Fantasy Girlfriend Diary | If Mei Miyajima Worked at an Apparel Shop

The sound of fabric rustling woke me.

I lifted my head from the sofa just in time to see her, kneeling on the floor, folding the shirt I’d left crumpled the night before. Both sleeves folded inward, the body folded into thirds, then a gentle press of her palm against the top to release the air. The finished shirt had become a perfect rectangle, like when it came from the store. It bore no resemblance to the memory of tossing it aside.

“Oh, you’re up.”

She said it without looking at me. Her hands were already reaching for the next piece. My hoodie. Clothes with hoods always made her pause slightly. She tilted the hood to rest against the back, set the angle, then folded according to her calculation. Three seconds of consideration, then steady fingers.

Even on her day off, she was up before seven. On work days, six-thirty. Only thirty minutes difference. Her body clock hadn’t adjusted to rest yet. The curtains were already open, and three neat stacks of folded clothes sat on the low table. Mine, hers, the load for washing. The corners of each stack were perfectly aligned.

The kitchen held the scent of coffee, with a faint undertone of hand cream—something with shea butter, a touch too sweet. Her fingertips were always rough, cracked around the edges. “It comes with the job,” she’d say, and nothing more. She’d count off on her fingers once, describing how she opened boxes, used steam, touched fabric all day long. Her fingerprints had become shallow from the wear, so shallow that in winter, her phone’s recognition wouldn’t unlock.

She reached for a mug in the cabinet and pulled a small step stool closer. Rising on her toes, still not quite high enough, she stepped up. Her back stretched into the morning light, and she pulled down what turned out to be the mug I always used, the one I’d left behind. She set it on the counter ahead of her own, then stepped down. One hand steadied itself on my shoulder as she descended.

“Your bedhead’s amazing,” she said as she poured the coffee, with no intention of helping fix it.

“Where are we going today?”

---

The shopping district was a fifteen-minute walk.

In casual clothes, she wore an oversized T-shirt with dropped shoulders and jeans. If someone who’d only ever seen her at work caught sight of her now, they probably wouldn’t recognize her. Her stride was small, so when I walked at my normal pace, I’d gradually pull ahead by half a step. She didn’t quicken to catch up. She maintained her rhythm until I slowed to match hers.

Saturday mornings brought crowds. The radio from the vegetable stand, the exhaust fan from the yakitori place, the sweet smell from the bakery. In front of the bakery, she slowed slightly, read all the hand-written signs for new items, then walked right past. On days when she’d decided to drink tonight, she skipped sweets during the day. That was how she kept score.

At a red light, she stepped into the shadow just behind me. Summer retail work was a battle against sunburn, or so I’d heard. She never carried an umbrella—didn’t like having her hands full. Instead, she’d developed the habit of moving from shadow to shadow wherever she walked.

She stopped completely at the window of a vintage shop.

She stared at the mannequin dressed in an ordinary shirt. To me, it looked like any other dressed figure. But her gaze was fixed on the area behind the mannequin’s armpit.

“It’s pinched in the back. The waist.”

I walked around to look, and sure enough, the shirt’s back seam was held together with a clip like a clothespin. That was how the silhouette from the front was created.

“Huh.”

“We do the same thing. Just less obviously.”

She started walking again. A few steps later, her hand found my sleeve cuff, and she pinched the fabric between her thumb and index finger, rubbing twice.

“This has polyester in it. About sixty percent.”

“I didn’t know. How can you tell just by touching?”

“You get a feel for it. Dries fast, but it’s hot in summer.”

“Would cotton be better?”

“Cotton feels nicer to wear, but it wrinkles and shrinks. Both have their place. It’s just about the use.”

That was how she explained things to customers. She didn’t seem to notice she was doing it. Her hands traveled from my sleeve cuff down to my hand, and her work-mode fingers became her day-off fingers.

---

Inside the vintage shop, the air smelled like dried dust mixed with fabric softener.

Just inside the entrance, her eyes made a quick survey of the interior. The shelf arrangement, the rack heights, the register position. A three-second glance that was neither assessment nor greeting—just her taking in the space. Only after that did she shift into customer mode and start walking deeper in.

