The Northeast

"Stay away from me, please."

"No. You're just askin' for it, the way you're dressed like dirty whore."

The girl whimpered and backed up further against the brick wall. Tears welled in her eyes as she realized there was no way she'd get out of this. Like a flock of birds, the gang of guys flew in closer to her. She may have been dressed in that attention-grabbing way, but she really didn't want this. That much was obvious.

I rubbed the back of my neck underneath my muffler, and then took a long drag on my cigarette. God, men were pigs. And girls, they were weak. At least in the Northeast part of the shabby city, that's all I ever saw.

The girl whimpered loudly as one of the men touched her thigh, moving in closer. She could probably smell his tangy, putrid breath on her tanned skin. Sick.

This was my cue.

I stalked over the pitiful group of guys, my heeled boots clicking hard on the cement. I gained speed and stepped into a jog, ran right up, swung my arm hard, and punched one of 'em flat in his nose. Spot-on!

Of course his face made this sick cracking noise, and he totally fell out, sputtering and cursing like nothing else. I pulled back my foot and kicked him hard as he lie on the ground, nailing him with the pointed tip of my boot before jabbing at him with my heel. What a pitiful man.

Grimacing, I spun and popped another one under his chin, knocking him right up and over. He stumbled back and up, and fled like a cowardly dog with his tail between his legs.

The other guys got out of there in seconds, scared shitless. I was a lanky, intimidating woman - the sort of person you probably didn't mess with.

By the time the bastard guys had left, the girl had already gone without thanking me. That was fine; I was used to doing things because I wanted to rather than for the goodness of others. I guess I still hoped she'd act and dress with a little more decently now.

But that wish was in vain. Young people from the Northeast didn't learn, not even me.

After beating up those couple of guys, I hightailed it out of there. I didn't want to get into trouble with the police or anyone. That would've been nothing but annoying.

So I headed back to my apartment. It was nice to go back there each night, to see my roommate and my cat. Those two were my world, honestly. I didn't have so much going for me other than them. I walked ten blocks and then some, heading into the building that housed my apartment. Fourth floor, ninth room. I memorized the number of steps on the stairs and counted as I climbed.

When I finally entered my apartment, she was already there, chilling on the couch reading a thick romance novel. She wore a coat, mittens, a hat, and multiple pairs of socks. Our cat sat in her lap, purring like a chainsaw.

"God, Mew, it's so cold."

Her nose was red, she sniffled. My dear roommate, there she was, always freezing her ass off in any situation. She wore sweaters in summer.

I tossed my cigarette in the ashtray by the door. I promised to never smoke around my roommate. She hated it.

"It's winter, what do you expect?" The apartment actually seemed pretty warm to me. But then again, I was a hot-head.

"Brrrr, Sabami's cold too. Look at him, he's shivering!" The cat sat motionless in her lap, asleep.

"Iroha, he's fine. You're a snowman." I said. I pulled my muffler off and tossed my coat over the shabby blue chair that I always sat in. I sat there, and then Iroha sat on the far side of the couch. Sabami always positioned himself between us. It was good.

"What are you reading today?" I asked, genuinely curious of the thick book that she grasped in her gloved hands.

"It's excellent. It's about this one girl who loves another girl, and they're close friends. But they're penpals of a sort, and they don't even know what the person they're talking to looks like. But anyways, one falls in love with the other, but the one girl doesn't realize the other's feelings, and has eyes for someone else. The girl who's in love with the other is in total despair at first. She cried herself to sleep each night, in the beginning, but she gradually is getting over it. It's so bittersweet, though. Like dark chocolate, but not as scandalous."

As she rambled on, I tied my dark, thigh-length hair into a high ponytail and headed to the kitchen to make tea. I always felt like a softie for enjoying tea so much, but ever since Iroha introduced it to me, I've been addicted. I'll drink any sort of tea at this point, sweet or bitter, cold or hot.

"So there's this whole deal where the one girl loves the other but can't really tell her since they live oh-so-far away from each other. Through all that I've read so far, it seems like they'll never meet. But oh, oh! It would be an ending of true sweetness, if they could meet and talk and love one another. The story would go right from dark chocolate to white chocolate, the words melting on my tongue like dessert." She sighed. Iroha was a huge reader – a calm, happy, good-natured bookworm. She herself was sweeter than chocolate. She read everything she got her hands on, and she worked at the library as the person who fixed their computers.

I, on the other hand, worked as a sort of "unofficial jack-of-all-trades detective", I guess. I didn't even have a business, but people would always come to me with their problems. I'd usually accept them. And one day people started paying me for what I did for them. That was how I made my living.

Iroha and I had met when I had to work at the library doing a bit of research for someone. She was so cute, I remember her exactly on that day.

"You're interesting. Your eye makeup is really cool. And you come here to do research on such random topics. Who are you, anyways?"

I remember her words, the way her bangs fell – hovering just over her eyebrows. Her hair was dyed this incredible peachy-pink color, but her clothing was all in natural shades of brown and gray. It was such a funny sight, I mean; she had this obnoxious hair color and then these totally sensible clothes. I still don't know why she dies her hair that color, or when, or if it's actually natural for some freak reason.

She turned page after page in her book, engrossed in the story. I sat in my blue chair, blissful in our quiet apartment. Sabami moved off of Iroha's lap to sit on the other side of the couch, closer to me and perfectly between Iroha and I.

This was my ideal life.

I loved Iroha.

It wasn't like love in her romantic story, but it was love like, well, I can't explain it. I'd do anything for her, I'd guess. It was that sort of love. Iroha was that sort of person who would correct you blatantly if you were wrong, but help you right back up if you ever fell. She rode a bike everywhere. Iroha was so sentimental that she kept a box of feathers she had gathered from the streets, and she could name where each one of them came from. She was the kind of person who pressed and dried flowers, the sort of whimsical chick who was always down to earth while still being totally ethereal. I loved her with all of my being. I loved her quirks, her flaws, her words.

