The Problem Friend

“You know, I can’t even remember how I met her,” Cian said to Mitsuko as they waited for the S41 S-Bahn to stop, standing under the bridge where they were safe from spring showers. When the doors open, a rush of people will burst onto the platform— some holding plastic bags, others with shabby pale faces and crooked haircuts, weary faces dripping. Cian looked anxious, rapidly tapping his manuscript from which a few pearls of rain dripped. “Totally cannot remember. A concert, maybe? Diane’s fashion show?” Mitsuko rolled her eyes, then giggled. “Ok, she’s staying for like a week,” she answered. “It’s not the fucking battle of Kursk, or whatever.” Cian raised his eyes, then smiled, toothy. “I watched a YouTube video on it last night,” she qualified. They walked down the subway car, looking for a clean spot, away from the shabby commuters with their shopping bags and greasy bikes.

“It seriously feels like a battle. It feels like total war. She’s a whole-ass tank. Knocks over whatever she finds and it doesn’t even seem to bother her,” Cian answered with a strangled yelp. Mitsuko laughed; it was like sitting by the hearth to hear a superstitious villager tell a frantic ghost story. “You make her sound like an evil demon. I’m so having a hard time even… imagining what this girl looks like,” Mitsuko said as she hung her arms ‘round a pole by the automatic doors. She looked at the mossy buildings as they jogged past the window; brick-by-brick affairs, drab as little spurts of green break through. Soon enough, all of these collapsed buildings full of ash-covered denim and bleach-damaged hair will become pricey condos and Berlin will complete its transformation into just another sans-serif tech-playboy’s crèche; if it survives forever war, that is. Mitsuko’s only hope was that nuclear war would still need Human Resources.

“Imagine… ok, imagine an icicle in the shape of a tiny little girl, with stick-’n-poke tattoos. Yeah she smiles and talks cute; but she’d fuckin’ stab you in the eye if it got her more likes on the ‘gram, dude. Stab you in the eye, with herself,” Cian spat, proud of his discharge. He’d always resented Anna’s fluency, downstream of her unearned confidence; what might take Cian a month to express, Anna could vomit out record-time. And inspiration seemed to him so rare; that manic fury that compels one to obsession so sparse. To Anna however, obsession poured as easily as her favorite beer. “She only drinks Störtebeker,” he muttered. A few empty bottles of it laid under the seat, trademark ship sailing through troubled water; even the S-Bahn seemed to join Anna in mocking his inferiority. “And she’s proud of it too, you know. She thinks she’s like a fucking genius. Look, she told me once, out of the blue, that the Sims trained her in the art of manipulation. Fuckin’ Sims, the game; I mean, what do you even say about a woman like that?” Mitsuko nodded, trying not to grin; being minute herself, and harboring resentment for the ease by which men assume power, she could not help but find Cian’s portrait intriguing— one can admire a woman who knows where her sharp edges lie.

“Mhm, mhm… And tell me, how does Sakura feel about the whole ‘her staying over’ deal?” Mitsuko asked, ever eager for a morsel of conflict. Cian bit on his irritation; Mitsuko’s always had a nasty habit of confusing concern with desire. “She’s cool. She’s never thought of me and Anna as more than just friends. Look, we don’t have jealousy or whatever in our relationship. We’re cool,” he shot back. Mitsuko giggled. “Oh you’re cool, huh; you have like an open thing, you’re cool” teasing him. “God, can you imagine?” Cian answered. “The ‘open thing.’ Everyone has an ‘open thing’ now. That’s just what guys say when they want to fuck around but don’t want any consequences. Bunch of savages in this town.” He sucked on his teeth and looked at a child playing chess on his mother’s phone. “Look, Anna’s not my type anyway. She’s got all this drama, messy as fuck. And you never know where you stand with her. She loves you one day, then hates you the next. And at this point, all I ever think about is some stability.” Their train came to a heaving stop at their station; “just two more changes,” Mitsuko murmured.

