by Rocco Ryg
“I’m so sorry, Kayoko, but I can’t let you out. Forgive me.” As Kayoko begged, pleaded and pounded the locker, Chikara walked away. She left through the side exit and past the baseball field, her bokken at her side, in case an unwelcome guest was waiting.
***
That evening, Kagekuro Gen located the Kaminari home. The marvelous structure impressed him, though he had little interest in such relics of Japan’s feudal and oppressive past. The house had been constructed with the more traditional architecture, with a large bamboo gate serving as the entrance to the property. He passed under the gate and followed a path of natural stepping stones, admiring the aesthetic design of the building and natural beauty of the surroundings, such as the peaceful pond on the side of the house and the cherry trees around it. Very soon, the sakura (cherry blossoms) would bloom, a yearly occurrence that symbolized the brevity of beauty and life.
He rang the doorbell and waited until Chikara answered in the most awkward attire. She wore a plain-white kimono and a red hakama, similar to the dress of shrine maidens and miko from various anime titles. This uber-traditional dress took Gen aback for a moment. “Kagekuro-san,” she said, impatient to get to their business. “Thank you for coming.”
Gen bowed with respect. “Thank you for having me. You have a neat house.”
She invited him in and led him past the kitchen to her room. The house’s interior impressed him just as much as the outside. Sliding walls allowed the rooms to enlarge and shrink, and translucent paper shades obscured the sunlight. The old Japanese home had probably been in her family for several generations.
“I like your dress.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you always wear that when you invite guys over?”
Chikara resisted the urge to slap him. “My room’s over there.”
He noticed Renka inside. “Kagekuro-san!” she said, her happiness radiating like a lamp. “You actually came.”
“What, you doubted me?” Gen then saw Chikara’s reaction and corrected himself, “Oh, you did.”
“Just sit down. I made you some tea.” Chikara served her guests the homemade recipe she learned from her grandmother and explained the situation. “Okay, I guess I’ll explain. This conversation doesn’t leave the room... under threat of death.” She glared at Gen, who gave a sarcastic shrug.
“My mother died two months ago. She had inoperable cancer.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” said Gen.
“Thank you, Kagekuro-san.” She took the lead case out of her drawer and showed them the strange ring on her finger. “Now, yesterday, I listened to her video will. She left me this ring in the box and told me to share it with you two. I don’t know why, but that’s my responsibility, and I can’t fail.”
She could see Gen’s confusion. “So, your mom told you to share this ring with me?”
“Yes. And Renka.”
“I didn’t even know your mom. I barely know you.”
“She obviously knew about you. That’s why she said your name.”
“Do you still have this video will? I’d love to see it.”
Chikara didn’t like the challenge to her authority. However, she couldn’t scare him away, or else he wouldn’t want to share the ring. “Okay, fine. Let’s go to the living room.”
She retrieved the DVD from her father and playing it for her guests. “Any questions?”
Gen replied, “No, I think that covered just about everything.”
“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm.”
Gen realized that he had hurt her feelings, and tried to elaborate. “I’m sorry. All I’m saying is... this makes no sense. I mean, only we can save the world? By sharing a ring? I don’t get any of this.”
Renka didn’t want to offend, but she shared Kagekuro’s criticism. “I loved your mom like an aunt, Chi, but I don’t understand this either.”
Chikara couldn’t explain the ring’s importance, since she didn’t even know it herself. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here anymore than you do, but... my mother was very wise. She was the best investor in town, and she even went to Africa to help starving children. She had a way of knowing what was best, and she’s depending on me to share the ring with you two. There must be a reason. Plus, now Nagasado wants it, and there’s no way...” Chikara went silent mid-sentence, as she had been keeping this to herself. Now the secret was out.
“Michiko?” Renka asked. “What does she have to do with this?”
“Is that the one whose shoes you were licking yesterday?” asked Gen with a slight grin.
Chikara ignored the last remark. “She saw the ring and freaked out. She looked really scared of it. Then she... she made Kayoko try to steal it from me.”
“Kayoko?”
“Yes. She did her voice thing on her and made Kayoko attack me. I had to fight her and trap her in a locker.” She grabbed her side, which still throbbed in pain. That Shinai really hurt.
The bizarre situation captured Gen’s interest. “Okay, let me get this straight. This Nagasado girl forced your friend to attack you and take the ring?”
“That’s right.”
“And she made Chi and Yui lick her shoes,” added Renka.
“So she’s a mind-controller?”
The girls didn’t know how to respond. Renka scratched her head and replied, “Umm... I guess.”
“This just keeps getting better.”
As if the drama in the living room couldn’t get any more intense, Masakazu slid one of the walls open. “Chikara, your friend Kayoko is here.”
Everyone turned in panic. “Does she have a weapon with her?”
“No? Why, did you get in a fight?”
“Something like that. I’ll be right there.” She thought Kayoko had been taken care of. “How did she get out?”
“The janitors, maybe?” said Gen.
Chikara slipped the ring off her finger and gave it to Renka. “Okay, you guard it. I’ll take care of her.”
“Be careful, Chi.”
