the chapter with the fucking

...luminaries Professor Dimitra Stavrou was to arrive alone and in her own personal capacity, unrelated to her main projects at the university of Tosaka, but also not for the purposes of leisure.

This whole visit and the actual reasons for the visit carried more than a slight touch of absurdism.

Recently, she and Wakuu had discovered a star. By accident. No big deal, what with the observable universe being an ever-growing blob, new stars sprouting and their light reaching us all the time, and better telescopes installed or launched every other year.

Thing is, the one they had discovered wasn’t any boring run-of-the-mill star, but a red supergiant in its very, very final stages. That baby was about to blow.

Somehow, perhaps not by accident, the information leaked to the press. Poor Professor Stavrou, who hated being in the spotlight, decided to relegate the adjacent responsibility to her trusted former research assistant, now-colleague. In the same manner she was always using him for any attempts to procure a grant, ‘because he’s pretty, and they like it when pretty people do science, so yes, I have to prostitute him, otherwise nothing gets paid for and nothing gets done’ (sic).

As if academia wasn’t already rife with problems, systemic issues, and all other types of —isms, lookism had infiltrated academia too. Albeit only as an unexpected byproduct of another issue: corruption in the funding system. The chances for a charismatic and pretty person to procure a grant when so much of the funding had already been skimmed off as ‘overhead’, were substantially higher. Of course, the person in question needed to know how to bat their eyelashes and how to grovel. ‘Wouldn’t have worked if he was a woman, ‘cause women need to be pretty but not too pretty, otherwise they’re considered dumb’ (sic... sickening).

Nevermind that scientists were supposed to do science, not goddamn marketing.

“That’s also the biggest problem for writers nowadays! There’s no longer just ‘be an introverted recluse and write’. If you want any chance at success, you need to constantly keep yourself in the spotlight and ‘build a personal brand’ and cater to superficial people who don’t even remember that you’re human, and they would move on to other so-called content in the blink of an eye!” lamented Millie, who was writing another novel in her spare (scarce) time between serving as the town’s librarian and record-keeper, restoring old books, and doing administrative work for the governing body. She was getting more and more riled up with every phrase uttered. “I don’t want to be treated like that and I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I never have, not since I sent in that first article years ago and went: ‘oh hey, I should write a book!’ I simply wanted to find pen pals, to educate, and to make people think! And I was so happy just writing, but there is no ‘just writing’ anymore if you want to be noticed, if you want your voice to be heard. How can I lie and say that I don’t want my voice to be heard? But nowadays hardly anyone wants to read anything that isn’t plastered with graphic sex scenes, and not only is this and self-promotion culturally unacceptable for me, but it also just impedes my writing and makes me lose sight of why I write, and— They mock my weight and my overbite, they manage to sexualize even my glasses, they’re racist, and there’s no pleasing them, they always act like they own me and my stories, and like they have a right to my soul, and like they are doing me a huge favor by simply laying their eyes on my stories, even though they don’t do anything but consume, but this dereky, as you said, society they live in has convinced them that consuming is the highest virtue and a merit, that their attention is a currency, while they’re constantly being devalued as humans, and instead of rising against this devaluing or even recognizing the fact that it’s taking place at all, they accept everything without question, without thinking, and move on to devalue others, and they always threaten to withhold attention and affection if I’m out of line and don’t please them properly, like a— Like an abuser does. Abusers do that! And yet I still have to act like everything is fine and like I love them all, and to grovel before my audience at all times and to constantly put up and put out lest I be ignored or forgotten or canceled, and they treat me as if I was a machine and not a human being, because if I dare stand up for myself even once, you can’t imagine what kind of a— I’m a writer, not a salesperson!”

And Wakuu was a scientist, not a talk-show host. A scientist, not a spa attendant. A scientist, not a promoter. A scientist, not a slave. Alas; welcome to discovering the horrors of capitalism. Welcome to feeling like a sellout, because you are just one person, and one person can’t fight against the whole system, no matter what Wakuu had claimed a year ago.

