Reiwa V - "Reciprocality"

One year to the day of the death, Saki prayed in the morning to the little shrine on the shelf in the back of the small six-tatami room, glancing up at the black-and-white photo of Great-Grandmother Youko when she was younger. She wore a kimono, her husband - having finally returned from the POW camp in Siberia late in 1948 - standing next to her, the little baby in her hands. People didn’t smile back then, at least in this photo - perhaps there was nothing to smile about.

Had she been following tradition, today would’ve been the day Saki would be freed from dressing in all black. Black clothing for one year straight after the death in the family, that’s what custom called for. But they lived in the modern age, so Saki had been wearing school uniforms and sweaters and skirts throughout that year-long period. Today she wore the familiar sailor fuku of her high school, the white shirt with its blue collar and gray skirt, that marked her as a Joshikousei - JK. She cursed the word and cursed the uniform - why had her high school hung onto the outdated sailor fuku while so many others wore blazers and neckties? The concepts of JK and moe clung to her like the late summer humidity that ensconced her as she stepped out of her family’s apartment and into the September air.

Saki was the typical high schooler - a little over five feet tall, jet black hair that seemed to nonchalantly spill down to her shoulders. Her blue bookbag hung from her shoulder as she waited for the bus in the muggy air of dawn. An anime character mascot in the bus stop told her how respectful it would be to wait in line. Saki did so, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth as her great-grandmother taught her to do so in stressful situations. She didn’t talk to the fellow girls waiting at the bus stop with her - their bags had too many stickers and pins on them, they talked in high-pitch voices and giggled when nothing was funny, and assumed these fake personas in public that made Saki’s skin crawl.

She decided to walk today, leaving behind the anime girl mascot and the girls, hammered by mass media, unconsciously mimicking it. Saki headed up the completely smooth sidewalk alongside a completely smooth street where buses flashed by with idol anime singers advertised on the side. Wouldn’t it be nice to pound a hole in the streets, crack it all up, bring a sledgehammer onto everything?

A 7/11 waited nearby; Saki was rarely hungry, but she knew her great-grandmother would want her to eat, so she abruptly turned inside. The lights were so bright, the floor so pristine, that it nearly blinded her. She dropped a candy bar on the counter; the cashier’s face lit up, assuming the public mask. Who wanted to be a 7/11 cashier for the rest of their life, especially this early in the morning? But the cashier, following his training, spoke like he worshiped both the 7 and the 11. On the walk to the school, Saki could only stomach half of it and wished there were trash cans on the way.

School was always the same. Put on the indoor shoes that marked her as a senior, sit alone in the classroom without so much as a word of greeting, but she didn’t need it nor wanted it anyway. The trio of girls giggling in the front corner; the boys eyeing those girls from the back corner; the girls showing off new phone cases and keychains along the window; the boys talking baseball like their lives depended on the outcomes. Perhaps they did. These people had nothing but consumption, nothing but purchases and deliveries to sustain and nourish them. It was all so fake.

The school day moved along like the dog days of summer, perpetually hot and slow and tiring. Saki ate alone at lunch and didn’t mind that either. When the school day ended, she sighed and trudged down perfectly paved streets to her club meeting. She would’ve been a proud member of the go home club, thank you very much, but her mother said she needed to join one to make up for (what she considered to be) lackluster grades. Joining a club was the worst thing of all, because the cult of cute that ruled Japan could be symbolized by the simple formula:

High school girls + school club + hobby = kawaii. All that was missing was the four members of her Cultural Research Club jumping into the air as part of an anime opening.

At least the meeting was at a McDonalds. Saki could at least smile at that. She could get hungry for it, too, and sat down at the table with the waiting club members with a huge tray of food. It took all her energy to keep up with the stereotypical members of her club.

“Woah, you eat like a pig,” Kiyoko the bucho joked, letting out a hearty laugh from her small frame as she slid over to let Saki into the booth. Kiyoko’s bookbag was covered with anime pins and her legs were covered with black tights and she was constantly restless, tapping her fingers on the table even as another member of the club chided her about low test scores.

Dumbass otaku genki girl.

Chikako, the tall dark-haired piano protege and academic superweapon, ended her tirade when it became clear Kiyoko wasn’t listening. She calmed herself and glanced at Saki, a smile on her face. “I’m glad you made it, Saki. I mean, not like I was worried about you or anything.”

Tsunderes are so tiring to deal with.

“How was the walk here?” Hana asked in her soft-spoken voice. She had a calming, serene atmosphere of an idle rich woman about her - until her glasses slid down and she fumbled around with them before they could fall off and break (as they tended to do).

