I. Onigashima

She’s cute—adorable, even, compared to other brats her age—but that’s not the first thing that stands out to him when he meets her. It’s the defeat in her. Poor thing is so starved for love that she’s withering away like a wren without a song. “Dad” this and “Dad” that. The man’s clearly out of his depth. He didn’t ask for this, didn’t sign up for it. Good thing the kid’s here. Little princess is in her tower and her cousin has come from a faraway land to save her.

She’s braver than her peers, but she isn’t immune from childish frights. The night unsettles her.

“Daddy, can I sleep with you tonight?” she asks after dinner.

“Come on, Nanako. You’re a little old for that now, aren’t you?”

“Can I sleep with big bro, then? Just for tonight, I promise!”

“I really don’t mind if it’s just once or twice,” Narukami offers.

Her father doesn’t budge. At least he’s consistent across audiences. “There’s nothing to be scared of. We’ll keep you safe whether you sleep with us or not.”

She ceases her entreaties and picks at her pickled turnip.

Dojima, Dojima. She’s right to be afraid.

He insists on dragging him back to the house one evening. It’s such a fucking nuisance, but his options are limited. Nanako goes quiet for a while at the sight of him before piping up again.

“Dad, I have to read a book for homework. It’s this one.”

She slaps her hand over a thin paperback. He makes out the title between her fingers: The Tale of Momotaro.

“Oh, hey! I remember reading this in grade school,” he says.

She hesitates. “Really?”

“If Adachi remembers it so well, he should read it to you.”

He imagines that he looks about as enthused as she does, which is to say not at all, but he remembers to whom he’s beholden and plucks the book from the table before sliding closer to her.

“Okay, let’s see.” He rubs his chin. “Jeez, stuff that’s written in all hiragana is hard to read when you’re an adult.”

“I don’t think it’s hard,” she says with such authority that he can’t stop himself from laughing.

“Oh yeah? Why don’t you read it to me then?”

“Dad already said you’d read it.”

This young and already so conniving.

“Okay, okay. You can read to me next time.”

As he reads, she draws nearer like a hesitant kitten. She cranes her neck to see the pictures until she’s leaning into him with one tiny hand planted on his thigh. Her pigtail brushes against his neck and a frisson unfurls across his skin.

“‘They quickly broke through the front gate. They fought many demons before the demon king arrived. The dumplings made Momotarou stronger than any human, so he fought Akondoji and won the battle.

Akondoji said, ‘I give up. Take what you want. Just leave me be and spare my life.’’”

“He gave up so easy!”

“Hey, I’d just give up too. What’s the point of fighting when you’re not gonna win?”

“No way! You have to keep fighting, even if you’ll lose!”

He bursts into laughter and pats her head. “Hey, if you say so.”

He reads the remainder as she drapes herself across his lap, leaning close toward the pictures and tracking each kana with her finger.

“That’s it?” she asks with a huff. “That was boring.”

“Yeesh, you’ve got high standards. How would you change it?”

She opens her mouth, answer at the ready, before Dojima speaks.

“All right, that’s enough fun, you two. Yu just let me know he’s on his way home. It’s bedtime for you when he gets back.” He juts his chin toward Nanako.

“Will you read me a different story, Dad?”

“We’ll see, sweetheart. Adachi and I have a long day tomorrow.”

The speed and intensity with which her expression wanes is enough to drive a stake into whatever exists of his empathy. He winces.

“Come on, Dojima-san. We got home early for once.”

“It’s about time for you to be heading out, too.”

There’s naught to do but accede. He rises to his feet and Nanako’s hand falls from his leg to land limply on the floor. A grim notion gnaws at him as he follows Dojima outside. A chorus of crickets send their signals into the inky sky.

“Thanks for entertaining her. I think she’s taken a shine to you.”

He laughs, uneasy. “You think? She sure didn’t act like it.”

“You may not see it, but I do. Don’t think this’ll make me go easy on you, though.”

“Oh, never, sir!”

Dojima waves him off, releasing him into the heady summer evening. Humidity clings to him, a film on his skin, like alcohol on a woman’s breath. He shrugs off his blazer and rolls up his sleeves, but he sweats even more than before.

He sneaks a last glance at the soft yellow light spilling from their windows, their happy home.

Dojima’s a great guy.

He’s a terrible father.

The case goes in circles much to his delight. Dojima pulls some long days at the office. Long days. Long weeks. They see more of each other than Dojima sees of his daughter and Adachi sees of any other human. It’s enough to drive a man mad. He takes to hiding out in the corner of Junes, scoping out high school chicks and housewives and dodging that old crone, gritting his teeth as perky pop music grates against his eardrums. Other days still he resigns himself to being attached at the hip, wasting away in the precinct.

“Nanako-chan must be lonely,” he says as they each stab at cups of instant noodles.

“My nephew takes good care of her. She’s crazy about him.”

“Aw. I thought she was crazy about me.”

“Don’t be stupid. She’s discerning. Yu…he’s got a heart of gold, that kid.”

“You saying I don’t?”

Dojima’s chopsticks hover as he dissects him with his weathered gaze.

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“Nah, I won’t sit here and act like I do. I’ve got my own skeletons in the closet, like pretending I don’t know where something is if someone stops me for directions.”

He frowns reproachfully. “That’s no good if you want to be a real member of the community here. Get your act together.”

They eat the remainder of their noodles without further comment. A real member of the community. That’s a good one. Fucking hilarious, actually, as is the idea of getting his act together. There’s no fun in that. No, the only fun to be found lies in the other direction, the opposite pole—if it can be found anywhere at all.

Narukami bludgeons him with his overbearing bonhomie on his way home one sweltering night. He holds up a plastic bag with leeks peeking through the handles and invites him to dinner. Adachi objects, citing the awkwardness without his uncle there, but he insists with that heavy-handed hospitality of his. They walk back to the house and make stilted small talk in the interim. When they open the door, Nanako leaps to her feet and rushes over.

“Welcome back, big bro!” Her expression shifts. “Oh? Adachi-san?”

“Pretty sure it’s me, yeah!”

The sarcasm slides off of her like rain off a leaf. She tilts her head and pouts. Unknown urges tug at his nerves.

“It’s not nice to tease,” Narukami says pleasantly.

He plunks down at the family room table, unsure of his role without Dojima here. The kid gets the stew going. Nanako twiddles her thumbs and waits for her big bro to rescue her. A bitter bolt of envy courses through him.

“So I hear you’re moving back in the spring. Man, Dojima-san’s gonna be real upset, I bet,” he says when Narukami sits back down.

Nanako’s cheer disappears in a great puff of smoke and he rues his vengeful streak. He’s never cared to spare kids’ feelings and she should be no exception, but he rushes to recoup her approval with his parlor tricks. She oohs and aahs with puerile wonder, gasping and begging him to do them again. Narukami plays along. At least Adachi gets the credit for once.

Her face glows with delight. “You’re the best!”

There’s something he doesn’t hear every day—or ever. He falters and fumbles for words.

“It comes naturally, believe it or not. I’ve always been pretty good with my hands.”

She laughs and claps her hands as she sings his praises until the stew is ready. She pokes and prods at the potatoes and sheepishly proclaims them to be too hard. The kid just shrugs and issues a half-assed apology. A deep channel of trust flows freely between them. Adachi’s lip twitches. When it comes time for him to take his leave, he drags his feet.

Narukami pats her head as he collects the plates. “What do we say, Nanako?”

“Thank you, Adachi-san!”

She looks up at him with her adoring eyes and wraps her arms around his waist, her warmth seeping into him, and a surge of hunger stuns him into submission. Narukami smiles in the periphery, unaware of the rapacity raging within him, a greed that should never be satisfied.

“There’s a lot more where that came from,” he says, as much a promise as it is a threat.

He was growing accustomed to his lot when Narukami had the gall to disrupt his pity party. The evenings where Asahi cans serve as his only callers lose their luster, leave him wanting for something. Grilled fish. Magic tricks. The distant din of the Junes jingle. Laughs and gasps and impassioned theses on the superior flavor of senbei. Welcomed. Wished for. Wanted.

And tonight there is nothing. No ill fortunes foretold on the Midnight Channel. An empty house that amplifies the sizzle of carbonation. The king, the princess, and the knight eat their fish—no wasabi for her—as they conspire and collude and love and dream.

A can tumbles onto the table. Wind whistles outside, presaging tomorrow’s pluvial weather.

Dreams come into focus in the camera obscura of the country eventide. Little girls’ dreams, their nightmares, the unfinished business of the dearly departed, the scattered consciousness of the incipient living. Dreams to steal and swallow.

You’re the best!

Dreams so easy to eat, and he’s starving.

Dojima stumbles off to bed posthaste after hauling himself across the threshold of the house. The kid’s out doing whatever it is that he does when he’s not being a thorn in their side. Nanako prepares the futon with funereal gravity. Time and time again she has done this.

