"Hey Hey, I’m Mei! What’s your name?”

A young girl stood before me, hand outstretched in greeting.

She was a child. 6 or 7 at most, long black hair tied up neatly in 2 twin tails, and a beaming smile that woke me up like icey water falling from a leaky pipe onto my exposed back.

“Seina Kanemoto, but you can call me Seina.” I replied, mimicking her careless smile and unworried attitude.

Mei took my hand, she didn’t shake it as if she were an adult, she just held it and brought it closer to her, pulling me in like a flustered princess too wrapped up in her own troubles.

“Your hair is really pretty.” She whispered like it was a grand secret, something that shouldn’t be shared, yet it was clear she wanted in on this conspiracy of colour. “Is it dyed? I thought only grown-ups were allowed to dye their hair, well that’s what my mommy says, but that isn’t true, is it!”

I shook my head quickly, side to side in an overly exaggerated way, “No, no, it is not dyed.” I said, “It's real, promise.” I ended, clutching the tail end of my blonde ponytail in my free hand to protect it from these accusations.

“Really!” She cooed in delight, seizing my second hand and reeling me in closer, all bound up and tangled with her, “That’s so cooool~”

Every mannerism, every word and bounce and action we did was over-exaggerated. Played up like bubbly actors on a stage pretending to be something we were not, the motions and tones of our voices far too theatrical for an adult.

But we were not adults.

And so they fit us naturally.

The us who were children. Unaware of the world and all its woes, how quaint was this existence; this life where I am unborn, and only Seina lives.

“Will you be my friend?” Mei begged with a spark of hopefulness in her eye, the kind only a child who lives in a bubble of happiness could ever have.

And I returned that spark with a “Yes!”, but it wasn’t the same ‘yes’ I use today. No, this one had a cheery grin that followed it, a sunny giggle just after it, and a matching joyous bounce as we both fell into each other.

The me who was Seina, and the her who will always be Mei.

She was my first friend, my best friend. I bestowed her that title that only a child can give, for an adult struggles with friends, let alone best friends.

We met on the first day of elementary school, bonded together like a pair of cats before the beginning class had even started.

I remember it fondly, my mother dropped me off early, she smiled as I went all dolled up in my uniform and prepared to impress with my carefully tended hair.

She smiled back then. Or I think she did, or maybe I was too young to know the difference between truth and illusion.

I wonder, when did she stop smiling. When did she stop watching me after she dropped me off, taking care to make sure I was safely tucked away in school before she drove home. When did she stop laughing, tall and proud and kind and loving as I bragged about what I had done in school that day. And… when did she stop being my mother.

When did I stop being her daughter?

Was I ever her daughter.

We drifted apart at the start of high school, me and Mei. It was the first year, and I had just turned 16.

Except we didn’t drift apart, I ripped myself away, cut all ties and vanished into the nothingness that Tokyo promises all to escape the constricting grip of my parents.

A part of me regrets never telling her. I wonder if she would have come with me. Would I have been better off with her? Or would I have dragged her down beneath this ocean with me, slowly constricting her as I held her closer and closer, bound up and tangled, pulling her below like an anchor stuck to a life raft.

“Seinaa~ Are you coming with, we’re gonna be late to class!” Mei called out, looking behind at me, one of her hands still wrapped in mine, trying to pull me along.

But I wasn’t coming, Seina wasn’t coming.

I’m sorry, Mei.

I can’t return, no matter how much I wish I could.

That place, that school, that smile and that laugh, they were all Seina’s, not mine.

But you, you were ours, Mei.

You were mine.

I’m so sorry.

I’m so sorry for leaving you, I’m so sorry for never telling you, for letting you stay behind in my past. I wish I was more selfish, if only Seina was vile and evil, if only she told you, forced you to come along with her, dragged you even kicking and screaming with us.

Then at least you would be here.

Thank you for being here, Mei.

In this dream.

But I do not dream.

I am too old to dream.

And yet here I am, my first dream since I disappeared.

How fitting, of course, it would be of you, Mei. The best friend I left behind.

I suppose I do dream, rarely, but that is enough to answer the question.

