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There’s no flower in this world more beautiful than an artificial one.
That’s because everything is manufactured from lies.
Antipathy world
Ena sits next to Mafuyu on the park bench. The air is quiet between the two girls, sitting inches apart, close enough to touch if they wanted to, but neither making a move to.
“So… what did you want to talk about?” Ena asks eventually.
Instead, it seems to solidify, the evening air so thick that it feels difficult to even breathe. Ena tenses. Mafuyu does as well.
Ena’s girlfriend inhales deeply, before saying, “I think we should break up.”
“Eh? What do you mean?”
Mafuyu’s expression remains carefully neutral. “I said, I think we should break up.”
“What happened?” Ena’s eyes, which were open wide, begin to water with tears. “Did I do something wrong? Why are you saying this so suddenly?”
“You did nothing wrong.” Mafuyu looks down at her hands, which are fiddling with the fabric of her skirt. “I just… I don’t think this relationship is going to work out, in the long term. It’s better to end everything now.”
“What’s the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Ena would sound furious if it weren’t for the waver in her voice. “Our relationship has been working out for the past six months, why would that change?”
Mafuyu continues fidgeting with the hem of her skirt as she says, “You have no idea who you’ve been dating.”
Ena stands up. Mafuyu flinches as she shouts, “Yeah, clearly, since you blindsided me with this sudden talk about breaking up!”
“Ena—”
“Go.” Her voice is frigid, dropping an octave so suddenly it almost sounds hoarse. “If you’re serious about this, if you don’t want to try and work through whatever is happening, if you’d rather have nothing to do with me… go.”
Mafuyu stands up. She doesn’t look back as she walks away, leaving Ena behind.
The rain of despair pelts my umbrella and
Dampens my bangs and the hidden side of my heart
Oh, it’s all so troublesome
The air is humid and wet, as rain pelts down from the sky. They cling to the fabric of Ena’s black dress, causing it to stick uncomfortably to her skin. Despite the umbrella she’s carrying, protecting her from the worst of the downpour, some droplets get past, landing on the top of her head and dripping down the sides of her hair.
In other words, the stormy skies perfectly reflect Ena’s stormy mood.
It was one thing to have insecurities about not being good enough for your girlfriend. Hell, it was one thing to tell your girlfriend that you struggle with self-esteem issues, how you worry about being less beautiful, less talented, less effortlessly perfect than she is.
It’s another thing to have proof that your girlfriend secretly thought those things about you, too. After all, if Mafuyu really cared about Ena, she would’ve tried to save the relationship, instead of ending things out of nowhere, right?
Thinking about the breakup—how abrupt it was, how cruel it was—widens the ache in Ena’s chest. Just the mere thought of her ex-girlfriend is enough to make her want to sink to her knees in the middle of the pouring rain.
She wishes Mafuyu was there to hold her and whisper sweet nothings about how she was more than enough like she used to when they were still dating. Even now, she still has Mafuyu’s number. She could call her, beg her to take her back, make things how they used to be—
But after six months of dating and a year of being friends before that, Ena knows Mafuyu, and she knows that Mafuyu isn’t the sort of person who’d change her mind like that.
Then again, if she’d known Mafuyu as well as she thought she had, maybe she would’ve seen the signs of their relationship deteriorating. Even now, Ena’s not entirely sure what she had missed—maybe Mafuyu was thinking about the distant future because she’d begun preparing for her college entrance exams? Or maybe the stress of school meant that she didn’t have the time for a relationship anymore?
But we’d made time for each other in the past.
Mafuyu must’ve really grown tired of her, hadn’t she?
Liquid streaks across Ena’s face. She wishes she could say it was just the rain.
Before I knew it, the words had already withered
The fruit of the truth is ripening within me
Painting lies upon the mirror’s reflection
A “makeup of the loss of oneself”
Ena stands in front of her bedroom mirror, carefully applying concealer to the dark bags underneath her eyes. It’s a full week after the breakup, and if it weren’t for her applying a full face of makeup before school every evening, it would show through the pallor of her skin, her puffy red cheeks, and the acne that’s broken out across her forehead.
