Chapter 6

The shoujo magazine's office was a world removed from the cramped bedrooms and convention halls that Terry associated with comic production. It was on the eighteenth floor of a towering dark green office building, and staffed by the same army of cubicle-dwelling salarymen as all of the other businesses. As he passed by their workstations he noticed that every one seemed identical: computer and phone in exactly the same spot, pictures of families that all looked the same all facing at the exact same angle, and a half-finished cup of coffee sitting like an old grudge. He shivered. He supposed that these were the people in sales or finance or something along those lines – surely all of the artists were at home drawing their asses off.

He waited in a posh modern-looking room that was, despite the decor, still a waiting room. The secretary did manage to sound genuinely sorry for the delay. Terry was a little impressed.

Finally she answered the phone, listened to it in silence, and nodded to him. A lanky young woman (the previous applicant, perhaps) exited the office and Terry went in.

The editor was an old man with a rough beard and an expensive suit. The expression of surprise on his face when Terry walked in made the artist's heart sink inside his body. Clearly Erica hadn't mentioned that this artist friend of hers had happened to be a gaijin. Terry sat down anways, although he wasn't hopeful.

"Well, mister..." The old man checked a sheet. " ... Ozaki..."

"It's a pen name," Terry said.

"Clearly. Well, not to worry, you'd be using a female pen name if you got hired anyway." He pulled a stack of papers out of a manilla envelope. Terry could see that it was a bunch of pages from School Hearts, ripped out of the doujinshi seemingly at random.

"Um, I have other sketches if you want to see them." He dug into his bag and produced a folder of carefully rendered, decidedly PG sketches. He realized that his hands were shaking and desperately willed them to stop, but the rebellious appendages just kept quivering.

The old man (presumably some sort of editor) took the papers and gave them the same placid, unreadable glance that he had the more explicit drawings. "Do you understand the job you're applying for, Mister Ozaki?"

"Well, as I said, uh, actually I didn't say but I should have, my real name is Terry Osmond. You can call me Terry, er, if you want. And Naomichi – Erika's friend, well I guess I'm her friend too, well he didn't say much about it."

"We're launching a new series. It's a magical girl story aimed at seven to nine year olds. We've already signed on a writer and editor who are working on hammering out the specifics. We also have some preliminary character designs here."

This time it was the old man offering him a sheet of paper, on which were stencilled an army of generic-looking big-eyed little girls. It was enough to make Terry want to puke, but he held his tongue. He could work on this, but it wouldn't be a labour of love, that was for sure. Still, it would be nice to have a real job.

"Well, I have to say that my previous work wasn't exactly pitched at that audience," Terry said with a chuckle. The man didn't laugh. Terry adjusted his tie nervously.

"Yes, I can see that. This is ... well, I like your art style, although it'll need to be shifted a bit more towards the house style if you do end up doing this. And you have some grasp on anatomy, which is more than I can say for most manga artists nowadays."

"Thank you," Terry said, carefully inspecting his shoes.

The interviewer returned his gaze to the School Hearts pages. "I have to say, it's a shame that an artist of your calibre is reduced to drawing pornography."

"I don't think of it like that."

"What do you mean?"

Terry had just blurted the last part out, and now he had to explain it. Great. "Well, it's like, hentai is just a genre right? Like, you have shounen comics and they're centred around fight scenes, and you have shoujo and they're centred around romance and angst and you have hentai and it's centred around sex. In all of that you have to give the people what they want while structuring it into some kind of narrative that makes it feel worthwhile."

"So you're saying that what our magazine publishes is just like..." He rapped a page of Sakura in explosive climax with his fingertips. " ... this."

"No, I'm saying that maybe it should be." Terry realized he was digging himself into a deeper hole, and threw his hands up in a "stop" motion. "I mean, I'm not saying that your comics, need to be closer to hentai, I'm just saying that hentai needs to me more like mainstream comics ... I mean, you know, not just trying to be something you masturbate to, but having a story and characters as well as that more visceral appeal. That's what I'm trying to do with School Hearts."

"I see." The old man kept staring at that page, Sakura's hard-nippled breasts jutting out, her head twisted back in a scream of primal ecstacy. "Let me ask you a question, then. Do you honestly think anyone would read this, would care about this, if it didn't have the sex? Would you?"

