A Darkly Beating Heart

by Lindsay Smith

  “Come on, keep up!” Aki snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Kenji is pulling—”

  “Pulling his weight.” I manage to break through the fog and find my way back to my path. I don’t understand why we need to leave Tokyo.

  “Yes. You’re pulling your weight. Everyone else—”

  “’Sup, otaku?” Tadashi sways up to our table. Akiko’s talent manager-slash-sort-of-boyfriend never seems to lack funds to buy those shiny skinny jeans and shades and bleached-tip haircuts, but still mooches off the rest of us when we go out. He grabs a dumpling off Mariko’s tray, pops it in his mouth, and perches on the edge of the bench next to Akiko, stroking the bleached goatee that drapes his face like a bad taxidermy job. “Aki. Baby. Who loves you?”

  Aki snaps her chopsticks apart with a sound like gunfire. “I hope you have more good news for me.”

  “aidoruLOVE magazine is sending a journalist to report on hot new trends at the Kuramagi Cultural Festival.” Tadashi couldn’t look more pleased with himself if he’d turned our broth into liquid gold.

  Aki juts her chin toward him, like she’s expecting more. “And?”

  “And? And I’m gonna try to get them to write a feature on you.” He grins. “Duh.”

  “But they haven’t agreed to it yet,” Aki says.

  Tadashi plucks the pickled egg out of Aki’s ramen. “They will,” he says, custardy yolk oozing into his whiskers.

  “Kazuo,” she says, “I need website updates. New sections. A feed of all the good press aki * LIFE * rhythm is getting.”

  “Yup. I’ll code it later.” Kazuo runs one hand through his stubby fauxhawk while he plays.

  “And Reiko,” Aki’s devious smile turns on me, “historic photo shoots for the historic village. Make it happen.”

  I stare back at her. What the fuck am I supposed to know about Japanese history? How am I supposed to arrange costumes or anything in a strange village when I can barely say sumimasen? I stare into my bowl.

  Kenji taps my shin under the table. “I’ll contact a kimono rental company,” he says. “Just worry about lighting and so on.”

  His voice is kind, but it makes my insides convulse. “Okay. Sure.”

  I don’t look up. The Reiko of a year ago would have devoured the glistening, tender pork cutlets and perfectly seasoned broth in three gulps, but I feel too wrung out and shrunken to even try now. I watch the steam wisp and curl through the air while Akiko chatters about plans for our weekend in Kuramagi village. The boys slurp down every last noodle of their ramen. Even Mariko valiantly manages to eat half her bowl, and Akiko sips at the broth. Tadashi slips the untouched gyoza in his pockets as we depart.

  “You look shaken,” Kenji says to me, as we walk back to work.

  I shrink into the hood of my jacket. “Why do we have to go to some backwater village?”

  “What, the trip to Kuramagi?” His expression softens. “It pays the bills. Should be a pretty village, too. They’ve preserved all the original Edo-period structures and everything.”

  I tighten my grip around my satchel and hurry my pace. I don’t know what to expect in Kuramagi. I don’t have a plan for what to do with my time, my thoughts. And when I don’t have a plan, the feelings—the anger—find their way back in.

  I rush to the toilet and lock myself in. The programmable electronic toilet seat is sweltering hot against my thighs; someone left it set at max heat. As soon as I lean back, the toilet control panel speakers blast the sounds of rushing water right into my eardrums. Not my favorite conditions, but Akiko’s news forced me off my path, and I need to shepherd myself back on course. Everything’s been shattered since Hideki’s terrible act, and the only thing left is to shatter it more.

  Before Hideki left for the medical corps, I’d already mastered the path of secrets, the trick of coiling them up tighter than a nautilus shell. There was always room for more secrets in the black hole of my soul. Crush them all down, make geological layers of them, but never let them see the light of day.

  I study the bruises along my wrists and arms—those are from Hideki. But the thin parallel rows of scars along my thighs belong to me.

  This hatred belongs to me. Chloe and Hideki and Akiko and my parents and the entire student body of Saint Isaac’s Prep can never take it from me. Only I have earned that right. I am mastering the path of hatred. The first slice runs only a fraction higher than my oldest scar, my favorite scar, the uneven one wrought by an unsteady hand. The scar of a girl who hadn’t yet learned how to unleash the violence that pumped through her heart. The blood wells up sluggishly, thick and already congealing, but the sting is what I crave. The sting of air on all the exposed pain rings clear and perfect through my hollow body.

