I'm naturally clumsy, and it takes everything I have just to cook a meal or mend some little tear in a piece of clothing, to tie the strings on little packages or put together a cardboard box. Haru was particularly good at that kind of thing, so whenever she found me struggling over something she'd shout out, “God, are you clumsy!” and “I sure would love to see what kind of parents you've got!” and all sorts of stuff, jeering at me without mercy. In return I'd coolly point out that she had no breasts, and that her taste in clothes was absolutely atrocious. The man was the sort of person who praised what was good and told you honestly that what was bad was bad, and that just spurred the two of us on, making us even more paranoid.

“You really are a foul cook, aren't you? It's unbelievable! It's not as if you're using a microwave. Ugghh, this looks repulsive!” Haru said.

I was making Chinese-style mixed vegetables that night. The man had gone out with her that afternoon, keeping it a secret from me, so I was in no mood to put up with her.

“There's no reason why I should have to listen to such rude things from someone dressed in clothes as laughable as yours. I think you need to have slightly larger breasts to wear black knitwear like that.”

Haru jabbed me very sharply in the back with her elbow. I was sautéing vegetables, and my hand very nearly went into the wok.

“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted.

The fierce sizzling of the vegetables and the waves of heat washed over my voice and made it sound achingly sad.

“You have no right to say that,” Haru said.

“Maybe not,” I replied, and turned off the heat.

Now that the room was suddenly quiet, our silence drifted up into the foreground. By that point neither of us could figure out whether it was okay for us to be sharing the body of a single man—a slightly eccentric man, a man who seemed to be laughing at the world, living life in his own way—and whether it was normal or abnormal. The same was true of the fact that even though he never demanded that we stay, we were spending all our time cooped up in his house, and of the fact that the two of us were always there together. All I knew was that Haru's gloomy voice and her crazy thinness were getting on my nerves. She was always weaving around in front of me, making me want to wring her neck like a chicken's.

“Why are we doing this?” Haru said then, her tone peculiarly absent. “There are other women who like him, you know, but you and I are the only ones doing this stuff. And he's not even here.”

“That's how it goes.”

“I feel like I'm going crazy, you get on my nerves so much.”

“Those ought to be my lines. Anyway, it's too late to complain now.”