”
“We’re going out—as in getting drinks.”
With conflict present in her face I get a, “Oh.” She's weighing her options.
I tug her forward, “Come let’s get you ready.”
A silent battle rages behind her eyes, it’s obvious. She knows what I’m implying, when she's with one of us, she gets to be a girl and I’m making a demand of it.
Hesitation has her tense. She's stuck searching for an excuse.
I put my finger on the scale,”Come I’ll do your makeup.”
Her eyes dart away, she mumbles, “I… I don’t know…”
“What, are you doubting my makeup skills?”
Got her!
For a second she's a fish on land before she frowns and pouts, “No.”
She takes the lead again and I follow.
That’s it, no playing boy on my watch.
────୨ৎ────
It's one of those giant concrete shoe cartons in one of those nondescript side streets, wrapped in one of those inoffensive bright faux pastel colors that seem to collect black spots like mold in every imperfection of their outer walls with the first rainy season. A storage facility of a different name. Her flat is on the third floor.
The moment she opens the door I know what I’m going to see. The sterile nothingness of not-life in a not-flat that becomes cramped the moment you have to hang up a single piece of clothing to dry. She kept it clean. No litter, everything neatly stored away like her and all the other little worker ants in their sleeping crevices.
I take off my shoes and she storms away. There's no privacy and she doesn’t care for my presence or has her head elsewhere.
I get to see this boy-adjacent body, thin enough that I can count her ribs and get a glimpse why she might loathe it with such visceral disgust. She throws on a new black shirt and a pair of straight cut jeans and tries to move past me. I reiterate that I get to do her makeup.
Katsumi has her eyes trained at the floor. I hear her mumble something about how this is stupid and yes it is. She wants it, and I want it, and this is stupid.
Taking her hand I drag her back to the main room and sit her down. She mounts no resistance.
Her makeup is easily found, she has a good set of products, far more than I had her pegged to have. I use the hairband she has to get her wild strains under control and go to work. She looks at me with the conflict ever present. On one hand eager and elated, and on the other ready to call it off. One might call it cute, if it weren’t so sad.
If she's going on dates I need her to know that she can be sexy. She's been doing this cutesy girl-next-door makeup with that soft cosplay-esk contouring, that together with the bangs and long hair of her wig, would push her over the edge where no-one would read her as male at a glance. I’m going for attractive young woman instead.
Sharp dark eyeliner and one of my own red lipsticks.
One can arrive at the same place with different approaches. I look her over and hand her her wig. She looks really good. I tell her as much, tell her next time she goes out with Hikari she should go with a look similar to this.
There's a deep frown and she starts protesting that Hikari sees her as a guy, that Hikari is into guys and that she would never 'crossdress' in front of her.
I have to bite back a laugh. If that woman has spent any prolonged amount of time with Katsumi and has asked her out for a date, she might want to hand in her straight girl card. The only thing that could have new girl perceived as a man is the sheer initial inertia of her masculine presentation, because anything beyond that doesn’t hold up to even the slightest amount of scrutiny. She's too much like Hotaru, too femme, too soft, and without the slightest clue how to behave masc.
I take stock of the sad state of affairs that is her closet while Katsumi looks downright scared at her own reflection. She clearly has never seen herself like this before. It's depressing. She has only two long skirts and just two woman’s tops and one bra. At least the bra has some lace because the rest of her wardrobe is rather conservative and boring.
I hear her behind me, still transfixed by the mirror, “I… I can’t go out like that.”
“Why not?”
“I…”
“We going to a bar and then the club. Trust me, that’s what the makeup is for.”
“I look …”
Different?
Attractive?
Sexy?
She quivers, swallowing her own words, never to finish her sentence.
Facing her I say, “I’m more concerned that you have nothing to wear. Maybe I should let you borrow some of my stuff.” The tug on my short black skirt has her face a bright red. “Or I’ll ask Makio if she’d give you one of her lolita dresses.”
That has her tense with a wide stare.
New girl definitely wants to, but I might be pushing her too far. She thinks her body is too male and I can understand where she's coming from, sort of. As downright adorable as she is right now—completely flustered with her makeup, long hair and the mismatch of her boy clothes—I should let her develop at least some curves.
“We should go shopping one of these days.”
I let her be and dress herself.
I wait outside. New girl can use the privacy.
────୨ৎ────
In a world where everyone follows the expectations of their parents, everyone is already ash. You follow your parents ideals, they follow their parents ideals, and they followed their parents ideals, so on and so forth. On and on it goes, and sooner or later you're going to hit ash. Your ancestors get revered and you get to live how someone who is ash now thought you should, you're basically just an extension of that pile of ash—yet to be burned. Not alive, merely not burned.
In such a world no one ever lives, they're in the strict sense not-dead but that’s not the same as living. I intend to live and I intend to try and spare others the fate of becoming ash or not-yet-ash as long as I’m able to.
I’ll never again watch.
The snack bar of Mama Ikushima presents itself with the worn wood look one would expect to find in the countryside a few decades ago. The whole ambience reeks of past decades, not as an obvious ploy for nostalgia, but a product of careless disregard for keeping up with the times.
