THEY EAT BABIES IN AMERICA. THEY ARE A CULT AND ECONOMY IS THEIR RELIGION, MONEY THEIR GOD.

[Yonagoda]

Have you heard of Junko Furuta?

Have you heard of Pai Hsiao-yen?

Have you heard of the girl down in some basement in Tokyo, who was tortured to death over the course of ten days, back in 1996, who apparently died at exactly the same time Haruka’s tamagotchi did? It was really weird.

Have you heard of Japan Air Lines Flight 123?

Have you heard of the American national anthem, with its 19 semitones, sung by a chorus of children?

Have you heard of unit 731?

Have you heard of the band Nirvana?

Haruka hadn't.

[Yonagoda]

Haruka only let herself stare at girls for about five seconds at a time, for plausible deniability.

[Yonagoda]

One time, her arms were so bruised from volleyball that her mother actually asked her if she was OK, if there were any bullies hurting her, "oh please don't lie if you're having trouble with boys-"

She wore long sleeves after that.

[Yonagoda]

Actually, she really, really wanted to kiss a boy, just so that she could slink away and frown and go "ew gross" and prove to herself once and for all that she only liked girls.

[Yonagoda]

Mom always said that she's glad that she knew how to cook well, because her husband will like that.

[Yonagoda]

"I heard that you were only allowed, like, twenty haircuts back in unified Korea."

"Wait, really?"

"Really!"

"No wonder why it broke apart."

"That's the Americans."

"They only let people have twenty haircuts and when the country goes to shit you blame the Americans? If I lived there I'd rather be American, too. What the fuck."

"Careful, Haru, that's how you get sent to the labor camps."

Haruka threw back a laugh and kicked the other girl on the rib, but like, lovingly.

[Yonagoda]

If she were a boy, she would've been named Hajime.

If she had a brother, he would've been named Hajime too.

Except she didn't actually have a brother because FUCK LOW BIRTH RATES

SHE WANTED A FUCKING BROTHER GODAMMIT

SHE HAD TO DO ALL THE FUCKING CHORES HERSELF

[Yonagoda]

"I've actually heard Foo Fighters music before."

"That's literally illegal."

"By accident!"

"How do you... listen to Foo Fighters... by accident?"

"I can't tell you that, I'll get arrested!"

"It's not a laughing matter!"

"Almost everyone has heard of, like, Bruce Spring-Sting. It's fine."

"So we're all getting arrested?!?!"

[Yonagoda]

When she first heard of the Kiriyama Family she thought that it was his actual family.

[Yonagoda]

''All I'm saying is that murdering children should probably come AFTER the birth rate problem is solved.''

''Technically, the children murder each other.''

[Yonagoda]

Haruka's backpack had, at any given time:

-Two tubes of chapstick (berry and mint flavored)

-Her tamagotchi

-About 5 hair ties, for when her friends break theirs.

-Thirteen candy wrappers

-A hairbrush

-A small, handheld mirror

-Three scented pencils (Strawberry, grape, cola)

-A teal colored glitter pen

-A pad of sticky notes shaped like ice cream cones

-A blue clay keychain charm that looks vaguely like a cat

-''Everything About Frogs'' and ''This Book Will Make You Love Marine Biology!'' by the same author

-Fifteen or so candies, usually hard and fruit flavored

and

-Her flip phone

[Yonagoda]

She had a dream where Yukie was touching her and when she woke up she cried intermittently for three days.

[Yonagoda]

When she found the word lesbianism in the dictionary when she was twelve, she was fucking floored. It was absolutely lifechanging for her, even though it really shouldn't matter much. It was like all those irritating little discrepancies suddenly pieced together and made sense.

It felt like she shouldn't make it into such a big part of who she was, because she was more important than who she liked, but it made her feel special. Like there was this secret underground community that she belonged to, like there was something that set her apart from everyone else, you know? She shouldn't be happy. Fifty years ago, this was the stuff that got people killed in Germany, in their camps where they looked at people who aren't normal and thought that they didn't deserve to live, or to reproduce, or to survive even as a concept, so they threw them behind walls with guards and they locked them in rooms and flooded them with neurotoxins.

And even though she knew that she should be guilty for giving Yukie the affection that she never will recieve and forcing her infatuation unpon her without knowledge or consent, even though she should feel afraid of being called perverted or wrong, even though maybe life would be better if she was able to think about spreading her legs for boys... Even despite all that, Haruka wanted, she wanted to touch, she wanted to love, and she wanted to feel. And deep beneath that fear and shame, there was pride.

[Yonagoda]

Haruka's nose was slightly, almoat imperceptibly, bent. A volleyball smashed into her face when she was fifteen. In two days, with the bruise still visible on her nasal bridge and a smile on her face, she was back in the game.

[Yonagoda]

Sometimes she wished her friend group had a cool name, or even just a name at all, the shitty kind like the Kiriyama Family or whatever.

Internally, she called them Yukie And Friends. Or Haruka And Friends.

Or Chisato's Cooking Club, after one particularly good meal of braised fish and a single swig of an already open, pilfered can of beer.

But a lot of the time she felt like she had nothing, because the thee veneer of friendship was vastly eclipsed by all the emotions she couldn't tell everyone- gratitude, attraction, jealousy. Fear, most of all, of rejection, that they onlike like her on a surface level, unaware of her secret.