Hiroshi built his wife in June.
Rainy season had just hit Tokyo. The air grew humid, almost cloying. Mirrors of light bathed the city streets. Subway floors glistened under soaked soles. Hydrangeas flooded residential areas, their bright blue petals bursting as the sky poured.
Hiroshi lives in the west of Shibuya, away from tourist traps and soaring skyscrapers. Secondhand shops and family-run restaurants line the winding roads of his suburb. On Sunday mornings, rain or shine, Hiroshi would visit his favorite coffee shop, spending an hour with a newspaper and a café au lait. He would then go home and watch replays of Yomiuri Giants matches until noon.
But for the first time in over ten years, on a stormy Sunday in June, Hiroshi stayed at home. He sipped on stale coffee that morning and watched raindrops scatter on his windowpane.
A more superstitious person would have scheduled the delivery for August, maybe September, for better weather — Hiroshi, however, did not have time for that. He had built his life around logic and routine, becoming the youngest manager of an international consulting firm at the age of thirty-one. A decade later, he still analyzed risks for a living, his days filled with corporate projects and client relationship meetings and countless other tasks no one wants to hear about.
Just before noon, two men in dark raincoats appeared at Hiroshi’s doorstep. They struggled in their slippery shoes, almost dropping his delivery on his feet. He had wondered if his
wife would come in several containers, but the box in his living room resembled an adult-sized coffin. One of the men asked him to sign a document. The other gave him an instruction manual.
Within a minute, they were gone.
Hiroshi’s wife arrived with seven identical outfits — one for each day of the week. Her body parts were individually sealed, their plastic bags labeled and color-coded. Her instruction manual provided detailed diagrams in twelve languages. Hiroshi lifted each part of his wife with care, only letting his mind wander once as he thought about the poorly built brides out there. Did their tongues twitch mid-speech? Did their eyeballs ever plop into their soup or roll off the dining table?
“You’ll be perfect,” Hiroshi told his half-assembled wife. He had started with her upper body. While holding her face, he recalled her profile in the mail-order bride catalog. Joy, 26, from the Philippines. Her smile captivated him — unlike the other women with seemingly fake grins, Joy laughed in her photograph. According to several online forums, her name meant “great delight and happiness.”
Hiroshi decided she would keep her name.
*
He had first considered purchasing a mail-order bride in February. At a tiny izakaya in Shinjuku, two colleagues joined him for ramen after work. They asked Ryu, who served as both bartender and chef, to thicken their broth with butter. Outside, people trekked through the winter air, white frost crunching beneath their feet.
Jiro and Will talked about their wives. Having nothing to say, Hiroshi slurped his soup. Swirled noodles and scallions around the steaming golden broth. Bit into braised pork, its salty fat melting in his mouth. Chewed on corn kernels, their tender sweetness unfurling on his tongue.
“Would you ever get one, Hiroshi?”
“What?” Hiroshi looked at Will. “Get what?” “A bride. From that website I mentioned.”
“You should consider it,” Jiro said. “I was thinking of getting a Russian bride at first, but my brother has one and won’t stop complaining about her. He says she just cooks borscht all day.”
“Where’s your wife from?” Will asked.
Jiro reached for his beer. “Vietnam. Took a few months for her to arrive, but it was worth it. Southeast Asians make the best kind of wife, all the forums say so. They’re submissive, obedient. More familiar with Asian culture, you know?” He turned to Hiroshi. “You should check out the website I used. If you don’t find a wife soon, you’ll probably end up dying alone.”
Hiroshi considered Jiro’s words. Throughout his adolescence, mail-order brides were uncommon. Virtual girlfriends, rental wives, midnight escorts — most adult men in Tokyo preferred them. But after Hiroshi graduated from his MBA program at the age of twenty-seven, body parts started appearing regularly on doorsteps around the city. They were flown in from countries he would visit on business trips many years later: Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, Colombia, Brazil, the Philippines. Soon enough, a few of Hiroshi’s neighbors ordered their own brides, and he could no longer identify the living wives from the assembled ones. Hiroshi’s cousin, who lived with his young bride in Osaka, suggested placing his ear on a woman’s chest.
Where there is no heartbeat, there is no life.
“Hiroshi,” Will said. “Are you still with us? Hello?”
