Tokyo Love

by Diana Jean

  “I’m sorry, I’m just not … ready right now,” Kathleen murmured, unsure of what to say.

  Ayame nodded and settled back in her seat. “That’s all right. Recent breakup or something like that?”

  Kathleen sighed, looking back out the window to the snowy mountains. “Yeah, something like that.”

  She checked her wrist, finding only the usual updates from Hama-chan. She flipped through it, to yesterday, the day before that. All the way to over a month ago.

  Kathleen: I’ll be leaving with Mashida’s PR team soon. Do you want to hang out? Share a beer?

  Yuriko: Sorry. I’m very busy atm.

  Then, a week into Kathleen’s tour.

  Visiting the castle at Nagoya. I didn’t realize that Japan had castles. Also, I just might live here instead of the shrines in Nikko.

  No response.

  The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is beautiful and depressing. I’m almost glad I lost the rest of the group so I have some time alone.

  No response.

  I’m glad I don’t ever have to say much in these meetings and seminars. When I do, everyone is very friendly and don’t expect much anyway. Haha.

  That was two weeks ago and Kathleen knew she should probably stop. She couldn’t help it. She would see something amazing or try something new and she immediately thought that she could tell Yuriko. When she managed to order her own beer at a restaurant, she nearly called Yuriko. When she made her first presentation and it wasn’t a total disaster, she wanted to talk to Yuriko. When she saw the ocean or the mountains, she wanted to show it to Yuriko.

  She tried to confide in Mitsu-chan once.

  “She is just busy, da ne? I hear it is crazy back in Tokyo.”

  “Have you been talking to her?”

  “Mochiron! Otherwise I would sound like an idiot whenever someone asks me a question.”

  Kathleen paused, cradling her beer. It had gone warm. “Is she doing well?”

  Mitsu-chan gave her a weird look. “She is just giving me technical information.” She sighed. “Ahh, I wish she had come. But she turned it down and recommended me. She said she didn’t like doing interviews or presentations.” She grinned. “It is because I am so kawaii, deshō?”

  Kathleen forced a small. “Definitely.”

  Yuriko had turned down representing Mashida? Was it because she wasn’t comfortable with all the vid calls and seminars they were attending? Or was it because Kathleen was here? Did she truly want all ties cut? Would she move from the company housing?

  Kathleen had the sudden inexplicable urge to call Ai and ask if Yuriko was still there. That was ridiculous; no one was at Kathleen’s apartment, certainly not Ai. Ai was in Kathleen’s briefcase.

  It was the middle of the night. On yet another shinkansen, but this time they were heading back to Tokyo. It had felt like ages since Kathleen was last there. It had been. She had been on the road for two months. Summer had come and gone. Fall had too.

  It was December and everyone was glad to be returning. Fukusawa slept next to Kathleen, head bent at an awkward angle. She didn’t know how it wasn’t painful for him. She opened her computer, the display glowing on the seat in front of her. She opened up Ai’s files again.

  She hadn’t much time to review the mysterious program during the trip. Though often she was asked to open up certain files to show Ai’s learning and revising process. She had kept USER/NONUSER EVALUATION away from scrutiny.

  Again she searched through the code, wondering if she should find some way to simulate it. Without any context, it was hard to read it and fully understand what Ai had been trying.

  “Kathleen-san?” Fukusawa asked softly.

  Kathleen turned, surprised to see him awake. She was glad that during the trip she managed to convince him to call her by her name, instead of Director. She looked at him. “Yeah?”

  He sat up a little straighter in his chair. “I'm sorry that I did not give you the report on the cortex scan.”

  “Report? What report?”

  He looked slightly uncomfortable. “When you first received PLC 00, you reported that the cortex malfunctioned when it designed the physical body.”

  Kathleen suddenly felt a little embarrassed about it. That felt like ages ago. Then, well, a lot more complicated things had come up. “Oh, what happened to the report?”

  “Inconclusive.”

  “Really?”

