Breasts and Eggs

Worst part is, there’s a good chance that you’ll get used to the constant pain just as the chemicals stop working their magic. Anyway, yeah, I had to stop. Three months was all I could take. I looked at my nipples, and somehow convinced myself that they were going to stay like that. Like, what if I was the exception, the only person on earth who co

It feels like I’m trapped inside my body. It decides when I get hungry, and when I’ll get my period. From birth to death, you have to keep eating and making money just to stay alive. I see what working every night does to my mum. It takes it out of her. But what’s it all for? Life is hard enough with just one body. Why would anyone ever want to mak

Concentrating my awareness on my frontal lobe, I rubbed my thoughts together with ferocious speed, like a person rubbing sticks together to make fire, and waited for the smoke to trickle from the wood. Under the assumption that the tomboy was a decent person, I tried to think up a scenario where I’d say one thing and she’d respond agreeably, after

I could have told her, “Maki, your nipples look strong.” But would she take that as a compliment? I doubt it. But what’s wrong with having strong nipples? Or dark nipples, for that matter? Who wants their nipples to be cute or pretty? You’d think that, in the world of nipples, it’d be the strong, dark, big ones that would reign supreme. Maybe somed

—And who the fuck might you be? Hold up. This isn’t Osaka, and not every guy with a nice body and an icy gaze talks like he’s about to rip your head off. My prejudice had biased my imagination. On both sides.

A little after two, we made it back to Minowa, the closest station to my place. Stopping along the way for a 210-yen bowl of noodles, we braved the heat and walked the ten minutes home, while the cries of cicadas smeared the atmosphere.

when I was in high school (and still use on occasion). That was 1998. Ten years now. I seriously doubt at twenty that I saw myself, in my vague dreams for the future, still being in Tokyo at thirty.

The brochure for her favorite place was glossy black, printed on thick card stock. It had something the other brochures lacked. You could say it looked expensive, but I thought it looked aggressive. The lettering was thick and gold. No trace of the cutesy, happy, undemanding purity normally found in ads for clinics geared toward average women. Its

“They’re not dark, not at all,” I said without thinking, or even meaning what I said, but Makiko had more questions. “So they’re basically normal?” “Well, like, what’s normal?” “You know, whatever normal is to you.”

absurdly smoky motsuyaki restaurants,