Unless I cheat

Sometimes, the best things happen in the worst of places.

I follow Yui down two staircases, into the bowels of an apartment building that doubles as a breeding ground for drug-resistant diseases. The walls are this cross-stitched mess of black mould and piss stains, and the carpet gives off a pungent smell that should be classed as a biological weapon. Still, I’m here willingly. Why?

Because from the moment Yui first spoke to me, I’ve been dying to ask her –

“Do you act like this with everyone, or am I just special like that?”

“I do act like that with everyone,” Yui says, “and you are special like that. You’re the first one to actually clap back at me.”

“Wow. That easy, huh?”

“Oh, hush,” she punches my elbow. A little harder and it would’ve broken it rather than just leave a bruise. “Look, it’s not that easy. You just – have a vibe, okay?”

“Quite a lot hanging on just a vibe.”

“Not really? It’s not like you know my name –”

“Yui.”

“Exactly. Not like you know my real name, or my face. And when this is all said and done, well – Chiba’s a big place,” she mumbles, sounding as wistful as a widow. “Doubt we’ll ever run into each other again.”

I shoot her a subtle glare, “Don’t jinx it.”

We step off the landing, and venture all the way down to the end of the corridor. Our destination is the second-to-last door, a thin slab of wood surrounded by a Jackson Pollock of blood splatters. Yui knocks and, though we hear movement on the other side, nobody answers for a while.

“So,” I break the silence, “tell me more about this vibe.”

“Is that your way to fish for compliments?”

“Just curious how beating the shit out of me became a choice, that’s all.”

“Well,” Yui ponders, “I don’t know. I guess I’d hate to hurt someone who’d jump after me – unless they asked for it.”

“Lucky I’m not a masochist, then.”

“What about my vibe?” she chirps, and I realise that we’ve long ago stopped trying to peer at the person inside through imaginary peepholes. Instead, we’ve been staring at each other, with a candour that doesn’t really care for the how’s and why’s that brought us to this moment.

“What about it?” I say, more defensively than I intended.

“Just wondering. Bit strange that the guy who was nothing but jail this and police that only moments ago is getting pretty chummy with a criminal, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, well –”

Suddenly, the door clicks open, saving me from having to process and stumble through an explanation.

Shivering under a layer of hand-woven quilts and moth-eaten clothes is a woman with skin as pale and dry and flaky as the paint lining the walls of her bare-bones studio. Plastic tubes extend out of her nose, feeding back into a small oxygen tank that she doesn’t look strong enough to even budge, let alone carry around. And though there’s nothing but a thin dusting of hair on her brow, I can still tell she’s happy by the vibrant glint in her oaken eyes.

“Yui,” she mutters, tears welling up in her voice. “I thought – it’s been almost a week. I was worried you wouldn’t –”

“Issues with the supply chain, auntie,” Yui says, flinging a ‘shut-your-mouth’ peek at me. “Still, the Red Mountains never forget their valued clients.”

The auntie perks up. Her decrepit hand trembles towards the bag, but Yui quickly pulls it out of her grasp.

“Sorry,” she mutters, a hint of genuine remorse behind that salesman’s apology. “Rules are rules. I – Payment first.”

“Right, right,” the auntie sighs. Digging through her cardigan, she produces a small, brown envelope. “Least you ask nicer than those insurance hounds.”

“And charge less, too,” Yui chuckles nervously.

The trade happens quickly and without much emotion. The auntie checks her pills are all there and Yui does the same with all the coins and bills, before stashing the envelope in her jacket.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Yui says. “And remember to always take them in the morning.”

The auntie shoots one last charged glance at her, says a heartfelt, half-mouthed, “Thank you,” then closes the door.

And that should be where we separate, but it’s not.

We walk out of the building together, each of us silent and deep in their own thoughts. Outside, the street lamps come alive with a flickering glow and a low, buzzing hum, the song of urban decay. Shaking her head left, then right, Yui crosses the road, then carries down the block at a slow, shaken pace. As perturbed as her, I stay by her side. She notices me, but doesn’t complain.

I could apprehend her so easily now. A carefully placed sucker punch to the tense back of her neck and she’ll be out cold till the nearest koban. But as soon as my fists ball, they unfurl and grow limp. I can’t bring myself to do that to her. Not when her eyes are welling up with regret, fixed on that one spot on the pavement. Not when regret weighs down her shoulders and shimmers on her lips.

Honestly, I don’t know why we’re still together, when she’s had one, two, three crossroads to ditch me at. I don’t know anything about her, nor the shady deals she strikes, selling questionably-sourced chemo to terminally ill cancer patients. But I’m glad that, if nothing else, we’ve shared this long and quiet walk together. Even though, as all nice things do, it has to come to an end. And I’m not looking forward to that.

