(Excerpt from a novella.)

A monster used to live in my basement.

Not the kind you see in movies or comic books. He didn’t drip slime from his mouth or plot to take over the world with conveniently powerful stones or wands. He rarely even left the house.

With his glossy hair and impractically long side-swept bangs, my basement monster looked more like a college hipster than a world destroyer. His face was more pretty than handsome with well-arched eyebrows. He wore a white bathrobe that he claimed was reserved for special members of his people, which I suspected may have been from Bed Bath and Beyond. He got cold easily and stayed wrapped in my brother’s childhood woolen blanket as he read water-stained horror paperbacks he'd scavenged from behind a tower of abandoned computer screens. He would unfurl old rugs and tatami mats and sleep on them, saying that their smell reminded him of his first home. His name was unpronounceable to human tongues, or so he claimed, so I just call him Seni after the dead dachshund whose bed he was sitting on when I found him.

Seni’s eyes were two different colors, one green, the other gray, and he said he had come from Purecell, a world you don’t get to by train or plane but through blank energy doors. He'd spent the past year looking for the right door, but had yet to find his way home. The last one he opened had led to my basement, and he wouldn’t be able to try again for another three months. I was stuck with my pretty monster.

Seni and I made a deal. He built me a house in a place far far away, where no one from this world could find me. I called this place the Green Zone. I had my own sunflower garden, and a short walk away was a 24-hour ice cream stand. There was an outdoor cafe with a veranda overlooking a massive river that dropped straight into a valley. They sold chocolate croissants that were always still warm when I went to go buy them. My house had a 50” television that I never watched but felt good having and a retro phone that was more decoration than usable. The sun set at 10PM each day, fireflies lighting up the gardens in pulses of green, just like the stars.

To enter the Green Zone, Seni had to open a temporary energy door in the wall of my basement. The opening would only last for two weeks at a time, so I would have to return through another blank energy door in the wall of my bathroom in the Green Zone. Seni would be waiting by the door, blanket cloaked over his head, ready to scare me on my way in. I wonder if that was something he'd read in his books.

Two weeks in the Green Zone was just one day in the normal world. A whole year could pass there and less than a month would have passed here. It could be snowing when I left and the gray slosh would not yet be melted by the time I returned. A single year here would mean more than a decade there. I often wondered how much time I could spend in the Green Zone before my parents began to catch on to my strange aging.

In exchange for giving me my own little world, I agreed to take Seni out for a full day once a week. It wasn't a bad deal. He was curious to know what it was like outside, but without a full-time keeper, he was too dangerous on his own. I convinced him to give up his white bathrobe, pilfered some old shirts and pants from boxes of my brother’s high school things, and Seni transformed into a proper 90s boy after he’d slipped on the loose plaid shirt and khaki shorts. The sixth, shaggiest-haired member of N’Sync. He asked why everything was so colorful and I told him the 90s was a more carefree time.

Saturdays were spent in the Green Zone, and Sundays were reserved for Seni. We had a good rhythm going. He picked a place and I would be his wallet and unreliable tour guide for the day. I gave him free city magazines I picked up at the train station and he’d give me his ‘Fun List’ by Friday night. Women and men would often turn to stare as we walked down the street, his arm hooked into mine as if afraid I would try to escape. He was a monster but still a very pretty one. I wondered if people thought he was my prisoner and not the other way around. 

The time in between I’d go to class, go watch a movie, study in the library, sit in freshmen music seminars for my TA gig, go out to dinner with friends, or help my parents download new games for their phone. I kept my weekly dance class at the gym. I practiced Chopin etudes in one of the college music rooms and helped grade freshmen essays for my professor. Life was still as boring as ever. Each day stitched into the next, the same monotone patches. Saturday morning was when I really woke up.

In the Green Zone, my neighbors were a beautiful family straight out of a department store picture frame. The woman was cyborg-statuesque with impeccable posture, always in jeans and sleeveless cashmere sweaters with loose bouncing hair like old school Cindy Crawford. She was often in their garden, smoking cigarettes by the water pump, looking like she was posing for a magazine spread. Whenever I stepped out onto the veranda, wincing at the sunlight like a retired vampire, she would wave to me enthusiastically as if trying to catch the attention of a rare wild cat, her arms impeccably toned. Her husband was taller than her, but not by too much, as if they had agreed on the perfect man-to-woman height ratio before getting married. He always wore a suit despite never leaving the house, and perpetually smelled of freshly baked pie. He liked to collect different novelty pins, a different one pinned to his collar each day. Their clothes were always pristine as if they never sweat despite the mid-day summer heat.

They had a son two years younger than me who looked nothing like his parents with his prematurely gray hair and matching gray eyes, but was still attractive in an otherworldly, I've-returned-from-the-dead-to-serenade-you-with-emo-songs kind of way. He wore black pants and white turtleneck sweaters despite the summer weather as if he too felt no heat. I wondered if his closet was just filled with the same clothes, the left side stocked with a tower of folded black pants, the right side with a line of hanging white sweaters. I was their troll-like neighbor, always in sweatpants and oversized t-shirts, squinting at them behind my thick glasses, yet they treated me like the most interesting person in the world.