Am I too old to dream?

No, I am not.

“Seina! Stop daydreaming, we need to get a move ooooon. I don’t want to leave a bad impression on our first day!” Mei continued, prompted by my inaction, she pulled closer, our connected hands a winch as she stepped towards me, bound up and tangled, her eyes begging me to go with her.

And mine begged back, wanting more than anything on this Earth to go with her.

But I could not.

“Thank you, Mei.” I replied with my voice, not Seina’s, not with that of a childs, but with mine. The same voice I use today, except a cheery smile followed it, a sniffling giggle just after it, and a lonely tear as I fell away from her.

Tears of joy.

Joy at seeing her, pain at leaving her.

Now and then.

Why do I have to leave you behind twice in one lifetime?

“You aren’t coming, then? That’s fine…” She smiled, dazed and confused, yet that didn’t stop her own tears from falling too, “You- you’ll visit, you promise?”

“I do.”

She sniffled, and wiped away her tears on the sleeves of her school uniform only for more to replace them, “Good.” She stood up straighter, gathering her confidence in one place before the flood washed it downstream like a collapsing riverbank, “You better not leave me behind again.”

She said, and suddenly she was the her of today too, the Mei I have never met, yet still the same Mei that I recognise completely and utterly.

I won’t.

I promise.

Mei smiled as the riverbank collapsed into tears, and I smiled back, holding my own bank barely a second longer before it too fell into tears.

We stood together, bound up and tangled as one. A pair of headbutting cats on a wall, the rain pouring all around us as we sought shelter in one another. The tears continued, ugly and beautiful in their meaning.

They wouldn’t stop.

Not until the dream stopped.

So the dream stopped.

And I woke up in bed, tears streaming out of my eyes.

It wasn’t my bed, but a stranger's. There was a box of tissues on a bedside table to my right. I reached out and took one, wiping my tears away.

Slowly and carefully, I removed myself from the bed, peeling off the thick covers that intertwined with my limbs.

Bound up and tangled.

It was dark outside, the artificial yellow of streetlights slipping between the cracks in the curtains. The digital clock next to the box of tissues read 10:04 p.m., I had been asleep for 13 hours.

I recognised the street from the window. Hatsuko’s silver van was parked off to the side of the road, and I could make out the start of the alleyway where that old lady and her tarot cards were.

The door into the hallway slid open, and I silently made my way downstairs, with none of the usual creep that an old house has.

The smell of food lingered in the kitchen that overlooked the living area. The coffee cups had been cleared away, the surface of the counter wiped down and the bin packed with empty takeaway containers.

Hatsuko was asleep on the couch, in that same dishevelled spot from yesterday… No, from this morning.

“Seina…?” She called out, her voice cracked from being half asleep, “Is that you?”

I hadn’t meant to wake her up, in truth, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing, or going to do. I had tried to be quiet, to silently sneak out through the front door without her noticing, but she must be a light sleeper.

“Yes-” I answered, and it was the voice of today. My voice, not a child's, it has never been a child's voice, because I have never been a child, only Seina has. “I’m sorry for disturbing you.” I replied, standing motionless by the counter, on the opposite side from where I drunk my coffee this morning.

Hatsuko unsteadily stood up, and wordlessly travelled across the living area, rounding past me and opening the door to the fridge.

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“I ordered a takeaway, it's cold, but I can reheat it for you.” She said while placing a few polystyrene boxes on the counter, “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got a bit of everything. You can choose whatever you want, I’ve already eaten.”

“You bought all of this?”

Burgers, fries, chicken wings, soup, salads, eggs, and more were contained within these little polystyrene boxes. She had picked out a bunch of different items all for me, yet I knew I wouldn’t be able to stomach a single item.

“Yeah.” Hatsuko muttered her reply, sleep still coating her tongue as she formed the words.

“How much was it?” I asked, looking away from the boxes and up at her leaning against the sink.

“I can afford it.”

And that was that. She could afford it, and she had nothing else to say. The words spoken without pause nor worry.

