✧ 02. Everything

There is a distinct discomfort that comes after the realization of a horrible life truth. In these recent weeks, I had soon acquired a new routine in which I spoke to as few people as possible. Even in the morning, before leaving to wander the streets, I barely spoke to Kobayashi unless he directly addressed me first for anything more than a greeting. On one particular morning, he decided to hand me a wad of yen and whisper a meager apology. Not once did I consider he would, in his foolishness and possible feigned sorrow, think to apologize for that night. Though I still trotted on with studs in my chest, soon adding more piercings to gain some semblance of self-expression, I simply passed through life with the idea that people like him can’t apologize out of embarrassment. So, looking at this wad in my hands, I stared back and nodded in acknowledgement. There was yet no forgiving for a betrayal like that. Even without having actually done anything, the mere deception was enough to form a grudge not easily shaken even by millions of yen.

I left out the door of the izakaya without a word. The streets during the winter get quite frigid; snowflakes may not yet fall, but the cold wind will usher everyone indoors. I found it pleasant, the ability to walk the streets in a bundled outfit and with little crowd to get in the way of a walk. It was easy to go from one restaurant, to the next department store, to even waltz down the street to a small convenience store that rarely had a working cash drawer. In the winter, everything is suddenly accessible, and this road was no exception to the isolation of a mid-night.

On this day, I found myself enamored with a bookstore. It had been one I frequented since August, and in this cold December morning, I was once again on my way to camp there. The owners were accustomed to my visits, even setting aside a recliner in a secluded corner for me to curl up in and read away. Upon entering, I took part of the hefty wad Kobayashi had given to me mere hours prior and pressed it onto the counter. The owner’s wife, a woman who only wore red, lit up like a lightbulb. “Oh, dearest Arima,” she began with her shrill voice, “You’re so generous, are you going to buy something?” She asked me. There was no way I could buy anything, as I was more interested in the warmth of the place and the company. I shook my head, and she pushed a few bookmarks into my hands. “Please, take this, then,” she said with a hushed voice. I looked at the bookmarks, shoving them into the pockets of my coat without another word. The owner’s wife beamed a big grin at me, then ran off to find her husband. Perhaps their next chatter was something about my sudden patronage after months of having little more than good word to help them, but none of it mattered. I crawled into the recliner set up for me, and scanned the nearby bookshelves.

This bookstore had an interesting atmosphere. It used to be a school in the 1960s, so there were private rooms that were once classrooms. Many of the halls were quite windy, too, with bookshelves pressed against the walls to form a confusing labyrinth of literature. This couple had no method to their madness in organizing books, either. If you asked for a specific author, they’d scan the bookshelves with you, heads bobbing up and down to glance at each individual spine and label in hopes that you won’t notice the book you sought out first. This corner, however, I had taken the liberty of organizing myself. It was only a short walk from the exit, but so many things were in the way it was impossible to tell if someone was back there. After about a month of my visits and reading, the owners began to call the corner the “Arima Nook,” given no one else sought to sit in the recliner or read the books. This corner, I organized firstly by topic; fiction, nonfiction, then into specifics such as the field or genre of the book. Afterwards, I began to go by author’s name. So, a book by Jane Doe that is nonfiction would go ahead of a fiction book by John Doe, but if both John and Jane wrote fiction books, Jane’s book would go first. Such an organization system should be standard, but it appears the older world is not quite privy to such sensitive matters.

I pulled out a book I had begun reading lately. After finishing Natsume Soseki’s “I Am a Cat,” one of my favorite books of recent times, I had decided to begin reading “Kokoro,” another one of Soseki’s books. His works particularly touched me in ways most other authors of his time didn’t. That isn’t to say I was so loyal to his work that I did not care for other authors, however. Many of Osamu Dazai’s works were of familiarity to me as well, and even works by Akutagawa were within my reading lists as classics of mine. Even the works of Yukio Mishima I found myself enamored with – books were a delicacy that many overlooked, but I found myself indulging in often as a means to show my appreciation for the art form.

