Author's Notes

What in the crikeyfuck am I doing?

This is a really bad idea. Not like ha-ha, this is such a bad idea we'll all have a good laugh tomorrow after the hangover's gone; but like, fuck me, this is such a bad idea, and we'll be lucky to avoid prison. It is an AU, set in the world of a Stephen King story, which makes it either a bad idea or a really bad idea. In addition, my writing is rusty, and that's putting it so gently that I may as well go ahead and give myself a happy ending while I'm at it. Feel free to read three pages, scowl, click the review button, type "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT" and then never think about me again.

Finally, like Stephen King does at the end of the Dark Tower series, I'm going to say this: If you enjoyed Fake having a happy ending, stop reading. Click that little red button at the top of your screen. Do something else. Go outside. Play a video game. Raise your kids.

A hikikomori (引き籠り) is a person who does not leave their house. It is a prevalent social issue in Japan which is usually tied to psychological issues with the hikikomori him(/her)self. It literally means something like "pulled into being cooped up."(Japanese compound words never translate well.)

Google Maps is responsible for the greater portion of this chapter.

All of the locations I've referenced in Manhattan are real, and I'm sure Aburiya Kinnousuke is a marvelous restaurant. Anybody from that part of New York care to comment? One thing I did notice is that holy shit are there a lot of Japanese restaurants around that area. Being from the Midwest, where a big city might have four or five, of which three or four are overpriced garbage where they serve such authentic meals as "Teriyaki Chicken" and "Shrimp Tempura" I am both baffled and envious. However, they are nothing compared to the street vendors in Osaka, holy shit on a pancake. Which, incidentally, is probably the best description of Okonomiyaki you're likely to find.

This isn't wholly a crossover - you won't meet anybody particularly outside of the Marimite universe here. It's not wholly an AU, either, as the lovely Sumiregawa pointed out to me, since it doesn't take place either inside or outside of the marimite universe, so I'm not really sure what to call it, aside from "vague."

As always, all thanks to my editor, Sumiregawa Nenene, without whom this would be not only a horrible idea, but an unintelligible, horrible idea.

Sound trucks are those things you sometimes see in Japan blaring a political party line. They're creepy as shit.

Before

Stave:

Commala come come / There's a woman on the run / Doesn't know where she's going / but she knows she's gotta run

The cashier smiles at me. I think the smile might mean something more than, thank you for shopping, have a nice day. I wonder if he would smile at me the same way if I told him that the reason I was buying such a large bottle of Vitamin D was because I often went for a week or more without even seeing the sun. I wonder if he would smile at me the same way if I tried to smile back and realized I'd forgotten how. I wonder if he would smile at me the same way when I did not so much shy from his touch as flee from it.

I wish he wouldn't smile at me.

As it always had been and always would be, starting was the hardest part. Had been the hardest part.

Japan legalized marriage between two members of the same sex in 2012. Yumi Fukuzawa and Sachiko Ogasawara were not ready then, but they weren't far off. Sachiko was twenty four years old, and Yumi twenty three, and neither were quite settled in their careers. There was no doubt between them that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, but it is the hallmark of the modern couple that they are no longer necessarily willing to gamble on what they want to do simply because of who they want to do it with. Maybe that was called progress, or maybe everyone was just getting more self-absorbed. Sachiko and Yumi didn't think about it that way, in any case.

Sachiko published her first novel while they were living in a small house in Kyoto. It was a modern piece of not-quite-real-world fiction, about a young hikikomori who lived her life as though somebody were taking notes on it. Very proper, very clean, very rigid. But nobody to see it, except the lone eye which she sometimes saw peering through the window, or staring into the peephole at her door. The woman's name had been Ling, and Ling had nearly ended Sachiko's writing career before it began. Sachiko had had no idea what to do with Ling. Ling haunted Sachiko for several months, demanding a proper ending, demanding that Sachiko tell her computer the truth, and not just some made up bullshit having to do with the healing power of the love Ling had felt for her neighbor, who sometimes peered into her window, not aware that the eye was there with him as he did. Masturbating as she undressed; who was the reason she undressed slower on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Sachiko had nearly been driven mad by Ling. Up to that point, she had written the novel in marathon sessions for almost three months, right up to her second-to-last planned chapter, which she was not able to write so much as a word of. Writers block had been too kind a term for her sudden inability to so much as sit down at her keyboard. She had been enraged at herself for not knowing what to do with a story which until that point had been as easy to write as breathing, to the point where it was beginning to take a toll on her relationship with Yumi, and she had been coming close to simply scrapping the novel altogether, when all at once, as though somebody had told her in some passing small talk, she had realized that Ling had seemingly vanished, leaving her door, even her windows, locked, the chain on the door securely fastened. Her absence had been discovered by her landlord, who had had to cut the chain. Who had wondered at the state of the apartment. Had wondered at the indent the woman's body had left on the futon, the indent which still persisted a week or more after she'd gone. (To the police, he said that he knew only that she had paid the rent and then never paid anything again.)

