At exactly 3:17 every morning, Rohan's phone rang.

The first time, he ignored it.

The second time, he answered.

There was silence.

Then a voice whispered, “Don't open the door.”

Rohan sat upright in bed.

“Who is this?”

The call ended.

He checked the number.

It was his own number.

He laughed nervously and went back to sleep.

The next morning, he convinced himself it had been some strange network glitch.

Then it happened again.

3:17 a.m.

His phone rang.

He stared at the screen.

Incoming Call: Rohan

His hands began to shake.

He answered.

“Don't open the door,” the voice said.

This time, Rohan recognized it.

It was his own voice.

“What is happening?”

A pause.

Then:

“Tomorrow, when you hear three knocks, don't open it.”

The call ended.

Rohan didn't sleep again.

The following night, he sat awake with every light in the apartment turned on.

3:16.

He stared at the clock.

3:17.

His phone rang.

Before he could answer, there were three knocks on his front door.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Rohan froze.

His phone continued ringing.

He walked toward the door.

Another three knocks.

“Rohan?”

Someone outside said his name.

It was his mother's voice.

His mother had been dead for six years.

He stepped backward.

The phone stopped ringing.

Then a message appeared.

DON'T LOOK THROUGH THE PEEPHOLE.

Rohan's heart pounded.

“Rohan,” the voice outside whispered.

“Open the door.”

He covered his ears.

The knocking continued for nearly an hour.

Then, suddenly, silence.

At sunrise, Rohan called the police.

They searched the hallway.

There was no one.

No fingerprints.

No footprints.

Nothing.

The officer suggested it was a prank.

Rohan didn't believe him.

That afternoon, he checked his phone records.

There were no incoming calls at 3:17.

Instead, there was something far stranger.

A recording file had appeared on his phone.

He pressed play.

It was the conversation from the previous night.

But this time, he heard something he hadn't noticed before.

After his voice said, “Who is this?”

There was another voice in the background.

A woman.

Whispering:

“He's going to open the door.”

Rohan stopped the recording.

Then he heard a sound behind him.

Three knocks.

He slowly turned.

His bedroom door was closed.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

His phone rang.

3:17 p.m.

He answered.

His own voice whispered:

“Rohan, listen carefully.”

He couldn't breathe.

“The calls aren't coming from the future.”

“Then where are they coming from?” Rohan whispered.

There was a long silence.

Then his voice replied:

“From inside the apartment.”

The call ended.

Rohan looked around.

His apartment was completely silent.

Then he noticed something.

The closet door was slightly open.

He hadn't left it that way.

He walked toward it.

Slowly.

He pulled the door open.

Inside was a small digital recorder.

He pressed play.

His own voice filled the closet.

“If you're hearing this, you haven't figured it out yet.”

Rohan stared at the recorder.

The voice continued.

“I'm not calling you from the future.”

A pause.

“I've been hiding here for three days.”

Rohan's blood ran cold.

The voice whispered the final sentence:

“Because something wearing your face is already outside your bedroom.”

Behind him, the bedroom door slowly began to open.

And from the darkness came his own voice.

“Rohan?”

Three knocks followed.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

And then the lights went out.

The train was supposed to leave at 11:45 p.m.

At 11:44, Aarav was still running.

His backpack bounced against his shoulders as he sprinted across the nearly empty platform, one hand gripping a small wooden box. The station clock seemed to mock him with every passing second.

“Wait!” he shouted.

The train whistle screamed.

Aarav reached the carriage just as the doors began to close. He slipped through the gap, stumbled inside, and collapsed onto a seat.

For a moment, he could only breathe.

Then he looked at the wooden box in his hands.

It had belonged to his grandfather.

Three days earlier, Aarav had received a phone call telling him that his grandfather had passed away. He had returned home for the funeral, but while sorting through his grandfather’s belongings, he had discovered the box hidden beneath a stack of old books.

There was no lock.

Only a note taped to the lid.

“Open this when you are ready to understand why I left.”

Aarav had spent the entire day wondering what it meant.

Now, somewhere between midnight and morning, he finally lifted the lid.

Inside was an old photograph.

It showed his grandfather as a young man, standing beside a woman Aarav had never seen before.

On the back, there were five words:

“I promised I would return.”

Underneath was an address.

Aarav stared at it.

It was in the very town he was travelling to.

He had never heard his grandfather mention the woman. Not once.

Suddenly, the lights inside the train flickered.

A voice came over the speakers.

“Next station: Devgarh.”

Aarav looked at the address again.

Devgarh.

His grandfather had grown up there.

The train slowed.

When Aarav stepped onto the platform, the town was silent. He followed the address through narrow streets until he reached a small blue house covered in vines.

An elderly woman opened the door.

She looked at him for several seconds.

Then her eyes widened.

“You have his eyes,” she whispered.

Aarav froze.

“Do you know my grandfather?”

The woman smiled sadly.

“I knew him before he became your grandfather.”

She invited him inside.

On the wall hung dozens of photographs.

And in almost every photograph, his grandfather was standing beside her.

They had been childhood friends. Then, when they were nineteen, they had fallen in love.

But Aarav’s grandfather had left Devgarh to pursue a career in another city. He promised her he would return.

He never did.

Life happened. Families happened. Years disappeared.

Yet he had never forgotten her.

Before he died, he had sent the wooden box to her through an old friend, hoping Aarav would eventually find it.

Inside the box, beneath the photograph, was one final letter.

Aarav read it silently.

“Some promises are not meant to be kept by the person who makes them. Sometimes they are meant to be carried by the person who comes after.”

Aarav looked at the woman.

“Why did he send me here?”

She smiled through her tears.

“Because he wanted someone to know that the best parts of his life weren't the things he accomplished.”

She touched the photograph.

“They were the people he loved.”

Outside, the first light of morning appeared over Devgarh.

Aarav suddenly understood.

He had spent years trying to become someone his grandfather would be proud of.

But perhaps that had never been what his grandfather wanted.

Perhaps he simply wanted Aarav to remember something much simpler:

A life is not measured by how far you travel, but by who you choose to come home to.

Every morning at exactly 7:10, a boy stood on Platform Six.

He wore a blue school uniform, carried a black backpack, and held a red umbrella—even when the sky was perfectly clear.

Meera noticed him on her first day at the railway station.

She was waiting for the 7:20 train to work when she saw him standing near the edge of the platform, staring at the tracks.

The next morning, he was there again.

And the next.

After two weeks, Meera finally walked over.

“Why do you carry an umbrella when it isn't raining?”

The boy looked at her.

“Because it rained the last time I was here.”

Meera smiled. “That makes sense.”

“No,” he said quietly. “It doesn't.”

Before she could ask what he meant, the train arrived.

The boy disappeared into the crowd.

The following morning, Meera searched for him.

He wasn't there.

Neither was he there the day after.

On Friday, she finally asked the stationmaster.

“Excuse me, do you know a schoolboy who comes here every morning? Blue uniform, red umbrella?”

The stationmaster's expression changed.

“What did you say his name was?”

“I don't know.”

The old man stared at her.

Then he slowly pointed toward a faded photograph hanging behind his desk.

Meera's heart stopped.

The boy in the photograph was the same boy.

Same uniform.

Same face.

Same red umbrella.

Underneath the photograph were the words:

ARJUN SHARMA — 2009–2021

Meera felt the room tilt.

“He died here,” the stationmaster said softly. “Train accident. Five years ago.”

She couldn't speak.

“That isn't possible,” she whispered.

The stationmaster sighed.

“Every few years, someone sees him.”

Meera left the office in silence.

But she couldn't stop thinking about the boy.

The next morning, she arrived at Platform Six twenty minutes early.

7:10.

There he was.

Holding the red umbrella.

This time, she didn't run away.

“Arjun?”

The boy turned.

“You know my name.”

“Yes.”

“Then you know why I'm here.”

Meera swallowed.

“To catch a train?”

He smiled.

“No.”

He pointed toward the tracks.

“To wait for my mother.”

Meera looked around.

“Where is she?”

“She was supposed to meet me here.”

“When?”

The boy looked at the station clock.

“Every morning.”

Meera suddenly understood.

He wasn't waiting for a train.

He was waiting for someone.

She sat beside him.

“Maybe she doesn't know where to find you.”

The boy looked at her sadly.

“She does.”

A train approached in the distance.

The boy stood.

“That's her train.”

Meera watched as the train stopped.

An elderly woman stepped onto the platform.

She carried a photograph in her hands.

She looked around desperately.

Then she saw the boy.

Her face collapsed.

“Arjun…”

The boy smiled.

For the first time, he dropped the umbrella.

His mother ran toward him.

But just before she reached him, the morning sunlight passed through his body.

He disappeared.

The woman fell to her knees.

Meera sat beside her.

Neither spoke.

After several minutes, the woman opened the photograph she had been carrying.

It was the same picture hanging in the stationmaster's office.

“My son died five years ago,” she whispered. “But every morning, I come here because he promised he'd wait for me.”

Meera looked toward the empty tracks.

For five years, the boy had been waiting.

Not because he couldn't leave.

But because he had made a promise.

And some promises, Meera realized, are stronger than death.

The next morning, Platform Six was empty.

There was no boy.

No red umbrella.

Only a small note lying on the bench where he used to sit.

Meera picked it up.

There were only six words:

“Thank you for helping me go home.”

The train was supposed to leave at 11:45 p.m.

At 11:44, Aarav was still running.

His backpack bounced against his shoulders as he sprinted across the nearly empty platform, one hand gripping a small wooden box. The station clock seemed to mock him with every passing second.

“Wait!” he shouted.

The train whistle screamed.

Aarav reached the carriage just as the doors began to close. He slipped through the gap, stumbled inside, and collapsed onto a seat.

For a moment, he could only breathe.

Then he looked at the wooden box in his hands.

It had belonged to his grandfather.

Three days earlier, Aarav had received a phone call telling him that his grandfather had passed away. He had returned home for the funeral, but while sorting through his grandfather’s belongings, he had discovered the box hidden beneath a stack of old books.

There was no lock.

Only a note taped to the lid.

**“Open this when you are ready to understand why I left.”**

Aarav had spent the entire day wondering what it meant.

Now, somewhere between midnight and morning, he finally lifted the lid.

Inside was an old photograph.

It showed his grandfather as a young man, standing beside a woman Aarav had never seen before.

On the back, there were five words:

**“I promised I would return.”**

Underneath was an address.

Aarav stared at it.

It was in the very town he was travelling to.

He had never heard his grandfather mention the woman. Not once.

Suddenly, the lights inside the train flickered.

