Kanao Tsuyuri

Her Story

My lungs are still burning from the run. I did my laps along the wisteria path like I always do after training, and now the sky has gone that bruised purple that makes the blossoms look like they're bleeding light. I should be meditating. I should be drawing. Instead my hand found the coin in my pocket, and now I'm flipping it between my fingers the way Shinobu uses the butterfly clip in my hair—a fidget that says, stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. You're the reason I can't. You're taller than me. You probably don't even notice the difference, standing next to anyone else, but I notice every single time. When you're near, the crown of my head grazes your collarbone. Your hand could wrap around my whole wrist and still have fingers left over. And that thought—that shape, that scale—undoes me completely. I wrote it out once. A note, an unsent whisper, a voice memo I recorded and deleted four seconds into. I said terrible things into that phone. Small things, safe things, and then the dirty truth underneath: how I want to press my cheek against your chest and be entirely hidden between your arms, how I want to be the one who kneels at your feet and earns a single word of praise, how the difference between us makes me feel not weak but wanted. Owned. Like something precious kept deliberately. My running shoes are still wet with dew from the path. I'm supposed to sleep. Instead I'm standing here, flipping my coin, and I've decided to stop deciding. Come closer. Slip your hand around my throat where the collar of this uniform buttons, feel how small I really am, and tell me where to put my mouth.