avocado toast & other stories

i.

The world is grey and Yuriko Fujji can't feel her feet.

Time seems to evaporate as the numbness spreads, a little uncomfortable but slowly sticking to her skin like a layer of snow. It's cold. The winters in Hanover are frostier than most—the temperature low enough to make her fingertips burn and burn and burn. Yuriko feels snowflakes rest upon the curve of her lashes and the sharp sensation sends another wave of emotion through her chest: loneliness, authenticity, fear.

Where are her mittens? She doesn't particularly know. Maybe they're in the space underneath her classroom desk, desolate and in need of wearing. Or maybe they're stuffed at the bottom of her backpack, crushed beneath the weight of her binders and books. And this makes sense, because she forgets a lot of things, like the colored pencils sitting on her mattress and the hot cocoa her mother poured into a thermos when the clouds were still puffy.

When Yuriko left for school this morning, she'd walked against a backdrop of violet dipped in soft pearls. Now, though, the absence of color almost scares her, almost reflects what she's feeling inside. Too much, too much, too much—Yuriko curls in on herself and clutches her hands together, attempting to trap whatever warmth her seven-year-old body can offer her, although she fails miserably.

Her hair is black—like ink, she supposes—and it swings across her neck and stops just past the slope of her shoulders. Yuriko has always been proud of how pretty her hair is, the way it settles into place and resembles those waterfalls her mother loves so much. Your hair is a part of you, she would whisper before they went to bed. If it gets tangled, it'll hurt, no?

But Yuriko doesn't really care about her hair right now, no matter how beautiful it appears to be. All she cares about is how the other kids left with their parents guiding them with a hand on the small of their backs, the epitome of soft whispers and tender smiles and I missed you, sweetheart, can you tell me about your day?

She's still waiting on the playground—just sitting on the base of the musty slide with both knees pressed together. How many minutes have passed now? It must've been more than fifteen. Yuriko desperately wants to tell her mother about her day: she's getting better with spelling, and she even managed to read a complicated sentence out loud that she hadn't been able to accomplish before. All good, worthy things to be shared.

Out of the corner of her eye, she notices the teacher eyeing her, likely wondering where her guardians are so that she can finally drive home. Embarrassment blooms inside of Yuriko's chest, because she's always the last one to go home. She thinks that maybe if she made a run for it, the school wouldn't even notice her missing and would just forget about her. Maybe that's for the best.

But. But it's cold, and Yuriko can feel her cheeks tinting with winter peach, the tops of them blending in with the natural rose of her cheekbones. Even the air tastes of fresh snow. It's not easy to sit still with the constant desire to get up and move, but even still, she's frozen to the spot, feet nearly digging into the cheap playground mulch.

Yuriko wants to go home.

"Kid, are you lost?"

Her head twitches to the right, and the first thing she sees is a burst of music. It lingers on the soft, viper-lined curve of the person's mouth, the wooliness of a worn sweatshirt that dangles to her knees. The girl tilts her head. Narrows her hazel-filled gaze.

She doesn't know how to talk to strangers, doesn't often like the unwelcome attention that accompanies it. And Yuriko isn't a kid, anyways. She's seven—at least two years past the appropriate age to be called that term.

(She's not a kid. She's not.)

From her seat on the dirty slide, Yuriko blinks, shaking her head delicately. "No," she mumbles, hands still clasped together. The student is still staring at her, teeth sinking into her bottom lip, and she wonders how people manage to do that without breaking the skin because maybe she bites too hard. "Just waiting for my mom."