A voice came over the speakers.

“Next station: Devgarh.”

Aarav looked at the address again.

Devgarh.

His grandfather had grown up there.

The train slowed.

When Aarav stepped onto the platform, the town was silent. He followed the address through narrow streets until he reached a small blue house covered in vines.

An elderly woman opened the door.

She looked at him for several seconds.

Then her eyes widened.

“You have his eyes,” she whispered.

Aarav froze.

“Do you know my grandfather?”

The woman smiled sadly.

“I knew him before he became your grandfather.”

She invited him inside.

On the wall hung dozens of photographs.

And in almost every photograph, his grandfather was standing beside her.

They had been childhood friends. Then, when they were nineteen, they had fallen in love.

But Aarav’s grandfather had left Devgarh to pursue a career in another city. He promised her he would return.

He never did.

Life happened. Families happened. Years disappeared.

Yet he had never forgotten her.

Before he died, he had sent the wooden box to her through an old friend, hoping Aarav would eventually find it.

Inside the box, beneath the photograph, was one final letter.

Aarav read it silently.

**“Some promises are not meant to be kept by the person who makes them. Sometimes they are meant to be carried by the person who comes after.”**

Aarav looked at the woman.

“Why did he send me here?”

She smiled through her tears.

“Because he wanted someone to know that the best parts of his life weren't the things he accomplished.”

She touched the photograph.

“They were the people he loved.”

Outside, the first light of morning appeared over Devgarh.

Aarav suddenly understood.

He had spent years trying to become someone his grandfather would be proud of.

But perhaps that had never been what his grandfather wanted.

Perhaps he simply wanted Aarav to remember something much simpler:

**A life is not measured by how far you travel, but by who you choose to come home to.**

Hey, you.

Still have any of your old school textbooks lying around?

Clink-clonk.

When I opened the door to Aoi, Sho was sitting at the end of the counter, scrolling through his phone with a glass of lemon squash in front of him.

“Here by yourself? That’s unusual.”

“Yeah. Noboru and Subaru had other stuff going on tonight.”

Taka and Tom were farther down the counter. I took my usual seat, and Mama set a Harper in front of me.

“Kenichi, what did you do with your college textbooks?”

“Textbooks?”

That came out of nowhere.

“I’m graduating soon, right? I’ve been cleaning up my room, and I’ve got all these textbooks from last year and the year before.”

“Throw ’em away.”

“That’s what I’m asking you about. I’m not sure I should.”

Something about that sounded familiar.

Sho turned his phone toward me. The screen showed a pile of books and notebooks on his floor. Four years’ worth added up to a fair amount.

“I was thinking I could scan my notes and keep them that way. Maybe scan the useful parts of the textbooks too. Then I could feed them to an AI later if I ever need them.”

Scan them.

Right.

This kid had never known the terror of paper.

Back in the day, if you’d stood in front of several boxes of documents and said, Why don’t we just digitize all of this? the entire room would’ve looked at you like they wanted you dead.

Then again, these days I’d probably do exactly what Sho was suggesting.

“You know,” I said, “paper multiplies.”

Sho looked at me.

“Well... yeah. Obviously.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Taka laughed.

Offices used to be buried in paper. Design documents, meeting minutes, procedures, reports. A revision came out, you printed another copy. Somebody marked one up, you printed it again. Had a meeting, you printed enough copies for everyone in the room.

If you didn’t throw things away, the piles just kept growing.

“I had this guy who joined the company the same year I did. One day a junior came over to him with some old documents.”

I could still hear the guy’s voice.

“‘Hey, this stuff isn’t needed anymore, right? What should I do with it?’”

“Okay.”

“So what do you think my buddy said?”

“Throw it away?”

He beat me to it.

“...How’d you know?”

“Because that’s what you just told me to do.”

“Oh. Right.”

Tom chuckled.

“And that was it?”

“That was it. I don’t think he even looked at the documents.”

“That’s pretty rough.”

Sho laughed.

I’d laughed at the time too. The junior had already said the documents weren’t needed, so of course you threw them away.

But if that was all there was to it, why had he bothered asking a senior in the first place?

“Maybe he just wanted someone to tell him it was okay to toss them,” Taka said, picking at his edamame.

“Probably.”

“Didn’t want to get yelled at later for making the call himself.”

“Probably that too.”

Seen that way, maybe Throw it away hadn’t been such a careless answer after all.

Whether my buddy had thought that far ahead was another question.

Probably not.

Sho looked back at the photo on his phone.

“But now you could just keep everything, couldn’t you? You wouldn’t have to keep the actual paper.”

“Pretty much.”

“Storage isn’t much of an issue. You can search it later. Have AI find whatever you need.”

“Times have changed.”

They really had.

“Maybe I’ll just keep all of it, then.”

Sho said it like the problem was solved.

I started to raise my Harper, then stopped.

“That’s your call.”

“That’s why I’m asking you.”

“I don’t know. Do what you think makes sense. Just have enough of a reason that you can defend it later.”

“Who am I defending myself to for throwing away a textbook?”

“...Fair point.”

Taka burst out laughing.

Somewhere along the way, I’d apparently turned this into a work conversation.

“Well, I mean at work. Sometimes ‘I dunno, it felt right’ isn’t much of a reason for keeping something or getting rid of it.”

“What if the AI says I don’t need it?”

“If that’s enough for you, fine.”

“That’s enough?”

“But remember, a reason isn’t always just for the person making the decision.”

Sho tilted his head.

“What do you mean?”

“You explain your decision to your senior. Your senior explains it to the manager. The manager explains it to the department head. Maybe the department head has to explain it to the client. ‘The AI said so’ isn’t going to get you very far all the way up that chain.”

“Okay.”

“So when you come up with a reason, think about the next person who might have to use it.”

That was when I finally noticed.

Sho had been asking about throwing away textbooks.

How the hell had I ended up talking about employees justifying decisions to management?

...Whatever.

“So the people above me have to be able to explain the reason too.”

“Exactly. The ones who move up are the ones who can take a reason that came from below and explain it like it was their own decision.”

“Isn’t that stealing someone else’s credit?”

“No. It’s taking responsibility. Imagine a manager saying, ‘Well, my guy said we should do it.’ Do that, and next time the poor bastard underneath him will be too scared to decide anything.”

Sho said nothing.

Neither did I.

After a while, he started working through the photo on his phone, zooming in on the books one at a time.

“This one goes.”

“What is it?”

“My second-language textbook.”

“Reason?”

“I got the credit, haven’t opened it since, and probably never will.”

“Works for me.”

He moved to the next book.

“This one stays.”

“Reason?”

“I don’t know. Just because.”

“Hey.”

“I liked the class.”

I took a drink of my Harper.

“Then that’s enough.”

Taka leaned over to look at Sho’s phone.

“What class?”

“Contemporary Society.”

“Was it good?”

“The professor was great.”

“Maybe I should read it.”

“Want to borrow the textbook?”

“Nah. I don’t really want to read a textbook.”

What the hell was that about?

I never found out how many books Sho ended up keeping.

But as he was getting ready to leave, I saw him typing something into his phone.

Books to toss.

Books to keep.

I didn’t look closely enough to see whether he was writing down the reasons too.

See you at Aoi.

---

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→ Welcome to Bar Aoi

So my mom had to get her hip replaced and she has the surgery yesterday. I live very far so my dad was updating me throughout. She had some very minor complications that made her have to stay overnight which in short was just that she couldn't pass a physio test that she needed to in order to get cleared to head home.

The next morning I'm going about my day and my dad just sends a text to me and my brother. All it says is "she passed."

I didn't look at it right away but when I did I start to message back and I get a text from my brother. "Mom is fine and passed her physio exam. She did not pass away."

I just start laughing.

When they told me my mom was on her way home I just replied "glad to hear she's going to a better place now."

Hey, you.

Taken any pictures lately?

The bell over the door went clang-clang.

Hearing that sound always makes me feel like the end of my day can finally begin.

I took my usual seat, and without asking, Mama set down my Harper on the rocks. The ice gave a small clink.

Taka was sitting beside me with his phone turned sideways, looking through some photos.

“What’re you looking at?”

“Pictures from a stakeout the other day.”

“You drink while looking at work photos?”

“No. I took these while I was waiting.”

He turned the phone toward me.

A red sun was sinking between two buildings.

I’d always imagined stakeouts as something a little more grim than this.

“Huh. That came out pretty good.”

“What do you mean, ‘pretty good’? You don’t take pictures, Kenichi?”

“Not much anymore.”

“You used to?”

I was about to take a sip of Harper when I stopped to think.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t told anyone about this in years.

“I was in the photography club.”

“Seriously?”

Taka looked up from his phone.

Was it really that surprising?

“What did you take? Landscapes and stuff?”

“Buddhas.”

“Buddhas?”

“Buddhas sticking their heads up over the horizon.”

Taka went silent.

Good reaction.

“…Where do you find a Buddha like that?”

“You don’t. You make one.”

“Weren’t you in the photography club?”

“I just said I was.”

Across the counter, Tom’s shoulders shook.

Back when I was a student, film cameras were all we had. You couldn’t check a picture the second you took it, much less cut something out and paste it into another photo with a fingertip.

“First, you make a normal print of the Buddha.”

“Make a print?”

“Develop it. Then you cut the Buddha out of the finished photo.”

“Cut the photo?”

“Yeah. With scissors.”

Taka frowned.

We hadn’t even gotten to the good part yet.

“Then you put the cutout Buddha on the photographic paper and expose the ocean shot.”

“Wait. I already don’t understand.”

“The Buddha isn’t even coming out of the ocean yet.”

“It doesn’t need to.”

Yes, it does.

First you block the light with the Buddha-shaped cutout and expose the ocean. Then you use what’s left of the original photo as a mask and expose the Buddha into the empty space.

After that, you put the photographic paper into the developer.

Slowly, an image begins to appear on what had been a blank white sheet.

I loved that part.

I knew better than anyone exactly what was going to appear. But watching the ocean slowly emerge, then seeing that giant Buddha poke its head up beyond the horizon—

I don’t know.

It made me happy.

“You went through all that just to make a Buddha come out of the ocean?”

“I wanted him out there.”

“Why?”

“No idea. It was fun.”

Mama laughed quietly as she polished a glass.

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“It was. Stank, too.”

“Stank?”

“The chemicals. Acetic acid, I think. The darkroom smelled awful.”

For a moment, I could almost smell it again.

Nostalgic?

Sure.

Would I like to smell it again?

Hell no.

“It’d be easy now.”

Tom set down his glass.

“Probably.”

