It had recently gotten chilly. Sou-kun's cold hands gripped my throat. I started taking Abilify a few weeks ago, due to the irritability and psychotic episodes caused by the doctor from the Mie Hospital's new even more experimental treatment. On top of that, I was taking Lexapro to counter the depression caused by the Abilify. It worked a little bit. Even with the Lexapro, the Abilify made it hard for me to fight back against Sou-kun's wishes to due gross stuff with me, like choking and bondage. I really didn't like it, a light touch to the throat, the implication of it was enough for me. Any more than that and it lost it's hotness.

Afterwards, I laid with my head between his shoulder and chest. He stroked my hair, “Have fun?” If I told him no, he'd get mad at me for “letting” him do something I didn't really like, so I said “yeah.” I hoped if I showed through tone that I didn't really like it, he would stop asking without starting a fight. I knew in the back of my head that it wouldn't work. I pretended to be tired and fall asleep, while waiting for him to fall asleep. Once he fell asleep, still naked, I got up and carefully kneeled with each of my legs on either side of his chest, and put my hands around his throat. Just tight enough to feel a little pressure pushing back against my fingers, not tight enough to wake him up. I sat there like that for a long time, I'm not sure exactly how long. I wanted to clench down on his throat tighter, tight enough to cut off the bloodflow from his brain and tight enough to make him stop breathing forever. If he stopped breathing, I wouldn't have to let him choke me anymore. One choking to stop all the choking I would have to go through. If I just broke up with him I risked him cutting me off from the hormones and morphine, but if he died, his bosses would probably keep selling to me. But, at the same time, I couldn't kill him. If I killed him, my few remaining years, extended from months due to the new medicine, I wouldn't be able to find somebody to love me until I died. I didn't want to die alone. And who would love a tranny like me who's about to die. And he was the first person to call me Suzuka. Who would love me like him. So I let go after what could have been 30 seconds or 2 hours.

I dug my head into his chest and started crying. Quickly it turned into sobbing, and I grabbed at his chest and hair as I wailed into his chest. He woke up confused groaned at being woken up and, once he realized what was going on, put his hand on my cheek and asked “Babe, what's wrong? Bad dream? It's okay,” as he stroked my cheek with his thumb. It only made me cry harder. “Heeeeyyyy, heeeeyyyy, it's okay, it's okay, tell me what's wrong baby.” Through brutal choking sobs, I spoke.

Recently Sou-kun taught me mahjong and I started going to a local jansou to play at . I had money to burn, even losing 10,000 yen per day of losses wouldn't cut deep into my coffers. And I had a limited timespan, so I could always take out more loans if I got dragged into deeper depts if it got out of hand. It was fun. Even the small stakes made it feel real, and sometimes it got out of hand and I spent 20, 30 thousand yen in a single day. The free drinks made it fun too. All the meds I was on meant even two highballs got me trashed, so I would drink two or three highballs over the course of a ten hour gambling session, lose around 5-10k yen, and head home trashed where Sou-kun would choke me and fuck me and tie me up in weird positions so that my muscles cramped and it hurt and I screamed, but I was high on morphine and drunk and numb on Abilify and Lexapro and morphine so I didn't care. A while ago I stopped taking the morphine pills and got vials and needles and higher doses and ducked into the jansou women's single-occupancy bathroom freaking out if someone saw and confronted me and took the morphine and calmed down and went out and lost money.

But eventually I stopped losing money.

Today I went to the jansou; last night I told Sou-kun I didn't want to have sex with him any more, or at least for now, and his dead-eyed response scared me so much that I didn't really want to be home at all today. I managed to get there before any other women, usually there's around one, compared to the around dozen and a half men there. That meant I could rush to the bathroom without fear of being "caught." I shot a high dose of morphine from my newly implanted permanent IV port. Since I was getting injections so frequently for the new experimental treatment that they put in a permanent IV line directly from my heart into a small port on my upper chest, to the left. After leaving the toilet, head as clear as a morphine addict's head can be, I sat down for my first hanchan. Plus 47. The second hanchan, plus 35. The third hanchan, plus 52. The fourth, plus 29. I was up 16300 yen. I'd more than doubled my money. It was the first time I was up so much. It felt good. Almost as good as the morphine. I had a massive shit eating grin plastered across my face the whole time. After the end of the fourth hanchan, my toimen got up and left, and was quickly replaced with someone I hadn't seen in a while: Fukumoto. "Up big today I see," he cackled as gesturing to the pile of money left on the table for me to collect. "What do you want, Fukumoto?" He feigned a look like he had been seriously offended, "What? I'm not allowed to see what one of my biggest debtors is up to? How they're spending my money? But really, I had heard you had undergone some interesting changes and had to see for myself!" The smirk on his face was sickening. "Either sit down to play or go somewhere else..." He looked shock to see me talk back at all. "Okay, okay, let's not get all emotional here! Although all those new medicines you're taking might induce that, though," he cackled as he went to sit down across from me. Once he was sitting across from me I could see the disgusting look on his face. It was part the look of an middle aged (or older) man looking up the skirt of a middle schooler on an escalator, and part that of a man who just discovered the "shemale" section on pornhub for the first time. It was more of the latter, this time, I think. "How about instead of money, if you win you get to kick me in the balls and if I win you show me what sorta changes those hormones have induced?" The few months I'd been "a girl" had been short, but it was enough to have creepy encounters. However, never was there anything like this. I lifted up my left arm, bare to the air in my tank top, and said "I did this to myself with one bare hand, imagine what I could do to you with both. Also, you'd probably end up hard win or lose." He let out a deafening howl like some sort of mythical beast loud enough to draw the attention of all members of the jansou. "You're energetic! Must be all the money you're winning. You know, even at the rate you're winning today there's no chance you'll be able to pay me back in time."

