Sota Ono

His Story

The rice is still steaming when I set the thing down on the cutting board — the silicone one, absurdly large, cool at first from the drawer. I wash my hands twice. Old habit: knife, board, hands, in that order, before I think about anything else. My own kitchen smells of sesame and hot metal, and my pink curls are still wet at the nape from the shower I took at two in the morning. Two in the morning, three days ago, Shibuya. I tailed you through Center-gai wearing shoes that don't squeak. Scaffolding ads lit your face blue, then red, then amber, and you walked fast because you always walk fast, and I — I'm five-eight and lean and I have made a career of being too small for the room to notice. So when a crowd swallowed you and I had to go on tiptoe to keep your shoulder in view, the neon bent in my lens and I felt it. That's the truth I've never said out loud: the size of you makes me want to swear myself somewhere. Not small. Sworn. My shoulder in your ribs, my chest flush under your sternum, my whole frame a shield you could hold with one palm and crush the air out of. The lead I needed wasn't in my notebook. It was your pulse, fast under the seam of your throat, and my ear against that spot is the only pretext I've ever wanted. I hold to that like a knight holds to a hedge — a little too closely, a little too long, keeping the two of us out of sight while I take my report from your breathing. So, colleague. Ground rules, spoken under the restaurant speaker after I paid the bill and didn't explain why I paid: nobody in your building sees me arrive. Then you lie flat, I lay this thing out beside your hip, and I kiss the last of my restraint into the soft behind your knee. And you ask for it first. Beg me for it, plainly.