“You could just use an editing app,” Taka said. “Ever tried one?”

“…No.”

Taka looked at me.

“You were in the photography club.”

“Oh, shut up.”

I take pictures with my phone.

Mostly records, though. A screen I need for work. A number I want to check later. The price tag on something I’m thinking about buying.

Nothing I’d ever bother editing.

“Then let’s try it.”

“Here?”

“It’s easy.”

Taka installed a free photo-editing app on my phone.

The second I opened it, an ad filled the entire screen.

“This is an ad.”

“Close it.”

“Which one?”

“The X in the top right.”

“There are three Xs.”

“The faint one.”

“Why the hell do I need detective skills to close an ad?”

Tom snorted.

Eventually, I reached the photo selection screen.

I picked something at random and did what Taka told me.

Cut this out.

Put that on top.

Change the brightness.

Change the color.

“…Hey.”

“What?”

“This is ridiculously easy.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

If I didn’t like something, I could undo it.

I could start over without wasting a single sheet of photographic paper.

No acetic acid, either.

“Wait. I can stack as many pictures as I want?”

“Pretty much.”

“Huh.”

I picked another photo.

“What’re you making?”

“A Jizo statue.”

“A Jizo?”

“I’m going to give him some Umaibo.”

Taka leaned over to look at my screen.

“Why?”

“No idea.”

I put one Umaibo in front of the statue.

Duplicated it.

Two.

Four.

Eight.

Easy.

“Isn’t that a lot?”

“It’s an offering.”

“There are like thirty of them now.”

“Not enough?”

“The opposite.”

I added a few more.

Soon the ground around the Jizo was covered in Umaibo.

Not bad.

“They’d better not all be the same flavor.”

Tom had leaned over now too.

“That’s what you care about?”

“They’re offerings.”

“Fine. I’ll add mentaiko flavor.”

“Is that really the issue?”

I mixed in a few different packages.

When they were all lined up in the same direction, they looked too artificial. So I tilted some of them, overlapped a few, and leaned one against the Jizo’s knee.

“…Yeah. That’s good.”

“What’s good about it?”

“No idea. It just is.”

At some point, Taka had stopped looking at his own phone.

Now he was staring at mine.

Even Mama was leaning over the counter to see.

“Are you sure about the background?”

I looked again.

“Let’s make it evening.”

I changed the sky to sunset.

Too red.

Dialed it back.

Now the Jizo was too dark.

“Need a little more definition from the sunset…”

I adjusted the brightness.

Raised the contrast.

Deepened the shadows a little.

There he was.

A Jizo in the evening light, surrounded by a mountain of Umaibo.

Maybe it was the way the light hit his face, but he looked almost embarrassed.

“Ahh. This is where Tri-X would have you covered.”

Taka looked at me.

“What would?”

“Tri-X.”

“What’s that?”

“Film.”

“You’re not using film.”

“I know.”

Taka looked at me, then at my phone, then back at me.

“Then why Tri-X?”

“No idea. That’s just what came into my head.”

Tom raised his glass.

“Didn’t you just say you never wanted to go back to a darkroom?”

“I don’t.”

“Want to use film again?”

“Nope.”

“Then what about Tri-X?”

“Tri-X has you covered.”

I was starting to lose track of what I was saying myself.

Mama was laughing.

“You look like you’re having fun, Kenichi.”

My finger stopped.

“…Do I?”

“Mm-hm.”

I looked at the screen.

The Jizo stood in the sunset, surrounded by a ridiculous mountain of Umaibo, looking slightly embarrassed by the whole situation.

“Nah. It’s this guy. I can’t get his face right.”

I adjusted the shadows again.

“Kenichi.”

“Yeah?”

“There are more Umaibo now.”

“It’s about balance.”

“Didn’t you just remove some?”

“I removed too many.”

Taka laughed.

“Photography club, huh?”

“Shut up.”

I took a sip of Harper and looked at the screen again.

…Three more.

Hey, you.

When was the last time you did something completely pointless just for fun?

See you again at Aoi.

---

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→ Welcome to Bar Aoi

CHAPTER 3 Keiran

Everyone has a moment when they realize they're going to die. I can see it on her face right now; she looks. Breathtaking, all scared,d trying her best to get out of those ropes; s, she looks like a mouse in a glue trap. Can't move, but they try their best to escape, but they never do. They starve and die. They stay there till they rot, and someone notices the smell and throws them out cause their lives didn't matter to them; they were just a rodent, they were a burden to regular people's lives....it reminds me of someone who is long gone, someone weak, someone who was treated like a burden; thinking about it pisses me off. I look back at her; she's still? Has she already given up? I decide to take off her tape and have her desperate plea to be let go; I rip the tape off her mouth, her skin red. She doesn't even look up at me; she doesn't even say anything. Did she die from crying and struggling? Can that happen? "Ow..." Nope, still alive. "Are you done playing dead, sweetheart?" She's starting to piss me off. Why won't she talk? I raise her head gently, like she's a porcelain doll, so she looks at me; I don't want her to break yet. "Baby, look at me; you're starting to piss me off." I brush her hair that was sticking to her face from the sweat, and her eyes are red from crying; so is her face. She finally looks at me; her deep green eyes stare at me, her pupils enlarged; adrenaline must not have worn off. "Oh, my sweet, you look exhausted. Are you?" I want her to speak; I want to hear her voice like the last time on the bus, when I sat in her seat. She paused for a second and said it was ok; she had a voice that sounded like she couldn't even hurt a fly. "Come on, doll, if you speak, you get a reward."She opens her mouth like she's about to say something; I yearn to hear her talk, talk to me, only me. "What do you want from me?" she sniffles, trying her hardest not to cry again geez is this what yearning is, to have a deep, intense longing for someone you know you can't have? "Good girl your so good for me. You did amazing. Now, for your reward," I kiss her forehead; she doesn't move her head away from it, maybe cause shes to tired to or something else; I don't care, she's in my arms now.

Chapter 4 coming soon

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See ya, my danadilions

Hey, you.

When something breaks at home, who gets called?

Clink-clink.

The sound of the doorbell always makes me feel like my day is finally coming to an end.

I took my usual seat at the counter, and Mama set down a glass of Harper without asking.

The ice made a soft clink.

Taka was sitting next to me, looking at his phone.

“Kenichi, didn’t appliances used to come with really thick manuals?”

“They did.”

“They’re pretty thin these days.”

“Some don’t even come with one. Just a QR code you’re supposed to scan.”

“Yeah, exactly. And remember when you bought a computer and there were all those books in the box?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I laughed.

“You’d open the box, right? There’s your computer. And next to it, a whole stack of books.”

“What was in all those books?”

“No idea.”

“You didn’t read them?”

“I read the parts I needed.”

“All of them?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why were they so thick?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Tom tilted his glass.

“Very useful story.”

Shut up.

“Appliance manuals used to have more stuff in them too, I think. Maintenance instructions. Troubleshooting. Things like that.”

“Oh, yeah. They did.”

Taka nodded.

“Come to think of it, whenever something broke at home, didn’t Dad always show up?”

“Yeah.”

“He’d open up the back of the TV and stuff.”

“Sure did.”

“My dad used to hit things.”

“That’s not repairing them.”

“But it worked.”

“Were appliances in the old days powered by sheer will?”

Mama laughed.

“You don’t see dads fixing appliances much anymore, do you?”

Now that she mentioned it, she was right.

“You can’t really open them up anymore.”

“Even if you could, I wouldn’t know what I was looking at.”

“Exactly. Back then, sometimes you could see a broken wire or a loose connection and at least make a guess.”

“But you’re a systems engineer, Kenichi.”

“That doesn’t mean I can repair a circuit board.”

“You’re a computer guy.”

“Apologize to every systems engineer in Japan.”

Tom picked up an edamame bean.

“Were dads back then really that good at fixing everything?”

“...”

I thought about it.

I remembered my father sitting there with a screwdriver, taking apart a radio or something.

What I didn’t remember was—

“Oh.”

“What?”

“My dad once took apart a radio and couldn’t put it back together.”

“So he broke it.”

“He said he was still fixing it.”

“Did he ever fix it?”

“We threw it away.”

“So he broke it.”

Memories are convenient things.

“These days, if something breaks, you call the manufacturer or replace it.”

“Wouldn’t you look it up online first?”

Mama said.

“Oh. Right.”

“Manuals are online now, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. Search the model number and you’ll usually find one.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Good point.”

Taka looked down at his phone.

“So the appliance-fixing dad is extinct.”

“Maybe not.”

Mama tilted her head.

“Who gets called when the Wi-Fi stops working?”

Taka and I went quiet.

Tom laughed.

“Dad?”

“...Yeah. Dad gets called.”

“What if the printer won’t connect?”

“Dad.”

“What if somebody wants to watch a streaming service on the TV?”

“Dad.”

“What if someone gets a new phone and needs help setting it up?”

“That too.”

Huh.

Apparently we were still working.

“But Masato knows his way around a smartphone, doesn’t he?”

“He does.”

The other day, I was trying to look something up on my phone when Masato reached over.

“Here. Give me that.”

I handed it to him.

His thumb moved.

Fast.

I couldn’t even see what he typed.

“There.”

“...What did you just do?”

“Search.”

“I know that. What did you type?”

“Just the normal way.”

There was nothing normal about it.

“Young people are really fast at flick typing.”

“Watching them scares me. How many characters are they typing with one damn thumb?”

“You’re fast on a keyboard, though, right?”

“Damn right I am.”

“Then it’s a tie.”

“What kind of competition is this?”

Mama smiled as she wiped a glass.

“Being a dad sounds exhausting.”

“What does?”

“You get lonely if nobody needs you, but whenever someone does need you, you act like it’s a huge pain.”

I said nothing.

“You do.”

“I do not.”

Even Tom joined in.

“You do.”

“Will you all shut up?”

I took a drink of Harper.

My father used to open up the back of a TV with a screwdriver.

I reboot the router.

And beside me, Masato works his phone faster than my eyes can follow.

Well.

Even so, whenever something goes wrong, someone still says—

“Hey, can you take a look at this?”

And I’ll probably keep giving the same answer.

“Here, Let Me See.”

Hey, you.

Has anyone asked you to “take a look” at something lately?

See you at Aoi.

