Asura Girl

a Swedish exchange student who has come to America for high school, and sometimes I get letters from my brother, Olle, who lives back in Sweden, out in the countryside. He asks me what it’s like “there” (by which he means Boston) or tells me that “here” (a village called Hadetbra—that means “Farewell” in Swedish) he’s busy with his sheep; that he’s going to buy a ticket sometime soon and pay me a visit “there” so we can go see the crocodiles at the zoo. He’s never seen a crocodile before…or so his letter says. Kerstin has come all the way from Sweden to live in America, but she’s not the least bit scared or homesick. She has no hang-ups—the kind of girl who takes life in stride. Whether she’s in tiny Hadetbra or big, bustling Boston, she keeps her perspective. She just gets it. She knows who she is and never gets bent out of shape. She might seem a little standoffish at first—but that’s just because she’s so awesomely cool, calm, and collected. She makes friends with all kinds of people, and she has lots of them—friends, that is, boys and girls. She seems so together that these friends naturally come to her for advice about their love lives. Of course, Kerstin sometimes admits to herself that she has worries in that department like anyone else; but she knows she’ll have to solve them herself, and she still gives the most perfect advice to her friends. Giving advice is simple enough.

Kerstin has some simple advice for Aiko Katsura in Tokyo as well: Aiko, sweetheart, sleeping with people you don’t like just makes you lonelier. Fake warmth from a body that means nothing only makes you colder. Fake “relations”—fake fucking!—leaves you farther from the world, not closer to it.

I get it. And I have to admit that it feels like there’s a huge chasm, an insurmountable distance between me and the world right about now.

But, Aiko, you shouldn’t worry so much about “distance.” Pay attention to the “road,” the “way.” That’s what’s real and concrete; “distance” is just a vague concept.

“The ‘road’ is long, but the ‘distance’ is just a fleeting dream.” Is that it?

That’s it, Aiko. If you spend your time thinking about how far you’ve strayed from the world, you’ll end up like Noguchi or Hasumi, jumping off a bridge somewhere. Or, like the Round-and-Round Devil, you’ll go from flaying stray cats and dogs in the neighborhood to chopping up those little boys—triplets not even a year old—down by the river.

I’m not crazy.

Who said you were? And why would it matter? But the point is…who do you really like?

What? Who do I like? Well, I guess the first name that pops into my head is Sekiya.

Sekiya? That’s just a reflex. You saw too much of him in middle school.

But he was so cute back then.

So what? As soon as he got to high school, he quit kendo, joined the tennis club, and started to party, party, party. He stopped going to school and turned into a complete jerk. You didn’t think much of him then, did you? Totally disappointing. It’s not him, Aiko. So who do you really like?

River Phoenix?

I was under the impression he’s slightly dead. And besides, you don’t know anything about him. You just like him because he went out with that weird Martha Plimpton for a while.

No one knows anything about celebrities, really.

So forget celebrities. There must be somebody you like right here in the real world.

Kasami?

You only went out with him for two months.

Ishiyama?

No dates, nothing but sex.

Nakagawa?

You were just flattered that he asked you out. Aiko! These guys are all history. I mean someone new, someone now. There must be somebody. Somebody you still like? Somebody you’ve always liked?

Sagara?

Sagara!

I think I really like him. Sometimes I suddenly want to see him so much I can hardly stand it.

But, Aiko, you put a question mark after his name just like all the others. When somebody asks you who you like, you don’t answer the question with a question. Love has no room for doubt. It’s absolutely sure of itself. You don’t say, “I may perhaps like so-and-so.” That’s just wrong. This is about your one-and-only, your everything—it should be the clearest thing in the whole wide world.

So, Aiko, there must be someone you were interested in even before you started going out with Sekiya. Someone you wouldn’t trade for Kasami or Ishiyama or Nakagawa or Sano.

That’s so Kerstin.

And there is, of course. I know it’s not right—though I’m not sure why, or who it would hurt to admit it. Me maybe? Anyway, I’m sorry, and I know it’s too queer and boring and all that, but I can’t help it: for more than six years now I’ve been in love with a boy I knew in elementary school. Yoji Kaneda. My first love, but I never seemed to get over him. What can I say?

I sighed and slipped deeper into the bath. The sigh blew away the bubbles, and I could see the murky water over my belly and legs. Had Sano really been touching me down there just a little while ago?

I started to get depressed again, but then Kerstin reappeared and said just the right thing: You can’t let something like that get you down, Aiko. There are plenty of people out there who are ready to do bad things to you, even worse than Sano did just now.

That’s right. Kerstin is amazing. She always knows just what to say. And she’s absolutely right about this. It could have been worse. What if Sano had managed to hit me in the face? Or even worse than that, what if he had asked me to let him come in my mouth, had stuck his little dick in and forced me to swallow. Or—nooooo!!—even worse still, the worst would have been having him come inside me and getting me pregnant. Having Sano’s baby inside me. I swear I would have killed him