attachment
episode 1
The top-floor lounge. The officers' club.
Someone was playing the grand piano.
The elevator doors opened, and I knew immediately it was Bach — that particular melody, inorganic. Geometric…stripped of sentiment, moving forward with a kind of indifferent beauty that filled the whole room before I'd taken a single step.
And I knew, almost at the same moment, who was playing. This hour, this place, Bach — there was only one person eccentric enough for that combination.
I found a chair near the entrance and sat down without a word, letting the music run its course.
When the music ended, a single voice called out "Bravo!" — followed by a scatter of slow, solitary applause from somewhere behind her.
The performer turned, mildly surprised. Then she smiled. She rose from the bench, dipped slightly at the knees, and bowed in my direction. A curtsy — the kind a European noblewoman might offer.
I walked over to the piano and leaned against it with one elbow.
"Goldberg Variations," I said. "My mother used to play that aria. We even had the Gould recording."
Sunah looked at me with a small, mischievous smile.
"Wrong. Sorry." A laugh. "Bach is right, but anyone can hear that much — nothing to brag about."
"Seriously? Then what is it?"
She drew it out, enjoying herself.
"This," she said, "is the Harpsichord Concerto. Number Five, F minor, Largo. Sounds nothing like the title."
"Huh. On piano it does sound like the Goldberg. I was sure that's what it was."
"It does, actually. They're quite similar."
I moved to the bench beside her and made my request.
"Play me the Adagietto. Mahler."
She became even more deliberate.
"Not in the mood for that at this hour." A pause. "How about this instead?"
She stood, half-crouched, and launched into something that swung like boogie-woogie — Mic's Blessing by The Style Council, I realized. I found myself tapping my foot, slapping the beat on my thigh.
She hit the final note and exhaled — "Fuu!" — like she was blowing something away.
I picked out the notes with my index finger, one wrong key at a time, fumbling my way through the Adagietto. Sunah watched with a smile. When she figured out what I was attempting, she laid her hand over mine and guided my fingers to the right keys. Not like that. Here. Here. Yes, like that. Once I had something resembling the melody, she joined in — an accompaniment so out of sync with my stumbling that it bordered on parody.
We played the same passage over and over. The tempo was so catastrophically off that we started laughing, then couldn't stop — playing Mahler and laughing like idiots, both at the same time. "The original's in C-sharp minor," she said between notes, "so transposing Johann's part is a nightmare."
After a while she rested her head on my left shoulder, eyes half-closed, wearing the expression of someone perfectly, inexplicably content.
Her hair smelled faintly sweet. I felt something I couldn't quite name — and wasn't sure I wanted to.
I'm not in love with you the way you are.
There are other women.
I don't deserve the way you touch me.
She was something between a friend and something more — irreplaceable, exactly because of that distance. And here I was, saying nothing, just smiling.
Was that a betrayal? Or its own kind of kindness?
A gentle lie. A deception. Performance. Hypocrisy.
Though to simply tell her — I don't love you — unprompted, unasked — that would be its own kind of cruelty.
And underneath all of it, something uglier: sitting this close, I wanted her. Wanted to take something from her body that would settle the restlessness in mine — selfish, uncomplicated desire. There was no question she would give it willingly. No question it would be extraordinary.
But.
The thing we had — this precise, charged, unresolved thing — would not survive it. Once crossed, that line doesn't move back. I didn't want to lose what we were. Not even if she offered it freely, called it a secret, asked for nothing after.
And if it happened — I knew myself well enough to know — I would orbit her. Permanently. Like a planet that's found its sun and can't remember how to move in a straight line. Not the worst fate. But then what? A closed system. No exit.
Too much to give up for something that lasts seconds.
We met too early. Ten years from now I could love her without hesitation, without all this calculation.
I left her that evening still wanting her — and said nothing.
On weekends I'd throw a leg over the Harley and ride out toward Yodoyabashi, working my way through the area looking for whatever orphanage Sumire might have landed in. It turned out to be harder than I'd expected.
A lot of the facilities were converted residential houses — ordinary homes pressed into service, offering shelter from the rain, a hot meal, basic medical care. Emergency welfare. That's all it was, and everyone knew it. No official records, no central registry. Nothing to search. The only method was old-fashioned and inefficient: show up, ask around, move on.
And it got me nowhere. When I asked for Sumire by name the staff just looked blank, or confused, or offered me someone who turned out to be a different child entirely.
My unease began to solidify into something darker. What if I simply never found her? I should have kept track of her from the start. Should never have looked away.
Too late for that now.
Then one facility looked promising. A staff member recognized the name — and the description matched.
The director who came to meet me was a middle-aged woman, the kind you'd find running any neighborhood in Osaka — warm, no-nonsense, completely at ease. She still had cooking oil on her hands from whatever she'd been doing in the kitchen. She spoke quickly, in the flat, rolling cadence of Osaka dialect, and got straight to the point.