“Don’t worry. I can beat her again. Just make sure that ring is safe.” Chikara carefully made her way to the front entrance, where Kayoko stood in the doorway with tears pouring down her face. She ran to her friend and hugged her. Her weak, emotionally-scarred posture proved that this was no trick.
“Oh god, Chikara, I’m so sorry! I couldn’t help it! I just couldn’t stop!”
Chikara clutched her as hard as she could. It pained her to see Kayoko like this, and she vowed to avenge her. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault. It was that tramp.” The words startled her father, who hadn’t known of any problems at school.
Gen and Renka came in and watched the scene. While Renka remained speechless, Gen just shrugged and said, “Looks like she’s okay now. In a manner of speaking.”
Chikara handed Kayoko over to her other friends. “Try to cheer her up. I have a score to settle. Dad, where’s my middle school phone directory?”
***
Nagasado Michiko ate dinner with her mother and went to her room to study. She turned on the electric heating table and opened her history book to the chapter on the post-war era. Although she knew that she could now convince any teacher to give her the best grades, she figured she would read the books anyway just to be on the safe side.
Yazawa Kayoko failure to retrieve Kaminari’s ring still disappointed her. She and her friends had waited near the locker room and listened to the whole fight, but the sounds of Kayoko banging on a locker by herself indicated that she had lost. When they walked in to investigate, Chikara had already split. Perhaps next time, she would need to use multiple pawns.
Her mother then called to her from the apartment’s kitchen. “Michiko, Junko-san is on the phone.”
“Junko? Coming.” She couldn’t recall ever talking to Junko. She took the receiver and asked, “Yes?”
Kaminari Chikara’s voice spoke through the phone in a tone so morbid, it chilled her spine. “If you ever hurt my friends agai
n, I will pry your mouth open and cut out your tongue! Back off!” Chikara slammed the phone onto the receiver, almost breaking it.
“What was that about, dear?” asked Nagasado Nyoko.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine.” After she had reassured her mother, she went back to her room. She realized that if she didn’t play her cards right, her years-old rivalry with Chikara could escalate into full-blown war.
Worried and frightened, she opened her top drawer and pulled out her prized possession. The small, metallic case always gave her goose bumps when she touched it. She opened the lead box and looked at her ring. The black, smooth, lusterless stone in the middle and the gold band never failed to dazzle her. Now, her hated enemy had a second one and she didn’t know why.
“Dad? What is going on?”
CHAPTER 3
FEELINGS
Kusaka Renka woke up with the worst headache she ever had. At breakfast, she asked her mother for some ibuprofen with her eggs and toast. Mrs. Kusaka suggested that she stay home, but Renka displayed no other signs of illness and didn’t want to miss any more school. Before she left, she noticed Chikara’s ring, which she had worn to sleep the night before. She removed it from her finger and put it back in the lead box on the dresser.
The previous evening, after Kayoko had left, Renka agreed to take the ring first and not to bring it to school, due to Nagasado’s attempt at theft. Although she didn’t remember all of the details, this was just one of the reasons she and Michiko were no longer best friends. She had put up with her spoiled, selfish ways for years, and no matter how friendly and loyal she was to her, Michiko didn’t return any of the benefits she had been given. When the kind, generous Chikara came along, she gravitated to her side and left her old friend’s company.
As she headed out the door, she asked her mother, “Thank you for breakfast, Mom, but can I have one more pill?”
Mrs. Kusaka felt her daughter’s head. Her temperature didn’t feel abnormal. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Probably just the booze.” Mrs. Kusaka laughed and gave her another ibuprofen. As she swallowed the pill, she swore she could feel a strange sense of concern. Not for herself, but for someone else. She shook it off and walked out the door.
Chikara came down the street for their daily walk to school and noticed her moving with a disoriented posture. “Good morning, Renka. Rough night?”
“I have a headache. It still hurts.” She felt her head, feeling a different form of concern than before.
“I’m sorry. Is the ring safe?” asked Chikara, still worried about losing her inheritance.
“Yeah, I wore it to bed. I hid it just like you asked.”
“You wore it in your sleep, and now you have a bad headache?”
She mentally hit herself for not putting that together before. “Wow, I guess so.” She felt stupid before her mood changed to fear.
***
Later that day, the two friends sat side by side and took notes while Mr. Makino lectured about trigonometry. Renka didn’t understand a word he said, math being her absolute worst subject, but she luckily had a friend in the number-crunching Yui. She noticed Chikara looking into her compact mirror. She was not the type to check her beauty in the middle of class. Chikara tightened her eyes and closed the mirror with, for lack of a better term, a vengeance.
Renka developed an incredible sense of contempt. Repressed rage boiled in her normally-harmless soul, for reasons she couldn’t fathom. She wasn’t mad at Chikara or anybody else…. maybe Michiko.
As soon as she thought that name, her anger turned to fear. She nervously turned her head, after making sure the teacher wasn’t looking, to see Nagasado looking at the back of Chikara’s head. She always had that fearful face when threatened. Did Chikara show her an angry scowl in the mirror? A reminder from her earlier threat? Michiko saw her looking, so Renka turned away.