The novel had basically flown off of the shelves. It had made the bestseller's list almost immediately. In Japan, a society which was sometimes deep, and sometimes brutally, numbingly superficial, sometimes the author was as important as the novel, and for that reason Sachiko had never been completely satisfied with the popularity that novel had afforded her – she had made the mistake of not writing under a pseudonym, and as a result, many were fascinated not necessarily by the book, but by the fact that a pretty young lady with such a proper upbringing – (twelve years at the conservative, Catholic, Lillian school for girls! And then this! How deliciously disturbing) – had produced such a frank and grotesque novel. Of course, the novel had been popular in America as well – not as popular as, say, a Murakami Haruki novel might be, but it did well enough for itself.

That novel alone had afforded her the financial security to take half a lifetime off of work if she held her yen close to the vest, but she wasn't satisfied. She published two more novels, only a year apart from one another, and under a pseudonym this time. For this, she sometimes heard herself compared, not unfavorably, with a certain American author from New England, who had become famous writing just the sort of novels that she herself had found she was quite good at – and the latter of the two became just as popular as Ling's story had been. After this she had found the financial security to last her just as long as she desired it to last, and she found that she desired it to last not long at all. Certainly it was the hallmark of a woman brought up in an environment where money was less a means to buy bread and more a means to acquire power over others, but whatever the reason, Sachiko hated having money.

She asked Yumi two things in one single night, the night of their eighth anniversary, Sachiko twenty-six, Yumi twenty-five. The first thing she asked Yumi to do was to help her pick out a house in Tokyo, and not to be cheap about it. To make sure that they moved to Tokyo with as little in savings as she could muster. The second thing she asked Yumi to do was to wear a ring on her fourth finger when they went to their first showing, and to marry her on the day of their ninth anniversary, in Tokyo, with their close friends beside them.

Yumi had said yes both times, her cheeks wet the second. It had been the best day of their lives, and the inspiration for the novel she had written in the cracks of downtime which were scattered about the next six months, primarily concerned with Yumi's job hunt and their combined house hunt. It turned out to be her first novel in which nobody was simply…watched.

It was as when she put the ring on, the voices in her head had been simply…silenced. Since she had been to college, were not so many of them as there had once been, and they had never been clamorous, never maddening, only obnoxious. They sometimes made it hard to sleep. After she put the ring on, she slept like a rock, she was grateful for it. Maybe, she thought, it was a sign from God that she done good. Or maybe her mother, who had so often been the one waking her up at three in the morning, was just allergic to gold.

She felt that when she wore the ring, she could write a novel about somebody who was not watched. Constantly. Maybe because she felt that eye lift off of her as well.

The Ogasawara-Fukuzawa estate turned out to be a very nice two-story house with a tiny yard in the middle of a very nice neighborhood which was, in fact, not so far off from the Lillian School for Girls. In the years that followed, Sachiko would sometimes look outside and see a girl in a crisp skirt, which of course fell beneath her knees, the hem of which was always tidy, walking quickly but with a look of forced calmness down the street, no doubt late for school, no doubt torn between the twin, conflicting calls of the Lady—to never be late, and to never hurry. Yumi had once told her that there was a way in which one could hurry without appearing to hurry, and Sachiko told her with a smile and a poke on the nose that if there was, Yumi had never quite gotten it down.

(Sachiko supposed that people simply assumed that Ladies had nothing better to do than leave early enough that they could walk slowly to wherever they were going.)

It seemed that Sachiko could not escape that demon known as success, though. Maybe it was in her blood. She published three more novels, all about quieter, gentler topics than eyes which always seemed to watch, never to act. None were rousingly successful. It seemed that people liked reading about normal lives where normal things happened significantly less than about things which tickled the little parts of them that they could not tell their children about.

Like at the parties…

Like at the whole fucking estate.

