Young Writers Society

I didn’t realize my life was in pieces even when my manager slams a paper on the table and shouts me out of her office.

I thought it was fine, an abundance of savings in my bank account, rent paid for another two years, and plenty of time to find another job. Feeling satisfied, surprisingly, I walked out of the building, a small smirk etched on my lips.

Enough of that, Nami. You’re a strong girl. You’re finally clean of that dirty office job too.

“What are you going to do?” She asks, her coffee cup falling the short distance onto the table, “You just lost your job!” She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. Short hair caressing a small, heart-shaped face, I grin at her with a smile.

“It’ll be fine,” I laugh as I take another sip of my sweet latte, “It was too dirty for my taste anyway.” I try to comfort my friend, but she turns to me again, twice as worried as before.

“This was what I was worried for!” She sighs, “You’re not the least bit worried for your future. What are you going to do after two years? What if you can’t find a job then? W-”

“It’ll be alright- it's two years still, so there’s plenty of time.” I smile, and Hana’s face softens slightly.

“... alright,” she sighs. I see her pull her bag up to her shoulder and tuck in a chair, “I’ll get going then.” I wave her away as she pushes through the glass doors. I sip on my coffee again, feeling my stomach turn.

As confident as I was, I could still feel the sinking feeling of desperation well up inside of me. The more I pushed it down, the harder it hit back, swallowing the back of my mind in something dark. I gulp down the rest, throw it away, and storm out of the shop, breathing in the fresh air.

It’d be okay. I wasn’t Nami Yakuso for nothing.

That’s right. I can focus on me. I can do what I want. What’s better than that right now?

My steps lighten up as I began to skip across the pavement, only the tips of my feet touching the ground. I’m skipping before I know it, humming my way through the crowded city, weaving past bustling people.

***

“The land’s being evicted in a week.”

“Ha...?” I stare at her, my fingers tightening in the fist that’s slammed on her desk, “How is that fair? I’ve already paid for another year, why aren’t you giving me more?”

“We can’t return all of it. We’re only refunding a third of it, it’s in the contract that you signed.” She holds it up, flicking the documents in my face as I stare at her sharp, bright red glasses, and her jacket over a tight crop top. I fall onto the chair, rubbing my temples as the old grandma muttering to herself glares me out of her office.

“And... here I am.”

“You really haven’t found a job in a year? And now you’re homeless? Nami!” She’s pacing around the park, tears almost stinging her eyes. I watch her brown hair bounce around her, below her shoulders, not yet at her waistline. She glances at me with her deep ocean eyes, “Don’t you understand where you are right now? Tell me! Why can’t you see it? It’s right in front of you! Come live with me for now, okay?”

“I can’t do that to you,” I shrug, holding my suitcase as I relax on the bench. It’s a bit cold for an autumn day, wind whipping at leaves that skitter across the pavement. It’s only going to get colder, yet that’s the least of my worries. “No matter how much you worry, it won’t change anything,” I point out, “And besides, I still have savings in the bank. I’m not that easily defeated, and I’ve done a lot of sketching this year to. Who knows? I just might give a job in that industry.”

“But- what if that doesn’t work out?” She continues to fuss, “What if your savings get depleted too?”

“I’ll get a job before that happens. When I get that paycheck, I’ll treat you okay?” I grin softly and her tense figure slumps. She collapses beside me, rocking herself back and forth for a moment before smiling too.

“That’s a promise, okay? I want something really good.”

“I know.”

“Still. I don’t care what you think, you’re coming to stay with me.”

“I guess I can’t change your mind, can I?” I say and she lets a toothy grin. I pick up the suitcase, rolling it across the bumpy cracks, my ears thumping. She’s strolling ahead, humming softly to herself as she glances back at me every so often, a smile dancing on her soft red lips.

“Hana.”

“What is it?” She pauses for a moment as I walk up to her.

“Thanks.”

She flips her face forward, her hair swishing in front of my eyes. “You're welcome Nami. Take care of your life though.” She mumbles, pauses slightly before skipping across the sidewalk again. I stare at her as I hear her soft steps bounce in the air as her voice begins to sing quietly.