One day, as I was watering the sunflowers in my garden, the wife and husband were drinking on their deck and invited me over to join them. Everyone in town had been invited to the opening of a new park in the east end of town, and they were pleased to see someone else skipping.

“Can’t stand the Construction Head,” the mother said, pouring me a glass of their homemade sangria.

“They used to date,” the father whispered loud of enough for her hear. His cheeks were alcohol rosy as he unsuccessfully tried to wink.

"If you call one poorly arranged drive out to the sunflower fields a date," the mother fanned a hand in front of her nose as if smelling something awful. "That clown thinks staring at things together is a good form of communication." 

“Our son went to the open ceremony though,” the father said. “He likes that kind of thing.”

The mother rolled her eyes as she swirled her glass, “That boy never talks, so who knows what he actually likes.”

As I sipped on the homemade sangria that tasted more like orange slices soaked in rubbing alcohol, I asked the family what they did for a living. The wife laughed, her hair bouncing around her face, and the husband followed with his own brand of giggle, his slicked back hair gelled solid. “We don’t do much, but a job’s a job. It’s important to stay essential in the Green Zone,” the husband answered, putting his hand over his wife’s. She smiled lovingly at him like those couples in diamond commercials. She said they manufactured stars. I wasn’t quite sure what they meant. They weren’t quite sure how to explain. We smiled politely and the father poured us all another round. The son eventually returned to the house (from the ceremony I suppose) and fried up a massive omelet that the four of us shared until the sun set. His parents didn't ask him about the ceremony, and he didn't bring it up, as if all three of them knew sometimes some things weren't worth agreeing on. 

Seni never asked about my time in the Green Zone. He preferred to spend his time asking me about things he’d seen in the magazines I’d brought. “What’s Santa Con?” “What do people do at this ‘Great Gatsby Party’?” “Why would someone want to pay $100 to eat raw fish?” “Why is everyone’s teeth so white?” My answers never seemed to satisfy him, each reply opening the gates to five more questions until I had to pretend to have homework and fled back upstairs.

Seni had two favorite things: sweets and numbers. He flipped through my old high school math notes he'd found stacked in basement boxes, circling numbers he liked and crossing out those he didn’t with an old Lisa Frank pencil. If he had the option, I’m sure he could spend hours just playing sudoku and eating Lindt truffles. He didn’t need to eat to live but sweets kept him in a good, quiet-smiling mood. During our first outing, I made the mistake of ignoring his sad sleeve pulling as we passed a crepe truck, and he spent the rest of the day only speaking to me in a language I didn’t understand.

Me: What do you want for lunch?

Seni: Ja som si ka sa

Joji and I had just finished our weekly ritual of five alarm spice Pad Thai and Coconut Cokes and were making our Friday rounds through Shinjuku, our tongues still burning. We cut passed the usual scenes: college kids drinking beers outside a convenient store as they exchanged phone numbers, old men sitting on the bench of an oden stand smoking cigarettes, young men waving bar menus and hawking all-night karaoke deals at passing pedestrians.

“Want that giant Mickey plush?” Joji asked, as we passed a late-night game center. The clutter of Mickey plush dolls in Santa hats stacked behind the glass of the UFO catcher machine stared up at us with their festive grins. No doubt they were beckoning to Joji’s inner gambler.

“Not really,” I answered.

“I bet you that I can get it with just 500yen.”

“And what happens if you don’t?”

“All-night karaoke. Check’s on me.”

“Drinks too?”

He hesitated. I shrugged, slowly walking away.

“Ok, ok drinks too. Geez you’re scary,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender.

“And what if you get it?” I asked, putting a hand on his shoulder as he dropped the 500 yen into the coin slot, activating the plastic claw.

“Then you have to follow me tonight,” he said, maneuvering the controls: leeeeeeft – forward – then down the arm went.

“To karaoke?” I asked.

“To anywhere. No questions.”

I looked at the soft Mickey plush doll as the claw went down again, dragging the plush only halfway down through the hole.

“Only one more try!” I said in mock fear. “What will the great Joji do now that his wallet will be out 8000yen! Tonight I’m gonna have myself a real good time,” I sang in falsetto, mocking his usual drunken Queen rendition.

He didn’t look at me, his eyes completely entranced by the swaying claw. Left – fooooorward – and down the arm went again, pushing down on Mickey’s head.

The plush said goodbye to his brothers and tumbled down the hole to freedom.

“As usual, the gambling king wins again,” I murmured.

“Nice to meet you. I hope we can be friends,” Joji said in his best Mickey voice as he held out the plush doll’s soft hand to me.

***

I met Joji four years ago at a school festival. He was working as a teacher’s assistant in the Japanese literature department at Waseda University, despite despising anything written in Japan before 1950. We often went to Yoyogi Park with cans of plum-flavored alcohol and chips, lay beneath the trees, and he would start telling me about the main character in a new book he was reading, complete with dramatic gestures and appropriate accents. He said the only way he could remember what he read is if he told someone about it, that he was afraid his brain was rotting a little bit every day. So I would bring a notebook, and after his theatrical storytelling, we would write down everything we did for the week until all our memories were on solid paper.