And then her first novel, Ling's novel (not mine), caught on in America. Not the in niche market it had previously held, but more like the niche markets Murakami Haruki still held. It caught big. Maybe it was the new translation. Maybe it was the picture of the author on the back flap, the picture of Sachiko, ravishing in a blue button-up, the top button undone, hinting that maybe she knew how to do more than just write (this had been her publisher's idea, and in the end it had been a choice between murdering him in his sleep and taking the fucking picture). Maybe it was the paperback. It was slow at first – her publisher reported that she was selling better than they'd expected in the American market, but that it was nothing to get worked up over, that she should take the extra money and have a nice dinner or something; the same call came three months in a row—have a nice dinner, buy yourself a nice cocktail dress, start up a college fund for your kids—and then on the fourth month, her publisher informed her that her novel had made the New York Times bestseller list. She had a funny feeling that her publisher had been telling her a little white lie or two about how much she had actually been making off of that novel, and ignored it. Not because she thought it was false, but because she didn't care. He could keep the money.

The fifth month, she was informed that Maturin Films was interested in picking up a big-screen adaptation, and that she should probably get her cute little ass to New York in a damn big hurry if she wanted to see it happen. This, of course, meant that she had better get her cute little ass to New York in a damn big hurry if she wanted to publish another novel.

Really, it was Ling who drew Sachiko there. Sachiko had been ready to bite back, to tell her publisher to go find another best-selling author. Yumi couldn't go – or maybe wouldn't go. In fact, she begged Sachiko to stay, and the night before she left, she did so with tears in her eyes. She could not explain why she was so convinced that Sachiko needed to stay, nor could Sachiko explain why she was so convinced that she needed to go.

After all, how could she tell anybody, especially Yumi, that she felt like Ling needed her there?

One

Response:

Commala come one / sometimes we gotta run / but if it's ka we're running from / we might as well be done

When I was fifteen, I was hit by a car. After that, I was afraid. At first, I was only afraid of cars. I walked to school every day anyway, so it was easy enough to live with. I walked on the inside of the sidewalk no matter which direction I was going. Manageable.

It wasn't until I hit 17 that I realized that the reason I had been hit by a car was that somebody had pushed me. I began to shy away from people then, but I was still in school, and my parents would not let me drop out. A few friends I trusted, but one day one of them laid a hand on my shoulder, I don't even remember why, and I started to scream. After that they didn't touch me again, and it was not until much later that I realized that without touch, trust cannot exist.

The jury's still out on this city, Sachiko thought, and not for the first time. Someone knocked into her, and she apologized reflexively into the crowd, in Japanese, which effectively doubled her chances of being ignored. She had just come out of the Japanese Society of America, near 1st Avenue and 47th Street in Manhattan, where she had stopped to ask somebody who wouldn't mistake a small bow for a sneeze for directions. As it turned out, she needn't have done so – Maturin Films held its offices in 2 Hammarskjold Plaza, on the corner of 46th St. and 2nd Avenue, in Manhattan, and she was just down the street. Google maps had been unable to come up with a location for 2 Hammarskjold Plaza, and her editor had assured her that she couldn't miss it, but apparently she had. Her English was mediocre at best, and she had been unable to link up with Satou Sei yet, though she worked just around the corner, as a waitress - or bartender, her story changed depending on when you asked her - at Aburiya Kinnousuke, which from what she had told Sachiko was essentially a restaurant where they charged you something nearly equivalent to 2000 yen for a meal you could buy from a street vendor in Osaka for 600 yen.

She was just scoping the place out for now anyway. In spite of her callous attitude towards the prospect of a feature film by a major American production house

(when did you learn to be callous? I can think of a couple of nuns who would roll over in their graves over that, or maybe roll into their graves, I wonder if they're still around)

once she had actually arrived in Manhattan, once she had set her bags down, called Yumi (who had been asleep) to tell her she was safe, and laid down on the bed that somebody else had made for her – which felt too much to her like a throwback to living with servants for her comfort - she found that she was quite anxious over the prospect of actually making a movie. Maybe she hadn't wanted to do this, but now that she'd gotten here, she wanted it done right. Moreover, she wanted it done expediently and without her involvement, and while in reality, there wasn't a production house in the world which would not have been overjoyed to hear just that sentiment out of an author whose books they wanted to adapt for theaters, she did not know that. She had mentally prepared herself for many months of writing and rewriting screenplays, for which she had about as much talent as she had for sharpshooting; for dealing with incensed Australian actors whose accents she could barely comprehend storming off to their turailaass, and for getting her ass pinched by directors like her father's horrid houseguests had done at the horrid parties which she'd been forced to attend in the same capacity as a nude statue at an art gallery.

