純- Jun
She was short, but eventually was taller than me, and her hair was chestnut brown and rippled down her back in waves. She had a big nose and full lips and had a face that was beautiful in and of itself and with makeup was absolutely stunning. This girl commanded the attention and fascination of our entire class with her half-American heritage and I initially envied her because I was also a Hafu yet my mixed blood made me appear more of an abomination than a beauty like her. Her eyes were green like emeralds and her name was Akiko.
She spoke to me first, as most of my acquaintances do. I now regret not reaching out first, or at least being a little friendlier when I did respond to her initial greeting. We had two high school classes together when we were first-years in high school, and one day I walked into one of them and found her eyeing me with the half-intrigued, half-bewildered curiosity most of my classmates would stare at me with. But in her eyes, which I didn’t yet know were green, was a tinge of familiarity, like I reminded her of someone she knew some long time ago. She said hello to me and I, ever avoidant, responded promptly and sat down, avoiding eye contact. She continued to look at me longer, but I was too uncertain of myself to say anything else, let alone meet her eyes again.
Despite this awkward first interaction, Akiko was my best friend for a peaceful year and a turbulent six months. I loved her so dearly. I found myself awake at night thinking of nothing but her, my heart beating not with the dread it was so familiar with but with eager anticipation as I looked forward to seeing her the next day at school and later over the weekend. We were both born on a 29th- she in October, I in February. She introduced me to astrology but conveniently never acknowledged that Scorpio and Pisces made the best couple of all signs. She was my world and I was, as ever, much too proud to ever admit it.
I’m vain and I’m prideful, but I don’t like coming across as such and thus keep conversation about my personal details to a minimum, at least to strangers. But it is necessary for me to provide a few key details about the person I used to be- the person I was when this story began- for mine and Akiko’s separation, and all subsequent events, to make sense.
I am a Hafu, as I mentioned, and my Russian and Japanese genes did not bless me with the ethereal looks Akiko was born with. I had a big nose like hers, but it was crooked and my classmates in junior high would all say I looked like a Jew. I was one of the few students in my school to know what the word “kike” meant, and even that it was a word. My hair is curly and dark, and when I still had crooked teeth and braces and my smile was strange and immature, adults would tell me my curly hair was my greatest redeeming physical quality. My classmates would make fun of it and put things like staples and pencil lead in it when I wasn’t looking. The only thing that ever betrayed even a hint of my Japanese heritage was my eyes. To the rest of society I was an ugly, half-Russian, Jewish girl. The only Russian I ever knew is what I taught myself, and I have never set foot in a synagogue. I don’t even know where to find one where I live.
When I had just turned thirteen, I was suspended from junior high in a storm of accusations that I had threatened to kill several of my classmates and teachers. The accusations were baseless and there was no evidence of my “statements”, but I was forced to leave for two weeks and my return was contingent upon my visiting a psychiatrist beforehand. I was told by more than one therapist I was a sociopath. At thirteen I had been thoroughly taught the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath- I was told that the bullying in my childhood, spurred on by my strange appearance and antisocial tendencies, had dramatically affected my ability to empathize with others and make social connections. I was slightly offended, and I found great irony in my complete and utter indifference to my classmates’ heckling and gossiping upon my return. The therapists were right, it seemed.
At fourteen my family and I moved from Nagoya to Yokohama and I made a silent vow to keep to myself and float through my high school years without bothering to make friends or care about anyone in particular. I failed quickly, and made several acquaintances within the first week, and Akiko lifted me out of my asocial stupor and introduced a sociopath to a feeling called love.
I loved her, I really did. I would kill someone who tried to get too close to her, and I would kill myself if she refused to accept me by her side. My friends suspected what I eventually verbally acknowledged was true- albeit only to a coworker, years later- that I was a yuri, a girl who only likes girls. I would tell them I wanted a boyfriend, envied my friends who had one, but I could never bring myself to flirt with a boy. I didn’t find any attractive, at that. I wanted it because I wanted to feel desirable, like every other girl was. But inside I was utterly repulsed by it and hated the thought of a boy holding my hand, kissing me, calling me “baby” and then weeks later replacing me with some other girl he discovered he liked better. Men are revolting, I came to admit. To this day I have never touched a man, let alone fallen in love with one. Akiko was the object of my desire, and only her. Only her, even all these years later.
“Jun chan, you know there’s nothing wrong with liking girls, right?” she’d asked me one day. I looked at her, dumbfounded. We had been drawing during a study period and our conversations had been lighthearted and silly until then. “I think you’d be happier with a girlfriend.”
She then opened her venomous mouth and added the words that plagued me for years to come: “I mean, I like boys, but..I think yuri relationships are a lot healthier and would be better for you.”
I just stared back at her, my Russian face and my Japanese eyes cold and unfeeling. “I don’t want to date a girl,” I replied. It was a lie and my heart knew it but that same heart was aching from the words that stupid girl had just dared utter.
I figured you liked boys. Most girls do. But it hurts when you say it out loud, because I’m in love with you, and I can’t have you.
