Sailor Moon's Pet

I woke up to Warechu licking my face. His tongue was rough like sandpaper, the way it always is when he wants breakfast and I’m taking too long to stop dreaming.

“Get off me,” I muttered, pushing his fat little body to the side. He squeaked. That high-pitched, indignant sound he makes when he doesn’t get what he wants. I opened one eye. He was sitting on my chest now, all four paws planted, his round ears twitching. His fur was the color of wet asphalt, and his eyes were too big for his head, black and shiny like polished stones.

I’d found him three months ago in the pet shop in Shibuya, the one tucked between a pachinko parlor and a convenience store that sold old man porn. He was in a cage labeled “Warechu: Species Unknown. Handle With Care.” The store owner, a man with a mole on his nose the size of a bean, told me they’d found a whole litter in a shipment of tropical fish from South America. Nobody knew what they were. They ate everything. They multiplied fast. And they had a weird habit of staring at you until you did what they wanted.

I bought him for three thousand yen. Best money I ever spent.

“Fine,” I said, pushing myself up. The futon crackled beneath me. My room was small, barely six tatami mats, with a window that looked out on an alley where the neighbor’s cat liked to fight with stray crows. The walls were thin. I could hear Mrs. Tanaka two doors down yelling at her husband about the garbage. I could hear the train rumbling past every ten minutes, shaking the building like a cough you can’t shake.

Warechu hopped off my chest and waddled toward the kitchen corner. His belly dragged on the floor. I swear he’d gained two kilos since I brought him home. He ate like a vacuum cleaner. Rice, fish, vegetables, bread, even the pickled plums my grandmother sent from Kyoto. He’d eat them and then make that face, the one that said *I don’t like this but I’ll eat it anyway because I am a creature of pure appetite.*

I pulled on my school uniform. The black sailor top, the navy skirt that was too short according to the school rules but too long according to the girls who actually cared about fashion. I tied my hair back. Looked in the mirror. Same face as yesterday. Same tired eyes. Same thought: *You are seventeen years old and your best friend is a fat rodent from a pet shop.*

Warechu was waiting by his bowl. He sat there, patient, like a tiny furry monk. I poured him some leftover rice from last night, mixed it with a can of mackerel. He dove in without looking up.

I ate standing up. A piece of toast and a cup of green tea. The tea was bitter. I didn’t sweeten it. My grandmother said sweet tea was for children and foreigners. I didn’t know if that was true, but I didn’t argue with dead people.

The school bell was a lie. It rang at 8:15, but homeroom didn’t start until 8:30. The fifteen minutes were for socializing, which meant standing in clusters and pretending you cared about the conversation. I didn’t have a cluster. I had a desk near the window, a view of the cherry tree that never bloomed quite right, and a reputation for being the girl who talked to herself.

I wasn’t talking to myself. I was talking to Warechu. But I couldn’t exactly explain that to the girls in my class, the ones with perfect hair and perfect nails and perfect opinions about which boys were worth looking at.

“Did you see the test results?” Yumi asked. She was sitting in front of me, turned around, her chin resting on her hand. Her nails were painted a pale pink that matched her lip gloss. Everything about her matched. It was exhausting.

“I didn’t look,” I said.

“You got the highest in the class again. It’s not fair.”

“It’s not unfair either. I studied.”

She rolled her eyes. “You always study. Don’t you ever do anything fun?”

I thought about Warechu. I thought about how last night he’d stolen a sock from my drawer and hidden it under the futon. I thought about how I’d spent twenty minutes searching for it, and how he’d watched me the whole time with that smug little face, like he knew exactly where it was and wasn’t going to tell me.

“I have a pet,” I said.

Yumi blinked. “A pet? Like a dog?”

“No. Something else.”

“What kind of something else?”

I didn’t know how to answer. The word *Warechu* meant nothing to her. It meant nothing to anyone. The pet shop owner had made it up, probably. A brand name for a mystery animal. But I’d kept the name because it fit him. Warechu. A sound that meant *round thing that eats everything.*

“It’s a rodent,” I said. “From South America.”

“Gross,” Yumi said, and turned back around.

I didn’t blame her. I would have said the same thing, before I met him. Before I saw him in that cage, staring at me with those black stone eyes, and I felt something click into place. Like a lock turning. Like a door opening into a room I didn’t know existed.

The morning dragged. Math, then history, then lunch. I sat alone under the cherry tree, eating a rice ball and watching the clouds move. They were fat and slow, like Warechu after a big meal. The thought made me smile. I didn’t smile much. It felt strange on my face, like wearing someone else’s shoes.

When I got home, the apartment was quiet. The television was off. The kettle was cold. I called Warechu’s name. Nothing.

I checked his bowl. Empty. I checked his corner. Empty. I checked under the futon. Empty.

A cold feeling crawled up my spine. It started at the base of my neck and spread across my shoulders like a hand pressing down. I checked the kitchen, the bathroom, the closet. Nothing. The window was open. Just a crack. Just wide enough for a fat little creature to squeeze through if he really wanted to.

Warechu had never tried to leave before. He had everything he needed here. Food, shelter, a warm body to sleep on. But he was a mystery. A species unknown. And mysteries don’t stay put forever.

I leaned out the window. The alley was empty. The neighbor’s cat was sitting on a trash can, licking its paw. It looked at me with yellow eyes, then looked away.

“Hey,” I said. “Did you see a fat gray thing come through here?”

The cat didn’t answer. Cats never do.

I pulled my head back inside. The apartment felt smaller now. Bigger too. The silence was a different kind of silence, the kind that happens when something important is missing.

I sat down on the floor. Cross-legged. Staring at the open window.

I waited.