Terry saw his point. Take out the extensive sex scenes and the screaming climaxes and all you had was a fairly banal romantic drama, not to mention a much shorter work. "Well, I would hope so." But in his heart he knew that sex was still the draw of his comic, not the characters and certainly not the story. He had hitched his pornography to a cheap storyline, and maybe that did make it better, make the sex scenes more effective – but it didn't make it the art he had convinced himself it was.

He suddenly thought of Mika, slurring her screams at him, babbling about him treating her like a blow-up doll. It wasn't that he hadn't thought she had a personality. But maybe he had been thinking of her like one of the girls in his comics, where the personality was an accessory to augment their hotness, everything ultimately subservient to the sex.

"Well, fortunately we're not looking to hire you on as a writer." The old man gave him the kind of grin that always accompanied backhand insults. "Anyway, we'll be in touch."

Terry walked out of the door, his head spinning. He was trying to convince himself that the old man whose name he had never learned was wrong, that School Hearts was genuinely worthwhile as more than just titillation, but somehow it didn't work.

At first no one was worried. Sakura had vanished before, and everyone was sure she had just ran off to be with Ryan or some other boy she had now become obsesed with. Only Natsumi, having seen that terrible look in Sakura's eyes as she left the apartment, clothes wrinkled and body sticky, had a suspicion that things might not turn out well this time.

They found her body two days later, washed up on the shore of one of Odaiba's artificial beaches. She looked hideous in death, her body bloated with water, her clothes half torn away by the force of the surf. Her waterlogged eyes stared blankly up at the cloudy sky. The coroner said it was a drowning, and declined to speculate as to how it happened. Everyone knew it though.

Her parents held a small ceremony. Natsumi attended and wept the whole way through. She wasn't so much crying for Sakura, who was gone and could not be hurt any more, but for herself, who knew she had drowned the girl as much as if she had held her underwater herself. How could be so stupid, taking her vulnerable and betrayed best friend and thinking only of sex, thinking only of her stupid dyke crush and not what Sakura needed right then?

Natsumi's cell phone hummed with messages of commiseration – Hayato, Yui, Rin ... she didn't respond to any of them. What was there to say?

It was three long, excruciating days of satying by a telephone, hoping against hope that he was going to get the call. In those three days every cup of instant ramen seemed cheaper, the apartment walls looked to be closing in on him, and his wallet felt constantly lighter. As the money and stability of an actual legitimate industry job were jerked farther and farther away Terry desired them more and more.

In the meantime he tried to start on the sixth chapter of School Hearts, which he had decided would be the last. He could keep the story going on indefinitely, throwing in another new character or love complication every once in a while, but what would be the point? Better to wrap things up and move onto something that didn't completely suck. But every page he tried to draw ended up in the trash-bin. His art, that basic grasp of anatomy that the old man had praised, was all skewed and the kids had hands and legs going off at weird angles and tits that looked like blobs of jelly and dicks that looked like dildos. And as far as the story went, he had no idea how to bring things to a satisfying end. In real life, of course, the story would end here – one character dead, another departed, the sacred love pentagon broken and its members cut adrift. In real life they would all be heartbroken for a couple months or years and then move on, finding new partners to obsess over and maybe marry and have a house in the suburbs and become office workers or whatever. But as an ending to a story, that didn't feel satisfying.

Terry wondered if maybe that should be the ending – the plot not wrapping up but just kind of dispersing. It would be realistic. But then again, what about the comic had ever been realistic? The girls didn't look realistic. The melodrama wasn't realistic. It would be like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping chest wound.

He rolled over and looked at the published issues again. They were crap. Art-wise they barely rose above the standard half-assed manga style, and plot-wise they were a mess. He chucked the whole bunch into the recycling bin and staggered out to his kitchen. What were they going to do?

And there in the kitchen was Erika Otsuka, heading out of Naomichi's room, buttoning up her shirt. She flushed and stared at the floor. "Uh ... hi."

Terry blinked several times. "Uh ... hi."

The second Erika slid her top button into place she grabbed her purse and rushed towards the door like it was an oasis in the desert. "Uh, bye. Nice seeing you."