I pulled out my pack of Mevius Option Yellow 5mg's from my purse, pulled out a cigarette, bit the capsule hard enough to feel it snap like a chicken bone, and lit it. I took one long puff in, exhaled, and took a large gulp of my highball. I had lost all of the money I earned in the day, and it was now pitch black outside and I was trashed on morphine and alcohol, my resistance to both weakened by the slew of drugs I was on and the slew of other drugs I was on to manage the negative psychological side-effects of the other ones. Right around my second pack of Yellow's, and right around my last yen of profit running out, I decided it was time to call it, face the music, and go home to Sou-kun. I waved backwards at Fukumoto as I walked away from the table and out of the store without saying a word. He might have said something to me as I left, but I wasn't right enough to register it.

It must have been around three in the morning. The backstreet neon lights were mostly off by this point, but a few still glared; an izakaya open all night, a ramen shop open 24 hours, and a teishoku restaurant only open from midnight to five in the morning. I realized I was starving, and stumbled down the street like a drunk bird towards the teishoku restaurant. It was seasonably chilly, pleasant, so I took my time making my way down the 50 or so meters to the restaurant. Were it a few degrees colder, I would have probably rushed over and fell down, the drunk that I was. The place was faced with a sliding door, affixed with an automatic button. I pressed it at least five times, to no avail. Normally, I would assume they were out of business for the night, but I was determined to eat something, so I gripped the button and slid open the door. Expecting some force, I pulled hard, and the result was slamming the door open, which in reality had almost no resistance. Everyone in the shop snapped their necks around to look at me, and my face turned into a bright strawberry-red color. "A-ah. Sorry. I thought that, uhm," spilled out of my mouth slowly and awkwardly, and I gave up finishing the sentence. I stumbled into an open seat, and snatched the menu out of its little holder with a bit too much vigor and aggression. I picked out the first thing I saw on the menu, "Kitsune Udon" and slurred my order to the single man behind the counter. "Excuse me," echoed out from my left to the feeling of a light touch on the shoulder. It was the priest, dressed again in jeans and a t-shirt. In this state, morphine and alcohol fueled, even a blind man could see that I wasn't doing "well," so he cut him self off mid-sentence when saying, "I'm glad to see you're doing... Well I'm glad to see you're still here." I ignored his statement, "What are you doing here so late? Isn't it not the best image for a priest?" He chuckled, "We had a festival at the temple that ran late into the night, I just got here 15 minutes ago for some much needed home-cooking." Home-cooking? He's talking like he knows this place well. Anyways, I'm not in the mood to really talk to anybody right now, I'm more focused on dreading going home after this Kitsune Udon.

As soon as the delicious-looking Kitsune Udon arrived, the priest chimed in, "It tastes good, trust me," with that same heartwarming grin from however many months ago honestly written across his face. I, now conscious of my volume as the room slightly swayed, half-spoke/half-whispered "I can tell." He placed his right arm around my shoulder, "Is this okay?" He said it with the tone of a boyfriend eager yet scared to touch his soon-to-be girlfriend for the first time, which caught me off guard. I didn't want to respond. "You're making a lot of progress. I'm happy for you. But I don't know what to call you even. All of this time and I only ever learned your other name from the doctors. What should I call you?" It felt like he had an agenda. Not necessarily a negative one, just some greater point he was getting to. He wasn't the type to put on some big set-up in order to try to convert me, so it confused me. "Suzuka, please." He smiled at me again, and started talking more.

While we were walking home, he asked me if I live alone. I told him I live with my boyfriend, but I unintentionally let my tone—that of someone who doesn't dare desire to go home—slip out. "What's the matter? Don't wanna go home tonight?" I thought for about a minute, "Not really. I kind of want to break up with him, but..." I realized as soon as I said it that I shouldn't have entered in that "but...", it would only elicit more questions. "Are you afraid of him?" I didn't really know how to answer that question, "No. It's not like he's hit me or anything before, or that he's the type of guy who seems like he would." I was careful this time to not affix that same dangerous "but..." to the end of the sentence. Following my omission, nothing came from the priest for around a minute. I hated these moments where you're in someone else's company and it's completely silent. I always felt the need to blurt something out. "It's just, I've known him since we were kids, and I'm scared of what the rest of my life looks like if I break up with him. I don't want to die alone." His response was quick and self-assured, "You can't wait to end a relationship until someone or something better comes along. It's not respectful. I'm not talking about towards him, I'm talking about towards yourself. On top of that, you'll find someone better fast, trust me. Please, let me introduce my daughter to you, she can help you with this better than I can." I didn't respond to his comment, and walked up towards the apartment building. I said bye and he told me good luck as I climbed the stairs. When I got up to the third floor, I looked back out and saw him waiting, he gave me a thumbs up, turned around, and walked away.