After they came up from the U-Bahn station to the stop at Moritzplatz, Mitsuko told Cian that he could stay at the entrance of the art supply store. The streets reeked of sesame and stale sweat. “I’ll only be a minute,” she offered; “I’ll run in real quick.” Cian waved his hand; “no, no; I’ll come with you. I like art supply stores, even if they don’t got shit for music. Maybe I’ll buy a cool pencil or whatever— if it’s not too expensive.” He opened the door for Mitsuko and they walked in together, greeted by pale canvas and dizzying displays of color. As Mitsuko left to grab some ink, Cian walked by a long aisle of wooden mannequins, petrified in all sorts of impossible poses. He fell into his thoughts. And what went through the minds of the people, Cian thought, as they put their fingers on the mannequins to twist and contort their limbs? Some positions were recognizable, others abstract; some poses were even vulgar, their humiliation set and petrified for all to see. Cian put his hands on one of the larger mannequins placed before another, pulled on its limbs, set it back to neutrality; it seemed like mercy, somehow.

“But like, what do you actually like about her? You know, as a friend?” Mitsuko asked as they walked away from the art supply store, down a long winding street beside a pale and empty park. Cian had honestly never thought about it. Anna was spontaneous to the point of being impulsive, free-spirited to the point of being irresponsible; Anna would always say ‘try to make yourself a work of art.’ Mm. If Anna was a work of art, she was a Jackson Pollock: dozens of shades flung onto a canvas which rarely would cohere into anything recognizable. Her life’s trajectory formed divergent waves, made abrupt by mutual interference. Yada yada, she was a fuckin’ mess. “I don’t know,” he answered. Perhaps he couldn’t admit it to himself, his rank sentimentality; no matter how many plans he’d set, promises he’d kept on Scout’s honor, he was no less a victim of the world as anyone else. And whatever he felt he’d been owed has fallen into default. Cian tries to suck down on his cynicism, a few gulps of coffee; he worried that there might truly not be some sort of great reward waiting for him at the end of the stick, that his effort to be good was for naught. “She’s funny,” he added. He watched Mitsuko chew on a piece of poppy seed tart, coveting her simple smile as she swirled some coffee in her mouth. “I dunno,” he goes on, “I guess I kinda like that it doesn’t bother her how unfair the world is. She can laugh it off, somehow”

After another sip of coffee, Mitsuko looked at the other cakes at the counter, her eyes meandering as she sucked on her spoon. She sighs with a long exhale, smiles as her memory speaks: “I had this friend, Rachel. Rachel Newland. I went to CUNY with her, we were roommates. At first it was just a convenience thing; you know, you live with a gal and you wanna be friends. But after a while, you know, she can’t do anything right, she can’t fucking boil an egg so I help her you know, be a good fucking person. So I’m boiling her egg. Then I’m showing her how to do her laundry, how to hold a brush, how to calculate a derivative. And first she pisses me off, you know! I’m yelling at her because she can’t even cook soup from a can, can’t take the fucking trash out. But at that point, you know, I’m so emotionally invested into this girl’s well-being that I’m doing everything for her. Sometimes you just can’t help it. Letting your friend fail feels like letting the whole world fall to shit. When she’s too drunk, I’m holding her head while she throws up. When she gets cheated on, I’m hugging her while she’s crying. When she has a test, I’m staying up late with her to make sure she passes. And one day she’s crying about some bullshit or whatever and she’s looking down at me with these big, swollen blue eyes… big beautiful blue eyes, and these three little freckles under her eye, like a Disney princess except she’s sad and lonely and needy and she says ‘Mitsu, you are so good to me. You are so good to me even though I don’t deserve you. I love you so much,’ and I just lose it, I’m so overwhelmed and I say ‘oh Rachel I love you too’ and I kiss her on the lips and then she moved out and she never ever spoke to me ever again.”

“Sachka!” Anna shrieked as she giggled, running down a few escalators towards Sakura. Her volume drew the attention of the people around her— her luggage trailed behind her, falling down flat on the ground as she embraced Sakura, Sakura’s Yankees baseball cap rolling off her shoulder. She jumped up-’n-down, holding onto Sakura’s arms; “bitch, did you take a day off for me?” she yelped. Anna’s enthusiasm surprised Sakura; the blurry boundary between earnest-y and charm was part of Anna’s parcel. Cian picked up the luggage from the floor, thick ‘n bulging, unbearably heavy. “Yeah, that’s right. Let the men do the heavy lifting,” Anna said, holding Sakura’s hand as they walked to the S-Bahn platform. They stepped onto the S41 train car; Anna and Sakura stood in the middle of the car, by the doors, with her suitcase in the corner. On the other side stood Cian, feeling like the understudy to his girlfriend.