He rubs the back of his neck and condoles with her by way of a starchy smile. “Thanks. I tried to get him to slow down, but, well, y’know.”

She nods without a word and retreats back to the family room. She sits at the table, little chin resting on her little hand, and the enormity of the empty house devours her.

He ought to leave them be. Nothing good can come of getting caught up in their family soap opera. He pivots to leave, but he looks back at her, back into the jaws of the void, and shakes his head. Too sentimental for his own good. He shuffles over to her place by the table.

“You okay?”

She nods again, lost in the meadow of her melancholy.

“Hey. C’mere.”

She shrinks back at first, but the overpowering desire for attention wins and she inches closer, unsure of whether to proceed further. He plants his hands on her tiny waist and hoists her into his lap.

“Is this okay?”

“I guess.”

He sighs, rests his cheek on top of her head, takes in the tropical scent of her shampoo.

“You know Dojima-san cares about you, right?”

“I know.”

“He’s just really stressed right now.”

“Mm.”

“Plus, you’ve always got Yu-kun—and me.”

She spins around in his lap and gazes up at him with apprehensive awe. “Really?”

“You bet.” He tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m right here for you.”

Her eyes go starry and he rides an incredible high. It’s the euphoria that can only come from possessing vast reserves of power, a different kind than that which dictates life or death. Her father sleeps, absent and inebriated, and she’s precious and wanting in his arms.

She squirms and shifts and he squeezes his eyes shut for a clipped moment.

“Um, are you okay, Adachi-san?”

“Me? Sure!” His voice cracks. He hooks her legs around his torso and lifts her up. “Come on. It’s probably past your bedtime.”

She nods obsequiously and allows him to carry her into her room where her futon lies prepared. He sets her down and angles himself away.

“Be good, Nana-chan,” he coos.

“I will.”

He waits. His impulses disintegrate. A breath rushes out of him as he pets her hair and exits.

He won’t be so lucky next time. Neither will she.

A particular flavor of purgatory, this place. The earthen scent of sour rain and rotten wood. A cicada’s cry. All things linger longer than they should in this condemned corner of the world.

Dojima runs a hand through his hair. Fluorescent lights carve unflattering shadows into the contours of his face.

“Look, I hate to ask this, but the kid’s on a school trip, so…”

“You want me to check on Nanako?”

“Yeah. I know she can take care of herself just fine under other circumstances, but—well, I don’t need to say it.”

The swivel chair swallows him. He withers, wan and pathetic, like everything else in this excuse for a town.

“I’m glad to and all, but why me?”

“I’m waiting on a call from metro and I can’t haul it off on you.” He closes his eyes. “Yeah, I know it should be me. Wish things were that easy. They used to be.”

He stifles a sneer, substitutes it for a simper.

“Don’t beat yourself up, boss. I’m on it.”

He pulls up to the house and raps his knuckles against the door. Nothing. He unlocks the door. The house is pristine, glistening, a far cry from his own place. He frowns. He’s got the perfect little daughter-wife and he can’t be assed to run home for fifteen goddamn minutes.

The lights are still on but she’s nowhere to be seen. He rounds the corner with a light step.

“Nanako-chan? You awake?”

The rustle of sheets cuts through the quietude.

“Hello?” her demure voice calls out.

He crosses the threshold into her room and she rubs her face as she sits up sluggishly. Tendrils of hair stand up in all directions like tick marks on a compass.

“Oh no. I didn’t mean to wake you up. Dojima-san wanted me to come and check on you.”

“Daddy? He’s still at work?”

Disappointment burns through her somnolent stupor, a fire in the fog, and a strange pang tightens his chest. He approaches the futon and kneels by her side.

“Yeah. But he’ll be home as soon as he can.”

It’s no consolation. Tears pool on her long lashes before falling onto the sheets and soaking the fabric. Her child’s body can’t hold onto the adult-sized sorrow inside of her; it shakes with the force of her bridled cries. He stares, aghast.

“Hey, hey. Don’t cry.” He takes her hand in his and she turns to regard him. How does one comfort a kid? “Um. Oh, what’d I tell you? You still have me.”

But she doesn’t want him. No one does. He has no desire to resort to force, but he’s built for it.

“You know how adults can make each other feel better? Kids aren’t supposed to know, but I can show you.”

Her face contorts in confusion. Any memory of her parents as a unit has evaporated into an abstraction. The concept of love is soft clay in her heart, malleable and manipulable. It can be anything. It can be his.

“This is what people do when they love each other.”

All this talk about love makes him sick, but it’s a helpful pretense. Her gaze softens and he takes hold of her shoulders. He’ll forfeit his humanity for this. He never had need of it.

He gives her a quick peck as a precursor to the real thing. He gives her another and shoves his tongue past her lips this time. He tastes her cotton candy toothpaste, the freshness of her. She’s velvet smooth inside and out, warm and wet, and there’s no real difference between her and any other female, but she’s here, clean, sinless. A squeak vibrates against his mouth and she freezes under him, unsure of what to do. He pulls back, the realization of his transgression dumping ice all over the moment, but her shock and intrigue encourages him. He rubs circles on her shoulders, nips and sucks on her bottom lip, and she allows it the way no other girl ever has.

He knows better than to press his luck, so he breaks the kiss and watches her lips shine in the dim light of the hallway lamp. Her dazed expression speaks of a dream, an unreality.

“That was a grown up kiss?” she asks.

“It sure was, and you handled it like a big girl.”

“Wow. That felt so weird.”

“That’s ‘cause it’s new. You just need to get used to it.”

She runs her dainty fingers along her pink, swollen lips.

“Well, we’ll keep it a secret. Just you and me, kid. We could get in big trouble if someone found out.”

She doesn’t understand and he can’t expect her to do so, but he has the exhilarating, excruciating suspicion that she won’t tell a soul, that she’s in the practice of changing irreparably without a sound. He ruffles her hair and his heart pounds faster than it did when he snuffed out that Yamano cunt and the Konishi brat. The death of the flesh and the death of innocence, one and the same in the eyes of the law.

“O-Okay. Um, I’m gonna sleep now, Adachi-san.”

“Good girl. Sleep tight.”

He pecks her forehead and rises to his feet. He slides the door closed behind him before slumping back against it, still savoring her sweetness, the flavor of unripe fruit.

He tossed and turned after that fatal encounter, but the difference in her disposition is imperceptible to any onlooker, including her father. Figure that. When she sees him, her eyes darken, the color of rain-soaked soil, the promise of spring, and she looks down at her lap.

He can’t relax those first few weeks after the fact. The locus of his fear has nothing to do with Dojima.

“You’re not getting sick, are you? You haven’t eaten much.”

Narukami’s all benevolence, filial selflessness. The biggest threat of all.

“Oh, I’m good. No need to worry about me. I’m like one of those houseplants you can just forget about and it’d be fine, you know?”

He laughs. “You’re a person, whether you like it or not, Adachi-san.”

The sun still shines in desolate lands. The fog lifts from his blighted heart and he can see reality in all of its cruelest colors. No options, no justifications. He’s racked up quite the karmic debt.

And what is there left to do when all that is good is gone? Sucking up people’s souls and spitting up the bones. Death is too good a fate. The dead never envy the living when they realize what they’ve gained through what they lost.

He tucks his hands under his arms and stares out the window into a world dyed in rain, a faint image, an impressionist painting. Ha. How romantic. How unlike him.

Dojima doesn’t look up. Ash curls and crumbles off the end of his cigarette and lands on his desk calendar. “What’s got you looking so glum?”

“Can you blame me? We’re spinning our wheels here. We’re not any closer to the truth.”

“How sensitive of you.”

“Hey, I’m a sensitive guy.”

Dojima looks up. A beat passes. Raindrops roll down the window in sinuous trails, translucent and sensual.

“It’s not my place, but a lot of people would kill to have a kid like Nanako,” he continues.

“I know. Your point?”

“Oh, nothing, sir. Just a thought that came to my head.”

“I’m surprised anything came to that head of yours,” he snaps.

Comforted, he unfolds his arms and tucks his hands inside his pockets. If it hadn’t been him, it would’ve been someone else. She was born into this world without a chance.

Dojima asks again in a crazy stroke of luck. There’s just too much on his plate and there’s nothing he can do. How pleasant life must be when one is so far removed from the truth, so reluctant to look its way.

She’s curled up in a nest of blankets, sighing and stirring at the sudden disturbance.

He moves toward the futon and hopes that something—Narukami’s abrupt appearance, a heart attack, a meteor—will abort his plans before he boards a ship from which he cannot disembark. But nothing happens to obstruct him. Nothing is there to spare her.

He strips down to his boxers and undershirt. He pulls back the sheets and slips in beside her, spooning her the way a normal man might caress his wife. There’s no hope for him on that front anymore. If he continues, there won’t be any for her either.

His finger slides along her thigh and travels under the thin material of her nightgown.