She reached a corner and stopped walking, and

(singing)

(someone is singing)

and somebody bumped into her back, which caused her to both jump and clamp her hand over her mouth—surely the city of New York would not tolerate a Lady such as her disturbing the peace with a shriek—as somebody said something in English which she did not wholly understand, but which she assumed based on the tone was not wholly polite. She had been intending to look at the street signs again, and she forgot about this for a solid two minutes as she stood there, her heart pounding. At what? At getting bumped in to? I live in Tokyo, for God's sake, Tokyo makes Manhattan look like a quaint little hamlet. I'd have been trampled to death a minute ago in Tokyo, and left there as an example for those who would dare break stride on the sidewalks.

(When did I get so morbid)

No, that wasn't it, not entirely. It wasn't the shock of being touched, although she was still not a fan of being touched by strangers.

Somebody had been singing. Not someone on the street corner, or on a loudspeaker, either.

She looked at the street sign. It said 2somethingsomething ay vee ee. She frowned. What in the world was an ay

Avenue, you silly little girl. Ave is short for avenue. Were you raised in the rice paddies?

She frowned, closed-lipped. She did not like being lost, and she did not like feeling stupid. She especially did not like being condescended to, especially when it was her herself doing the condescending. Would that be called reflexive condescension? Mostly, she just wanted Sei to get off of work already.

That other sign says 2. This is 2nd street and 46th avenue.

There was a sound truck in the distance, playing a rendition of Bach's 6th Brandenburg piece. She couldn't hear the piece in its entirety – the noise of the city was sufficient to drown out the lower frequencies but she picked out the higher notes from the song, and was able to fill in the rest of that old, familiar song with her imagination. Sei had once called it an unbelievable cliché for someone of her breedingto have such a profound love for classical European music, and Sachiko had been unable to argue with this. Yumi thought it endearing, in the way that a four-pound dog would bark at passerby to defend its master was endearing, but Yumi was also a diehard fan of whatever happened to appear on the week's top 20, so her opinion was not to be trusted.

Sachiko couldn't say that she disapproved of the way they used sound trucks here in America. In Japan they were universally used to spread propaganda from the left or the right, or to sell you various trinkets that you were guaranteed to throw out or lose within the week. A sound truck devoted to classical music – this was why America was still a cultural -

That's your phone.

Sachiko fished through her purse, trying very hard not to go red. Why? You weren't even talking to anybody.

She got it out of her purse and flipped it open with her thumb, hoping it hadn't gone to voicemail already. She slipped a glance at the screen as she put it to her ear – se was the first syllable, which was encouraging.

"Hello?" She hoped she didn't sound as desperate as she felt. She stopped walking for half a second, felt the fear of death come over her, then started again.

"Sachiko!" Sei yelled over New York, which was mostly a testament to New York. "Sorry I didn't call you before, I had a table."

"That's –" Sachiko froze as somebody jostled past her, clamping her hand down on her purse. Was this a reflex? Could a reflex develop out of fear and not of practice? Probably. "Fine." She started walking again. Why was this city making her so tense? Especially with that lovely singing coming from just a little way off.

"Can we meet up by—" Sachiko looked up, read the street sign carefully. "2nd and 47th?"

"Next to Hammarskjold?" While Sei had lived in America for the past 3 years, and her English had improved far beyond what Sachiko could ever hope for herself, words that were clearly not of English origin still did not so much roll off of her tongue as flop off of them. Sachiko had no idea what she had said. It came out hah-mah-su-ka-ru-do.

"I'm sorry," she said reflexively. (This was certainly a reflex born of practice). "Next to what?"

"Er," Sei said, "Next to 2nd and 46th. There's a tower there, a big black glass one. '2' is the first part of the name you'll see on the front of it. Let's meet there."

Sachiko looked back towards 46th, and saw that indeed, there was a great black skyscraper on the other side of the street. This, however, left her with the monumental task of not only backtracking a block, but crossing 2nd Avenue, which at this time of day looked just enough like a parking lot to be dangerous. Something clicked in her head. 2 Hammarskjold Plaza! That's where I'm supposed to be! For a Japanese person, who read English in syllables, Hammarskjold was probably the cruelest name they could have picked for a meeting place. It had been like asking Sachiko to memorize a nonsense string of letters, and Sachiko had clearly overestimated her talents, not for the first time since she'd been published.

