Originally from August 9th, 2024

The wheezing sound of my kettle swam its way into my bedroom, waking me up from the accidental half-sleep I had fallen into. I had gotten into the habit of having tea before bed to relax. There were other things that I loved to drink to calm me down before bed, but they always came with a soul-crushing hangover the following morning. 

I lifted myself off my bed and headed through the dark hallway to my kitchen. The hallway was dangerous when it was dark because my failure to clean up resulted in many stubbed toes and a lot of tripping, but I needed to keep my light bill down that month. My weighted keyboard remained unplugged for the second or third consecutive month, the handwritten sheet music on the top starting to curl at its ends. 

I felt like I was moving in slow motion towards my kettle, the wheezing sound piercing my ears. I turned the hot plate off and poured the steaming water into the mug I had placed out for myself. 

This could be so much better if this would make me drunk, I thought to myself as I steeped the teabag in the mug. I stirred in a bit of soy milk and a drop of honey for good measure. 

The sliding glass door to my humble cement box of a balcony was still wet with raindrops from earlier in the night. There wasn’t much of anything to see outside, no matter the time of day. If you were lucky, you could see a couple of people heading into the 7-Eleven on the other side of the street, or you could catch the flickering of the streetlamp that twinkles occasionally on its own accord. In the spring, I enjoy seeing birds land on the phone line–the phone line that I felt was a little too close to the building. But right then, it was quiet. 

Four of us lived on this floor of the building. Sometimes, I could hear the little twins crying across the hall and their mother begging and pleading with them to stop being noisy. It was rare, but there had been times I’d overheard the other woman across the hall talking with a man outside her doorway. But next door, to my left, lived Junko. 

I’ve never had a friend like Junko. She wasn’t always the nicest—in fact, she was very mean to me quite often, but I knew she didn’t have bad intentions. We spent many of our afternoons together in the coffee shop next door to our university–she’d give me free lattes while I worked on both of our homework assignments simultaneously. She really enjoyed Hello Sleepwalkers, Microphone Pagers, and pretty much any rock or rap, and I only knew this because of the paper-thin wall between my living room and hers. She had no idea, though. I knew that if I told her, she’d turn the volume down or even start wearing headphones. I didn’t necessarily love the music, but knowing she was having a good time was nice. 

I took a sip of my tea and immediately burned my tongue. I cringed through the pain, setting the mug on the TV stand next to the door. The plush sweater that engulfed my body was starting to get warmer and warmer, and then I began to sweat. 

I can’t sleep anymore. My hands shake and sweat, and my brain goes foggy. So foggy. I was trying to shake the habit. 

“Habit.” It was just a habit, right? 

I noticed that it started to rain again. 

Why am I feeling like this again? Why does it keep getting worse? 

I turned away from the door and looked at the bottles that adorned the top of my tiny, pathetic refrigerator. Dassai, MIO, Gekkeikan, Tozai, more Gekkeikan, an unopened case of Jumai Once Cup, more Gekkeikan…The different colors made it look like an art installation. To me. They were all art to me. The way it felt to hold the neck of a bottle, the beautiful illustrations on each label, the way it sparkled after being poured into a glass…it was all art. The exhibitionist dance my brainwaves did in my head after a few sips was something I could only watch. The dance pulled me in, spinning and dipping my limp body as I melted. Forgetting the things I beg to forget, forgetting why I do what I do, forgetting who I was. But it was fine. It was fine because I didn’t want to be her. She was pitiful, weak, and needed saving. By forgetting everything, I was freeing her. 

Do you seriously want to give up now? Do you want to set your inner child free again? She’ll just come running back to you, you know. Will you be sad when you wake up and she’s still there? Is it worth the night of forgetting? 

I stared at the top of the refrigerator for what could’ve been an hour. Just standing there, not feeling like I was…there at all. I knew I was trying to drink less, but why? Everyone tells me, 

“Midori, you have to stop drinking so much,” 

“Midori, you’re a fucking alcoholic, why are you in denial?” 

“Midori, you’re ruining your own life.” 

“Midori, I miss the old you.” 

Everyone sees something wrong with me. There are plenty of things that are horribly wrong with me. Why does it matter so much, I wondered. But there was one thing that Junko said to me once. I had forgotten something once. I always considered myself forgetful and rather scatterbrained, but Junko told me that, no, I wasn’t always like that. 