“What…what are you doing?” she says, voice thick with drowsiness, consonants unclear.

It’s a brief shock to the system, his actions in the limelight, but he doesn’t miss a step.

“Nothing, nothing. You just looked so lonely.”

“Why are you touching me there?”

“That’s where boys touch girls to make them feel not so lonely anymore.”

“Um, that’s kind of weird.”

“It’s only weird in the beginning, just like kissing. The more you do it, the better it feels.”

He’s tired of talking, though. Maybe what he’s saying will rearrange her brain chemistry and alter her wiring, forcing her to accept and crave the burn and hurt of acid pits. Maybe it won’t. If he’s lucky, he won’t be around to evaluate the results.

He’s not into kids—-not the really young ones, anyway—but she’s so endearing. So pliant. So damaged. She wants love as much as he does. He feels with her a certain sense of kinship.

He runs his finger along the seam of her clean cotton panties. She’s half-asleep. She won’t remember. If she doesn’t remember, it’ll be as though it never happened.

He rubs her lips through her underwear and the sensation coaxes a pained cry out of her. She wriggles against him, brushing against his hardness, and he bites back a moan. She leans back to expose the hollow of her throat. He must abstain—can’t leave evidence. Not yet. Not until she’s old enough to be truly his.

“That hurts,” she says with a sniffle.

“It’s supposed to hurt at first.”

He alternates between affection and aggression, soft touch and slight pinches. She’s bone dry, but that might not mean anything at her age. He fills in the visual blanks. Bare lips, a narrow slit, the head of her clit peeking out just a bit. Her thin thighs straddling him, the sides of his cock.

He hooks a finger into his pants, pulls them down, and grips his throbbing dick. He runs his thumb over the head and coats himself in precum, tightens his fist, and pumps into his hand. She’d be so tight, too small to put up a fight. He wouldn’t have to beg or push or accuse or accost. She would acquiesce and it would be so goddamn beautiful.

And if he tells her it’s love, then love it shall be. He’s God before her and his words become her gospel truth. He can create as easily as he can decimate.

Man, parents really do have the hardest job. You plant one wrong idea in their heads and they’re messed up for good.

She asks no more questions. Her litany of little mewls and the rhythmic susurrus of dermic friction meld together into perverse music. He sacrifices a pair of boxers and empties himself into them, cumming harder than he did the night he killed that high schooler. This sin is an acquired taste, but once you’ve got it, it’s a thirst like no other.

He consoles her with sweet nothings as he catches his breath.

“You’re never alone,” he says, “and I’m all you need.”

No response. She’s already buried deep in sleep’s embrace.

His lips twist into a smirk.

“Sweet dreams.”

It all goes awry. He thought he wouldn’t care. He would shrug his shoulders at the collateral, the cost to play. Bile rises to his throat as he sees them now, etiolated on their hospital beds and entangled in his web.

Her hair fans out across the pillow, a tarnished gold halo. The artificial scent of antiseptic saturates the air. He taints it with every breath. His animal drive for self-preservation slows to a crawl, suspended in time, and he thinks he can afford a little anger at Namatame. He messed with his possessions and now it’s personal.

He sits on the bed, one leg dangling off the side, and crosses his arms.

“It’s their fault. If they had known their place, you wouldn’t’ve…” He tilts his head. “You’re a smart girl. You know it’s their fault, don’t you?”

Her waxen face stays still, betraying no consciousness. Her hand lies against her chest—the same place it landed when Narukami let it slip from his grasp, his face twisted in pain. Droll. Nauseating.

“Heh. Who am I kidding? You’d still love your big bro no matter what he did.”

Narukami, with his electrifying charisma and everlasting cheer. Narukami, with his family and friends and cortège of fans behind him. Narukami, who reigns absolute over her fledgling spirit.

“It’s not fucking fair.”

He tangles his fingers in her feather soft hair. The fog subsumes him, body and soul. He catches sight of his distorted reflection in the glossy plastic of her oxygen mask and he jerks back, his sin staring at him with amber irises aglow.

Come on. You can’t quit now. You wanted a girl who won’t say no.

A twisted version of his voice reverberates against the walls.

Well, you got what you wanted, so finish what you started. Take some responsibility for her, will you?

The cold amber light seeps into his blood, his skin, the very fabric of him.

A knock on the door draws him away from her. Her hair falls into the spaces between his fingers, shining like spun bronze in the clinical white light.

“You’ll have to wait, Nana-chan,” he murmurs as the nurse saunters in. “I’ll come back for you.”

He tempers the urge to press his lips to her cheeks, her hands, her hair, to know all the parts of her that her big bro would never dare to go.

He’s sown his seeds. They’ll germinate. They’ll proliferate. They’ll bear fruit for him.

All in good time.

II. River of Three Crossings

A new grey hair sprouts on Dojima’s head with every visit. He sympathizes. Prison is hopelessly easy compared to the backbreaking labor of rearing a teenager.

Adachi collapses into the wooden chair on the other side of the partition. “You’re starting to look your age, boss.”

“Easy for you to say. You look younger than when you first started out here.”

“That’s what a solid eight hours’ll do for ya.” He cracks his neck. “So, how goes it on the outside?”

“Things change out there about as much as they do here. Not much.”

“And how’s Nanako? She’s about to start high school, right? She must be a bundle of nerves.”

His expression falls. A sore spot.

“It…I don’t know. I thought she’d become, you know, a little more easygoing as she got older, but she’s more serious than ever, if you can believe it.”

“You really thought that? She’s always struck me as the serious type. You know, the kind you settle down with.”

Some things don’t change. His barbed glare prompts him to back off.

“Don’t even go there. I hope…”

He trails off, wading into a thick pool of profound silence. Adachi almost feels bad.

Dojima shakes his head. “Ah, never mind. I shouldn’t even be telling you any of this.”

There it is, the kernel of contempt at the core of his compassion. Not a problem. Keeps things interesting.

“You think I can see her any time soon?”

“That’s her decision. She asks about you all the time, though.”

“Does she know?”

“Not the gritty details, but she gets it. I don’t know how much it’s changed for her.” He leans back in his chair. “Kids aren’t as vindictive as adults.”

Oh, he’d beg to fucking differ. His kid just happens to be exceptional, her forgiveness engineered.

Dojima pulls some strings. Dojima doesn’t suspect a thing.

She follows her father into the visitor’s room still dressed in her Yasogami uniform, skirt swaying, a slice of paradise. The picture Dojima had shown him couldn’t prepare him for all the gifts that puberty conferred on her. Her eyes are still large and neotenous, her face heart-shaped, smooth skin. Hair long and silky, tied in low pigtails. Hips filled out. A chest to speak of. He’s been deprived for so long that his body reacts without any conscious thought.

“Wow. Look at you,” he says breathlessly.

Her grin, coy but genuine, shines supreme, a peerless sight with which not even the most lurid products of his imagination could compete. She’s not his type, not really, but wholesome girls have their own allure.

“Long time, no see, huh?” he continues. “You’re not so little anymore.”

She looks straight into his eyes. Her smile doesn’t waver.

“No, I guess not. I missed you, Adachi-san.”

On her second visit, she asks Dojima if she can speak to Adachi alone before they go. The corners of his eyes crinkle, but he defers to her.

“You’re old enough to decide.”

He pauses in the doorway and evaluates the calculus of his assent, its attendant risks, before leaving.

She rolls her eyes. “I really hate when he says stuff like that.”

Oh, a little rebellious streak. What a pleasant surprise. Stubborn bitches can go straight to hell, but a little spice gives a girl some nice kick.

Her hair caresses the curve of her neck. He wets his lips.

“He’s not wrong, though.” He conjures a smile. “You’ve become a fine young woman, Nanako-chan.”

He can hear a small gasp through the glass. She hangs her head, laughs shyly.

“Speaking of, how’s it looking with the boys? I bet you can’t shake ‘em off fast enough. Anyone catch your eye?”

“Um. Well, that’s…”

Her eyelashes flutter. She’s fighting back tears, fighting the gnarled roots curling around her soul from the seed he planted in her so long ago. He almost can’t believe it, this incredible fortune, luck that cancels out any other curse.

“You’re getting out soon, right?” she asks, dodging the question.

“I should be. Why?”

He knows why, but she needs to say it. Her words will make it real; her words will water those knotted roots. Her desperate adolescent heart is the most fertile soil of all.

“I see. I was just wondering.” She looks up. “What will you do?”

“I dunno, probably go back to the city? I’ll figure it out.”

She goes silent again.

“Hey,” he says softly. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

“It’s nothing, really. I just want you to be okay.”

It’s a kiss on an open wound.

“Huh. Well.” He looks at the wall behind her head. “I’ll be just fine. You’ve got too much on your plate to think about someone like me.”

He isn’t meant to hear it. If he weren’t listening intently, he would miss it, her whisper, that stifled sound wave of scrambled syllables that uncouple themselves in his head. But he catches it. He clutches it in his fist.