Hiroshi blinked. He thought of telling his colleagues the truth. The truth is, I almost got married once. The truth is, I have a daughter in Nagoya who stopped answering my phone calls after her tenth birthday. No, nothing would change if anyone knew about his past. And nothing would change if he talked about his home, where a single toothbrush would stare back at him. Where he would flood his bedroom with voices, falling asleep to reruns of Friends. Maybe he needed someone who would wait up for him. Maybe he had grown tired of the silence in his living room, where he talked to himself — sometimes, he needed to hear his own voice, needed to ensure he was still alive, still real.
Sometimes, he watched the hands of cashiers, yearning to touch the skin of a stranger. “What’s the website?” he asked Jiro. “I’ll think about it.”
*
The Tokyo sky was an endless gray throughout September. By then, Hiroshi had settled into newlywed life. On weekdays, Joy stayed at home while he worked. On weekends, they cooked together and indulged in reality TV.
Hiroshi could no longer go to bed alone. Joy had ruined sleep for him — without the warmth of her skin, her limbs tangled with his beneath the sheets, he could watch the bedroom walls in flux, changing from dark to light and back again for an eternity. Sometimes, Hiroshi, always the first to wake up, would gaze at his wife. At her face partly submerged in her pillow, at the upward curve of her lips.
This is the highest form of trust, Hiroshi would think. To share a bed — naked, vulnerable — and believe the other person would never hurt you while you dream.
Whenever Hiroshi observed Joy, he would regret the past decade of detachment. Why would anyone choose solitude when life is better with someone by your side? He finally had someone to welcome him home. Someone who never let him work on an empty stomach, someone who thought of him at random times of the day. Someone who accepted him for who he was.
And he, in turn, accepted that this someone could never love him.
From the beginning, Jiro and Will had warned Hiroshi about falling in love with mail-order brides, created to serve, not feel. But Hiroshi would be fine — he knew that only idiots fall in love. He had cared for someone once, a fleeting fancy of youth, and he never wanted to suffer again.
Falling in love is a descent into madness, after all.
Hiroshi would have worried if his wife were a real person, for she remembered the little things. She knew he despised mushrooms and moth wings. Whenever he had a fever, she warmed up some porridge with a sprinkle of sugar. She set his alarm and charged his cell phone every single night. Before drifting off to sleep, she could spend hours spouting questions, asking about his earliest memories and his favorite childhood movies and all the song lyrics he knows by heart. She would even hint at meeting his family until the day he declared they were all dead.
The signs of someone in love were there, but Hiroshi knew better than that.
Whenever he doubted reality, he thought of his wife’s impeccable body. Whoever designed mail-order brides must have believed that men seek perfection, for Joy had no flaws. Her skin was a
smooth, taut canvas. Her hair behaved no matter the weather, and her clothes never creased. Hiroshi knew something so perfect could never be real.
Yet the first time they shared a bed, he almost forgot. Almost. In the dark, with their legs intertwined, Hiroshi could barely discern his wife’s face. He placed his hands beneath her shirt, seeking out her waist. His fingers trembled. He had traced the bodies of other women many times before, but it had been so long since the last time, so long that he did not know what to do with himself, and soon worry began trickling in, as it always does, when what was once so natural becomes forgotten.
“What do you want me to do?”
Hiroshi closed his eyes, unable to answer his wife. Other women had asked him the same question before, but he would never falter. He had the sudden urge to turn the lights on, to search for a ravenous gleam in his wife’s eyes, but he already knew what he would find.
Joy placed her palms on his neck. Slid them down his stomach, past his hips, until they reached his thighs. She repeated her question. Hiroshi knew what he would not, could not ask of her.
He rested his head on her silent chest. “Nothing,” he said. “Just hold me.”
*
By the end of November, golden ginkgo trees adorned the city. Hiroshi watched Joy marvel at the autumn leaves as they headed for Shinjuku, where they had a dinner reservation at the Park Hyatt
with Kota, Hiroshi’s childhood best friend. Joy had yet to meet other people or step inside a hotel
- or outside their apartment, for that matter — and sometimes, Hiroshi wondered how the world appeared through her eyes.