She stood in front of a clothing rack and began sliding hangers from left to right, one at a time, with a steady rhythm. Shh, shh, shh. Her eyes seemed to skim over the fabrics, but occasionally the rhythm would break and she’d pull a single piece, hold it against her body for two seconds, then return it. When she returned it, the spacing between the hangers was adjusted by exactly a finger’s width. Probably unconscious. This wasn’t her shop.

“Does looking at vintage clothes tire you out?” I asked.

“Yeah. Since every piece is one of a kind, if you miss something, that’s it. There’s no coming back.”

She kept browsing as she spoke, sounding almost like she was having fun.

Halfway through the third rack, her hand stopped.

“This.”

She’d pulled out a faded green open-collar shirt. She held it against my shoulders and stepped back. Something had shifted in her eyes. Not the playful look from this morning on the step stool. Her gaze was measuring—my shoulders, my neck, my complexion, taking in each in turn. The eyes of someone who saw the person beneath the clothes.

“It brightens your face. Try it on.”

It wasn’t a suggestion.

In the fitting room, I buttoned the shirt while facing the mirror and hesitated slightly. I’d never chosen green before. I had no idea what to say if it didn’t work. Through the curtain, I could hear her voice talking with the shop staff. Opening a wash-care tag, checking something, both of them laughing. Fragments drifted through—something about gauze-like fabric, about being washable at home, about water-treatment. A shared language with someone she’d just met. Words from a world I didn’t inhabit. Her world, one I couldn’t enter.

When I pulled the curtain open, their conversation stopped, and both sets of eyes turned to me. She looked me over from top to bottom, then nodded once. The shop staff nodded too.

“See. Just like I said.”

In the mirror, I did look healthier, more flushed than usual. I reached for the price tag, but she turned it over first and went quiet for a moment.

”…Much as it pains me to say it, that’s a fair price.”

I didn’t ask which pain she meant.

While I waited in line at the register, she held a denim jacket up to herself. At the mirror, the sleeves fell to her knuckles. With practiced hands, she rolled the cuffs once, adjusted the collar, and stood there for just two seconds. Her fingers traced the shoulder line, measuring something, then she silently hung it back on the rack.

“That one works for you,” I said.

“The sleeves need hemming. The question is whether I want it badly enough to bother having it altered.”

She was talking about choosing clothes, but depending on how you heard it, it sounded like something else. Her clothes shopping always came with extra hoops to jump through because of her height. The way she sized up an outfit for her customers so quickly—maybe that speed came from jumping through those hoops every time.

While she paid, she gazed at a jumble of buttons in a tray by the register. By the time I’d put my wallet away, she’d already straightened the hangers on the rack she’d disturbed earlier, spacing them evenly with her three fingers as a guide.

Leaving the shop, she took the paper bag from me and gripped the handles at their base—a hold that kept the bag shut, kept the clothes still inside. After a few steps, she seemed to realize what she was doing and silently handed it back.

---

We went to a small set-meal restaurant in the shopping district for lunch.

It was a narrow place with just a counter, and a horse-racing broadcast played on the TV overhead. She stood in front of the ticket machine, hesitated for three seconds, then pressed the button for ginger pork with extra-large rice. Always amazed where it all fit in her small frame.

She had a fixed eating order: first half of the shredded cabbage, then the meat, then rice, then the rest of the cabbage. She’d read that method somewhere once. She stuck to it for about the first three bites, then everything just mixed together after that. When I pointed this out, she got annoyed, so I stopped mentioning it.

She finished at the same pace as me, and while drinking her water after the meal, she kept staring at the used-book shop across the street. After confirming where her gaze had landed, I walked straight over without asking.

In the manga section, she stood sideways to the shelf and pulled out a single volume. I picked a random one and opened it beside her.

Our reading speed was completely different.

By the time I’d finished the first chapter, she’d already gone back to the shelves three times for the next volumes. It wasn’t skimming. Her eyes moved top to bottom, diagonal across the frames, catching and moving on. The rhythm was mechanical in its speed. Occasionally she’d stop, flip back two or three pages to check something, then continue. She wasn’t skipping anything.

“Are you actually reading?” I asked.

“Yeah. The childhood friend loses in this volume.”

“Already? You’ve gotten that far?”

“Those two probably won’t end up together. The author’s patterns make it obvious.”

