I spent six months doing the work, a shut-in committed to the betterment of self, university and my study of Japanese literature, both formal and otherwise, shelved, temporarily. The doctors kept me for six days and then sent me home, pockets stuffed with pills and appointments and placards advocating the commandments of safer living. I hadn’t spoken to Lin since before I checked myself into the hospital for terminal ennui, exhaustion so acute it couldn’t be sanitized with sleep, couldn’t be remedied by anything but a twist of rope tugged tight. I tried not to cringe, to wince, beset by a zoetrope of sudden emotions. You could just about smell the cream on the lip of Phillip’s grin, though. “Is Lin coming?” I licked the corner of a tooth. Only one other person had ever said my name that way. You forgot about us, but we didn’t forget about you. Have you ever cannonballed into a cold lake? The shock of an old memory is kind of like that every neuron singing a bright hosanna: here we are.

Poster-boy perfect: every one craved him like a vice. In the dusk, the letters of his name were gilt and glory and good stitching. His varsity jacket, still perfectly fitted to his broad quarterback frame, blazed indigo and yellow where it caught the sun. I get it, I get it.” Phillip dropped his suitcases at the door and palmed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. Like that makes this any less ridiculous.” Just got us permits to spend a few nights here.”

And then rented the fucking imperial palace or-” This, on the other hand, is … This is beyond absurd, dude. Extravagant”-I slowed down for effect, taking time between each syllable-“is a honeymoon trip to Hawaii. He shrugged, smile cocked like the sure thing that was his whole life. That Phillip could finance its desecration-lock, stock, no question-and do so without self-reproach was symptomatic of our fundamental differences. It felt profane to see the place like this: without curators to chaperone us, no one to say do not touch and be careful, this was old before the word for such things existed. Time etched itself into the shape and stretch of the Heian mansion, its presence apparent in even the texture of the crumbling dark. “How the fuck are you this rich?” I took in the old vestibule, the wood ceiling that domed our heads.

Nothing but blackened teeth plot