At last, Yui stops. We’re in front of a convenience store that looks like it sells counterfeit sweets and only from dusk till dawn. I watch her shrinking in her shoulders, more settled than before, but with a sullen, farewell gaze still.

“Well,” she swivels back and forth, heels to tiptoes, “this is me.”

“You live here?”

“No? This is the only place in our ward that still sells candy cigarettes – And where we say goodbye forever.”

I smile, only to offset my frown. “What do you need those for?”

“A more authentic, yet still legal delinquent look. Also, sugar cravings.”

“That’s – how would you even smoke them?”

“You can’t seriously think I have this thing on 24/7.”

“I dunno, maybe you’ve got a congenital deformity you’d rather the world never sees. Or – maybe you’re that rare, ultra kind of pretty that brings about more risks than rewards.”

She chuckles, intrigued and the space between us feels like it went from an infinity of daggers to the arm’s length it always was. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Have you heard about those pick-up artists who claim they can go from eye contact to sloppy make-outs in less than a minute? Well, I’m half as delusional, but twice as big a moron. Because, as I reach for her ear and gently peel off her mask, I expected to see a smug, ‘like what you see?’ smirk. Instead, I get a grimace of betrayal, frozen between her flushed cheeks and her snake bites. Which soon melts into a primal rage and a very determined blow, aimed directly at my head.

My fight or flight instincts kick in right away. I dodge back, but she quickly switches gears and seizes my lapel in a vice grip. Next thing I know, she pivots, grabs my arm and starts pulling forward. And, if she were the slightest bit stronger, I’d be on the ground now, picking up the pieces of my shattered spine. But she needs time to set up the throw and that gives me an opportunity to reverse her grab and push her away.

What follows is a close quarter combat starring her rabid fury and my avowed lack of enthusiasm and care for her wellbeing. Don’t get me wrong, she’s cracked. Every punch and kick flows swiftly like a coursing river and carries the force of a great typhoon. But, at the end of the day, I’m a head taller and she’s twenty pounds lighter. In short –

“You really shouldn’t be doing this,” I say. God, I feel like an asshole.

“Why –” a blocked heel “ – the hell –” a parried knee“– not?”

“Because there’s no way you can win this?”

Miraculously, that works. With a groan, she retreats, panting as she wipes her sweat on her sleeve.

“You’re right,” she spits.

“Good. Because I don’t want to hurt you and you are acting pretty irrationally.”

“Odd choice of dying words.”

“Didn’t you just say you can’t beat me?”

“Yeah,” she says, springing forward, “unless I cheat.”

My childhood was a gauntlet of every pain known to man. I’ve been chewed on by Russian bears, had a couple thousand volts run between my nipples and read an entire shelf of BL harem manga in a day. But nothing compares to the undying waves of agony emanating from my ballsack, as I writhe in the aftermath of a quick and well-placed kick.

Yui approaches my wriggling body, retrieves her mask from my twitching fingers, then scampers away with a look that’s half concern, half ‘I hope you stay dead’. And that look sticks with me. I think about it as I limp back home. I think about it as I squirm in my bed, trying to find a sleeping position where I’m not whimpering with every breath I take. And I’m still thinking about it as morning rolls around and I need to prepare for my first day of school.

I put on my uniform, comb my hair, cook breakfast for two, help Anna with her tie knot – she’s managed to turn a half windsor into a full noose – then, I’m off. The sun is at its usual place in the sky. The traffic signals all turn green after being red for a while. The road leading to school is packed with people dressed like me, all heading in the same, expected direction. “Hi,” some say in English as they notice I’m a stranger unlike them. “Hi,” I reply in unaccented Japanese, to announce the contrary.

Already, I feel the clutches of that same old, dull routine digging into me. The smell of chalk, the idle shuffle of my loafers against polished linoleum floors, the tepid, washed off colours of the school hallways. A sigh bubbles in my throat as I make my way to the classroom where I’m sure a year will pass by in the blink of an eye.

I reach for the door handle at the same time as someone else. Listlessly, I turn to this girl with oddly rough fingers and calloused knuckles, only to find her staring back at me with pure, unadulterated shock. She recognises me and, right away, so do I.

Those sparkling blue eyes, concealed by thick-rimmed glasses. Those thin, shivering lips and the two empty slits beneath where piercings should’ve been. And those strangely perfect legs hidden under a skirt worn almost infuriatingly up to snuff.

It’s funny. She seemed to be so confident when she said goodbye, when she said that we would never run into each other again. But alas, she had to cheat right before we broke it all off.

And, we all know that cheaters never prosper.