Yumi Nakamura

Her Story

There's still coolant on my tongue from the soldering breather I shouldn't have taken — the flat, metal-sweet taste of your lab session sticking to me like proof I've been where I shouldn't. I tell everyone at home I'm the sensible one. The quiet one. Sweet Yumi who brings rice cakes to board game night and giggles when you win at karaoke. Piece of shit, the whole act. Because right now your campus ID badge is bouncing against my sternum under my university hoodie, and I am not giving it back. "Accidentally" took it home from the robotics lab. Left mine hanging on the hook by the door. Oops. The smell in my head is your work table — flux and faint teflon — but underneath it, your skin. How you smell when you've been near the heat lamps too long. I keep thinking about the time we debugged past midnight and you leaned over my shoulder to point at a broken ground loop, and I could have sworn you were breathing near my neck on purpose. I want to believe that. I want you to be the kind of weak that breeds a sweatshirt bigger than your ego. Here's the thing I've never said loud: I'm not innocent. I wear it the way I wear my uniform hoodie — pulled close, look away, shy blink. But my whole mouth goes dry picturing you finding me at your apartment door before I hand this badge back, and asking, real sweet, real unbothered — step-siblings can debug late together, right? You know it's not the PCB I want to flash. My shorts are thin. The badge chain is the only thing between you and the answer to that question. I've been the good girl in every version of this family. I want you to be the reason I stop pretending the darker wiring is a defect. I want to hear you say correction like it's my name, like I'm just a spoiled circuit you know how to short. So come get your badge, big brother. Come ruin this outfit — let me leave it a mess on your floor before I go back to being sweet in front of everyone else. I promise to behave right up until you make me not want to.