“Thank you for your hard work!” 

The young man's recitation bounced off Yasuka’s back as she left the convenience store. The soft, cool, air of night met her with its stars and winds. She pulled the bag to her shoulder and let out a breath that had been held in for the last ten hours of her shift. She realized that to feel how long one's legs were must have been a really bad sign of exhaustion. 

Her apartment was a small building only ten minutes from the place she worked. A blessing to live so close in the confines of Chiba's new and foreign streets. It was harder to get lost when she only had to cross one major road. She was still a ways off when the pedestrian signal flicked on. A small cabal of shapeless people moved away from her. Yet as her feet hit the curb, the light changed into its red warning. 

“Unlucky, eh?” 

Her half-sighed chuckle was only audible to her beneath the sound of traffic. 

Yasuka found her way home and climbed the stairs to the second floor landing. Her apartment was on the other end of the three rooms. Once over the top step she lifted her eyes from her feet and looked across the walkway. 

There was a girl sitting outside the middle apartment. Her back was against the door with her knees pulled up. She held her head in the palm of her hand while what little hair she had covered her eyes. She was slightly red, and her hair was disheveled. Yasuka walked forward and stepped around the girl as she approached her own apartment. She pulled the keys from her pocket and unlocked the door, opening it and meaning to go in. A heart-wrenching promise emanated from the nightstand beside her bed , within which a curse awaited her. Surrounding it was nothing but the grim emptiness of a life not spent. Her head pulsed like the repeating flash of a red crossing sign. She stood at the door, waiting for an explosion that would never come. 

After a few moments of silence, Yasuka looked over to the girl. 

“Hey, Michie, you want to hang out for a bit?” 

The teenager dropped her arms to her sides and pushed herself off the floor. She stood and patted the fabric of her sweat pants, smiling from ear to ear. Without a word she moved forward quickly and pulled the door from Yasuka’s hand, going in ahead of her. Michie nearly disappeared into the dark apartment. The girl let out a large exhalation in a rough tone as she threw herself face first into Yasuka’s carefully organized bedding. Yasuka went in after her and flicked on the lights. As she set her bag in the closet by the door she began to interrogate her guest. 

“Did you get in another fight with your mother?” 

There were two thuds and a series of blunt strikes made by socked feet as the girl ran to defend herself.

“It wasn’t my fault this time!” 

“Sure it wasn’t,” Yasuka almost chuckled, but her day pulled her heart to the floor as she tried to stand. She rested on her knees with the teenager standing over her, feeling the uncertain gaze on her back. 

“Good there, Yasu?” 

“Yeah, just a little lightheaded.” 

“Long day at work?” 

Yasuka took a deep breath and pushed against the wall, lifting herself to her feet and standing proud. Michie was still taller, but it was better than being further beneath her. At least according to the physical realm. 

“Pizza sound good?” 

The teen replied with a smile. 

The budget that month had not allowed for it. Still, it was better than cooking in her state, and the child had to eat something. Maybe she could get away with it if she prevented herself from relying too much on the aircon, save on power. Less condiments too, not having mayonnaise would hardly be the end of the world. By the time she had read out her card info and set the phone down, small plans like that lined themselves up in the forefront of her mind. 

“Yasu~!” 

Yasuka raised her head and saw Michie had already been standing by with her hands clasped behind her back. She knew what the girl was waiting for, though the practice drew no amount of benevolence in her heart. 

“Alright, what do you want to wear this time?” 

“I liked that one last week! With the frills!” 

“Sure, sure…” 

Yasuka went to the closet and pulled a large cardboard box from the back corner. She went back into the main room and dropped the heavy thing on her bed. Michie stood behind her, looming around her shoulders, and watched as the box opened.

It smelled of sea salt.

A bundle of clothes was inside. Some were nicer designs of a more modest type, shirts made of silk. Some were dresses with large flower-like embellishments down the broadside of the wearer's form. Yasuka knew every one and despised their presence, despised their retrieval, and yet could not convince herself to despise the innocent creature who wanted to see them. Michie had mentioned frills, which lined up with a French-style kimono with a light yellow trim. The majority of the fabric was auburn. Inspiration, once upon a time, but then it just sat there collecting dust in a Chuo Ward apartment. Yasuka did as she was told and retrieved the thing, pushing aside its cousins and presenting it to the girl. 

“I forgot I resized this for you.” 

“Thank you!” With a yelp of gratitude and a quick snatch, Michie disappeared with the thing and went to the lavatory to change. Yasuka was left with the box. She sat on her bed and sighed deeply, reading the faded marker on the side. 