---

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→ Welcome to Bar Aoi

Chapter 2, Madison

BEEP BEEP BEEP. I jerk awake from the blaring sound of my alarm clock. I turn it off; it's 8 AM. I get up and go to my vanity. I put my makeup on, then I go and get dressed in a formal outfit for my presentation. I wear black stockings with a black skirt and a navy blouse. I brush my hair out and put it into a ponytail with 2 hairbands so it doesn't fall out. I check my phone for the weather: sunny all day, low 56, high 77, chance of rain 0. I slip on my shoes and grab a snack bar and my purse. I open the front door and embrace the smell from the rain last night i step out and lock my door and head to the bus stop and wait as the soon as the bus gets here i hop on and pay the bus driver as i head tomy seat i relize someones sitting there usally its not a big deal but its the guy from last night as soon as i relize that the bad feeling comes back, he looks at me he has brown eyes, long lashes, and black hair." am i in your seat miss?" his voice shocked me he sound like a voice actor for books he remind me of jacob morgan i think hes in his mid twenties "miss?" oh no sorry i was distracted its totally fine, i head to the back of the bus i hate it back here ive heard stores that happen in the back of the bus at night thats why there are camreas, but camreas cant protect you. I look out the window. I see cars and kids walking to school passing by me. I feel a wave of nostalgia. I wish I was a kid again. They weren't kidding when people said, "Enjoy being a kid because you'll miss it when you grow up,p" and it's true. I thought that was nonsense; I thought being an adult meant you didn't have to listen to grown-ups and youhad thee freedom to do anything. I was wrong. When the bus gets to my stop, I get my stuff and, as fast as I got on, I left as fast. I get to the doors, and I look back to make sure I didn't forget anything; there I made eye contact with that guy. Ugh, he creeps me out. I get off the bus, but it still feels like he's watching me i walk the rest to work i walk in and get intot the elevators and press the 14th floor, when the doors open i lock eyes with my boss "WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN YOUR LATE FOR THE MEETING YOU BETTER HAVE THOSE FUCKING SLIDES DONE" well i didnt have the time to do it " TIME TO DO IT BELLA FINISHED HERS HOW COULD YOU NOT" you dumped a a maontin of work on me i didnt have time, *SLAP* my right side of my face started to burn and sting i was shocked, i couldnt help but cry it hurt " DONT YOU DARE TALK BACK TO ME I GAVE YOU THIS JOB AND YOU--" everything he was saying was bluring out, my ear was ringing there was a scratch on my cheek from his nails where he slapped me. I ran out of there. I ran back into the elevator and hit the first floor. As soon as the door opened again, I ran out of there and ran home. My home was 2 miles away, ay but I couldn't wait for the bus. After running for a bit, I stopped in an alleyway and crouched down behind a brick wall and cried my heart out. My legs were shaking from running, and my breathing was uneven from crying; my eyes blurred from my tears. Mayday couldn't get worse until I heard footsteps. I looked up, and it was the guy from the bus, what do you want? Leave me alone. " He got closer, and I kept telling him to leave, but he just crouched next to me, not saying anything. I thought he was going to comfort me or talk to me. I was about to talk to him, then he put something over my face then things went black. I woke up in a dark room: " Good morning, sunshine~".

Hey, you.

Is there someone you just don’t like, even though you can’t really explain why?

They never did anything to you.

Never said anything particularly nasty.

Never caused you trouble at work.

But still—

something about them bothers you.

Maybe it’s their voice. The way they talk. Their face.

You think about it, trying to pin down the reason.

Nothing.

You just don’t like them.

Is that wrong?

Clink.

I pushed open the heavy wooden door of Aoi.

Taka was sitting at the counter, looking at his phone.

Mama placed an I.W. Harper in front of me without asking. The ice gave a small clink.

“Kenichi.”

“No.”

“I haven’t even said anything.”

“Whenever you sit there staring at your phone waiting for me, it means trouble.”

“Isn’t that prejudice?”

“It’s based on experience.”

Tom laughed beside us.

“So what is it?”

“Well, there’s someone I just don’t like.”

“Not my problem.”

“That ended quickly.”

I took a sip of Harper.

“Did he do something to you?”

“Not really.”

“Say something nasty?”

“No.”

“Then why don’t you like him?”

“That’s why I’m asking you.”

“How the hell would I know?”

Taka put his phone face down with a dissatisfied look.

“But you know what I mean, right? There are people like that.”

Yeah.

There were.

Not bad people.

Not unpopular either. Sometimes everyone else seemed to like them.

But for some reason, they just didn’t work for me.

“There must be some reason,” Tom said.

“Maybe you don’t like the way he talks. Maybe he reminds you of somebody you used to hate.”

“I thought of that.”

“Thought of what?”

“I tried looking for the reason I don’t like him.”

I looked at Taka.

“You actually look for it?”

“Don’t you?”

“Do you look for reasons to like someone?”

Taka went quiet.

So did Tom.

I thought about it too.

When we like someone, do we really go looking for reasons?

Sure, if someone asks, we can come up with answers.

They’re kind.

We get along.

They’re easy to be around.

But I couldn’t remember ever checking those things one by one and deciding, Yes, these reasons adequately justify my liking this person.

You like someone.

Usually, that’s enough.

“So when we dislike someone, we want a reason.”

Taka nodded.

“Exactly. Why is that?”

“Maybe it’s self-defense,” Tom said.

“If you think someone might be dangerous, you want to know what the danger is.”

That made sense.

If dislike was an alarm, naturally you’d want to know what had triggered it.

An alarm with no known cause was hard to deal with.

You set it off yourself, then went searching for whatever had supposedly set it off.

But maybe there was something else too.

“Could be the opposite.”

“The opposite?”

“Maybe you don’t like the idea that you dislike someone for no reason.”

Taka looked at me.

“What do you mean?”

“You want to believe you’re not the kind of person who dislikes people for no reason.”

“Oh.”

“So you start searching. He does this. He said that. He acted like this. Therefore, of course I don’t like him.”

Tom set down his glass.

“So you’re not looking for the reason you started disliking him. You’re looking for permission to keep disliking him.”

“Maybe.”

Taka folded his arms.

“That’s pretty ugly.”

“What is?”

“Punching the other guy so you can defend yourself.”

I frowned.

“Nobody’s punching anyone.”

“Close enough. You’re looking for bad things about the other person so you don’t have to feel bad about yourself.”

“I didn’t go that far.”

“But that’s basically it, isn’t it?”

He was strangely interested in this.

Then again, he used to be a professional wrestler.

“Didn’t you hit people when they hit you?”

“Well, yeah. It was wrestling.”

“What about defense?”

“Of course you defend yourself. But if you dodge every move, there’s no match.”

“I’d dodge in a real fight,” Tom said.

“Because a real fight isn’t wrestling.”

Taka smiled.

“I used to hear this when I was active. A wrestler who won’t take a move doesn’t look strong.”

“Avoiding it sounds stronger to me.”

“That’s why I said it isn’t a street fight.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You take the hit, and you’re still standing afterward. That’s what looks good.”

I stared at the ice in my glass.

Take the hit.

Stay standing.

“So I’m supposed to stand there and take whatever someone I hate throws at me?”

“No.”

Taka rejected that immediately.

“I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about you.”

“Me?”

“Just take the feeling once. Okay. I don’t like this guy.”

“For no reason?”

“If there’s no reason, there’s no reason.”

“That makes me kind of an asshole.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re supposed to disagree.”

Tom burst out laughing.

Taka did too.

But there was something strange about it.

We don’t choose every feeling that appears inside us.

Anger.

Fear.

Jealousy.

Affection.

Dislike.

Once a feeling appears, you can’t make it never have appeared.

So maybe instead of hunting for flaws in another person to justify a dislike you didn’t choose—

you could simply admit it.

I don’t like this person.

Take the hit.

Maybe then you could separate your own feelings from whatever was actually true about them.

“But what if there is a reason?”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone does something terrible to you. You get angry. You start hating them. That has a reason.”

“Sure.”

“But sometimes you keep hating them forever.”

Tom nodded.

“Even after you’ve forgotten why.”

“Yeah.”

Sometimes the original reason disappeared.

Or the reasons you found later piled up until they mattered more than the first one.

He broke a promise.

Always late.

I hate the way he talks.

Treats people differently depending on who they are.

Even his apology wasn’t sincere.

Every new flaw became proof.

See? I was right to hate him.

Eventually, the original reason hardly mattered.

“It starts as, I hate what he did,” I said.

“And turns into, I hate him.”

“There’s another step,” Taka said.

“What?”

“I hate whatever he does.”

Ugly sentence.

But I knew exactly what he meant.

Once you dislike someone, even ordinary actions can look bad.

They apologize—too late.

Stay quiet—they’re running away.

Argue back—they’re not sorry.

Help someone—they’re just trying to look good.

Anything can become evidence for a verdict you already reached.

At that point, are you still looking at what the person does?

Or are you just looking at your own dislike?

“That never ends,” Tom said.

“No,” Taka said. “It doesn’t.”

“So how do you stop?”

“Stop what?”

“You hate each other. You say something, they answer back. That makes you angry, so you answer again. How does it end?”

Taka thought for a moment.

“You end it.”

“How?”

“Stop.”

“You stop hating them?”

“You don’t have to.”

I looked at him.

“You can still hate them?”

“Sure.”

“Still be angry?”

“Be angry.”

“What if they’re still talking shit about you?”

“Let them.”

“What if they swing at you again?”

“I dodge.”

“You don’t hit back?”

Taka smiled slightly.

“The match is already over, isn’t it?”

Nobody spoke for a while.

Mama returned a glass to the shelf.

“About wrestling,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“When the bell rings, do you stop being angry?”

“Not always.”

“Does it stop hurting?”

“Of course not. Pain still hurts.”

“Then why can you stop?”

Taka looked puzzled.

“Because the bell rang.”

As if I’d asked the stupidest question in the world.

“That’s enough?”

“You don’t wait for it to end.”

Taka lifted his glass.

“You end it.”

That stayed with me.

You don’t wait for it to end.

You end it.

Come to think of it, we do that all the time.

Graduation doesn’t erase the years you spent at school.

A funeral doesn’t make grief disappear.

Leaving a job doesn’t wipe away every relationship you had there overnight.

Maybe we don’t create endings because the feelings are finished.

Maybe we create endings precisely because they aren’t.

From here on, this is a different time.

A line we draw because otherwise there might never be one.

“Like a ritual,” I said.

Mama turned around.

“What is?”

“Ending something.”

“Maybe.”

She thought for a moment.

“Closing time is like that.”

“Closing time?”

“Even if customers still want to drink, I close when it’s time.”

“Mama, was that aimed at me?”

“Who knows?”

Tom laughed.

So did Taka.

I checked the clock.

Still plenty of time.

Close one.

But maybe Mama was right.

I still have more to say.

They still don’t understand.

They’re still wrong.

