Sayane and Masaru Pt I: Still Here

They made their way through the crimson lobby and to the door. Movement was slow. Sayane’s tapping cane was the only sound to be heard as they gingerly moved away from the room where he’d found her.

Masaru was waking from his dissociative spiral, and in the face of renewed clarity, he decided he was leaving again. It didn’t matter that his shift was only halfway over; he was taking Sayane back to her home and would stay there beside her in his apartment just in case she needed anything. Even if he got in trouble. Even if he got fired. None of it mattered anymore.

At that moment, his only concern was making sure she fled this place and had time to heal.

Questions about her situation began to rise in his mind, but he didn’t feel it was his place to ask them. Especially right now.

Walls began to smear around them as they neared the exit. Creaks and pops hinted that the edges of joinery were bending to watch them leave. Just as they reached the door, the poster of call girls fell from its display mount with a papered thud.

Masaru paused and turned to see the large advertisement lying face up on the floor. Ethereal, haunting smiles of airbrushed faces beamed up towards the ceiling, but it still somehow felt like their eyes were all on him. A chill ran over his neck as he debated picking it up and returning it to its place.

Sayane didn’t speak. At the last second, Masaru decided against it and instead opened the door. A small smear of hate turned into a spiteful smile as Masaru chuckled to himself. The hotel had wanted him to pick up the poster. He was almost sure of that. In some way, it was toying with him to keep them there, even just a little longer. But it didn’t work.

They exited the building as a gust of wind created a vacuum of pressure around them. The door slammed with a violent thud, causing Sayane’s body to flinch.

“Sorry,” Masaru whispered as he locked the entry.

She merely shook her head.

Moments later, they were boarding the train in silence.

Announcements chimed out on loudspeakers as jingles and other audio cues alerted them to upcoming stops. Traction motors activated, and their swift acceleration carried them away from that horrific place. Rocking suspensions sent gentle vibrations through the tilting car as it rounded a bend. Her eyes closed. He dared to inhale and allow a faint hint of relief to wash over him.

“Thank you,” she whispered as her scuffed knees pulled inward against themselves.

“Of course,” was all he needed to say.

Soft whistles along the edges of his words told her of a repressed speech impediment that had never truly faded. He smelled of cedar. She’d never noticed it before, but it was there, like the scent of a slightly damp forest in the fall. He seemed to breathe through his nose most often. Shakes in the cushioning told her his leg was once again tapping, but not to the severity it sometimes reached when he was lost in thought on his balcony. Warmth lingered in her lower lip.

Half an hour later, they were at the familiar stairwell of their apartment complex. Silent tears ran down her cheeks, and he didn’t fully understand why, but he knew it was best to simply stand there beside her as her cane reached the stairs’ edge and her palm found the railing.

One step at a time.

Grunts of strain pulled from her stomach as she went.

Step by step by step by step.

They reached their floor, and the crying intensified. Sayane stopped moving, allowing Masaru to casually move from beside her to in front of her.

It was subtle. Before he’d noticed her hand moving, she’d found the edge of his jacket and caught him mid-stride.

“I’m so sorry to ask this… but… but… can I come to your apartment? I don’t want to be in mine. And I don’t want to be alone.”

Her face was contorted in humiliated anguish as she stared ahead at her upcoming door. The words surprised Masaru, and he was a little flustered. He hadn’t cleaned. His home was small and boring. He’d never had a single guest.

But it didn’t matter.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he sent it to voicemail without glancing at who it was.

“Of course. Do you need me to go into your apartment to grab you anything?” he asked.

She flinched at the offer.

“M-maybe some toiletries. I’d like to shower, but not there.”

“Understood. I can go in a moment.”

Shifts in tension moved his jacket fabric between her fingers as she processed, trying to say something.

“I… I really thought it was going to be this time…” she exhaled as though speaking to herself.

“This time?”

She blinked her eyes clear and shook her head. Her fingers released his jacket.

“Nothing,” she mumbled as she turned her face from the door and moved down to his.

With that, Masaru unlocked his entrance, and the two of them stepped into the solitude that had only ever known him.

He made sure the door closed as quietly as possible.

Nervous stammers almost overpowered his words, but he still forced them out.

“I-I-I have your clothes still. They’re in my closet. Do you want to shower now? I c-can start the water for you. And I can go get your stuff while you wash. Or-or do you want your own shampoo and things?”

She shook her head.

“I can just use yours, if that’s okay.”

He noticed she was focusing and wondered what she was perceiving.

She was focusing on everything. Remnant notes of incense hung in the air. The room felt larger against her shoulders and ears, as though his entrance was more open than his. Fingertips traced the linoleum edges of countertops, which did remind her of her own. His ceiling fan was spinning, but it was in a different spot than hers. He was quietly winded from the stairs.