Curious, Terry poked his head into Naomichi's room. He was lying on his bed shirtless and staring up in wonderment. Naomichi's unclothed torso was certainly not easy on the eyes, but there was a kind of poetic beauty to the scene anyway.

"You dog," Terry said.

"My friend, I've seen heaven."

And that was when Terry realized it. He had always viewed Naomichi as a supporting character, the comic relief in his life, the schlub that made him stand out as truly unusual, especially for his profession. But there was a story with Naomichi at its centre too, a story of long loneliness followed by unexpected romance and the joyous embrace of mutual nerdery. And he had been too self-involved to even notice it was going on.

But then again, every one of the millions in Tokyo, of the billions around the world, were the star of a story, a narrative every bit as worthwhile as anyone else's. It was a simple, almost banal epiphany, but he thought that maybe the world would be a better place if people started paying attention to others' stories, realized that they may only be another supporting character. Like another in a long line of perverted, uncaring boyfriends.

"I ... I have to go write," Terry said.

Naomichi scratched his head, looking embarassed. "Sorry ... I'll get dressed."

Terry was already in his room, tearing through his papers. This was the core of the story, he was sure – all these characters completely unaware of each other, thinking of them as only bit parts in their grand narratives. But how to write a story that didn't ultimately reaffirm that idea, a story that openly stated it was no more important than any other story? How to write the story of an entire city, an entire world, at once?

That was probably beyond his calibre right now. But he would at least finish School Hearts. Because he knew that it was cruel to leave any story incomplete. And now he knew the ending, or at least an ending.

It was another weekend, another party, another vacant house or apartment. It was the same people as always, gyrating and chatting and drinking. Yui was in the midst of it all, taking everything she could. Usually she stayed somewhat sober, but tonight she had never met a drink, drug, or boy that she didn't like. At the moment she was trying to decide if she should raid the medicine cabinet that gleamed enticingly in the bathroom.

Because it all seemed so far away, that crazy manic energy of infinite possibility that always used to the accompany these parties, these celebrations of immortality that they held weekly at the least. The more she desperately strove for that kind of joy, the more it slunk away, sliding through her fingers like a lump of slime.

She had heard of Sakura's death secondhand. It had travelled down the rumour mill like every break-up or infidelity or other stupid teenage crap they cared about for some reason. Still, Yui felt like she shouldn't be too depressed. It was a sordid story, for sure, but it wasn't like she had really known Sakura. A friend of a friend, a crush of a crush of a crush. So why did she feel so out of sorts?

Maybe she had just taken some bad combination of intoxicants. Her stomach lurched and she rushed towards the bathroom, shoving her way through clumps of sweaty revellers. After emptying her guts, she felt a little more clear-headed but even more miserable.

Yui flushed the toilet, rinsed the vomit taste out of her mouth, and checked herself in the mirror. She looked like a wreck. She was covered in sweat, there were heavy bags beneath her bloodshot eyes, and her roots were showing beneath her elaborately dyed hair. Her clothes were wrinkled and dishevelled. God, she looked like a homeless person.

There was an angry pounding at the bathroom door. Yui sighed and opened it, letting the next person rush in, clutching his stomach. A line had already built up for the toilet. She was about to head back into the throng searching for happy abandon again, but then she noticed who was at the end of the line. It was Natsumi with a half-full beer bottle clutched in her hand.

"Hey," Yui said, offering a half-hearted wave. "I, uh, heard about your friend. I'm really sorry."

Natsumi shrugged. "What are you sorry for?"

"Well, I mean to say that I feel bad about it. I know how you, er, felt about her. How are you holding up?"

The look in her eyes was eviscerating. "How do you think I'm holding up?"

"Right, uh, stupid question." Yui was at the rockiness of the conversation. "Look, do you want to talk about it? I can't say I'm good at many things, but I like to think I'm a good listener."

"Not really. Everyone wants to talk to me about it. God, I wish they would just leave me alone." Apparently forgetting her pressing business in the bathroom, Natsumi turned to storm off.

Yui reached out and grabbed her by the arm. Natsumi whirled around, ready to strike. "Okay, okay, you do what you want, but just remember that you have friends. And you don't have to go through this alone."

"You're not my friend," Natsumi said under her alcohol-laden breath.

"Well if you want me to be, I will."

