?Interrobang! · Track 73 · middle

Paid or Real, If It Feels the Same

OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): mementos of a lost friendship — bracelets, inside jokes. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Real Friend Rachel — rent-a-friend from China; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: the jungle highlands beyond the Foja range. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Rachel is hired to fake friendship though she's a Real Friend; left mementos of a true lost friendship in the jungle highlands. What's the difference between paid and real, if it feels the same?

Lyrics

Found this in the Foja highlands.
Where the maps just stop.
A little box, wrapped in oilcloth, tucked under a fern root.
Your name wasn't on it, Rachel. Just the feeling.

Two woven bracelets. Blue and green. The threads are starting to fray at the knot.
A receipt from a tea house, dated 2019.
On the back, in your handwriting: 'The goose stole the good bread.'
An inside joke nobody else will ever get.
This was from before. Before your business card read 'Real Friend for Hire.'
Before the easy, paid-for laughter at a stranger's table.
This was the other kind.
The kind that costs nothing and everything.

And I have to ask you, Rachel.
What's the difference?
The hand you hold for an hourly rate...
The hand that used to fit yours without thinking.
The smile you practice in the mirror...
And the one in this photograph, cracked at the corners, that you didn't know was being captured.
What's the difference, when it's over? Paid or real, if it feels the same.

This one must have been hers. The other bracelet.
Did you make it on a long train ride?
Did you argue about the colors?
Your clients, they get the curated stories. The perfect listener for an afternoon.
They don't get the silence after a fight.
They don't get the shared look across a crowded room.
They don't get the weight of this little box, here in a jungle that has never been owned.

So I'm asking you, Rachel.
What's the difference?
The hand you hold for an hourly rate...
The hand that used to fit yours without thinking.
The smile you practice in the mirror...
And the one in this photograph, cracked at the corners, that you didn't know was being captured.
What's the difference, when it's over? Paid or real, if it feels the same.

You came to one of the last secret places on Earth.
A place so real it feels like a dream.
And you left the only proof.
That the real thing existed.
That the real thing can be lost.
The paid ones are easy. You just say goodbye.
How do you say goodbye to this?

The goose stole the good bread.
Was it paid for?
Or was it real?