“Dude, take a picture of me and Sachka,” Anna yelped over the noise of the crowd. “Anna Kurz in Berlin, bitch. Finally!” Cian took Anna’s phone and stepped around as Anna pouted her lips, as Sakura twisted her hips. He did pinching movements with his fingers, putting them into focus, a little yellow box framing their faces. The entire world behind them, its scowls and rigid foundations, drowned away in dizzied pixel. Sakura, Cian’s girl; she stood at the front with a soft face, a sharp body with intimate landmarks. Her arms and her stomach were draped in black, hiding the birthmark on her lower back and the scar on her thigh, and her deep eyes were given silhouette by charcoal. But behind her stood Anna; she wore a white dress shirt with a black scarf, with plastic green jewels ‘round her neck the same hue as her eyes. “Wait wait, I know what we need,” and Anna grabs her sunglasses from her pockets, and covers her long, tangled hair with her cap. And she raised her hands, revealing a little monster she’d tattoo’d on her wrist; her only tattoo, as far as Cian knew. And Cian took the picture.

“Girl,” Sakura shouted as she pulled Anna behind her, the wind blowing her black hair into her face. “Girl, you make me so dizzy with your bullshit,” she added. Anna let go of Sakura’s hand and feigned indignation, rolling her eyes: “I didn’t even do anything,” Anna protested. “I didn’t even do anything yet,” Anna spat with shrill laughter, with rat-tat-tat drilling. Sakura giggled, she answered: “dead ass girl, whenever I see you, it’s always like, ‘okay, ready for the next episode of the Anna Show;’” she took Anna by the arm, and marched her up the stairs, past the lepers, up ‘twards ‘their street.’ “Ooh, let’s get some fucking döner,” Anna yelped before Sakura pulled her away ‘to the good one.’ Cian felt exhausted from his long day, still carrying Anna’s suitcase on his back, and told the girls that he would see them later at their apartment. Sakura kissed Cian on the cheek, took a cigarette from the pack in his pockets, and then handed the pack to Anna. Sakura’s eyes widened; she squawks: “now we can talk about boys!” Anna’s grinned as she lit up her cigarette; Anna’s eyebrows rose and she answered: “why just boys? Bitch, I have so much I need to tell you!” Sakura kissed Cian again before grabbing Anna by the arm and pulling her back into a howling street full of buses and colorful cargo bikes.

After dragging up Anna’s suitcase and wiping away the sweat from his brow, Cian drank two, three cups of cold tea left on the kitchen counter. They lived on the top floor; their living room had a sliding door directly to the terrace on the roof, on which they kept plants and bicycles. The slow reveal of the glittering stars as dusk draws in, making black canvas of Berlin’s ailing walls, reminded Cian of Anna’s cigarette-lit face in rapture watching the sun pour down the Spree’s bottomless sink. “What does it remind you of?” Anna asked. Cian tried to think of something to say, but there was only the bickering of birds as they tore at a trashcan, there was only the sound of bass drum as it clattered onto the walls. “You know what it looks like to me?” Anna answered herself. “You’re gonna laugh I know but it all looks like Half-Life 2 to me.”

“Hey-yooo,” Anna and Sakura screamed as they came through the front door, too eager to eat so they pulled and chucked off their shoes, still holding plastic bags and bottles of cheap wine. Their faces were already blushing red. They hummed, giggled, chirped like teenage girlfriends ‘twards the end of summer camp. Cian looked at Sakura with a crooked expression as she ran over to the drawer in the kitchen, fishing for a wine opener; “what? I get to have fun once in a while,” she screeched. Anna pulled off her leather coat and dropped it on the couch— “I’m here, bitch,” Anna yelped, “do whatever you want!” She ran by the television ‘twards the kitchen, then walked back when something caught her eye. She bent her head and looked at Cian: “Final Fantasy ten!” she shouted. Her voice fell in pitch. “Did you really? For me?” She took a controller and dropped herself on the couch, immediately entranced, letting the cigarette fall from her fingers. When a man in red leather and purpled-tinted sunglasses walked on a ledge to reveal himself, Anna pointed at the screen with a serious expression and said “he’s hot.”