“That’s not true.”

Dojima’s cagey this time around, running his hand over his face, peering at the floor.

“Jeez, you didn’t come all this way to just to fidget, did you?” Adachi asks.

He doesn’t reply. Not even with a censorious stare. Adachi shifts in his seat.

“You’re getting out in July,” he finally says.

He smiles, bemused. “Uh, yeah? Thanks for the reminder.”

“You don’t have anywhere to go, do you?”

His smile transfigures into a scowl, but only for a moment before he realizes what this means. She doesn’t report back to her father.

“Well.”

“You—” Dojima starts, stops again, reshuffles his words. “You can stay with us. Just until you get on your feet.”

He barks out a sharp laugh.

“What? Come on. Even if you are being serious, how am I supposed to show my face in that town?”

“You’ve paid your dues. No one’s gonna hassle you. And let’s be real—you and I both know you’re not going to land on your feet if you try to go it alone.”

He squares his shoulders.

“I feel responsible,” he continues quietly.

Oh, isn’t that cute. Just adorable. He’s a born father if there ever was one. If it’ll put a roof over his head, he’ll nod along and let him believe it.

“Is Nanako okay with that?”

“She is.”

There’s a weight behind his words, more said in the unsaid. What he would give to have been privy to that conversation.

“Well, just give it some—”

“Nah, I’ll take you up on it. It’s not like there’s anywhere else for me to go.” He scratches his neck. “Thank you, Dojima-san. I mean it.”

It’s a generosity, one that escapes him, but it’s something else as well—something not so altruistic. Something he can never lose sight of.

“I’ll behave. Promise,” he continues.

“After all this time, I’d hope so.”

Inaba is a time capsule, a welcome balm for the shock of bearing witness to the world once more. A memory of resentment bubbles to the surface, but it does nothing to discourage the relief of fresh air, pure sun, endless carpets and canopies of green. To be real once again.

They roll into town. He recoils. Everything is the same. Nothing is. A cafe instead of a liquor store. Housewives convene outside in their pastel skirts, sips of coffee interspersed with the same stale gossip as nearly a decade ago. An abandoned food cart. A shuttered bookstore.

“The Konishis moved away,” Dojima explains, voice infuriatingly neutral. “Three years after everything.”

To make any reference to it is to pull back the curtain on how absurd this all is. Adachi drums his fingers against the car door.

The house hasn’t changed since he last stepped foot inside. The sameness stirs paranoid thoughts that he perhaps went to sleep, wandered in a nightmare, and woke up, his time in prison nothing but a coma’s phantasmagoria.

“Where’s Nanako-chan?”

“She stays late for—poetry club, was it? She’s taking an online Chinese class too.”

He scoffs. “Chinese? Where’d that come from?”

“Beats me. Couldn’t bring myself to say no when she asked, though. Seemed excited about it. She gets out for the summer next Friday.”

Little Miss Overachiever. All the odds pointed toward a housewife’s fate, but here she is, cultivating her curiosity. God, it’s kind of disgusting. He shudders and drags his bags upstairs.

The irony of occupying the same space as Narukami once did is not lost on him.

He finds a menial job in the rice fields on the outskirts of town. They can’t afford to reject the help. He wasn’t meant for manual labor—his parents would keel over before they entertained the possibility—but it’s straightforward work, satisfying in its simplicity. Walk the fields, pull some weeds. Cash in the pocket. Turns out that he can make a living with his hands after all. No one sees him come and go in the dusty light of daybreak.

On especially blessed days, he arrives home minutes before her. She’s got something of a routine: calls out to see if anyone’s home, kicks off her shoes, tumbles onto the tatami, heaves a histrionic sigh. It’s the only outward sign that her ambition exhausts her. She’s easy to tease, much to her and Dojima’s dismay.

“Man, school, friends, clubs, extra classes? You gotta stop and smell the roses while you can, Nanako-chan.”

She shrugs. “I like staying busy.”

He soon sees why. The school year concludes and with it most of her responsibilities. Life decelerates into a languid pace, contracting and clearing space for all that must be suppressed during more demanding times.

Soft cries stir him from the cradle of sleep in the depth of a dog day’s night. He peels off the sheets and listens as sound drifts up from the lower level. He descends the lower stairs and peers into Nanako’s room where she sits up, shivering, as Dojima rubs her shoulders and soothes her with gentle syllables. He locks eyes with Adachi in the doorway and shakes his head as he mouths not now.

It’s a relief, the release of any responsibility. Yes, a relief, but when he slides back into bed possibilities sit heavy on his chest like the anvil of sleep paralysis. Do any filaments of her terrors contain the image of him, the feeling of him, the moments where he siphoned away her goodness? Filaments, fragments, flashing behind her eyes again and again, flaunting her loss.

There are times when she stops and stares, mystified, terrified. Times when she remembers what he did, what he is. That fleeting fear impresses itself into his retinae, the phantom of a camera’s flash. It guts him. It turns him on.

He walks back to the house from the rice fields and she’s on her knees in the garden, hair tied back and brows furrowed in deep thought. The futon calls to him, but his body moves toward her.

“Nana-chan, if you’re gonna work that hard, you might as well get paid for it.”

Her head snaps up as he sits on the grass next to her. Surprise segues to relief and she laughs.

“But I am. Think of all the money we save on veggies.”

“You know, that’s a good point. You can buy a lot of umeshu with that money.”

She chuckles. “How was work today?”

“Huh? Well, same old, same old. They work you to the bone out there. But hey, I’ve got some muscle now, so there’s that.”

“Will you try to get a different job soon?”

He sighs. “With a rap sheet like mine? Yeah, good luck with that.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for. It’s not your fault.”

He sits and watches her work, her slender muscles flexing, and she persists despite it all, despite enduring the worst a child can go through. Her face is calm but her body is tense. Her body remembers.

“Are you scared of me, Nanako-chan?”

She turns to him and the sun catches her clear lip gloss. He’s seen her friend apply it with delicate hands in the early morning light before school. Her eyes teem with pity.

“The fog made you sick, just like it made me and a bunch of other people sick. That’s what big bro told me.”

He blinks. She had wondered. She had wondered enough to ask. She had asked and Narukami dismantled the brutal truth and fed her the most digestible sliver of it.

“Yeah. Yeah, something like that.”

She jams her spade into the earth and frowns, forlorn.

“You must have felt lonely.”

His skin crawls. He says nothing.

“Can you help me? The daikon bed still needs compost mixed into it.” She remembers herself and adds, flustered, “If you don’t mind.”

A summer zephyr sweeps across the land and diffuses the heat. It plays with the grass; it kisses her hair. Her eyes follow him as he rises to his feet. She releases her grip on the spade and her fingers tremble.

He’ll tear her flower beds to shreds. He’ll smear soil everywhere. There will be nothing left alive.

He stalks away and returns, compost bin cradled under his arm.

She’s not as gregarious as her cousin, but she’s rallied a respectable group of friends. Two boys and two girls. The five of them return to the house after regular excursions to Junes, watermelons and plastic bags of bottled lemonade in hand, and watch TV as they fan themselves out on the porch, just as the previous generation of brats did so many years ago.

She’s closer to one than the others, a boy with unruly black hair partially slicked back and small steel hoops dangling from his ears. Well-dressed, soft-spoken, sharp-jawed. The exact kind of motherfucker who drowns in pussy from the very nascence of pubescence. The more Adachi sees of him, the clearer it becomes that the only pussy he’s interested in is Nanako’s.

Today he peers in on the familiar scene from his vantage point at the top of the stairs.

“I’m never gonna find a guy like Do-hyun in this stupid town,” one of the girls laments.

“You wouldn’t find a guy like that even if you went to Korea, Himari,” Girl #2 says. “Besides, Won-soon is better.”

She crinkles her nose. “Ew, isn’t he, like, over thirty now?”

“Um, that’s when they’re the hottest they’re ever gonna be, right, Nanako-chan?”

Nanako leans back on her arms. Her white skirt droops into the valley between her thighs.

“Older guys are pretty cool,” she concedes airily.

Guy #1 claps his hand onto Mr. Pierced Ears’s shoulder. “You hear that, Yuuto? Kiss those chances goodbye.”

The kid—Yuuto—rolls his eyes while the rest of them giggle.

School resumes and with it her busy schedule. Days go by where he doesn’t see her at all and it’s a dissonant disappointment. She diligently saves a portion of her cooking for him every day and, occasionally, adds little notes.

Do your best today!

Let’s both work hard today, Adachi-san!

It would make any normal person feel grateful, but he isn’t normal and he feels only rabid jealousy, a desire to wrench her away from all the superfluities and distractions she loves so goddamn much.

He walks through the door and the smell of smoke and soy sauce smacks him in the face. She looks up and leans back. Dubious orange dots form constellations on her apron.

