She couldn’t go after all.
Reigning in her hesitation, she gestured for him to follow. They doubled back towards the church. They entered into the building post midday Mass and witnessed that its nave had emptied. Father Blake had already retreated to the rectory, his living quarters. The sound of boots against tiles resounded in lingering echoes as they shuffled along the aisle. Ryu took the spot beside her and they remained there, unsettled. Unspeaking. It was like the both of them were waiting for permission to talk, for something to happen, but nothing would.
Haruna sighed. If Ryu had rolled the dice coming here, then it was time to play this out ‘til the end.
“What now?” she said.
He bobbed his shoulders and caught her off-guard with a dark smile.
“We never did finish Truth or Dare,” he whispered. “I'll ask again. Will you forgive me?”
Haruna ignored the palpitations in her chest. "I guess the hardest thing to accept is that you didn't tell me. The fact that you are this kind of person… it scared me. It still does. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it must be harder for you.”
Ryu lifted a brow. “So is that a yes? ‘Cause it didn't sound like you answered the question.”
Haruna gave him a wry stare. “It's my answer. So are we playing? It’s my turn.”
“Fine. Truth.”
“Ryu, don't you ever get scared?"
He looked thoughtful, careful in considering his words, collecting his thoughts. "Scared? I used to. There've been times when I thought I'd get beaten up so bad I wouldn't know myself… get caught. Sometimes you get a rush. Sometimes you just feel numb. There were times where I thought I would die. But eventually… you just get tired of always being scared. And then dying becomes the least scary thing. Sometimes you're just waiting, wishing—hoping—‘cause at least then it would all be over."
Haruna’s jaw slackened. "I can't imagine hating life so much that you'd want to die. Is that why you cut?"
“I cut once to see if I could still feel. I don’t know why I did it since, but it makes me feel better the way drugs would.” He sighed. "It isn't about hating life so much as being over it."
"You're not… suicidal, are you?"
He waved a hand. "Nah. I promised Seth we'd graduate together, so I'll definitely be sticking around until then." Perhaps he had been caught off-guard by the look on Haruna's face, for he cleared his throat and looked away quickly. "Honestly, I've thought about it. In the end, I think the scariest thing was telling you the truth. That was worse than getting beaten or stabbed. Or kicked in the… you know."
"Seriously?" Haruna shrivelled inwards, embarrassed. She’d almost forgotten “the kick.”
Ryu nodded. "Besides my boss or guardian, I've never cared what anyone thought about me before. And you… I know you're always looking for perfect. I'm not him. I'll probably never be. The last person I wanted judging me like everyone else was you."
His voice had been steady until that point. He turned his head, and she felt a flutter in her chest when she caught the glow in his cheeks. He wasn’t kidding. It looked like… had she seen it at last? The sheep beneath wolf's clothing? Haruna felt joy burble at her centre and was certain she must have been blushing her hardest too. It was amazing. He wasn’t completely apathetic after all. In fact, he felt things. He cared about people and their feelings. But that burbling was tinged with guilt. “Obsessed with perfection” described her well. She was vain because every single day she too was on the receiving end of criticism. Maybe real. Maybe all in her head. By the Academy. By this church. By her grandmother. By Ryu himself.
"I don't want you judging me either,” Haruna said with hands forming fists against her knees. “It hurt my feelings when you told me I'd be worried about my reputation. Do you really think I'm that shallow? Because I'm not! Not anymore. You're not perfect. I'm not perfect. But… it's okay." She felt her voice become faint. "It will be okay, right?"
Ryu smiled. “Truth or dare?”
“Dare."
“I dare you to start being true to yourself. Stop trying to please others so much.”
Haruna drew back, her nose scrunched. “What kind of dare is that?”
“It’s either that—or I dare you to kiss me.”
“Ryu!”
He stuck his tongue out at her, then stretched back against the pew with arms folded behind his head. He closed his eyes.
“Fine. I'll be the most real and authentic Haruna there ever was. Now you choose,” Haruna said, crossing her arms.
“Dare,” he said.
“I dare you to show me your most painful scar.”
His eyes fluttered open and he sat up straight, uncrossing his arms.
“That of all things? Why?”
Haruna shrugged. “I figured since we're being honest… in order to heal, it's what we have to do. Don't you think?”
His shoulders twitched. “Alright. I'll show you something. It hurt and left more marks than any of my scars.”
Ryu squirmed. He reached under his black sweatshirt and charcoal grey tee and yanked them over his head. His bare chest. Haruna recoiled, feeling her skin erupt into goose bumps. He was ripped! And yet, before she could dwell on it, marvel at his lean torso or sculpted shoulders, she saw them. The old cuts, bruises and marks across his abdomen, along his arms. He turned. His back was a tapestry. At its middle, a terrifying man with a sword—some kind of ancient warrior guarded by a dragon—against a wallpaper of clouds, rivers, a flurry of flames, thorns and bark. Littered, scattered among all of that were the petals of pink cherry blossoms. This whole time, underneath his uniform or that black hoodie, was all of that? It was mind-numbing. It was chilling. It was impressive. It was stunning.