“Millie, let’s talk about the ‘impedes your writing’ and ‘losing sight of why you write’ part,” I said a while later, moving the box of tissues in her direction as she trailed off into sobbing. “Let’s talk about ‘success’ and ‘be noticed’ too.”

Either way, after suffering at Emily and Erika’s hands for a meager hour (they were getting better, faster, stronger; not like they were given a choice), Wakuu conducted an online press-conference, which boiled down to him repeating the same statements over and over, using all of the appropriate words in all of the possible combinations.

The statements in question went thusly... No, we weren’t ‘all about to die’. No, our faces were not going to ‘melt off in thirty days’. No, this ‘heavenly event’ hadn’t been ‘prophesied’ (nor ‘prophesized’). No, a supernova on the other side of the galaxy was not ‘ten times worse than the climate crisis’. No, there was absolutely no need for panic, well, there was, but not because of some remote insignificant star which by the way did not exist anymore. No, we weren’t ‘about to watch it go boom live’, as the actual event had happened centuries ago. No, the star was not ‘basically in our backyard’, but hundreds of light years away and thus posed no danger, because of this gloopy term and that gloopiness. No, the star was not ‘bringing about the end of our world’. The only thing it was capable of bringing: a brief and modest light show sometime in the upcoming decade, or the one after that, or maybe the one after, whenever its final light would be reaching us. That, and some stupid clout that’s distracting everyone from the climate crisis.

The latter, he abstained from saying out loud.

To his own surprise, the assurances helped, the sensationalism dialed down, and the news cycle moved on. Sadly, not because of Wakuu’s eloquence and talent for persuasion, and not due to the wider public’s capacity for rational thinking, either.

But because the online stream had gone viral and ‘Is a Supernova About To DESTROY ALL LIFE On Our Planet?’ turned into ‘Exclusive Video: The HOTTEST Scientist In The Hemisphere (is talking about some boring shit)’ in the span of two days.

Wakuu’s perfect, chiseled, artificial beauty ensured that the crowds’ short attention span would move away from doom and gloom. Right to discussing academia. Kinda. Mostly along the lines of ‘wow I thought they were all uggos but that guy was so-o pretty’ and ‘well of course, he’s a hawt professor after all!’ and ‘wtf he’s a twink, he can’t be a professor!’

A worldwide apocalyptic panic was thus nipped in the bud by the power vested in Wakuu by Da Bomb’s domain of skincare, make-up, and plastic surgery.

Unfortunately, while this signified the end of worldwide resonance, the discovery continued to resonate on a local scope.

Firstly, the townies set up a redundant round-the-clock Supernova Watch on the observation deck of the lighthouse — and on the observation deck of the island too. Well, this was mostly fun and had kinda spilled over into ‘more communal bonding’.

Secondly... Any astronomer who discovered a star was to be granted the naming rights to the star. Fill out some paperwork, send an application, pay a small fee for the processing of that paperwork, and bam, a heavenly body with your name on it. Or any other name you’d choose, but the overwhelming majority of scientists chose their last names. An easy method of immortalizing oneself, after all.

Wakuu and Professor Stavrou went through that hassle, had a shared sad chuckle or two (‘like buying fish filet that’s going to expire before you reach your kitchen’), and attempted to move on.

Then the island’s governing body convened and decided that the two of them deserved a naming ceremony and a party thrown in their honor. Okay, a nice and thoughtful gesture, but they never asked for one. Also, Professor Stavrou had to take a day off in order to come over, and she hated off days. Also, everyone in town treated the upcoming event like a... baby shower? For some reason.

Also, Wakuu’s ghostly pallor dissipated, replaced with a furious blush when Eva mentioned being excited and curious about the ‘Name reveal’. So of course I became convinced that the star’s name was nowhere near ‘KiharaStavrou123’ and that the night skies would instead be lit up by the operatic majesty of FVCKuMOM9000 or May0rConn0rSuxBgD0ng or iLikeBoobies.

Although he refused to tell me, saying that I would find out in a couple of hours, anyway.

“I wanted the name to be a surprise. But they hogged the certificate,” explained Wakuu, nodding in the general direction of the Town hall as we stood on the pier together, waiting. The Chicken boat was running a bit late.

“A surprise?”

