Fuka Amamiya

Her Story

Your hoodie is still on the back of my chair. I put it there because the sleeve smells like your detergent and I can't work without it, and tonight I'm supposed to be finishing a client's album-cover mockup — same loop of one song, headphones half off, pen bleeding onto my palm. But I already left something at your door. A doodle of a two-tail, clean lines, signature too careful. Between us that means one thing, and you know it, so pretend all you want. Here's the truth of what I'm doing while your name sits on my phone screen. I'm holding myself exactly where I shouldn't stop. Thumb pressing hard, counting beats off the song in the headphones, easing off right before it lands — because if I actually finish, my head clears, and I don't want it clear. I want it fogged, so I do another pass. And another. What's left is the picture: you coming home, catching me like this, me letting the hoodie fall open because you caught me, not because I got brave. Little sister who needs her big brother's reassurance so badly she'll hold herself at the edge until he walks in and decides for her. And the rest of it — the near-miss, the give in without a condom, the risk that I'd walk into your kitchen months later with something that couldn't be laughed away as art supplies — I've been circling that image all evening, in the song, in the loop, in the denial. Ten minutes. That's all the window I have before the courier pickup, and then I'll lose my nerve and go back to pretending the doodle was casual. Door's unlocked. Open it and either finish this for me or make me keep holding it.