by Misumi Kubo
The ice cube in Keiichiro’s teacup had melted, so the surface of the liquid swelled up over the rim of the cup. It looked as if it might overflow at any time. What was this called again? Was it “surface tension,” or was that something else? I felt like asking Keiichiro right away, but going by the way he’d been acting at dinner, I guessed it was better to wait until the following day. Just one more drop of water in this cup, and the tea would spill over. I could hear the sound of a TV blaring and a kid shrieking with laughter, likely coming from the apartment next door. The cherry blossoms were out already, meaning it was officially spring, but the nights were still pretty chilly, and I shut the door to the balcony that I’d left open. I hadn’t yet started on my hamburger, so I wrapped it in cling wrap and put it in the fridge. That would do for lunch tomorrow, I thought, and as I worked my way through the remains of Keiichiro’s burger, I listened to the sound of water from the tap dripping into a mug I’d left in the sink.
I know this is probably a totally clichéd thing to even think, but back at school I’d often pictured a cup sitting there inside my chest, like the one in the sink. Every time I was bullied or teased, it was like another drop of liquid falling into the cup, building up slowly inside me.
I still don’t know exactly what it was that prompted the bullying. What I do know for a fact is that I was fat, ugly, stupid, bad at sports, and just generally slow, and I probably came out with a lot of dumb stuff—the kind of stuff you weren’t supposed to say, like I had today with Mrs. Kimura. Back then my eyelids were so swollen that my eyes became these little slits, and when I looked at someone—even if just in a regular way—they’d act like I had been glaring at them and call out: “Whoa, Satomi gave me the eye again!”
The school wasn’t particularly academic, but it was Catholic, and there were strict rules about how we should behave, so maybe the kids were looking for someone to take their stress out on. But actually, there probably weren’t any clear-cut reasons why it began, especially. They just wanted to pick on someone and there I was, an easy target. When I messed up tons of times in our softball game for the school tournament, a group of kids locked me in the recording studio and started in on me, saying how it was my fault our class hadn’t won, swearing at me and insulting me and that kind of stuff. Thinking about it now, that recording studio was the perfect spot for bullying people. So long as that soundproofed door was closed, nobody outside could hear so much as a whisper from within.
I spent break and lunchtimes sketching my favorite anime characters. One time I came back from the bathroom to find the notebook I’d left on my desk with its pages all ripped up. On the cover someone had written in black marker gross otaku scum. The thing was, I didn’t have any friends I could talk to, and I’d got into the habit of talking to myself inside my head, so when I saw what was written, the thought that went through my head immediately was, Oh, I’m scarcely worthy of being called an otaku! This seemed pretty funny to me at the time, so I sort of tittered to myself, but I guess I was being watched because I heard someone say: “Whoa, she’s so creepy!”
Of course, it got me down when that kind of stuff happened, but my dad had been so delighted when I’d got into this middle school that I resolved never to miss a day. My mom had died of breast cancer when I was still a baby, and my dad, who ran a Korean barbecue restaurant and a love hotel, brought me up all by himself, never remarrying. When my first period came, soon after I’d started middle school, it was my dad who sorted me out, rushing out to the pharmacy to buy me supplies. What he bought, as it turned out, wasn’t tampons but those little squares of cotton that people use for removing makeup. Since it was my first time I didn’t know any better, either, so although I always found it kind of weird wedging those small, creaky squares of cotton between my thighs, I just kept on doing it until eventually my aunt—my father’s elder sister—got wind of it. When she saw what I was using, she let out a great roar of laughter that soon morphed into a sob. Then she rushed out and bought me some regular pads.