We're early. The only guests so far. Mama Ikushima’s smile is wide and her cleavage as prominent as ever. I’ve made sure to tell new girl the night is on me. I don’t suspect her konbini salary leaves room for experiences that are more exciting than repeating the company motto in the morning.
The tension she held outside fades under Mama Ikushima’s craft, a greeting, a sentence, an innuendo that goes over her head, a drink, and Katsumi looks almost relaxed. I keep her close.
With her usual purr, Mama Ikushima asks if I’ve found another stray to warm my bed, so I tell her that Katsumi is a hunter. Ikushima laughs at that. Her eyes say what her mouth doesn’t. No difference, I wouldn't refute her even if there was one. I need the familiar comfort of her banter right now. The reminder that the warmth is still there. That this place will be here for me, that she will be here.
Katsumi’s shy study of the pictures on the walls and the decorations has her finally put together where she is. She's about to ask as Mama Ikushima snatches her unfinished sentence from her. Mother eager as always to educate the fresh ones.
“…a place for weary girls who might long for the lips of another girl, who are curious how it might feel to have the delicate touch of another girl run across their bodies; who seek girls, who are like them, exited at the thought. Mama Ikushima provides a place for that and she knows to keep all those tiresome men far away from her girls.”
The last part is new. She must have picked up on Katsumi’s peculiar kind of shyness. Not sure if it was wise.
I intervene before new girl gets the wrong idea, "If you say it like that she might think she isn’t welcome.”
“Oh dear, I wouldn’t allow for any man to cross my threshold. That means that there aren’t any men here.” She winks at Katsumi.
There are layers to this place like rings to a tree trunk, each season, each year, each fresh batch of girls leave their mark and Ikushima hasn’t taken down any of it, only ever added. The walls seem to swell under the slow but constant trickle of letters and pinned notes with rounded lettering, making sure to convey how cute their authors were, most of them with lipstick marks. Photos of girls holding or kissing each other, memorabilia of current or former patrons and in between: multi page print outs of magazines of the girl-love variety. It is so saccharine one could puke.
An overdone façade. A nest for her.
She glances at me between her administrations of playful words to Katsumi. She talks for a while with her. She an expert at her craft. She gives a second drink to her and then turns to me, the big round invitation of her cleavage right in my face.
“My dear I heard what you did, but I don’t think it filled that hole of yours.”
“Aren’t you glad it’s dead?”
“In the abstract,” she muses, her tone friendly but her eyes sharp, “I’m glad it’s gone, but I worry for you, now that it is. The hole is still there isn’t it?”
“Don’t pretend you care.”
“There is no pretending.”
I scoff.
People find comfort in the idea that they're of importance. A warm blanket of delusions, pre-packaged for mass distribution, pheromones to control the little worker ants.
I’m not solipsistic enough to think the thing that was already old when my great-grandmother was yet to be ash, has anything but the most fleeting interest in me. This is transactional. Nothing more.
“Don’t push it and ruin the illusion.” I take a sip of my drink, “Got anymore leads for me?”
“For you dear, as you are now? No. You bring me some cute fresh girl so I might overlook that your little victory left you as hollow as you were before? Weak. I know a thing or two about hunger girl, so don’t pretend. You won’t close that hole of yours like this and I told you that.”
“I don’t want it closed. I’ll keep it open until I’ve shovel every single one of your cold hearted siblings into it. I want to remember her. Not some pile of ash, not a picture, her! I want to remember her!”
“By focusing on your obsession alone? I don't think she would have wanted that.”
“I don't care what the dead want. They're not here. I am.”
────୨ৎ────
Don’t look. You should’ve looked. Look away.
Her eyes, they had been open and still, so still… same as her…
After a sufficient intake of fermented and distilled and refined and whatever else they came up with over the ages—liquid that has people telling you they enjoy it for some other quality that isn’t temporary shutting off important functions of their brain, the world falls away all on its own, and you yourself become wrapped in these tiny styrofoam pellets, safe and warm.
Katsumi is holding me, or I’m holding her. It’s hard to say. She's so sweet. Why is she so sweet? She has no right to be so sweet, the world has been hardly kind to her. I would be so angry. She's still doing the bargaining thing, I remember that phase. The 'this is fluke' or 'only temporary' or 'not real'—the 'I can keep this under wraps'.
It’s been a long time.
It’s cold out here on the street. Still so many people. Night time district.
“She's a demon,” Katsumi's words cut through “Ikushima is a demon.”
“Took you long enough. Class-B, and not our mark.” She frowns at that. “Not every demon kills when they feed. Ikushima feeds on heartache and no, she doesn’t create it herself. She says if she is responsible for it, it tastes like shoe leather and the free range kind is a juicy steak prepared by a master chef. One could call it almost mutually beneficial, girls come to her to cry their hearts out, and leave having their pain reduced and Mama Ikushima got another meal.”
“So she's harmless?”
“I wouldn’t say that, eating other’s feelings leaves them sluggish and drained for a week, but it’s a decent bargain I guess. Also she remains a powerful demon, so don’t fuck with her.”
I keep the part to myself where Ikushima has killed and eaten a few men, abusive men.
Katsumi is too innocent for these things.
“Come Katsumi, no more demon talk, I need dancing and you need dancing too.”
“I need a bed…”
“Nooope, dancing first, then bed!”
I drag her forward.
No getting away.