“Yes. A private one. For you,” he said, looking not at me, but at the horizon. Seemingly in an attempt to hide another bout of blushing. “For us. For the—” He mimicked holding a glass and tilting it towards his mouth. For the Anniversary of How We Got Wasted Because We Were Too Scared To Give Each Other A Long Hug, yes.

“Oh.” Okay, maybe not May0rConn0rSuxBgD0ng. But I still wasn’t ruling out iLikeBoobies. “That sucks. But I appreciate the intent, you know I do, right?”

Squeezing my hand, he nodded.

“I’m sorry, Wakuu.”

“It was stupid, anyway.”

I squeezed his hand harder. And tugged a little. “No it wasn’t.”

“Right. No microaggressions aimed towards myself,” he remembered and took a deep breath before course-correcting, “It was not stupid. Not even overly sentimental. No such thing. And the real reason why I feel self-conscious and am second-guessing myself now, is that I—”

“Yes?”

“I did not expect them to drag this private moment into the spotlight.”

“And the fact that they are dragging it into the spotlight—?”

“Is not my fault, either,” he concluded, smiling with the corners of his mouth.

“The-ere you have it.”

There’d been a time, not too long ago, when I could have improvised a whole lecture on the ‘inevitable’ problems inherent to being in a relationship with a male partner, off the bat. Like the familial expectations and pressure of the ‘five grandkids yesterday!’ kind, emotional constipation, lousy sex, a dearth of romance, patriarchal gender roles, lack of validation in a supportive environment, and lack of a supportive environment. But now? Now I was done generalizing and presuming in this department, as well.

I wouldn’t even endeavor to say I had gotten lucky. This had nothing to do with luck.

“I feel happy. And hopeful.”

“So do I. This year has been really—” started Wakuu and rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb, as if he was trying to scratch a sentiment directly into my skin and bypass saying the words out loud. I knew he’d say them eventually. We always communicated what needed to be communicated, sooner or later. We were getting better and better at it. And considering his background? Wakuu was becoming a Champion.

But today was a stressful day. The whole town was about to learn and make a big deal out of a joke he’d been wanting to keep private and between us.

For now, with not a single shred of sarcasm in my tone, I helped, “Taco. This year has been very taco.”

“Yes. Exactly. Very taco.”

‘Taco’ encompassed everything that was right with the world and all of the good things about life and living it, despite how in general this world and life sucked a variety of bad and unappealing things.

“And I just wanted to say that I—” Stopping mid-sentence, he inhaled a lungful of sea air and courage, and exhaled a serene, “I taco you.”

His eyes met mine and held. And held and held and held. Brimming with so much taco that I felt a burning need to throw all of my past words into the ocean and hug him close to me until my arms and legs cramped from the strain.

So I did it. I just hugged him. Just went ahead and jumped his bones and got my hands all over that warm, pale, slender, wiry body of his, the body I knew almost as well as my own, and I buried my nose right in the crook of his neck, and I squeezed him until he quacked like a ducking duck.

“I taco you too. So much. So, so friggin’ much,” I said, the words muffled against his skin that smelled like home. My favorite way of saying anything.

Wrapping his arms around my shoulders, Wakuu pressed me tighter to him and made me quack too.

By now, our hugging muscles were mega buff, and we were practically syncing up every time we embraced. Sometimes, I could imagine hearing the utterly boring and incredibly comforting riffs from our shared mental playlist, blasting whenever we stood or sat or laid like this.

A couple of seagulls landed on the hardwood slats of the boardwalk. They screeched in each other’s faces, pretending like they were in a fight, when in actuality they were amicably hating something together. As we waited in comfortable silence, embracing, we watched them taking off and flying away and away and away across the waves until they disappeared against the vast backdrop of the ocean.

My senses were engulfed in him and in the present, but I found my thoughts turning back to the past. Year. And to the many nice, funny, and absurd moments throughout. Most of those moments, like jokes never told, would disappear from existence. Forgotten forever, and utterly insignificant on the cosmological scale, they’d die with us. But first, they’d get to live a little....of the system < They’re coming tomorrow morning. Hide your phones.