Three years had passed since Hiroshi last saw Kota. As they dined on creamy lobster bisque and buttery filet mignon, Hiroshi recognized the same boyish grin from their youth. But life in New York had aged his friend, carving lines on his forehead that time could never erase. To Kota’s left sat Hana, his Japanese American wife whom he met at a Trader Joe’s somewhere in Brooklyn.
“Not the most romantic story,” Hana declared. “How about you, Joy? How did you and Hiroshi meet?”
“Your husband hasn’t told you?” Joy asked.
Kota laughed. “Hiroshi and I don’t keep in touch very often. Whenever I try to contact him, I always get one-word replies. But that’s just how he’s always been, you probably know that. Everything’s fine once you hang out again in person — he proves he’s capable of uttering more than one sentence at a time.”
“That’s a sign of a strong friendship,” Hiroshi said.
“I know, I know. You always say that.” Kota smiled at Joy. “Can you believe he only told me about you a few days ago? I called to tell him my company transferred me, and he updated me on his life in five minutes.”
“How long will you be in Tokyo?” Joy asked.
“We’ll see. We just got here last week, but all I know is I’d rather die than go back to New York. I’m just glad Hana was willing to move with me. This is her first time in Japan, actually! Her parents are from Kyoto, but she was born in California –”
“No, no, my life story is so boring!” Hana turned to Joy. “Let’s talk about something more interesting. Tell us how you and Hiroshi met!”
“He built me,” Joy said. “Our first encounter was unromantic, much like yours.” “Sorry, what?” Hana’s eyes widened. “He built you?”
Joy looked at Hiroshi. “Have I said something wrong?”
“She’s a mail-order bride,” Kota told Hana. “He got her in June.”
“Oh!” Hana placed a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry! It’s just, you look so real!”
“It’s not just you,” Kota told Joy. “It took Hana a year to realize that one of our neighbors back in Chelsea was a mail-order.”
As Kota talked about a woman named Tatyana, Hiroshi watched Joy. For the first time, he noticed her frowning.
“It makes perfect sense, though,” Hana said, sipping the last of her wine. “Buying a bride, I mean. It’s just so hard to find the right person these days.” She glanced at their table’s third bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. “But I swear, if this is some elaborate prank and Joy isn’t actually fake, I’m going to murder everyone.”
“Do me first,” Kota said.
Hana sighed. “Who needs children when I have you as a husband?” She looked across their table. “Joy, tell us more about you! Kota told me Hiroshi works at a consulting firm here. Are you in a similar line of work?”
Hiroshi held his wife’s hand. “Joy’s unemployed. She stays at home while I’m at the office.”
“Don’t tell us that!” Kota said, reaching for his wine. “You’re planting ideas in my wife’s
head!”
Hana laughed. “It’s fine. Everyone knows I’ll paint at home all day once you finally become a CEO.” She smiled at Joy. “How about you, Joy? What’s your favorite hobby?”
Joy frowned. “What is a hobby?”
“Oh. Um, a hobby is something you do in your free time. You know, for fun.” “Hiroshi and I watch television together. Is that a hobby?”
“I’m not sure,” Hana said, glancing at Kota. “But I think traveling might be considered a hobby. Have you flown anywhere recently? Kota took me to Palawan for my birthday last month, and we went to this beautiful restaurant at the base of a waterfall. I don’t remember what it’s called, maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“I have never traveled around the Philippines for leisure. My parts were manufactured in Quezon City and shipped from Clark to Tokyo. But I can speak thirty-four languages fluently, including Filipino, English, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish, and I can prepare several of my country’s traditional dishes.”
“Oh, I love Filipino food!” Hana grinned at Hiroshi. “You’re a lucky man.”
Kota hiccuped. “Joy’s lucky too. Hiroshi’s one of the last good guys out there, and I swear I’m not just saying that because we’re friends. Joy, when there’s a spider in your house, what does he do? Does he open the window to let it out?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever seen him pour alcohol on ants?” “No.”
“Has he ever chased a mosquito in front of you?” “No.”
“See? He’s always been like that,” Kota slurred. “You could’ve had it much worse, you know. Imagine if you were married to someone who locked you up and abused you.”
“Kota,” Hana said, giving him a disapproving look. “Stop that.”