"I'll be straight with you — the conditions here aren't good, and I'm not proud of it. The children we take in, every one of them's had a hard life. Bullying, violence — that's just how it is. We do what we can but it never really stops." She wiped her hands on her apron. "And I won't dress it up — we've had rape. Between the children. It happens here."
The same country. Somewhere in it, children growing up in homes with two parents and warm dinners. And then this.
I thought of Sumire's face — that small, unguarded smile — and felt something I had no word for and no use for.
The director promised to contact me if Sumire turned up again — apparently runaways often cycled back through the same facilities. I thanked her and didn't put much faith in it.
I started working the street kids around Yodoyabashi too — the kotchebi, the wanderers. When I spotted one who looked sharp, I'd approach.
"You know a girl named Sumire? She was at one of the shelters around here. Hundred dollars for information. Bring her to me and I'll give you a thousand."
I'd say my piece and hand out a dollar to each kid I spoke to.
One day a boy edged toward me, cautious, sizing me up.
"Hey mister — you for real? A thousand dollars?"
"That's right."
"No but like — for real for real?"
I pulled the bills out and let him see them. His eyes went wide.
"Whoa — " He caught himself. "...but Sumire's dead."
"Where?"
"Last week. Over in that park. Police came and took the body. I'm not lying, it was on TV and everything —"
The blood left my face. I kept my voice level.
"If it turns out to be the girl I'm looking for, there's fifty more in it for you. And even if it's not — good information is worth fifty. Come back here to collect." I handed him ten. "Spread the word to the others. Anyone with something useful, I want to hear it."
He stared at the bill — clearly unimpressed by the smaller denomination — then his face broke open and he took off at a run, delighted with himself.
That's when I heard a voice behind me.
I turned. A girl was standing there. Beautiful, in the way that made you uneasy.
"Hey mister. Want a 'F' ?"
"A what? 'F'? "
She gave me a look.
"Seriously? You don't know what 'F' is?"
"I don't."
"A blowjob. You know. Suck you off."
She said it the way you'd quote a price on groceries.
I understood then why she'd approached me — she'd watched me handing out money to the kids and assumed I was shopping for something else. Given the adults she dealt with, it was a reasonable assumption.
"Ten dollars a time. If you want longer, ten every five minutes. No yen. No rough stuff. No sex."
"Ten dollars. How old are you?"
She looked away.
"...what's it to you."
"Tell me your real age and I'll give you money. How much do you make in a day?"
"Good days, two, three hundred. Bad days, nothing."
"I'll give you a hundred if you tell me honestly."
"Twenty."
"Try again. You're in middle school."
"...fourteen."
I took out the money and held it out.
"Take this. Go home. No more clients today."
She looked at the bills like they were a trick.
"A hundred buys ten blowjobs. I can finish you in the mouth if you want."
"I'm with the occupation. Take the money. I'm not going to ask you for anything."
She took it. Slowly.
"...why are you giving me this?"
Still suspicious. At fourteen she'd already learned not to trust a reason she couldn't see.
"I'm looking for a younger girl. I'm worried about her." I paused. "You're a kid. You shouldn't be doing this. Something bad is going to happen to you."
"...yeah." Her voice went flat. "Already has. Lots of times."
She pulled her hair back and showed me the scar behind her ear — a sutured laceration, healed crooked.
"They grab my head and shove it down hard as they can."
"Go home now."
She started walking. Then stopped.
"...mister."
"Yeah."
"Thanks."
I nodded.
"You're a boy, aren't you."
"...yeah."
"Thought so. Japan will come back someday. Don't give up until it does. And stay in school."
"Okay."
He said it clearly, and walked away with his head up.
When I was a child, I was loved. Fed, sheltered, wanted — all of it so ordinary I never thought to name it.
And these kids. I just —What the hell! These children had been fed to the adults around them instead.
Without education, without anyone to answer to, they'd grow up to be consumed in different ways — just as thoroughly, just as casually. Looking at them made something rise in my chest that had no clean name.
I stood there on the street and wept.
That night, the notification chime of a social media app rang out.
Yuzuki — completely naked. A photo with a message attached. Somewhere at a resort, a hotel or maybe a condominium, she stood with her back to the camera beside a window with an ocean view. A pale, smooth nape flowed into an alluring curve all the way down to her hips. God, she's beautiful.
'Wow, look at this… a resort. How gorgeous. Damn rich housewife…'"
The message read:
Maybe I've found the answer.
An old wound in my heart —left unhealed,
it's been haunting me all this time.
It ruins everything.
Even when something fills my heart,
it cancels it all out.
Maybe if I could cast everything aside, the way Buddha taught —
empty myself completely —that would solve it.
Or maybe I should take up mindfulness practice,
learn the skill of deceiving myself.
Maybe that would fix everything.
That's how it feels. Right now.
If I could throw it all away, and a blank, new life began —
maybe there'd be a different kind of day waiting for me.
…So?
Do you want me?
