My flatmate, Nori

Nori! My first Otaku! I am the bane of your existence.

Your life is fluorescent lights and vinyl backpacks. Laminated notes and grunts are your voice. Rice cakes and electrical bills sustain you. You probably peer into computer hard drives wearing goggles and sleep on a digital bed. You have never smiled. When you were a baby you had fun eating grapes once. Occasionally, a grape delivery man brings a box to our house. Do you eat them? Do you have teeth? I've never seen them. When I fail to lock the door you draw a dot in my "mistakes" chart (Tokyo is not so safe anymore, as you once penned to me). Nori, my wordless, small-mouthed inventor, you show me what life can be.

Seven months have passed us quickly by. I will carry the glow of your monitor screen in my sunny heart forever, locking every door I see and putting irons back into the cupboard the moment they are cool. Cleanliness is beauty. Beauty is godliness. God lives in your computer and Nori will coax him out. Nori fixes dinner for God and they enjoy it alone together in Nori's room. Nori has to look professional at his professional job in his bedroom, so he does laundry three times a week.

Nori is one of the reasons I am moving across town. His relationship with God makes me uncomfortable. I don't know what they're doing next door to my bedroom, but they do it in silence for seemingly endless stretches of time. I heard Nori cough once and it startled me. Suddenly, I knew that "Nori and God can surely hear me when I so much as turn the page..."