Reiko

The worst part of being immortal is the memories. Not the ones you keep, but the ones you lose. I remember the last man I killed but I don't remember the first. I remember how a bowl of noodles tasted in Kyoto eight hundred years ago but I can't remember my own phone number. I've been gone from Japan a century but it still lives within me, crowded cities whispering, pennants fluttering in the breeze.

The familiar hunger stirs. Even if I tried to forget it, it won't let me.

Tonight I will run, hungry ghost fox, woman-shaped, among the unsuspecting gaijin. They will love me, and I will drink their lives, and consider it a fair trade.

Come morning, I will not remember their faces.

But in their dreams, for the rest of their lives that flicker out like lightbulbs after lightning strikes, they will remember mine. I pay for what I take with the coin of knowledge that for one hour, they were chosen by something immortal.

The sun is setting. Tonight, others will remember what I cannot.

It is a small, cold comfort, as I kneel here in my rooftop garden, trying to recall my name.