I blocked my ears with the book before she could spoil more. She laughed out loud. The shop owner glanced over, she covered her mouth, and her shoulders kept shaking. In the narrow aisle between shelves, only her shoulders trembled.

In the end, she bought volumes one through three of the series I’d been reading. Fast readers make fast purchase decisions. Three books from the hundred-yen shelf for three hundred yen total. As she took coins from her wallet, she said, “Leave the rest at my place, I don’t mind,” so those three volumes would be living in her apartment until I finished reading.

---

Evening at the supermarket was crowded.

She’d been the one to suggest drinking at home. By the time we left the shopping district, the way she walked made it clear she’d lost interest in eating out.

Choosing snacks was serious business. Thirty seconds deliberating between fish cake and cheese, fifteen seconds between umeboshi-flavored rice crackers and regular. She only grabbed the half-price edamame without hesitation. Two cans of lemon sour, four cans of beer. The cans clinked in the cart.

“Isn’t that too much?” I said.

“We’re drinking. It’s my day off.”

In the baking supplies aisle, she added unsalted butter and cake flour to the cart. Before I could ask, she said, “I’ll want something sweet at midnight, so I’m making it now.” We hadn’t even started drinking yet, but her midnight behavior was already decided. The order seemed backward, but somehow it made sense to her.

At the bagging station, she unloaded everything from the basket, arranged it by size, then repacked carefully. Heavy items on bottom, cans standing upright, edamame next to the ice pack. Nothing moved inside. The same hands that had held the paper bag at the shop, hands that knew how to carry things without shifting.

The store BGM shifted to old pop music. Her heels began tapping softly to the rhythm as she pushed the cart. She didn’t seem aware of it. By the time we reached the checkout line, her toes were keeping perfect time. She’d danced until high school, I’d heard once. The beat still lived in her body.

---

There was a ritual before drinking.

Every snack went into a small dish. The rice crackers in a deep bowl, the cheese on a flat plate, the fish cake cut and served with mayonnaise. I’d always thought eating straight from the bag made sense, but she’d say “because it’s my day off” and wouldn’t budge. Only after she’d arranged a tiny izakaya on the low table did her hand reach for a beer.

The first can was empty in ten minutes.

She had a quiet, fast drinking style. No pouring into a glass, just the can itself, steady pace. Not the type to make noise with her throat. Slow and constant, unstoppable. She’d lift the can sometimes to check how much was left. The redness came to her cheeks starting from the second can, and her laugh threshold dropped with each new one.

“So this senior at work, right, in a meeting…”

It was a pointless story from my job. Barely even a punchline. But she set the can on the table, buried half her face in a cushion, and laughed. She had two different laughs. The first was a high sound, then as her breath ran out, it became silent, shoulders shaking alone. The silent version lasted longer.

“Do you really laugh that hard at things?” I asked.

“But like…”

The rest didn’t come. She wiped her eyes with a finger, still shaking.

The second story was worse. It was just about buying an umbrella at a convenience store and the rain stopping before I even left the bag. This time she went straight to the silent laugh, skipping the first sound entirely. Her shoulders shook first, then the rest. She grabbed the edge of the table, and I could only hear her breathing.

“It’s not that funny,” I said.

“You carried the umbrella home still in the bag, though. I just pictured that…”

She dissolved again. The TV had been turned off at some point, and soft music played from her phone. In the silence between songs, her laugh resonated. That was all the sound in the room.

She opened the second lemon sour, took the first sip, and foam beaded on her upper lip. On the plump curve of her mouth, the drops caught light, and her tongue absently wiped them away. She noticed I’d been watching and laughed. “What?” I answered with nothing and opened my own can.

Her feet came up onto the sofa, one leg resting on my knee. Her socks didn’t match—navy solid on one side, gray striped on the other. The same person who could lecture about the propriety and purpose of clothes wore whatever was easiest to herself. The version that stood at work was probably never this casual, probably holding the most comfortable posture possible.

The song on her phone suddenly shifted to something uptempo. For just a moment her eyes opened, and while holding the can, her upper body began following the beat. Her shoulders moved first, then her neck. Dancing while seated.

“A song from when you danced?” I asked.

“Yeah. We used it in the recital. I still remember all the choreography.”

