Seijin: A Coming of Age Love Story [girl x girl]

Chapter 8

Shin-Okubo was a noisy neighborhood, shops blaring loud Korean music every couple of meters. An aspiring boy band stood outside of the station, handing out flyers for their next live performances. One of them tried to get my attention as I passed, but I wasn't in the mood to talk with a stranger. I wanted to get to Naho's as soon as possible.

    Naho lived in a sharehouse away from the station. It was a converted warehouse with a wide, plain exterior. Inside, however, was a stylish common room with concrete floors and a professional-looking kitchen. All of the rooms had once been storage units so the metal doors rolled up rather than to the side. I could never imagine living in a house of strangers, including a regularly changing group of foreigners, but Naho lived a life dedicated to aesthetics.

    Her room was a loft with a bed below and a platform above. She had built a small art studio on the loft, complete with an easel, small couch, and a wide bookshelf full of art books and shojo manga. As soon as the metal door rattled shut, I curled up on her sofa-for-one and wrapped myself in the soft white blanket she had gotten from Nitori.

    "Sorry for the mess," Naho apologized as she picked up stray pencils and brushes from the floor and dropped them on a stack of sketchbooks in the corner.

    "Sorry for just dropping by."

    "Oh, that's no problem at all," she looked down at me with her big eyes. "A little unlike you is all."

    I felt a little unlike me, and had been for a while. Soon, I feared, I would become someone unrecognizable.

    "Nacchan, can I ask you a weird question?"

    "Of course," she said, sitting on her drawing chair facing me.

    "Have you ever considered dating a girl?"

    She blinked at me. "Like, a girl crush?"

    "See, that's the thing," I sighed. "How can you tell a girl crush apart from a real crush? What if you think it's a girl crush, but that's the way you are?"

    Naho leaned back. "There was a girl at my high school who was pretty popular with the other girls. She was tall and good at sports and looked a little bit like a pretty boy. I thought she was cute, for a moment."

    "Did you want to date her?"

    "Gosh, no," she smiled at the idea. "It was more just the fun of fawning over someone. It was safer than fawning over a boy. Boys were serious, with one-track minds."

    "What if she had made a pass at you?"

    She crinkled her nose. "I can't even picture it. We liked her because she was like a boy, but she wasn't a boy. It wouldn't be the same."

    I tried to imagine Kurumi confessing her love for me. My heart soared into my throat.

    "Why are you even asking me about this, Juri?" Naho looked at me with a slight pout.

    "I was browsing manga at the bookstore and picked up a yuri one. It just got me thinking," I lied.

    "Hmm," Naho nodded and rested her cheek against her hand. "I mean, I don't think I have anything against people like that. You know, gay. You can't control the kind of person you're attracted to, right? My mom told me once that she thought she'd end up marrying her college boyfriend, all tall and blond with blue eyes. But then she came to Japan on a graduation trip and met my dad. She'd never dated an Asian guy before, and then bam -- love at first sight. Broke up with her boyfriend back in Canada and moved to Akita. My dad, too, never thought he'd marry a gaijin. But that's what their hearts wanted."