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Japan feels smaller lately. I can count its sights on one hand: my apartment, now infested; Boss’s car (my car), with a dying engine and a dying air freshener that still smells like her; her office, the statues’ eyes staring me down every time I enter; her home — my home — where I sleep.
— the Sejima mansion, where we meet weekly to play at the idea of a civil relationship. Quiet, isolated, devoid of house staff and security guards. Just me and him.
I let myself inside the dark entryway. It’s empty until I look down to remove my boots and he appears out of nowhere like a ghost, a frigid hand on my shoulder. I greet him with a sideways glance, no words and definitely no smile.
Saito is unperturbed by my coldness. “You look nice,” he hums.
I don’t believe him. The dress I pulled out of Boss’s closet, like all the others, looks awkward on me. It’s his fault for telling me to wear something different, or maybe her fault for only ever buying one size too small.
As if he can read my mind, he adds, “You should slouch less. You look uncomfortable.”
“I am uncomfortable.”
“You get used to it, eventually.”
I always forget he was in the same situation once. Puppeting a dead woman, existing nowhere in the interim, and for a longer time than I have so far. Saito taps a curled finger under my chin and I lift it to look at him.
“Better already,” he whispers.
I kiss him first, because if I don’t he will. He’s clearly expecting it to last a little longer. But I pull away first too, and he sighs softly and doesn’t push the issue. This charade we started together went too far and now we’re stuck dancing around each other, giving each other just barely enough of what we want. For him, that’s me. For me, it’s…
“How’s Mizuki?” I ask him.
His hand snaking around my waist halts at my mid-back. “She’s fine.”
“She starts middle school in a few weeks. Is she ready for it?”
Saito tries not to roll his eyes, shrugs, and goes, “If she isn’t, she hasn’t said anything.”
“You can’t just assume…” I sigh. “You have to actually talk to her about this stuff.”
“Nobody talked to me about middle school and I did fine.”
That’s extremely difficult to believe.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Saito supposedly mimics my facial expression, eyes wide and mouth pulled into a low frown. “She’s fine, I promise.” Without leaving room for me to respond, he tugs me along through the winding hallways to the dining room.
The ornate dining table, seating at least a dozen, feels equally as empty as the rest of the house, and is set for only two. A plate, knife, and fork on either side of a small, plain cake, itself topped with two childish candles side-by-side, 3 and 1. To the left of the cake is a kitchen knife, handle facing Saito’s seat.
I kneel down, as does he. Saito faces the only way out of this room. Even if he didn’t, I wouldn’t have any chance of escape. We’re sitting the closest distance across from each other, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the knife is not only for cutting cake.
“Give me your lighter,” Saito says. I do.
“You were thinking of running away again,” he muses, a bit of a lilt to his voice as he lights the candles. “You keep glancing to the side. You’re an easy read.” He smiles. “But you wouldn’t do that to me on my birthday.”
“Of… course not.”
“Of course not.”
He hands my lighter back, hums a few notes in preparation, and begins to sing. “Happy birthday to me…”
The candles flicker. “Happy birthday to me…”
I notice they’re facing me and not him. “Happy birthday, dear Saito…”
His lone voice fills the room. “Happy birthday to me.”
Saito closes his eyes and blows the candles out. Warm smoke wafts against my cheek. “You could have joined in,” he says. I give him an unamused look.
He grabs the knife, laughs softly when I flinch, and cuts into the cake.
Beneath the white frosting is blood-red flesh. My vision wavers.
“Red velvet,” Saito says with an unassuming smile. He watches me closely as he cuts out two slices, taking one for himself and rotating the cake platter towards me. “It’s storebought. I didn’t poison it or anything.”
“I didn’t think you did.” I take my slice and stare down at it. It really doesn’t look like blood aside from the color, but it nags at my mind regardless. I’m worried less about the poison and more about anything else he might have slipped inside — but as a whole it’s made with a competency I don’t think Saito could muster. The one thing out of his mouth I do believe is that the cake’s from a store.
I take a small, tentative bite of my slice. It’s overly sweet. I’m about to say as much when I see Saito lean forward with eyes closed and mouth open wide.
“You have your own.” I gesture to it for him like he’s at all unaware or at all paying attention.
Saito opens his real eye. “I think yours looks tastier.” His saccharine smile bothers me far worse than the cake does.
I stab off some of my piece and hold it out for him. His head ducks down to take it, lips closing around my fork as he pulls the cake into his mouth. He leans back, content with himself.
I contemplate wiping my fork off on my sleeve, but it would only ruin Boss’s outfit. Instead I separate my cake into chunks with it as an excuse not to look at Saito or to eat any more. For a minute or so, it works. Then I hear a soft inhale.
“I want more of yours.”
I repeat the motions without protest, but this time Saito doesn’t move to take the cake from me. He just hangs there with his mouth open like an idiot. I wish Aiba was here to tell me not to shove his face into the cake or not to poke his remaining eye out with the fork. It’s annoyingly easy not to do either with or without her here.
He’s still not moving. This time I lean over and put the fork in his mouth. Only then does it slowly close. His tongue lifts the fork as he licks off the cake, and I press against it. Harder — the closest I’ll get to stabbing him — he makes a hum of pleasure and my hand retracts in disgust. Saito clings onto the fork with his teeth and pulls it out himself. “What’s wrong?” he asks. He knows already. I just stare at him.
He twirls the fork he stole from me absent-mindedly. He’s wearing the clothes he stole from me, too. There’s a barely perceptible stain on that coat from Mizuki spilling hot chocolate on me one Christmas, right on the collar, near a fold — as I focus on it, Saito’s smile in the corner of my vision distracts me.
“Wow, you look pissed.”
I stay silent. He looks at me through the tines of the fork.
“I wonder if that’s what I looked like in the interrogation room.”
“Don’t. We have nothing in common.” I wince at my own outburst. Saito laughs at me.
“Ah, but don’t we?”
His voice is cloying with an inside joke only he gets. A familiarly sickening feeling hollows out my stomach. I recognize it as the dread I felt after the Somnium with him posing as Iris, after seeing my own face (his face) reflected in the shattered glass. He knows more about me than I do.
“Sorry.” His apology is empty manners, nothing more. “Have some cake.”
And he outstretches a hand, using my fork to shovel his cake into my mouth. I keep it closed tight. He nudges my lips with the metal.
“Play along, Shizue.”
It’s on me that I respond to that name now, that I listen to him at all. My lips part and Saito pushes the fork in too far, cooing as I choke, “It’s good, isn’t it?”