  I am in control. The next slice, right on top of the scar from the day Chloe ruined everything. The day those awful, bloody secrets were bared for all to see. But this blood is for me alone. No one else can see these scars, this smear of red on my shriveled-up thigh. And no one ever will.

  The third slice—never more than three, never too deep, never too close together—goes on the other thigh, somewhere in between a scar from Hideki’s cruelty and a scar from Hideki’s failure. I slump back and let the wave of pain roll through me, loud as the tinny trickling sounds on the toilet speaker box.

  I will make them pay.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Aki thrusts another cell phone at me. “Photo,” she snaps.

  I take a step back and sigh. This has been my Sunday so far—photographing her with tourists at the cosplay gathering grounds of the Jingu-mae bridge in Harajuku. We’re crammed in here with Gothic Lolitas and sword-wielding Sephiroths and man-eating Titans and Malice Mizers, but she clears a space and strikes a perfect kawaii pose next to the pimply white American tourist: head cocked, one leg kicked back, two fingers spread wide in victory. “Say kawaii!” she hisses through a clenched-teeth smile, and the guy eagerly obliges.

  I snap the photo and exit out to his phone’s home screen, then immediately wish I hadn’t—two plump cel-shaded anime breasts glare out at me from between the app icons. I all but toss the phone at him while Aki does her best to pretend she doesn’t understand his declarations of love.

  It’s our last day in Tokyo, and Aki’s making me spend it in the Harajuku district to drum up free publicity for aki * LIFE * rhythm and her performance at the festival. “Tune in on NHK5 to see the big show!” she cheers in English between each song.

  Tadashi keeps wandering off to answer his phone, Mariko’s already camped out at our usual table at the nearby pancake-serving bunny café, and Kenji’s tucked himself into the narrowest corner he can find to sketch the crowd.

  And me—I’m playing Aki’s photographer even though I hate her frilly candy-blue maid costume and curly caramel-colored hair. But most of all I hate this camera. There was a time when you couldn’t pry the camera out of my hand, or the scissors I used to chop up my photos to make collages. But that time feels like a movie I watched long ago, falling asleep during all the good parts. A life that happened to someone else.

  “And who are you supposed to be playing, my fair maiden?” The same guy is behind me now, smoothing the front of his silk-print dragon shirt. “No, let me guess. Is it Mako Mori from Pacific Rim? You’d look positively ravishing with a touch of blue in your hair.” He starts to reach for a lock. “Want to find out if we’re drift compatible?”

  I jerk violently away from him. I’m shaking with disgust. He thinks he can speak so lewdly to me, that I exist for his adoration. These are the moments when I wish I knew just how to wield all my hatred. But I’m not prepared. No snappy rejoinders at the ready.

  “I will carve your insides out,” I manage, my voice breaking as I say it. But even then, I only think of it because Chloe once hissed it at some woman on a camp field trip who acted disgusted to see us holding hands. Stupid. Stupid. Now Chloe’s back inside my head, her grating laugh, the cocksure way she wrapped my hand around the paintbrush and told me not to hold
back.

  The guy’s stammering out a response, but I’m just thinking of Chloe’s words about justice and freedom that always left me hungering for more. I walk away as Aki yells for me, but I ignore her and push through the sea of plastic claymores and wigs like exotic birds.

  “Why do you let them call you names?” Chloe had asked, after I told her about Saint Isaac’s one late night at camp. How they toss slurs my way, gross Orientalist comments. “You can’t let them say that shit to you. They think they won’t have to pay? You’re an artist. You have power. This is your chance to take control.”

  So I cut the head off another photograph of a student in a white-and-navy uniform. I painted the cathedral weeping with blood. I don’t even remember how the other collage elements got introduced—the guns, the guillotines, the gas masks, and mushroom clouds.

  Subversive, Chloe said, standing back, looking at the carnage I’d wrought across the painting studio.

  Disruptive, she said, as her arms found my waist.