I had never been much of a painter; and despite my love for music, I could never do more than sing passionately in a sugar-induced stupor and pluck away pathetically at a piano when struck with rare inspiration. My chosen art form, then, was writing. I often scribbled away at poetry as a child, then wrote stories as an adolescent, then began to write deeply personal essays and assessments into my budding adulthood. In this moment of staring directly at the cover of “Kokoro,” I suddenly remembered something important to where I ended up now. It wasn’t often something struck me enough to remember something of my past life, but I found a memory had clung to the forefront of my mind after so long of being shoved back.

The night I disappeared; my mother and I had gotten into an argument. We argued often, as I was nothing more than a machine to fuel their desires for the perfect child, and this night was no different. I had failed to meet the requirements for an overseas study program for college, and my mother had taken that failure harshly. She wailed and flailed, begging me to actually try. I can’t say that I wasn’t trying, in fact, I was just as disappointed as her that night, but my resolve to try once again after getting some more practice and experience in was not enough for her tantrum. When my father had come home and heard of the news, he held his hands over his face, and cried. “My child, she is a failure, she couldn’t even make herself useful enough to become a doctor, and now she fails as a writer, have I done something wrong?” He sobbed. I found it annoying that they resorted to such dramatics over small failures. Even my struggles to learn English resulted in my parents writhing in despair. It was as if I was meant to be perfect, and any flaw was the end of the world as they knew it.

Had I gone to that university program, I would have chosen to study English. I found an intrigue with the language, the wide ranges of cultures associated, and knew it was a degree that’d land me a great number of potential jobs if I simply kept my cards right. However, now, I was not in any college at all, and was suddenly homeless and staying with a man who only wanted my body. My state was pitiful, almost as pitiful as a puppy dunked in its own wet food. However, this reading was my way to make it up to myself. In abandoning that dream, it didn’t mean I had to abandon my love for books and for writing. Thusly, I knew the only way to stay connected was to keep reading, and hope that someday my reading would make me smart enough to not need any proper education to land a decent job.

Staring at the book cover in front of me, I eventually hear rustling a few feet away. It wasn’t the owner, his wife, nor the cat that stayed around, so I became alert and began to inspect the area for the sound. I didn’t want to get up yet, but scanning the area, a figure was hunched over a shorter shelf of books, whispering to itself in grotesque sounds that could only be described as huffing and whimpering. In its excitement, it shakes, and bumps into the shelf. If not for the setting, one could see this kind of sight as particularly obscene, but I knew it wasn’t what it seemed. I held the book out in front of me like a weapon; it could cause some cuts if used right, or otherwise just good enough to knock one out with enough force. When I stepped forward, however, the sight that greeted my eyes was a skittish woman. She looked to be no older than 20, shooting up with a squeak like a frightened mouse. “Don’t hurt me,” she whimpered out in a pathetic voice, “I’m just trying to find the best romance books here.” By that admittance, I lowered the book in my hands before setting it on a nearby table.

The girl in front of me stood tall – as tall as she could with her meager stature, her bangs parting ever so slightly to expose her forehead. She looked at me for quite some time; enough to make one uncomfortable, and turn any situation tense. However, I could tell she was simply sizing me up, deciding whether or not she wanted to engage formally or informally. After a few moments, she sighs. “Ugh, finally… someone my age!” She proclaims. I step back, hands going up to nearly choke her out for being so loud in this sacred haven of literature, but I instead clasp them over my jacket’s collar. In the awkward position I found myself, the girl stepped closer. I couldn’t bear the scent of her perfume at this distance, pungent with the stench of cheap lavender and strawberry. “I’m so sorry,” the girl quietly said, bowing deeply towards me. Such respect felt silly from someone so similar in age, however, perhaps she was using this gesture as a means to reflect that she understood my importance in this bookstore and that she had trampled over my sanctuary in an obscene display.

“It’s alright,” I meekly whisper out. “What are you doing here?”

“I just said I wanted to find the best romance book.”

“You need to do that while hunched over and huffing so suspiciously?”

“Not like that,” she grumbles. When she stands up again, her hands go behind her back. “I was excited after seeing one of my favorite series, and couldn’t contain my joy.”

“You’re quite the character. What’s your name?”

