Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Consequentially

We forgot about our phones for a long time. It wasn't as if the garbage can in the bedroom was particularly full and needed to be put out; we were rather clean - I preferred to keep my apartment as minimal as possible, not unlike her own, and I discovered she compulsively wiped surfaces and rearranged displaced objects for leisure. Ironically, while trying to resist the System, it became clear we had an inherent need for a construct of sorts. But is it Systemic influence or intrinsic personality? Or perhaps human nature?

In a way, our lives began to take a cyclic shape of its own. Without our phones around, it was unnaturally quiet without any more unwelcome disturbances. Normally it would be fortunate but it became wound up tension, compiling more pressure into one single point, not unlike the still days before Cosmo Clock 21. Surely there was another climatic clash prepared ahead. If there's a structure to our struggle, it would be the rise and fall of uncertainty and suspense.

We were still keeping to a discreet inconspicuous lifestyle, until the concert and the Cause's campaigns blew over, uncertain of how far the reach had been and how memorable our photo was. We would see reports of demonstrations blowing up all over the country, silent protests at first and then the angry mobs, never with a specific purpose. They'd complain and we'd stay in my apartment, in a state of suspended purgatory, only heading out for necessary supplies. We woke up at around nine - though habitually at slightly different times each day - made coffee and watched the news. Then we would do simple bodyweight work outs to keep in shape and on some nights, have sex when we felt like it. At some point, it dawned on me that she could hear the thoughts of my neighbours and I mentioned it. To which she assured me, the Yasuda's nightly had no direct influence on her own needs. It's just necessary, she said, without telling me why.

I decided to trust my impression that she always knew what and when was right. Sex was right because that was what she learned on top of Cosmo Clock 21, and it wasn't something I minded. I had a feeling it was a prerequisite to understand how to function together, cohesively and mutually - a prerequisite that she had long resigned herself to. But I could never tell if she was acting by obligation or desire. Or if I had been a part of her plan at all.

I learned about her body and all its intricacies - muscle and bone structure, what gives pleasure or discomfort - and she learned about mine. It wasn't so different from analyzing a piece of literature, in all its conscious design, authorial conjecture, rhetoric and semantics, allegorical implications, intertextualities and allusions, poetic devices and grammatical constitution, and then conjuring an appropriate response to her form. Poet to poet. Thesis to thesis. Every location carried meaning and triggered overpowering messages through our bodies to our brains, opening access to a different realm, moving from rhythm to plot structure, the self to the fundamental archetypes, a word in its syntagmatic structure. In a way, we were joined in the presence of a universal collective. It likely had a permanent effect, somewhere, though we did not know where it was. Such a possibility encouraged and motivated us to continue, if even just in rebellion against Etiquette. But for us, no doubt, it did make us more comfortable and straightforward with one another. It was the ultimate act of exposing the totality of our beings to each other. She seemed to trust me.

"How do you feel?" she asked one night.

"Satisfied."

She laughed. She hit me playfully. "I mean have you been feeling something else?"

"Something else?"

"Something more." She looked disappointed.

"I feel like I should be feeling something more. There's something missing. The feeling that something is missing, is growing."