Still, her mother had shown concern when Ena had skipped school for the third day in a row, so here she stands, attempting to make herself look presentable enough for class.
Mafuyu used to be the one to encourage her to go to school. She used to be the one to help reassure Ena that she looked presentable, even without makeup on. She used to be the one who would cheer Ena on whenever she struggled with her homework.
Now Ena has to push herself to go to school, despite the way that her chest seems to constrict at the idea of doing anything besides curl up into a ball in the corner of her room and cry. She wishes that Mafuyu were there, if only so she could shake her ex-girlfriend and demand that she make things right again.
Mafuyu was the one who messed up, after all—right? She was the one who’d broken up with Ena out of the blue, she was the one who threw their relationship out of the window, she was the one who took all their promises to stay together and shattered them into a million pieces.
Even now, she can’t seem to get her ex-girlfriend out of her mind.
“Stupid Mafuyu…” she whispers to herself in the mirror, desperately hoping to make the words feel true.
She knows, deep down, that it’s the opposite—she’s the stupid one, to have fallen for someone so much better than her in every way.
Papapparapappararappappa
Let’s play a game where we count all the riddles
Tatattaratattararattatta
Why, oh why do we dance in this place?
She’s walking home from the convenience store, a bag of snacks in hand, when she spots her.
Mafuyu looks as flawless as always—despite wearing “grandma clothing” (a loose sky-blue cardigan with baggy beige pants) and a loose ponytail, Ena can’t help but notice the quiet grace that she effortlessly carries herself with.
She doesn’t realize she’s been staring until Mafuyu tilts her head for a moment, and they lock eyes.
Ena is grateful that she always leaves the house looking as photogenic as she can—after all, you never know when the opportune moment for a selfie will strike. It’s paid off, now that Mafuyu is staring at her—there should be no evidence that she still cries herself to sleep sometimes, thinking about her ex-girlfriend.
Her ex-girlfriend nods in her direction, a polite smile on her face. “Hello, Ena.”
Against her better judgment, Ena slows to a stop, as the two stand in front of each other. Aggravatingly, Ena has to tilt her head up to look Mafuyu in the eyes.
(Once upon a time, it’d fill her with a thrill of excitement—the way she’d tilt her head up, and Mafuyu would tilt her head down, cupping her cheek with her hand, leaning in closer—)
Ena waves the thought away. “Mafuyu.”
“How have you been? It’s been a while since we last talked.”
It has been almost two weeks since that day at the park, where Mafuyu took Ena’s fragile heart and shattered it into a million pieces. If this bothers Mafuyu, she doesn’t show it on her face. A passerby would think Ena was merely a casual acquaintance who hadn’t seen Mafuyu in years.
Well, two can play this game. “I’ve been doing well. I’ve been busy—going to class, working on my portfolio for art school applications next year, visiting local galleries, you know how it is.”
Mafuyu looks unphased. “I’m glad to hear that. I’ve been busy preparing for the medical school entrance examination as well. I was worried you might be upset, after what we discussed two weeks ago, but you’re doing just fine.”
She pauses, waiting for Ena to respond, but Ena feels frozen in place at just how casual Mafuyu is—as if they hadn’t just broken up.
After what feels like an eternity, Mafuyu finally steps forward. “I’ve got to head home. I’ll see you around, Ena.”
Mafuyu begins to walk away, and Ena feels her composure slip. Turning around, she says, in a low voice, “Did our time together really mean that little to you?”
There’s no indication that Mafuyu heard Ena, but she freezes in her tracks, feet planted firmly in place.
“We were dating for six months. We were friends for a year before that. We were committed to each other—we were talking about moving in after university—were all those promises just words to you?”
Mafuyu remains silent.
