(UPDATED ON APRIL 28, 2026)

you’re twenty, married, and already regretting ninety percent of your life choices. riki, your golden retriever of a husband, is all sunshine and long legs and arms, a walking smile who somehow makes carrying trash bags look like a calvin klein ad. and you — well, you’re just the demon girl who married him.

the gated community, ironically, does not keep the chaos out. if anything, it traps it in, like a cursed jar filled with gossipy old japanese women and their limp-noodle husbands who haven’t done anything useful since the bubble economy popped. you and riki move in on a thursday, barely unload your rice cooker before the neighborhood coven is already circling.

they watch from behind lace curtains, eyes gleaming like they’ve been waiting for this drama all year. by friday morning, riki’s outside fixing mrs. takahashi’s mailbox — she broke it backing into it for the third time this week — and she’s gripping his forearm like it’s a lifeline. she’s seventy-six, twice widowed, and absolutely shameless. her lipstick is coral and smeared like war paint.

“so strong, ne, riki-chan?” she purrs. her voice sounds like gravel and menthols.

you’re standing there, holding your fourth iced coffee of the day, glaring over the rim of your straw like you’re willing her to combust on sight.

“you married a yankee girl, huh?” mrs. fujimoto giggles from her lawn, pruning already-dead hydrangeas. “she looks scary. the eyebrows!”

“i like her eyebrows,” riki says, not even blinking, like he doesn’t realize they’re ready to toss a salt circle around you.

by sunday, they’ve formed a committee about you. the whispers travel faster than fiber optic. you drink too much bubble tea. your skirts are too short. you said “fuck” at the mailbox once and now little daisuke won’t stop saying it to his goldfish.

meanwhile, riki’s been recruited as the official handyman. one day he’s hanging curtains for mrs. watanabe, the next he’s crawling under mrs. kojima’s sink, and the whole time they’re trying to feed him daifuku and pat his ass like he’s on the market.

you? you get death stares and stale mochi.

“i think mrs. abe tried to grab my butt today,” riki says casually, folding laundry like he didn’t just drop a domestic horror story on you.

you blink. “what did you do?”

“told her my wife would kill her.”

“good answer.”

“she laughed.”

you scream into a pillow.

it doesn’t help that riki keeps smiling at them. he’s polite, helpful, completely incapable of saying no to free food or old women. they ask if you even cook. you don’t. they ask if you even clean. you definitely don’t. one time they saw you throw a slipper at a crow and now they think you’re a witch.

you kind of like it.

soon, you start dressing weirder on purpose. darker lipstick, eyeliner sharp enough to cut glass. you wave at them like a queen of hell when you pass by. they flinch. except mrs. takahashi, who winks. disgusting.

you and riki sit on your tiny balcony every evening with canned chu-hi, watching the neighborhood unravel itself. mrs. fujimoto’s husband finally snapped and tried to run away on a bicycle. mrs. abe installed hidden cameras. someone left a headless tanuki statue on your porch. just another tuesday.

and still, every day, riki smiles like none of it matters. because in this clown circus of pension checks and passive-aggressive pickled vegetables, you and him are the only ones who are young, in love, and insane enough to enjoy it.

you sip your drink, flip off the gossip line of old ladies watching from across the street, and grin.

home sweet fucking home.