If I told you I was okay, would you believe me?
Here, in the catacombs of anonymity, I have found peace, sanity and safety.
The first slap, a lover’s jealousy; the second, a husband’s right. By the time I ran, my body was a ravaged battleground. Overnight, the yonige-ya promised. They delivered too. But ten years planning escape hardly qualifies as overnight.
Today I live as a ghost, in a place scrubbed out on the maps. Johatsu, evaporated people of Japan, they call us. Poof! Gone, vanished, disappeared.
Does anyone care where?
Perhaps it’s best they don’t.