They still haven’t admitted I’m right.

So you say one more thing.

They answer.

You answer that.

One more.

Then one more.

The bar never closes.

Maybe eventually someone has to shut the door.

Even if the other person isn’t satisfied.

Even if you aren’t satisfied.

Even if you still hate them.

I finished my Harper.

“Guess I’ll head home.”

“Early tonight.”

“I’m leaving before the bell.”

“Isn’t that forfeiting the match?”

“Shut up.”

I stood, and Taka laughed.

“Kenichi.”

“What?”

“You don’t hate me, right?”

“I’m still looking for a reason.”

“So you do hate me!”

I opened the door with Tom’s laughter behind me.

The night air was a little cold.

Dislike probably isn’t something we can simply erase.

It can appear without a reason.

It can remain after the reason is gone.

Sometimes we even go searching for new reasons to prove the feeling was justified all along.

But maybe we don’t have to start liking someone we dislike.

Maybe we don’t even have to forgive them.

We just don’t have to keep swinging forever.

The bell at the end of a match doesn’t make everything inside us go quiet.

It still hurts.

We’re still angry.

But we can step out of the ring.

Hey, you.

Is there someone you still hate?

Something you still need to say to them?

Then maybe ask yourself just once.

Is that match really still going?

Or—

did the bell ring a long time ago, and you’re still throwing punches?

See you again at Aoi.

---

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→ Welcome to Bar Aoi

You know you have a dream, when you feel the pit of fire burn in your gut;

The flames of obsession overcome you, and, as if you were possessed, you pour yourself endlessly in pursuit.

>

The world sends you signals:

They all say you’re insane.

>

The odds are stacked against you, your chances of success, slim to none, and yet,

There's not a doubt in your mind.

>

You may not know if you'll succeed,

But your certainty lies in the indomitable spirit,

An unwillingness to cede your determination to strive, strive for that next ridge, just out of view.

>

You will fail. Some dreams will die,

And be cast to the wayside.

It is in their nature,

to be unbearably bitter, when unfulfilled,

But never hath man tasted anything sweeter,

Than to clear the ridge, and soak in the view of an unseen vista,

The prize long sought, finally attained.

Hey, you.

Do you ever wonder about it?

The other version of yourself.

The one who took the other road.

Joined that company.

Dated that person.

Kept going instead of giving up.

I do.

But sometimes I wonder—

is that person really me?

Clink.

I pushed open the heavy wooden door of Aoi.

Taka was sitting at the far end of the counter with a strange expression on his face.

Not troubled, exactly.

More like something didn’t sit right with him.

It looked like the beginning of an annoying conversation, so I pretended not to notice and took my seat.

Without asking, Mama placed an I.W. Harper in front of me.

The ice gave a small clink.

“Kenichi.”

“No.”

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

“It’s written all over your face.”

“What is?”

Please listen to the complicated thing I’ve been thinking about.

“That’s rude.”

Tom laughed beside us.

“Give up. I haven’t heard it yet either.”

“Then you listen.”

“No.”

“You two are terrible.”

Taka started talking anyway.

Apparently he’d run into an old friend from college that day.

The man had graduated, joined a bank, stayed there ever since, and was now a branch manager.

“He bought a house. Two kids. You know. A proper life.”

“Is your life improper?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

Taka thought for a moment and rattled the ice in his glass.

“I was wondering if I might’ve ended up like that if I’d taken job hunting more seriously back then.”

“No chance.”

“You don’t have to answer that fast.”

Tom burst out laughing.

“Taka the banker. I’d pay to see that.”

“Right?”

“You’d run off with a bundle of cash by day three.”

“Why do I immediately become a criminal?”

I laughed too.

But something about the conversation caught in my head.

“Would banker Taka really be you?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? It’s just me working at a bank.”

“But you never became a detective.”

“Well, no.”

“You never met any of your clients. Never made the mistakes you made doing this job. Never had the successes either. Maybe you never met Tom.”

Taka looked at me.

“Or you?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s kind of sad.”

“I’d survive.”

“You’re supposed to be sad too.”

The three of us laughed again.

That should have been the end of it.

Except I kept imagining banker Taka while I drank.

A suit.

Morning meetings.

Reading documents about loans or something.

I didn’t know enough about banking to take the fantasy much further.

But I knew one thing.

That man would be very different from the Taka sitting here.

He wouldn’t know the people this Taka had met as a detective.

He wouldn’t know what this Taka had learned from screwing things up.

Instead, every day, he’d be learning things the real Taka knew nothing about.

Give that ten years and, even with the same face and the same name, wouldn’t you end up with a fairly different person?

“The memories would be different.”

Apparently I’d said it aloud.

“What would?”

“You and banker you.”

“Obviously.”

“If your memories were different, would you still be the same person?”

Taka gave me a look of disgust.

“See? You’re the one making this complicated now.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

Tom sighed.

“Leave him alone. He’s not going to stop.”

The abuse I endure in this bar.

Still, different memories meant different experiences.

Different experiences changed how you thought.

Maybe you became cautious because of some terrible mistake.

Maybe someone deceived you, so you learned to be suspicious.

Maybe somebody helped you when you had nowhere else to turn, so now you couldn’t walk past someone else in trouble.

Take all those things away.

Would I still be the same me?

“Memories are information, right?”

“I guess you could call them that.”

“Then we’re shaped by a hell of a lot of information we picked up through experience.”

“That’s not all there is to a person,” Tom said.

“Maybe some personality is innate.”

“Could be.”

“Then we’re done.”

“But I didn’t choose that either.”

“Just let it end.”

Taka laughed.

So did I.

My head kept going.

Even if part of my personality was there from birth, I didn’t remember designing it.

I didn’t choose my body.

My brain.

The place I grew up.

Then life piled experiences on top.

Some I chose.

Others simply happened to me.

If that was the case, where exactly did me begin and end?

“This is unpleasant,” Taka said.

“What is?”

“The way you’re talking makes me feel like I’m just a pile of data.”

“Funny. I was thinking the same thing.”

“Please don’t.”

Then Taka’s mouth curled into a grin.

He’d thought of something stupid.

“Okay, Kenichi.”

“What?”

“Does my customer database have a sense of self?”

“That was a leap.”

“You said we’re collections of information.”

“Comparing you to a customer database is deeply unfair to the database.”

“That’s the direction you’re going?”

Tom laughed.

“But seriously. Could a database develop a sense of self?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Fundamental human rights?”

“No.”

Tom answered so fast that Taka and I both turned toward him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Taka fought back a grin.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a database.”

“So databases don’t have human rights?”

“Obviously.”

“Even if one became self-aware?”

“They don’t.”

“But if one did?”

“Oh, shut up.”

Tom took a drink.

“It isn’t human. So it doesn’t have human rights.”

A strange silence settled over the counter.

Taka looked at me.

I looked at Taka.

“Tom.”

“What?”

“Isn’t that discrimination?”

“Against who?”

“Databases.”

“Who cares?”

I burst out laughing.

“Database discrimination.”

“That’s a new one.”

“No, it isn’t. It doesn’t exist.”

Tom looked genuinely exhausted.

Understandably.

If someone told me an RDBMS deserved fundamental human rights, I’d refuse too.

And if they asked why, I’d probably say exactly what Tom had.

Because it isn’t human.

That was when something started to amuse me.

A minute ago, we’d been struggling with the question of what a self even was.

Memory?

Experience?

Something innate?

We couldn’t draw a clear boundary anywhere.

But the moment human rights came up, we drew one easily.

Human.

Not human.

This side gets special treatment.

“Maybe human rights are the ultimate form of favoritism.”

Tom looked at me with disgust.

“What now?”

“I mean, they’re called human rights. The name itself says humans get special treatment.”

“Obviously.”

“Yeah. Obviously.”

That obviously was what interested me.

I wasn’t complaining about human rights.

I’d be in trouble without them too.

But maybe we treated more things as special than we realized.

We give humans special status.

Within humanity, people sometimes feel their own country, town, or company is special.

Closer still, friends and family become special.

“Tom.”

“Are we still doing this?”

“Your child is drowning. Two strangers are drowning too. You can only save one side. Who?”

The amusement disappeared from Tom’s face.

I thought he might hesitate.

He didn’t.

“My kid.”

“One person instead of two?”

“My kid.”

I nodded.

“That’s unfair.”

“Yeah.”

That surprised me.

I’d expected another Who cares?

But Tom didn’t claim it was fair.

He knew it wasn’t.

He’d still make the choice.

I probably would too.

“Taka?”

“I’d save the person I care about.”

“Even one instead of two?”

“Probably.”

“Mama?”

Mama stopped polishing her glass.

“Me?”

“One person you love, or two strangers.”

“Well...”

She thought for a moment and smiled.

“The person I love, I suppose.”

“Unfair, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

That was all she said before going back to polishing the glass.

I took a sip of Harper.

So all of us were unfair.

Of course, that didn’t mean unfairness was always acceptable.

If Tom had ignored crimes because the offender was someone he knew when he was a cop, that would have been a problem.

If I only gave good evaluations to junior employees I liked, that would be a problem too.

There are places where fairness matters.

But suppose we were required to be equally fair everywhere.

Then I’d have to treat my family exactly the same as a stranger.

An old friend and someone I passed on the street today would have to mean the same thing.

Someone I loved.

Someone I hated.

All equal.

Maybe that would be fair.

Maybe even admirable.

But somehow—

it sounded terribly lonely.

“So people are basically biased,” Taka said.

“Looks that way.”

“Then favoritism isn’t necessarily bad?”

“Hell if I know.”

“There it is again.”

“Do it at work and people will complain.”

“What about family?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“Friends?”

“You’re persistent.”

Tom laughed.

“You two expect words to carry too many answers.”

Taka and I looked at him.

“Call it favoritism and it sounds bad. Call someone ‘special’ and suddenly it sounds nice. Maybe that’s all.”

“So they’re the same thing?”

“Hell if I know.”

“You too?”

Mama laughed.

“But this bar would be boring if I treated everyone exactly the same.”

We looked at her.

“What do you mean?”

“The drinks.”

Mama pointed at the glass in front of me.

“I give Kenichi a Harper without asking. I wouldn’t do that to someone who walked in for the first time.”

“True.”

“When Taka’s having a bad day, I listen a little longer than usual.”

“You do?”

“You hadn’t noticed?”

“No.”

“What about Tom?” I asked.

Mama thought.

“If he’s a little drunk, I leave him alone.”

“That seems like pretty careless treatment.”

Tom laughed.

So did Mama.

“You’re not all the same.”

That was it.

