The Prescription

The morning started, as most mornings did, with someone looking for something.

"Where's my other sock?"

"On your foot," Akari said, not looking up from her phone.

Shiya looked down. "That's the wrong one."

"It's a sock. It's got two holes."

"It's blue. Mine's the one with the, the cat."

"Then the cat ran away."

"Auntie!"

From the kitchen Shion called, "Akari, just help her, I'm not writing you another note."

"I am helping."

"Physically."

"I'm emotionally invested."

Kazuya went past with his tie hanging round his neck like a dead snake, one cuff buttoned. "Keys? Has anyone seen my keys?"

"By your elbow."

He looked. "Oh."

"Impressive."

"I'm still waking up."

Kazuya stole the corner of her toast and kept walking.

"That was mine."

"Quality control," he said, mouth full, already in the hall.

She stood holding the knife, butter going soft on the blade. The house was loud and untidy and half the socks were wrong, and she wouldn't have swapped it for anything.

She knelt and kissed Shiya's head. "Be good."

"I'm always good. Pancakes tomorrow?"

"We'll see."

"That means yes."

"It means we'll see."

"Honey!" Kazuya, from the front door. "Come here a sec!"

She went. Passing the living-room shelf she heard again, right beside her ear, close enough to feel on her skin.

Honey, I left the paper bag on the shelf, can you grab it?

"Yeah, yeah, okay."

She took the brown bag from beside the books without looking at it and slipped it into her workbag.

At the door he was glaring at his watch.

"What took you so long?"

"Just drive."

"I'm standing here waiting and you're telling me to hurry?"

"Kazuya."

"Fine. Fine."

Neither of them mentioned the bag.

Route 9 had stopped completely, a long red smear of brake lights up the hill. Kazuya leaned on the horn.

"It doesn't work, you know."

"I'm expressing myself."

"They can hear you. They just don't care."

He sighed and let his head fall back against the seat. Neither of them said anything for a while. A man on a scooter threaded between the cars, and Shion watched him go.

Then the radio started something old with a stupid whistling intro.

"Is that—"

"Yeah."

"You played this the day we met."

"The café played it."

"You said it was your favourite song."

"It was."

"You said that about four songs."

"I'm a man of many favourites." He turned it up, just a little. She put her feet on the dashboard, which he hated, and he said nothing.

The whistling went on. He tapped the wheel in the wrong rhythm, and she let him.

"You're off the beat."

"I'm interpreting."

She laughed, and he glanced at her, and for a second his face did the soft thing it only did when he thought she wasn't looking.

The cars ahead began to crawl. He took her hand off her knee and held it on the gearstick until he needed it back.

At the clinic she kissed his cheek, and he said something she didn't catch, and then she was through the doors.

The clinic changed the moment the door closed behind her.

Records. Schedules. Unanswered reports. She set her bag down and reached for the phone.

"Yume? Could you come in for a moment?"

Ishida appeared in the doorway instead, files under his arm.

"Looking for Asako?"

"Yes. Where is she?"

"She called earlier. Something urgent. She'll be late."

He left the files and went. Shion pulled the first report toward her.

One became three. Three became ten. The phone rang. A patient arrived early. An administrative note needed her signature. By the time she finished, her shoulders ached and her eyes felt dry.

She stood, took her bag, and went to the cafeteria.

It was empty.

That was fine. It was between rushes. She ordered at the counter, sat by the window, and reached into her bag for a napkin.

Her fingers found paper.

The brown bag. She had carried it all morning. She had carried it into the building.

She opened it. A black book, white letters across the cover.

YOU ARE ONE OF US!

No author. She opened it to the middle, expecting nothing, and the first line was her.

She was seven when she first lied about the dog.

She had never told anyone about the dog.

The teapot cracked on the Tuesday Shiya was born, and she cried over it in the hospital bathroom because it was easier than crying over everything else.

Page after page. The name she'd written on her hand at fifteen until the biro went through the skin. What she'd said aloud to the empty chair at three in the morning, certain no one heard.

A thought from a lift, years ago, lost completely until this second. It came back whole. It was her life, in her own cadence, as if someone had stood behind her for thirty-four years taking dictation.

Then the lines stopped halfway down a page.

She is reading this now.

Somewhere behind the counter, cups clinked, the coffee machine hissed, and two customers talked over each other.

She looked up. The counter was empty.

There was no kitchen noise behind it, no radio, no scrape of a tray. The chairs were pushed in at every table, and it felt as though no one had ever sat at them.

"Hello?"

Her voice went out into the room and did not come back.

A latte stood on her table. She hadn't seen it arrive. It was still steaming.

Her heart began to hammer. She told herself to stand, to walk to the door, and found she didn't want to move. Moving would mean the room was real.

The menu board went dark. Then white letters crawled across it, row after row.

YOU ARE ONE OF US!

YOU ARE ONE OF US!

She snatched up the paper menu. Same sentence, in neat lines, to the bottom of the page.

YOU ARE ONE OF US!

The napkins. The sugar sachets. The foam of the latte, pale letters rising and breaking.

YOU ARE ONE OF US!

Her phone lit by itself in her hand.

YOU ARE ONE OF US!

She dropped it. It landed face-up, glowing, and she stared at it and felt something in her chest go small and cold. She had a husband and a daughter and a whole life of people, and not one of them was in this room.

The world had been tidied away, and she'd been left in the one place that hadn't bothered to hide the join.

Through the window, a billboard across the road. It had been an advert for a bank. Now it was black.

YOU ARE ONE OF US!