I was cold when not here at home, but in this apartment, with Iroha, with Sabami, I was happy and kind. I was warm.

I would be happy dying in this place. I was utterly content.

Iroha stuck a bookmark into her novel and gently placed it on the coffee table. She grinned at me so wide her cheeks pushed up into her eyes. "Happy weekend, Mew! It's Friday night, let's play a game."

And for the rest of the night, we played like little kids.

We started with traditional board games, like Monopoly and Parcheesi. When that got old, we moved on to twister and Pictionary. Iroha drew all these funky pictures; you would have had no idea what they were! We laughed so hard at her drawing of a cat, it looked like a pig infused with a giraffe. Sabami must've been insulted.

Once that was old, we divulged in a hot chocolate making contest. We used the instant kind, but added milk and mint and cinnamon and chocolate syrup to the point that the brown liquid overflowed out of our mugs. We drank from each other's cups, cracking up when we found that both of our drinks actually tasted horrible.

We danced, we talked, we argued over the shipping of characters from our favorite novel. Iroha showed me some of her photography from the week, I showed her a short story that I'd written. She told me about an amazing violin player who'd set up in front of the library that day. I told her about the guys I'd beat up. She scolded me, I laughed at her. She gave me an angry look, but was hiding a smile that totally burst out once I started cracking jokes. We laughed, we competed, we sang, we baked, we dressed up, we made a secret language, we ate, we laughed some more, danced some more, and finally collapsed into our traditional couch and chair positions, exhausted.

Iroha smiled and closed her eyes, leaning back into the couch. "Let me tell you a story."

I didn't say anything in a reply, but closed my eyes as well and ran a hand through my hair.

"Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a place where two best friends did all sorts of weird shit together, and they weren't scared of anyone.

"They laughed at those who were uptight, and lost themselves in their bliss. They did every silly little from baking flat soufflés to speaking in broken Spanish (a language neither of them knew, other than what they'd learned in school). And those two best friends, they had this cat that somehow put up with them and their antics! At least they fed him bunches, he sure did like that.

"These two best friends lived for ever and ever, until they grew so old that they shriveled up like prunes,

"And died together.

"Not willingly, obviously, but when you get old, you know how it goes.

"So the two ceased to exist, and left earth and all of their possessions, sleeping between heavens and Earth. They didn't live on, but all of their memories did. Nobody ever forgot those precious memories, even when they were just shared between the two. Their recollections floated forever, through light, space, and time, unforgotten.

"And eventually, the two were reborn as children. History repeated itself, they were always friends. And this cycle repeated and repeated and repeated and so on and so forth.

"And they lived happily ever after until the end of time, never a care in the world."

Her words faded into a mumble at the end, and she probably kept smiling. I wouldn't know since I had my eyes shut during that moment. I was actually beginning to fall into sleep, but I managed to say one more thing before I drifted off. "Iroha, let's do this again next Friday, huh?"

"Yes, as always, my amazing Mew. Just as always."

We both fell asleep then, leaning back in our shabby seating with our dear cat positioned between us.

The only way to describe it was perfect.

X

The next Wednesday, I got into an accident.

I got tied up in too many things and became buried in too much trouble.

I died.

I died by a bullet wound through a vital place, and I was killed instantly. No worries, it didn't hurt.

But you know, I didn't regret or miss a thing.

I had lived the past three years of my life with my best friend and the person I loved most. The way she smiled alone made me feel like nothing could touch me. I was Mew, the tall and invincible girl without a care in the world. And that was how I died. I met my demise thinking about her, my best friend, my soul mate, and my dearest dear. I died happy, even though there were a thousand more things I hadn't done with Iroha yet. I died without a hint of sadness, because I knew that not many people would ever get a chance to click with someone the way I had clicked with Iroha.

There was no doubt I would miss her. I'd miss her habit of collecting feathers, the way she never left the apartment without a book in her bag, and the way she dressed in those sensible clothes, completely against her vivid hair color.

I would miss Iroha, but I cherished her with all of my heart for the time we had together.

That's what you're supposed to do. You need to cherish the people you have even when they do get on your nerves, even when they scold you or put you down, even when you think they hate you although your common sense says that that's not possible.

And as I lay there on the pavement, dead but still bleeding, red spread across the pavement – I wasn't sad. I wasn't alive, but I was okay. I'd go off to dangle between heavens and Earth for a long time, happy, reliving the memories that floated in the atmosphere. And that's where I am now, that's what I'm still doing. I'm at peace.

But I still have this one, lingering hope, one thing that bothers me and won't go away.

I'm hoping that Iroha is just as happy as I am.

I hope she appreciated me as well and is still living on, and I hope that one day we'll meet again in the Northeast part of that city, where we'll share an apartment and do senseless things.

One day, we'll be reborn, in the Northeast, as each other's very best friend.

But until then, Iroha,

I'll just hope that you let go.

Welp, this turned out totally different than I wanted it to. It starts out so rough and then just gets so, ah I don't even know.

But I guess I'll pay no mind to that, this was another sort of writing practice for me, as well as something I wrote to get some stuff off of my chest. I'll rewrite it someday and it'll be better and it will turn out differently and all will be well.

But until then, I'll kind of feel a little guilty that I killed Mew so abruptly, ahh.

I also feel a little guilty that I don't know if Sabami is a boy or a girl cat, so I just decided to have him be male since I'm used to boy cats? Lol I really don't know.

Review if you'd like? Don't feel obligated to do so, though.

Stay wonderful until the next time we meet up!

Mei