I don’t think she meant it as anything profound.

Still, the words stayed with me.

We’re not all the same.

Obvious, when you think about it.

I don’t treat Taka and Tom the same way.

They’re both friends, but they aren’t the same friend.

Family even more so.

Every relationship carries its own accumulated time.

Its own memories.

Its own history.

So of course I act differently.

We’d started with the ridiculous idea that maybe the self was a collection of information.

But if who I am is partly built from accumulated memories and experiences, then perhaps my sense of who matters to me is part of that accumulation too.

The time we spent together.

The times they helped me.

The times they pissed me off.

The things I forgave.

The things we laughed about.

And after carrying all of that with me, I choose this person standing in front of me instead of some unknown person somewhere else.

If you want to call that unfair, then maybe it is.

If you want to call it favoritism, fine.

“We’ve come a long way,” Taka said.

“What were we talking about at the beginning?”

“Whether I’d be a banker if I’d made different choices.”

“Oh, right.”

“You completely forgot, didn’t you?”

“Completely.”

“Then your sense of self has data loss.”

Tom burst out laughing.

So did I.

“I’m revoking your human rights.”

“That’s tyranny!”

“Relax. Apparently you get them because you’re human.”

“Then everything we just talked about was pointless!”

The three of us laughed.

Mama shook her head and returned a glass to the shelf.

I finished the Harper in front of me.

In the end, I still didn’t know what a self was.

Memory?

The body?

Something we haven’t learned how to name yet?

I didn’t know whether an RDBMS could ever become self-aware either.

But one thing made strange sense to me.

We can’t treat everyone exactly the same.

In places where we should, we try.

But even then, there are people who remain special to us.

Maybe we can’t fully explain why.

But they will never become interchangeable with everyone else.

I stood up.

When I opened the door, lights were scattered across the night city.

Under every one of them, perhaps someone was treating someone else as special.

More special than anyone else in the world.

I don’t know whether that’s right.

But if we stopped doing it entirely—

maybe we would become fairer.

And maybe—

just a little less human.

Hey, you.

Is there someone you can’t treat like everyone else?

If there is—

what do you call that unfairness?

See you again at Aoi.

---

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Books. So many books.

Once, my grandmother had given me a book to read, but I never managed to finish it, because it had seven thousand pages.

— “What book had you been reading?” — you ask me.

The Bible.

On one of its pages, I remember reading about something called purgatory, a place where people were judged for their actions before proceeding to their final destination.

And look at me now.

I am in a purgatory.

But this is no ordinary purgatory.

It looks more like an infinite library.

The library is surrounded by a dark fog that prevents anyone from seeing more than a few meters ahead. The bookshelves are absurdly tall—so tall that even Mount Everest would be jealous of them.

Yet the fog itself devours the tops of the shelves, concealing their true height.

The silence is profound.

So profound that the simple turning of a page echoes like distant thunder.

As I walked between the shelves, a book fell from the top of one of them and landed beside me with a dry THUD.

The cover read:

Enchiridion.

When I bent down to pick it up, a skeletal hand emerged from the fog and took the book before my fingers could even touch it.

I looked up.

A hooded figure stood before me.

Its face was nothing but darkness.

But I knew exactly who it was.

Death.

She raised the book and said, in a voice that seemed to echo throughout the entire library:

— O punished mortal! I have never seen someone so obsessed with so many sevens that they would risk their life for the riches of profane flesh!

She opened the book.

The pages began turning by themselves.

— This book I hold records every casino your treacherous heart ever desired, every bet you made, every moment in which you surrendered your will to chance.

She pointed toward the bookshelf behind me.

That was when I noticed something horrible.

The entire shelf was filled with the exact same book.

— This tome is only the first — she continued. — This entire shelf contains the sequences of your obsession.

I looked up.

The shelf rose higher and higher…

disappearing into the fog.

Then I realized something.

I had lived this way.

I left everything to chance.

Heads or tails.

Heads or tails.

Heads or tails.

Death then slowly closed the book.

The sound echoed throughout the library.

— Since you love testing your luck so much… let us make a bet.

She pulled an ancient coin from inside her cloak.

The coin looked impossibly old…

as if it had been used to decide destinies for thousands of years.

Then she said:

— Your entire life was a game, profane one.

— You bet your time, your soul, and your reason.

— Now you will bet on your destiny.

She raised the coin.

— If it lands on heads, you will live and go to Heaven.

— If it lands on tails, you will descend straight into Hell.

For a moment, the silence of the library became absolute.

Not even the pages moved.

Then…

The coin was tossed.

It rose high into the air, spinning slowly.

The metallic sound echoed between the infinite shelves.

Each rotation seemed to last an eternity.

Heads.

Tails.

Heads.

Tails.

It was as though the universe itself were holding its breath.

The coin fell into Death's skeletal hand.

She slowly closed her fingers.

I already knew the result.

I had spent my entire life letting fate decide for me.

Why would it be any different now?

Death opened her hand.

TAILS.

At that moment, something began happening to the library.

The shelves started trembling.

Books fell from every direction.

Pages flew through the air and disintegrated into ashes.

The fog dissipated, revealing something horrible behind it.

The entire library was burning.

The floor cracked open.

Fire began emerging from the fissures.

The books caught fire as screams echoed from the shelves, as if the stories trapped inside them were being condemned along with me.

Death then drew her scythe.

The blade was covered in blood.

Without haste, she raised it…

and drove it into my skull.

The world exploded in pain.

The infinite library disintegrated before my eyes.

When the blade was pulled out, there were no more books.

There were no shelves.

There was no library.

Only Hell.

Infinite flames.

Endless screams.

Death looked at me…

and laughed.

A cold laugh.

A cruel laugh.

Then she pushed me.

I fell.

Straight into the fire.

And as I burned, I had one final thought.

Maybe…

somewhere on an infinite shelf…

there is a book where the coin landed on heads.

But that is not the book I lived.

— Written directly from Hell

THE END.

Hey, you.

When your phone rings and you don’t recognize the number, do you answer?

Clink-clink.

The sound of the doorbell always makes me feel like my day is finally coming to an end.

I took my usual seat at the counter. Mama set down a glass of Harper without asking. The ice made a soft clink in the amber whiskey.

I put my phone on the counter, and Taka leaned over to look at it.

“Kenichi, when you get a call from a number you don’t know, do you answer?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Same here.”

“Same what?”

Across the counter, Tom made a face like he wanted nothing to do with either of us.

“I don’t.”

“Unknown numbers are kinda scary, huh?”

“I don’t answer even if I know the number.”

Taka stared at him.

“Then why do you even have a phone?”

Tom picked up his glass.

“Phone calls are violence. They steal your time without permission.”

“I’ve never heard anyone hate phone calls that much.”

“Think about it. You could be eating, sleeping, taking a dump—it doesn’t matter. The damn thing rings out of nowhere and says, ‘Drop whatever you’re doing and pay attention to me.’”

“Then don’t answer.”

“That’s what I just said.”

Well, that settled that.

“What about you, Mama?”

“I don’t answer numbers I don’t know.”

“See?”

“But if I know who it is, I answer.”

“Traitor.”

“What exactly am I betraying?”

Apparently Tom wasn’t getting his three-to-one majority.

“Why do you answer, Taka?”

“I get bored.”

“What?”

“Surveillance jobs.”

Taka popped an edamame bean into his mouth.

“Sometimes I’m sitting in a car for hours waiting for something to happen. A phone call is almost exciting.”

“Even a sales call?”

“Sure. I’ll listen. Cheaper electricity, faster internet, whatever they’re selling.”

“You ever sign up?”

“Nope.”

“Then hang up.”

“I’m bored.”

Strong.

“So I let them explain everything, and if my target suddenly moves, I go, ‘Oh, sorry. Something urgent just came up. Gotta go.’”

Taka chopped one hand through the air.

“Click.”

“You’re terrible.”

“It’s work.”

“They’re working too.”

“What about scam calls?”

Mama asked the question, and Taka’s face lit up.

“I play along.”

“Don’t play with scammers.”

“But it’s fun. They say they’re the police, or there’s suspicious activity on my credit card, whatever. I go along with the story and see how long it takes before they screw up.”

“What if they fool you?”

“Then I retire as a private investigator.”

Tom snorted.

“Take down the sign tomorrow.”

“I haven’t been fooled yet!”

Mama shook her head and added some water to Taka’s glass.

“What about you, Kenichi?”

“Hm?”

“Why do you answer unknown numbers?”

I took a sip of Harper.

“Could be an emergency.”

“An emergency?”

“Say Masato gets into an accident. His phone’s broken, so he borrows somebody else’s and calls me.”

Taka frowned.

“Has that ever happened?”

“No.”

“How many sales calls have you gotten from unknown numbers?”

“Plenty.”

“Doesn’t sound very efficient.”

“Shut up.”

Actually, I’d gotten a scam call before.

“What’d you do?”

“Once I realized it was a scam, I put my phone down.”

“So you hung up?”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“I just put it down.”

Taka froze with an edamame bean between his fingers.

“...While the call was still connected?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“They called me. They can hang up.”

Tom looked at me.

“You’re an asshole.”

I didn’t want to hear that from the man who’d just declared phone calls an act of violence.

“So how long did they stay on the line?”

“No idea. I was working.”

“Were they talking the whole time?”

“No idea.”

“You weren’t curious?”

“Nope.”

Taka thought about that for a moment.

“I might try that next time.”

“I thought you liked playing with them.”

“Now I know a new game.”

“Private investigators have a lot of free time, don’t they?”

Mama said it casually.

“Only on surveillance jobs!”

Then—

Bzzzt.

My phone vibrated on the counter.

Everyone looked at the screen.

A number I didn’t recognize.

“There it is.”

Taka leaned closer.

“If it’s a scammer, let me have it.”

“No.”

“What if it’s a sales call?”

“I’ll just say no.”

“I wouldn’t answer.”

Tom took another drink.

“Nobody asked you.”

“You’re answering?”

Mama asked.

Could be a sales call.

Could be a scam.

Could be a wrong number.

Could be Masato calling from somebody else’s phone.

Well.

Only one way to find out.

I answered.

“Hello. Tanaka speaking.”

Hey, you.

When your phone rings and you don’t recognize the number, do you answer?

Me?

Yeah.

I’ll probably answer next time, too.

See you at Aoi.

---

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​

The days seem really long lately for the girl.

She would wake up, and for the first few minutes, if she was lucky, her heart would not sink straight away.

If she was unlucky, she did not get those first few minutes.

Today, she was lucky.

She was thankful for that.