“Welcome back! I’m almost done.”

He analyzes the contents on the stove as he retrieves a beer from the fridge. “Whatcha making? It smells great.”

“I made char siu!”

“Really? That’s just yakibuta.”

She wilts. “No, I made it Cantonese style.”

“Call it what you want, but it’s yakibuta.”

He flashes a toothy grin and she wilts harder as joins him on his way to the family room, final product in hand.

Beads of sweat swell and drip down the sides of her neck as she bends to set the steaming plate down. His gaze travels toward the valley under her shirt, the sliver of skin afforded by the slit of her two undone buttons. Hairs slip free of her once taut ponytail.

“Let’s eat!”

He bites down on the first piece and the smells from earlier translate into a mélange of harmonious flavors, thick and savory.

“This is amazing. Keep it up and you’re gonna make one lucky guy very happy someday,” he tells her.

Any blush is lost in the residual ruddiness of her culinary efforts.

“Oh, that’s a really long way off. I’m not thinking that far ahead.” She motions to the pile of textbooks on the other side of the table. “I know it’s rude, but do you mind if I study? It’s hard to fit it all in during the day.”

He swallows down his dismay with a swig of beer. “You’re just the model student, aren’t you? Don’t let me stop you.”

She tears into pieces of pork while she opens her notebook. Strings of characters cascade down the page. Plenty of words he recognizes. Know, know, know. Study, study, study. Like, like, like. Want, want, want.

She inhales her food, failing to savor the fruits of her labor, and sets her chopsticks down to pick up her pen and copy characters. Know, study, like, want. She tugs on her collar, plays with her buttons.

“Chinese, huh? Seems like a drag. Why do anything that you don’t have to do?”

“‘Cause I like it, silly. But it’s tricky because the grammar’s like English. See?” She turns the page and taps on a series of characters. “Wǒ xué zhōngwén. I-study-Chinese. ‘I’m learning Chinese.’ Wǒ ài nǐ. I-love-you. In Japanese, it’s just ‘I love you.’”

It was purely didactic, strictly abstract, but their eyes widen and the words sit between them like an unexpected visitor.

He presents her with two gifts for her sixteenth birthday. He bequeaths the first during dinner, the biography of some Chinese writer. Simple and vanilla. She beams and her body twitches forward as if to hug him, but she reins herself in.

“Thank you so much, Adachi-san! I’m sorry that you had to go out of your way for me.” She leafs through the pages. “I’m excited to read it, though. This guy invented the Chinese typewriter, I think.”

He saves the second for a day where it’s just the two of them on a frosty October evening. He produces a bottle from the far corner of the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.

“You’re such a serious kid that I figured you might need some help loosening up,” he calls out to her.

She follows him to the kitchen and twists her body to get a glimpse of said help. She narrows her eyes before balking.

“I can’t drink that stuff!”

He pours the pale liquor into a glass in spite of her protests and proffers it to her. She frowns, conflicted, reluctant, before accepting.

He winks. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

She sloshes the umeshu around before taking an experimental sip. Her eyebrows shoot up and she shudders.

“It’s so sweet!”

“Goes down easy, doesn’t it?”

She nods meekly. He needed no confirmation. Girls love this weak shit. They can’t handle pain unless it’s laced with sugar.

“Ick. It gives me a weird feeling in my throat.”

Right on cue. He pours himself a glass in solidarity. “Some people drink just for the burn.”

“That’s gross. Maybe I should stop.”

“Nah, you’ll start feeling good if you keep going. I’ll keep an eye on you.”

It’s kind of pathetic to peer pressure a kid, but her heart’s cloistered up. There’s no other way in. He tops off her glass and she keeps going, cheeks growing rosy, and he discovers to his dual horror and delight that she’s a chatty drunk. He paces himself, for his own intoxication would nullify this whole operation, but he becomes progressively tipsier and gloomier. He waits for his bacchanalian self to emerge, that blithe and airy lush, but the edges of his vision darken like the grainy film of a vignette and he sees only the white noise of all his failures crepitating before him.

“…so I’m thinking about sticking with it because translation’s not too bad and I can be financially independent that way, but Yuuto-kun thinks I should do something with writing because my highest grades are in writing, and I tried to ask Daddy but he just says, ‘Whatever makes you happy…’ Adachi-san? Are you okay?”

She shakes him gently on the shoulder and the chains of the present rattle and rouse him. He hangs his head. A monochrome rainbow of emotions rages within him.

“God. What the hell have I done with my life?”

“Don’t say that! You—”

“Maybe if a girl like you had noticed me back then, I wouldn’t’ve ended up in this mess.”

The words tear him apart even as he utters them. Hooks in his mouth, burrowing into the tissue, flooding his tongue with blood. She reaches out to console him, but she teeters over and lands halfway in his lap, hand on his thigh. Déjà vu washes over him.

“But you were sick. It wasn’t your fault.”

If he hears that again—if she tells him that again—he might snap her neck.

“Ugh, okay. Conversation over. Your dad’s gonna kill me if you have a hangover tomorrow.”

She mumbles a vague acknowledgment as he scoops her up. She goes dead weight in his arms and he’s grateful for what meager muscle he’s built up over the past three months.

“What are you doing?” she slurs.

“Dojima-san would kill me if you woke up with a hangover, but he’d double kill me if you split your head open trying to get back to your room.”

She giggles and nuzzles his chest.

He carries her to her room and sets her down on the futon. Her shirt rides up to expose her navel, the smooth expanse of her stomach. Her skin is a canvas that begs for bruises and bite marks. He could take anything he wants. She would let him and she would like it.

Her head lolls to the side.

No, no. It can’t happen like this. She needs to remember it. She needs to memorize the very moment of it, his face, that feeling. The pain and pleasure need to change her forever. It can’t happen like this.

“Adachi-san.”

The sound of his name disperses the haze. She blinks, casts her gaze upon the floor.

“You scare me, but I dream about you,” she murmurs, as if in a dream herself. “Is that weird?”

He watches her. She rolls onto her side and curls up.

“When I’m dreaming, you touch me—and kiss me. But I can’t forget about what you did.”

The fabric of her skirt pools around her.

“Are you going to hurt me?”

Her doe eyes go wide and glassy.

“Why do I…?”

Cheeks flushed, liquor lucid, palms facing the ceiling, grasping at nothing. She voids his bids for power. He wants to hurt her and she expects that he will.

He wraps her up in her blankets.

“Go to bed, Nanako-chan.”

He turns off the lights and unharnesses the darkness. It sinks its teeth into the spaces between her ribs—into her beating heart.

Tension permeates the house and chokes the air in the days that follow, such that Dojima takes notice. Dinner is a quiet affair. Nanako wipes wasabi off the tops of halibut pieces. Her father still forgets.

He’s on the precipice.

But what would his life be if he weren’t hindered at every turn? He clutches his jacket closer as he walks back from the rice fields. The house comes into view and he pauses in the middle of the road.

She’s sitting in the garden today, head hung low, with that boy sitting across from her. She wrings her hands as her mouth moves and the kid watches her with smoldering concern. They’re talking about something serious. Something intimate.

Thousands of possibilities fly past him like a flock of gulls. She finally remembered what he did to her and the memory is too great a burden to bear alone. She doesn’t remember what he did, but she’s scared of what he’ll do. She’s confessing her fears, confessing her lust, for him, for the kid, for anyone, for no one.

Dry leaves scuttle away at his feet, driven by the wind. Thin air fills his lungs and it’s not enough. Nothing is ever enough.

The house phone rings right as he cracks open his first beer of the night. He vacillates, debates if he has any right to answer it. He sucks his teeth and picks up.

“Dojima residence.”

A jaded sigh. “Oh, it’s you. Is Nanako there?”

“Nope, don’t see her around. What’s up?”

“I called her a few times and she hasn’t answered. Did she say anything to you?”

“Not a thing. You want me to…?”

“No, not yet. Could you see if she left her phone at home? Give me a call if she’s not home by seven.”

After profuse promises that he’ll do just that, he hangs up and surveys the house for the unlikely presence of her phone. She’s a conscientious kid, after all.

He pads into her room, which has remained largely unchanged from eight years ago save for the addition of a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. He might as well snoop a bit, see what makes her tick.

His eyes scan the shelves in swift saccades. Classics and romances, poetry volumes and light novels. He’s still skeptical of the idea that anyone could read this shit for fun. On the bottom shelf lies a pile of notebooks and other miscellanea—among them a thin paperback titled The Tale of Momotaro. A whisper of guilt breathes down his neck.

One of her poetry volumes sits next to it, displaced from its spot with the others. A single purple tab sticks out from the middle of the tome. Modern Poetry in Translation. He rolls his eyes but the tab beckons his curiosity and he stoops down to open it anyway. Foreign poems rain down the pages next to their Japanese translations. English, French, other languages he doesn’t recognize—Korean, Chinese—which leads him to the tab.