***

“I’ve been thinking of something recently,” Joji started, as we cut down a small alleyway of closing boutiques and the stained glass entrance of love hotels.

“My sister is in the hospital. She’s been there for a while now, and I was thinking of visiting her soon. She’s been on my mind, but I just can’t bring myself to go visit her.”

I didn’t say anything, waiting for him to continue, but we just walked in silence.

“Have you ever tried out a host club before?” he asked me, changing the subject as we passed the neon red entrance of kabuki-cho, Shinjuku’s night paradise.

“No, and not interested,” I said.

“Well today’s your lucky day then,” he said, grinning, and I knew something terrible was going to happen.

***

Joji was impulsive, like a curious child, he would often purposely get off the train at the wrong station and then suddenly decide to walk home, despite how he was more than four miles away from home. It didn’t matter if it was raining, if he was carrying over ten pounds of books, or if he wasn’t even sure of the way back.

The winter after college, he quit his teaching job and decided to put all his savings (with a healthy loan from his parents) into opening a bakery in Kichijoji, right outside Inokashira Park with its troves of lovesick couples and chirpy families. When I asked him why he didn’t choose a smaller neighborhood where the rent would be cheaper, he scoffed and asked me why oh why I dreamed such sad, small dreams.

As we waited for a streetlight to turn green on our usual walk to Yoyogi Park, Joji handed me his new name card:

Termini

Italian Bakery

Joji Iwasaki, Owner

"Not to brag or anything, but you can tell your mom that you're dating a millionaire now," he said shrugging nonchalantly.

"I don't think most bakeries make over a million a year," I said, clearing my throat. "How'd you come up with the name?"

"I visited Rome with my family when I was a kid, like maybe 10 years old? I remember getting off the train at Roma Termini, the first bit of civilization after a nearly traumatizing 14-hour flight. It was midnight and a lot of homeless people were gathered outside the station, sleeping on newspapers or just chatting. There was graffiti all over the buildings, and I remember thinking 'yeah we're gonna die tonight.'

"But then I looked over at my brother and he had this look about him. This look. It was as if he had found something so special. As if everything in this moment was absolutely perfect. It was then that I knew there that there was something about this place, something about this feeling, something about this moment that I absolutely had to keep. I couldn't just let it get away from me or I would never have it again. I was suddenly terrified and exhilarated all at once. I tried to take it in all at once, the look of the streetlights, the smell of the Indian curry shop, the steel sheen of the chairs and tables lined outside the trattoria across from the station."

"What do you think that feeling was?" I asked.

"I think it was love. Love for my family. It was the closest I ever felt to anyone. I think it was the only trip I ever took with my whole family," Joji answered, staring out as if piecing the memories together through an invisible tapestry.

"So how do you feel about opening your own place?" I asked, turning the name card around to find the cute logo his brother had helped him design.

"Not sure to be honest. Who knows, maybe I’ll be back to editing those terrible essays about Yukio Mishima again soon," he said, pulling on his right ear lobe as he always did when he was nervous. "I just want it to be a place people bring their families."

I looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, preferably happy families. I definitely don't want any of those screaming kids or parents doing the whole not-talking-to-each-other-now deal," he quickly amended.

"And how do you plan on filtering those groups out?" I asked, reaching out to hold his hand.

"No discounts. Ever. It has got to be one of those places people only go to when they're in a good mood. Like a reward. Maybe I'll get a cute dog as the bait," he said, lost in his imaginings.

***

“Heaven’s Rose” was written in calligraphy the neon sign-board outside, next to blown-up portraits of tanned men in suits. A young man, freezing in his tuxedo, walked over to us with a pamphlet and asked if we were looking for a host club. I looked at Joji, and he just shook his head. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“My sister used to come here a lot,” Joji said as the automatic doors opened to Heaven’s Rose. The walls and ceiling were a perfect powder white, the floors a white-gray marble. We walked over to the round reception desk and found an empty chair with a single red intercom button and a speaker embedded in the desk.

“Heaven’s Rose is not taking additional guests tonight,” a polite woman’s voice answered after we pressed the button. It was neither high nor low, a perfectly modulated voice as if tuned by a conductor.

“This is Shoko Nakamura,” Joji said.

Who? I whispered, but he didn’t answer.

“Welcome to Heaven’s Rose, Miss Nakamura. We hope you enjoy your time with us tonight,” the woman said after a brief silence, the door next to the reception desk opening. Before entering the next room, I put my giant Mickey plush on the empty chair – it made the room seem less threatening.

The room had a cabinet of books and magazines and two sofas positioned around a low glass coffee table. We’d entered a waiting room. Joji picked up a book from the shelf, Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country, and made himself comfortable on the sofa, patting the seat next to him for me to join him. He pulled on his right earlobe as he read the opening lines aloud: “The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country…”

After a few minutes, a young man in a tuxedo and feathery blond hair entered the room.