  He shrugged. “There was no malfunction detected. No anomaly in how the cortex scan was interpreted by the computer. In order to thoroughly investigate, I would have to analyze your personal cortex scan. I assumed you would not want me to go through your personal information … ”

  She looked away from him, staring at Ai’s code. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  There was silence, for a moment. Then Fukusawa spoke, soft and just a bit nervous. “PLC 00. Her appearance … it was like Vellucci-san in Quality Control, yes?”

  Kathleen stiffened. “You know Yuriko?”

  He shook his head, then shrugged, like he wasn’t sure which motion to commit to. “I do not know her well. But her profile came up when I was researching who in the company I could contact about the cortex scan. I did not make the connection, however, until I saw that you knew her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He flushed in the light of her computer screen. “You often commute with Vellucci-san. I take the same train, but get off on an earlier stop.”

  Kathleen felt a little embarrassed herself, though she wasn't sure why. “Oh.”

  “I decided to not pursue the report then. I am sorry if this was, anō, presumptuous.”

  Kathleen looked passed him, to the lights from the city flashing by the window. “Maybe the cortex scan was a bit presumptuous too.”

  She must have been silent for too long, because Fukusawa spoke up. “Would you like me to complete the report?”

  She shook her head. It was an unconscious reaction, but she did not correct it. "No, that is unnecessary.” There were some things about Ai that Kathleen still didn't understand. But now, after so long, it didn’t seem right to say she had been a mistake.

  “Making a new sim?” Fukusawa gestured to her screen.

  “It’s not mine. I’m just … trying to figure out what it is?”

  He leaned forward, reaching out to flick through it on his own. He hummed. “Looks like the PLC sim, but … what is the word … ” He rubbed the back of his head, yawning. “Etō … like when the cortex scan looks for, anō, compatibility? Except this is not making a PLC. It is finding the companion. Ah! Matchmaker! It is a matchmaker sim?”

  Kathleen looked back to the code. With that context, it made more sense. Ai’s original programming was all guided by the principle that Ai would do anything to please Kathleen. At some point Ai must have come to the conclusion that she could not please her, so she was seeking another.

  It made sense why she’d placed certain memories into the file now. They were all signs or hints or reasons of why Kathleen and Yuriko were more compatible. So compatible, to Ai, that she was trying to make it her purpose to arrange them together.

  She’d constantly invited Yuriko to be with Kathleen. Or suggested Kathleen spend time alone with Yuriko. When they went to the hanabi, she had left them, though her original programming would compel her to stay at Kathleen’s side. To make sure she was happy and satisfied. She was always trying to please Kathleen. Which is why the code worked and didn’t work.

  In the end it had failed.

  Kathleen suddenly dove into Ai’s memories, plugging in some ear buds so no one would hear. It didn’t matter; Fukusawa had fallen asleep again.

  Apparently I am just an easy subject to ease her loneliness. A convenience. It didn’t mean anything. I don’t mean anything.

  The cortex scan isn’t random, it isn’t biased. It reads and analyzes data more accurately than I can. All it saw was what was perfect, absolutely perfect for Kathleen … and it made a copy of you.

  You are
wrong.

  And I wish I had … just more time. I need more data. I need to analyze more.

  People aren’t computer programs. Things might seem like they should work out. They might even seem perfect. But people don’t always make sense.

  You have all the time in the world, Ai. Your program will be given back to Kathleen, after all. She’ll review it and revise for as long as the PLC project has a budget.

  chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  The world was full of lonely people. However the lonely people in Japan were a special brand of pathetic. Most often they were businessmen who, because of long work hours, either didn’t have a family to go home to or actively tried to avoid the family at home. Others might be young adults who had failed in college and now spent most of their time locked in their parents’ house; the only source of light in their darkened rooms was the glow of their video games. There were also lost foreigners, people who simply never learned how to make or keep friends, people running away from their problems, and people trying to drink away the pain in their hearts.