“Answer me!” Ena surges forward, grabbing Mafuyu and spinning her around. Even now, Mafuyu stares at some fixed point in the distance, slightly above Ena’s head. “Did you ever really care for me at all?!”
Her ex-girlfriend tilts her head down, staring Ena directly in the eyes. Her expression is one that Ena had never seen before, in all the time she’s known Mafuyu. Her eyes, wide as a fish’s, lack the usual sparkle. The subtle smile that she typically wears has been replaced with a neutral expression.
If Ena had to describe it… she would say it was completely and utterly devoid of any emotion whatsoever.
And that really is an answer in and of itself, isn’t it?
“You disgust me,” Ena says, before she walks away from her ex-girlfriend, without sparing a second glance back.
I can’t understand even the simplest of things; what even am I?
Even that, stirred by the hand of the night
Just like love, it disappears
I cried, still unable to say even goodbye
Phony, phony, phony
Tangled up in lies, I am a phony
Antipathy world
Did you ever really care for me at all?
Their conversation replays on repeat in Ena’s head, over and over again. Mafuyu’s casual demeanor as she asks about what she’s been up to. The detached way she referred to breaking up with Ena. Her emotionless expression at Ena’s confrontation.
It’s really over, isn’t it?
Mafuyu really meant it. Their relationship, their year of friendship before that, all the promises they made, all the moments they shared—for nothing. For all intents and purposes, they are just strangers who happened to pass each other on the street.
And if that’s the case… why is she still trying to cling to what was?
Closing Instagram, Ena opens her contacts. It’s not hard to find “Mafuyu Asahina” listed, her name surrounded by purple hearts. To match your hair! Ena had said at the time, as she had reached forward to twirl a purple wave between her fingers.
Now, she finds herself hovering over the “block” button instead. They’re nothing more than strangers. Why hold onto the memories of her ex-girlfriend, who clearly wants nothing to do with her, and probably never really cared in the first place?
“Goodbye,” she whispers, and the words choke in her throat, saline dripping down her cheeks and covering the screen of her phone with teardrops.
She takes a deep breath, and presses block.
Before I knew it, the mimicked cries joined the unpleasant chorus
Their eyes, leery, are dissolving you
I am missing from the mirror’s reflection.
There is only a “fake” that everyone mistook for someone else
Mafuyu stares at her reflection in the mirror. Her reflection stares back—her empty-eyed, apathetic self. She smiles, and the girl in the mirror smiles with her—eyes large and bright, a smile stretching across her face, a picture-perfect porcelain expression for a porcelain doll like herself.
Ena had always complimented her for her beautiful smile. Mafuyu wonders—what would she have thought if she’d realized that her smile was nothing more than a beautiful lie?
Unlike her smile, her feelings were real. After a month of musing on the breakup, she had managed to conclude that much. The flutter in her chest at the thought of Ena was a clear sign that she felt something real towards the other girl, just as much as the pain in her gut at the thought of Ena’s hurt you disgust me.
Mafuyu’s not good with emotions, but even she could see the anger in the face of the girl she had once loved.
“This was for the best,” she whispers to her reflection. Ena didn’t know that all of Mafuyu’s effortless altruism, her passion for being a doctor, even her role as the perfect romantic partner, were all just a performance. Behind her mask of perfection was a blank canvas—no passions or personality whatsoever.
Mafuyu is nothing but a fake, and Ena deserves to be with someone as tangibly real as she is.
Still, she can see the way her eyes pinch at the corners as she repeats the words to herself, over and over again, like a mantra. This was for the best. This was for the best. This was for the best.
You’re nothing but a phony, after all.
How do we live, as we crowd around and lust after that thing known as love?
I’m swimming today again, as the night train is passing me by.
Dance the night away!
The sky is a grayish blue, fading out into the dark peach of dusk. Cutting a clear silhouette against the gradient is the shapes of the city skyline—buildings, electrical wires, and the other side of the train platform that Mafuyu is standing on, waiting for the night train home to arrive.