“What? It’s true. That’s why I don’t watch the news anymore, I mean, they just won’t stop reporting about the assaults.”
Hiroshi frowned. “What assaults?”
“You know, husbands beating up their fake wives. There used to be a few cases every year, but it’s gotten out of control recently. The last report I saw was about this guy in Nakano who tried to choke his wife to death, but that obviously wouldn’t have worked, so one day he got a gun from who knows where and shot her.”
“Kota!” Hana looked at Joy. “I’m so sorry, he doesn’t usually drink this much. It doesn’t seem like it, but he’s more of a lightweight than I am.”
“It’s okay,” Hiroshi said. “I know how he gets when he drinks.”
Hana took Kota’s empty wine glass. “Did you really have to say all those things? We’re still
eating.”
Hiroshi reached for the handkerchief in his pocket, then frowned at the foolish gesture. He forgot his wife could not cry.
Their server appeared a minute later, taking their plates and used cutlery. Hana declined another bottle of wine, asking for the dessert menu instead. While waiting for their server to return, Hiroshi asked Hana how often she painted.
“Not as much as I’d like,” she admitted. “But I used to paint almost every day when we still lived in New York. You should try it one day, Joy! It’s so fun.”
“I’d support that,” Hiroshi said. “I can convert the living room into a studio, and you can paint while I’m at work. What do you think?”
Joy blinked. “If that is what you want.”
“Wrong answer!” Kota pointed at Hiroshi. “Husbands are supposed to do what their wives say. So if you want something, just say it.”
“Okay,” Joy said. “I want to paint.”
Hana clapped. “Wonderful! Now you just need to decide on your subject matter.” “What should I be painting?” Joy asked.
“Anything you want,” Hana said. “But maybe something simple since you’re starting out.
And once you’re ready, you can try making a reproduction.”
“Like those paintings in that book I bought last week,” Hiroshi told Joy. “The one with the portraits.”
“Have you ever seen a reproduction in real life?” Hana asked her. “They’re replicas of original work. Like you.”
“Me?”
Hana nodded. “I’m a real woman, and you’re a copy. Probably of someone somewhere in the Philippines. Your manufacturer must have modeled you after a living person.”
Joy blinked. She looked around the table, then forced a smile. “Right,” she said. “I forget that sometimes.”
*
On the first day of February, snow covered the city. Fine white powder dusted rooftops and post boxes as tree branches sprouted silver leaves. After work, Hiroshi ate at Ryu’s izakaya, mesmerized by the steam curling up from his ramen. He then journeyed to Yoyogi Park, strolling behind a couple who shared a single umbrella. Somewhere above, the crows cawed into the winter air.
Hours later, when Hiroshi announced his return home, Joy did not greet him. She stood by the living room window, a paintbrush in hand, watching the snow fall. Hiroshi waited for his wife to notice him. After a minute passed, he coughed.
“How was your day, Joy?”
She looked at him. Or rather, she looked in his direction. But she did not see him, not the way she used to. Hiroshi thought of their first night in bed, a time when she had been so attentive. She had listened to his every word, even in the darkness.
“Did you finish that painting?” Hiroshi asked. “The one with the birds?” Joy nodded.
“Come here.” Hiroshi sat on the couch, and his wife followed. “Tell me about your day.” “Every day is the same for me.”
“I know,” Hiroshi said, placing his head on her shoulder. “But maybe you did something a bit different today. Did you start another painting?”
“No. After I did the laundry, I prepared dinner, and then I stood over there to watch the snow. I plan on painting more birds tomorrow.”
“That’s nice.” Hiroshi looked at his wife. She ran her fingers through his hair, staring at the front door as they spoke.
“It must be beautiful outside,” she said. “Can we go out tomorrow?”
Hiroshi sighed. “We’ve talked about this, Joy.”
“I know. But I need inspiration. I paint the same things all the time.”
“That’s why I buy you books,” Hiroshi said, sitting up. “It’s the same as going out.” Joy looked at him. “You are wrong.”
“How would you know?” “I just know.”
“What? Don’t say that, how could you even –”
“Fine, I do not know! I do not know anything! How could I? All I do is paint and wash your clothes and clean this house!”
“Why are you yelling at me?” “I am not!”
