A while back, I was walking around Namba hopping from shop to shop with my hands full of shopping bags. A man around my age, maybe 30, was power-walking straight toward me from the opposite direction and ended up crashing right into the cardboard box I was carrying that had a kettle inside. I instinctively said, "I'm so sorry," and suddenly the guy collapsed onto the ground, shouting, "Ow! Ow! Why'd you run into me?! That's terrible!"
While I was standing there in shock, my partner (my boyfriend), who had been walking a little ahead of us, came back. Before he could even ask what was going on, the guy who had just been lying on the ground suddenly stood up and sprinted away without saying a word.
Whenever weird things like that happen, it really gets me down. I’m sure it really did hurt when he bumped into me, but it pisses me off thinking he only pulled that stunt because he thought I was walking alone. To just take off in complete silence the second my tall, sunglasses-wearing boyfriend showed up—come on, that's just low.
In everyday life, you occasionally run into weirdos who try to pick fights or hassle you. Whenever I've been targeted while walking alone, it’s genuinely terrifying; I end up apologizing profusely or desperately trying to run away just to get through it. But facing the reality that those incidents vanish like a lie—that they simply stop happening—just because a big, muscular guy is by my side made me feel a little envious of physically strong men. I want a huge body, too. I want to stride through the city without fearing a single thing.