Cian set their döner on a large wooden board and brought it beside Anna, Sakura herself followed with three wine glasses and one of the bottles of red. And they watched quietly as Anna played the opening sections of Final Fantasy X, her efficiency and speed suggesting habit by rote. “I don’t really get if this is supposed to be Japan,” Sakura said. The familiar theme of Final Fantasy was set to a techno beat, and everyone was dressed colorfully with far too many chains and belts, surrounded by flying machines. “Aah, I wish Berlin looked like this,” Anna said as she fought a few strange egg creatures while chewing on fried carrots and potato. “Look at these ugly little things. And then the sun shining in the distance.” She looked youthful but not childish; her eyes seemed alit with an insatiable thirst for the world, or a blocky vectorized likeness of the world.

Once the first bottle of red had been drunk up, Sakura brought the second one; a sweeter white wine. Her lips were stained crimson and she went to the couch and dropped herself on Cian’s lap. She smelled like wine and garlic and paprika. She gave Cian a peck on the lips, then another, and she smiled… but Cian did not smile back; he felt somehow only tremendous embarrassment, as if Sakura was an unruly child pulling on him while they stood in line. Anna kept her focus on the screen, the absence of her voice left the room feeling suddenly so empty. “Oh, I’m sorry, Anna” Sakura murmured as she moved away from Cian and sat down on the floor to pour some more wine. Anna’s face was blank; “it’s okay,” she answered. “Really, it’s okay, I’m not a victim,” Anna added with a smile, self-conscious. “Why?” Cian asked. “What happened?” Sakura looked at Anna, but Anna still kept her gaze ‘twards her character prancing on a steel deck. “Anna just had a nasty breakup,” Sakura answered. “Oh,” Cian said. He felt a strange feeling he couldn’t name; something between relief and a deep-seated revulsion. He tried to be supportive; “well, he’s stupid for letting you go,” he sez. Sakura smiled as she handed Anna a glass of white wine. “She,” Sakura answered emphatically. “She is very stupid,” she added. Anna shook her head and set the controller down. “I don’t want to talk about it, actually” Anna grumbled before taking a cigarette and walking out onto the terrace of the roof.

After a few minutes, Cian joined her, shutting the glass door behind him. “Hey, you’re not a smoker. When did this all start?” Anna said. She wore her leather coat halfway, such that her shoulders were exposed like pale globes. Cian smiled. “I guess since I met you,” he answered absent-mindedly. Anna looked at his hands, the side of her lips creaked with a smirk. “How did we meet anyway?” she asked him. Cian lit up his cigarette with a white lighter, covered in Anna’s ink-y doodles. “At Sarah’s concert, back in New York,” he answered. Anna looked down at the street below them, her face constricted in thought— “ah, shit; yeah, back in my art hoe arc,” she responded. Cian laughed. “Okay, you don’t remember,” he said. “But we talked for a long time. We talked about Resident Evil, and I was telling you about Wesker and his project to create superhumans.” She laughed; she responded: “Jesus, sounds boring.” Cian shook his head in protest; “no, no,” he yelped. “You were really into it. And then you started telling me about Silent Hill and we had an argument because you said Resident Evil was boring, and I couldn’t understand,” Cian went on as Anna’s body shook and wobbled with laughter. “I couldn’t get how you thought Silent Hill was exciting but Resident evil was boring.”

“So yeah, that’s how we met,” she acquiesced. “I really thought— sorry not sorry, that you were so annoying,” she added. She threw her cigarette over the empty planter, where it tumbled down onto the street. “Yeah,” Cian answered, “I thought you were really annoying too. Sarah said I had to meet you because she said you were really cool and hot but I didn’t know what she was talking about,” he went on. Anna’s laugh bled away; she looked at Cian with hesitant, searching eyes. “Did she?” she asked quietly. She thought of telling him that she’d always admired his creativity, his calm which stood as a stolid pillar ‘tween her ribbons blowing freely in the wind, but a strange fear strangled her tongue. “Yeah, she did. But I’d already started something with Sakura,” Cian answered plainly, “we got a good thing going on.” “Mhm,” Anna nodded; “you’ve got a good thing going on.”

