{Photograph} by Angie Sijun Lou.
Within the opening scene of Angie Sijun Lou’s brief story, “Bubble,” which seems in our latest Fall subject, no. 257, the narrator goes along with her father to a parent-teacher convention—an intervention of kinds, concerning the truth that the unnamed sixth-grader “had spoken fewer than thirty phrases over the previous educational 12 months.” Through the convention, as her instructor threatens to carry her again barring higher socialization, the lady performs with a Tamagotchi Angel—a high-maintenance, limited-edition digital pet which, because it occurs, was additionally based mostly on a toy Lou obtained in actual life.
December 25, 2025
Yesterday, my boyfriend and I went to Don Quijote in Shibuya, a twenty-four-hour, eight-floor mega low cost retailer. We obtained separated in its mazelike aisles and floor-to-ceiling shows. I thought of shopping for a samurai sword, an epilator, matcha-flavored potato chips, lychee jelly cubes, and a Kuromi key chain, however in the long run, I purchased nothing.
This morning, I gave him his current, a darkish brown sweater with vertical stripes that I purchased in New York. He rigorously eliminated the wrapping paper, then made me go away the room. He hadn’t identified we’d be exchanging presents and reused the paper to wrap the last-minute current he’d gotten for me.
After I opened it, I noticed he will need to have picked it out on the Don Quijote whereas I’d been distracted by the lights and the sounds. It was a Tamagotchi Angel, with a pair of wings painted on its glitter case.
December 27
My boyfriend learn the Wikipedia web page concerning the gameplay out loud to me whereas we had been driving to Mount Aso. After a Tamagotchi dies, her spirit will get trapped in limbo. The participant is tasked with elevating the Tamagotchi within the afterlife till she is able to be a part of the league of angels in heaven. If I did a great job, she would flip right into a chestnut angel, a smiling angel, a chubby angel, or a cactus angel. If I did a foul job, she would flip right into a demon spirit and descend to hell.
I rolled the home windows down as we drove by means of a sulfurous cloud on the summit. A gaggle of schoolgirls counted down earlier than leaping within the air for a photograph. From my angle, it regarded as if the women had been rising straight from the volcanic crater, the ribbons round their necks fluttering within the mist.
I need to identify my Tamagotchi after a biblical angel, however I can’t determine if she’s a Gabriel or a Uriel.
{Photograph} by Angie Sijun Lou.
December 29
In Fukuoka, we stayed at a finances lodge chain geared towards Japanese businessmen. The attendant wouldn’t enable me into the spa due to my tattoos, so I waited till the nighttime earlier than sneaking in to wash in whole darkness.
I really feel hopeful concerning the coming 12 months. I need to eat extra greens, reply to my emails in a well timed method, get up at dawn to journal and train, and commit myself to one thing exterior to me. Day-after-day, I’ll practice my Tamagotchi to leap over stars, feed her pie and sweet, clear her poop, and switch the lights off at bedtime. Day-after-day, her metrics will enhance: Angel Energy, Starvation, and Happiness.
There’s additionally an choice to Self-discipline her, which I pressed as soon as, as an experiment. It made her lose one Pleased coronary heart, and I observed that she doesn’t beep as a lot as she used to.
January 1
On New 12 months’s Eve, we went to a Shinto shrine inside a cave on the coast of Kyushu. We arrived fifteen minutes earlier than the gates closed. I believed we had been going to get locked inside in a single day as a result of my boyfriend was taking too lengthy attempting to purchase a Coca-Cola from the merchandising machine.
The one individual manning the shrine was a monk promoting saltwater taffy from a dimly lit sales space. The signal stated that the taffy was produced from water gathered from a breast-shaped stone contained in the cave. In keeping with Japanese mythology, the ocean goddess Toyotama-hime needed to return to the ocean after giving beginning. She hooked up her breasts to the cave wall in order that her youngster may proceed to be nourished by the water dripping from them.
I purchased the taffy and ate it, then washed it down with a sip of Coke. I used to be having fun with the fizzy mixture when my Tamagotchi let loose a piercing shriek, reminding me to offer her sweet too.
January 6
I obtained again to New York this afternoon and discovered that the warmth in my constructing has been damaged since Christmas. My landlord retains shuffling round within the basement, watching YouTube movies on repair a boiler. I walked to the grocery retailer with my hair moist from the bathe, and by the point I got here again, the strands had frozen into icicles.