  Yuriko might have been drinking, but she liked to think she wasn’t so far down yet, even though she was wandering around the city during that early morning hour, when it was still more night than day. She saw those lonely people in the arcade buildings, playing fishing games with short handheld rods, or singing karaoke in a booth by themselves. They walked from the pachinko parlors, blinking away the bright lights and deafening noises from within. They were sleeping in their business suits in the bushes by the train stations, sobering up until the trains began to run again.

  Yuriko usually didn’t walk around this late at night by herself. Too many old drunk men would try to convince her that her life would be better with a husband to “take care of her.” However it was nearing four AM and most of the predators were passed out or being shoved into a taxi by their friends.

  Yuriko stopped as a waft of cheap meat and salty broth washed over her. She looked up to a blazing sign of a small fast food restaurant. She checked her wrist. The trains wouldn’t open up for another hour. So she stepped inside.

  She remembered taking Kathleen to a curry restaurant shaped like this. Just single seating around a long counter. Kathleen had been surprised by the lack of tables. Kathleen had also … well, maybe that didn’t matter so much anymore.

  At this moment, Yuriko felt like whoever had decided that serving to a party of one was more profitable than the American mantra of serving to two or more was a genius. This country, after all, catered to its strong population of lonely people. It knew that lonely people ate alone.

  Yuriko slid into an open seat, making sure to keep a distance between her and an old man in a weathered suit currently dozing into his gyudon. The waitress was a middle-aged woman who looked like twelve cups of coffee just weren’t kicking in fast enough. Her eyes were watery as she took Yuriko’s order: gyudon and a bottle of beer. The woman produced the bottle and a clean glass, then opened the lid and walked away.

  Yuriko sipped the beer, figuring that she might as well continue the trend of the night until the sun came up. She glanced around the restaurant. A couple of businessmen were at a table, attempting to keep their voices down as they argued. A young girl and boy were at the counter. She slept on his shoulder while he shoveled ramen into his mouth.

  In the light of day, she wouldn’t lean on him so easily. Yet right now it wasn’t day, not yet. In the morning they would be back to their careful distance. The only contact they could look forward to was on the train. Then it was appropriate for any young man to shield a young girl with his body from other strangers.

  The door rang as someone new walked into the restaurant. A young woman, a foreigner, wearing a large backpack, fleece jacket, shorts, and hiking boots. Her cheeks were flushed and she grinned around the room like she had just hiked up a mountain. She strode to Yuriko and sat next to her, offering a friendly smile and letting her backpack fall with a heavy thump.

  The waitress came over again and Yuriko listened as the woman ordered in broken Japanese. It wasn’t perfect, but enough and the waitress walked away.

  “Do you speak English?” Yuriko asked, before she remembered that she had come out tonight to avoid talking to people.

  The woman turned to her, smiling widely. “Yes. Am I that obvious?” She laughed, a little too loudly for the morning hour. The man near Yuriko snorted into his food then seemed to fall back into his stupor. “My name is Shannon.”

  “Yuriko.” She looked at the woman, with bright red hair and freckles coating every inch of visible skin. “Where are you from?”

  “Originally? Texas. Outside of Austin. I’ve been traveling East Asia for about five years now. Lived in Seoul for almost a year, and then lived in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong. Now I’ve been in Japan for just over two months.”

  The waitress came back with a cup of steaming tea and Shannon thanked her.

  “Was actually in Hiroshima, now I’m slowly moving north. I’ve an early shinkansen to Hokkaido.” Her voice was loud and Yuriko could hear her southern American accent slip out a few times. She wondered if Shannon attempted to hide it. “I’ve got a temp job lined up at a farm there. Doesn’t pay much, but I get housing and all the home cooking I can eat.”

  Yuriko suddenly remembered. “Hiroshima?” Kathleen would be leaving for there in the morning, with the Mashida PR team. She had sent Yuriko a text earlier that night, asking to hang out. Yuriko had been in her apartment then and she had almost immediately left it, afraid Kathleen might try to come over. Yuriko didn’t want to see her. She wasn’t sure what she would do if she saw her.