"Dear Master, we would like to welcome you to Heaven’s Rose," he smiled brightly. He couldn't have been more than 20 years old.

Joji smiled back, returning the book to the shelf.

"This is Hinako," Joji said, pointing to me. "This is her first time." Who was Hinako? Joji stared at me, so I nodded.

"N-Nice to meet you," I stuttered. I silently cursed his rooster-like fluttering hair for distracting me.

"Thank you for visiting us,” he said with a smile. “I'm so happy to meet you. I really hope we can be good friends. I’m here to listen to anything you want to talk about," he continued and reached out to take my hand. His skin was warm and smooth, and I felt my heartbeat increase suddenly.

“Don’t have too much fun,” Joji grinned, waving as the young man led me toward the open door. He was still holding my hand. I didn’t know if this Joji’s idea of a reward or punishment.

---

"My name is Shinji," the boy said, pouring two glasses of champagne. The private room was as white as the reception area. A keyboard piece from Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier played lightly in the background. The leather sofa was plush against my back, the air temperature moderated perfectly for forgetting the time.

"Do you have any siblings?" I asked, as we clinked our glasses together.

"I have one older sister," he said, smiling softly. "How about you, Miss Hinako? You seem like someone who takes care of others."

"I have an older brother. Haven't seen him in years, and I'm hoping that time really does make the heart fonder because I could easily punch him in the jaw now," I said, and Shinji laughed.

"What does your little sister do?" I asked, taking another sip of my drink.

"She's a nurse," he answered. His black suit was perfectly ironed, the collar of his shirt stiff and bleached white. He kept his hands on the table, his fingernails perfectly manicured.

"Really? Your professions seem quite different," I replied, trying my best not to offend him.

"Everyone makes different decisions," he smiled.

"How did you start off here anyways?"

"A friend in high school recommended me," he answered, making eye contact with both of us as he spoke.

"Is your friend still doing this?"

"No, he got married last year," he replied. "It was a really beautiful wedding. Lilac flowers and lavender everywhere. The bride’s family and friends were crying, everyone was so happy.”

I thought of Shinji and his host friend in the same tuxedo and dyed feather hair at this lavish lilac wedding, the two exchanging knowing looks during the wedding toast.

“Are you married?" Shinji asked, noticing my stare.

"No," I answered, my face flushing red.

"I'm sure you will find someone soon. Someone as beautiful as you," he smiled.

"I have a boyfriend," I said. "He was right outside before."

"Oh, you're Joji's girlfriend. Does that mean I don’t have a chance?" He winked, filling up my glass with more champagne.

"You know Joji?" I asked. Shinji stopped filling up his glass and placed the bottle down.

"Joji's sister used to come here quite often.”

"What was she like?"

"She was beautiful. Long black hair and brown eyes that were always opened wide, as if she were trying to see everything all at once," he said enthusiastically. "She would always sit right there and tell me about all the people she had been meeting at work."

“What kind of work did his sister do?” I asked. I had never met her, and Joji never talked about her.

“I think she worked at one of the clubs around here,” he answered after some hesitation.

“Did she like her job?”

“She didn’t hate it. No one hates this job,” Shinji said. “If we did, we would just leave,” he continued, pouring himself some more champagne. “She said she felt really popular at work. It was the first time she could openly talk to complete strangers. Of course it’s scary at first, suddenly listening to a complete stranger’s most personal moments. I remember the first club I worked at, I was scared out of my mind.”

“How long do you think you’ll work here?”

"That’s a good question,” he laughed, narrowing his eyes as he thought. I watched the cold condensation drip down our glasses.

“You know, there's a point between today and tomorrow where you don't really know if time is moving forward in a linear manner," he said. "Before working here, I used to pull a lot of all-nighters so I could watch the sun rise and make sure the day was starting anew. I kept telling myself today I would pull things together today and do something I really wanted to.

"But there is something so lonely about seeing the sun rise every day. The ironic part about confirming the new day was that it started feeling more like the days never ended, each day just spilling into the next. The same thing over and over again. I started feeling alone and stuck.

“I do enjoy working here though. I’m not unlike Joji’s sister. I used to be very bad at talking to people. These types of clubs make it easy for us to meet new people, to candidly talk about ourselves and other people without the need for context or commitment. I think when I don’t need this stage anymore, I will move on.”

He took out his cell phone and showed me a picture of a woman sleeping on a bus, her mouth opened wide like a yawning manatee. I chuckled at the unglamorous shot.

“This is my sister. Every day she gets home and feels exhausted. She keeps telling me that she is going to quit her job, but never does. When I talk to her about my job and the people I’ve met, she’s always jealous.”

“Do you think Joji’s sister felt the same way?”

“I think the problem with Joji’s sister was that she started losing herself. She came in one day saying she met the most amazing guy, a gynecologist who worked near Hiroo.