Show me, I said. “Can’t, I’m drunk,” she answered immediately, but her shoulders kept moving anyway. Just once, during the chorus, both hands stopped at precise angles. Just the first move of choreography from years ago, burned into her body. Then, self-conscious, her hands went back to the can.

“I feel like I’m drinking tomorrow’s share too,” she said.

“Is tomorrow off for you?”

“Yeah. Two days off. Miracle.”

She raised the can, toasting alone. She’d been working for six years. Getting two days off was something worth celebrating. She’d had very few Saturdays and Sundays off since we’d been together.

“Maybe this is when I’m most myself,” she said, almost to herself.

This way of drinking, this way of laughing—probably only I knew them. Feeling the weight of her leg on my knee, I thought that might be true.

---

After eleven, she suddenly stood up.

“Making cookies.”

She declared it and went to the kitchen. The unsalted butter went into a bowl and a whisk started turning. No recipe consulted. Sugar went in straight from the bag, measured by eye. When I asked if that was right, she said, “My hands remember,” and I heard the whisk go shh, shh, shh, with steady rhythm. I’d heard that sound before—at the vintage shop with the hangers.

She pressed the oven preheating button without even glancing at the temperature display. One-seventy. A number she’d pressed hundreds of times. She didn’t refrigerate the dough. “Midnight snacks need to be done by midnight,” she said, or they don’t make sense. The baking books would scold her for this method, which she knew full well. But knowing it, she did it anyway. That’s how her kitchen’s cookies were made.

Even drunk, her hands shaped the dough with precision. Circles of equal size appeared at equal intervals on the baking sheet. The same habit as adjusting hanger spacing, I realized, and had to smile.

“What are you laughing at?”

“The way you arrange things is so work-like.”

“No work talk on my day off.”

The oven door closed, its interior light casting orange across her profile. She crouched down, hugged her knees, and peered through the glass at the dough rising. The light in her eyes watching the cookies was serious, not on some mannequin or rack, just plain focus on baking cookies.

She stood as the heat rose, returned to me, and picked up the last lemon sour. A little hum started, a tune I didn’t recognize. Her hips swayed in the same rhythm as the supermarket, following the song.

The smell of butter baking began filling the room. Her head rested on my shoulder. Shampoo scent and toasting butter mixed. The weight grew gradually heavier.

---

I stopped the timer before it went off.

The weight on my shoulder had increased. The rhythm of her breathing. The manga collection she’d been reading was open on her chest, rising and falling with each breath. I slipped my shoulder free and slid a cushion under her head.

In front of the oven, I watched the timer display and opened the door just before zero. Heat hit my face. On the baking sheet, circles the same size as before, edges just slightly darker, spaced perfectly even, had finished baking.

I moved them to a plate to cool. Breaking one in half, the inside was still a touch soft. I understood then what she’d meant about wanting something sweet at midnight—the smell alone was explanation.

The sound of the last train passed outside the kitchen window.

She still rocked slightly on the sofa. Maybe something in her dreams made her laugh. Her mismatched-sock feet stuck out past the cushion. The tiny izakaya on the table had emptied completely except for one bowl of rice crackers picked clean.

I took just one cookie from the plate and set it next to her phone where she’d see it first when she woke.

Outside the window, the lights of the shopping district went dark one by one.

Story Notes

Halfway through, I wrote, “This way of drinking, this way of laughing—probably only I knew them.”

It was a lie. There’s one film where she shows it all.

The title says it plainly: “Mei, Fully Off-Duty, Drinks Well and Laughs Well.” It’s about stripping away all the staged performance and capturing Mei in a slightly tipsy, completely unguarded state. That’s the moment I described in scene six—cheeks flushed, laughter threshold dropping, a high laugh followed by silent shoulder shakes. The title promises exactly that time. The fantasy was only on my side; her being someone who drinks well and laughs well was something the studio confirmed on camera.

And since the title continues, “Fully Defenseless and Lewdly Lustful,” the continuation I didn’t write in the story is what this film delivers instead. The reviews show perfect scores. If sample footage is available, start with just her voice while drinking—compare it to the laughing I described in the story. You can verify the accuracy right there.

Note: Product information is displayed in Japanese.