Butter

by Asako Yuzuki

when she’d seen Reiko in her wedding dress, Rika had felt as though a piece of her own self had been stolen away.

From early childhood, everyone had had it drummed into them that if a woman wasn’t slim, she wasn’t worth bothering with.

In principle, all women should give themselves permission to demand good treatment, but the world made doing so profoundly difficult.

‘I learned from my late father that women should show generosity towards everyone. But there are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.’

it tastes like you’re falling.

The more expensive the butter, the better the quality; the more that you used, the richer the taste.

Rika shut her eyes and let the memory imprint itself onto her tongue.

She had the sense that come war, come famine, this woman would find a way of surviving.

‘A fall that never ends, that leaves you spinning and spiralling as if waltzing as you plummet ceaselessly down.’

I belonged to nobody, either spiritually or physically. I was “travelling”.’

Looking up at the night sky, it was hard to believe that all of this lay behind the scenery she encountered day in, day out.

‘Offer your heart to her on a plate.’

She was beginning to understand that the more delicious the time she spent with others, the more alone she felt.

‘I don’t need friends. I’m only interested in having worshippers.’

‘My brother got sucked in by her impressive way of talking. He was just an audience member at the play she was putting on.

The idols Rika knew from the nineties had all sung about love and sweets and lip balm, and seemed to be having a whale of a time.

‘Don’t you think that’s a disease of the contemporary age? It feels like these days our value is determined by how much effort we make from day to day. That matters even more than our results. After a while, the concept of effort starts to become mixed up with things feeling difficult, and then you reach the point where the person seen as the most admirable is the one suffering the most.

If you were accepted by just one person, then you didn’t need to be someone whose beauty was acknowledged by everyone.

Just the thought of spending two hours by herself on the train made her heart expand joyfully.

If you moved anything, you’d be shouted at – that was the sense that the room exuded.

As I went on telling lies, I started to feel as though they were becoming the truth …

She had to do all she could, under her own steam, to make the small details of her life as rich and fulfilling as they could be.

I felt fairly sure that everyone who got involved with me would come to regret it someday.

if I never come to understand the kind of pleasure that makes you lose respect for your partner, for the rules, I will consider myself fortunate.

It was just the same, whoever it was, wherever I was.

‘The quickest way for a modern Japanese woman to gain the love of a man is to become corpse-like.

Cleaning and cooking are much more rock and roll than I thought.

She found herself hoping for the day when the walls would cave in altogether, obliterating everything inside this place, herself included.

When it came to appearance, the world’s standards were so harsh that, unless you built thick walls like she had done, unless you continued to affirm yourself with a great tenacity of spirit, it became difficult to lead your life with a sense of pride.

Rika heard the sizzle of butter melting in a hot frying pan. It smelt to her like life itself.

this world deserved to be tasted, greedily.