“She said he’d come to her club for a few weeks, usually on Wednesdays and Fridays. He would come in at midnight and stay until the first train back to the outskirts of Tokyo where his family was. She used to come in and give me every detail. What drink he ordered, what he was wearing, which patients he had due for delivery soon, what worried him about his kids, all his bad jokes. I almost felt like I was dating the guy,” he laughed, holding his drink with a look like he was remembering something fondly.

I tried picturing myself dating a gynecologist and the kind of bad jokes he would make. I shuddered silently.

“She had the softest hands and this way of talking to you that made you feel like she was always so happy to see you, that you were so important to her. There was so much good in her,” Shinji poured me some more champagne, but he was staring at a point past my face, past this room, somewhere to the illuminated night streets of Kabuki-cho.

“What happened to her?” I asked, raising the glass to my lips but not drinking. The room was starting to feel cold and clammy.

“The doctor just stopped coming one day,” Shinji said, smiling. “That is how our work is. We meet new people. But there is no commitment for them to keep seeing us. It’s not like a girlfriend where you have to at least give her a call or message to tell her that you want to break it off.

“I thought Shoko knew that. But every day she came in saying that she knew the two of them had something special, that he understood her. She said she dreamt about him, where they had a small house together on an island, just the two of them, and every time she woke up physically hurting because he wasn’t actually there.”

“How did she get hospitalized?” I asked, remembering Joji’s words.

“The doctor came back one day,” Shinji said. “And he stabbed her. She had become so sure that they were meant to be together that she found his clinic in Hiroo and managed to get his wife’s phone number. She made up this whole story about how she had been sleeping with the doctor and that she was pregnant with his kid. Of course none of that was true, all they had ever done was talk, but the wife took it all seriously. She didn’t want to hear his side of the story. Said something about her friends always telling her he wasn’t good enough for her. She filed for divorce and went on a crusade to ruin his reputation,” Shinji explained. “So the doctor came back one day and stabbed Joji’s sister on her way home. Called her a psycho whore. The club had to close for a month afterwards because of all the nasty news coverage.”

The light in the room went suddenly dim for a few seconds, and then returned to its perfect intensity again. The air vent rumbled and seemed to restart.

“I’m sorry Miss Hinako, but it seems our time is almost up. Do you have more time to talk?” Shinji smiled.

“I think I should probably be going back now,” I said, standing.

“I really enjoyed talking to you,” Shinji said, standing as well. “You reminded me of a lot of important things I’ve tried to forget.”

“Just tell me one more thing before I go,” I said, looking at the half empty glasses.

He nodded, his lips pursed slightly.

“Did you ever tell her she could do better? You were her friend, weren’t you?” I asked. He looked at me, his expression difficult to read. “Did you ever tell her she could find someone better? That she was worth more than that?” I persisted.

He continued to look at me silently.

“Did you?”

“No.”

The door opened and another man in a tuxedo was standing there, bowing slightly.

I bowed slightly as I left the room. Shinji also bowed, never raising his eyes from the ground.

--

I recalled the first few months after Joji's bakery had opened. There was always a line out the door. He was so busy I barely saw him for weeks at a time, and he apologized each time with something else he had won at the UFO catcher machines. He was tired, but he never complained.

Fourteen months in though, Joji suddenly decided to close the shop down. He said he couldn't take the stress of running the place anymore. I’m not good at sticking with something for too long, he said.

He sold the bakery to a popular French cafe chain, and within a month, they had changed the signboard outside and reformed the inside completely. They let him keep the Termini menu board that had been hanging on the door, which he promptly threw out on a recycle day.

"Thank god I never got that dog, huh?" he laughed as we went together to cash the check. He stroked the lobe of his right ear as he handed the check to the clerk.

---

“What did you guys talk about?” Joji asked as we walked out of the waiting room. Before we left the powder white reception room of Heaven’s Rose, I briefly looked back at the Mickey plush. He was still sitting on the reception chair, silent but smiling. I truly hoped that his new brothers would be kind to him.

As we stepped onto the artificial streets of kabuki-cho, the sudden rush of cold air covered my face and ran down my spine like an electric current.

“Your sister seems like a nice person,” I said, blowing warm air into my hands. The same young host from earlier was passing out flyers to some drunken girls in platform boots.

“She is,” Joji said, looking straight ahead, his hands in his pockets.

“Want to tell me more about her? I have a hankering for some ramen,” I said, reaching out for his hand before he could touch his ear.

---

“I didn’t grow up with a sister. I had a brother. His name was Sho. At 20, he said he was going to start taking medication, that he was ready to begin his metamorphosis. That he was ready to become a woman. None of us understood what he was talking about. Where did all of it come from? What metamorphosis?”

Joji ground some sesame into his ramen bowl and crushed a whole garlic clove into the soup. I watched him methodically mix the chili oil in and then neatly place the noodles on his porcelain spoon before slurping them up.

“We used to play soccer in the small field near our house. He would always start crying because he kept falling, and the other kids would call him names. He was so bad at passing the ball so the other boys made him goalie, but then he was so scared of when the ball would come at him that he would just hide behind the metal pole. I used to think he was so weak. But in reality, he was the one who had the most guts out of all us. He did everything he had to do alone. Absolutely everything. He was always alone,” Joji said, taking a bite of the pork belly slice. “We all thought he was being selfish, but who on this planet isn’t selfish? Weren’t we the ones trying to force our preconceived notions on him?” Joji said, biting his lower lip. He put down his chopsticks.