Masaru slid into his slippers in silence as Sayane stood in the center of the entrance without speaking. Slow, steady breaths were the only sounds she could relinquish.

Masaru made his way to the bathroom, daring to leave her alone even though a small part of him feared she would vanish if he looked away for too long.

His presence faded as he moved into the other room, and Sayane was left to feel the slight temperature difference between how his home felt versus hers. As she thought of her own dwelling that was just on the other side of the wall, an unusual feeling of distance moved over her. She’d spent days thinking she’d never return there, and now the very concept of setting foot into its vinyl-floored emptiness felt absolutely strange.

At least he’d offered to go get things for her, so she’d be able to prolong returning.

Water started from around a corner, and she could hear it splashing against its plastic walls.

She slowly bent down to remove her shoes, and her roughened denim shorts scraped against the cigarette burns on her buttocks, causing her to grimace. Shame returned. The white cane fell to the floor with a plastic clack.

Panic consumed her like a flash flood, and she was immediately drowned in self-loathing.

Masaru heard the slapping and punching thuds as he closed the closet.

“Sayane?” he asked as he looked to see what was happening.

When he peered around the corner, he saw she had collapsed into a squat and was currently sobbing as her fist repeatedly struck her right temple.

Masaru rushed to her side and reached out for her, but he remembered her request and stopped himself from touching her. She was sobbing now.

Knuckles struck skull.

Each heavy thud sent flashes of white into her unseeing sight and she wondered if that was what it was like to stare into the sun.

Guttural, hateful cries wrestled themselves from her chest as she assaulted every inch of her head. She sensed a palm reaching for her, then pausing.

“Sayane. Sayane it-it-it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I’m not okay. I’m not okay at all,” she cried as her fist opened and latched onto her hair.

Masaru’s eye burned, and he saw himself in her. Without meaning to, his left hand gently raised and touched the skin just below his eye socket.

“Please, don’t hurt yourself....”

She paused. Skin pulled across knuckles as her fist stayed raised in hunger.

His hand stayed there beside her: outstretched for support but never breaking her request not to be touched. Masaru saw it morphing and blurring as he entered another phase of partial erasure and return. Cataclysmic dread soaked his back as he wondered if he could actually even touch her if they’d wanted.

Her head turned towards him.

“What if I told you I did want to hurt myself?” she hollowly asked.

Masaru couldn’t answer.

“What if I told you I’d been hurting myself for years, just to spite them?”

Her face was still contorted in disgust, but her fist began to lower.

“Do you know what happens to girls like me after they stop making enough money?” she muttered.

There was a sneering hate in her voice, but it didn’t feel like it was directed to Masaru. If anything, it felt like it was directed to her.

“No,” Masaru answered.

“They disappear. One day, they leave their homes for the last time, probably not knowing it. They lock their doors, but they never come home. Because our owners decide at some point we’re worth more being sold overseas or dead and ripped apart as organ donors for the black market.”

Tears cut across her face, and she pushed them away with a bitter hiss as she tried to steady herself.

“So I made sure they’ll at least never get that part. Every substance I could consume. Every untreated infection. Every cheap, processed meal. I wanted to make sure I was rotting before I died.”

Purple veins streaking her pale, sickly skin now made more sense. The drinking and perpetual smoking did too. Scars of track marks on her arms and cutting lines on her legs told stories he'd never know.

“You-you try to make yourself sick?” Masaru asked.

Sayane nodded and wiped her nose.

“One day I’ll die, or they’ll kill me. And I know they’ll cut me open to sell the rest of me for parts. But I’ll make sure every goddamn organ is worthless. They won’t get another yen from my body. And I honestly thought this was going to be that week. I thought I was going to die. But I’m still here. I’m still here,” she cried.

He wanted to speak.

He’d never been good at engaging with people.

He wasn’t even sure he’d ever had a conversation last this long with someone beyond a customer.

None of that mattered. He wanted to be kind to her.

“You’re still here, Sayane. And… and… and… you can stay here if you want.”

Her eyes stayed closed as her lips pulled back in grimacing gratitude.

“I’ll sleep on another futon. You can have the bed. I’ll cook something for us while you shower.”

Her fist slacked, and her hand angled towards him with the smallest centimeter shift, but then it stopped. Sayane inhaled and then nodded.

Masaru’s phone buzzed once more, and he sent it to voicemail without even removing it from his pocket.

Calming repetitive splashes streamed on from the bathroom as the shower continued to spray water for no one. They stayed there, crouched on the floor, leaning towards one another like two structurally failing buildings. Her fist lowered, and his hand relaxed but stayed partially extended towards her as it faded in and out of clarity. Her sniffles echoed and lingered in the air longer than they should have. All around them, the walls smeared and floated upwards in steady streams of slowly unraveling reality.