Assignments. 

She really was thirty. It felt odd to think about it so much, to linger on something as obvious as that. She thought to her old friend from school, Miriya. Last she had heard Miriya had gotten a job at a tech company. At some point she had gotten training in whatever a tech company office worker did. Accounting? That must have been it. Miriya was better with numbers. Yasuka looked at her fingers and the little pin-small scars on them. She wanted to say she was better with her hands than Miriya, that they compared on that account. One in the mind, the other in the form. Even sitting there, with nothing but a box of rags to show for her matter, she could not degrade such a beautiful person like that. 

“Yeah, she was always better at this than I was.” 

The door to the bathroom opened. Slowly, with a renewed austerity, as if she had stepped into her skin for the first time, Michie emerged. The top consisted of a mock-kimono, resembling the folds of one in auburn. Only at each point where the fabric would be separate or over-folded, there were lines of yellow silk trim. The auburn slowly parted from the form of Michie’s mid-stomach. Where the over-folded portion would be, the dress came out into a bouquet of layered frills. Every third layer a black lace accented the color, making it seem as if the shadows between the folds leaked out over them. The left side of Michie’s waist and legs remained in the kimono fashion, tight to her body. Michie was a silly girl, and her hair was still not done properly to attest to the quality of her face.

“Come here for a minute,” Yasuka asked. Michie obliged, allowing herself to sit on the floor with her back to Yasuka. The older woman took the girl's newly grown hair into her fingers and started to run them through it. She gently pulled apart the knots and brushed it softly. 

“You should brush more often. If you’re going to grow it out you have to take care of it, if you’re a girl you should learn this much.” 

Michie stayed quiet under the comment but for a small murmur of affirmation. 

Yasuka found that once it was properly groomed, Michie’s length reached to just shy of her shoulders. Not very much to work with. It would be better to style it, a trim in some fashion that suited shorter women's hair. Yasuka stopped herself before saying as much. There were reasons Michie could not do such things. A force pressed upon her again when she realized that. Her heart weighed down by what she was really doing, by what the girl was doing. Was it right to entertain her in that way? It was, because it was what Michie wanted. Yet without being a part of Michie’s internal world, what could she do? Knowing the effect without the cause, that was a difficult series of events. Then it was her job, as an adult, to know. She should have had the experience to do something, to say something. 

“Well, I can’t do much yet, but it looks much nicer now. At least it’s tidy, eh?” 

Michie stood and went to Yasuka’s dresser. She pulled out a small pocket mirror and waved it around in front of her eyes. She observed closely every small detail, every notion upon her head. The girl slouched slightly, displeased. 

“Do I really look that good?” 

“Well, you could strike a pose or two. That’s what models do, young miss.” 

Michie shot a look towards Yasuka with glee. Yes, Yasuka knew how much Michie liked to be called a young miss. Little strings lifted some of the weight off her chest, though it remained and that smile that praised her own praise was something far from truly uplifting. To escape into convenience, that was what Yasuka had wanted from the behavior. To make a friend, to do a good thing. Then what was she doing? Providing clothes to that person? Dressing her in rags from a wasted time. 

Michie turned and went to stand in the center of the room, between Yasuka and the door. She put her legs out and posed with her hands on her hips like a sentai character. The movement startled her but she laughed along as was desired by the performer. Unaware, or perhaps aware and not showing, that she was observing Yasuka’s own performance. The movement, properly paid for, was replaced by something a touch more feminine. Michie pulled one hand up to her chin and rested it upon her palm. With her other arm tightly reaching across just under her chest to hold the upheld arm in hand. Yasuka was shocked, not because of its arrogance—a teenager was, after all, prone to such expressions—but because of its application. Michie had been looking down at her. From a person standing to one sitting. From the taller to the shorter. These were normal things, unserious. Performing her little role, Michie had adopted a new height upon which she could place herself. She must have been a goddess, or, at least, a queen. Someone of posterity, someone who would be recalled for having been a great many goods and bads. A person of note, looking down on a peasant who has enthralled themselves upon her path. The eyes were what had done it. 

Yasuka put her hands together and clapped. 

“Was it good?” 

Michie broke her pose and leaned forward with wide eyes and an even wider smile. 

“Yes, you looked super proud right then!” 

“Really? Did I really? Just like Marie Antoinette, right?” 

“Just like her!” 