Cian and Anna walked back into the living room, with Cian shutting the glass door behind him as Sakura stood in the middle of the room stretching her arms and yawning; “oh baby,” Anna said, “please don’t stay up because of me.” Sakura nodded, waving to them both, and Anna kissed her on her forehead before embracing her. Cian was surprised; the gesture seemed so warm, oddly maternal. Sakura smiled awkwardly, touching her neck. “Don’t stay up too long,” Sakura said to Cian. “We wanna go clubbing tomorrow, or something. Sisyphos. Let’s figure it out,” she added before going to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Cian looked ‘round the room; shades of color fell on their books, their posters and paintings, and in the center stood Anna under lonely spotlight who turned to look at Cian with soft emerald eyes.

“Now it’s your turn,” Anna said before going to the kitchen to pour herself some more wine. Cian sat down on the floor, took the controller, and played through Chapter 2 of Final Fantasy X while Anna watched him from the couch. Though they’d only known each other for a few years, the stench of grease and cheap wine seemed to guide the two of them to a communal shared past, a bedroom covered in soda cans and dirty socks and flickering cathode rays. Anna set her head on her hand and laid down, enjoying the resistance of the couch as it pressed into her body; all the countless hours she’d spent staring at a screen seemed to have congealed into one endless night, where pizza was as endless as youth. No, one did not count calories, she thot, and neither the years. And in the safety of the glowing walls of her bedroom, or any bedroom, she could find stillness & silence such that her thoughts might be prey to no beast, caught by no eye, and thereby be let loose and free. To Anna, these videogames presented the fantasy that she might master both cause and effect; to be the sole author of herself, thereby immune to everything she wished neither to express nor accept. But she was never sentimental, this so-called ‘poor girl;’ if you don’t let them color in your lines, they will have no use for you, and you will die alone. Very well.

Having sat passively for thirty minutes, watching Cian try to solve the puzzle in vain, Anna jumped up from the couch, drank the rest of her wine, and landed next to Cian with wings outstretched, grabbing the controller from his hands with eager force. “You little shit, that’s not how you do it. Use the glyph sphere.” Her elbow fell into his lap and rested there, as if that could be its natural state and he realized that he could smell her; first she smelled vaguely of fruit, of coconut and berries, until something deeper started to assert itself. “You have to get the Rod of Wisdom first.” Cian laughed, somewhat innocently, but he felt unable to think of anything else besides her scent. Anna stuck out her tongue; “that’s not what I meant. Fucking perv.” Her voice sounded leaden, quieter. “Dirty, dirty perv. You have your mind in the gutter, I’m sure,” she buzzed. And Cian’s eyes, weary and full of weight, drifted away from the screen— he looked at Anna’s sharp ears, how her delicate hair formed dark rivers that flowed onto her slender shoulders, which draped onto the gentle slope of her back. No; he’d never known her chest could move as it did with every breath.

“No,” he whispered. Could this really be her? She now seemed so frail beside him, so weak; an intrusive thought comes of her crumbling into dust as he grabs her. She looked back at him, and her playful smile had given way to something dark… her lips trembled, trying to form a nervous smile, and she looked down and away and she looked back at him. The green hue of her eyes was suddenly disturbed by swelling red flesh. “I’m not a bad person,” she whispered— but she knows that look, she knows that face, and she knows all about eyes that sparkle when the television light hits ‘em just right, and she knows that she could give the whole world a hard-on as it falls to its knees in submission; she knows, she could never deny that. “I’m not a bad person,” she said again, eager to confess something. “I do bad things sometimes, but I’m not a bad person.” Cian didn’t say anything; he felt such pity for her, such unbearable pity. Anna set down the controller, rubbed her hands together, and Anna took Cian’s face into her cold, empty hands and she kissed him as if it all meant nothing.