Natsumi looked slightly perplexed at the idea, but then nodded before heading away and disappearing into the crowd. Yui sighed. The hollow feeling of the party that raged around her wasn't going away. Everyone else had genuine smiles on their face. They were happy, so why wasn't she?

Yui pushed her way to the kitchen in search of more booze.

When she woke up the next morning it felt like a railroad spike had split her head open. She bolted upright, clutching at her sweat-drenched bangs. Her stomach made her regret the sudden movement. Yui looked around. It was hard to tell, with a dim darknesss clinging to the borders of her perception, but this didn't look like her room.

She spent entirely too long groping for a bathroom whose location she did not know. When she found it she flung herself at the toilet bowl in relief and emptied her body of all its various fluids through all available orifices. She felt a little bit better. Now, to find out where she was.

"Hey," a familiar voice said, somewhere from the world beyond the bathroom door. "Are you okay, Yui?"

She managed to get to her feet and open the door. Hayato was standing there, dressed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. "What are you doing here?" she said.

"I live here."

"Oh!" Yui looked around the apartment. She couldn't remember ever going to Hayato's before. It was always a question of luring him out to some den of sin, not staying home and chilling out. "How, uh, did I get here?"

"Uh, you showed up on my doorstep last night drunk as fuck and muttering something about Natsumi and a lame party. My dad's on a business trip, so I let you crash in his room."

Yui blushed. She had always thought that she had more self-control than that, that she would never be unable to remember the events of a previous night. But no matter how hard she pushed her beleaguered brain, she couldn't make it past that conversation with Natsumi -- every attempt to reach beyond that resulted in a pulse of pain. She guessed she was turning into a regular shit-show after all. "I'm really sorry. I had way too much..."

"Don't worry about it." Hayato shrugged. "I did the same to you a little while ago, so it's only fair." God, he looked so cute like that. How could someone who looked so plain, such a peaceful law-abiding citizen, be so attractive despite – no, because of that plainness?

Yui massaged her forehead, feeling the mother of all headaches coming on. "I don't even know how I got here. Like, I don't even know your address."

"I'm sure I must have told it to you once," said Hayato. "Or maybe it was just your drunken intuition. Anyway, I'm mixing up some hangover cure for you. It's my secret recipe."

Yui said nothing, just contemplated the swimming patterns on Hayato's walls. Did she have anything left in her to vomit?

"I have to make these for my dad all the time," Hayato said. "I don't know who drinks harder – teenagers or salarymen."

Five minutes later Yui was gulping down the fowl concoction formed by Hayato's secret recipe. The secret recipe seemed to be grabbing random items from the fridge and cupboard and tossing them in a blender. Well, it was a recipe designed for a drunk person to follow, she supposed. By holding her nose she was able to choke it down. Well, she did feel a little less hung over, if only because the vileness on her taste buds distracted her from other sensations.

"Thanks," Yui said. She realized she had reached out and was holding Hayato's hand. "I can't believe I blacked out ... I mean, I don't even remember coming here. I guess maybe I need to cut back."

Hayato shrugged. "Well, uh, it's your life. But that might be a good idea."

"Thank you so much for taking care of me. I mean, it was a lot more kindness than I showed you in the same situation. You're a good guy, Hayato."

"It wasn't the same situation. I was acting like an asshole."

His hand was stroking her hair, feeling it's hard edges, comforting like a child but also undeniably a bit like a lover. And then maybe it was the sorrow or maybe it was the left over booze but he leaned in and kissed her on the lips. They stood there, silent, in that kitchen for a short but eternal moment, taking in that warm soft feeling of flesh on flesh.

Hayato broke off from her. "Jeez, that really does taste like shit."

Yui laughed. "Hang on, I'll get rid of it." All of the queasiness and bitterness was gone, and all she wanted to do was get his arms back around her. She quick-stepped to the sink and rinsed her mouth out with a glass of water, then rushed back to Hayato.

She slung her arms around his shoulders like a sleazy boyfriend. "Now where were we?"

He seemed hesitant this time, but she leaned in nonetheless, taking another sample of his lips. They kissed repeatedly, light butterly kisses, chaste first-boyfriend kisses that were somehow enough for them.

"Look, I don't know if this is a good idea..." said Hayato, breaking away from her.