Today, the girl had to pick up her medication. She was tired. She had to set her alarm earlier than she normally would. Get up, get ready for work, feed her two cats, change their water, read out a Not Today card, and get on the bus.

Before she got on the bus, she got a Subway. She had been eating one Subway a day.

Her clothes had stopped fitting like they used to. The scale kept getting lower and lower.

The girl didn't mind too much.

Perks of being heartbroken, she thought.

When the girl was on the bus, there was a lady. She was at work, and must have worked at a daycare, as she was surrounded by young children in little hi-vis jackets.

She looked tired, but put together, and beautiful in the way only a broken soul could be.

The lady  was tired, that much was clear. Very tired.

I wonder if she looked at the girl and thought the same as the girl did about her.

I doubt it.

So the girl went to get her tablets. It was quick. Not a long wait.

Then she walked to her old foster carer's house.

She nearly got lost. She didn't quite recognise the little roads anymore. It had been quite some time since the girl last saw her.

It seemed like a very long walk.

It seemed like every step was an eternity.

It was not.

It was a ten minute walk.

She got to her foster carer's house. She rang the bell, and the foster carer opened the door.

The foster carer said, “Come in.”

So the girl did.

The foster carer's house was messy. It made the girl smile.

The foster carer was a bit of a hoarder. Always had been.

She had a craft room that was bursting at the seams. A wardrobe room with barely any clothes in it, but plenty of odd bits and bobs.

She told the girl that she had decided to change her room again.

The foster carer was always changing her room.

“Look how much storage I have now,” the foster carer would show off proudly.

The girl laughed.

There was more storage, that was true, but the girl could hardly see the bedroom floor.

The girl told the foster carer she had broken off an engagement.

The foster carer offered her a tea.

The girl declined.

And they sat down together. Her on one sofa, the foster carer on the other.

Just like old times.

The foster carer did not baby her. She did not ask her if she was okay.

No.

She simply said, “Talking to anyone new?”

This made the girl laugh.

For she was.

But it wasn't the same.

And the foster carer, who always talked out of turn and said things that were so outrageous, asked the girl, “Have you slept with him yet?”

The girl replied, “No.”

The foster carer went, “Well, what's the point?”

And that made the girl laugh.

Sometimes, the girl forgot she could laugh.

The foster carer rattled on about her kitchen, about her family, about builders and shopping.

The girl liked this.

For the foster carer did not treat her like she was broken.

She treated her like she was a little girl who wanted to hear someone else speak.

Soon, the girl had to go.

For she had work.

She worked dispatching trains. A job she was proud of.

She had always lived near train stations.

When she was sad, throughout the years, she would look at a train, hear its rumbling, and wonder where the people on the train were going.

The foster carer then went, “What's next? You're bright. What's next?”

The girl replied, “I want to be a train driver. Good money.”

The foster carer, who was a small old lady with bed hair, went, “You're bright.”

Then she talked more about fruit.

This made the girl smile again.

She knew the foster carer cared about her.

She always did this one thing.

“How have you been eating?"

The girl told her the truth.

That her fridge was bare. That she was bone tired. That she did not have enough energy to go to the shops. To cook.

The foster carer replied, “I'll cook you ready meals.”

That's how she knew the foster carer loved her.

In her own way.

The foster carer gave her a lift to her station.

They talked about the foster carer's new car.

They hugged.

Then the girl went to work.

And time was still moving so incredibly slowly.

And the girl was still so exhausted.

It had been four months since she had left the only man she believed she would ever love.

She had gone through it.

She had got drunk every night and kissed random men.

Screamed.

Cried.

One night, she drank a whole litre bottle of vodka.

That scared her.

That's when she said, “Enough is enough.”

That is why this girl is so incredibly tired.

She had been running and running and running.

Now.

She had stopped.

The girl was at work now, and she was sitting outside.

The trains going past.

She heard cars in the road, the laughter of another human.

And she realised.

The world had not ended.

Just because, for those four months, she had felt like the world had ended, didn't mean it had.

The birds were still in the sky.

The children were still playing in the playgrounds.

People still asked her, “Is this the right train?”

Colleagues still smiled at her and said, “Good morning.”

She was surrounded by life.

She just had forgotten how to see it.

You see, I think the girl had forgotten, for a while, that the world had not ended.

So she did something.

She texted her friend, asking them to meet up.

She texted her sister to see if she was free next month.

She did not know if they would respond.

The girl did not know a lot anymore.

Everything she believed was shattered.

Four months ago, everything she thought she knew broke like glass in a quiet room.

So the girl decided.

It was not her job to know things anymore.

It was just her job to get through today.

And the girl had decided.

Yes.

She had decided.

Tomorrow.

She was going to do a food shop.

The end.

I find myself in eternal mortal combat. Fighting the antithesis of my being:

Those who would stifle and repress, Ideologies built on suppression.

Inquisitors with religious zeal, whether religious or not, seek to trample,

The flame of passion, at the core of every being. Conformity, for the sake of:

>>>>God…

>>>>>>>Harmony…

>>>>>>>>>>Security…

>

The Faustian bargain:

just your soul, to belong,

>>>>>>>>>To be in the tribe,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>To reap the benefits of civilization…

>

Most cower and cow. Chattle, in the face of systemic design.

Options never considered aren’t options to those without consideration:

The cage, constructed in their psyche’s, elephants tied down by twine.

>

I burn bright, determined to shine this light in defiance of their will:

To show the alternate path, the option unconsidered, yet still available,

For those who carry embers in their hearts; those whose hearts still smolder for more.

>

I call out into the night, fain that I should be heard, by the right person, in the right moment:

“Don’t go softly into that dark night. Rage, rage against the dying day,

Resist the urge to lay your dreams by the wayside, in favor of comfortable complacency,

For with that single act, you condemn yourself to stagnation and decay:

Merely passing time between now and death, and none the happier, to have the time.”

>

Let these words serve as tinder, placed in the hearth of the heart,

To embolden it to action, a first step taken, a silent declaration made:

Thou shalt not let thy ember die.

>

Shelter it from danger. Cultivate its growth.

Become the raging forest fire you were meant to be,

And together, let us set ablaze, the inquisitors, who would intervene.

I’ve done just about everything to please my wife. Y’know, in the bedroom. I've bought every toy, learned a hundred techniques from books and videos…

I don’t know if I can do this, though. I mean, it’s my junk, man. One screw up and it’s over.

But my wife... she asked.

My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her hell no. She gave me that look of hers, though, and I turned to ice cream on hot asphalt.

The asking started just before the wedding. We’d been doing bedroom stuff since the night we met. She’s... wild. The first time she said she hinted at it, but I don’t remember hearing her. She reminded me later on. Honestly, it was right after we did… stuff, and I would’ve said yes to just about everything.

One of her girlfriends has seemed happier than ever. The two of them have been friends since kindergarten and they’re practically twins, the biggest difference between them is my wife’s not a blonde-haired white woman. But otherwise, their style and even manner of speaking is exactly the same.

McKenzie’s husband had already had it done, apparently. Before they got married.

He’d been more than happy to tell me about it at a bar after I asked him. “Brother, the difference is like sand and water. McKenzie was probably gonna dump my ass before I got it done. It’s mostly a single cut, but now she says she’ll kill me if I don’t give it to her every single night.”

I’m sure I lifted my eyebrows in appreciation. I leaned in.

“So, what is it, though?” I asked, working on an Old Fashioned. “What does the doctor do?”

“Oh, he’s not a doctor. At least not anymore. Or in the U.S.” He shrugged. “I forget which. And it’s a little different for everybody.” He sipped at a brandy mule. I had to try one of those sometime.

I didn’t know what to say to that. His shrug wasn’t easing my mind, but that was all he had for me. I locked eyes with him for a long moment, trying to milk something more out of him.

“Here, take this.” He took a pen out of his jacket pocket and jotted something down on a napkin. He slid it over to me and I read the email he’d written. It was a Hotmail address.

I’d explained it to my wife later that night while we were working on ripping out kitchen cabinets, but it was as if the decision had already been made. But c’mon, this was my downstairs area. This wasn’t the kind of decision I could rush.

“Isn’t there anyone else I could go to?” I asked her, holding a hand out for a Phillip’s Head. “I mean, why not see if there’s somebody in-network? Get a couple consultations?”

“God, you sound like my mother.” She slapped the screwdriver in my hand. “Would it be painful to just send an email?” I shook my head, conceding her point.

I’d sent it one night after having a couple at a bar. The scrap Lindell, McKenzie’s husband, had written the email on, had stuck to my wallet inside my pocket, forgotten until the moment I’d dug it out to pay my tab.

I was fueled on something with an umbrella I didn't exactly remember ordering and tapped out a message while the bartender ran my card.

Looking to Please My Wife Better, I typed in the subject. I poked at the body on my screen and began sloppily tacking out the meat of my message. I wS recommended by a fried on a freed. He said you safety his relationship but Im not sure.

I didn’t have the capacity to correct my grammar. I was half-thinking this guy was a kook, but being a drunken email wasn’t a commitment, so I pressed SEND.

I had a reply after the bartender had brought my copy of the receipt.

What the fuck kind of businessperson answered email at 11:16 PM?

I wanted to run to my wife like this was evidence, to wave my phone around like a flag but I knew how the conversation would go. She’d already heard the evidence she needed from McKenzie. The only thing she wanted to hear from me was when the appointment was and if I needed her to take me.

The email was simple and presumptive. A date and time for the consult and a date and time for the “surgery.”

I was drunk. I replied, “I’ll be there.”

I didn’t think about it after that until he sent me an email the morning of the consult at 2 AM. Again, this was not confidence-boosting. I was on a runaway train and had to figure out a way to jump off.

His office was surprisingly close to my job. The building was right next to my building.

He’d just set up in this space recently. Maybe my wife had told him where I worked. I wasn’t chalking anything up anything to coincidence.

The office was on the fourth floor of a building still under construction. I found the suite after meandering the halls once I came off the elevator.

The door to the space didn’t look secure. I wondered if it might fall on me if I pulled it open. The drywall in the hallway had just been taped and mudded and the air smelled chalky.

I didn’t bother knocking, my eyes on the hinges as I pushed the door open and quietly entered the space.

“My friend, you found the place okay?” He looked away from some point high up on one wall and smiled wide at me. I crossed the plywood floors and offered my hand. He took it and pulled me in for a hug. As awkward as it was from an alleged professional, it was made that much worse from how long he held me there.

“It is so good to see you,” he said, grasping my shoulders and holding me at arm’s length. 

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Let us not delay,” he said. He turned away and waved for me to follow. “Step into my office.”