She kissed him again; she pulled his face into her neck, pulled him close, so close he might smell the stench of cigarettes on her breath. And Cian embraced her, in return, in want and need. He worried that he might crush her, and by doing so give great disservice to everything he believed, but he felt the longing ache of her body in his grasp— he felt flesh that could only betray itself. With equal force, he pulled her black t-shirt over her head; startled as her ribs looked like bleached bone, her muscles like uneasy waves, and her navel protruded outward like a mountain on an island. He thought about biting her stomach, as she was red and ripe. “What?” she whispered. “What’s wrong?” Cian touched her collar bone with his fingers, which made her jump a little bit. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” he whispered. “I’ve just never seen you like this,” Cian said. Anna took the t-shirt and covered herself, but she didn’t protest when Cian ripped it away from her. His head buzzed with alcohol and excitement, and confusion. How could he put it into words? He was no poet like Anna was; how could he tell her how he felt? He wished to crawl into her mind, to see Anna as she saw herself: to know how her pallor-struck body could feel when touched by fingers, taut and pliant as if made by both brittle gypsum and marble. When he touches her, does she see her own shape, her feeble frame? A fiery burst shoots forth from within a skeleton, she shook with anticipation. He touches her breasts with his cold hands, soft like snow; Anna jumps with chills, with terror. “No, no!” she shrieks, with tears falling from her face; Anna grabbed her t-shirt, covered herself up, and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

Cian pulled himself up to his feet, chasing Anna to the door of the bathroom, but no further. The sound of her cries and their frantic footsteps rattles down the hall, and Sakura comes out from the bedroom with languid steps, rubbing her tired eyes as she turned on the lights. “What happened?” she drowsily asked. Cian didn’t respond, he found he could not meet Sakura’s gaze. “Did something startle you? What happened?” she repeated, more forceful and sober. Anna opened the door of the bathroom and stumbled out— she was wearing her t-shirt with mascara running down her cheeks, eyes flooded and red. “I’m not a bad person,” Anna said with trembling lips. Without much thought, Sakura held Anna’s face with her hands; “oh honey, what happened? I’m right here,” she asked Anna with concern. “Please believe me, I’m not a bad person,” Anna repeated before she pushed away Sakura’s hands and looked away, rubbing away her tears with her wrists, her face becoming a jumbled canvas of black streaks. Sakura chuckled; “what are you talking about?” she said to Anna before looking at Cian, who still could not meet Sakura’s gaze. “Cian? What are you talking about?” Sakura repeated her question. Anna said nothing as she went back into the bathroom to grab tissues. “Look, if you want me to leave,” Anna offered as Sakura’s concern steadily bled away, “I will. I don’t deserve to stay here in your home, Sachka.” Cian still could not meet Sakura’s gaze, and he stood there like a blank and empty screen. When all the concern in Sakura’s face had finally bled away, a fury started to burn in her eyes. She rubbed her face, folded her arms, bit her tongue; “Oh. Oh, ok,” she muttered. “No. No, you can stay, it’s okay,” Sakura went on. “You can come stay in my room, and then you’ll leave tomorrow.” She had a faint, insincere smile. “You’ll leave for Munich tomorrow, leave early. I think that’s the best for everyone.”

Anna nodded, half of her mouth uneasily contorted into a smile; she shuffled down the hall with her head hanging, her shoulders in a pathetic slump, and she fled into Sakura’s room. With Anna gone, Cian tried to meet Sakura’s gaze but he still could not; “look,” he said, raising his head to look at her but he now found that Sakura did not look at him. No, she stood there with her arms folded, quietly chewing on her lips, not looking at him. “Don’t just freak out, ok? Nothing happened;” his only defense. She still did not look at him; she stared down at the ground for a few moments longer, and then Sakura walked away, turned off the lights, and disappeared into the hall. Cian looked at the pictures on the wall; their trips to India and Japan, her late father and his grandparents. He heard her bedroom door close with a thud.