That text and what followed it: how I found out. How I’d learned of the town’s Worst Kept Secret and finally solved the mystery of the Dish. It was a lame mystery, not worthy of even a minute of Great Conan’s time.

We were in Tosaka, seated by a carp pond in a mini-park, opening the fourth box of mini ice creams we’d procured from a vending machine. Each box held a small stick and six chocolate-coated stick-stabbable pieces which were usually in the shape of a frustum. Only, Wakuu had told me that sometimes one could find a heart shape — it was an omen heralding luck in love. Or a star shape. Which was an omen heralding uuuh... Okay, in retrospect, it did not prophesize (or prophebitesize) that one would discover a star.

Because we’d failed to find either. It was not a big deal; we didn’t believe in omens. He, as a person of hard science, was opposed to superstition on principle, deeming it ignorant in private, just because it was ‘unsubstantiated by anything’, and keeping politely silent in public. While I, for my part, knew where each and every superstition was coming from, which purpose every one of those trauma responses served, which biases formed any type of magical thinking, and which biases formed as a result of magical thinking, and could easily deconstruct each particular case of unverified personal gnosis, and of course a lot of them were easily explained by sleep paralysis, and of course non-directive attitude directed me to shut the fuck up about sleep paralysis. In short, the Knowing How The Sausage Gets Made part kinda killed the fun of eating The Sausage.

But we were still having fun. Because we were together, because we had gotten two full days off work and had half a day yet to burn, because we liked sitting in a cute mini-park in front of a pond with fishes who were more sociable than a lot of humans we knew and almost as sociable as Taco, and we enjoyed psyching each other up and exchanging stupid jokes.

We enjoyed all of the delicious sugary chocolatey frustums too. Perhaps, too many frustums, considering that before indulging in dessert on a stick we’d indulged in a plethora of kushikatsu (but everything was more fun on a stick).

Also, in the last box we ended up finding an ice cream in the shape of a mushroom.

“Now this is really rare.”

“Is this a legalization omen?”

He was about to give me a no-doubt-epic quip in response, when his phone started going off with various notification sounds. Wakuu had had a short-sightedness correction surgery the day before. His vision was still blurry, and he abstained from reading anything, just to be safe. I was his reading-eye puppy for the weekend.

Hence, he passed the phone to me. I unlocked it and flipped through the notifications, and read the latest emails out loud, and— He interrupted me by cursing.

Then Wakuu instructed me to urgently send a message to everyone in town. Every single person was told to turn off and hide their phones.

While we had to drop everything and check out early, and bolt back. As we gathered our stuff in a haste, he explained the truth. The boring truth which I by that point had been suspecting for some time, yet abstained from mentioning my suspicions, because why would I bother or care. Why would anyone in the world, except Da Bomb himself, care that one of the radio telescopes he’d paid for wasn’t combing or transmitting anything.

“So the dish isn’t real?”

“It’s real. It’s just almost never on.”

Wakuu proceeded to explain, during our untimely demise to port. Amps consumed energy, which was a waste, and having a working radio telescope called for universal silence: no cell phone usage allowed in the vicinity, no other dishes, even to watch shows from home. Da Bomb did not give a damn about inconveniencing an entire island. He also believed himself to be a very special boy and believed everyone else to be stupid and unworthy. Tight-knit countryside communities like this one really disliked to be thought of as unworthy and stupid. They loved to prove moneybags wrong.

The majority of Da Bomb’s acolytes lived in cities. If he’d have been a politician... My skin erupted in goosebumps of terror each time I imagined.

The most fortunate thing ever, though: no, Da Bomb wasn’t a politician. He was neither advocating for walls nor using slave labor to build rockets, and he wasn’t preaching racial purity. He was not pretending to care for the little guy, either. The little guy was too ugly for him. Da Bomb just really wanted to get off this planet.

Well... We all had our individual ways of coping with the fact that there was only one way off this planet.

“This is a wobbly and flammable situation. So the town agreed to keep it hush-hush and—”

“Yes.”

“And you trusted people to—”

“Yes. They also signed NDAs. Ironclad.”

