I struggled with the lock, juggling my keys, purse, a bag of groceries and my laptop. Grudgingly, the lock finally disengaged, and I stepped into the entryway of my small apartment. I nearly dropped my laptop as I struggled to remove my shoes and finally deposited my things onto the counter. I briefly considered making dinner but decided I wasn’t nearly hungry enough to bother going through the process of actually creating anything. Or more to the point, I amended, flailing about and finally deciding to make instant ramen. I figured it would make more sense to skip the entire lead-up to the inevitable defeat and simply make a bowl of ramen later if I got hungry.

I put away the vegetables I’d bought before I left Adachi, grabbed one of the cans from the six pack of beer I’d bought and sank down onto the couch in the living room with a sigh. I was tired. The type of bone-tired that seemed to sap the will to even move from me. I rubbed the palms of my hands over my tired eyes, not caring whether or not I smudged my mascara and sighed again.

Through the sliding door of my living room leading out onto the balcony I could see the lights of Yanaka Cemetery glowing down the street. The hibernating, skeletal boughs of the Sakura trees swayed in the cold winter wind blowing down the streets fronted by aging homes and shops surrounding the quiet, centerpiece of the city where the dead lay slumbering.

I cracked the top of the beer and shuddered slightly. The taste of beer didn’t sit well with me. I couldn’t understand the appeal of it, nor the fact I still bought it from time to time. Maybe it was some sort of ingrained instinct brought about by watching too many commercials or something. In a a pinch, though, it would take the edge off the day. I stared through the partially closed curtains at the silent gates of the house of the dead and shuddered again. No matter how long I lived here I doubted I’d ever get used to the silence of the vast cemetery I walked by to get to the few convenience stores in Yanaka, or to get to my train in the morning.

It was a place of serenity and calm which offered no comfort. Walking past the silent graves each morning and night served only to heighten my unease. It was like something out of a horror movie if I was honest. It was also, along with the main street of the city marked by blooming Sakura trees in April, the place that drew throngs of tourists to the otherwise uninteresting area of Tokyo I’d settled in.

I took another sip of beer and grimaced. Nasty, I thought to myself, shaking my head to clear the taste. When I went out drinking, I generally drank something harder. Some people drank to achieve a pleasant glow. I had no time to straddle the line between drunk and sober where the warmth seemed to dwell. It was best to get plastered if that was the goal and let the chips fall where they may. I sighed and drooped back into my sofa.

This was not how I had imagined my life would end up, I thought with a scowl. The place I guarded so jealously, to the point I had never allowed anyone but Nanami and Koemi to even know the town it was in was nothing special. A simple two-bedroom flat in a non-descript building in a run-down part of one of the worst places in Tokyo to live. I had nothing of any real value. A few paintings I’d done and some furniture I’d picked up at yard sales were about the extent of my worldly possessions. Yet this apartment, with its view of the road leading to the cemetery and its walls of faded alabaster paint and simple furnishings, was mine.

It had cost me quite a bit, but I had purchased it from the landlord earlier in the year and could no longer be kicked out at someone else’s whim. I could not be removed because someone disapproved of my lifestyle or decisions or even the choices I was seldom allowed to make. This small bit of wood and plaster with its twitchy tub and touchy stove, was mine. I couldn’t be exiled or tossed aside or be made to leave. I owned this humble apartment with its shabby furnishings and maudlin view.

I glanced down at the beer in my hand and scowled at it. There was no getting around the fact the taste was disgusting and I knew I wouldn’t be able to drink it. I considered giving it another try just in case my taste buds were temporarily mistaken before giving up and finally set it on the small rickety table beside the sofa and headed off to the bath.

I was physically still the same as I had been in high school. A centimeter or two taller, perhaps, with longer hair that fell to the middle of my back, but my eyes were the same dark brown, my face was the same, my body was the same. I was, for all intents and purposes, the same person who had walked to school with Mizuki along the high path every day. I stared into my own eyes reflected in the water of the bath and scowled. I was the same but wholly different.

“Who the hell are you?” I whispered to the face staring back at me, the movement of my mouth mirrored in the water. My reflection had no answers. I grunted in disapproval, swished my double into a shattered portrait and laid my head back against the edge of the bath, closing my eyes on the faded paint.

It was impossible to choose just one point in my life I could go back to and zig rather than zag and make everything afterward magically better. Avoiding the whole train wreck with Aria wouldn’t fix the mess that was Kasumi Fujimura. No, I corrected myself, Kasumi Tanaka, now. I’d tossed aside Fujimura when Koemi adopted me.