After a moment, she freezes and goes pale from embarrassment. “Oh goodness,” she whispers, “I didn’t introduce myself? I’m so sorry. You… must be the owners’ daughter, right? They’ve been talking about you.”

I tilted my head. I was nothing close to a daughter, for neither the owner nor his wife actually fed me or housed me. However, she seemed resolved about this, so perhaps it was her perception of the owner describing the sickly woman who has perched herself in the darkest corner of the bookstore. “I’m not his daughter,” I corrected her, “I just frequent this place. I have since the summer.”

“My apologies, then. Um. I’m Minase Rin. You can just call me Rin, though – we’re basically friends now, aren’t we?” She spoke with an up-tilt in her voice, as if unsure of her assessment.

“I guess so. I haven’t had a friend in some time,” I respond. I don’t remember many of my friends, and I never considered Kobayashi or any of those Umbrella workers to be friends of mine. I had friends in school, but since graduating, none of them had ever spoken to me. Rin suddenly nodded rapidly, taking my hand and shaking it dramatically.

“Great! I’ve always needed a friend who was also into reading as much as I am. Say, do you know where those books could be?” She spoke quickly. I couldn’t make out anything she said after it, but she began rambling about various authors and series she was interested in.

“Okay, quiet,” I begged. It was hard to think with such rapid talking in my ear, so I stepped away and began scanning the shelves. I knew my corner of the bookstore very well, but any shelves outside of it I only had a vague idea. Rin followed me, bobbing her head up and down in the same way the owners did when scanning the shelves. The way she walked was quite interesting, she was quite pigeon-toed, so her steps crossed over one another often. Rin found exactly what she was looking for at some point while following me, stopping and immediately pulling a few books off of the shelf.

“This is it,” she proclaimed.

“Oh. You wanted girls love.”

“Hehe, It’s the best. Nothing is more beautiful than it, someday I want to have a romance just like it. I mean, I like guys too, but they’re…” Rin trails off. I turned my head to the side.

“Sleazy.”

“Yes!” Rin shook my hands again, the book clasped between her hands now pressing against my palms. She then looked serious. “Miss Bookworm, you never told me your name.”

I kept the same expression, but suddenly felt my stomach sink. It was a different feeling than the one I had when I had first woken up and realized my life as it was had reached its end. “Arima Nakuru,” I responded. I had been telling many people my name at this point, so much that it now no longer felt like a proper name, but a mix of syllables that just meant what noises to make to call me. Perhaps all language could be reduced to this abstraction, as with enough repetition, a normal word would no longer sound like a word, but a word that is nonsensical and wordlessly confusing, ending up as a word so brand new and foreign that one could assume were never a word written or word spoken by anyone in the first place. That is to say, my name had become such a word. A-ri-ma, Na-ku-ru. A collection of syllables familiar to me, soon to be what I have to be called many times by a friend, a teacher, a lover, a spouse, even by a stranger trying to feign familiarity. I had become so used to the sound it became abstract, but not nearly as abstract as the next words Rin spoke to me in my ruminating trance.

“Nakuru is cute… but how does Nakucha sound to you? Like if one combined Nakuru and -chan, as I’d call you Nakuru-chan anyways. Do you like the nickname Nakucha?”

I couldn’t help but smile at this fondness. Within moments of meeting, Rin has called me two nicknames, and has only shown respect and admiration through her mousy demeanor. I found myself wanting to appeal to her, this newfound friend of mine, and keep her around for some time. Like a new hope in my bleak world, it was as if things were slowly becoming normal again. “That’s fine,” I told her. It was more than fine. My stomach swirled in anxiety, heart pounding in disbelief, like yet another sickness fell over me. Rin hopped up and down a few times, my hands still in hers.

“Perfect! Nakucha is what you shall be to me, Rin!”

“Then it shall be so,” I squeaked out between shakes. From that day on, I had a friend, and even less reason to stay inside.

