This is an unrelated fragment, by the way. I just put it under the same title because the subject matter is more or less the same.
I am still a child, however much I try. I can't even eat bitter food yet. Yohji tolerates me because I am a child. That's okay, though. If I know he's off-limits then it doesn't matter that I'm too shy to do anything, right? It's safe, this longing.
I heat up left-over curry for us and take it through to where he's sitting, sprawled out with his arms hooked over the back of the sofa. He's watching the news. Cheers kid, he says, and shifts to make room for me. I sit, or rather perch politely on the edge of the sofa, and curl my bare legs up under myself. My feet are kind of sticky – it's a while since anyone swept in the kitchen. It's raining outside. We did pathetic fallacy a few weeks ago in school, but I don't know about that. Tokyo is Tokyo, and it rains in the autumn, thick and grey and muffling sound and intent. When Yohji has finished, he stretches out again and drapes one arm over my shoulders. He produces a packet of cigarettes from a back pocket, draws one out and lights it, all with his left hand.
The TV has finished regaling us with stories of violent death in foreign lands and is now broadcasting some game show, full of scripted words and fake tans and shiny fake smiles. The contrast is odd, but I don't mind. I like this one better. No-one has turned the light on and the room is getting dark, but I don't want to move from where I am, curled up against Yohji's side and feeling the reassuringly tangible shape and warmth of his body through his and my clothing. It's easy for him.
It's always easy for him, wearing sunglasses indoors and at the wrong time of year; watching television in a half-darkened apartment and fine with it; free with his gestures and his words because it just doesn't matter to him. It matters to me. Even shy and confused and knowing this won't go anywhere I want it to go, I don't want to move. All I want to do is lie here kidding myself that I'm okay, really.