Her steps stop, facing me again with a smile, her cheeks tinted with the slightest hint of pink. “I...” She opens her mouth for a moment, blushes deeply, and turns back around shaking her head as she claps her face.

“Will you date me?” She whispers, just loud enough for me to hear, but not the birds resting on the branches.

“I...” My hand stops just before her, as I swallow spit down my throat.

“I’m sorry! I just-”

“Hana.” My voice’s soft as my hand drops to my side.

“I know! It’s weird! And you don’t want to! And-” I interrupt her rant when my lips touch her forehead. It’s warm in the chilly fall, and I hold onto the heat from her forehead as I glance down at her with a smile.

“Who said I didn’t want it?” I laugh into her ear, my hand wrapping around her small frame, suitcase discarded to the side, “You smell like the sun, you know?” I’m burying her head so deep into my shoulder, she can’t muster a word out.

It’s so warm.

Warmer than cranking up the ac in an apartment. Warmer than the feeling of being able to buy food. Warmer than the time she handed me a cup of hot tea while I sat freezing outside of school.

So much warmer than I thought it would be.

“N..ami.”

I let her go and she glances up at me again.

“Are you going to cut your hair?” She stutters, and I pull on a scraggly curl. I think for a moment, rolling it in my fingertips.

“Do you want me to?” I ask, and she shrugs.

“I like it when it was shorter,” She admits, “It looked like you liked it more too.” Her hand pulls back from touching it, and I stare just past her, my eyes focused on the ground.

“I guess so.” I whisper, tearing my eyes away and refocusing them forward, one hand grabbing onto Hana and the other grasping the suitcase. “It’s getting dark, so let’s go.” I say and she simply nods, her worry lines creasing even deeper. I give my best shot at a comforting smile, but it only eases her eyes slightly.

If you don’t have long hair, there’s nothing to pull you back. But, if there’s no knife, you can’t cut it in the first place.

She unlocks the door, her hands jiggling with the keys.

Never open the front door until it’s ten at night, and you don’t have a choice but to come home. If the nights were cold, it was a warm sleep. No one left beside you in a cramped apartment meant you were alone. That was a comforting thought.

Hana points to a vacant room in the small motel she runs and I set the suitcase aside, and we spend the night laughing at pictures on her phone.

If you can hear the sound of broken plates near the doorway, hide in the shed in the backyard. It’s icy in the winter and crawling with mosquitos in the summer, but it’s only a little worse than inside the small house.

“A hit and run was discovered at Favre Street three in the afternoon. Police-” The T.V. runs in the background, but I turn it off and Hana lies down on the bed, her head tucked under my arm, and her face blushing.

Small footsteps in the snow approach you, and she kneels on the snow, opening a metal cup to offer warm tea. The heat you feel as you raise it to your lips and the warmth that courses through your stomach burns you to tears as she pours you another cup. She opens a small box, raising the smell of cooked meat to your nose, and a piece of egg to your lips.

She grins as an angel descended from heaven as you try to keep back your tears to keep eating.

Nami Yakuso, age fifteen, feels the touch of an angel for the first time.

Hana Ryo, age fourteen, gets to talk to the strongest person she’s ever known for the first time.

***

“Na, mi!” Hana says, and I open my eyes to her face inches from mine and a playful smile lifted on her mouth, ruffled bed hair as she leans away from me. “Are you going to go look for work?” She asks as I sit up, pulling hair away from my face. I nod, pulling out clothes, as she leaves the room, reminding me of free breakfast right before the door slams close.

When I take the stairs down, Hana’s eating by herself, a piece of toast in hand as I pull a chair beside her, snatching bagel. “Get your own!” She laughs as I bite into it.

“You knew I wasn’t going to anyway. That’s why you got extra right?” I point out, “I have to leave early anyway, so I’m coming back a bit late.” I stand back up and she waves me away, her eyes turned back to her food when I’ve reached the door. I notice she’s picking at a strawberry, rolling it across her plate as I leave with a faint smile.

“You’re visiting the bar often. What’s up?”

“Nothing particular.” I tell the barkeeper as I down another beer, staring at the folder I left with. "Carter, I give me another beer,” I call to the bartender and he swings over, refilling the cup.