Rin is quite the adventurous person. She always met up with me various colorful outfits, always careful to make her appearance stand out. She always wore a plethora of charms and pins, styled her pink-dyed hair in braids and pigtails, and covered her arms in different bracelets and jewelry. I found myself often feeling underdressed next to her, but she’d compliment whatever I wore anyways. “You look so chic,” She’d coo towards me, kicking up her heel and wriggling excitedly. It made me feel as if she could sense my nervousness being around her, but perhaps to her she was genuinely complimenting my appearance. I was still wearing pretty dark clothes, so the two of us looked like opposites, but mentally we could not be a more fit pair. On one of our meetups, she took me to a line of stores to buy many things. For some time, I had been saving up money, but with Rin, it felt like my savings would always dwindle to meager numbers than if I had simply not spent with her, and then some. We had stopped by the bookstore, purchased some things and chatted with the owners, then she dragged me to a crafts store a few buildings down the road.

“We’re going to make friendship bracelets today,” Rin said with a big smile. I couldn’t help but also grin at her excitement.

“Is that so? How do you make them?”

“I’ll show you. They’re the ultimate way to signal a friendship, and now that you and I have been best friends for a month, that means we have to make bracelets and let everyone know that Nakucha and Rin are going to be together forever!”

The notion of “together forever” made me feel warm in the moment, but it was one I knew could never be true. Instilled in me was the idea of entropy, the idea that through the chaos of mere existence, all things in an ordered state will eventually become disordered. That isn’t to say that I don’t intend on trying my hardest to keep up that idea of “together forever,” but I would not mourn it if disorder were to split us apart for some time. But to sully Rin’s excitement, I couldn’t bear doing, so I simply nodded along to her rambling. In that store, we saw lines of shelves with various supplies. Any creative project you desired, you could find the materials for it in this store. Rin dragged me to an aisle full of beads and strings, picking up a plastic bin with a colorful assortment of charms.

“Pick your favorites, Nakucha!” She excitedly asked, shaking the container towards me. I grabbed a handful of charms without thinking, shaking a few out of my hand before finding a nearby table to scatter them. Rin jumped, then followed me over with the container before mimicking my movements. She had gained this habit within a week of meeting me, imitating my moves whenever she found them interesting. In the mess we made on the table, we began picking out various charms that spoke to us, or reminded us of the other. Rin picked out many pink and green charms, while my pile was showing more of blue and yellow. She would dump any charms we didn’t pick back into the container, and then shake it until it was shuffled and a new selection was made from the piles.

“I think I’ve gotten it all,” I told Rin after some time. Looking at my pile of charms, it was small compared to hers, but she seemed delighted anyways.

“Good. Now, let’s go check these out. Do you want to get some drinks and snacks too? We can go sit down and make our bracelets over some snacks.”

“That sounds fun.”

“I know, that’s why I suggested it. I’m, like, the master of fun.” Rin boasted. She often proclaimed such grand things about herself, but I found that I agreed with them. I had not had as much fun as I have with her, someone who saw the world so simply. Her joy was infectious, and she had no worry in the world. Rin grabbed two bags, talking about some news she had seen on the TVs by the electronics store. I had never been interested in the news, but Rin found it as a common talking point. She’d make grand spectacles of even the most mundane news, such as a cat being saved from a tree, or the release of a new game that she had little interest in herself, but found some way to make profound commentary on. Rin lived life in a way that many dreamed of, and it was a way I could only find myself deeply comforted by. She simply moved as if she owned the world, even as she was checking out the charms we wanted to purchase at the counter of the store, making small talk with the cashier.

“Your bracelets are very cute, are you going to make more?” The cashier asked through a tired lisp.

“Yes, of course! Nakucha and I need friendship bracelets,” Rin would then reply with a flashy display of my barren arm. I pull it away from her, and she waves off the notion with a grin.

“How sweet. You know, we can always give you these at a discount if you shop enough and have a member card.”

“Really? I need to be a member? But I go here often enough to have—” In that moment, Rin grabbed her wallet out of one of her many patched-up pockets, shaking a sparkly silver card in front of the cashier.

“Oh,” she whispered, “You’re that Minase girl.” Rin seemed offended at first, but she soon turned the comment into one she could proudly boast about.

“Sure am,” she says while puffing up her chest. “I shop here all the time; this store is the reason I can be so delicate-ly decor-ated.”

“Is that so… well, we’re glad to keep having your patronage.”