She took her mock university examination today. Her mother will fret over her grades, accept nothing less than absolute perfection, but she knows, in her bones, that she did well. In the absence of her relationship with Ena, Mafuyu had thrown herself into her studies with a fervor that even took her mother aback.
Still, she misses study sessions at home, Ena on the other end of the phone, encouraging her to take a break. Go outside and take a breather, for a second! she would say. I know you love studying, but you’re working yourself sick!
Only if you’ll stop painting and step outside with me, Mafuyu would tease back, and she knows Ena never saw past the good girl facade she played up around everyone she knew, but those moments almost felt real.
It sinks in now, almost two months after they’ve broken up, that, even if Ena had fallen in love with a liar, maybe, in another universe, she could’ve tried to make things real.
Of course, there was her mother, and the pressures of entering university, and there was no guarantee that Ena would still love the real her, and it was so much easier to pretend than to peel off the mask to reveal the hollow, rotten core behind it—millions of small reasons why she made the right decision, why breaking things off with Ena was the correct thing to do. And yet she finds herself wondering—what if she had told Ena the truth? What if she had given that vulnerability? What if she had taken that risk?
The what-ifs of her mind pile up, choking her, and she finds her vision blurring as she thinks about Ena—her smile, her laugh, her voice, her humor, but most of all, the passion that drove her to pursue the thing she loved most, despite the obstacles blocking her path. Mafuyu had always envied that spirit, deep down—the determination to claw her way to the top that Mafuyu could never dredge up in herself.
She never understood what Ena found enviable about her, when she was so filled with life and passion and warmth that burned so brightly it almost felt like fire.
Mafuyu misses Ena. The feeling is like a knife to the gut, and all she can do is stand on the platform, waiting for the train, as though her world hadn’t collapsed two months ago.
The wind blows cold around her as her train pulls into the station, blocking the star-speckled sky from her field of vision.
Papapparapappararappappa
Let us sing and deceive with riddles.
Tatattaratattararattatta
Why, oh why, does it hurt here so much?
Three months have passed when they next cross paths.
Mafuyu is walking home from prep school when she sees Ena in her uniform. Probably on her way to her night classes—but why is she in this part of town?
She tries to look away, but it’s too late. Brown eyes lock with her own, and she can see Ena nod in acknowledgment.
Mafuyu slows down. Ena follows suit, which surprises her. The other girl had seemed angry, the last time they had talked.
“Hi,” Ena says, her expression bright. “How have you been?”
Mafuyu shrugs. There’s not much for her to say.
“I know entrance exams are coming up,” Ena says. “How do you feel about those?”
“I got the highest score in my class on the mock exam,” Mafuyu responds.
Ena goes silent.
“Why did you stop, if you don’t want to talk to me at all?”
Mafuyu takes a deep breath, before letting her mask drop.
“I do want to talk to you, Ena,” she says, her voice low and rough. “But what is there to say?”
“Well, you could apologize for the way you handled our breakup,” Ena says, her voice cheerful to the point of aggression. “That would be a good start. Then again,” and now her voice has lost the cheerful edge in favor of an angry tone, “that would require you to care at all in the first place, wouldn’t it?”
“I do care about you,” Mafuyu says instinctively, and she’s surprised to find the words still ring true. “I wouldn’t have dated you otherwise.” Her voice catches slightly, as she says, “The breakup hurt me, too.”
Somehow, that was the wrong thing to say. “Oh, the breakup hurt you, huh? Then why’d you do it? Why didn’t you try to work things out? Why did you just give up? You say one thing, but your actions say something else entirely. So be honest with me—did you ever really care about me?”
“Of course, I did,” Mafuyu says, and she feels like she’s drowning as the words escape her lips. “It’s you who never really cared for me.”
“And yet you were the one who broke up with me,” Ena says, beginning to walk away.
“Where are you going?”
Ena freezes in her tracks, without turning around. “What else is there to say?”
Dancetime: about 11 seconds
They don’t cross paths again, after that.