My Tamagotchi looks as if she is changing into extra excessive upkeep than she was earlier than, possibly as a result of she’s advanced right into a teenage angel. She has a spherical physique, 4 legs, and puffy purple lips for pouting at me. Yesterday, my boyfriend opened up her stats and regarded shocked by how occasionally I had been feeding her since we returned.
I already gave her pie final week, I stated. I don’t get why I’ve to do it once more.
The following morning, he despatched me a screenshot of Google’s AI response to the query, Can I feed my Tamagotchi solely as soon as?
January 8
It’s too simple to have delusions of grandeur simply earlier than the beginning of a brand new 12 months. It’s solely the second week of January, and I’ve already observed fewer joggers flailing down the streets.
I went to go to my brother yesterday afternoon. I attempted to inform him about our journey, however he was busy fussing over his cat, pureeing her meals with a Nutribullet. She coughed up a hair ball, and he went to the pc and logged it on an Excel spreadsheet. My brother does every little thing with an intense, quasi-religious devotion, and that is why he has a million {dollars} in cryptocurrency and I don’t.
I woke as much as a sequence of high-pitched beeps in the course of the night time. I believed that my carbon monoxide alarm was going off till I noticed that my brother had turned up the amount on my Tamagotchi after I wasn’t wanting. I ponder if he and my boyfriend are in a conspiracy in opposition to me, and this machine is meant to show me a lesson the way in which {that a} excessive schooler may get assigned to deal with an egg in house economics.
I pressed the Self-discipline button till my Tamagotchi misplaced all of her hearts, after which I buried her within the folds of my sofa.
January 11
Now that I’ve my brother’s infrared house heater, there may be nothing left for me out on the planet. On Saturday night time, I barricaded myself in my room with a cup of tea and a set of tales by Pleasure Williams, ready for the heat.
The story I appreciated essentially the most was about an aged lady who’s visited by a mysterious lady. As the girl struggles to tell apart between reminiscence and dream, the reader realizes that the girl is nearing the tip of her life, and the lady she has been conversing with might or will not be a figment of her creativeness.
The lady tells the lady concerning the final time she felt anchored in consensus actuality: when she rode her childhood pet, a black horse named Abdiel, up and down a grassy hill subsequent to her home. Like Tolstoy’s horse, Abdiel’s flesh rippled as if grazed by an unseen hand.
He was so actual, such a dwelling pressure, she says.
January 14
After I woke within the morning, I believed my room regarded brighter than normal, after which I noticed that the magnolia tree exterior my window had an inch of snow balanced on its branches. I can’t bear in mind after I final noticed snow so pristine. My first thought was, I need to go exterior and break it.
In Sundown Park, my boyfriend and I watched youngsters barrel down the slope on items of cardboard, making snow angels within the locations the place they fell. I informed him concerning the a part of the Pleasure Williams story when the aged lady remembers sledding down a snowy hill on a carton that after held gallon jugs of maple syrup.
Abdiel is the one seraph in Paradise Misplaced to denounce Devil after studying about his plan to incite a revolt among the many angels. Among the many faithless, Milton writes, trustworthy solely he.
I took my Tamagotchi out from beneath the cushions after I obtained house that night time. I attempted to think about the way it may really feel to be on the mercy of somebody who doesn’t communicate my language. I’d need that individual to be as attentive as attainable, to acknowledge that every of my beeps means one thing completely different, even when they sound the identical.
January 18
I had simply completed wiping my Tamagotchi’s butt when she made a celestial sound. The display froze, and her picture flickered. I believed that her last type was going to be a chubby angel due to all of the sweet I’d been giving her, however that’s not what she advanced into.
After doing a deep dive on the Tamagotchi Wiki, I realized that the faceless Fortunate Unchi-Kun is the rarest evolution. Fashioned out of stardust and different angels’ poop, she is pictured as a glittering turd. As a result of she has no legs, she rides across the heavens on a small cloud. A Tamagotchi will evolve right into a Fortunate Unchi-Kun provided that its proprietor makes quite a few care errors however not sufficient to show her right into a demon spirit.
Regardless of being faceless, my pile of poop nonetheless managed to shed a small tear as she waved goodbye.
Goodbye, Abdiel, I stated, naming her as she disappeared right into a beam of sunshine.
Angie Sijun Lou’s tales have appeared in BOMB, ZYZZYVA, Joyland, and Fence. She is at work on a novel.