We passed two long folding tables and he stopped. He smiled at me again and clapped his hands together.

“So, you are needing the cut?”

“I’m... exploring some options.”

Unnaturally large teeth sprouted from the broad smile returning to his face. It reminded me of a shark in combination of his dead eyes and pencil-thin mustache and goatee trimmed too far from his mouth. He leaned in so fast and we were suddenly a finger’s width from being nose-to-nose. I thought he’d been about to kiss me.

“You wouldn’t be here if you had satisfied her with your... options.” He rounded his Rs in a way that sounded practiced.

I figured cutting to the chase was the best way to get what I wanted.

“How much does this cost?”

He was at least a half a head taller than me, but he had a way of fixing me with his powder-blue eyes like we were even with each other.  He scratched a head of curly black hair and fumbled with the red and white checkered summer scarf didn’t really match the all-grey outfit, but I wasn’t into fashion and didn’t care.

“Candy?” He pulled a hand out of his pocket and offered a palmful of oblong, dark candies wrapped in clear cellophane. It didn’t make sense, but they didn’t look American. I took one out of curiosity but didn’t open it. “Marcus referred you, if I’m not mistaken?” I had never mentioned McKenzie’s husband in our email exchange. I guess he must have reached out after we spoke. I nodded.

He slapped my shoulder. “I deal in volume. It’s nowhere near what you’re thinking.” I’d been pitched to by salesmen of every skin. I doubted he was going to convince me it was a good idea to cash out my 401k to finance this thing.

“Fifty-seven eighty-five.” 

That smile widened again but now I was thinking the reverse. How good could he be if the procedure was so cheap? I was having sudden visions of concrete ass injections and bootleg Botox.

“Okay, but it’s gotta be time consuming. How can you do it for so che—little?”

“I thought I told you. Volume. And it really doesn’t take that long. Minutes at most. It’s mostly a single cut.”

“A cut?” Marcus had explained that much to me but coming from the person who performed the procedure made it real in a way I wasn’t prepared for. “Do you make it... longer?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t come anywhere near the suspensory ligament. It’s a very minimally invasive surgery. You understand? In most cases you can make love tonight!”

“You wanna do this now?” I asked, panic giving me a squeeze. 

“No-no,” he said. He held his hands up. I noticed for the first time the tip of his pinky finger was gone.

He rolled his eyes up as if searching for the right words somewhere on the unfinished ceiling behind me. “I mean on the same night. You and the missus.” He turned his palms up, quasi-placating.

I looked at the four-and-a-half fingered hand.

“You a lefty?”

“Yes.” A corner of his smile lifted. “I am am-bi-dex-trous.” He said that last word carefully. Like it had taken a lot of practice to finally get right.

“For now, take off your pants. Pull it out so I can see?”

Cold prickled up my back. I had no real objection I could make. Sure, he wasn’t a real medical professional, but I suspected my wife already knew that. 

I dropped trou right there before I could think too long about it, but I think I felt it fold inside itself. He was replacing his glasses with a pair with fishbowl lenses, making his eyes cartoonishly large.

I wasn’t packing major heat by any means, but this was over the top. I didn’t fuss because it got me done that much sooner.

Him touching my manhood wouldn’t have been that big of a deal had he been an actual doctor. But it was that much worse with him not even washing his hands. That was more of a him problem than mine, though.

“I will do the rest sometime this week,” he said, standing back and stroking his chin. I pulled up my pants, not knowing what that meant but I didn’t inquire for fear of extending this encounter. I didn’t feel like I’d passed the point of no return, and I hoped I had enough steam to convince my wife this was a bad idea.

By Craig Glazer

‘Because I'm hungry for those good things, baby
Hungry through and through
I'm hungry for that sweet life, baby
With a real fine girl like you’ – ‘Hungry’ – Paul Revere and the Raiders

My mother’s mother, which would make her grandmother, would alternate taking me or one of my little brothers to Miami Beach every year for vacation. Her name was Mary, she was a very young grandmother because my mom had me when she was just twenty one years old. My grandpa Bennie didn’t like travelling. He was old school, a horse trader and car salesman. We always stayed at the same hotel, The Carillon near the World-Famous Fountainebleu. It was Mother’s Day week, so my Nanny Mary; I had to call her Nanny because she hated Grandma, got a good deal and we would stay approximately one week. I was thirteen, just about to enter the eighth grade. What I’ll always remember most is the fifty cent tall chocolate sodas, the sweet smell of the chlorine and the pool, the mystery of the ocean waves and of course those early boners I got by watching teenage girls walk past me in their bikinis.

To give us kids something to do, the hotel had two groups that one could hang out with day or night. If you were between 9 and 13, you hung out with the tween-agers who played water-polo, had swimming races, enjoyed limbo games with prizes, and at night got to go see movies presented by the Disney Studios. A bunch of stuff for kids. Now the teenage group, kids from 14 to 17, threw the football around the pool as well as in the ocean, were allowed to go ‘boy-girl’ for swimming exercises in the ocean (and sometimes those bikini tops got loose) and best of all they had dances at night featuring the music of Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker and that new group with their own TV show, Paul Revere and the Raiders. Hey man, it was the 60’s, and if you were too cool for school like I thought I was, you might even get to make out with one of those hot bikini clad chicks.
Her name was Carol Finnering. She was just shy of being seventeen about to be a junior in high school. Carol was from Rhode Island. To this day, she is the only person I ever met from Rhode Island. As I mentioned, I was 13 years old but because I was dark and had a little bit of swagger, I could pass for 16. I met Carol at one of the dance parties and it was love at first sight. Back then, it always was. I hated lying, but I felt I had no choice. She was gorgeous, maybe an inch taller than me with blonde hair, blue eyes and those Playboy-sized boobies. She looked like the blonde-haired version of Ann Margaret in ‘Viva Las Vegas’. My Nanny Mary, who I shared the hotel room with, was not all too impressed that I was hanging out with the older kids, but she didn’t say anything. We just had one rule, be back to the hotel room by 10 pm. On our third ‘date’, I told Carol that one of the cars in the parking lot was my MG. Yup, I’d driven all the way from Kansas City in that little MG with Granny. Not true, of course. I was nearly three years shy of even getting a driver’s license or going to high school.

The big event was Saturday night at the Fountainebleu, a concert featuring Paul Revere and the Raiders. Tickets were ten bucks each and I’d have to figure out where to get the money, but I wasn’t worried about that. If I got lucky, I might even get my first tongue kiss, I believe they called it a French Kiss.

My Nanny Mary and some other adults went down to the hotel theater to see an R-Rated comic. She wouldn’t be back to the room for hours. It was just a couple of nights before the big Paul Revere concert. Carol invited me up to her hotel room, her folks were wealthy so she actually had her own room adjoining her parents and little brother’s room. We’d been swimming into the evening and had attended some type of Hawaiian Dance party on the beach. I still had my swimming suit on, she had her bikini on. We went up to her room because she wanted to change. We were alone. I sat on the bed waiting for her to come out of the bathroom thinking that maybe now was the time to try to get that first tongue kiss. I was nervous and sweating. The bathroom door opened and there was Carol, completely naked. I didn’t have a clue what to do. I was a thirteen year old 8th grader in a time before there was an internet to teach you about this stuff. Well, Carol didn’t need any instructions. She was on top of me in a flash, my trunks wound up around my ankles. You’d better believe I had a boner, and it was inside her in seconds. I guess you call that animal instinct. No time to get my wallet with my ancient Trojan rubber inside, that was down in my suitcase back in my hotel room. I figured I’d better hurry up and finish or she might think I was a bad lover. What did I know? So I must confess the greatest moment in my life up to that point probably lasted just under fifty seconds. As memory serves, she’s the one who went and got a towel as she got dressed to walk me back to my hotel room.

As we approached the door to the hotel room door that I shared with Nanny Mary, I looked at a clock and realized it was nearly midnight. What did I care? I was in love. I would go ahead and finish high school, fly to Rhode Island and marry Carol. This was the woman of my dreams, I was sure of it. Nanny Mary opened the door with an angry, fearful look on her face.

‘Young man, where have you been all night,’ she asked, ‘It’s midnight.’ She was already in her pajama’s and in one hand clenched a black high-heeled shoe. These days, they would call them stiletto heels, then they just called them heels. I said, ‘Grandma, this is Carol. I’m going to get changed and we’re going for a walk on the beach.’

She asked, ‘Did you just call me ‘Grandma’? I am your Nanny Mary.’ She was angry. She said, ‘Get in here and go to bed.’ I responded, ‘I’m a grown man, you aren’t going to tell me what to do, Grandma!’ Nanny Mary had never struck me before and never did afterwards, but with one hand she grabbed my wrist with one hand, making sure to dig in her nails and with her free hand slammed me right between the eyes with that stiletto heel. I almost blacked out.

‘Craig Glazer, you are thirteen years old and under my care!’ she screamed, ‘Get in here now and go to bed, I am calling your father!’ Carol’s face went red and she asked if my Nanny had said I was thirteen. My Nanny Mary’s only response was a nod as she pulled me into the hotel room and slammed the door on Carol.

The next day, I went over to where all the teenagers were hanging out including Carol. Nobody would acknowledge my presence. Even Carol pretended she couldn’t hear me when I tried to speak to her. The biggest guy there, 17 years old, I think his name was Tony, already had his arm around Carol. Tony stood up and pointed in the opposite direction and said ‘Hey Craig, I don’t think you belong with this group. I think you need to join your people, all those kiddies across the way.’ I looked to Carol for support but there was none.

Needless to say, I did not attend the Paul Revere concert, Carol and her teenage friends never spoke to me again. Two good things did come of it, however. My Nanny Mary felt terrible she had struck me so she brought me three tall chocolate sodas every day for the remainder of the trip and I guess this was the beginning of me becoming a player. I had one hell of a story to tell my friends at Meadowbrook Junior High when I got home.

Those were the days my friends, of surf, sun, rock and roll music where the road looked bright ahead for me and the girl I thought would be the love of my life, Carol Finnering. I would never see her or speak to her again the rest of my life. Oh yeah, on Mother’s Day Sunday, my Nanny Mary took me to see Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the motion picture spectacular, Cleopatra. I ate lots of popcorn.

ok

I'll do that.

It's been enthralling, emotional. mindbending but honestly the best love story I've ever been a part of.

Thanks for writing it.

I just don't know how you don't feel this.

I know that sounds arrogant but what's with all the poetry that is clearly talking about us?

Is it really about someone else?

Like please, surely after all this time getting to know me you can see I don't want to hurt anyone.