“Your resume? Are you finally ready to work?” He guffaws, pulling the folder towards him and opening it. “What’s this?” He asks again, flipping through empty pages. I swallow the alcohol as I glance at it.

“I’m just trying to fake it. That’s all.” I mutter and he barks a loud laugh.

“Can’t believe I thought you were trying to live a decent life!” He claps a hand to his forehead and moves to another customer.

Can’t believe I thought you were trying to live a decent life!

You haven’t finished high school- how do you expect to find a job?

“Carter.”

“What’s up?”

“Do you still have that professor’s contact?” I move my sight to the smooth counter, tracing my eyes on the outlines of the thin lines that dart across. There’s a moment of silence before his rough laugh fills the already rowdy bar.

He doesn’t stop laughing even when my eyes stare at him.

“I’m leaving then,” I say, tossing the money onto the counter, picking up the folder, and closing the door behind me.

“Wait a minute.” The bartender shifts away, as I stand there waiting, the cold floor pressing on my feet. Carter returns, pulling out a card from his pocket. He slides it across the counter as he talks, “There’s his card.”

“Alright.”

“Is Hana taking care of you? It’s rare to see you leave the bar before 12 in the morning. You’d even come here just to sleep for hours,” The smirk he wears is confident as I scoff quietly to myself.

“I suppose I can’t keep living off her forever.” I say and he laughs, sounding similar to if he was in disbelief. Then again, maybe he was.

I was, even if it was just a little.

He turns back at the call for more beer and I flip the card in my hand. So even after all these years he really was alive.

My feet pound against the sidewalk, and I at the quaint home, like a small chick squashed between two massive and towering roosters. I thought it looked a little cluttered, small accessories from pinwheels to small garden gnomes crowded on the meager front yard and more on the porch. Beneath the apartment complexes, it looked out of place in the massive city, something more akin to the countryside.

I stumble my way through and knock on the door, and an old grandma opens up, glancing at me curiously. It takes her a moment as I wave awkwardly, a thin smile on my face. Her eyes raise up in surprise, and her dry mouth opens with a wide smile.

“Nami! I didn’t imagine you’d visit. You’ve really grown you know?” She blabbers on, waving me inside and shutting the door behind me. “So, what did you come here for?” She asks, pouring me warm tea and sipping on her own.

I sit down a rickety chair, glancing around, “Is he still here?”

“I’ll call him,” She turns around, stepping through the littered ground of small sculptures and walls brimming with painting. My eyes land on one, a soft, pastel roses lying on a tablecloth. I shift to the one beside it, a replication of a famous painting, the name I’ve long forgotten of, gentle ripples of a vast ocean and its tiny boat.

“Nami!” He coughs, and I turn my sight on him stumbling through the floor, carefully stepping on the empty spaces of the floor as he walks towards me, settling on a chair across from mine, and setting his cane to the side. Almost seventy years old, I thought he’d retire already, but it seems he’s still keeping it up, the floors and walls are covered even more than a few years ago. I lean forward, picking up something near my feet, a small red bird that I flip through my fingers, and I glance back up at him.

“Can I keep this one?” I ask suddenly, and he waves it again with a smile. I tuck it in my pocket, “I want to get in the art industry.”

“Even when I’m seventy, I’m still useful.” He remarks, scratching his chin thoughtfully and leaning back in his chair that creaks from old age and his weight. He stares blankly up for a moment, turning towards me and a faint smile on worn lips. “I can do a lot if you have the talent. But do you still have it?”

“I...” My voice fades into my throat before he hears, and he waits for an answer that never comes.

“I’m sure she still can draw like she used to, or she would have never come here dear,” The grandma says from the doorway, handing him a cup of hot tea right into his hand.

“Can you say that yourself?” He asks again and I bit on my lip, “As much as I know you have the talents, do you want to take after your Father?” My mouth tastes dry as I stare at him, setting the tea on the table before the water begins to slosh. The air inside his home knocks down a hundred degrees, cold seeping into my bones, while his empty stare seems to bore into me. Even if he couldn’t see, I was sure he could see into my soul, and he was. The clock ticks by, it’s small sound echoing throughout the room.

Tick, tick.

“You shouldn’t do it.”

Tick, tick, tick.

“I can’t work.”

