The apartment is almost entirely dark. A small battery lamp burns on the crate beside the couch, throwing just enough yellow light to outline the rough shape of the interior. The television flickers without sound, washing the walls in a pale blueish color. The walls brighten and dim in uneven pulses, old stains surfacing between them.
“I’m home,” I call into the dark.
No answer.
My mother sits on the couch in her work uniform, a blanket draped over her knees. Shoes still on, hair tied back with the kind of carelessness that means there was no care left to spend. Her hands rest in her lap. The TV light dances across her face in the dark. She does not turn to face me. She stares at the screen, her face washed blue, expression unreadable.
I take off my shoes and step inside.
The apartment used to be nice. Not fancy. Nothing in this building has ever been expensive. But someone had clearly cared once. You can see it in the faded floral wallpaper in the kitchen, the careful trim around the bedroom doors, the little ceramic bird-hooks by the entrance. Small, stupid things meant to make a room feel less like a box you slept in and more like a cozy home.
Now the wallpaper bubbles from damp. One bird hook is broken. The ceiling has yellowed in wide patches where leaks spread and dried and spread again. The whole apartment smells faintly of bleach, mold, and old fabric. My mother keeps bleach under the sink. Every few days, she scrubs the mold until the whole apartment stinks like a meth lab. It never works for long. By the next morning, the black spots start to push thru the walls again.
I cross into the kitchen. A poorly wrapped half a loaf of bread sits on the counter, the exposed slices gone hard at the edges. Butter scraped almost clean from its paper. A jar of salt with a cracked lid. I open the cabinet. Empty. Another cabinet. A chipped bowl. Two packets of tea. A dead moth. I close it gently, no need to slam the door, anger just wastes energy.
Bread, butter, salt. The holy trinity of a poor man's dinner.
I make the sandwich on the counter, spreading the butter thin enough that the knife scrapes bread more than it covers it. Then I sprinkle salt over the top and fold the slices together. A pandwich. The name is stupid. I invented it years ago to make the meal seem less depressing. Poor man's sandwich became pandwich because apparently even misery is easier to swallow when you give it a cute nickname. Surprisingly, it doesn't taste half bad, for as long as you don’t oversalt it, that is.
I take my pandwich and go to my room. The room is small enough that the bed almost touches the desk. The desk almost touches the wardrobe. The wardrobe door cannot open fully because of the chair. Every piece of furniture has been arranged to make use of every single inch of available space. I sit on the bed and eat in the dark.
That is the part that bruises my ego hard. All day, I watch girls at Miracle Academy open lunches pretty enough to be displayed behind glass. Warm rice, glazed meat, fruit cut into little stars, sauces sealed in tiny cups, desserts wrapped in golden paper. The smell alone is enough to make your stomach growl. And they still have the gall to complain about sauce touching the rice or something like that before throwing half of it away.
Then I come home and eat stale bread with a scrape of butter in a room barely big enough to turn around in, and the worst part is that I enjoy it. I enjoy the salt. I enjoy the thin smear of fat. I enjoy the small, stupid mercy of my stomach finally shutting up. I know I should be embarrassed that something this pathetic can still satisfy me. Instead, I sit in the dark and take another bite.
I chew slowly. The first few bites make my stomach cramp. It gives one slow, resentful twist, as if it has been empty long enough to take offense. I look at my bony fingers holding the sandwich. I was not always this thin. It all started when I first enrolled in Miracle Academy.
I could not eat at school. Not because I’m not allowed to or that the food is bad. It's just that every time I try, my stomach locks up. The problem is that I get nervous when people watch me eat. Even more so in hostile environments. My hands start feeling clumsy. I take bites too carefully, then too quickly, to the point where I have trouble swallowing. The food sits in my mouth too long. My throat gets tight. I hear myself chewing, feel myself trying to force each bite down, and the harder I try to act normal, the worse it gets.
Combine all that with the fact that while all that's happening, I have a few dozen rich girls staring at me. Ready to turn anything I do into a joke. So I sit through lunch with my hands under the desk and let myself starve quietly, while everyone else eats, pretending that all the smells don't bother me as my stomach groans quietly.