  So she had done what any sensible Japanese person does when trying to forget their problems, she went out drinking alone. Now she was here, listening to Shannon from Texas prattle on about the sights she saw in Hiroshima and the food and the weather. She was loud.

  Kathleen had been quiet. She had been afraid to even go into the local grocery store. While Kathleen had struggled to figure out the train system in Japan, Shannon had been traveling the world all by herself. She had been taking on odd jobs, staying in the houses of people she just met, learning new languages as she sat on trains or in airplanes to a place she had never been to before. She was currently sitting in a cheap fast food restaurant, chatting to a complete stranger and laughing all the while.

  “Was it hard to leave?” Yuriko asked suddenly. “I mean, moving from America?”

  Shannon shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, it was a bit terrifying. I was barely twenty-one at the time. But I had been thinking about this for ages. So I was pretty pumped.” She snorted. “Though, it was a pretty steep learning curve when I first got to Korea. I feel like I learned more in those first two weeks than I have in five years.” She waved a hand. “Not that I’m not learning still. I mean, I used to think—” She continued on.

  Yuriko didn’t mind the noise. It gave a good background as she finished her beer and ate her food. It made her feel like she wasn’t like the rest of the people around the restaurant. She might still have some life still in her.

  When she met Kathleen, she saw someone lost, and maybe Yuriko had wanted to help her. Help her live in this country and understand it, but stay true to who she was. A foreigner, maybe, but just simply a person from another place. A person who had learned how to live here, but not be crushed by the culture. Instead, enjoying it. Enjoying it because she was foreign and could enjoy it in a way that a native could not.

  Kathleen was traveling now and learning more. Yuriko knew she would handle it. Yet Yuriko wished she could be there. To see Kathleen flourishing, being excited about new experiences. To be there when Kathleen needed support. To be there when Kathleen would turn to her, face in awe, as if just realizing for the first time just how incredible this world was. Like maybe Yuriko was incredible for bringing her there.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Yuriko realized she had been staring into her empty bowl. She nodded, a little hurriedly. Shannon was leaning
forward. Yuriko noticed that her eyes were green. Kathleen’s eyes were brown. Maybe that color wasn’t as interesting as green or blue, but it was always the color Yuriko had envied since childhood. A color to keep quiet with. A color to stay unnoticed.

  “What brings you out tonight?” Shannon asked. Her voice was softer now, more delicate.

  The lonely people. The people Yuriko could walk by and judge and pretend she was above it all. Above the hurt and the heartache. Above the childishness and the weight of it all. Maybe Yuriko was what she wanted back in high school. She had learned to be Japanese. She had learned to keep her thoughts and emotions close to her. Not to bother others. Be strong and be part of the crowd.

  She realized that when she told Kathleen that she might have loved her, she should have promised it. She should have said it long before. Before Ai had told her to stop holding back. Before she had told herself to hold back.

  Shannon was waiting for an answer. Yuriko wasn’t sure if she could stand the silence. “My … girlfriend broke up with me.” It was a partial truth and the partial lie. Yet it felt good to say it like that.

  Maybe she and Kathleen hadn’t been girlfriends, but they had been more than friends. Now it was over.

  Shannon’s eyes widened and she suddenly reached out, pulling Yuriko into a one-armed hug. She smelled like cigarettes and minty soap. “God, I’m so sorry. That’s rough. That’s so rough.”

  Yuriko didn’t think she was crying, but she might as well been. Her chest felt raw and open. Her every breath raked against her ribs. Shannon didn’t even know her. She didn’t even ask for more details.

  Perhaps that was for the best. Maybe then, for just a moment, Yuriko could pretend that it was all simpler. That she could be cured with a night of irresponsible drinking and comfort from a total stranger. She could pretend tomorrow that she would wake up with a new breath in her lungs, a fresh hope in her heart.

  She would forget this moment, in which she wished with all her heart that she could be holding Kathleen instead.