  I had been so sure she was right. That this was what real art was—not the silly elven princesses I’d drawn before, or photos I’d taken of my brother, his combat-haunted smile strained to breaking point. Art was violent and aggressive and charged. Art would set me free.

  “Hey, Rei.” I’m heading across the bridge, into Yoyogi Park, and Kenji is calling my name, just loud enough for me to hear.

  I start to walk past him, pretending not to notice, but guilt tugs me back and I turn toward his bench. “Hi.” I jam my fists into the pouch of my hoodie and watch his hands work.

  It’s a sketch of the chaotic scene on the bridge, of course, but everything’s all inverted. The cosplayers and tourists and fashionistas in all their garish glory—they’re just background noise, a dull sea of gray. At the center, a skeletal girl with a sloppy braid stands, shoulders back, stance wide. Leather bracelets scale both of her forearms. Ones that perfectly match the ones I’m wearing now.

  I look from the drawing toward Kenji’s face. He’s so intent, and he has these beautiful dark lashes framing his eyes, and the sloppy hair and wry wit and kindness, but … I can’t do this now. The antidepressants have chiseled away all semblance of a libido from me, and after Chloe, I don’t know if I can bear to be touched by anyone ever again. I squeeze my eyes shut and rock back on my heels.

  Kenji glances up at me, and his face darkens. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be, mm, creepy. I just…” He twiddles the pencil between his fingers. “It’s practice. For the comic I want to draw.”

  “What, and she’s your main character?” I start to roll my eyes, but manage to stop myself in time. He doesn’t deserve that. Of all of our team, he’s the one who doesn’t deserve to be hurt.

  “Maybe.” One corner of his mouth twitches into a grin. “I’m still figuring out her backstory.” His gaze darts up at me, flashing like fish scales, before sinking again. “What her secret powers are.”

  I sink onto the bench beside him. “Pretty sure she doesn’t have any.”

  He shrugs and keeps drawing. We sit in companionable silence—I’d forgotten such a thing exists. Usually silence claws at me like a cornered animal, desperate for something to relieve the agony of everything going unsaid. I turn on my camera and snap a shot of Kenji working—it only seems fair, after all, to take his picture when he’s drawing me.

  “Hey, nerds!” Tadashi calls, striding toward us as he shoves his phone into the back pocket of his jeans. “Kenji. My man.” He claps Kenji on the shoulder so hard it jostles both of us, then leans in and whispers something to him in Japanese. Kenji tightens on himself like a fist and shuts his eyes.

  Then Tadashi rounds on me. “Rei-rei. Time for Aki to sing, don’t you think? Present our ninkai nanba wan star! Get some snaps! Help me work the crowd!” He pushes his fingers through the stiff peaks of his frosted bangs, then bounces off to boss around his equipment flunkies who are hauling amplifiers and synth boxes through the crowd.

  “And that’s my cue to go.” I stand up and shake the concrete dust off the butt of my jeans. God, how are they so baggy on me now? They used to call me a pork dumpling back at Saint Isaac’s. I wish I could feel proud of myself for shedding the weight, but it’s just a side effect of my failed efforts to disappear.

  “Not going to get more pictures for Aki’s portfolio?” Kenji asks, a teasing grin in his tone.

  I roll my eyes. “I’ve got enough. See you at the café, or something.”

  “Or something,” he echoes. “Yeah.”

  I stroll along the pathway deeper into Yoyogi Park just as the frenetic strains of some technopop song blasts out of Aki’s amplifier. The same song I’ve heard her practice ad nauseum at the apartment.

  The crowds have dried up this far into the wooded park; the clattering JapanRail trains and honking cars are reduced to nothing but a dull throb behind my eyes. The leaves are still mostly green in Yoyogi, though the overcast sky muffles everything with a gray filter, sapping away the color and life. No birds. No people. Nothing but the dim rustle of branches in the wind. Total, solitary silence. I hate it and love it—love that I have space to breathe and think, hate the thoughts that take the opportunity to crowd into my head.

  I pass under a hulking wooden torii, the Japanese-style archway that marks the winding path toward Emperor Meiji’s shrine. Massive wooden racks holding sake barrels, wine, beer, and countless other offerings from around the world line the path. Emperor Meiji is a Shinto spirit now, because he ended the centuries of military shogun leadership and brought Japan into the modern era, which apparently meant opening it up to Western influence. Doesn’t sound like that great of a deal to me, but now Emperor Meiji gets to hang out with all the other spirits and drink sake and party all the time until someone petitions him with a prayer, like Kenji with his ema board.