Ever since then, I have been losing weight rapidly, not surprising really considering that I only eat twice per day. Before dawn and after dark. A pandwich in the morning. A pandwich at night. Maybe a stolen packet of crackers if I were lucky. It is not enough. That was pretty evident by my rapid weight loss.
At first, it was easy to ignore. A looser waistband. A little more room under my sleeves. My skirt sitting differently on my hips. Small things. Things I could ignore if I did not look too closely. Scarily enough, I have become so malnourished that it has become impossible to ignore it for any longer. Now I notice it every time I look at the mirror.
My clothes hang differently. The waistband had gotten so loose that I had to tighten it constantly. The sleeves fall loose around my wrists, which now look thin enough to snap in half, revealing just how little there is left between skin and bone. When I pull my blouse over my head, my ribs press briefly against the fabric, each one more visible than it used to be. The shoulders have gone sharp. My cheeks have thinned out. My knees look too large.
My whole body has started to look more like one of those concentration camp prisoners from old history pictures than a regular teenage girl. At no point was I ever chubby or anything, but I at least had some meat on my bones. A decent figure. Now I was nothing more than skin and bones. Clearly, two sandwiches a day is not enough to keep a person going. Sooner or later, I am going to have to find another way to eat, or I’ll start developing some serious health issues. Easier said than done, other than outright stealing, there aren’t many options a slum girl can get food.
The last bite sticks in my throat. Instinctively, my hand reaches down behind my bed and picks up a bottle. I unscrew the cap and take a big gulp of water, then lean back against the wall.
The quiet presses in. Not true quiet. There is no such thing here. The pipes tick behind the walls, steady as a second clock. A cough rattles through the other side of the wall. From the upstairs apartment comes the thin rattle of dishes being moved around in a sink. The TV mumbles in the living room. The whole building seems to breathe through its cracks.
I realize that the whole building is packed with people. They surround me on every side, separated from me by little more than a few walls, and yet I have never felt as alone as I do now, sitting by myself in the dark.
It wasn’t always like this. There used to be someone who could fill even the quietest room simply by being there.
But she is gone now.
Whatever comfort the room held a moment ago drains away. In the silence it leaves behind, a much uglier thought begins to take shape.
Yashiro bullying me is the only time I get to talk to another human being.
The thought sits there for a second. My fingers go still. No. No, no, no. Do I actually enjoy it? Do I look forward to it every day? I slap both hands against my cheeks, hard enough to sting.
“What the hell am I even thinking?”
But the thought has already opened the can of worms. I picture walking through the school halls tomorrow. Yashiro passes me without slowing down. Her hair perfect, her expression bored, her eyes slide over me like I am not there. Sophia does not laugh. Kika does not give me that fake-soft look. No one whispers. No one points. No one says my name like it is something dirty. They just ignore me. Completely.
My stomach twists hard enough that I press a hand over it. That should be the dream. Being ignored should feel like mercy. It should feel like finally getting what I begged the universe for every morning before I step through the academy gates.
No. That cannot be right. Am I really that desperate for attention?
I think about earlier today, after I jumped into the trash and listened to their footsteps move away. I remember how relieved I felt when they finally left. Of course I was relieved. I was shaking. I smelled like garbage. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. But underneath that relief, underneath all the shame and anger and stink, there had been something else. Something small and rotten.
A tiny, miserable part of me had wanted them to turn back. Not because I wanted another round of humiliation. I am not that far gone. I just wanted them to stay. To act like I mattered. Even if they laughed. Even if they called me disgusting. Even if all they did was remind me that my role in the world was that of a punching bag. I just didn’t want to be alone anymore. I don’t care at what cost, but I just wanted someone to talk to.
I stand too fast. My head starts spinning. The plate slips off the bed and clatters onto the floor. I flinch, then leave it there.
I need to speak to someone. Anyone.
RIGHT NOW.
The whole room started spinning around me, the walls closing in as I desperately made my way towards the door. The wardrobe leaned towards me as if trying to seize me by the arm. I open the door. The television is still mumbling in the living room. My mother is still there, probably, I hope so. I really need to see her. To talk to her.
I collapse on the floor beside the door, slumped against the wall. My breathing was so erratic I thought I was about to get a heart attack.