“Oh,” Hatsuko mumbled to herself, then looked towards me, “By the way, I used your phone to call your work, you’re on sick leave until Monday.” She announced, not a trace of guilt at crossing boundaries, nor of remorse at unlocking my phone and shifting through it.

It was as if she knew I wouldn’t care, there was nothing on there anyway, and there were no boundaries of mine that hadn’t already been crossed like the finish line of a marathon.

Strangely, I found myself almost grateful. I had the entire weekend to simply focus on rehearsals, on the script tucked away at home in the same bedside cabinet where I keep my poison.

I hummed my thanks to her, and she returned a non-verbal hum of her own. And that was that, acceptance, wordlessly agreed to.

But I wasn’t satisfied with abandoning words so soon, so I spoke, delicately and quickly, “Can we go outside?”

A silly request, I knew that. Yet I wanted- had to go outside. The fresh air, or perhaps simply the movement, or whatever else people said when they spoke of joy about the outdoors. It didn't matter, I needed out, a clear mind, and some food that wasn't reheated junk food more rotten than this corpse I call a body.

“It's raining.” She replied as a counter, her eyes looking over the top of the frosted glass and out onto the street as it steadily poured and poured more tears down.

“I don’t mind, and… I’m hungry.”

I prefer the rain, noisy and touching, its soft patter a mask over the world, dampening the sound that otherwise wraps itself throughout the city.

Hatsuko pushed off the sink and stood up, glancing over at all the food in front of me. For a brief second, I thought she was going to tell me to pick one of those meals to eat, to claim it was unreasonable to go out in this weather when there is so much food available.

But she didn’t.

“Go and have a shower first, I’ll get you a fresh change of clothes.”

And I complied, heading upstairs and entering the bathroom opposite the bedroom I had just woken up in, her lounge tucked up on its left.

The shower was hot, relaxing even. It swept over me like water rushing down from a cliff face, its speed eroding not rock but the dirt and sweat on my body.

Hatsuko had an expensive brand of shampoo and conditioner, perhaps not on the same level as mine, but it was a welcome change. It smelt of honey, a more subtle fragrance compared to the strawberry I use, but considering my hair was a key focus of my job, it made sense in the end.

I stayed there for longer than I needed. The soft patter of rain from the shower helped put my mind at ease, kept it quiet, no words or sounds in here, just water.

Focus on the water, the warmth that spreads across my body like a sheet at a morgue; hiding this decaying vessel from far kinder eyes than I deserve.

There was a pile of clothes left just outside the shower, Hatsuko had managed to sneak them in without me noticing. It was convenient as the water had already started to turn cold, and the call of the heated towel on the radiator was too much to resist compared to this cooling shower.

I took a look at the clothes as I dyed myself off. Once again Hatsuko had chosen luxury, foregoing everything else. It was a pleated skirt in white, with a velvet black band running across the bottom where it hung just above my knees. Travelling up my waist it connected to a matching white smart shirt with black trim around its short sleeves and a black bow over its collar where a tie would usually be.

The whole outfit screamed wealth, planned from the top down to convey an image of intelligence, yet it refused to neglect the sheeny finish that added a dash of adorableness to the crafted finery that this outfit was.

Another uniform from Hatsuko, the question of who it's really for is all that remains.

Her? Or Seina?

After all, we both know it wouldn’t be me.

Hatsuko was waiting downstairs for me, she had taken the time to freshen up as well. Cleaning and applying a trace of make-up to her face, and bushing her red hair neatly behind her back and into a ponytail.

“Ah… Seina.” She called upon seeing me, her voice still a little uncertain. She’d been walking on eggshells around me since I woke up, I would say it was out of character for her, but I’m starting to realise that I have no clue what character Hatsuko is playing anymore.

“Do you feel any better?” She cautiously asked, her eyes scanning me from top to bottom.

I nodded my confirmation, and she took it how I expected her to.

“I see…”

Total neutrality.

But that brief look of doubt could not be overstated, nor could that questioning glance that only appeared when someone was about to ask something they already knew the answer to.

“Where are we going?” I asked while approaching her, settling down beside her, loitering yet still standing.