Things still change, though. Of course they do—nothing in life is static, and the lives of Mafuyu and Ena slowly march forward, as time does.
Against all odds—and by odds, her numerous absences—Ena graduates high school. More importantly, she manages to get into art school—not her first choice school, but her second choice. It’s more than enough to prove herself, regardless, and even Ena’s father gives her a gruff “good work.” It doesn’t make up for years of criticism and harsh words, but the praise fills Ena with both a sense of accomplishment and determination to continue to prove her father wrong.
Mafuyu also graduates high school—first in her class. She gives a speech at graduation, wearing her usual smiling mask, encouraging her classmates to continue to forge their path in life and do the things they love. Despite her own words, she enrolls herself into university as a premed student, at her mother’s wishes. She’s slowly realizing that her mother’s wishes don’t align with her own, especially when her mother casually mentions that she should start looking for “a man of equal standing” during her time in university, but the time to act on that knowledge has not arrived yet.
Ena enjoys art school. Despite begrudgingly signing up for morning classes—a prestigious professor teaches the 8:00 AM section—she’s enjoying what she does. She’s used to working hard, used to having to try just a little bit harder than the rest of her peers to keep up, and the workload of art school only serves to invigorate her. Her classmates praise her for her work, but she still doesn’t really see herself as talented—she knows she has low self-esteem, but years of self-deprecation, especially in the wake of Mafuyu’s sudden abandonment, has warped her self-awareness.
It’s hard for Mafuyu to enjoy university, at first. She tries to maintain her facade, tries to do everything she’s supposed to do, but this isn’t high school, and she finds herself burning out—fast. It’s not until she meets with her advisor, and he (exasperated) asks her if she even wants to be there, that she breaks down and admits that, no, she really doesn’t want to be a doctor at all. Shortly after, she moves out of her house and switches her major to nursing, to the ire of her mother. Dropping her mask makes school much better, afterward, and even though her classmates gently rib her for how deadpan she is, Mafuyu feels much more at ease than she ever did in high school.
Some things don’t change, though. Ena runs through her purple paint like it’s nothing. Mafuyu avoids art galleries like they’re the plague. Neither of them dates, but Ena will startle whenever she sees the color purple, and Mafuyu scrutinizes every brown-haired girl she sees on the street, despite both of them deliberately avoiding the places they know the other used to frequent.
So it’s not until two years after they’ve broken up, the summer after their first year of university, that they stumble across each other’s path again, at the park where they originally broke up.
I can't change these miserable days
This rain of despair just won’t let up
I cried, still unable to say even goodbye
Phony, phony, phony
I’m just tangled up in lies
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Ena says. She’s not upset at the sight of her ex-girlfriend like she might’ve been in the past—two years is a long time, after all.
“Likewise,” Mafuyu responds. Her hair is cut to her chin, and Ena’s surprised to find that the hairstyle suits her, even more than her ponytail.
Her expression is deadpan and her voice is monotone, enough for Ena to ask, “Would you rather me leave?”
“No.” Mafuyu says it with such resoluteness that it takes Ena aback. “This is just how I am now.”
“Really?” Ena raises an eyebrow. “But you were always so… cheerful, before.”
Mafuyu shrugs. “Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a long story.” Mafuyu pauses, then adds, “I wouldn’t mind telling it if you have the time.”
Ena sits down on the bench, where Mafuyu had broken up with her two years ago, and gestures to the spot next to her, where Mafuyu had sat two years before. “Go ahead.”
Mafuyu sits, and explains the whole tale—her mother’s controlling behavior, the mask she had clung to in response, her decision to switch majors in university—all of it, without holding back. It takes Ena by surprise, how brutally honest her ex-girlfriend has become.
“So you were faking your personality the entire time… and you broke up because you were scared of me discovering the truth?”
Mafuyu nods. “It seemed like the correct thing to do at the time.”
“I would’ve loved you for who you were, no matter what—you know that, right?”