“He took up the name Shoko Nakamura as his hostess name. You have to put aside your real self and assume a new identity when you enter this world. But when he came home in the morning, he wiped off his make-up, put on a big t-shirt and loose jeans and try his best to look like the Sho we knew. The funny big brother. The reliable son. I think even he didn’t know who he was anymore. She never told us anything about what she did at night, and we never asked.”

I thought about Shinji and wondered what kind of person he had been before he had become a host, what kind of regular high school student he had been. How he must have joked with his friends on school trips or how his heart must have beat as he spoke to a girl he liked in the cafeteria for the first time.

"I just need to know. I need to know if I was responsible. If somehow I did this to him," Joji said, his eyes tearing up. Some of the other guests in the ramen shop glanced at us, but then went back to their hot bowls. I ate some of the chewy noodles and bean sprouts as we sat in silence.

“I found out later on that she was obsessed with some guy and the notion of being together because he had asked her to be his girlfriend,” Joji continued. “You believe that guy’s bullshit? My guess is that he was getting tired of paying the club bills, so he told her that he wanted to be with her separate from the club, that he just wanted to be with her. She thought she could trust him,” Joji’s voice was ragged.

“So she told him the truth. That she used to be a man, but that she had completed her transformation. She didn’t tell the club because no one would understand, but she thought at least he should know everything about her, that she wanted to know everything about him.

“And that’s when he stopped coming to the club. He didn’t love her, he never did. What does the hell does love even mean?” Joji shook his head and looked out the door at a couple stumbling into a hotel across the street. “When I opened Termini, I was so happy. My parents were so proud of me. I thought I would be running that place until I was too old to even remember my own name.

“But when Sho told us he was going to start taking his meds, he thanked me. He said when I started my bakery and told him why I’d done it, it reminded him of a very important point in his life. He said when he got off that train in Rome, he felt like everything was different. All the doubt he had been feeling about himself, all the loneliness and frustration he had been trying to silence, seemed less important. In Tokyo, he felt like everyone was just silently tolerating their unhappiness with smiles, that as long as you were a contributing member of your group, that was enough. There was no drive to find personal happiness and no right to express your personal suffering. Yet so many people were living here on the other side of the world, struggling but still living, still able to feel real joy in addition to the sadness. They were still their own individuals even on the streets. He realized he didn’t know anything about working for his own happiness. For him, Termini Station was the beginning of everything.

“So my parents began hating that bakery and that made me start hating that bakery as well. I felt sorry for having tried so hard to keep something so terrible. I knew that my bakery hadn’t caused him to be the way he was and that he would have eventually chosen his own way, but I still came to work every day, looking at the Termini signboard outside, and felt depressed. I had completely misinterpreted what had been so special about that moment in Rome.

“So I decided to erase everything. I sold the place to some investors that were eyeing the place for months. I told everyone I didn’t have the money or willpower to keep running the place and closed that chapter of my life,” Joji took a final slurp of the soup.

“I tried to erase the last strong connection we had. I willed Termini out of existence,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I sometimes get scared that I will just forget about him, that he never wakes up and we all just forget about him.” Joji looked down at his hands. “Can you remember your brother’s face?”

I thought for a bit. I could only come up with a tall silhouette in a baseball cap but no clear face. I shook my head.

“Why did you really bring me here today?” I asked, slowly wiping my mouth with a napkin. The ramen shop owner took the order ticket from a pair of customers that had just walked in. All the customers we had entered in with had already left.

“The knife wound from the doctor wasn’t fatal,” Joji said. “She spent a few days at the hospital and came home. She wouldn’t talk to anybody, blasting the same song over and over again in her room. I think she didn’t know what to feel anymore. I think she still wanted to be with the guy, but hated him at the same time.

“Then our mom began saying this was all a sign for why Sho had been going in the wrong direction. That he was destroying our family with his selfish decisions. She would talk to her friends on the phone and make up stories about how her son had received a scholarship and had gone overseas to study law in New York, that he had found a nice American girlfriend. She had basically killed her son in her mind.

“So Sho got a bottle of sleeping pills from one of his club friends. He downed the whole bottle one night and never woke up. We were too late but too early in a way. He, or rather she’s, been in a coma ever since.”

“Did you bring me here to find out more about what happened from Shinji?”

“No,” Joji shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know why I brought you here, but I think I needed to come here. I needed to tell you Sho’s story,” Joji said, still looking at his hands, the bones and veins like tiny intertwined slopes.

“I feel like if I tell somebody else her story, maybe she won’t have to be so lonely anymore. That I won’t forget her.”

---

We walked to the station in silence, the night sky covered in clouds. The club billboards of large-eyed girls with fake eyelashes and dyed-brown hair left me feeling vacant. A cab waited for us by the curb, but we waved it away, neither of us talking.