Clumsy meganekko Yamato Nadeshiko ojou-san.

“It was fine,” Saki mumbled in between eating. The worst, worst thing of all was how Saki neatly fit into the group - the fourth girl who was just kind of there and occasionally had some lines, very few of them truly memorable. This whole moe hellscape was a perpetual prison, a society that took a certain view of her just because she was a high school girl, a society of hierarchies and roles cemented in stone. For fuck’s sake, why she’d have to call everyone older than her -senpai and her friends -chan and strangers -san? What’s so hard about a first name basis? She lived in a society where you didn’t need to think on your feet, where everything ran smoothly, a society that shaped everyone neatly into boxes, a society which worked for everyone who accepted being shaped neatly into a box.

That was why Saki ate her McDonalds like her life depended on it. Because, just across the sea - there was a land of opportunity that awaited her. One day, she would make it there.

Saki ate quietly, enjoying the finest American cuisine, a little sad that the McDouble in her hands wasn’t the true thing, because a real McDouble would be made at a McDonalds with a drive-through, where the chefs spoke Spanish or Russian or any of those diverse languages, where customers wore pink shirts or basketball shorts, where joggers ran shirtless outside and nobody cared if you went outside without an umbrella to keep the sun from tanning you.

After about five minutes of debating about which end to eat a chocolate coronet from, Chikako finally barked some sense into the club president.

“Ahem,” Kiyoko began, clearly enjoying any opportunity to give a speech, “We’re meeting today to discuss serious business - what to display at the club booth for the Culture Festival.”

Saki frowned. She wanted a Homecoming football game and the thing they called the Homecoming dance where she could be crowned the Homecoming queen. Anybody could be the queen, and then all the high schoolers could drive home down those long highways and endless spaces. Then they’d have that Thanksgiving meal the next day, with turkey and ham, and they could watch that Lions team lose their football game-

“Saki!” Chikako exclaimed, waving a hand in front of her face. It took a moment, but Saki realized the other three club members were staring at her.

“Huh?”

“We were saying how much we liked your stories about America,” Hana said gently. “They really show how different life there is compared to here.” Chikako and Kiyoko nodded at varying levels of agreement.

“It’s just a fantasy,” Saki mumbled, trying not to let the inevitable crimson shade seep onto her face. “Just letting off some steam.”

Kiyoko whistled. “Well, if that’s just letting off some steam, then I can’t wait to see what you’ll write when you give it your all.”

“What do you like about America so much?” Chikako asked.

“Is it the cartoons they got there?” Kiyoko rested her elbows on the table and propped her face up on her palms. “I know you like all of them, and I know they got all those violent television shows too. Is it the movies?”

Saki leaned back in her booth and for the first time in a long while, let a smile drift across her face. It's not like she had rehearsed this monologue for such an occasion during long periods in the bath. “Where do I even begin? The entire country is based on the American Dream. Anybody can be whatever they want and that’s how it is. Individuality. People can be themselves without conforming to anything. I’m tired of moe and putting on public masks and needing to say ‘oishi!!!’ after eating any goddamn thing.”

She jabbed a finger on the table. “Freedom. That’s why I love America. I don’t have to be an office lady or expected to have kids. I can start over and go to college at age 28 or 38 if I want to. I want to own a McMansion and have a huge pick-up truck and shoot a gun. But those are just examples. Whatever I want to be, I can be in America. But here, I’m just stuck in a role.”

Saki grabbed a fry and idly swirled it around a pool of ketchup on her tray. “The girl in the stories I wrote. She’s all about freedom. She wants to be a writer, so she pursues it. She doesn’t have to think school was the best time in her life. She has a car, she has a job, her aims are her own. She’s free.”

Kiyoko raised a finger. “Ah, I see. So America-san is like Eren Jaeger, right-”

Kiyoko’s voice trailed off as Saki interrupted with a sharp sigh. “No, that’s not what I’m saying! The media's warping our personalities. Not everything has to be about anime. Nor should everything be like anime. I want to escape anime and its consequences. America covers the width of an entire continent. That frontier spirit means there’s no limitations to your imagination. Too bad I’m stuck on an archipelago.”

The club fell silent for a moment. Saki rubbed the back of her neck and then let her hand fall to her side.

“I’m not jealous because I don't fit in,” she said at last, as if someone here accused her of it. “It’s more like…if Japan is Eden, then I wish I had been born somewhere just east of it.”