One night I had a dream I went to bed with Akiko. The following day at school, she asked me what I’d dreamt about the night before. She’d never asked me such a question and I wondered if she’d had the same hopelessly romantic, yet sickeningly intangible dream as I had.
“I dreamed I was looking at the ocean,” I’d told her.
A month later, a week or so after her 16th birthday in cold and glum October, Akiko destroyed my heart and with it, my last feelings of empathy, patience, and understanding for her and our friends we shared.
She was so excited, more excited than she’d ever been with me. “I have my first boyfriend,” she told me.
I didn’t pretend to be happy. I just looked blankly at her. “Oh,” I replied. I’d flirted with the thought of suicide as much as the average teenager does, but that night I really did consider slitting my throat in my dark bedroom while my family slept. I cried and I vomited. And I choked out the words, “I hate you, Akiko.”
She told me her neighbor’s child, a 9-year-old elementary school student, had encouraged her and this wretched male to give dating each other a chance. Truthfully, I seriously considered finding this little boy and doing to him what I had wanted to do to myself when Akiko had broken my heart. More than that, I wanted to hurt this boyfriend of hers beyond human imagination, to torture him in ways I won’t list because it would go on too long, but I was, and still am, a 50-kg girl who barely reaches 160 cm. What could I do? For the first time in my life I became sickeningly aware of just how weak I was, physically and socially. In junior high I had been among the tallest of my friends, and stopped growing at age 11, but I’d still viewed myself as intimidating and physically capable until that point.
I would periodically avoid Akiko and complain to our other friends about her nearly constantly, unable to contain my hatred for her boyfriend and her new, happy situation, until she eventually confessed to me that she was tired of it and just told me, “I can’t be friends with you while you’re doing this.”
“Good riddance, then,” I’d responded. My heart ached. I cared but could never act like I did.
My mental health declined in my last year of high school and I avoided all my friends completely, save for Kimiko- mine and Akiko’s mutual friend despite our falling out. She remained completely neutral throughout the entire dispute, never revealing even a glimmer of her opinions on our petty, yet devastating, conflict. After high school I dearly missed Kimiko’s companionship, even dreaming about her, but after later meeting a coworker whose good sense of humor, yet complete unreliability, reminded me of her, I remembered I didn’t really care that I’d left high school and her behind.
I dropped out of university in my first year. 20 year old males were no different from their 10 year old counterparts, I found, in how they treat girls they find unattractive. I moved into a cheap apartment and supported myself by shoplifting and selling the stolen merchandise online. When you sell makeup online, no one cares how you look or talk. The only thing that matters is a reasonable price and quick shipping. I loved it. Shoplifting was my life for a few years and saved me hundreds of thousands, if not millions of yen on toiletries, food, and clothes. And I, ever the ice cold sociopath, never felt a fraction of remorse for it. Yet I wrote a love poem for Akiko.
I could not keep a job for longer than three months. I did not have the education or training to secure anything above an entry-level position, and found myself working part-time gigs as a cashier, barista, waitress, etc. I fell in love with a woman when I worked briefly at a cafe. Her name was Honoka and she was almost as beautiful as Akiko. She was my coworker, 2 years my senior, and had a gentle smile and kind, intelligent eyes. She was extremely bright and spoke Hungarian and Czech and frequently traveled with her family to Europe. Honoka was pursuing a career in international relations. I wished longingly that I could someday travel to Europe with her. On the day we finally exchanged phone numbers, she revealed to me she was moving to America for an internship. I was visibly disappointed and left work that day with a bitter smile on my face. I quit about a month later. There was no reason for me to stay if Honoka wasn’t there. I had also been stealing food from the kitchen and wanted to leave before I got caught.
For the first time in my life, at age 23, a man confessed his love for me. I didn’t even know his name. He was an otaku, the type that spends his days and nights playing video games and collecting figures of half-naked 2D women. I was sitting in the food court at the mall when this stranger, who turned out to work at a store nearby, approached me and told me he loved me. We’d never interacted prior to that and I stared blankly at him, my hand cold from holding a soda and my purse heavy with stolen goods.
“I don’t love you,” I’d replied. “And I don’t think you really love me.”
I briefly dated an Italian woman named Aurora. Nothing ever really came of it apart from holding hands and a few kisses. She told me within the first month of our relationship she was moving back to Italy in the next month. I should have guessed. She was much too European to stay permanently in Japan.
I must have looked disappointed, because she then said, “Won’t you go back to Russia someday?”
“I’m not from Russia,” I’d responded.
On the 9th of March the following year, a mere week after my 24th birthday, I murdered a human being. Ever the thieving sociopath, I approached a young man, whom I learned during my trial would be 21 the next week, and I swung a heavy metal pipe longer than half of my total height at his shoulders, intending to knock him into unconsciousness and plunder whatever he had in his wallet; he was well-dressed and carried himself with an air that indicated an affluent lifestyle. I needed cash and my Internet sales had been declining that year. He avoided my blow and pinned me to the ground while he fished through his jacket for his cell phone. And for yet another of the many times of my life, I recalled begrudgingly just how small and delicate my puny female form truly was, and I nearly surrendered myself to the fact that the police would come now and arrest me for a petty attempt at robbery.