“But what legal validity would these documents hold? Technically the town is defrauding a— Whatever, defrauding a piece of shit who deserves it. But—”

“The communal validity. The kids made a bunch of NDAs as an art project at school.”

“Then went door to door?”

“Yes. And every adult signed them. And has been silent since then.”

“Is this why tourists have to turn off their phones?”

“Yes.”

“Under the risk of being fined.”

“Yes.”

“But what if one of them sees me using a phone?”

“Good question. From now on, it’s in airplane mode if they ask. But they won’t.”

“Got it. They’re renovating that seaside manor and planning this big timeshare, uh, what’s the name?”

“Wondrous Silent Retreat Timeshare.”

“But they actually can go online on their phones, they’re just not allowed to. So they’re forced to rest and relax on a beautiful island.”

“Yes. Is this unethical?”

“It’s brilliant. Do I get an NDA to sign?”

“We should ask Ollie to draw one for you. He’ll draw asters.”

“Any other town-wide conspiracies of silence that I’m not yet privy too?”

“Maybe just a couple of inside jokes. Okay, one inside joke.”

“Which one?”

“I’m not very good at telling it, maybe y—” He didn’t finish the phrase, because his phone started vibrating again.

We had to hire a boat. I tried to not feel too disheartened by this whole interruption and to instead rejoice over the fact that we’d done it on a hotel bed....manual We were in a fight.

The reason behind the fight? Not chores, not forgetfulness, not lack of foresight, and not even any miscommunication issues.

We were in a fight because of a sex toy.

A purple bullet vibrator shaped like a spermatozoon. An elongated ellipsoid with a tail. A new model operated by an app instead of a remote. Wakuu had given it to me as a gift, and I loved his thoughtfulness. We were already making exciting plans to use the toy in a public place. For now, to test it out, he installed the app on his phone, I charged the vibrator, and we got naked at the first opportunity, and he threw the cardboard box aside, and in the thingie went.

For extra spiciness, he’d tied my hands to the headboard with one of his canvas belts and spread my legs wide open. So far so good. He got his phone out, opened the app, turned on the vibrator, I choked on a breath, and he chuckled with an air of sexy smugness, and proceeded to experiment with the settings and poke various touchscreen buttons.

For a time, all of it felt fantastic. He was raising the levels gradually yet in a stable manner, with the eventual aim to crank that thing up to full intensity and zip me into the stratosphere, perhaps with some help from his tongue.

And then Wakuu discovered the other controls’ tab. With the in-built game. A match-3 type of thing with fruits falling onto the screen. The bigger the fruit matched, the more intense the buzz. At first, the game and how it was another method of operating the toy, was a source of lighthearted exchanges and sultry jokes. But only at first. For less than a minute.

Problem one: each scoring point turned the vibrator on for no longer than two seconds. A stupid burst of inconsistent, unpredictable, and either extremely intense (watermelon) or frustratingly underwhelming (blueberry) vibrations which no longer felt like vibrations, but more like a urethral catheter imitation. Unpleasant, to say the least. Problem two: he was instantly hooked, because that game was designed to be addictive and originally used elsewhere, in a place where it could be monetized. Problem three: Wakuu was very, ve-ery bad at this game, and he hated to be bad at things that seemed simple, and his trusty recipe for such occurrences was to do a thing until he’d get better.