  I reach the main area of the shrine. The slate square, hemmed in by a variety of wooden structures with weathered green roofs, is empty save for a white-swathed Shinto priest meticulously sweeping the stones. A breeze snakes through the square, rattling the ema boards that dangle from the prayer wall and swirling dead leaves around my legs. The priest pauses, glancing up at me with a tiny frown before he returns to his work. I wrap my arms around my chest and shuffle deeper into the temple grounds.

  I’m lost in my own homeland, ignorant of my own language, my culture, my customs, my heritage. I had to plead with my parents to send me here, revisit their birth land, or at least, that’s the excuse I used. They preferred to keep their heritage like a coffee table book to display at parties, not anything to look too closely at. The tech industry was their tribe, and Saint Isaac’s their religion. Their children were a newly compiled source code in constant need of upgrades. When Hideki went to Stanford, my parents were sure, so sure, at least one of them had served their purpose. And for a time, Hideki seemed so sure of it, too.

  But that conviction didn’t stop him from swallowing that vial, burning a hole in his larynx, wrecking a kidney or two, failing every final exam, costing Dad a major contract when he had to leave the middle of a software sales pitch to drive down the coast. I, on the other hand, was already in San Francisco, in Hideki’s grad student apartment. He wanted it that way. He intended me to be the first art critic on the scene of his final masterpiece.

  I just found him sooner than he intended. Rough luck for him.

  Standing in the shrine, I can’t get the image of Hideki lying in the hospital bed, a tube down his throat, out of my mind. His arrow-slitted eyes. His hand squeezing my wrist, fingers lining up on the old familiar bruises from him—one, two, three, four, five—like he had done when we were children, his eyes burning with hatred, his mouth smirking as he told me I’d always be the unwanted shadow in his sunlight. Except this time, he was the one who was fading fast.

  The memory is uncontrollable here, in this unfamiliar place. But maybe there’s something to what Kenji said about his practice—about giving his troubles over to something outside himself. I don’t bel
ieve in gods and spirits, despite the hours I’ve spent at Saint Isaac’s mandatory daily chapel time. But I’m tired of walking around with these memories in me, throbbing like a knife I never bothered to pull from my back.

  I’m just so tired. Of not being able to eat or sleep or to chase all these thoughts from my head. Tired of not finding the right trigger to pull to get the revenge that I’m due.

  A sign spells out in English how, exactly, to go about honoring the kami in the shrine. I start by scooping water into a ladle from a nearby trough, and pour it over my right hand, then my left, then pour water into my cupped hand to use to swish out my mouth. The chilly water raises gooseflesh along my arms, and I nearly drop the slippery ladle as I try to replace it in the trough. The priest’s back is to me, but I swear I can see his shoulders tense at my clumsiness.

  Next up: the shrine itself. I step up to the outer edge of the shrine and peer through the wooden doorway to the inner sanctum. I’m not allowed inside—instead, I’m supposed to drop some coins in the offering box, bow twice, clap twice to get the kami’s attention, pray, and bow one more time. When I reach the prayer part, I stutter for a moment. Am I supposed to address Emperor Meiji? Some other spirit or deity? The universe at large?

  Dear world. I feel weird holding my hands clasped in front of me, so I hook one finger in a loose belt loop on my jeans. The hatred burns like napalm in my chest. Help me find a way to get my revenge, I pray.

  I don’t know what I expected. To feel like a stone slab had been lifted off my chest, maybe, or for the perpetual antidepressants fog in my head to clear? But nothing like that happens. Nothing happens at all. What a silly waste.

  I turn and walk away without bowing again. Tears prickle in the corners of my eyes. So stupid. I briefly allowed myself to hope. There is no hope for me. I must seek out my revenge on the world alone.

  But I don’t know if I have the courage. I don’t know if I can see it through. I am nothingness. An empty vessel. The core of me is rotted away, and I can never get it back. There’s nothing left to fill me but anger. There’s nothing left for me to sense but pain.