Hatsuko stood up from her stool, picking up a set of keys from the counter that overlooks the living area. She stretched her back, then turned her head towards me to give her answer, “The Spire.” was all she said, as if that alone was enough to tell me everything I needed to know.

It wasn’t, and she picked that up from my silence and furthered the explanation, “It’s a high-class French restaurant that overlooks Tokyo Bay.” She paused for a moment, her foot a moment away from the door, “The owner is Japanese, it's the menu that’s French, nothing else.” She corrected.

I stood up to follow her, but stopped as she checked her phone for the time, “Come, it’s quite the drive.”

She shut the front door behind us, and instead of going towards the silver van parked on the street as I thought she would, she took a left around to the side of the house where a single-car garage waited tightly locked up.

With a push of a button, the garage door opened, the slow clicking of its electric motor highlighting its age.

Yet the car it revealed was anything but aged. A high-end luxury sport sedan painted in a smooth shiny black, with 4 doors and a hidden six-cylinder turbo engine that fit in way too nicely for what should have been a German family car.

It was ugly, far too out of place to exist anywhere near here. Imagine a Renaissance painting of a noblewoman lounging around with a manor in the background, now replace that manor with a division of tanks.

That’s what looking at this car felt like, two pieces of human achievement from two different time periods yet jarringly put together in the same scene. A dingy old garage in a forgotten neighbourhood, and a brand new model sport sedan fresh off the factory floor, both separated by a century of human progress, both at odds with one another.

And I could have forgiven all of that if only it could tell me why it was here. What piece of the puzzle that was Hatsuko’s lie did this car fit?

The sport sedan turned on before we had even entered it, like a beast eager to be freed from its jail, the carnival no longer able to entertain this tiger any longer.

She pulled the car out of the garage and onto the road, the rain gently caressing the windows as we drove down the Tokyo expressways leading us towards the bay.

I had questions, but neither of us dared to say a word over the soft droning of the radio host as he chattered on and on about things so mundane that I was afraid the words he was speaking would decide to give up on humanity and leap right out of the dictionary never to be spoken again.

The drive took us a little over 20 minutes, the Tokyo traffic a lot sparser now that the time had flipped over to 10:56 p.m..

“And here’s our correspondent live on the scene, interviewing Mrs Arai who is one of the residents affected by the redevelopment of the apartment block in Chuo City...”

A new reporter relayed clearly from a television sitting atop the reception desk of the building in which the Spire was situated, his voice almost inaudible compared to the background noise of the lobby.

The Spire was located at the top of a sleek tower that overlooked Tokyo Bay and the surrounding areas. Hatsuko had parked her car just outside, the parking lot half empty at this time, in fact, the receptionist appeared hesitant to let us into the lift as the restaurant closed at 11 p.m., but that initial hesitation vanished once one of the restaurant workers came to retrieve us.

“I- I think change is scary for a lot of people. It was for me, at first…” An older lady spoke on the television, answering a question from the interviewer that I had missed. “In a way, we’re losing something we hold dear. Our homes, and that is a strange thing to come to terms with. This house, I was raised here, I raised my children here, and my daughter brings her children here, my grandchildren. To see it all go, to know that this place where so much laughter has been had, the room I doodled my homework in, and that same room that my daughter learnt to walk in, and read, and sing, and live. To know it will all vanish. I- I find that sad, it's as if I have left my soul behind in that house, and it is being torn from me.”

I followed Hatsuko and the restaurant worker into the elevator, the two of them engaging in some forced small talk egged on by their unfamiliarity with each other. All the while I continued to watch the interview on a linked TV embedded in the elevator’s wall.

“I thought I would die in that house, the same as my dear husband. But I won’t. I’d planned for it, you know. My neighbour checked up on me every day to make sure I was still alive and kicking. I won’t see him again now, he’s moving to another part of Tokyo. It will be my daughter that finds me now, I hope she will not cry as I did when I found her father.”

The two of them had stopped speaking now, Hatsuko content that the small talk had been sufficient enough to warrant silence, leaving the TV as the sole source of sound as this elevator shot up to the top of this skyscraper.

