Free I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like by Justin Isis Page B

you said. I rose from the bed and put on my clothes. Still naked, you saw me to the door.
    From then on I tried to see you every day, although I was often disappointed. I thought of you constantly, afraid you would vanish. Still, I did not at first think in terms of love, which seemed a feeble word for what I had experienced with you. But I am not a great imaginer, and I have no other way to describe it. I only knew that I wanted to follow you into some other world. Does this sound naive? Between us we had dreamed you — a dream you originated, but one I am convinced you could not have finished alone. You needed someone to encompass you, to reflect you in their eyes and hold your gaze as you walked towards them. For all my faults, I am warmer than a mirror.
    This period coincided with Makiko’s rising success. Flushed with new money, she would buy me and my father presents, and I did my best to take advantage of her generosity. When the bookstore closed and I lost my job, I asked her for a large loan. I was working on a business plan, I told her. Surely she of all people understood the need for initiative, of striking out on one’s own?
    With my sister’s money we were able to complete your transformation, and you became what you had always been on the inside, a beautiful young girl. I took you shopping in Shibuya and Machida, bought you handbags, hair extensions, any piece of jewellery that caught your eye. Now you had boots, dresses, fashionable winter coats. You lost all trace of shyness and walked at my side in public with the same grace you had shown me in your room.
    We went to restaurants, stayed in hotels, had picnics in Yoyogi Park. Sometimes we wandered the streets at random — I can remember one Sunday afternoon with you, walking between Asagaya and Ogikubo, when some combination of breeze and clouds and sunlight affected me strongly. As I walked with your hand in mine, I felt completely at peace: the entire span of my life seemed to have passed in a few moments, and now it all seemed weightless and unreal, departing from memory as quickly as the fragments of an unpleasant dream. To have endured childhood, and one’s teens and twenties, and then to realize how little it all meant — for this I owe you everything.
    I want to recall one night in particular, which seems both representative of our time together and perhaps the culmination of it. It was not long after that first day in your room. You wanted to go dancing, and so we arranged to meet at your station in the evening. I stood waiting by the ticket gate, checking the time incessantly, overcome with nervous excitement. You had changed your hair, and when you arrived I noticed you without at first recognizing you, so that you seemed as distant and inaccessible as any other figure in the crowd. But then you smiled and walked towards me, and in that moment of recognition our shared world established itself again.
    The brief train ride remains fixed in my mind. It could not have been more than fifteen minutes, but while it lasted I became intensely conscious of each passing moment. You were seated next to me, so that I was able to examine your reflection in the window across from us. Your long silver-blonde hair fell around your shoulders. You were wearing heels and a black sleeveless dress, its silk surface broken by a silver pendant I had bought you. That day you had gone to a nail salon in Omotesando, and now your hands were beautiful jewelled claws, ornamental and useless, the hands of an empress: each inch-long silver nail encrusted with plastic gems and tiny pink roses. As always you sat with your back perfectly straight.
    I was so focused on your reflection that I did not at first notice a wasp had flown into the train and was now buzzing around your head in wide, lazy circles. In a gesture of complete passivity you allowed this insect to drift closer and closer until it landed and began crawling across your face. Afraid that it would sting, I could