No, simply not falling in love with Aria wouldn’t fix the fundamental problem with me. I’d have to go much further back. To a point before I was born. I’d have to go and re-wire my brain so who I was attracted to would match the “normal” people all around me.

Even after coming to the realization I was gay, I had still tried. I’d had ample opportunity to date and even went on one date, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find the appeal in the person across from me. The way he smiled too broadly, laughed too raucously, and tried too hard was merely annoying and cringey. He was nice enough, but my brain simply could not muster anything for him but disinterest and, honestly, pity. Plainly he was saying and acting precisely the way he calculated would give him the best chance at sleeping with me and it made me sick to my stomach.

I let him down as gently as I could and he handled it well, but I never should have even bothered in the first place and certainly never tried again. No matter how messed up my head was, I still had to draw the line somewhere, and hypocrisy was my line in the sand.

So, instead of trying to force a square peg into a round hole, I embraced being who I was and broke hearts the old-fashioned way. I chuckled mirthlessly. At least I did it honestly, I thought. I placed a rag over my eyes and shook my head. I really was a terrible person.

I wrapped my wet hair in a towel and returned to the sofa, feeling less dirty but certainly no cleaner. I wondered if there was a fix for what was wrong with me. Of course, all of the ways I was broken didn’t exactly lend themselves to a fix. I was 22 years old, barely graduated college with a mostly useless degree in art and worked drawing sex pictures for adult games. If I had dreams my current situation certainly didn’t count as working toward fulfilling them.

Did I have any dreams? I honestly couldn’t remember. I recall being mostly rudderless through high school. A ship adrift in a seemingly endless tempest, no plans for the future and no blueprint for how to get there even if I had. It was too easy to blame my parents for my own listlessness. They’d planned on my growing up to be an ornament for someone to upgrade our family fortune, certainly they wouldn’t have approved of my hard-earned skill at drawing realistic nipples and flawless vulva, pube free or no.

I sighed and rubbed my hair with the towel. It was much easier to deal with when it was shorter, I groused to no one. My hair stayed wet forever and required far too much work to keep it from becoming a tangled mess on my head if I didn’t properly brush it long enough. I considered briefly cutting it shorter again but discarded the notion. I wish I could honestly say there was an aesthetic reason for keeping it long, but Saki had once told me I was like a princess with long hair.

It was a terrible reason to continue to have long hair and put myself through irritation every day keeping it from going out of control. I knew that, but somewhere deep inside where the bits and pieces of the Kasumi I had once been still rummaged through the garbage bins of fading memories, it felt important. I was Saki’s princess and reason for fighting and trying to get better and that meant more to me than I could even attempt to explain.

I think the realization that I’d unwittingly betrayed my promise to Saki hurt almost as much as everything else combined. I hadn’t realized how important she was until I didn’t have her around me anymore. I finished drying my hair as well as I could with the towel and shook my head. Nothing good ever came from treading the paths of the past as overgrown with weeds and marred by pitfalls as they were.

I was just about to turn the tv on when my phone bellowed loudly in the quiet, causing me to jump and my heart to pound in my chest. “Fucking hell,” I hissed angrily, grabbing the thing with both hands, and feeling for a brief moment like I wanted to throw it against the wall. “Something had better be on fire.”

I slipped my finger across the face of the phone and pulled up the text message. It was from Nanami, and I scowled at it. There’s a party for the tour opening tomorrow. You are invited. Ugh, I growled. I disliked parties, especially parties with famous people and reporters. Instantly my brain began to cast about for a way to get out of going without looking like I was trying to get out of going.

I could tell her I had food poisoning, but I’d already used that excuse five times and I was pretty sure she was getting wise to it. I could pretend I hadn’t seen the message except the implication was quite plain I had. I scowled deeper, digging for any good excuse to get out of it when my phone vibrated in my hand and screamed into the silence again, causing me to jump once again.

I love you, Kasumi. You are totally my bias, but don’t even think about getting out of it. There’s a big announcement and we need you there for it. Bias? I thought…what the hell was that? I shook the phone back and forth irritably once again before sighing. Sounds like fun, I lied.

Perfect! Imperial Hotel ballroom 1800 sharp. Dress fancy! I cocked an eyebrow irritably at the last sentence. Show some skin!!! I sighed again and typed back. Fine. I’ll be there. But I’ll wear what I want. There was a brief pause before Nanami replied. Brat! Fine…but fancy!

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, tossing the phone on the chair on the wall to the north of where I sat. “Fuck,” I mumbled as it bounced once on the cushion and dropped with a clatter to the ground.