Today’s sunshine is prettier than yesterday’s,
but there is something horrifying about it.
Yesterday, I lay naked in the sun,
pondering how to compose a murder story,
but today’s sunlight seems murderous
for its own sake.
It would be bad
if things continue this way
without a drop of rain or a wisp of wind
to stir my hair.

Literature is chicks’ territory. It’s all saccharine trash to him. This is no different, but maybe she’s earned the right to something sweet.

It’s saccharine trash, but he reads it again. Again.

but there is something horrifying about it.

He slams the textbook shut and shoves it back on the bottom shelf. The rush of his blood reverberates in his ears. Something vibrates, whining against wood, and he turns his head to see her phone sitting forgotten on her desk.

He strides over to pick it up. Sure enough, there are four missed calls from Dojima, joined by a message from some girl whose name he doesn’t recognize and a text from Yuuto. The boy in the garden.

He’s well beyond attempting to be stealthy. He opens the text and two more roll in as he does.

Nanako-chan, I’m worried about you. I guess you’re just not coming to poetry club again? I keep thinking about what you told me that day…

Please call me when you see this.

By the way, Hanamura-san said to tell you hi and that he misses seeing you around.

A metal click; a creak.

“I’m home. Daddy? Adachi-san?”

She pauses in the entryway and looks into the family room before angling toward her room. She tenses, hugs her messenger bag flush against her chest.

“What are you doing in my room? And why—why are you looking at my phone?”

He weighs the merits of playing it off, assuring her that he was acting strictly on her father’s orders. He tests the truth on his tongue to ascertain the aftertaste.

“I guess there’s no use lying. I saw that your friend texted you and I was curious.”

She bites her lip and recoils from the sting of betrayal. He never thought her capable of anything so visceral as rage, but he sees some of it now, a spark that dispels her deference.

“Why would you do that?”

“Well, your dad was getting worried that you weren’t answering your calls and asked me to check to see if you’d left your phone here. Then I saw what your friend sent.” He tilts his head. “He seems pretty concerned about you. What’s wrong, Nanako-chan?”

She enters the room and gingerly sets her bag down by the door. “Nothing’s wrong. We just talked about, um, our friends.”

He takes a few casual steps toward her. She retreats, the same timid kitten she was nine years ago.

She’s up against the wall. He pins her down, boxes her in. He aligns his hips with hers and drags his finger down her cheek.

“Are you sure? It wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with me, would it?”

“What are you doing?” she asks hoarsely.

“Nothing you haven’t already dreamt about.”

She stares, motionless. “Adachi-san—”

He presses his lips against her forehead, feels the shiver that runs through her. His hand curls around her thin wrist.

“Come on, we’re closer than that by now, aren’t we? You don’t have to call me that anymore.”

“I really don’t think we should—I really don’t think…”

His teeth graze the shell of her ear and obliterate her objections.

“I’ve always loved you,” he says. It’s the only time those words have been close to true.

His lips move from her ear to the inviting curve of her neck as he pulls the fabric of her uniform aside to reveal her collarbone. He drags his tongue from the hollow of her neck to her clavicle, leaving a wet trail in his wake, and she writhes beneath him, modest moans resonating in her throat as she attempts to swallow them down. He kisses and sucks her perfect skin, peppering her with red marks, branding her as his, and he never thought life could be this divine. The salt of her sweat makes all the turmoil he went through worth it. He’d do it again if it meant he could always have this—he’d do it again and again and again.

He squeezes her thigh before setting his sights on what lies above. She’s a quick study, though, and intuits his intentions.

“I’m not ready for that,” she protests as she shies away from him.

He’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. He doesn’t need to strong-arm his way through this one. Gentle coaxing will do. It’s fine. Laudable, really. She’s not passing herself around like a party favor. But he deserves to be the exception. Just once, he deserves that.

“No one’s ever ready.”

He takes her hand and leads her to the futon. She follows him. Her body allows no other option. She lies down, his supine beauty. Hesitation casts a cloud of doubt over her.

“Do you really love me?”

He hikes her skirt up past the tops of her thighs. Lifts her shirt up, frees her breasts of her bra. She lets him.

“How could I not?”

He shoves his hand down her panties and he can’t help it—he gasps at the way she’s already soaked all the way through, the way his fingers slide effortlessly along her folds. Girls can’t fake that. She wants it. Foreplay was always such a chore with every other washed up bitch he’s been with, but it’s all shimmering and new for her, and he’ll slake her thirst until she craves his taste and no other. He doesn’t bother with one finger. He curls two of them inside her and she tightens around him.

“Fuck. Forget what I said. You’re so ready.”

He unbuckles his belt. He rolls her panties down and he has to lift her legs to get them off of her. She lets him. She lets him do anything. He frees himself of his underwear and she blinks.

“Oh,” she says.

He slides along her, bites his lip. “It’ll fit, if that’s what you’re scared of.”

He shoves his adult cock inside of her, breaking through her body’s resistance, its last pointless attempt at protecting her innocence. Her pupils constrict and she throws her head back, her chest heaving with her heavy breaths.

“It hurts,” she whimpers.

“It’s supposed to hurt.”

She lifts her head. He can’t be anything other than the beast he is.

She shifts and whines as she adjusts to his size. A thin trickle of blood sluices along her entrance, proof of her purity.

It’s been so long for him that he must go agonizingly slow if he wants this to last more than a minute. He thrusts into her at an even pace, filling her tight teen pussy, and leans down to kiss her and bite her bottom lip. She responds by bucking her hips against him and he hisses. Her cries of pain and pleasure make him harder.

The truth is that he’s never been good with delayed gratification, so he increases his pace, buries himself fully inside her, despite her pleas for him to slow down. He wraps a hand gently around her throat and flicks his tongue along her jaw.

“You’re such a good girl, Nanako. You know that? You’re mine.”

He presses down on her trachea with his thumb and her breath hitches with panic until a dreamy sort of rapture settles over her face, her hooded eyes, the fear never truly leaving.

“Why does—that feel good?” she rasps, hair askew, small tits bouncing with every thrust.

She reaches for his free hand, threads her fingers with his, and that’s what does him in. He pulls out of her and finishes all over her shapely thighs, coating them in his cum, and she’s irrevocably his.

Phosphenes float and fade along with his ecstasy. Reality comes creeping back, ugly and unwelcome. He runs a hand through his tangled hair.

“Don’t talk to that boy again.”

He could live the rest of his days like this, basking in her adoration and desire, an eternal font all for him, but propriety demands more than that. His probation officer, an elderly man, ex-military, gently suggests, “Adachi-san, it would be best to get a job that would let you live comfortably, wouldn’t it? I’m sure your friend wants that for you.”

He isn’t wrong. The possibility of living hidden from the public eye, unable to even buy groceries without the sharpest of scrutiny, sits bitter on his tongue.

Excuses.

So he fires off his resumes, cajoles his probation officer, sends messages in bottles and crosses his fingers. A retinue of rejections gathers around him, polite and icy, but one company expresses interest.

“It’s not guys like you I’m worried about,” the hiring manager drawls. “It’s the junkies that go in the slush pile.”

So that’s how it goes. His path back to normalcy is paved with one man’s prejudices.

He chooses not to tell her. She’s head over heels in the best and worst of ways and he can already see it now: the tears, the mood swings, the constant reassurances asked of him. Sex adds an element of insanity to the volatile alchemy of a teenager’s spirit. That was the case with his male peers, anyway. It’s gotta be a hundred times worse for girls. He doesn’t have the constitution for this shit.

None the wiser, she spreads herself open for him, her legs and her heart. He hasn’t entered the latter in a long time, but he can picture the interior, its walls festooned in greasy fingerprints and its floors marred by the muddy tracks of hunting boots.

He and Dojima are discussing the particulars of his departure in the spare room when she emerges from her hiding spot around the corner and materializes in the doorway.

“You’re leaving?”

Her voice cracks; her lip quivers.

“Sorry, kid. I can’t keep burdening your old man here.”

She looks from him to her father, her watery eyes demanding explanation. Her distress fells whatever visible relief Dojima chose to show when Adachi broke the news.

“Adachi found a job in the city. He starts in two weeks.”

Her expression cracks like a smashed mosaic, exposing the sickness that lies beneath.

“Oh,” she rasps. “Okay.”

They accompany him to the train station on the last day of autumn. It’s fall in name only. Life has abandoned the land.

Dojima plants a hand on his shoulder in a rare moment of paternal concern.

“I’m proud of you. I want you to keep living an honest life.”

See, that’s the thing about a modus vivendi of secret iniquity. No one tells you that every exchange is such a goddamn minefield. Any innocent word can be a barb in the back and a dagger in the psyche. An honest life. Give him a break.

“I’ll do my best. Wouldn’t wanna end up freeloading again.”

“You know that’s not an issue. That aside, I think someone else wants to say goodbye.”