She said I used to remember everyone’s birthdays. I never forgot about plans we made together. I could even go into the supermarket without a shopping list and get everything I needed.

But now, I can’t do any of those things. I didn’t even notice until Junko had pointed it out. It’s been years since I could do those things. She told me,

“Your memory is shit, Midori! How did you forget that I went on my first date with him?! Do you even remember your own birthday? Can you recall the lyrics of our favorite song from all those years ago? Of course you can’t. Because all you do is drink that shit. It’s burned your brain completely, Midori. Do something about it, you idiot.”

But why should I do anything about it? I was never meant to amount to anything in the eyes of the world, so Mother Earth can watch me waste away in my 1LK apartment in the middle of Sapporo. The amount of failures I’d faced in my adult life was the universe’s way of telling me that I should give up. 

I’ll never be successful. I’ll never have producers begging to work with me. I’ll never get to go on tour with everyone from class. The more I progressed into my twenties, the closer I was to leaving behind my prime years. I’d be dead soon. And I did remember my birthday, it’s November 21st. A day it always rains, a day it’s always cold. 

The sound of shattering glass snapped me out of my dissociation. I flinched, looking around the room to see what could’ve fallen. The mug was still on the TV stand, the bottles still on the fridge…

There was the sound again. But this time I realized it didn’t come from my apartment, but next door. I put my ear against the west wall, trying my very best to focus. More glass shattering. Hello Sleepwalkers playing on her speaker. 

“FUCK ALL OF THIS!” I heard Junko shouting. Then a thump on the ground. 

My stomach became an empty chasm. Junko is one to get angry, but I’d never heard a pandemonium quite like this, especially one involving objects breaking. 

I hastily made my way out of my apartment and down the hall to hers. 

“Junko? Junko, are you okay?” I called while assaulting the metal door with my fist. The darkness of the hallway caused it to spin and pulsate around me as though it was trying to eat me. It was getting closer and closer. 

“Junko!” My knuckles were most definitely going to bruise from how much I was banging. 

Almost instantly, she opened the door, but she didn’t say a word to me. She just stared at me, her eyes red. The sight of Junko and her apartment left me frozen. 

“What is it?!” she screamed at me after moments of silence. 

“Your hair…What did you―”

She grunted loud enough for the whole complex to hear to cut me off. “I don’t fucking know!”

Her blonde hair, the hair that nearly reached her knees, adorned the kitchen floor, leading into her bathroom like a path. The hair that was still on her head had been chopped in varying lengths and angles like a doll a child tortured with a pair of safety scissors. It was hard to look at. 

“Hey, Junko, can I come in?” I had an itching desire to hug her, but I knew she wouldn’t let me. Junko lost her temper often, but this is the first time I’d seen her be so destructive. She just needed someone to be gentle with her. “I want to help you,” I finished. 

She folded her arms and turned back into her apartment, and I followed. Hello Sleepwalkers became louder with every step I took. She took a right turn into her bathroom and put her hands on the sides of the sink. I didn’t follow her in there, but I watched her stare at herself in the mirror through the door, her thick eyebrows furrowed. I had no idea what was going on, but as I looked at her haircut, I began thinking of ways to fix it. Maybe she would look cuter with short hair. She’s always enjoyed the idea of being quite boyish. 

I turned my head a little bit and noticed a few shards of glass and ceramic outside Junko’s bedroom, and I walked in that direction to investigate. The speaker was in her room, perched on the windowsill. Underneath the window, however, was a shattered picture frame. It lay there alone as though the people in the image were waiting for someone to help them up. I was too afraid to lift the broken glass, but from what I could tell, it was a photo of herself alongside three people, most likely our friends from music class, assuming by the muddled hair colors. Sometimes, she adored them and found herself thrilled to hang out with them, and sometimes she screamed at me about the methods by which she would murder them. The photo being shattered was no surprise to me, though it made my chest heat up. 

Her living room was where the most damage had been done. There were only a few broken items, but because of how much glass was on the floor, it was like I was standing in an abandoned antique shop. Junko had a vase that she kept on her coffee table. I was the one to give it to her, in fact, I was also the one who always gave her flowers to fill it. It was my way of being grateful to her, even though I knew I never fully could express just how much I appreciated her. But I figured the gift of beauty, color, and life would be suitable. 

