Taketarino Yamaguchi and His Girlfriend’s Eyebrows

One of these days, I’ll say something

I’m Taketarino Yamaguchi from Shunkan Metal.

This was a long, long time ago, when I was dating a woman.

Pretty face, great figure, great personality. But there was one thing that bothered me.

Her eyebrows were thick—like a pop idol’s from ten years earlier.

Ever since we’d started dating, I’d been thinking, “One of these days, I’ll say something.”

So one night, we were, uh... getting intimate.

Afterward, I was in bed, smoking a cigarette—one of those things that turns your lungs black as coal tar—and I decided it was time. “Maybe I should bring up the eyebrows.”

“Do you take pride in your eyebrows?” I asked.

“Huh? Why? Not really.”

“Aren’t your eyebrows a bit thick?”

There. I’d finally said it. And she said, like it was no big deal, “Oh, really... I haven’t changed the way I do my makeup in about ten years.”

What a relief. That had gone more smoothly than I’d expected.

The next time I saw her was about two weeks later. Her eyebrows were slimmer and neatly shaped. They looked good.

“You look cuter that way. Good, good,” I said.

She smiled at me. “Let’s keep telling each other what we think, without holding anything back.” Then she turned around and walked off, her long hair swishing behind her.

And there, on the back of her head, was a round, coin-sized bald patch...

I thought, that must have really weighed on her.