Staring at his phone with an increasingly blank look on his face, hardly blinking, deaf and blind to the world around him, Wakuu kept on tapping and swiping the fruits in slow motion, over and over, growing more and more enthralled by this mind-numbing dopamine-tickling whack-a-mole bullshit with each passing moment. And forgetting that I was there. And forgetting the game’s true purpose. And not paying any attention to me or my growing distress, which was manifested in frenzied efforts to dislodge either the toy or my tied-up hands, buck my hips, hump the mattress, not hump the mattress, not pee all over the mattress, and most of all, to not cry — both out of sexual frustration and because how the heck was this happening when only a day prior we’d been tsk-tsking at inconsiderate partners wasting their time on stupid mind-numbing aimlessly dopamine-tickling video games! ‘I believe that the ubiquity of the gamer-boyfriend trope is not something that could be blamed on allegedly dirty-minded fujoshi artists creating evil propaganda, and it should not be seen as a trope, but as a societal shortcoming, and I’m sure that the reason for this normalized yet stigmatized behavior of many young men is their lack of alternative to living in toxic environments of mediocrity, combined with the pressures of everyday life and the depressing nature of the routine they need to face, so they indulge in the reward loop of dopamine hits from video games, in order to avoid reminders of the oftentimes unachievable expectations placed on them, with the modern society and educational systems having failed them and failed to offer an alternative, and in truth they’re not incapable of emotionally connecting with other people, yet under such immense pressure it is easier to simply check out, because reality is indeed too real and being human is a perpetual challenge, but I’m sure that if they learn of what is causing this behavior, encouraged to not take the easy way out, and if they’re extended a helping hand, the problem has the potential of being undone’ MY ASS!

At the end of it all, just as I extended a helping leg and tried to kick Wakuu out of the trance, there was a sudden avalanche of watermelons, an inelegant squelching orgasm, a mountain of profanities aimed at the universe at large and Wakuu’s smartphone in particular, and yes, also an unforeseen laundry day...

Cursing and scowling and shrieking, I kicked him off the bed instead, off the blanket soaked in fluids that did not belong on blankets, not at my age, then finally tore myself free from the belt, feeling like my wrist was broken, grabbed the nearest pillow, and hurled it at Wakuu. The pillow hit the target — he didn’t even try to dodge — and left the target unharmed, while at the same time the vibrator jumped out of my pussy like a wet projectile, and kicked the smartphone out of his hand: SPLAP. Everything, including me, clattered to the damn floor in a flood of noise.

Even after all of this pandemonium, it took Wakuu a few moments to blink himself back to reality. He sat up on the floor, rumpled and confused, then grabbed the phone lightning-fast and clutched it to his chest with a protective ferocity, then glanced around with a goofy expression on his face, and it became clear that his brain was not yet caught up with the events and he had no clue what had transpired. Normally, we would have doubled over in laughter right away. But that night?

We got into a fight. Why?

Because instead of settling down and laughing at the absurdity, I felt a surge of atypical rage, then I felt abandoned, then I burst into inconsolable tears, and finally, I yelled at Wakuu. My exact words? No idea. Could have been gibberish. Could have been in my language number one, which he didn’t speak.

Because he tried to help me up while I still felt angry and kept ranting, as well as wailing louder than a professional mourner at a very rich man’s funeral, and I slapped his hands away and shuffled further away from him, and got a wooden splinter into my ass in the process, and the splinter hurt much worse than having a gamer boyfriend, and made me bawl twice as loudly and made him twice as confused.

Because Wakuu got so ashamed of himself and the entire situation, that instead of waiting and talking it over and offering to move on, he called himself an idiot and a stupid hypocrite out loud, pulled on his clothes, grabbed the accursed phone, and fled the room and then the cottage.

And because we’d forgotten to check the calendar app’s shared events and see that yes, my period was coming up, and this month for some (hormonal, hereditary) reason I was PMSing off my rocker and needed some hugs and chocolate, not purple silicone spermatozoa.

But all of that, we would find out later — and never forget again.

For now, bunching and pulling the soiled bedding down to the floor, I sobbed in a room that seemed empty and cold, nevermind the 29°C outside.

My inane anger dissipated, leaving me to stare at the vibrator still buzzing on the floor, my open mouth twisted into a grimace of agony. Little by little, my crying slowed down to sniveling, ultimately topped by a racking dry-heave or two, then it petered out. I felt wrung out, dehydrated, and numb. My wrist was fine, but nothing else was.

We were in a fight.

The notion started sinking in as I rubbed my eyes and brushed my disheveled hair away from my tear-stained face. For a few moments, the notion engulfed and paralyzed me. Looming, terrifying. Catastrophic. Wiping the snot with my forearm, I choked on an urge to burst into tears again, and then I choked on an urge to phase out of existence, because of course there was no way we could overcome this enormous and insurmountable obstacle in our relationship and remain happy together after what I’d just done. And what he’d just done. He was gone forever, wasn’t he? He was never coming back. We were done, weren’t we?