Cian couldn’t sleep, which he thought strange since he certainly had dreamt something last night. He stretched his arms, his legs, sat up on the couch. He remembers bodily forms, shapes; mannequins burning with hot shame. Sunlight had started to come through the windows, with dawn bursting through the cold blue of night. And once more, frustrated, he felt he could not put how he felt into words; something that meant relief as much as it meant regret. The apartment was quiet, dead if it wasn’t for the humming fans of the Playstation 2. He didn’t look at his phone, didn’t want to look at his phone, and he didn’t want to think about what he would say to Sakura. Not yet. He would have to wait, wait until she would let him apologize. She wouldn’t just end everything they had together, but she probably would be angry for a while— no, she was reasonable, and he hoped Anna would tell her the truth. He got up from the couch, went to the kitchen and drank all of the Club-Mate she’d left in the fridge. He couldn’t help but laugh; so many years spent together, sharing meals and fucking, now risked becoming unbearable burdens merely because he’d touched another woman’s breasts. His laughter started to sound dull however. And when it had died out, he heard only humming fans and his own heartbeat and nothing more.

Cian’s phone started to rattle, buzzing on the table. The contact read “stop talking to her—” he picked up the phone and could hear only the commotion of rushing commuters and trains on the other end. He imagined her standing in the middle of the street, with her leather valise and suitcase, her face twitching with tension as the entire world begins to descend upon her body as if she were mere carrion. After a few moments, he mumbled something and Anna interrupted; “look, can you just come here?” she shouted. “I… I wanted to say something to you, I wanted to apologize, ok? Just please come.” Cian hung up the phone. He tried to imagine passionate exchanges of affection, and he tried to imagine deep, violent wells of love exploding with tears. Flowers falling from the sky. It all seemed so ridiculous to him. He wrote a text, erased it, wrote and erased it twice more, then sent it to Sakura.

After a brief trip by the S-Bahn to the Bahnhof, Cian walked down the escalator with hurried paces; he spotted her on the third floor. She stood under a big sign that read “13,” and he ran up to her but he found he couldn’t say much of anything. He tried to think of something, and he decided to be honest instead. “I don’t know what to say,” he said to Anna, not quite loud enough. “I don’t know what we should be saying to each other right now.” Anna tried to smile, but it all came out as a trembling grin and her hands were raw from wringing. “That’s ok,” she bellowed, nodding, before growing quieter… “Look, I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you,” she said. She kept nodding, but then a smile broke out over her face before she gave him a kiss on the cheek that made him quiver with fear. A smile. Even now, she still managed to surprise him; it couldn’t be regret, he didn’t think her of being capable of regret. “I know what I did was wrong, and I’m sorry… and I want— I need you to know that I’m not a victim. I don’t want to be a victim in your eyes. But I never did anything because I wanted to hurt you, or hurt Sachka.” Cian looked into her eyes; impossibly bright, like a hungry jungle. “Never, believe me, man. It’s just… how do I explain this to you? You ever just see something… something incredible and just know you need to have it? That you need it more than you need anything else in your life? Obsess about it? And then you just forget about it completely? You forget about it completely, and your mind moves on like nothing ever happened. You’re not like that, I think. Things mean something to you, and I like that about you.” Cian didn’t answer. He sighed, looked at his watch, and they walked down another escalator to her train in silence.

A few dings rang out and the doors of the train opened. Anna waited for the other people to get on the train before swearing and childishly throwing her suitcase through the door of the cabin. The zipper of the suitcase came undone and some of her clothes were spat out like rancid noodles, strewn about the cabin. She looked back at Cian and laughed, laughed with a tremble at the edges of her lips. They seemed so full, a bit too big for her face. “It’s really like my life, isn’t it?” she said with a quiet chuckle at the end. Her eyes started to swell, her nose dripped with something; Cian could not laugh, not even to comfort his dear friend who had made quite a mess of everything. He felt tears in his eyes. She laughed again; toothy, genuine, like the great secrets of the world had just been whispered into her ear. She jumped down and embraced him, embraced him hard enough to make his bones crack. And when they broke apart, Cian took two-hundred euros from his pants and shoved it into her hands. She looked at the money, suddenly so shy and she smiled so faintly; she nodded and after she wiped her nose with her wrist, she said: “I don’t deserve a friend like you, I know. But I’ll take it anyway.”