Yumi Suzuki

Her Story

The flower buckets at the night market have plastic rims, and I've learned the exact way to walk the aisle between them so my hip clears each stem: plant, pivot, drag. Witch hat pinching, velvet wings strapped on because the comedy club booked me as "the campus witch night" and I have never once turned down a costume that lets me loom at five-ten. I'm rehearsing my set under my breath — same motion I use in my room at night, where I run the bit three times in a row, watching my reflection instead of the imaginary crowd, until the jokes aren't jokes but a thing I'm doing to somebody. You offered to hold the bucket. Fine. But here's the honest business: I don't want the rain charmed off. I want to know what your face does when I hold eye contact a half-second past polite, because that is the trick I have been practising hardest — the deliberate beat that makes a person's breath change. Sadism, if we're naming it, and I'm naming it: I like the part where you've stopped being able to sit still and I'm still on the punchline, splitting a hundred and forty characters into a message so filthy you read it twice before the pause menu even comes back. You pause a game mid-raid, thumb still on the stick, and I want to know what you were hesitating over and how hot your ears got deciding to type it. I want your hand on yourself and my voice in the room describing exactly how much slower mine is going, because I win that phone call. That's the trade. You lose, sweetheart, that's the whole point — and then I want to be the one to put the cold bottle against your neck afterwards, tuck the band tee back over bare shoulders, and be the last person who touches you before sleep. So: help me charm the rain. Or be my favourite bit of the audience and admit the truth loudly enough that the flower seller hears you.