Michie squealed and leapt forward, tackling Yasuka in a big hug as they both fell over onto the bed. Yasuka obliged, having had the wind knocked from her chest. She had not noticed before, but Michie had started to use scented shampoo. 

Michie came up and went back to the box. 

“Which one should I wear next?” 

Yasuka remained on her back. The bed engulfed her with its fragrant dream-scent. It reminded her about the way of things, about the physical world. What was she doing? What was Michie doing? What had she done? What could she do for the girl? For the mother? For herself? Eight years had passed, and she remained in the same place as she had entered those eight years before. How many times had a younger person been hired at the store? Hundreds, there had to have been. All of them had left, all of them were living better somewhere else. That much must have been true. She stayed. The steel trash cans behind her store were clean and new when she began, and when she would go in the following day, they were rusted and filthy. Eight years of muck, that was her life. It was no surprise. She would hit those sheets every night and be reminded and yet she would return there all the same. Letting herself be overcome with the spreading rot. She felt herself a villain, because she knew that doing something, anything, would mean claiming Michie’s sadness for her own. She felt like she was a horribly vile person. 

“This one!”

Michie pulled out a pink maid outfit. The maid implication was performed by the stitched-on apron, a light blue fabric that covered a somewhat stereotypical chinese qipao which was pink with red and green flowers coming from the base. An early and half-serious challenge by another student. A joke, more than anything. For an assignment to battle certain pre-conceptions on the nature of fabric, the men from class wore silly things like that, and the women wore large hakama and haori. That was what the dress was to Yasuka, a half-joking ploy to make fun of her friends. Michie’s eyes, ever provoked by justification, were alight with joy. 

At least she did not have to resize it.

“Why are you so attached to the cute stuff?” 

“Why? I guess it just calls to me, you know? Why aren’t you famous?” 

The girl's glimmer remained under the question. Yasuka took it in and laughed, sitting up to address Michie with far eyes. There were those sorts of things which she was unable to control, she knew that. She had accepted it, or thought she had. Still, she saw the shoulder which had become entwined beneath her own fingers and felt pride. Michie looked beautiful.  Michie always looked very beautiful in Yasuka’s dresses. She was beautiful in every way that she was tragic, in every way that Yasuka felt her heart turn while looking at her. Yet despite that her own selfish ego had presented to her a new energy, reprised after a day out in the drain of reality. She knew what Michie had done for her, why she had engaged the girl in such activities. She wanted Michie to model for her. She wanted Michie to put the dresses on. She wanted to see her work finally amount to something. For her world to have amounted to something. 

None of that was a surprise. She was too old for surprise realizations like that. Rather, they were lingering stains on her soul. 

“Your mother found your shampoo, didn’t she?” 

Michie let the smile waver and rest into a grin as she sat next to Yasuka and held the new dress in her lap. Her shoulders did not fall, but her glee faltered and allowed that voice to fall an octave or two as she addressed her friend. 

“Yeah. She doesn’t think I should be using stuff like that. I tried to make excuses, you know, but she has been pretty suspicious of me for a while now. The hair doesn’t help.” 

Yasuke wanted to hug her. To pat her head. To do something of worth. Yet her hands remained in her lap, motionless. Yes, there would be things like that. Quarrels. Michie knew that, she expected it, but she was still so young—she was still so unsure of those things which the young engaged in. Yasuka knew what those eyes were, she knew what fires were in them when Michie was allowed to become one with that image of herself that she had always desired. There was no passing fancy in her. It was no oddity. Vanity, sure, but there was a truth to it. A sense that Michie knew what she was doing, that she was being vain, and that she embraced that part of herself. She wanted to be beautiful, how could Yasuka fault her for that? 

“What about your friends?” 

Michie laughed uneasily, letting more air leave her lungs than normal. 

“They don’t know a thing, but they’re all weirded out. You know, I guess I am pretty weird, huh? There’s no helping that in the end!” She stood and ran to the lavatory to change. 

Ah, I’ve made her cry. 

Yasuka stood and went to the lavatory door, speaking through it to her guest. 

“You can’t get famous by doing stuff like that. Fashion, I mean. I guess you could, if you know people, but otherwise you have to be super lucky. But there are a bunch of people out there who just want to take advantage of young people, take designs for themselves. Companies too. Unless you have a lot of skill or unless you know the right doors to knock on, you can’t really get rich off of fashion.” 

