Mizuki Yamamoto
Receipt
I know the cashier sees the incense, the tiny pack of lily shaped candles, the box of anpan even though I never buy anpan, even though I haven’t eaten sweet bread since the funeral, and I know she’s clocked the way I hesitate over the coins, how I count too slowly, like I’m buying time instead of groceries, and she sees the envelope too, the plain white kind you leave at temples, the kind people fold with both hands, and she sees my nails, uneven, chewed down, and she sees that I didn’t bring a reusable bag even though I always do, even though I live in this neighborhood and probably passed her at the konbini a dozen times without noticing, and she doesn’t say anything—just scans and stacks and flicks her eyes toward the customer behind me like maybe I should hurry up, like maybe I’m the kind of person who lingers where I shouldn’t, but then she hands me the receipt with both hands, slow, careful, and I feel it there, for just a second—pity maybe, or recognition, or just a soft place where the world didn’t press too hard today—and I take the receipt like it matters, like it’s proof I was here—and then she sees the hesitation, the flicker in my eye when she asks, “Do you want a bag?” like it’s a trick question, like there’s a right answer and I’ve already failed it, and I say yes, paper, please, and she says we’re out, and I nod like I knew that, like I expected that, like I’ve always known I’d carry it all home myself.
Bath House
You scrub your shins first, like your mother did, like your grandmother must have, though no one ever taught you—just the memory of hands, firm but careful, and the creak of knees on plastic stool. The tiles are blue, not the sea kind—hospital blue, ash blue, the kind that stays after you close your eyes like worn enamel in the back of your mind. The woman next to you rinses twice, then steps into the bath without a sound. No one speaks. The windows have long since disappeared into the steam. Even the clock is gone, smudged into blur.
You don’t come here for the heat, though it helps. You come for the smallness. The folding of the world into cubes: basket, stool, tile, tub. There is safety in things with boundaries. Your towel sits folded beside you like a loyal thing. Everyone leaves their rings in the same little tray, where the condensation pools like tiny offerings.
You sink in slowly, knees to thighs to spine, the hot water climbing her body like memory—painful, then nothing. Fog rises in soft columns. You think of your aunt, the one who used to dye her hair with chrysanthemum tea, who said baths should always be silent unless you’re alone. You think of the phone call. The voice. The silence that came after, thick as steam.
The woman across from you has the same scar. A crescent above the knee. Her eyes are closed.
When it’s time to go, you dry between your toes like your mother did, like your grandmother must have. Probably your aunt, too. Fold the towel. Dress in cotton with no buttons. You forget to check your locker twice, which you never do.
Outside, the vending machine hums. You buy a bottle of barley tea and drink it in one long swallow. The plastic crinkles in your hand.
You feel just a little bit like a new woman, a small step forward from where you started when you first arrived. Cleansed, but not yet of the ache.
That, you fold up and carry home.
Molting Season
After my sister died, a koi fish started flapping around in the gutter down the street, just thrashing there like it had a point to make and no way to say it, and I don’t know why I picked it up but I did—bare hands, salad spinner, no plan. It wouldn’t touch the pond, wouldn’t stay in the sink, flopped right out of the neighbor’s glass punch bowl, so I filled the tub and it stared at me from under the bubbles like I’d forgotten her birthday again, which maybe I had.
Every morning it left something weird on the bathmat—half a mood ring, the missing rhinestone barrette, a plastic bead I swallowed in second grade and apparently never found until now—like it was saying remember this, dumbass, and I did, I did. And the house got weirdly nice for a while, like warm and golden in the corners, like someone just left the room and the air hadn’t caught up yet, and once or twice I caught myself singing along to that stupid song she loved, the one I used to mute as soon as I heard the first notes.
I almost forgot she was dead. The morning it left, the water was still warm and on the edge of the tub was a single shining scale and this smell in the air—like her shampoo, or jasmine, or something I only ever noticed when she was already gone.
Mizuki is a writer from Japan, currently living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming at SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash Frog, HAD, The Forge, hex, and other places. She was the winner of The SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction 2025. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best MicroFiction, and the Pushcart Prize. Find her online at mizuki.carrd.co or on Bluesky.