Haruna reached without thinking, laying her palm against his spine, sliding her fingers down his back. She could feel the subtle vibration as he spoke, as though otherworldly. As though ethereal.
“These scars represent the life. They'll never go away.” He paused, perhaps giving her time to allow the words to sink in. She felt the rattle of his ribcage. He mumbled the rest, “I’ve told you everything. I’ve shown you… everything.”
Everything.
Haruna imagined leaning in, resting her cheek against his backbone, drawing him into her, feeling his heat, his warmth. The real Haruna, the authentic Haruna would have done it and wouldn't think twice. But being true to herself, to the promise she made to Ryu was something she wasn't sure she was ready for. The Haruna she was now could only hear her grandmother's scolding in the depths of her mind, biting and suffocating like barbed wire.
She removed her hand from his back. All of a sudden there came the distant howl of wind. A door creaked open. Haruna whipped around, frantic.
“Wh—?”
“Shh!” Haruna snatched Ryu at the elbow, scanning the room for a hiding spot. The confessional booth. Haruna zipped toward the box, dragging Ryu behind her. Once clumsily packed in one end, sandwiched between a wall and partition like canned fish, he forced the door shut.
“A little tight in here?” he whispered sarcastically.
“Just a bit,” Haruna mumbled back, flustered. “I think, maybe someone came back. We can’t be seen—at least not you with your shirt off.”
“You don’t suppose it would be weird if they caught us like this?”
“Don’t make this more awkward than it already is, alright?”
“Is it awkward?”
There it was again, his tone serious, maybe even a bit salacious. There they were—two people in too small a space, too dark a space, pressed against walls and each other in a booth where people went to repent for their sins. Of course this was awkward. But that wasn’t what he was getting at. Haruna could see that much in the way he looked at her, his tan face gleaming gold as light seeped in through the vented windows. Being with him, the idea of it… it wasn’t awkward. Not anymore.
"If I'm able to leav
e it all behind,” he said, his breath tickling at her ear, “you and me… we can make it work, can't we?"
"Will you really leave?”
Short of an answer, through the booth’s wooden doors, there was the sound of another slam followed by silence. Haruna jostled forward to peek. The person had done what they had come to do and left. After exchanging a knowing look, Ryu jostled the knob, letting them out. Haruna stumbled, inhaling and exhaling deeply, as though she had dived underwater and was only now breaking the surface. She found herself gaping nervously at his back.
“You should put your top back on."
Ryu spun back. His look had changed. Haruna knitted her brows. It was like he had stumbled on gold, like he’d made some grand discovery.
“Stop fighting… stop wanting,” he whispered.
“What?”
In spite of her confusion, in spite of his words not making sense—he moved in. She shut her eyes and his mouth took to hers, drawing her in like quicksand. It wasn’t too wet. Not embarrassing like her first. Just an electric current sinking, flowing through her veins, shocking her heartbeat into overdrive. Her arms lifted and glided along his centre. She took in his scent. Beyond the hint of tobacco, there was a trace of what she thought she first smelled when she'd first been this close, when she had bumped into him in their junior year. His smell was intoxicating. She could feel him grasp at her lower back, his grip firm on her waist as he drew her in.
Haruna slid her hand across his cheek, feeling its softness. Its roughness. Feeling the tiniest trace of fuzz along the sides of his jaw. She felt herself sinking into him, more and more. She felt in equal measure, him, reaching. In that moment, they were close. Closer than when she’d accidentally bumped into him in grade seven. Closer than when he’d stared her down in the hallway from afar, in the library arms length away, or in her living room side-by-side.
In this church, they were closer than that fall afternoon when she’d suggested there was nothing wrong with burning a couple grand on overpriced luxury jackets if it was what someone “was into.” He’d looked her dead in the eye. He had asked Haruna if that was what “she” was into. What had she been thinking then? When he’d been close enough for her to see the mischievous glint in his eyes, the way they glowed like ambers in the sun. He’d been close enough, she thought, to see her blush.
That’s when she really started to question things.
But they hadn’t been truly close then.
They were closer now than when Ryu boldly sat in the tiny gap between her and someone else on the cafeteria bench. Closer than when his thigh brushed against hers. Closer than when their noses nearly touched as he’d whispered his first dare, “maybe we should make things interesting?”
He always seemed too close when he was in her head, reading her mind, knowing her thoughts before she could voice them. But he hadn’t known her then.
They were closer in this instant than they were in that small space between those lockers by the janitor closet, where Haruna had nearly let Ryu kiss her the first time. They were closer at this moment than they were a few minutes ago in the confessional booth, shoulder to shoulder, bodies pressed against each other. Closer now than they’d ever been in their lives. And even so, the closeness was natural, like coming back after a long vacation. It was like she’d been gone so long she'd forgotten how much she had missed home. Needed home. Forgotten it until she'd at last returned…
But the closeness ended. It ended too soon.