Nanako stands by the town map, hands at her sides, skirt and pigtails fluttering, face steeped in disbelief. That strange pang radiates from his chest down to his fingertips, and he wonders when he became so fucking soft, so susceptible to disease.

He walks over to her, swallowing, checking himself in Dojima’s presence. Here stands the only survivor of his cruelty and she’s begging him not to leave.

“Will you—will you still visit?”

“I’ll try to get up here once in a while. You know how those salaryman kinda jobs are, though.”

Her garden variety sadness starts to simmer and boil into something else entirely, a flavor of panic, and she grips his shirt and bunches the fabric up in her fists. Her breathing becomes erratic, shallow. Tears fall on the asphalt in the space between their feet.

“Don’t forget me.”

“Nanako-chan, your dad’s—”

“You can’t forget me.”

His breath lodges in his throat. Her plea, a curse, wrings his neck, hurls him into the sea. Her words were never meant for him. Nothing was. He stole as he pleased. He still does.

Take some responsibility for her, will you?

“I won’t.”

III. Yomi-no-kuni

He floats through life as a lovelorn fool from that day forward. Pushing paper, watching ink dry. Prison wasn’t far off from real life and real life isn’t far off from prison. At least he can jerk off without jumping through elaborate hoops.

He tries dating women his age, but his efforts are about as successful as they are with any other endeavor. If his age and rank don’t send them running, the inevitable internet search does. Escorts don’t do anything for him—not after he’s tasted the freshest that nature can dispense.

She reaches out to him here and there, sending pictures of her outings with friends, the garden’s yield, stray cats, her Chinese homework. She solicits his approbation.

Hey! Look at this. I wrote it all by myself!

I passed all my exams!

I got nominated for the beauty pageant…I’m not going to do it, though. Maybe I’ll stay home that day.

He couldn’t care less about the minutiae of teenage life, but he clings to those fragments of her and weaves them into barricades against a malignant loneliness.

Seasons bloom and burst and burn, fading into each other like granular watercolors. Autumn dispatches summer and bids all green farewell as the leaves blush with scarlet and gold. Picturesque as it is, the image can’t compete with Inaba’s fertile beauty.

The fourth of October is tagged on his calendar, carved into his cortex. He taps his fingers against his desk, removes staples from thick stacks of dockets, gathers them in piles. He punches out on time and gets home by six.

She picks up on the second ring. “Adachi-san, you remembered!”

“Why so surprised? Not many birthdays for me to remember. This is one of ‘em, so happy birthday. You’re really getting up there, aren’t you?”

“I’m only eighteen!”

“Yep, better start planning for retirement.”

She huffs, but her exasperation gives way to laughter. He leans back, imagines her lips, the dimple in her left cheek. His toes curl against the tatami.

“Don’t be mean,” she chides playfully. “Hey, I know you’ve been busy, but…”

“But what?”

“I’m visiting big bro over winter break, and I—” She inhales sharply. “I could come and make char sui for you?”

He parses her meaning and scrambles to sit up.

“Of course. Of course! You know I’d always love to see you.”

Eighteen. A full fledged woman. Still terminally loyal to him. He looks up at the ceiling and summons the sight of her.

“You know how much I miss you,” he says. Lust distorts his voice, roughens its edges. “I want to see you. You must be even more beautiful by now, right?”

“You—You’re embarrassing me. I look the same as I always do.”

He dives into the memory of her writhing beneath him, a pretty pink flush fanning out across her lithe body. His fingers skim the edge of his belt.

“Why don’t I be the judge of that?”

Grooves exist between the minutes past midnight; they gather the detritus of decaying mistakes, rotting regrets. He appeals to his own morality as he wanders the depths. It’s missing parts, held together with duct tape, but it’s there.

Yamano and Konishi had it easy.

He could let her slip from his grip and into the glittering blue waters of a real life. He could put his foot down, ignore her, forget her, cleanse himself of her. He is still God before her and he can set her free.

But he comforts himself. He’s overthinking it. Her chains rattle and all she hears is wind chimes.

True mercy is hiding the key.

She shows up on the doorstep of his apartment one December evening with pale lips and snow-kissed cheeks. Her hair is shorter, halting just above her shoulders, with a thin braid spanning the circumference of her crown. She was wrong. She’s captivating.

She beams and throws her arms around him, burying her face against him as he bends over to breathe her in, her tropical scent, sweet and citrusy. Her chest presses against him. His self-control wavers, a candle in the wind.

After pulling away and dropping her bags by the door, she appraises his living space with a lapidarist’s eye.

“It’s cozy?”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I mean it! You can see the snow on all the rooftops from here.”

She darts over to the window and presses her face against the panes. He follows and looks over her head out onto the concrete sea. Thin layers of powder snow coat the ledges and conceal the grey slabs that sprawl toward the horizon.

“It’s different in Inaba. Like, you can see the shapes of everything even if there’s snow everywhere. Here, it kind of feels like nothing else exists,” she says, “except us.”

Her time with him is a twisted parody of marriage. She cooks (“Adachi-san, you should really eat more veggies!”) and cleans (“Adachi-san, how long have these dishes been in the sink?”). She washes his clothes and pulls him from the pit he refused to acknowledge he was in. She boils water for tea and prattles on about the woes of youth, how her friends have boyfriends while she’s busting her ass over entrance exams.

“TUFS makes you take a Chinese entrance exam if you want to study it, so I took the practice one and I totally bombed it! It’s like they want you to be fluent before you go. What would even be the point then?” She brings two mugs over. “If there were a speaking exam, I don’t even know what I’d do.”

“You worry way too much. That can’t be good for your health, you know.”

Her shoulders slump. “I know. Himari tells me the same thing.”

“See? I’m not crazy.”

“She’s going to beauty school, though. She doesn’t get it.”

They sip their tea wordlessly. She watches the snow sail down from a cavalcade of clouds and he watches her expression morph from neutral to troubled to tortured.

“Can I ask you something?” she says.

“You just did, but shoot.”

The steam from the tea erects a sheer, shifting smokescreen between them. Now it’ll all come out. She’ll ask for the key. She’ll ask why he had it to begin with.

She tugs at a sleeve. She shakes her head.

“Actually, never mind. It’s stupid, anyway.”

He’s never bothered to codify this thing they share and she’s not bold enough to broach the subject. He’s at a loss when it comes to that. She’s going to want a label eventually. If he resists, she might be lost to him as she tries to claw her way out of the limbo of someone else’s indecision. Women are all the same like that.

But then, labels aren’t permanent fixtures. You can dump a girlfriend, divorce a wife, disavow a victim.

So when she asks him why he doesn’t have a girlfriend as they huddle together in the thin warmth of an izakaya, her pink peacoat scraping against his black parka, he answers, “Aren’t you already my girlfriend?”

She chokes on a tendril of yakisoba and coughs. “What?”

“You heard me. I’m taken,” he says, “and so are you.”

She surveys her surroundings as though they might collapse like a house of cards around her. Then she says, quietly, so quietly, to herself, “Tohru-san. Tohru.”

She emerges from the shower yawning in a fluffy white robe as the evening winds down. Her phone chimes against the kotatsu and she dives across the room to snatch it with clumsy haste before swiping to accept the call. Her brows knit together.

“I already told you. Bye, Yu—bye.”

A man’s muffled voice starts to say something on the other end, but she clips him short, snuffs the sound of him out. She jams her thumb against the screen and purses her lips.

He sinks his fingers into the sides of his beer can. The metal yields; his fingers leave dents.

“You still don’t use Yu-kun’s first name when you talk to him, so who was that? A friend?”

“Uh huh.” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“That’s not very convincing, but hey, look, it’s fine. It’s not fair to put your life on hold when you’re so young.” He sets the can on the table. “I’m gonna run out and grab some more. You want anything?”

She shakes her head, burdened by knowledge that no amount of love can erase. A pale curtain of fear falls over her features and drains the color from her face.

“Sixteen hundred yen, sir.”

He slides a pile of wrinkled bills across the counter and attempts to reason with himself.

Maybe that kid’s obsessed. Maybe he harasses her. Maybe he just won’t quit. Maybe it’s genuine friendship, innocent and devoid of amatory inclinations.

He takes a step out of the store. The six pack falls to the ground and he follows suit.

No, he can’t accept that bullshit. She hadn’t listened when he told her to stop talking to that bastard. She probably fell deeper into his arms after he left, sobbing about evil old Adachi, that repugnant pervert.

The chill numbs his hands. His nails dig into the surface of his skin. The wind waltzes with pearly flakes of snow and through the gale he stares into the amber eye of his malignant loneliness.

Never the first choice. Never the better option. Not even after years of sowing seeds, pulling weeds, getting his hands dirty.

He’ll swallow that fucking key. She’ll have to eviscerate him if she ever wants it back.

He shuts the door. He locks the deadbolt. The water’s running.