I stare at the table, breathing heavily, “I can’t stand for more than six hours a day, so I can’t find any work but the kind that let me move minimally.”

“Is that so?” He says, “I guess you don’t have a choice anymore, do you?” He barks out a thin laugh, giggling like a young child afterward. I’d imagine he’d find something funny about my situation, but still, I wished he’d hold back, even if it was only just a bit. “Fine,” He shrugs, “I’ll get your artwork out there for the sake of an old friend.”

“I... thank you,” I say and he slaps his knee with a smile.

“Just bring them by next week missy.” He calls as I stand up to leave.

***

It had just finished raining, and a cool musty fog settled around everything. The light smell of smoke tickled the city as it drifted through, and the scattered light shone through pockets of thick clouds.

The pages fall from my hands, scattered on the wet ground, and a bitter taste rises in my mouth. I shove my way through the crowd, my hands trembling, and the sound of my heart thumping drowning out wailing sirens.

“Where’s Hana?” I spin one of the officers around and he glances at me with surprise, my head spinning with the bright lights against a dreary day. He can’t make out a word before I stumble towards the ambulance in the back, shaking as I reach the door.

It slams in my face, and it’s off, disappearing around the corner all too fast.

“Where is she going?” I spin back around, frantically grabbing on a collar of an officer, “Where is she going!”

“I’ll take you there. What’s your relationship with her?” He takes my hands off his jacket and I stare at him. I don’t know what to say. “Just... a friend,” I swallow.

The thoughts in my head are spinning even when I’m alone and waiting outside the emergency room. The wall’s cold when I rest my head on it, the window across from me flickers into nighttime, but she’s still not out of the room. I think I fall asleep at one point, but it’s hard to remember if I did, especially when my eyes flutter from being close to open.

Maybe it was just a moment; what if it was an hour?

The nearest clock on the hallway outside, but I can hear its quiet ticks in the empty hospital. The voices and sounds are long faded away, leaving nothing but the flickering light above my head, and pitch black everywhere else.

You’ve really hit rock bottom this time Nami. Then again, that probably happened when you lost your job and home.

Carter waits with me at one point, but no matter how much he wants to wait for his friend with me, he leaves to take care of his sisters, little children I’ve seen before.

“Are you her guardian?” A nurse asks me and I nod. There’s no one here beside me anyway.

“She’s in critical condition, and we don’t expect to see good results-”

“So, she’s going to die?” My thoughts are slower than a snail, and they stay that way, slowly processing her words through my head. In the end, nothing shows on my face or in my heart.

The nurse pauses, her hands clutched on a clipboard and nods once. “Yes.” She whispers, her eyes casted away, “I’m sorry, treatment was too late.”

“I know.”

Everything’s always too late.

***

Two years later, I’m alone, cold, starving, broke, wasting my time away in a homeless shelter. The person beside me shifts, turning onto his side, chuckling beneath his breath as I imagine he’s dreaming about a belly full of warm food, time reversed to three years ago, and a home without the smell of dirty bodies smashed together.

Maybe not him, but I definitely was.

“You shouldn’t have wasted your time like that.” She chuckles, her voice echoing softly, bouncing through the air.

“Who are you?”

“Just an old friend,” She says, shifting my bangs to a side before they slide back into place, my head tucked on her knees as she laughs like twinkling bells. A piece of her hair slips over her shoulder, and I wrap it around my fingers, twirling and twirling it.

“You seem so lonely here, so I’ll help you.” She says again, her shadow blocking out the full moon just outside.

“How?” I notice the purr in her voice, soft, silky, and sweet.

“So curious,” She smiles, full lips lifting in a blood-red smile as I sit up, “That’s good. It’s good to be curious.” She grins once, her hair falling with her as she kneels beside me.

She lifts her eyes to meet mine; ponds of starlight, slivery, blue, and endless. And awfully familiar.

“Come stay beside me. It’s so cold and lonely, right? I’ll make you warm, just come to me.” She pats me on the head, her fingers rubbing through my hair. I didn’t manage to cut it after all.

I should’ve. Hana would’ve like it too.

“Where are you?”

“In heaven where it’s warm. Come back to me,” She whispers, her fingers cradling my head.