“Attachment is a drug.” 

Kazuhara said such a thing below her breath as the smoke from her cigarette slowly caressed the blinds. Nobuho turned in the chair of her desk to face Kazuhara across the room. Night had come to cover them in sleep, but Kazuhara sat up on the bed by the window and smoked away the late hours. The darkness of the bedroom was only illuminated by Nobuho’s computer screen. A few old men were silently preaching their politics into the headphones that Nobuho had taken off to consider the sudden words. There was no desire in her to respond to a comment like that. It was a matter enough to just watch the woman staring into the pity of moonlight as though it were a panting dog, begging for a treat. 

Kazuhara inhaled her fumes and breathed out the transparent cloud of thoughts. 

“It’s a shame we’re prescribed it when we’re born. That’s why, you know? That’s why we want romance, because we want our next fix. Attachment is just an addiction that has everyone scratching at their arm.” 

Nobuho stood from the desk and went to the bed. She crawled across and laid her head on a pillow beneath Kazuhara’s frame. The other woman did not turn her head to watch the approach—she only glanced from the corner of her eyes as Nobuho pulled Kazuhara’s left calf closer in an embrace. Kazuhara sighed and locked eyes on some point far off in the expanse of the infinite heavens. Her face was angry, but her eyes remained shining with a frustrated curiosity for those places she could not reside within. It was Kazuhara’s misfortune, Nobuho thought while holding the woman's leg to her chest, that where she belonged was in the eternity of words and history—in the unforgotten whispers of time. Kazuhara must have been someone who would never amount to much in her life, but who would one day be talked about like a princess. 

“Is it really so bad?” Nobuho asked, rubbing her forehead against the bare skin. 

“Who can say? Attributing morality to addiction is a job for priests. Do you think the reason for the addiction could be found? Maybe the reason for the prescription?” 

Nobuho closed her eyes and breathed in the flesh-scent of the sheets. The hot night perspired them both. It was proof that there were two people there at that moment, and so even something like that was precious. It was much like the weight when carrying a person's bag, or being handed a coffee for such a—but, no, that was just Nobuho slipping back into her bad habits. She had promised to stop thinking like that. 

“Is that something there’s meaning in defining?” Nobuho said. 

“What other definition matters in the world? We could forget how to transmit electrons this very night and I would lament it less than the loss of the desire to define such things. We are born into a world that covers us in its sentimentality, and when we are unable to cover others in such things flagrantly, we become scorned. Reservation, I know you understand that much, Shiina.”

“I understand as much as I need in order to be with you.”

Kazuhara rested her elbow on the window sill and put her chin in the palm of her hand. She smiled at the statement Nobuho made, and her lips resembled a woman watching a pair of birds dance in the park. It was a pleasantness that Nobuho created within her, and Nobuho warmed gently at the expression. For as troubled as she was, Kazuhara could not keep herself from expressing such a simple pleasure when Nobuho spoke. 

“Is that it, then? Do you really think so little of it?” 

Kazuhara thought for a moment and used her free hand to caress Nobuho's sweaty hair. She scratched at Nobuho’s scalp a bit, causing the woman to lean into the hand like a cat. The two of them chuckled to each other before Kazuhara pulled her hand back. She put the cigarette to her lips again and puffed away the smile under the night wind that carried mid-Summer air from far off places to their little world. 

“I don’t hate it. I don’t hate the prescription. I just wish it was easier for some people to not notice that they were addicted, and to reject it so coldly. Since the salamander crawled from the primeval waters, we were all junkies to such a thing. I was watching a video the other day about the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I thought it was very interesting. Who could have created such a plain story as that back then? Who could have created a single summary of our fate in this world so straight back before the ancient gods all wasted away? It must have been a very sorry person. I see him on the street sometimes. Occasionally, you know, when you’re at the bus stop or in a cafe, you can see the same man or woman. Reincarnated through intentions when souls rotted away. They’re better off dead.” 

Nobuho reached up with one hand and grabbed the cigarette from Kazuhara’s lips carefully. She pulled herself up to meet Kazuhara’s eyes and pulled a lungful of smoke from the small pyre. Nobuho exhaled into the night and pressed the butt into a small tin tray on the sill which had been provided for such a purpose. Nobuho smiled at Kazuhara before wrapping her arms around her and rolling over onto the bed. Kazuhara yelped loudly while Nobuho laughed. Kazuhara tried to pull away with a smile on her face but Nobuho latched on like an alligator until the edge of the bed gave way and she slid off. So attached, Kazuhara was dragged down and the blanket also fell over onto them as they hit the floor. 

The two women breathed heavily into the dark and into each other's eyes. 

“I don’t want you to die,” Nobuho said without any hint of joy. 

“I’m not going to die. Especially not when I have such a good nurse…” 

Their lips combined in the dark. 

The low hum of the electric street lamp watched the games they played some nights. It illuminated the gutters and the walkways, but it could not illuminate those deeper things that each of them had kept most hidden. To such a thing as a street lamp, intentions must have remained secret, or else the whole of the world would be engulfed in a purifying light which would expunge life from every corner. When walking together, when walking alone, they were always walking somewhere. As long as they were in the cafe’s, or at the bus stops, or even making love in the privacy of their bedrooms where no other could see them, then they were in pursuit of the definition of their race's singular fascination. 

To an inanimate street lamp, love must seem very disturbing.