I remembered how our arguments always ended in silence. I would keep asking him why he did this or that, or why he said that, or why he didn’t do that, or was he even listening? and he would just sit there in complete silence, letting me yell at him until I just started crying, not sure why I was crying. Then he would take my hand and tell me he was sorry he couldn’t understand me, but that he was listening, that the silence didn’t mean he wasn’t listening. I wondered if his sister had been the same, waiting for him to tell her a story, how he had been, what scared him, and what he was going to do from now.

“Let’s go visit her tomorrow,” I said as we entered JR Shimbashi Station. Drunken salarymen were slumped on the floor, spooning their briefcases, empty cans of hangover remedies at their sides. The schedule board flashed with the first train of the day.

“Do you think she’ll want to see me?” Joji asked.

“Hard to say,” I pursed my lips. “Do you think you can win her a cute dog plush on the way? No one ever turns down cute dogs,” I smiled and Joji smiles for the first time since we left Heaven’s Rose.

As we waited for first train, the snow started to fall in tiny speckles, covering Joji’s dark black hair. The overhead lamps cast an orange glow over the few people on the early morning platform, their breath coming out in deep puffs against the cold air. We watched the light beginning to rise in the horizon, through the deep blanket of clouds like an orange ember melting the night, one day spilling into another.

I died on July 22nd, 2016.

My mother cried and cried, and then she just stopped talking altogether.

My father spent two hours searching forum posts on how to arrange an international corpse transport and last-minute funerals in New York. He then spent the next five hours reading articles and marathoning through NHK videos about Japan from the food to robot restaurants to the train suicide rates.

My brother had a beer in a bar he’d never been to. There, he went through our intermittent text messages throughout the years and then deleted my contact information from his phone.

They each coped in their own way, as always. 

The alpaca plush doll I’d given my mom my senior year of college sat on my old piano in the living room like a reminder that I had once been there playing for them, that I hadn’t been forgotten.

I woke up on August 22nd, 2016.

But it wasn’t in my bed in Queens. Or huddled in my futon in a cramped apartment in Tokyo. I was in a small, single room wooden house. I was sitting in front of square oak table. There was a window facing an endless green field like the one from Sound of Music. In the distance were snow-peaked mountains and the stone-lined reflection of a massive lake.

This was Vida Futura. Or at least that’s what it said on the welcome pamphlet on the table. In a cream-colored envelope was a ‘REASSIGNMENT CARD’ with an awful photo of me I didn’t remember taking and a contact card with a list of five names and phone numbers.

Faye Voestra, LIFE COUNSELOR — (555) XXX-XXX

Sophia Voestra, JOB COUNSELOR — (555) YYY-YYYY

Sherry Oshford, SOCIAL LEAD — (555) ZZZ-ZZZZ

Cyril Beeton, TRANSPORT LEAD — (555) AAA-AAA

There was a phone hooked to the wall and underneath that was a framed painting of a green field that looked just like the field outside the window.

There was no bed, no food, no water.

I picked up the phone and dialed the first number. The line rang three times before someone picked up.

“Welcome to Vida Futura!” an ear-busting voice announced from the other side.

“How did I get here?” I asked, staring out the window at the snow-peaked mountains. I fought back the urge to ask if this was actually some high cost mental hospital/rehab center in Europe.

“You’ve died! Congratulations!!” the woman shrieked cheerfully. I pulled the phone away from my ear, her shrill voice drilling into my head. “You are the newest resident of the green zone.”

I flipped through the welcome pamphlet but there was nothing but photos of nature and a two-page photo spread of people smiling in front of a fountain that reminded me of those terrifying old people tour groups in China. Above the people in bright white font read “Welcome to our family.”

I tried hard to remember if I had dabbled in any hard drugs the night before. But I couldn’t remember where I had even been the night before. Who had I been with? What had I eaten? There wasn’t a trace of hangover, no headache, no sour taste in my mouth; my head was the clearest it had been in months. Like I'd just woken up from a long and restful sleep.

“Are you still there?” the woman asked, concerned.

“Yes, I’m sorry. Um, Ms….” I glanced down at the contact card. “…Voestra? When you say ‘you've died’ does that mean…”

“I’m sure we will have many conversations from here on in, so please, there’s no need for formalities. Please call me Faye.”

“Ok, Ms Faye…”

“Faye is fine,” she insisted.

My hand tightened around the phone. “Sure, Faye,” I hated calling strangers by their first name, as if an suddenly we were on needlessly friendly, lets-get-lunch together terms. “Can you please explain what happened to me?” I asked.