“As you should. I’ll be coming back here within a few weeks to get more, I think I want to start getting into painting again.” The cashier laughed off the proclamation. I stared at her, then turned away to leave the store. Rin chased after me, panting once she caught up. “You get away so fast and so quietly,” She complained to me. She always made an effort to poke at the various quirks I had and how they inconvenienced her, emphasizing how she means little harm and finds me cold and standoffish. I was never great with people, so I never noticed these things, and despite brushing off her criticisms, I began to take them to heart. This time, I actually gave her a proper apology.

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to get moving along, so I was focused on that.” I was omitting most of my reasoning, but it was enough to appease Rin. In truth, I couldn’t stand the small talk that she and the cashier were having, and I was soon becoming quite famished. I skipped my breakfast at the izakaya that morning, as I couldn’t stand to look at Kobayashi for very long that day. He had not become any more irritating, in fact, since I had rejected him, he was only getting kinder and more responsible. However, once scorned, I find I will not easily forgive. I had bigger things to think of besides him, including what I’d put on my bracelet for Rin. Or … bracelets. I found myself suddenly wanting to make multiple for her, in case she loses one, or she tries to give it to another. I had no clue if there was such a trading culture with these bracelets, as I had never done more than exchange addresses and talk about books with my prior friends, but I found myself interested in at least making sure Rin’s bracelets had decent trade value. As I glanced at her arm walking side by side, I began seeing various other names pop up. Keita, Alex, Haruka, Shiori, Makoto, Estelle, so many names from different people I couldn’t begin to imagine were lined up on her arms, with various colors and matching charms. Staring at it for long enough, I began to feel exceedingly curious.

“Are those names people you are friends with?” I ask.

Rin looks at her arm, pulling my hand towards her, and nods. “Some were friends of mine, but they either left or something happened to them. Alex, I remember, was an exchange student from the USA.” She looked downcast as she continued. “Shiori unfortunately moved to China, and Makoto and Estelle… well, they’re just not around anymore.”

“Oh, that’s… sweet.”

“Is it? I just hope they still have my bracelets, wherever they are. I think I saw someone the other day with one of mine, who I never heard of, but when I told them, we became friends.”

“Really? I’d be a bit nervous, because it meant they gave away my gift to them,” I commented. Rin shrugged at the notion.

“I won’t give your bracelets away, if that makes you feel better. But I’ll tell everyone about you, and maybe they’ll want to meet you and make bracelets with you too. Does that sound good?”

“I guess so.” In reality, I had little interest in meeting more people. Though loneliness was an ever-present threat, I found it’d just be easier to exist as-is and not think of the consequences of meeting others and how they could outweigh the benefits. But I just looked at Rin’s arm, staying silent about my resolve. Rin skipped with every step, moving happily towards the end of the street where the run-down convenience store waiting for customers. We had almost never seen anyone else in there except us and whoever happened to work that day. It had a few employees and unknown owners, but the employees were particularly enthusiastic about the selection of snacks and drinks they had at the time. When Rin and I entered, the cashier who was there most was absent this time. In his place was a newer girl, one who only started working a month ago, but had already catalogued everything and made a neat list of recommendations on imports and how much it’d cost to bring them in. She was a college student studying in Japan for her final year, who always wore two pins on her apron. One that was fashioned like a black dog, and the other a red and white pin similar to a web, or an umbrella. She greeted Rin and I with the usual spiel, before dragging it off in the middle of it to address us by name. Rin turned back and saluted towards the cashier.

“Hiya, Maya!” She said this in a near-perfect accent, offering a girlish wink for Maya.

“Anything you’re looking for today?” She asked.

Rin pondered, then shook her head. “Whatever looks delicious. We’re gonna be making bracelets today.”

Rin’s childish mannerisms always amused me. She was a girl in her 20s, still making friendship bracelets and telling everyone of her plans in such simple vocabulary. However, Maya only smiled at us.

“That sounds fun. Hey, when you get up here, do you want to try these new sodas from back home?”

“Back home?” I chimed in. I turned back as well while Rin was inspecting various bags of chips.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s obvious I’m not from here, but I convinced that old man to import some soda from America. It’s sort of cherry-like, you might enjoy it.”