(It's okay everyone else underestimates you.)

"I think that I'm nearly there already," Sachiko said. "I can see it."

"Great!" Sei shouted into the receiver, and Sachiko winced. "I'll be there in a few minutes!"

She reached the corner, stood with a massive crowd of people waiting to cross. The light turned and the entire intersection was still full of cars, so the rest of the pedestrians began to weave between them, either not noticing or not caring that as the cars which had safely made it past the crosswalk began to inch forward, they were actually holding up traffic. Sachiko waited for the end of the light, not quite willing to go as far as holding traffic, or maybe just not willing to risk the ire of New York City drivers, who had never been compared favorably to…well, to anybody. She closed her eyes, took in a breath, waited. Surely this was a rare incidence. (Every driver simultaneously deciding to cause gridlock. Definitely random.)

As her eyes closed, the city seemed to flood into her. Without the disadvantage of sight, it felt remarkably similar to Tokyo.

One could smell nothing but car exhaust if one walked with her eyes open, but with them closed, one could smell a dozen smells, some wonderful, some toxic. She smelled middle-eastern food coming from somewhere nearby. Indian not far off. Hot dog carts, smelling of meat that wasn't quite appetizing but was not wholly repulsive either; pizza from somebody nearby (she could hear loud chewing if she concentrated, or maybe this was just her imagination). The chalky smell of a dry cleaners.

One could hear nothing but car engines if one walked with her eyes open, but with them closed, one could hear a hundred individual radios on top of them, playing rap; playing reggae; playing music which came from a part of the world where there was sand and wars and, if the news was to be believed, little else; even one playing a song Sachiko recognized from the radio in Japan. And from far off, and yet nearby, almost as though it was in her head, a choir. The last movement of Beethoven's 9th, what they called Ode to Joy if they were diehard fans of whatever happened to be on the week's top 20. Someone was singing it, and it was lovely, beautiful even. As she noticed it, she began to tune everything else out, and as the seconds went by it was like a marching symphony, getting closer to her ears, singing and playing in the most beautiful arrangement she'd ever heard in her life, raising gooseflesh on her arms the way usually only Yumi was able to.

People were walking around her, someone bumped into her, and she lost the sound, and for a moment, she almost screamed in frustration, and had no idea why. She opened her eyes, saw the crowd moving around her. Decided to chance crossing the street.

Besides, that's where the song is.

She hurried across the intersection

(when did I learn to hurry? Maybe it was a skill I picked up when my ratio of jeans worn to skirts worn exceeded one)

and moved against the wall so as not to obstruct the flow of traffic. Pressed the back of her head against the glass of 2 Hammarskjold Plaza.

(heard the song)

And felt the tension drain from her shoulders. Being lost in an unfamiliar city was stressful. Being exactly where she wanted to be in a bustling urban conglomerate was utterly natural.

Sachiko wasn't sure how long she stayed like that. She had a watch but something told her that looking at it would drag her, perhaps painfully, away from the song. New York passed around her and for a while, it was as though she were barely a part of it.

Eventually, Satou Sei caught up to her, and although hearing Sei's voice, even distorted by the white noise of the crowd, once again caused the song to escape her, to vanish into the crowd, her heart lifted as she opened her eyes and caught her first glimpse of her old friend in over three years.

Time had been kind to Satou Sei, as Sachiko had somehow known it would. She had been beautiful in her teenage years, and although she had abandoned her jeans and plain white shirt for slacks and a nice blouse, she had not lost the impish look in her eyes; the one that, if you looked closely enough, informed you that maybe, just maybe, she was a couple of paces ahead of you, laughing at you while your back was turned.

Also, her blouse was buttoned all the way up. Sachiko imagined that that Sei would have no trouble making the month's rent on tips in a single day if she took it down couple of buttons, and wondered if she had a special make-my-rent-off-of-idiot-salarymen day where she did just that.

Oh right, they don't have salarymen in America. Well, at least not ones who call themselves salarymen.

Sachiko pursed her lips, aware that her grin was a little bigger and a little dumber than she had probably intended, and consciously decided to not lift her arm and wave. She settled for fixing her eyes on Sei's as the girl approached, smiling as much as she could without appearing to have a mental deficiency.