“Welcome back.” The faucet screeches and silence slithers back from where it hid. “I finished the dishes.”

They’re lined up on the drying rack. She cleared the counters and wiped them clean.

He seizes the collar of her pinafore dress and pulls her toward him. Her mouth hangs open with shock.

“What are you doing? Let—Let go of me!”

“I don’t know how stupid you think I am, but I know it was him.”

“So what if it was? He’s my best friend!”

“Are you kidding me? Best friend. Don’t lie to me, Nanako.”

Her anger deliquesces into obeisance. Her nose turns red. The rims of her eyes water. “I’m not, I promise.”

She is blameless, bereft of all sin. She’s the only one who ever loved him. She’s a lying whore, no better than the rest of them. She is Mayumi Yamano, Saki Konishi, every miserable slut who spurned him for something superior.

“You lying little—”

He clutches her face in his hand and wrings the tears out of her.

“You think it was the fog? That it wasn’t my fault? I did it all because I wanted to. That’s it. I liked it. And you know what? I could do it again. It might even be you.”

He bends her over the counter until her damp hair clings to the surface.

“Are you scared now?”

It would be so easy. There would be no struggle, not like with the others. He could pin her to the floor, watch the terror swell in her, hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her screams as he split her in two, fucking the fight out of her. Pounding her unwilling pussy, tearing her apart. They’re so hot and tight when they’re scared. Who cares? She’s a woman. They’re all the same. She deserves no special treatment. That’s how he likes it, after all. Lie there and take it. Know your place and don’t you fucking forget it.

“You wouldn’t hurt me.”

He stiffens.

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she repeats, willing it to be true.

She snapped her fingers and banished his dark hex, his deviant fantasies. He releases his hold on her face and she staggers back. Tears drip from his hand, tepid and indelible.

She fled that night. She hasn’t reached out to him since then. His texts and calls go unanswered.

Weeks pass. January dies. February crawls.

Then, one day in March, his phone rings as he compiles reports at work and her name glows across the screen, reaching through the glass barrier and tying a ligature taut around his neck. He allows it to go to voicemail. She calls again.

He opts to pick up and she speaks before he can greet her.

“Hi,” she chokes out. “Are you still mad?”

He massages his temples. “I overreacted. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I guess. But you’re not mad?”

“I’m not. Is that why you called?”

“I got into Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. I’m moving there in a couple weeks.”

An extremely rare moment of vicarious joy fulgurates within him and he shares in her excitement for a fraction of a second. The implications settle and he pushes his chair away from his desk.

“Moving? What about your dad?”

Her pause sprawls out before him, saying all he needs to know before she thinks to utter anything.

“I care about him, but there’s nothing for me here.”

She forgives him, though there’s really nothing to forgive. Life proceeds. All is as it should be.

Dojima calls him on an overcast day shortly before Nanako’s move-in date. It’s been a fortnight since they last spoke. She never reported to her dad.

“I’m in town. You busy tonight?”

Adachi smooths his hair. “Hey, good to hear! Yeah, totally—I mean, no, I’m totally free!”

He’s waiting for him on the sidewalk when he leaves work, hands in his pockets. He doesn’t wave. Adachi grinds to a halt mid-stride. New lines adorn Dojima’s face. Grey dominates his hair. One uneventful year doesn’t typically inflict so severe a countenance on someone.

“Good to see you. How’re you holding up?” Dojima asks.

They walk down the avenue as Adachi loosens his collar.

“Can’t complain. I kinda miss grinding in those rice fields, though. Offices just suck the life out of you. What brought you to this neck of the woods?”

“Nanako, university stuff. Paperwork out the ass. She’s already on her way home.” He tilts his head back to face the sky. “Hard to believe she’s really leaving. I almost didn’t allow it.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“Well, I can’t really stop her, even if I wanted to. And what can a place like Inaba do for her now? She’s meant for bigger things.”

“Bigger isn’t always better.”

A pregnant pause. “You’ve had some changes of heart yourself.”

They continue walking and chatting until the funnel of the city narrows into a claustrophobic residential area. Buildings become sparse, roads taper. The sky darkens.

“Um, I guess it’s a little late to ask this, but did you have a place in mind, Dojima-san?”

He stops in front of an alley, hands still in his pockets. The streetlight glows behind him.

“You know, I figured you’d ask where Nanako got in or something. Thought you might have some kind of reaction. It’s a pretty big deal for a kid.”

Adachi bristles.

“She told me already. She called me.”

“Three weeks after she found out.”

“We don’t talk that much.”

“That a fact?”

He extracts a piece of fabric from his pocket. Shadows paint it a rusty red, the color of crusted blood. His hand trembles.

“That time is all a blur to me, but I remember when I gave you this, clear as crystal. Your first day. God, even knowing what I know, I still think you were scared shitless and it showed. I thought, ‘Come on, he can’t be serious.’ But you were, and I realized no one had ever taken you under their wing. No one ever showed you how things are done or the way they’re supposed to be. So I made you wear this, and you showed up every day after that with that damn crooked tie, and I thought it meant something.” He chuckles bitterly and clenches his fist around the tie. “Why was this in her suitcase when she came home in January?”

He sneers. “She stopped by to see me. What’s wrong with that?”

Dojima produces something from his other pocket: a small box emblazoned in pink.

He has no time to prepare an answer. His mouth fills with blood instead of words.

He stumbles backward into the alley as Dojima’s fist collides with his zygomatic. Stars coruscate behind his eyes and he loses his footing before falling against the concrete wall of the adjacent building. He marches over to his place on the ground and kicks him in the concave space below his ribs. A spray of blood flies from Adachi’s mouth.

“You piece of shit—you fucking scum!” He bends down to lift Adachi up by his collar. “How? Why?”

He says nothing. His nostrils flare. Dojima throws him against the wall.

“Answer me!”

“So I—ugh—was good enough for you to take pity on, but I’m not good enough for your daughter? You know, your kindness meant a lot to me, but if it was all just to make yourself feel better—”

Another blow—this time in the jaw.

“Shut the hell up.”

He doesn’t get it. He didn’t expect him to. He doesn’t get that he cannot be without her, that he’ll kill again without reservation to keep her close, keep her his. Kindnesses are coins on the street but real love is a blood diamond. He’ll kill him. He’ll kill anyone. And he’s done paying debts.

“Fine. I guess you’d just…rather not know.” He grits his teeth, grimaces. “Just bury your head in the sand and it all goes away. Same as always.”

Dojima’s fist hovers above him.

“You’re the one who forced her to become a woman when she was a kid,” he spits. “I just finished the job.”

Ringing roars in Adachi’s ears. Miasmic minutes choke them both. Dojima’s hand finally falls.

“You know what she said to me when I confronted her? That she loves you and that I need to stay out of this.” His voice breaks. He breaks. “This started a long time ago.”

He presses a hand to his sheening forehead.

“I know the law. I can’t stop her,” he says in a voice thick with tears, “and I can’t stop you. Goddamn you.”

He leaves Adachi in the alley with the rest of the refuse. Drops of blood soak into the ground, pitch black under a starless sky.

He takes time off until the bruises fade to a bilious yellow hue. He spends the time away from work in the four walls of his apartment, the dioramas of his memories. He catalogues his recollections, sets fire to the bridges that built him, and sifts through the cinders in search of answers.

She moves into a dormitory three train stops away from TUFS in the middle of an agreeable April. Dojima doesn’t stop to visit him this time. He never will. Adachi holds a private ceremony in the funeral parlor of his mind.

Academia is a more jealous lover than he could ever be and steals her away from him more than he had anticipated. She lives and breathes another language. He never examined why she was so drawn to that subject. He has a suspicion. He doesn’t want it confirmed.

“Ugh, sorry. This week was crazy,” she announces every Friday night when she walks through the doorway of his apartment. It becomes more certain than the sunrise.

“Do you hear me complaining? I know you’ve got stuff to do.” He grabs her by the waist and she giggles and protests again his onslaught of kisses. “But it’s not too late to drop out. I make pretty good money now, you know.”

“Oh, stop it. I want to be independent.”

She still clings to that pipe dream.

A caustic clarity shines light on all the crimes for which he was never tried.

I ruined you.

She whips around. “Did you say something?”

“Huh? Nah, nothing.”

No guilt nor shame can stay his hand. He touches her, tastes her, takes her, steals as he pleases. They lie entwined in bed, bound by sweat and skin, and she murmurs about Chinese coverbs and the clumsy advances of her male classmates.

“Maybe in another life, but not this one.”

“Sorry,” he says—to her, to many things.

She’s paid enough dues in her fragile life that she deserves to be dumb and content for the remainder of her days, but she’s her father’s daughter: smart in every way except for the art of self-preservation. She blinks—once, twice—before her eyes mist over.

“It’s okay. I always knew you were the one.”

She gets up to turn off the lights. Night floods the room and engulfs her, leaving a vague shape in its wake.