Ryu pulled back, leaving Haruna lightheaded, unable to suppress a huge, too-wide grin she knew looked ridiculous. Even though he was smiling, he managed to still look composed and so… so cool. Incredible. Here she was at church on a Sunday afternoon in the arms of a shirtless, tattooed-up gangster who she'd hated for all the years they'd gone to school together. She lowered her gaze to his chin and longed for another glance at his chest. A metallic sheen caught her eye. A silver chain. Haruna's eyes followed it down to an oddly familiar tear-shaped pendant embedded with a red garnet crystal.
“That necklace,” she murmured.
“Like it? It's from Japan.”
Haruna reached down the collar of her dress, giving a pull at the golden chain hidden underneath. She watched his brows twitch.
“You have the same one?” he asked.
“I got mine from my mother… I think…”
“You 'think?’ ”
“I don’t remember much from when I was little or my life in Japan. Without the pictures, I’m not sure I’d even know my parents' faces.”
“What does yours say?” He asked, lowering his head to look.
“I don’t know. I can’t read it.”
She felt the mild tug against her neck as he pinched her pendant between his fingers, and rotated it to its back. He studied it, brows together. He dropped it quickly and shrugged. “I’m not sure what it means either.”
Haruna knitted her brows. “Huh? I thought you knew Japanese?”
“Speaking it and memorizing thousands of kanji you rarely come across are entirely different things.”
Haruna scowled.
“These necklaces are pretty similar aren’t they?” She was fixated once again on Ryu’s own. “But why do we have the same one?”
“Coincidence, I guess. My father gave it to me so I always held onto it.”
Haruna's eyes drew into a squint. “Ryu—”
Ryu stepped back and shuffled away, over to where he had left his sweatshirt. With a newly acquired look of indifference, he hastily tugged it back on.
“We’ve been here for a while. I should head home,” he said, roughly tucking his chain beneath his top’s collar as it was before, hidden. He added a smile. “You should too. Need a lift?”
Wait.
Did he just cut her off?
Haruna gave her head a slow shake as the warmth of their recent embrace faded leaving her feeling cold. Alone.
“No,” she breathed. “It’s better I walk.”
There was no comfort for Haruna when she returned home. The scene that greeted her was as routine as it was disconcerting—her grandmother’s head braced back, her white hair falling into her face, her body motionless, passed out on a burgundy arm chair. On the centre table, an empty wine glass, and on the floor yet another bottle—likely empty too. Marie had skipped out on Sunday Mass for the second week in a row. Haruna watched feebly, too numb to feel as the words of the television announcer carried in the background:
“And yet another development in the fiasco surrounding Amrit Singh, the very outspoken father whose son was found dead on the city's East Side. Mr. Singh, who has been critical of Campbelton's police department, accusing police of corruption—as it turns out—may have a corrupt history of his own. Documents are surfacing which suggest his company's been engaged in fraud. Sources say he owes a whopping…”
Haruna crooked her head to the television, but she merely observed it, watched absently as the images shifted on the screen, no longer hearing a thing as she allowed her thoughts to drift. She recalled when she had learned of the vicious murder a month ago. The boy who had been killed had been a gang leader, but he’d once been a student at Glasgow Prep, an elite west end private school. Haruna thought it was strange at the time, insane even, that a wealthy private schooler could be involved in a gang. But nothing was beyond the realm of possibility, because even a Shady Glenn Academy student was…
Haruna felt the sickness rise in her belly and made a sharp turn for the staircase, rising like a robin taking flight. She collapsed onto her bed where she lay wooden and staring up at the ceiling as if it were the endless sky she could soar into.
Why did Ryu have that necklace?
He'd gotten it from Japan, which meant he had gotten it as a child. Haruna had also been small when she'd gotten hers from her parents—at least, that’s what her grandmother had told her. In fact, Marie had nagged her often when she was little to be careful with it during rec
ess. It was clearly custom-made. A one-of-a-kind. Haruna reached behind her neck, unclasping the chain, removing it to take another clear look. She felt the top of the side table for her glasses and set focus on the red garnet stone. Framing it was a subtle detail in gold, a mystical bird engraving with several looping tail feathers. Then its other side. Words neither she nor Ryu could understand. Haruna stared hard at those delicate strokes; as if maybe it would make more sense the longer she looked.
That's when she noticed something she hadn't paid much mind to before.
Just the tiniest of etching at the bottom edge, written in English. The name of the jeweller.
Haruna shot towards her desk. She powered on her laptop and tapped anxiously at its keys. The search results appeared and after what must have been twenty minutes of browsing, she'd confirmed at least one of her suspicions. Slamming her laptop shut, Haruna tossed her glasses aside and flopped back onto her bed. Things would be better in the morning, she told herself… even though the sun hadn’t set yet, and the current hour was a far cry from bedtime.
It was the last week of the school term before winter holidays. Monday came with the return of Tracy who was back just in time for exam prep. January was around the corner. With it also, their semester finals. That morning, having a stretch of time before first period, the girls hovered around Tracy's locker. These were their last days together before their brief taste of freedom.
“We missed you,” Angelique cried. Haruna and Gabrielle nodded.
“Yeah, it was no joke. My parents almost murdered me twice,” Tracy said, sighing.
“Almost?” Angelique asked, a single brow raised.
“Well, yeah. Until they actually listened to my side of the story. Oh, and Arlen showed up.”
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