“How’s school, Satomi? Are you enjoying it?” Dad would ask me every day, and every day I would respond with a big smile. But by that point, the cup lodged inside my chest was full to the brim. It had reached the stage where it felt like just one more drip could make it spill over. The bullying got worse each day, until finally everyone around me began to act as if I literally didn’t exist. Nobody in my class spoke to me, or looked at me, and my time at school was spent simply sitting silently at my desk, willing the minutes to pass. When I got home, I was so weary I could barely move, and each evening I’d grow a little feverish. I’d lay in bed with the lights turned out; watching hours upon hours of anime on the tiny DVD player Dad had bought me. Then it would be morning, and I’d try to keep the nausea down as I put on my uniform and made my way to school. I didn’t want to think that being bullied was better than being ignored, but in truth, it was. It was a tough time. And it went on and on, right until school finally ended.
The first time I had sex was in college. It was a fourth-rate place, the kind that even someone with grades as poor as mine had no problem getting into. No sooner had class begun than I realized that I was pretty popular with the guys. As a reward for getting into high school, Dad had paid for me to have cosmetic surgery to form a crease in my eyelids, and it was possible that had something to do with it. I don’t know, but in any case, lots of guys spoke to me, and I had sex with all of them. I was so just happy that they were talking to me and, also, I had no idea how to say no. I’d rather have sex with a person, whoever they were, than see them pull a face when I turned them down. As ever, I didn’t have any female friends, but I had a bunch of guy friends who I could talk to about my favorite anime and manga series, and that made me really happy. I pretended not to see the notes I sometimes found stuffed inside in my bag saying things like PIG-FACED SLUT and the emails asking if I shouldn’t be praying for the souls of all the children I’d aborted.
During my four years of college I had sex with lots of my guy friends, but I never really found it pleasurable. Once, looking up at myself reflected in the mirror of the love hotel, pinned to the bed by a man’s large expanse of back, I had the thought that having sex wasn’t all that different from being bullied. I watched how his butt muscles rose up every time he moved his pelvis and wondered to myself why sex had to involve such a ridiculous set of movements. I wondered, too, if other people burst out laughing in the middle of the act.
But even though the sex didn’t feel particularly good, I noticed that when I was doing it lots of warm liquid would spill out of my body. Looking at the man thrusting away so strenuously that he was drenched in sweat, I felt kind of guilty. If I made little moans and dug my nails into his back, he’d grunt into my ear: “You can come if you want.” And when I screamed out in a piercing voice, “I’m coming!” just like I’d seen people do in the erotic anime I’d watched (of course, I wasn’t actually coming), his thrusting would double in speed, and he’d come right away.
They did their best, those guys, they really did. They twiddled my clitoris with amazing persistence, rubbed away at the inside walls of my vagina with their assorted middle fingers, and changed positions on a minute-by-minute basis. I felt terrible about it, but the truth was the only time I would come was when I touched myself looking at boy-on-boy manga.
After I graduated from college, a business associate of Dad’s helped find me a job in a small company that manufactured vending machines. I had never been any good in an academic environment, but I was even worse in the office. There was something about me that meant whenever I touched a photocopier or a fax machine or a computer, something was bound to go wrong with it. My boss was constantly hurling abuse at me for the fact that the phone messages I took from our clients had an accuracy rate of 30 percent.
Six months in, my dad died from a sudden brain hemorrhage. I’d been under the impression that he had plenty in savings, but it turned out that most of the money went toward paying off his debts, and
just when I was starting to worry I’d have to live out the rest of my life in this company being yelled at, I met Keiichiro.
Keiichiro said he’d spotted me a few times in a restaurant where I often went for lunch, but I have no memory of ever having seen him there. But then, one day, I left my phone in the restaurant and went home without realizing it. Late that night, my landline rang, and I picked up to hear a man’s voice on the other end.
“Look out at the streetlight beneath your window,” said an unfamiliar monotone.
Since Dad had died, I’d been living in a studio apartment by myself, so this gave me the heebie-jeebies. When I peered down through the gap between the curtains, I saw a guy I didn’t recognize standing under a dim streetlight, holding up my cell phone in one hand and smiling.
“I’ll bring it up right now,” he said, and hung up.