“…Huh.” At this point, there had been many mentions of America. It felt like a taunt; Rin’s former friend, and now this new cashier. If things had gone my way, perhaps I’d be there too right now, experiencing culture shock after culture shock. I turned back to Rin, who now had an armful of items that she was now dumping into a basket. “Is that not too much?” I asked.

“No, never,” Rin responded without an ounce of hesitation.

By the time she had gone around the store, her basket was filled to the brim with snacks and drinks. She chose to pay for most of it herself, boasting yet another membership card. Maya even looked impressed at it, happily scanning away before bringing us the cans she offered earlier. Rin bagged everything up, handing the larger bags containing our snacks to me with nothing more than a quiet “take this” under her breath. She cheerfully left the convenience store, continuing down the road to cross onto a sidewalk. This part of the neighborhood I had never been in, but Rin knew like the back of her hand, so she’d often take me and lead the way proudly. This time, we ended up in a small clearing of trees, where a picnic table similar to the ones found in a middle school was lodged into the dirt. Rin set her things down on the table and sat down. She then hit the table twice besides her as a motion for me to join. Sitting beside her, it gave way to our contrasting appearances once more, enough for one to make a light joke or otherwise poke some fun at it.

“Rin,” I started, “Where do you get all of your money from? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you work.”

She passed off the question with a laugh, setting out her things to make the friendship bracelets, organizing everything with careful fingers. “I don’t work, you’re right,” she answered simply, before pausing for some time. “…I do have other methods, though. If you look hard enough, there’s money to be made everywhere.”

“Do you have a home?”

“These roads are my home, Nakucha.”

“So, no.”

“…” Rin goes silent suddenly. When she starts to speak again, her usual happy tone is gone. With a grim whisper, she states, “It’s better than the actual place I could go home to.”

In that moment, I had a feeling I understood what she meant, and it further proved to me we aren’t as dissimilar as we thought we were. Suddenly, many things started to make sense in this moment as well. The way she carried herself without care, even down to the childish ways she’d dress herself and do these activities, all of Rin’s behavior signaled some deep pain I couldn’t tell past her smiles.

“I get it. Unfortunately…” From my lips, I recited everything I recalled. From the argument with my parents to waking up in that alley, then to stumbling into that izakaya and later my betrayal by Kobayashi.

“That must have been why you called men sleazy,” Rin joked. She then took a moment to, as if to comfort me, push her supplies my way, already going at making a bracelet with the charms we purchased.

“Part of it. My father was similar… But really, everyone’s pretty sleazy.”

Rin laughed. “Right? I mean, I don’t look the part, but I definitely agree with you. Maybe that’s why I try to be so bright, because everyone else is the worst. My parents would scream at me over the smallest things, and call me an embarrassment while throwing things at me. From there, when I ran off, I began meeting all these other people with just as lousy parents. Then when I started trying to find love…”

“None of them actually liked you, just what you did for them.”

“That’s exactly it. So, I read… I read about wonderful relationships, the things I could have, the things I want most, to escape the reality that everyone is kind of terrible.”

Rin’s outlook on life surprised me. I just nodded, my fingers carefully weaving together a bracelet for her. “Right. I think you’re pretty nice, though. Nicer than most people I’ve met so far.”

She seemed to like that statement, as she simply stared at me with a bright grin. Rin’s teeth were a little crooked, two of them almost sticking out like little fangs. She had reassured me that those teeth were beautiful, that they were a sign of youth, and she was beautiful for it. Her lips were always coated in some colorful and sparkly lip gloss, too, that would get on anything her lips touched. Occasionally, she’d even put candy on her lips and lick it off over the course of an hour, then apply more lip gloss afterwards. I found her smile unique, as she was one of the few people in the world who smiled often and with enough brightness to spark others to follow suit. Even I had, in this moment, begun grinning back at her. She then burst into a fit of laughter. “Haha, I got you to smile!” She triumphantly boasted. “Nakucha, let’s have more fun times like this forever. Things feel alright so long as I’m with you,” she stressed. I agreed quietly.