Needless to say, that vase was completely destroyed, the remains of it concentrated on the left corner of the room. I wanted to run over to it and glue it back up. Put it back on the coffee table, fill it with water, and put two snapdragons in it, yellow and orange; those were her favorite. It was such a tiny little vase, but it was something. Was.

Before I got a chance to figure out what the rest of the shattered things were, I heard her slowly walking from the bathroom. Something about knowing I would have to face her in the state she was in made my brain begin to fog up. I couldn’t comprehend it fully. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what had driven her to this point, but if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t be able to help. And I wanted to be nothing but a good friend to her.  

She stood next to me, scanning the room, most likely realizing what she’d done. I looked down at her, and my arms stung with the urge to wrap them around her. But I couldn’t. She would hate that. 

“Junko, what happened?” I asked her, trying to be as quiet and warm as possible, hoping she wouldn’t yell at me again. 

She strutted to the center of the room, right in front of the coffee table, and smiled at me with all of her teeth. “I don’t know! I don’t…know.” Her head fell as she began to stare at the glass shards on the floor. “Midori?”

“Yes?” I replied, rushing over to her side. 

She was fiddling with her hands. “Don’t you have antiseptic or something in your bathroom? Or at least a bandage?” Her fingers and palms were covered in shallow scratches and a combination of dried and fresh blood. It was as if she’d stuck her hand into a food processor. 

“Uhh, I have gauze, I think…” It was hard to focus, as my brain was clogged with fog. Seeing Junko’s tattered hands made my heart race. She had the smallest hands I’d ever seen, all torn up. “Let’s go get it together, okay, hun?” I unknowingly had put my hand on her shoulder at some point, but she hadn’t tried to push it off. 

“Why do I need to come with?” she asked, her gaze floating from her hands to my face. “You literally live right there. You can come right back.” Her voice was strained with the usual irritability. 

I moved my hand from her shoulder to her back as I coerced her to the front door. She didn’t put up a fight like I thought she would. “I just…just don’t think it’s a good idea f-for you to stay in there right now,” I explained. We had to step over the chunks of hair, and something about seeing them again…It just…hurt. She loved having long hair, and she bragged about it all the time. And having her single pigtail made her feel so much “cooler looking” than Emi from school. She really cared about that last part. 

I brought her into my apartment and sat next to her on my couch. Handing her a blanket, I noticed her staring at my TV even though nothing was on. “Do you want me to turn it on?” I asked her. 

She shook her head. “No. Did you forget you made tea?” She pointed at the mug I had left on the TV stand. 

“Oh…” I sighed. “I put it there, waiting for it to cool down. But I heard you next door, so I had to leave it. It might still be warm.” 

“You’re drinking tea at night now?” she questioned, wrapping herself in the knitted blanket. Luka knitted it for me a year or so before. “What about the caffeine? How do you sleep?”

I chuckled a little. “It’s caffeine-free, actually. I just drink it so I don’t feel the need to drink anything else. You know. But why don’t I make you a cup? You like honey, right?” I stood up from the couch and jogged into the kitchen, opening up the kettle to fill it up again. 

“You don’t have to do that,” she insisted. 

I shut the lid. “Oh…Alright. I-I, umm, have some strawberries in the freezer. They’re covered in chocolate. Would you like one?” 

“No, Midori, it’s okay. Really.”

Wondering why she wouldn’t let me get her anything, I went into the bathroom and looked all over for some gauze and antiseptic. It was easy to find the gauze, but the antiseptic had been buried deep in my cabinet with old shampoos, tubes of toothpaste, and whatever else I’d thrown in there and forgotten. 

I made my way back to my spot next to her on the couch. I wanted to touch her shoulder again, but I feared she would get upset. I folded one leg under me as I sank into the cushion. “So…do you want to…uhh, talk about it? I want to help.” I reached the two first-aid items to her, knowing she wouldn’t want me to dress her wound for her. She had a thing about being independent. 

She let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “What is there even to say? I wanted to burn down the whole fucking city, but I settled for…I dunno, breaking my own stuff, I guess. I wanna say, ‘Oh, I don’t know what got into me!’  but I do know.” She drizzled the antiseptic on her hands and wrapped the gauze around as she spoke.

“And…what was it?”

“You remember that commercial deal I was gonna be offered? The one Professor Hioka spent months trying to get for me?” she asked. I could see her face getting red. 