“You are! Do you even hear yourself?”
Joy placed a hand over her mouth. Her eyes widened, something Hiroshi had never seen before. “You, you are right. I am sorry I raised my voice, I, I just…”
As his wife stood and continued to speak, Hiroshi closed his eyes. His fingernails dug into the tender flesh of his palms. The image of a woman, broken and alone with a bullet in her chest, crossed his mind.
“Come here, Joy.” “No.”
Hiroshi opened his eyes. “Why do you sound like I’m going to hurt you?” Joy stared at him. As he stood to approach her, she took three steps back.
“I just want to hold you,” he said, wrapping his arms around her stiff body. “Can’t I hold my wife?”
Joy said nothing. For a moment, it was June again. Hiroshi held her, this fragile creature he had built with his own hands, and she embraced him in silence, deeply, almost ardently, like someone in love.
“Hiroshi,” she whispered. “Please, let me go. I am so lonely. Please.” Hiroshi looked at his wife. She met his gaze with empty eyes.
“Joy, you can’t say that. You don’t know what loneliness feels like.” “I am so lonely, Hiroshi.”
“Stop that! You can’t be lonely, I’m right here.” Hiroshi tightened his grip. “Do you know what’ll happen if I let you go outside? You’ll want to go out all the time, and then one day you’ll leave me or someone’ll try to take you away. Do you think I want that? You don’t know what my life was like before I married you.”
Joy closed her eyes. “Hiroshi, I am your wife, but I never ask you for anything. This is all I want. Please let me go. I promise I will not speak to anyone.”
“You can’t promise something like that –”
“Who will I speak to?” Joy asked, her voice rising again. “I have no friends out there. You are my only friend.”
Hiroshi looked away.
“Friends care about each other. Do you care about me?”
“I do,” Hiroshi said, still staring at the floor. “You know I do. And that’s why I can’t let you
leave.”
His wife kept on speaking, but he could no longer hear her. She moved her lips, forming words without sound, until he left the room.
*
Sometime in January, not long before their first and only fight, they talked about dreams. They had spent the day watching TV, and as they held each other in the night, Joy recalled their dinner in Shinjuku. Kota had mentioned his hopes of getting promoted, while Hana had said something about owning an art gallery, a dream that first blossomed in her teenage years.
“I didn’t know wives could have dreams,” Joy said. “But that changed after Hana mentioned hers.”
“Well, I don’t have any.” Hiroshi pulled Joy closer. He no longer aspired for anything — he had his job, his apartment, his savings account, and his wife. “There are better things I could do with my time than dream.”
“Hana asked if I have any,” Joy said. “Do you remember?”
Hiroshi frowned. “Sorry about that. She probably forgot you’re not human. Even I almost forget sometimes.”
Joy rested her head on his chest. Beneath skin and bone, his heartbeat echoed. “Well,” she said, “it must be beautiful to dream.”
*
At the height of spring in Tokyo, Hiroshi builds another wife.
Cherry blossom trees line gardens and canals, bursting into color almost overnight. Pale pink petals swirl in the air before drifting down like snow. Restaurants offer new menus, selling soft spring cabbage and tender bamboo shoots alongside sweet sakura mochi.
Hiroshi still lives in the west of Shibuya. He is still a manager at an international consulting firm, and a week ago, he celebrated his forty-second birthday. His new wife’s parts had not yet been delivered from the Philippines, so after work, he bought a convenience store cake and ate the whole thing by himself on his couch. He turned his TV on, drowning out the silence with the voices of strangers. He tried calling his daughter, as he does every year on his birthday, but she did not answer, as always.
Hiroshi takes the day off work to build his new wife. For a moment, as he sorts through various plastic bags, he remembers a distant Sunday morning in June. He remembers holding his first wife’s face in his hands — even before he built her, she was already smiling.
Hiroshi no longer looks for Joy. In his world, luck and fate do not exist, and assembled wives follow orders. Had he truly known Joy, he would have listened to her on that sunny day in early March, when she told him over breakfast that she would be gone before dinner. Had he paid more attention to the look in her eyes, maybe he would have never left for work. Maybe he would have given her what she wanted, and maybe she would have stayed.
But it is useless to think of what might have been. Joy’s husband did not know her at all.
