Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Double Entendre

For a long time we sat there, while the sound of the forest slowly and laboriously returned, like a last breaths of a dying man. At last, he had stood up and bowed stiffly. "I trust that you will choose wisely."

I couldn't bother to see him out or watch how he left but instead I looked at the contract to my left, and then the one to my right. At first, nothing happened. My mind was empty. I was staring across a silent desert with white-parched sand. But one piercing cry of a crow from some godforsaken branch above, against the storm clouds, was all it took.

Things begin to churn around me like the flushing of a drain. It all spirals down wet and heavy into my head, flooding my soul with this tide of cold water like the clutch of a gigantic creature, gripping me with its talons. It all washes over my face and I reel, nearly falling over. The world swishes back and forth like a bowl of soup. I steady myself on the table and take off my glasses. I close my eyes.

Shizuka. Who I had trusted, who I must surely be in love with I realize, who I have been missing, who I long to see, who had ripped open a hole inside me. Her hair, her skin, her warmth, her smell, her taste, her touch, her lips, her eyes. Everything that had become reality and truth, my foundation, on which I built a future from an old Naoki Maeda of redundant motions. In whom, my hopes had lain, my hopes for survival. Each moment we shared, day in and day out. Slowly it shatters, crumbling sand, sifting beneath my feet. It disappears like the blood draining out of my face.

Was that all she was? A fragile construction I had subconsciously shaped and raised on a pedestal and worshipped like an idol god. An alleviation for my own loneliness and weakness. My own saviour. But she had never belonged to me or was truly invested in my matters. I had been working with a wolf in disguise. All that I've strived to do all these months, had she been against it in secret all along? Had she been sending suits after me, intricately weaving a master plan, playing victim alongside for amusement, leading me deeper into the rabbit hole where I would be paralyzed and left without an exit. Poisoning my mind and disappearing without a trace, like watching a game between fighting fish.

Such speculation that she had betrayed me, never cared for me, plotting behind my back racks me with anguish and agonizes me to no end. This violent pain pierces through me and I am crippled. It's more total and more concentrated than anything I've ever experienced before, narrowed to a fine sharp point, that I cannot resist or defend against its damage. I feel it enter me as a wedge and draw blood. My body shudders, I sweat, and feel the sensation of loss and finality. I had thought there was nothing left within me. But whatever still remained died, again.

I climb into bed even though it's early in the evening and curl up into a ball like a child. I had never felt so pathetic, hopeless and helpless before. So utterly devastated and incapacitated. I am nothing but a weeping child.

I fade in and out of sleep and in my dreams I remember her. I see her in full. I remember the look in her eyes, the surrendering warmth of her body as she invited me inside, the whisper of her hot breath and soft levelheaded contradictory words, our faces pressed together in a paramount photograph, the visionary dreams and the vast night sky above on which the universe ebbed and flowed, the prophetic wisdom she tried to impart over and over - these experiential recollections flood me as if she is still here in my arms, right beside me: how could that all be perfect pretense? An elaborate ruse. Measured and calculated moves.

But no, you didn't have to go so far. Not for me. You had it all together, there would be no need to associate with me. Why did you approach me if it would violate your Etiquette? Didn't you only need to report to your employer and thus, have me meet some wretched end? Why would you destroy yourself? Why have you sacrificed yourself?