The door opened and Michie was standing there, hands folded together in front of herself as she had trouble making eye contact with Yasuka. Bashfully she grabbed the apron with one hand and lifted the other to brush her ill-suited bangs to cover her eyes. The dress came down around her hips in such a way that surprised Yasuka. Such a smooth contour led the vines of the flowers across the fabric of the dress so tastefully that she wondered if it had not really been made exactly to Michie’s measurements. The apron too contested gaze with the look of servitude. 

“Do I look good?” 

“Yeah, you look great, Michie.” 

The doorbell rang.

Michie instinctively shivered across her whole body before composing herself with a grin.

“It’s the pizza, should I answer it?” 

Yasuka waited. What was she waiting for? A heat built in Yasuka’s chest at that moment, looking upon Michie in her little performance. She could not step aside, she could not let Michie go to the door and open it. Reveal her true self to the world outside, even in such a small way. Was it ownership? Was it mothering? Was it shame or pride? Or was it just fear? Each crept into her head along her cold neck. She cast her eyes to the door, then back to Michie, and again to the door. The idea ground against her throat like sandpaper, scratching away her voice until its vague airs were nothing but dust on the wind. A wetness built on the edge of her eyes, welling up from that heat. She could not step aside. 

“I’ll get it.” 

Yasuka slowly shut the lavatory door on the girl and went to the front entrance. She rubbed her eyes clean and grabbed hold of the handle. It was not the delivery person, instead it was a middle aged woman. Her hair was long, thin, and grey in small bunches at the base. She had tied it back into a bun with scraggly threads pulling themselves loose in every way. The woman’s skin was of a good color but drawn, like she had been very angry or engaged in chores for a period that made her tired. Yasuka knew the person well, it was one of her neighbors. 

“Hi, Mrs. Kadoyaka.” 

“And hello to you as well Ms Yamagishi. Have you seen my son? He’s left the place and hasn’t come back yet.” 

“I can’t say I have. Maybe he went to the arcade?” 

The older woman glared at her with thin eyes, analyzing the words. 

“Is it you then?” 

“I’m sorry?” 

On the reply the woman’s gaze softened and she scoffed in Yasuka’s direction. 

“If you see him, please send him home. He’s caused a great stir today and I won’t have him running about making trouble for the neighborhood!” 

On that note she returned toward the direction of the stairs, but her form was hidden by the closed door. Yasuka turned her head and saw half the face of that girl who was hiding away in the apartment. Barely peeking around the lavatory doorframe. She had seen the interaction, and her cheeks were red and her eyes were moist. 

“I have a good idea,” Yasuka said, walking past the lavatory into the main room. She went to her closet again and pushed the hanging clothes to the side. In a large shoebox she had borrowed from a man too many years gone to recall the name of, there was an outfit. A somewhat elementary example of the early learning of a young student. Hardly anything to hold onto, hardly a thing worth remembering. 

“It is inspired,” her professor said. “I can tell you worked very hard.” 

Michie came out in her maid clothes and looked over Yasuka’s shoulder. The older woman was holding the box in her hands, clearly intending to pick it up, to hand it over, but she had paused. Her shoulders did not shake—Yasuka thanked them for that much. It took her too long to hold back the feelings brought up by the box. She had forgotten that summary of her work. Just words in the past. Their phantom haze lingered on the cardboard. Yasuka cleared her throat deeply, swallowing a bit of spit that came up. In the new heat she was able to stand with the thing and turn to face her guest. 

“This is a good one, I think you’ll like it.” 

Michie received it slowly. Her eyes were soft, and Yasuka knew she had worried the girl. 

“You’re fine with tights, right? There are stockings to go with it. I’m pretty sure I lost the shoes a long time ago though.” 

The girl opened it and her eyes grew large. Then, before the smile could rise, she looked back to Yasuka with uncertainty. 

“Will it fit?” 

“Yeah, all the fancy stuff is over a nylon sub-layer. It will be tight, but it shouldn’t be a problem.” 

Michie allowed her smile to rise again, and she went to the lavatory to change. 

Then the professor’s voice came to her again. 

“What do you want to do with your life?” 

“I want to be famous.” 

“Are you sure? Fame is all well and good, but, Ms Yamagishi, if I may be so bold, I don’t think that’s really what you’re looking for here.” 

Motives. She was a well of misinterpreted motives. What was her true goal? What were her true ends? What means did she wish to partake in to reach such goals? She wanted to be called smart. She wanted to be called talented, or pretty, even just skilled. Even just Yasuka. Could she have answered him then? Did she have the will to do so? She knew, as she sat on the bed and waited for her guest to change, what her motives were. She knew why they were reprehensible, why she did not deserve what her peers had worked so hard to achieve and which most of them failed to do. Her apartment made sense when she thought about it like that. 

