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Mafuyu feeds the machine three tokens, turning the handle; she grabs the pink capsule that clatters into the collection chute, tucks it into her bookbag, and sifts her pockets for three more.
Mafuyu hadn't paid this store any mind until today, until Mizuki had dragged her along on a subway-wide trek with the vague promise that 'we'll have fun!' and that the trip would be worth it. Mafuyu had abided despite the heat haze—even now it feels like the city's sitting in a pressure cooker smothered under a weighted blanket. Mizuki had been fanning herself with a brochure throughout both train rides and the short walk, only stopping once they had finally entered the store.
(Mafuyu recognized these machines. She remembers one from the amusement park gift shop she visited when she was a child. She had gawked and pointed and pleaded with her mother to let her play—they were characters from the morning cartoons she used to watch.)
"Lately, it's like you've only been half-awake," Mizuki had told her. "Like only part of you really wants to be here. I used to be like that too. I'd go here to take my mind off it."
It's not crowded in the store, but the place is small. Stacks of gashapon machines take up the bulk of the space, crammed across two walls and into several aisles down the middle, so occasionally customers will back up against the stacks and mutter 'excuse me' while squeezing through. The place is stark white exempting the posters plastered onto each machine. The product posters scream their slogans across the entire color spectrum. The lights are bright and unrelenting.
Mafuyu keeps her eyes trained on the machine in front of her. It's on the bottom row of a three-machine tower, so she has to crouch down to keep it at eye level. The display sheet is familiar to her. Bright and cheery, the poster is pasted with bubbly multicolor slogans like 'Phoenix Wonderland presents!' and 'Four friends to collect!' Blowups of the little plastic phenny toys are lined up in the middle, the penguins photo-edited until they're saturated and sparkling. General product information is pressed into the margins: Approximately 8 cm. One product will come out randomly. Do not eat.
Mafuyu inserts more tokens and turns the handle again. A little yellow capsule rolls into the collection chute. She does it once more: a green capsule. Another three tokens gives her another pink one. Her knees start to hurt from crouching for so long.
(In that little gift shop from years past, this machine was on the uppermost row. She was much too short to reach it. Her mother was the one who fed coins into it, who then picked her up and let her turn the handle. She had gotten the one she wanted, and it had only seemed natural. Mafuyu was a good child. She believed in nice lists, in shooting stars and in magic words.)
Mafuyu gives the machine her last three tokens. She pulls the handle one more time, closes her eyes and sucks in her breath. A little blue capsule clatters into the collection chute.
When they leave the store, Mafuyu rummages through her bag and takes out the rest of her plastic bobbles—two pink, one yellow, one green—and she holds them out to Mizuki.
"You can have these. I don't want them."
Mafuyu arrives home in the early evening. Her room is near sterile: desk spotless save for laptop and lamp, the bulk of her bookshelf space neatly organized and taken up by textbooks and extracurricular materials. She had stocked her aquarium with fresh seagrass a couple days ago, but she still hadn't gotten to keeping any fish. No signs of life, no visible mementos.
(Her mother keeps all her precious things on display: her old stuffed toys, photos from her birthdays, her Halloweens, her Christmases, her graduations, her family vacations. Old portraits sit on the living room mantle. In most of them she's still a child, smiling happily, eyes twinkling like summer stars. Her mother's hand rests warmly on her shoulder.)
She does stash some things away for herself, occasionally. Ena's sketches are sandwiched between the pages of a couple worn notebooks. Mizuki's gifted bracelets and phone charms are set aside in a corner of her desk drawer. Kanade's songs are backed up on a little USB stick hiding in her pencil holder, light blue and unlabeled. All of her friends' things are sequestered in their little spaces.
(Her mother's touch blankets the room. She chooses her furniture, changes her bedsheets, replaces her curtains as she sees fit. She subtly dictates her wardrobe, sometimes passing on her old sweaters and cardigans as hand-me-downs. Her mother looks prouder when she wears them. It gives her the idea that her little Mafuyu is now all grown up.)
Mafuyu splits open the little blue capsule with a squeeze and a pop. She tosses the hemispheres of the container into her wastebin, then she places the penguin toy on the flat base of her lamp, adjusting it to face her. Shiny and sky-blue, it stares at her with its glossy black button eyes. When Mafuyu nudges it the brass bells on its hat jingle.
(The one she used to have did that too. Her mother had pressed the capsule into her hands, and Mafuyu smiled up at her and said something very sweet—her mother had smiled back so, so brightly. Mafuyu misses those days. She reminds herself of them all the time. Reminds and misses.)
Mafuyu lingers in little fragments of the past, always reminding and always missing—the two go hand in hand. She really does like doing both.
She likes reminding herself of the idyllic, sunswept days of her childhood, when all she needed to do was breathe and feel happy, never even really needing to think: she had all the meaning she could ever need, her absolute truths nestled close to her chest. I love my parents. I love my mom. My mom loves me. Those certainties meant more than anything.