“Yes.” Mafuyu pauses. “I know that, now.”
“That being said…” Ena trails off. “Breaking up might’ve been the right thing for you, anyways. Sure, I would have supported you, but the burden of keeping our relationship a secret from your mother and the stress of school would’ve added up.”
Mafuyu nods in agreement. There’s silence between the two girls, for a minute.
“You really did a number on me,” Ena eventually says. “I always thought it was because I wasn’t good enough.”
Mafuyu shakes her head. “If anything, I was the one who wasn’t good enough, faking everything like that and then breaking up out of nowhere.”
“The breakup could’ve been handled better, I agree…” Ena trails off. “But it wasn’t all fake, right? You still really loved me, back then.”
Mafuyu nods, her expression unreadable.
“That’s good. I loved you too. So, so much.”
There’s silence again, a much heavier one. The air smells like rain, Ena notes, future rain and past regret. She can’t tell what Mafuyu is thinking, behind those purple-blue eyes she had used to dream about.
“What are you trying to say?” Mafuyu asks, breaking the silence.
“That I missed you, that I really cared about you…” Ena trails off. “But that I’ve learned to move on. It’s been two years since we broke up. We’ve been apart for longer than we’ve known each other, you know? Time passes, and I’ve moved forward.”
I can’t understand even the simplest of things; what even am I?
Even that, stirred by the hand of the night
Just like love, (it disappears, disappears)
Goodbye, see you later, I murmured
Phony, phony, phony.
Tangled up in lies, I am a phony
“Time passes, and I’ve moved forward.”
Mafuyu’s heart sinks, despite the neutral expression on her face. She’d longed and regretted for so long, and for a second, at Ena’s words, she had hoped—she had dreamed—
“I see,” she says, her voice wavering slightly, adding infliction to her otherwise monotone delivery. “I missed you too.”
“Did you?” Ena smiles, a small one. “In a way, I’m relieved that you cared as much as I did, back then.”
Mafuyu nods.
“Maybe in another life, if we’d met at a better time, or under better circumstances…” Ena trails off. “But there’s no use musing, am I right? Not when it’s been over for so long.”
“If we’d met at a better time,” Mafuyu agrees. “Maybe things would’ve turned out differently.”
“Still, I’m glad to finally have some closure, and to know the truth,” Ena says. “That’s the one thing that was holding me back, really. Now I can really move forward, knowing that it really never was anything I did.”
“That’s good,” Mafuyu smiles, a real one—soft and small and slightly bittersweet. “I’m glad you’ll be able to finally move forward.”
“Still, you did really hurt me back then,” Ena says. “So if it’s okay, I don’t exactly want to be friends or anything… but if we ever cross paths again, I’ll be happy to see you.”
“I understand.” Mafuyu pauses. “So this is goodbye? We’re letting go of the past?”
“As best as we can… it’ll be easier, now.”
“Of course.”
There’s another silence between the two girls, as Mafuyu stares at Ena, memorizing the shape of her hair, the brown of her eyes, every inch of her appearance, for the last time.
“I do regret it,” she admits, eventually. “I’ve regretted it for two years, now.”
“I’m sure,” Ena says, her voice light. “But you’re forgiven, so long as you never do that to another girl ever again!”
“I promise I won’t,” Mafuyu responds, voice as monotone as ever.
“Then in that case,” Ena stands up. “I’ll be on my way then. Goodbye, Mafuyu.”
Mafuyu waves, a shaky smile on her face. “Bye, Ena.”
Ena turns away, a spring in her step, without looking back. Mafuyu resists the urge to call for her to turn around, to undo the past, to make things right.
She’s right, after all. Time passes, and all that’s left is for her to move forward with her regrets, without looking back.
So Mafuyu stands, wipes the tears that had started pooling in her eyes away, and walks away from the bench where she’d broken Ena’s heart two years ago, and where Ena had just broken hers.
Only the artificial flowers know this secret phony.