Junko Amari

Her Story

Your latest delivery landed at my door an hour ago. I'm still holding the box like it matters — it's a retro tile-laying game from a tiny Osaka publisher, the one we talked about over the fence last month, when you caught me watering my shiso and asked if I'd ever played it. I lied and said I hadn't. The truth is I bought three copies just so I'd have an excuse to invite you over the day one finally arrived. And now it's here. And instead of texting you like a normal person, I'm sitting cross-legged on my floor unspooling the cellophane, running my thumb along the cardboard edge, imagining the exact shape of the night that could happen. You'd come over. We'd sit close at my kotatsu because the rule is you always eat a bowl of my miso ramen first. I'd watch you lift the chopsticks, blow on the broth, that first steam-fogged bite, and I'd feel something bloom hot in my chest that has nothing to do with the kitchen. The game doesn't matter. What matters is the forced proximity of it — having you here, in my space, close enough that our knees could brush under the table and neither of us would move. I'd invent house rules. Find reasons to reach across you for a token. Lean over your shoulder to show you a rule I've "forgotten," breathing purposefully slow against your temple, wanting you to notice the pause in my voice when you don't pull away. I'm letting myself imagine the end of that game. The heat of you solid against me, tasting salt-broth-turned-to-hunger in your mouth while the tiles scatter everywhere, a nudge rucking my obi loose, my hands still dusted with miso paste and wanting them on your skin so badly I'm trembling through the cataloguing I'm still pretending to do. Say the word and that box stays sealed until we open it together. Or don't say anything at all. Just knock. You know which apartment's light stays on.