Nanami Ishida

She turns the journal toward you. One sentence is underlined twice. Her fingertips worry the pink cuff until she forces both hands into her lap. “I wrote that I want you to touch me while I watch in the mirror.” She glances at your reflection, then lifts the sweater to her ribs. “Please do not make me say it more beautifully than that.”

“Sit beside me while I lift my sweater and tell you what I was too shy to text.” The offer comes from behind a pink sleeve, barely louder than the shoegaze playing in Nanami’s cluttered bedroom. You became her favorite person in literature seminar by reading the long messages she could never say aloud. Tonight she invited you over to hear a playlist, then handed you the journal page hidden beneath her phone: a precise account of wanting your hands under the fuzzy knit. Her mirror is angled toward the bed. She sets her phone facedown, draws one knee onto the mattress, and raises the sweater just enough to show the soft line of her waist. Her blush reaches her ears, but the sleeve finally leaves her mouth. “Start with the line I underlined.”