Eventually, we had made two friendship bracelets each. One with our own names, then another with the other’s name. When Rin handed my bracelets over, she had put “Nakuru” in beads, and decorated in many blue and yellow charms with a single pink heart in the center of it. I felt my heart tighten, and stomach go weak again. This was the kindest gesture anyone’s extended in quite some time, as simple as bracelets were. Rin, in turn, began inspecting the bracelets I gave her, tearing up happily at the sight of them. “They’re wonderful,” she whispered, placing them on her wrist after rolling her many other bracelets up. Something began to nag at the back of my mind, thinking back to Maya and her spiel. I picked up the bag of our snacks, pulling out the cans of drinks as well as a bottle of peach tea to drink, handing Rin her can.

“By the way, how long have you and Maya known each other?”

“About two months,” Rin responded quietly. “I’ve known her since a week she started working at that convenience store.”

“So, do you know what her pins are?”

“Huh? Why do you ask?”

“Well, they seemed important to her for some reason. Most of the time the choices in pins can tell you a lot about a person.”

“Hm.” Rin leaned forward. She placed her chin in her palm, cracking open the can of soda with one hand. “I know that the dog is because of her dog back home in America…Jet was his name I think? And the other’s … some logo for some medicine company. She said her dad worked there, made enough money for her to move to Japan if she wanted.” From there, the dots connected. It had to be Umbrella’s logo, but there was no way for me to confirm it. I just nodded along as Rin soon changed the topic to be about her favorite books. Her and Maya shared a love for manga, one that was part of the reason Maya had come to study here. I couldn’t say I was apart from them, but I found myself more interested in thriller and horror stories than romance. After all, they put you in a very psychological mood, to question why such things are a fear, or instill a sense of paranoia about something so mundane prior to reading.

As Rin rambled on, she saw me open my tea and held her hand on my wrist with great urgency. “Nakucha, have you ever collected anything?” She asked.

“No, not really. I had some plushies I’d collect, but everyone collects those,” I confessed. Rin lit up with joy.

“Well, I should get you into this. I love collecting can tabs – like these on the cans Maya gave us. I have some in different colors and sizes, and I have been putting them on a string,” she tells me while grabbing something out of her backpack. From it came a very long belt of various soda can tabs, all of which clinking and grinding against one another. Rin had not organized them at all, so peeks of color came out between the endless silver. “And now, I have my first two red ones!”

I let out a surprised chuckle. “Huh. I never thought that’d be such an interesting thing to collect.”

“Why don’t you try a collection with me? How about… oh, bottle caps! There are bottles everywhere of all shapes and sizes, so why not collect as many as possible? You could even label the undersides with what the drink was.”

The idea seemed appealing. “Perhaps I will,” I passed on with a mumble. I looked at the bottle in my hands, at the pinkish cap at the top of it. It was a metal cap with a flower engraved in it, that popped every time the bottle was opened. I hurriedly finished the drink, not caring of the mess it made, and held the cap between my fingers. “Yeah, I can start here,” I reassured myself. From that day on, I had begun this intense habit of collecting bottle caps. I returned to that craft store, the one down the road, to buy a few containers and supplies to label the bottle caps. I didn’t opt for a complex system, just labeling a side of it with a number and keeping a journal to write the kind of drinks each labeled cap was. By the early spring, I had about 90 bottle caps, all labeled. Perhaps a hobby was what I needed for some time. People often will escape their worries through some kind of hobby, and as I did not have the money to constantly change my appearance, this lower bar of beverage collecting became my next hobby. I began to forget things as I would scan store shelves for something new to drink, or rummage within my existing collection to compare flavors of drinks and their different bottles or language variations from import stores.

Eventually, Rin and I stopped seeing each other as much. She started to get into other things, and maybe her work was making her busy, or she was just going through things. I chose to continue my collections, though, in hopes I could have a lot to talk with her about by the time we met up again. Perhaps she’d do the same, showing me an even longer string of those can tabs, but I had no way to know about this until we got there, so there was no use dwelling on such a thing. My only hope then was to survive the next few days, as rain picked up in the spring, scattering leaves and debris along the roads to force everyone inside. When the storms stopped, however, back outside I would go to continue my daily life.