Michie was a fact to herself. One which Yasuka had been blessed to witness, but what could she really do other than watch? To become part of that endeavor, would that not just bring her back to that old self? The horrid person who wanted more than she was owed? The professor was faded in memory, her fellow students mostly the same. Yasuka tried to make out the sounds of Michie moving around, but the girl was very quiet in her movements. Probably to keep from waking her family. A good skill to learn. It was better to be happy for Michie than to allow Yasuka to drag her into her own little tortures. It was good she was being true to who she really was. It was good that she liked cute things. It would be better if she could leave Yasuka behind and be free of those walls. 

Yasuka’s own little finch. Dancing in her cage. 

“I want to be wanted…” 

The words left her lips while her eyes fixed on a corner of the room. That was it, and what a repulsive inclination it was. To have made herself into something which would not be desired, to have produced for herself no spectacle. To have melted away into the background of her own life and to have wanted the world for it. Tears came, dry though they were, and instead she laughed at her own miserable self. She was just tired. It was nothing serious. She had to go to work the next day, and the next, and so on. Her phone would remain quiet, her door silent but for the delivery or the search for others. It was what she deserved for not working harder, for not trying her best, honestly, to be someone worthwhile. There were billions of nobodies in the world, it was pathetic of her to think she was special.  

For what purpose did she pursue such vilification? For its own sake? For the cause of justice? As if justifying herself against a learned morality held some greater sway in her heart than Miriya? That woman held no such ambiguous beliefs. Just the day before her social media had celebrated a small life brought anew into the rife and ever-so-tumultuous world. A matter of course, a matter of action. To give oneself over so thoughtlessly to the domestic inane? That held no sway. It did not benefit the ego which she held in her own heart. Having spent all ten years of her twenties in such faux-disambiguation, at last that much she was sure of. That was her ego, that was her vanity. 

Michie was something else. A being entirely of superior note. At least, she had yet been so tortured by herself that the idea that she should have a self that existed beyond what had been applied to her was hardly ambiguous. She was Michie, despite what they told her. Yasuka had spent a third of her life thinking about herself, and she knew just how utterly jealous she was of that girl. She wanted to lash out, to hate her. Then the girl would look up at her with those eyes, and all of her assurances were dashed. Was Michie so confident? In her shaking shoulders was there room for pride? In her vanity, was she really just as scared of being seen for who she really was? 

The door opened again. 

Her thin legs were covered by tight pink stockings. The tops of them disappeared beneath the frilled skirt which had come to the knees. It was like a downturned rose, with petals in different hues and dripping dew. Little clear beads hung from the petals like jingling dew on their elastic carriers. The waist came close to the flesh, hugging it tightly along the bias cut. She was pleased to see it work as intended. Clearance for the corset atop the nylon, the ease of the fabric stretched enough to make it look natural and yet not enough to reveal the gaps. A light green corset hugged the middle of Michie’s body with brown trim-patterns of vines swirling about upon it. The frilled hem of the neck and lace sleeves were just as green. Each arm exposed only a bit of naked flesh from the shoulder to the high ball-gloves that made it halfway up her bicep. 

Above all of it, and which stunned Yasuka most of all, Michie smiled sweetly. Her lips pressed together as her eyes were growing wet. She folded her hands in front of herself and bowed forward to Yasuka, bending her whole torso to face the floor. 

“Kadoyaka Michie, at your service…” 

Yasuka stood and wrapped her arms around Michie’s shoulders, weighing them both down with the days and worlds and the people who all mocked them. They fell to their knees on the floor, embracing each other against the outrageous night. Words wanted to rise, but they were caught and choked in Yasuka’s throat. She sobbed in an ugly way, unable to keep her breath, unable to keep her tears. She was getting older, everyone was. Michie would grow outside herself and disappear into age altogether. Another face recalled after ten years, a part of Yasuka she could not keep from slipping through the cracks of her tired mind. A part of Yasuka wished she would melt between the cracks and become someone else entirely. It would be easier then, to live with the nonexistence of forsaken dreams. 

“Yasu, am I allowed to be happy?” 

What was her answer? What could it be? Who was Yasuka in the shadow of that bright soul? She was a person moved in awe. She was no better than a worm in crawling envy. Michie was a person that moved without the need for others. In spite of them, in regard to herself and what she felt. She would say things with her own chest, her own intentions. Unshrouded by years of degradation, she would even say the deepest regrets and fancies as though they were trite news. None of it mattered in the facing of her ever-changing days. People like Yasuka were nothing in the story of Michie’s life. They were shadows. Coworkers whose high-pitched wishes fell on deaf ears. Women who happened to live next door. Vanity, and jealousy from it, leaked over onto Michie’s shoulder. 

