Kōji

Makiko looked old. Everyone looks older as the years go by, but that’s not what I mean. She wasn’t even forty, but if she told you “I just turned fifty-three,” you’d wish her happy birthday. She didn’t look older. She literally looked old.

Kira. The name rang like a struck bell. She wrapped herself in it, using it as armor to defend her core, using it as a way to give her/him/it some sense of internal consistency.

CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING BEHIND ME?

Personality-wise, she reminded Greta of one of those exotic vegetables she was drawn to at the farmer’s market but didn’t know how to cook. Kohlrabi, maybe, or a Jerusalem artichoke. Not very approachable. Not sweet or overly familiar. Not easily boiled down or buttered up. Not corn on the cob. Greta felt an instant kinship with Sabine, since she,

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

—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.

She had no grace or charm whatsoever. She had noncharm, or anticharm. A bottomless well of antagonism and hostility. And she was terrifically ugly.

She’s all, “You like my hair, don’t you?” Her head rolls to swing her hair like a spaghetti cape, and she goes, “This is the longest my hair’s ever been.”