She reminds herself of how her mother used to sit at her bedside and read her picturebook fables by the nightlight. Mafuyu's favorite was this one about two rabbits that lived in a magical tree stump—the book is still tucked away in the corner of her shelf, one of the few childhood keepsakes she clings to. She opens it from time to time, tracing colored paperboard and cardstock, playing with the little push tabs and finger puppets. She imagines her mother's voice as she reads the swirly script, "Once upon a time" all the way to "Happily ever after."
She misses how her mother used to soothe her fevers. On sickly nights she'd place a damp cloth over Mafuyu's forehead, rubbing ointment into her neck and leaving glasses of water at her bedside table. She'd whisper warm affirmations; sweet, tender words in warm puffs of breath that'd brush so warmly against Mafuyu's earlobes. Before leaving, her mother would always trace the outline of a heart into her little hand: Good night. Sweet dreams.
Mafuyu mimics that gesture sometimes. She'll draw cookie-cutter hearts into the skin of her palm: Love love love love love, fivefold inscribed by the chalk-white scritches of her fingernail, almost ticklish. She pretends this is her mother's hand, squeezing warmly, pinching her knuckles.
She misses how when she was little, really little, her mother would sleep beside her in the bed, arms wrapped around her stomach, keeping her close and warm and secure in the embrace. Gentle, nuzzling warmth; Mafuyu still tries to replicate it. Sometimes she wears one of her mother's sweaters to bed, imagining it still carries her smell—black bergamot tea, vanilla shampoo, the imprinted echo of it preserved despite half a dozen washes. Mafuyu would subsume herself in her mother's scent: She's hugging me. Then she'd embrace her pillow and squeeze tightly with both arms: I'm hugging her back.
Mafuyu always wishes that were true. Sometimes her room feels so unbearably dark and cold and lonely. She wonders how any child could ever bear to grow up.
The plastic penguin toy stares up at her. Its shiny eyes show Mafuyu her own reflection: staring down at it, expectantly, frowning.
(You told your mother something very, very sweet. Something very easy for a child to say.)
Mafuyu brings it up against her lips. Hands pressed to the sides of its face, she whispers into the plastic, repeating each remembered word exactly, intonation fervid, as though it were into her mother's ear. She confesses in one and a quintet:
"Thank you. I love you. I love love love love love you."
It's chilly in the living room. Her mother had set the portable air conditioner to the highest setting; the boxy standing fan does it's job diligently. The blinds are half-drawn so only little slashes of the morning light filter their way through the window. It's midsummer but the draft is cold enough that Mafuyu wears a pullover sweater—she doesn't remember if it's actually hers. Her mother's gaze doesn't tell her anything.
The television is on but the volume is turned all the way down. Mafuyu reads the scrolling news ticker: Subway delays along the Yamanote line, night market food festival on Vivid Street, art museum presents temporary embroidery exhibit...
"Where did you get that little toy on your desk?"
"You were in my room?"
"I was cleaning."
Her mother places a little teacup on the coffee table. Mafuyu presses her fingers against it and forces an equanimous smile.
"I was outside with some friends from school. We came across a store that had all these dispenser machines. They wanted to take a big picture with everyone holding a capsule, so I bought one to humor them. They were inexpensive—I didn't spend too much."
Her mother hums. It prickles the hairs on Mafuyu's neck.
"You shouldn't let your friends pressure you into buying things you don't want."
"I know."
"You remember why we gave you an allowance, right? You told us you wanted to be more independent, and that you'd spend it responsibly to supplement your learning."
"Yes, but—"
"A toy doesn't do much of that, does it?"
"...It doesn't."
Her mother nods and let out a short hum as though to say 'that's right.'
"You're not a child anymore, Mafuyu. One day I won't be able to help you. You need to learn to choose things for yourself."
Her mother's words are quick and cutting and they sting like an indictment—Mafuyu knows by habit that her mother's right, as always—but she still protests, her words clumsy even to her own ears:
"I like it. The penguin. You bought me that same one when I was still a kid."
Her mother says nothing, but Mafuyu can well enough read her face in the space of those couple seconds. The hollowing-out in her eyes, the squint, the telltale tug of her lip. It's not malicious or even intentional, but the realization still sinks her stomach a little: She has no idea what you mean.
Mafuyu cups her teacup in both hands.
"...I understand. I'll be more careful next time."
"Good girl. That's all I'm asking."
Then her mother's expression softens—maybe even a little remorsefully—and eager to reward her daughter's obedience, she adds:
"I'll buy us tickets to that new art exhibit, okay? We can also pick up more tea leaves—you said you really liked the mulberry ones, right? Do you want more of those?"
Mafuyu nods to all of it. It's only after her mother circles back around the kitchen island that she realizes she had been holding in her breath, counting her mother's steps: one, two, numbering eleven footsteps from the couch to the counter. She hears her mother push the kettle up against the back wall, into its little corner near the sink.
Mafuyu drinks from the teacup. It tastes like nothing, only the vague texture of grey milksop. But the smell is nice. Black bergamot tea—the familiarity relaxes her nerves. She sets the cup back onto the saucer.
Unthinkingly, she swirls the teaspoon in careful heart-shaped contours. Love love love love love. The liquid ripples against the porcelain brim.