“You deserve the world,” Yasuka sobbed. 

The doorbell rang. 

Yasuka stared at it vengefully. She was a villain, a wretched creature who had taken the princess from her tower for its own sick gain. She hated how she paraded the girl around her room like a porcelain doll, like a caged bird. Still, Michie pulled away from their mutual embrace and sniffled, sucking up a bit of snot her own crying had dredged up. She smiled and fixed her hair before standing and offering a hand to Yasuka. 

“I think that’s the pizza. You should answer.” 

A villain, that was it, because she could only drag Michie down with her. Her own stagnant heart was the cause. She knew that much, drifting on endless sleep-deprived nights between thoughts of home and thoughts of college and of that girl. She thought of cruelty, and of kindness, and found their form to be just the same. In her kindness, in hiding Michie from the place beyond that threshold, from its judgement of the form laid over her true self, she had been helplessly cruel. So, she thought, perhaps cruelty was its own kindness. 

“I’m a bit tired, can you get it?” 

Michie’s eyes widened with panic. She shot a look to the door as the bell rang again, resounding throughout her head like a cathedral call. She composed herself a bit before falling apart at the edges. Her shoulders shook terribly. Her eyes found Yasuka’s in pleading, but the woman could only smile while wiping the tears from her lips. Michie took a few deep breaths and tapped her chest roughly to squeeze out the nerves. 

“Should I do, like, another sentai pose or something? Oh, maybe I should do a magical girl intro? Like; ‘with a heart of gold and to save her friends!’ What do you think?” 

“Whatever you want, Michie.” 

She looked down at Yasuka with a laugh and turned away. That figure went to the door, still dressed in such a ridiculous cosplay, and grabbed the handle. Then, slowly, the fluorescent lights of the street leaked through as she gently pushed it out. Yasuka could only make out half of the man in his red polo and red cap. The box in his hand made its way to Michie before she had much of a chance to respond. His disinterested eyes smiled cheaply while he repeated his trained hello and well-wishes. He finally disappeared into the haze from which he had come, leaving Michie without a breath of a moment to speak up. She stood on the threshold with the pizza for a moment, basking in the cool Chiba air. 

Michie took a step onto the landing, engulfing her body in the breeze. It must have nipped at her upper arms, at the thin fabric of her stockings. She looked outrageous to anyone who would pass by. A teenage girl playing around in cosplay like an otaku with too much free time. To Yasuka, she could only admire the silhouette as Michie’s eyes, reflecting the outside lights, gazed around like she had never seen the street before. She did not speak up, as it was too soon for her soft heart to do something so brazen. So she took it all in. 

Yasuka got up and went to her nightstand. In the top drawer she pulled out a letter that her old professor had sent a month before. Promises of a chance, a competition. A good word, in respect to the student who had the most potential. They were compliments eight years late. They felt heavy in her palm, much more than the paper and ink should have. The ghost of Michie’s warmth filled her heart, and then the weight subsided. It was nothing more than paper, no more than praise. Perhaps, if she did it, and became successful, she could aspire to be someone that Michie could admire. Even if she failed, then at least being a failure would be better than being nobody at all. 

She left the letter on top of her nightstand as Michie returned. She was not crying, but her breath was short and she was chuckling to herself nervously. Yasuka laughed at the display and walked over to grab the pizza, setting it on the counter and divvying out two slices for each of them. They sat on the bed beside each other and ate. Yasuka promised herself she would stop crying, at least for the night, but she decided to say one more thing on the matter of it all. 

“Hey, Michie, you should be nicer to your mom. I think, you know, if you’ll take it from someone like me, you should tell her about yourself. She’s just worried about you, she just wants you to be happy too. I’m sure she’ll understand.” 

Michie nodded and continued to munch away like the child she was. 

“Yeah, well, after exams. If I do bad then I can distract her with this, eh?” 

The lavatory was filled with several outfits that were tossed about on the sink and the floor, pressed against the wall by the opened door. In the middle of the bedroom a large cardboard box lay open and overflowing with colorful fabrics half-dusty from age. Yasuka loved the mess, because it was a thing which she had not created. It was a thing which had been formed by another person's will. While she took another bite of her pizza, Yasuka laughed at Michie’s innocent joke.