The level to which the two had missed one another was not entirely clear to either of them until the moment when Sei came within arms' reach of Sachiko. Sei, instead of smiling and saying, Hey Sachiko, it's been a while, (though that was what she'd planned – in America, one seemed cooler the less one seemed to give a shit, and Sei had found that looking cool was an excellent way to avoid the hassle of finding women to talk to at the bars, as they tended to approach her) simply extended her arms, waited less than half a second (as far as she was concerned, consent was Sachiko not screaming in alarm and fleeing) and flung them around her, pulling her into a tight hug that she was just a little surprised to find Sachiko return. (Though Sachiko might have denied it later, claiming to be taken off-guard.)

After probably thirty seconds (it took her twenty to blink a few rogue tears from her eyes, and then she gave herself ten seconds to enjoy herself) like that, Sachiko finally broke it, pulling Sei to arm's length again and then letting go.

"Sei," Sachiko said, "It's been a long time."

Sei only nodded, pursing her lips against tears that had no place anywhere near her eyes. She shook her head, smiled, and said, "You look good, Sachiko. Really."

Sachiko bit her lip for a moment – to hell with it, if I can't be myself with Sei, who can I be myself with – and then said, "If you only sounded a little less surprised, I'd be tempted to blush."

Sei laughed, surprised and delighted. "Is that what you're into now? What happened to flattening your skirt and bowing politely?"

"It took New York City all of ten minutes to suck the polite out of me," Sachiko said, though this was not true – nothing could truly suck the polite out of Sachiko Ogasawara, though more and more she found herself having to dig around for it when she needed it.

"Hell," Sei said, "that's doing pretty well. Did you do the thing where—"

you apologize to whoever nearly bowled you over (Sachiko broke out in a grin)

"you apologize to whoever nearly bowled you over yet?"

Sachiko, still grinning, nodded. "In Japanese, at that."

"So you were ignored twice as much."

Sachiko nodded, allowed a moment of contented silence to pass between them, and then said, "How have you been, Sei?"

"Can't complain," Sei said with a shrug. Dismissive. Sachiko did not let herself frown at this, but she didn't like it. She couldn't quite put her finger on why, but she didn't like it. She wished all of a sudden that Yumi were here, feeling that Sei would have said something else, something more, just then.

Or could it maybe, possibly, be that you're overthinking this?

(A professional author, overthinking? Never in life.)

Was Sei distracted all of a sudden?

Sachiko looked at her closely as they dipped into another moment's silence, and realized she was.

(she's listening to the singing. She always takes a minute to stop and listen to the singing when she's down here)

For some reason, Sachiko could not bring herself to distract Sei from the singing, even if it was the singing which was distracting Sei from her. It seemed…wrong. Like refusing to allow somebody a cold beer after work on a hot day, instead making them wait until it was lukewarm. So she waited. Politely.

And after a minute, she started to hear the song herself, and smiled.

It wasn't long. A few minutes, at most, and then Sei said, as though she'd never paused, "Are you hungry? There's a food court in here, otherwise," she swept her arm around. "Anything you want. But more Japanese-themed food than probably anywhere else I've ever been, Tokyo included." She grinned.

"To be honest," Sachiko said, and now, of all times, felt a little color rise to her cheeks, "I could use a hamburger."

"Would you like your hamburger made from beef or the stuff they scrape off of the sidewalks?"

Sachiko cocked her head. Sei considered this tacit consent.

"McDonalds it is," she said, and then took Sachiko Ogasawara's arm and led her into 2 Hammarskjold Plaza. As she did, the singing intensified.

And for some reason, although she had eaten McDonalds in Japan and hated it, had thought the hamburgers little more than thick brown slop, she ordered a quarter pounder with cheese, and enjoyed every bite of it. She half-listened to Sei the whole time, and half-listened to the singing, and she had the feeling that Sei was doing the same.

She spent the night at Sei's apartment, preferring the slightly lumpy couch, the muffled bass line from a nearby apartment, and the two stringy blankets to the cushy mattress, polished silence, and lush quilt of the hotel which she had rented and then summarily ignored by an inch and a mile. The two split a bottle of wine, and laughed the entire night. Sei called Yumi to inform her that she would be corrupting her wife that evening. Yumi flustered, but was laughing by the end, probably in spite of herself. Eventually, Sachiko went to sleep, and she slept like a log.

She dreamed.

He is young and he is handsome and he is killing them one by one. They are already shot, but they were shot quickly, and some may yet live. He's fixing that, putting his huge revolver to their heads, one by one, and pulling the trigger. Every six shots, he reloads without so much as a pause. His hands work automatically, mechanically, without waste or hesitation. Is this a scene of genocide?

One of them has a plan. A plan to end the killing. There is a hidden gun.