The night before, Gen questioned Kayoko on what time Michiko spoke to her and what time she stopped feeling the compulsion to obey. From her estimate, he put the time limit of the mind control as three to three-and-a-half hours. This knowledge could come in handy later, if anybody else fell under her spell. Renka wrote a sentence on her notebook and angled it towards Chikara. Her friend read, “I think she got the message” and nodded in agreement.
When Makino left and Minsei walked in, dread crept into Renka’s soul. She had forgotten about today’s test, and with yesterday’s excitement at Chikara’s house, she didn’t study. Her mind went into panic mode. Damn I didn’t study I’m going to fail history and fail school and get into a bad college and Mom and Dad will be mad why didn’t I freaking study I had to go get that stupid ring I screwed up damn it damn it damn it! Nervous sweat poured down her face, and the cold, tingling feeling of emotional stress made her body go numb. She knew she would faint if she stood. When the test arrived in her hand, her jumbled brain made the multiple choice options blur into the same sentence.
Renka tried to calm herself down. She took deep breaths and repeated to herself that everything would be fine. Chikara noticed this reaction and immediately knew her friend was in trouble. Renka looked at the first question...
1. On what date did the Meiji Constitution take effect?
A. May 26th, 1887
B. December 3rd, 1889
C. November 29th, 1890
D. March 1st, 1895
Renka had no idea. She remembered the lecture, but not the insignificant date of the signing of a constitution the country didn’t even use anymore. She thought hard about May 26th. Perhaps thinking about it would make the answer pop into her head. When nothing familiar came about, she went to December 3rd. Still nothing. When she landed on November 29th, however, a strange feeling of relaxation replaced her panicking mind. She felt very confident that this was the correct answer. Trusting her gut, as she had nothing else at this point, she marked C on the answer sheet and moved on to the next question.
2. Which battle of the Boshin War ended the Bozu Republic?
A. Battle of Noheji
B. Battle of Toba-Fushimi
C. Battle of Hokuetsu
D. Battle of Hakodate
She must have been texting under her desk during this lecture. Once again, she thought of each answer one by one. The confidence returned only when she concentrated on the Battle of Hakodate. It just felt so right, while the others didn’t inspire confidence in her whatsoever. She marked D and read question 3. She repeated this pattern through all thirty questions, always having a great feeling over one particular answer. Sometimes, others answers had a hint of this feeling, but not as much as another.
When Minsei indicated that the time was up, Renka handed in her test along with the rest of the class. The teacher took the stack and sat them next to the machine that read and graded the answer sheets. Despite her open style of teaching, Minsei held to the old way of grading the papers right in front of the students, in order to intimidate them into studying harder for the next one. Social embarrassment had a way of motivating the lazy.
One by one, she fed the papers into the machine, which made a short stamping sound for each correction. The more stamps, the worse the score. Renka knew she would fail. All she had to rely on was her gut instincts. Her parents, who insisted on seeing every test, would be furious and probably forbid her from going out ever again. She would have to go to a less prestigious college, away from Chikara, and marry some loser salesman, living a life of misery and boredom. The worst-case scenarios jolted through her mind, despite the insignificant credit value of the test.
Minsei slid another exam through the machine. No stamping could be heard, indicating a perfect score. She held it up and said, “Great job, Kusaka-chan.” She almost jumped out of her seat in shock. Could it really be hers? She felt a stronger feeling of surprise pop into her mind, and she turned to see Chikara staring at her. Never before in their decade-long friendship had she managed to score a 100%.
When class ended and the students brok
e for lunch, Chikara asked, “A perfect test? What did you do, read the teacher’s mind?”
“I was just in a good mood.”
“Great job. We better get to the roof, before we run into you-know-who.” Renka suddenly felt the same contempt before it faded. After the incident in the cafeteria, Chikara suggested to all of their friends that they eat lunch on the roof to avoid Michiko as much as possible.
***
As Renka walked down the hall, she found her mood changing constantly for no reason at all. Happiness turned to depression within moments, followed by guilt, anger, jealousy and depression. Her period was just last week, so it couldn’t have been the mood swings associated with that lovely time. She wondered if she was bipolar, but dismissed this as stupid. Whatever it was, it scared her.
When they got to the roof, the Female Kendo Club and all of Renka’s friends were waiting. This time, however, Kagekuro Gen chatted with Yui and Hirono. He spotted Renka and got up to talk to her. “Good afternoon, Kusaka-chan. How’s the ring?”
Renka felt a twinge of interest. She built up her courage and replied, “Everything’s good. I just got a perfect score on a test so... I think it gave me good luck.” She realized how corny that line sounded and became nervous all over again.
Gen smiled. “Then I can’t wait to try it. Could you give me your address so I can pick it up?”
She could feel a surge of attraction slither over her body, making her nerves tingle. She had been interested in Kagekuro for a long time. For months she had listened to his left-wing speeches and caught glimpses of him at lunch, while privately fantasizing of him and writing down her thoughts when no one else looked. Now that she could talk to him as a friend, her attraction had grown even stronger. A part of her just wanted to grab him at that moment and force her tongue down his throat.