I nodded. “I do remember that,” I lied. Of course, I had forgotten, but that didn’t matter right then.

“Of course they didn’t give it to me. Because why would that work out? Why would I get to have a chance at anything? I’m mad at myself for even having hope in something so impossible. But guess who they gave the offer to? Fucking Emi! Why does that bitch get everything? Hasn’t she gotten enough? Why do people even still care about her? Aren’t they bored?” As she rambled, her face got redder and redder, and I noticed her eyes getting glassy. 

I looked down into my lap. I could feel the sting behind my eyes, the sting that strikes right before I cry. I know it wasn’t my offer, but this wasn’t the first time this happened to Junko. I just wanted her to get something. “Junko, I’m so sorry to hear that―”

“Oh, don’t you fucking cry about it!” she yelled at me. 

I flinched. “I’m really sorry. I can’t help it–I just want to see you succeed and h-hearing that breaks my heart. You…you deserve more. You know, Junko, when you sang at the bar, I was s-super proud of you! Hearing you sing your heart out for the melody was really, really…lovely. You are so talented and always have been, but right then is when I realized j-just how much you’ve improved. Th-That’s why, I guess…why this makes me so sad. I hope that…that all made sense.”

I took my gaze off of my lap and gave her a smile. But our eyes didn’t meet. She had buried her face into the blanket. “Are you okay, hun?” I whispered.

She lifted her head and yelled at me with a face full of tears. “It doesn’t matter how talented you think I am, Midori, because no one else thinks that. We’ve talked about this. The only thing I have to offer is being cute, and clearly that isn’t enough, is it? Why do we keep fooling ourselves?” 

I didn’t know what to say. Honestly. The one thing we’ve always had in common is our complete lack of success. It’s one thing for me to deal with my own failures, but when my closest, dearest friend has to struggle with the exact same pain, it doubles the hurt. Triples it, perhaps. We’ve talked about starting our own mini girl band, touring around the world dancing to pop music and being recognized and loved, just like them. We wanted to be like them. The difference between her and I was that I’d come to realize that I’d never get to be like them. She kept fighting it. I gazed over at my keyboard and realized just how much dust it had collected. 

She groaned. “Midori. Would you stop crying? This is not your fucking issue.”

“I just want better for you. I want to see you on stage and in commercials and in magazines beaming, filling the world with your―”

“I’m serious.” She stared at me with way too much intensity. 

I shrugged. “Alright. I’ll stop.” I wiped tears from my face and stared at my hands that I placed in my lap. Over time, I’ve had to teach myself that she and I think so much differently. It took me a while to understand that being kind with her doesn’t always help. She coins herself as being independent, and in turn makes her stubborn. Sometimes, I learned, she just needs to figure things out on her own. She can vent and vent to me, curse and cry, scream and yell, but advice often goes in one of her ears and out the other. 

Sometimes she listens, though. 

We sat in silence for a little while, her bent over with her head in her hands, me still staring into my lap. For a second, though, I looked up at her from my peripheral and once again noticed her hair.

“Hey,” I muttered, breaking the silence. 

She looked at me and cocked her head. 

“I have a pair of shears in my bathroom. I would love to do your hair for you. If you want…” I offered. 

She stared at me for a minute before standing up, nodding, and walking towards my bathroom, clearly expecting me to follow. 

My stomach started to grumble, but I couldn’t tell if it was from hunger or from the realization that I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I’d only used those shears to trim my own bangs and nothing else. What made me think I could trim Junko’s entire head?

Every few snips I made, a certain doubt grew in my chest. My hands began to tremble a touch, making it even harder to be precise. 

“Midori, chill. You can do this,” Junko remarked, slightly brushing her hand against mine. 

“Oh, are you sure?” I replied. 

“I’m sure.”

I surprised myself. I was able to–somewhat acceptably–shape her hair into an excuse for a chin-length bob. Luckily, she hadn’t messed up her bangs in her fit of rage, so I didn’t have to tamper with those. It was presentable, but I told her she’d have to go to a hairstylist to get it to look less like she’d impulsively cut it in her bathroom by herself. 

“Midori,” she called while she studied her new haircut in the mirror. “Do you think it suits me?”

“Do I think it suits you?” I repeated. “I really do. I think you look adorable.”

She smirked and let out a tiny nose laugh. “Cool.”