She looked down at her wrist. It was there already, in biro, in her own handwriting, pressed so hard the skin had split.

YOU ARE ONE OF US!

"No," she whispered. "No, no, no."

She backed against the window, the glass cold through her blouse.

Behind her something touched the pane from outside, and she turned, and a finger was drawing the words slowly on the glass. A finger with no hand behind it.

YOU ARE ONE OF US!

you are one of us

It wasn't a voice. It was like remembering something she had never known. It sat at the back of her teeth, and it spoke in Kazuya's voice, warm and impatient, the voice that said honey, come here.

you are one of us honey come here you are one of us

"Please," she said. Her voice came out tiny. "I want to go home. I don't want to be, I'm not, please, I'm not—"

She slid down the glass and shut her eyes and pressed both hands over her ears, and it made no difference, because it was never coming through her ears.

It was coming closer. A breath at her shoulder. A warmth. Someone leaning in.

Then silence. A long one. The kind that comes before a thing.

Something cold and light settled on her shoulder.

She opened her eyes.

A face hung an inch from hers. Upside down, hair dangling, eyes huge, mouth open in the middle of a word.

Shion screamed. It tore out of her, raw, and the whole café slammed back into being: cups, chairs, a tray crashing, a kettle shrieking, twenty conversations breaking over her at once.

"Ma'am! Ma'am, it's me! It's Yume! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you didn't answer, I only touched your shoulder!"

Yume crouched in front of her, white-faced, keys clenched in her fist. Heads had turned at the other tables.

Shion grabbed her sleeve like the edge of a cliff and could not let go.

"What time is it?"

"Almost one. Shion, you've been staring at that wall for two hours."

The latte had sunk to a grey skin, a brown ring where the milk had pulled away from the espresso. She drank some anyway. It was cold and tasted like it had given up.

She shoved the book across. "Read it."

Yume turned it over. "'You Are One of Us.'" She skimmed a page, flipped on. "Some kind of philosophy? Everyone's basically the same underneath." She frowned. "Is this yours?"

Shion took it back. Dense, ordinary paragraphs about solidarity and the self. She turned them hard, searching for the dog, the teapot, the chair.

Nothing. Just print.

"Okay," Yume said gently. "I'm taking you home."

Yume drove with both hands on the wheel and talked about nothing, the weather, a parking ticket, the way people do when they're scared. Shion leaned her head on the window and watched the road without seeing it.

At the house Yume steered her to the sofa and pulled off her shoes. Then she was up and moving through the rooms.

She went straight to the hall cupboard for the blanket, and straight to the kitchen drawer beside the stove for the thermometer, and the second drawer down for the paracetamol, and she never once stopped to look.

Shion watched her from the sofa, too tired to ask why that didn't feel strange. Then it did, a little, like a hair on the tongue, and then Yume was tucking the blanket round her feet and it slid away.

"Drink," Yume said, and put the water in her hand. "Do you want me to stay?"

"No. Thank you."

"I'm only a call away."

The door clicked. The fridge hummed.

It was Akari who broke the quiet, an hour later, dropping her bag in the hall. "Why's the front light on, are we burgling ourselves—" She stopped in the doorway. Then she crossed the room in four strides and flung her arms round Shion, bag strap and all.

"You absolute idiot. Yume rang me. You sat there for two hours?"

"I was thinking."

"You were haunting the cafeteria." But she didn't let go. She held on until Shion felt her own ribs ease, and then added in her ear, quieter, "You scared me. Don't do that."

"Sorry."

"I'm going to tell everyone you're soft."

"Tell them."

"I will. I'll tell the neighbours."

Shiya appeared in the doorway in her pyjamas, wrong socks and all, and climbed up without a word. She laid her small hand flat on Shion's forehead, very seriously, the way she'd seen doctors do.

"You're a bit warm."

"Am I?"

"I'll get you a biscuit." She slid off and came back with half a digestive, crumbs down her front, and held it out. "It's the good half."

Shion took it. Something in her throat gave a little. "Thank you, baby."

By the time Kazuya got home the house smelled of rice and the lamps were on. He listened to Akari's version, and Shiya's, and then sat on the edge of the sofa and said nothing for a while, just held Shion's hand in both of his.

"Take leave," he said at last. "A week. Two, if you need it."

"The patients—"

"Will survive. They survived before you."

"That's a terrible thing to say."

"It's true, though."

She almost argued. She was so tired she could feel it in her teeth. "Okay," she said. "A week."

"Good." He kissed her knuckles. "Thank you."

Later, in the dark, with his arm around her and the house gone still, she almost didn't ask. She wanted him to laugh. She wanted him to say oh, that, I'll get it tomorrow.

"I'm sorry about the book," she said into his shoulder. "I left it at the café. The black one. You asked me this morning. The paper bag, on the shelf."

His arm went still. "What paper bag?"

"You said it. Honey, I forgot the bag. I heard you."

He was up on one elbow. "Shion. I never said that." His thumbs were warm on her face. "Look at me. I was looking for my keys. I never asked you to bring anything."

She looked at the man whose voice she knew better than her own, and for the first time wondered whether knowing a voice had ever meant knowing who was speaking.

And softly, from somewhere in the room, just beside her ear:

honey?

------------

The café was empty under the city lights.

The black book lay on a table beside a cold cup of coffee.

Footsteps emerged from the dark. A figure stopped at the table and looked down at the book for a long time.

Then the figure picked it up.

Red light moved across the windows. One pane. Then another. Then every sheet of glass in the room, glowing the same deep red...