Faye did not beat around the bush as I expected: 

On July 22nd, I had been pushed into the train tracks at Hodogaya Station, into an oncoming Shonan Shinjuku expression train bound for Takasaki. Death was instant. As my body slammed into the first car at 160 km/hour, many of the commuters in the front car had questioned why that had not been them splattered over the front window. This was the second bloody accident that train conductor had seen in less than five years. My parents received a call at 9PM EST from an English-representative of JR company — right in the midst of sitting back to enjoy their nightly marathon of Chinese dramas, full tea cup in hand. Two weeks later, they received a bill for 6M yen to cover the cost of cleaning my remains off the train, tracks, and platform as well as damage to the front window of the car. My death was ruled a suicide, and that’s what they told my parents. No investigation was ever launched, and I was half-thankful my parents wouldn’t be caught up in a hunt for revenge for the last few decades of their life, only to find someone mentally unstable, drunk, or plain stupid. My mother hung up Buddhist mirrors around the house and spent her days staring at her Chinese dramas in her silent catatonic depression. She ignored calls from her sisters and made passing comments about seeing a ghost in her room, which made everyone else too scared to go inside. My father had started meeting any Japanese people he could find on craigslist to learn a language he never had interest in when I was alive. My brother started visiting them every weekend and talked to my mom even though she never answered him.

I took a deep breath, less sad than I thought would be. “So…if I’m dead, why am I here?” I asked.

“Upon termination of your past life, you were deemed Fit, so you’ve been sent here for reassignment.”

I heard a hollow tapping, as if Faye was drumming her finger on an oak table that looked just like mine. Her chair squeaked as if she were leaning back on an un-oiled office chair. For a moment, I could see a line of cubicles facing a massive 15th floor window looking out onto Tokyo Bay and Rainbow Bridge. Was this some scam to make people think they were already dead before they were harvested for organs? Where had I been going when I waited at Hodogaya Station. I couldn’t remember.

“How do people even get sent here after dying?”

“Unfortunately that’s not something I’m equipped to answer,” the chair squeaked again. “Trains, planes, boats, who knows right?” she laughed and I pulled the phone away from my ear again. “Let’s focus less on how you got here and more on what you’re going to do from here on. Stay positive! One in ten new residents attempt suicide in their first week in Vida Futura. Can you believe it? Already dead and… It’s just such a waste of precious opportunity! Most people love it here after the first month. Everyone here in Vida Futura is essential, and I’m sure you will also be great here.”

I looked down at the photo of the smiling people in front of the fountain and then closed the pamphlet. In ten seconds, I was sure I would have a full-fledged panic attack.

“There’s no bed or food or water in this house,” my voice cracked.

“Ah yes! I’ll get to that. No worries," the chair squeaked again. “Wait, are you worried? You sound worried. Shall we do some breathing exercises together? That will help you relax! Just count with me, heeeeee-huuuuu”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“I’m fine.”

“But you don’t sound like your usual self.”

“How would you know what my usual self sounds like? We just met.”

She made a doubtful hmmm noise from the back of her throat.

“Are you sure you don’t want to just try it?” Her resolve was weakening.

“Yes, I’m very sure.” I was more irritated than panicked now. Maybe this woman was a genius at therapy.

“Alrighty then,” she cleared her throat. “So first off, let me explain the rules of Vida Futura. Don’t worry about writing them down, you’ll remember them right away, everyone does!

#1 — If you die in Vida Futura, you cannot return. Where you go, we cannot say.

#2 — Everyone must have a job. You will be assigned one shortly, based on your preference and skill sets.

#3 — You cannot switch zones without significant reason (this may include suicidal tendencies or civil unions with members in other zones)

#4 — Make friends, but avoid asking other residents about their past lives.

All the other details should be explained by your job counselor.”

“Why can’t we talk to other people about their old lives?” I asked, not mentioning that I couldn’t remember what had happened to me in the past week or even my own name.

“Past lives,” she corrected. “We call them expired memories here. While they were wonderful, vital components for living in your past life, they cannot sustain their shape and cohesiveness here. They will decay and be forgotten shortly. We simply suggest easing the process so you can more quickly enjoy your new time here.”

She paused, and I tapped my finger on the table.

“You’ll get your name soon,” she said finally.

At that moment, I thought how silly all of this was. Out the window, the sky was a perfect, saturated blue like it was in all those Instagram photos. Not a creature in sight. There was no clock in the room, but I guessed it was around noon.

“What was my old name?” I asked, trying to memorize the sound of my own voice. I tried to remember what my face looked like, but only a watery shadow with no solid lines surfaced in my mind that I couldn’t even begin to sketch if asked. This had to be a dream.

“I’m sorry but I don’t know,” she said. I knew she was lying, of course, she had to be, but it didn’t matter. I was convinced it would be over soon. The bubble would pop and I'd wake up shivering in my in Tokyo with the AC turned too high and the first blue of dawn edging in through my curtains.

“Ms Voestra,” I said, being petty. “Can I request my new name?”

“Unfortunately-“

“How did you get your name?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not equipped to answer that-“

“Whole lot of stuff you can’t answer, huh? Not a very good life counselor, or was that just your poorly decided reassignment too?”

"I'm sorry, but if you-"

I hung the phone up and stared out the window again. The view was surprisingly relaxing. I tried to imagine the last thing I had listened to on my iPod, Madeleine by Konstantin Sibold, the space-like sound in the beginning of the song like an opening chasm of light or a black hole growing larger and larger. Wasn’t that closer to my vision of death? I thought I could hear birds chirping, but it was just silence.