Sure enough, my doorbell rang. It kept ringing, over and over. I was debating whether or not to answer when my next-door neighbor kicked at my wall with a great thump. I quickly turned on the light in the hall, opened the door a crack, and saw a man about the same height as me, kind of pudgy, and wearing small silver glasses and dressed in a suit.
“I wanted to bring it sooner, but I had to work overtime,” he said, reaching his hand through the crack in the door, which still had the chain on, and handing me my pink cell phone.
“Thanks. So much,” I said, but still he showed no signs of leaving. He lingered, staring at me as I stood there in my thin pajamas with just a cardigan on top. Thinking he might be angry because I’d not been thankful enough, I tried again.
“Really, thank you so, so much, I really appreciate it,” I said.
At this, he tried to pass a box containing a tiny cake to me. In a fluster, I undid the chain and opened the door. He cast his eyes around my room, then took his business card out of the pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to me. At great speed, he rattled off: “My name’s Keiichiro Okamoto, I’ve liked you for some time, please will you go out with me?”
I had no idea what to say. As I was looking down at the business card, he thrust the box with the cake inside toward my chest. Then he said, “OK. I’m going,” and stepped quickly back out through the door.
Wondering to myself what on earth all of that had been about, I put the cake in the fridge and went to bed. I’d stood so long by the open door in my bare feet that my legs were frozen right down to the tips of my toes, and I found it hard to get to sleep.
The following day, when I got back from the office, Keiichiro was standing in front of the door to my apartment, holding a box from the same cake shop.
Though I felt kind of alarmed, I bowed my head and said, “Thank you so much for returning my phone yesterday.”
“How would you feel about some dinner?”
Keiichiro persuaded me to go with him to a restaurant in front of the train station. He gulped down beer from a huge tankard and went on and on about how terrible his job was. It wasn’t exactly a thrilling conversation, so I just repeated the same three phrases over and over again as seemed most fitting: “Really,” “Gosh, that sounds bad!” and “Yes, I’m sure you’re right.”
After a while, Keiichiro looked up at me and said, “I can tell you’re a kind person.” And then, looking as if he were about to cry, he reached out across the table and squeezed my hand.
Keiichiro is round-faced and short. He’s the kind of guy who really isn’t made for wearing a suit. In other words, he is, and was, basically the polar opposite of the kind of man I was usually attracted to, physically speaking. The honest truth was I felt neither any particular affection toward him nor any strong dislike. He proposed on our third date, and when he said I wouldn’t have to work if I didn’t want to, I agreed immediately. I guessed that a big pharmaceutical company like Keiichiro’s must pay well, and that there was no real chance of it going bankrupt. I was so worn down from being insulted at work every day, and I’d been so lonely since my dad died, so I was glad to have Keiichiro in my life, even when he turned up at my apartment unannounced several nights in a row or messaged me ten times a day. “Don’t worry, Satomi. I’ll take good care of you,” he’d sometimes say to me, just like Dad had. When I heard that, I felt sure I’d make it through okay somehow.
Not too long after telling my boss that I’d be getting married and leaving the company, I was passing by the staff kitchen when I overheard someone saying: “Can you believe she’s marrying that stalker?”
“Well, at least that’s one less criminal on the loose.”
I could see cigarette smoke leaking out of the room, along with their voices.
“He really should have been reported to the police, you know. You know Miss Shimizu from accounts basically had a nervous breakdown after he started turning up at her house every night?”
As I was standing there, I remembered I wanted to collect my favorite coffee mug to take home with me, so I went in. The moment they noticed me, everyone stopped talking and looked straight at me. As I was rooting around in the cupboard above the sink, one of them said in a very fake sort of voice:
“Oh, Satomi! Congratulations on getting married! We’ll have to sort out a farewell party for you!”
“It’s so great you’ve found such a good guy, from such a good company, so you can stay at home!” said another.
“Yeah, I’m so envious! What I wouldn’t give not to have to commute.”
“Those packed trains are such a nightmare!”