Ever the prideful, impulsive, reckless sociopath, I took a small kitchen knife I carried out of my skirt and I slit his throat with it as he held my disgustingly fragile self onto the dirty pavement with his hands and knees. He sputtered and there was a sudden wave of thick, gleaming crimson pouring over my pale face and pooling into my slightly parted mouth, drenching my tongue in a metallic, almost savory taste that reminded me of a hamburger cooked way too poorly.
Vskipayet, kak volna…
He choked and coughed and shuddered and then he collapsed beside me. I stood, my shirt sticky and wet with this stranger’s blood, and I looked down at him, unfeeling. He reached out an arm to me as if to beg, with the last of his strength, “Help me, please. You did this. Please undo it.”
And I walked away from him and he died.
As to how I was caught, I wasn’t; I readily admitted to it. I saw no point in hiding it. Well, it’s true I was approached and, in a panic, questioned about the smear of red on my blouse while walking home, and I was too tired to lie. I had no lies ready to tell.
“I killed someone,” I’d responded. The horror on the faces of these strangers- strangers who had been fortunate enough not to be the one I’d approached behind the closed restaurant to rob that evening- was delectable.
For forty years it was decided I would sit in a prison cell.
And months later the nation was gripped by panic when a militant right-wing terrorist group called “Svyashchennaya Sasha”- “Sacred Sasha”- a group consisting entirely of young Japanese men with an obsession, almost a fetish, with Slavic culture and the nationalist and fascist movements taking place in Europe at the time, murdered four government officials in one night and bombed a shopping mall in Shibuya. The government had some knowledge of the group before this incident but regarded it as no more than the equivalent of a backwater cult- strange, but ultimately not an immediate threat to the general public. 76 people died as a result of this assumption.
I and the other violent female criminals in my prison were summoned the following week. I assumed they were going to announce that Big Bara- you’ll meet her shortly- was hoarding tampons and using them to coerce the pretty, young inmates into showering her with various favors, and therefore the policy on feminine hygiene products now stated that we were no longer going to be issued any more tampons or napkins and were from this point on required to bleed through our shabby prison uniforms.
The cynical sociopath proved to be mistaken. This was a real meeting, a formal gathering; they had us sitting at a table in a clean, professional looking meeting room I assume was primarily used by the prison staff. They briefed us on the Sasha crisis and we sat there bored, waiting for the point of the gathering. It took at least forty five minutes before they dropped the bomb.
“We are assembling a team of prisoners with lengthy sentences to assist the JSDF in hunting down and taking in, dead or alive, the leader of the Sacred Sasha organization,” the stout man directing the meeting told us. “This mission is completely optional, but participation will reduce your sentence by a minimum of twenty years.”
Who was this leader whose capture would earn us *at least* twenty years of freedom?
My fellow inmates were mumbling boredly amongst themselves. A couple girls had bright, hopeful expressions on their faces- their sentences were probably less than twenty years and participation in the mission would earn them a one-way ticket to freedom with only a few months of their precious youth having been spent in this hellhole.
“The leader of the Sacred Sasha, who goes by the name Aleksandr Zavrazhnov but is, as we previously stated, a Japanese citizen, is reported to have a wife, also Japanese, and a young son possibly living with him in a farmhouse in Kamakura. It is unknown whether this is his primary residence, but it is widely believed to be the wife and child’s.”
“So, what, we gotta take out the wife and kid too?” Big Bara chuckled loudly. She was quickly and fussily reprimanded by the attending staff.
For a break from dreary prison life, I halfheartedly decided I would participate in this poorly planned mission to make good out of the growing female prison population.
I wholeheartedly decided when “Aleksandr Zavrazhnov”’s picture was shown on the projector.
“Sousuke Nakamura, age 25. Native of Yokohama. Graduated from Yokohama City University three years ago- majored in political science. Worked in an auto repair shop before getting involved with the group today called the Sacred Sasha. Details of his personal life are surprisingly accessible, considering his criminal status. The only problem is that, unlike the other members of the organization, he operates almost entirely in solitude and his current whereabouts are unknown. The location in Kamakura we mentioned has not yet been confirmed to be his residence, as we mentioned. It is only rumored that his wife and child live there.”
I stood and I looked coolly at the bespectacled man standing at the projector with a clipboard in his fat hands. “His wife is not full-blooded Japanese. She’s a citizen, but she’s half American,” I told him. “And her name is Akiko Nishikawa.”
“How do you know that?!” he demanded.
Because when I was 15 and 16 I had a diary full of plans to torture and kill him for stealing the love of my life.
“It’s a hunch,” I responded. “I’ll participate in the mission. Hell, I’ll even lead it for you if you want.”
“Jun chan, I thought you weren’t interested in political stuff like this,” a friend of mine mumbled from her chair beside me.
“I’m not,” I replied.