The tiny splinter in my butt, which was still hurting like a b-word, supported my delirium with a non-verbal reminder that pain remained ever real, that cruel reality was going to outlast everyone and everything else, and that the meaninglessness of the universe would always be there for me, even if everyone else had turned their backs on me, even if I was just a stupid outlander who belonged nowhere and deserved to be shunned and abandoned and in excruciating pain from butt splinters, and also that love was dead, existence lacked meaning and purpose, and humans were meant to spend their short and pathetic lives in perpetual misery and suffering and despair.

Meanwhile, the vibrator kept on buzzing away, ringing its deranged tinny song as it rolled and bounced across the treacherous wooden floorboards, taunting me with its relentless endurance in spite of all the hell it had unleashed upon my life and happiness and the entire future of humankind.

Anyway, I spent the next minute trying to turn that dumb thing off, but either my fingers were too clumsy, or a physical power-function button didn’t exist, or I had jammed the power function with my vaginal muscles. Whatever it was; I could not turn it off, and the little bastards’ batteries weren’t running out anytime soon, either. I threw it aside, right into the small pile of bedding next to the mattress that I’d half-pulled off the bed frame before temporarily giving up on everything ever.

On my knees, sniffling, whimpering as a second round of shuddering sobs threatened to sweep over me, with rivulets of snot still running over my mouth, I crawled towards the cardboard box and the instruction lodged inside. I got the sheet of paper out, unrolled it and started reading through, my eyes growing narrower and dryer and dryer and narrower.

A bone-chilling screech resounded, followed by the loud grinding of the heavy door that wasn’t meant to be opened as slowly, followed by the soft pad of footsteps on the creaking floorboards.

Huddled on the floor, I still held the paper in my hand, turning around to reach for my own phone and call him. But Wakuu was there, with his features already morphed from dazed blankness into concern and compassion.

“I’m so sorry.”

In a dash, he moved towards me, first sitting on the floor, then scooting closer. As I slumped against him, his arms enveloped me.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, stroking my hair.

“No, I am,” I mumbled into his neck, clutching his torso, holding on for dear life. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to— Wakuu, I’m sorry.”

He shushed me with a kiss to the temple.

For a bit, we sat in silence, me drawing shaky breaths, him stroking my back.

Then I said, “You need to delete that app.”

“I will, I promise.” He sounded brokenhearted, but resolute too. “This was a bad idea anyway. Look, can I do anything? Should we talk about this?”

“Yes. And yes.” Strip the bed, find the first-aid kit, help me get that splinter out of my ass. After that, he’d make some tea, and I’d do the laundry, and we’d talk. “But later. I mean it, you need to delete that app. Now.” With this, I drew away so that he could see the paper I was still clutching. “Asap.”

“What is this?”

“The instructions, or so I thought.” I handed the paper over to him. “Look at the fine print. By using the app you are granting the manufacturer the permission to access, harvest, and resell all of the data on your phone. Including audio files. Documents. Text messages. Camera roll. Contacts. Locations.”

His eyes grew wider as he read on, his body tensing up against me. Wakuu paled further than usual as he got to the third paragraph.

Crumpling the sheet of paper into a ball, he threw it aside, and produced his phone out of his pocket. “What the— It’s in the universal permissions. It’s lodged itself even into the system settings!”

We helped each other up from the floor. With absentminded care, barely looking, he brushed something off me.

“Thank goodness it’s reversible. I thought my phone was done for.” He continued cleaning up and fixing the settings, cursing under his breath with every other tap. “Would have been a catastrophe. A data-harvesting tool, really..?”

“And the manufacturer is state-sponsored,” I said, brushing something off him. “Probably designed as part of an espionage program.”

In one sharp motion, he raised his head and eyed me with a mixture of incredulity and horror. “Wait, did I just shove a foreign government’s spyware into your, uhm.”

“We,” I corrected, placing my hand on his shoulder. “We shoved a foreign government’s spyware into my vagina.”

We were no longer in a fight. Okay, unless the shared fight against evil foreign governments counted. But were we really in it?