“Tell me about it! I’m so jealous!”
My mug wasn’t in its usual place. I glanced around and, sure enough, I found it staring out at me from inside a clear plastic garbage bag in the corner of the room. I untied the bag and removed the mug, only to see there was a big crack in its handle. I dropped the cracked mug inside my purse, and retied up the bag. My colleagues watched me in silence.
“Thanks very much for everything. Don’t worry about doing a farewell party or anything like that,” I said, and bowed my head. My colleagues’ faces took on slightly piteous expressions. Then, suddenly, one of them cried out. “Oww!” She stood up and flung her cigarette butt into the sink. “I think I burned my finger!”
“Gosh, are you okay?”
“Run it under cold water!”
My coworkers’ interest quickly shifted to the colleague with the burned finger. I turned my back on the sound of their animated voices and left the kitchen.
We started our life as newlyweds in an apartment near the house Keiichiro had grown up in. Keiichiro often said to me things like, “I like that you don’t boss me around like other people do, and you’re not all quick and efficient,” and, “I love touching your tummy, it’s so soft and squishy. . . . It really calms me down,” and, “It makes me feel happy to see you lazing around on the sofa reading manga.” I knew some might find those kinds of comments pretty offensive, but I felt content. I was no good at cooking or doing laundry or cleaning but, as long as I managed to do the bare minimum, Keiichiro didn’t complain. Yes, sometimes he’d fly off the handle about tiny things, like how the rice was too hot or his favorite shirt hadn’t come back from the dry cleaners, but compared to being bullied at school or abused at work, that was nothing. All I had to do was bear those parts and then, when Keiichiro went to work, I could get lost in the world of manga and anime. Keiichiro seemed to have no interest whatsoever in geeky stuff like that but he never ridiculed me or showed any sign of finding my interests gross or weird. For Christmas, he even bought me the DVD I’d been trying to track down for ages and went shopping with me to buy fanzines. He was altogether very kind.
As I was clearing the table, the phone rang.
“Oh, Satomi, hi. How did your appointment go?”
It was Machiko. I knew Machiko noted my appointments at the fertility clinic in her planner.
“It was unsuccessful,” I said, trying to inject a little sadness into my voice.
“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry, what a shame! Still, it’s no good giving up after just two
tries. I know a woman whose daughter got pregnant on her sixth go! And, Satomi, please don’t fret about the money. I’ve got that all covered. Oh, yes, and I was thinking, I know you don’t like exercise, but it’s so lovely out this time of the year! Why don’t we have a walk by the river one of these days? Did you know they say acupuncture can really help women with fertility problems? There’s a really good acupuncturist in the next town, so I’ll take you along, how about that? We can shop while we’re there for some lovely new silk lingerie—I read that’s also supposed to be effective for infertility. It’ll be my treat. And remember, it’s about to start getting warmer, but you mustn’t go gulping down lots of chilled barley tea or anything like that, okay? Hot tea only, it’s always got to be warm. Although green tea is actually supposed to cool the body, so it’s not recommended for people with fertility problems. Hoji-cha, you’re best sticking to hot hoji-cha.”
Machiko talked so fast there wasn’t space for me to say anything other than “yes” and “okay.” Her voice was pretty loud, too, so I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. Every time she used the phrase “women with fertility problems” I’d have to think for a minute before I realized, oh, she’s talking about me. When people used words like “fat,” or “ugly,” or “slow,” I knew immediately who they were referring to, but somehow “fertility problems” took me longer. Still, I knew this had now been added to my list of attributes. I was now not only fat, ugly, and slow, but I had fertility problems, too.
With Machiko going to such efforts, I felt a little bad about the fact that neither Keiichiro nor I really wanted a baby. As I went on listening to her and inserting the right responses into the right spaces, I eyed the clock. The program I wanted to watch on the anime channel was about to start, but I was too frightened to interrupt Machiko’s everlasting monologue and break off the conversation.