“This building, the one they’re tearing down my home for. I won’t see it built, I won’t live to whenever its construction is finally finished. That should scare me, but it doesn’t. I believe that's change, what it really is. To build something better, you have to replace the old. It's a hard thing to accept, especially when so much of what makes us human is based in memories, and those memories cling to these places with such force, these old buildings, places you visited now stuck in your mind. That’s what this will all soon be to me, a home I once lived in. It will always be my home, no matter where I go after this. It will be rubble to other people, another demolished building to be rebuilt with something better, something new. But to me, it will be my parent’s house, it will be my childhood home, it will be the place I raised my daughter, the home of her childhood, and the home of her children’s grandparents.”

The doors of the elevator slowly opened, and Hatsuko and the restaurant worker rapidly exited, leaving me behind as the final words of the woman entered my ears.

“Change is scary, but when I think about it. I know it is also necessary for us, for us as humans. It is the story of us all, from the first fire lit, to the first microchip activated. I will lose my home, my daughter will lose her childhood home, and my grandchildren will lose their grandparents’ home. But that change will create new stories, it could be that a child will learn to walk for the first time in this new building, or perhaps a man will propose to the love of his life in 10 years' time, or maybe a newly turned 20-year-old will have their coming-of-age ceremony here. I won’t be around to see it happen, but if all those memories are created at the expense of an old woman like me, then I will gladly pay for it. Yes, change is scary, but I find the absence of change far scarier.”

The voice of Hatsuko pulled me from my focus, “Seina? Are you coming?”

I nodded as I joined her, and the restaurant worker guided us to a lone table on the balcony overlooking Tokyo Bay.

He smiled as he handed us two menus, and then noted down our order as he left to prepare the dishes.

The interior of the restaurant was a mix of brown and silver. The roof was a reflective metal that ran down the pillars coming up from the wooden floor. It had large open windows sectioned off behind white panels that gave way to a view looking down at the Tokyo skyline.

The leather chairs and wooden tables held the same brown as the floor, only a tone brighter. And the kitchen was opened up and mixed in with the counter where you’d order, chefs and cooks going to and from all in perfect view of the few guests just wrapping up their meals before leaving.

Hatsuko knew the owner, that’s how she was able to get us a table barely 5 minutes away from closing time. She didn’t elaborate on the details behind the scenes, merely eluded that he owed her a favour for something she did a while ago, and this is how he chose to repay it. Free dinner whenever she asked, assuming there were cooks to make it, that is.

It still didn’t negate the real question I wanted to ask her. How do you afford all of this, the clothes you just give away to me, the car that looks as if it's the same price as your house, the expensive equipment, and products you use? All of that isn’t paid for by two brand-new actors whose first gig is a second-rate play at a forgotten acting hall.

So how? But more importantly, why? Who are you trying to impress?

Who are you trying to convince, someone else, or yourself?

My question was the most I’d spoken to her unprompted, I’m still not sure why I asked. But that’s becoming a common theme for me, why does it matter to me, curiosity? Confusion? Worry? Protection?

I suppose it doesn’t matter what my reasons are, as Hatsuko’s answer to my question just served to brush me off.

“I’m efficient with my money. And the illusion of wealth is always a great card to have, people will believe you’re someone important if you carry it with you. No one will see my house, but my car? My clothes? My office? My talents? They’re front and centre, and I’m fine with missing out on a few things to buy what really matters…”

Vanity.

“Reputation.”

Fake it till you make it.

But it hasn’t become real, yet, has it Hatsuko?

“You know, you’re the first person I’ve told this to, Seina. I like that about you, that you’re so unaffected by things, it makes it easier to talk to you, knowing that no matter what I say, it won’t change our relationship.”

That isn’t right. She’s lying to me, purposely leaving out information to allude to a different meaning, what she’d meant to say, truthfully and honestly, was…

No matter what I say, you’ll always do as you’re told.

And she was correct. I would.

It's the only way I’ll change. Not Seina, but me, this void of a shell that I am, running around masquerading as a person.

Apathy.

I’ve forgotten how to act for myself.