A Darkly Beating Heart

by Lindsay Smith

  “Get some rest,” Mariko says as they head for the door.

  Aki nods. “We have an early morning meeting with the festival coordinator tomorrow.” When I stare blankly, she says, “To walk through the festival performance.”

  “Right,” I say. “Sure. Have fun…” I force a bitter smile to my face.

  As they leave, a flicker of movement catches my eye in the corner by my pallet. It’s that goddamned roach again. It hunkers down against the seam between the wall and the mat flooring, hoping, I guess, that I won’t notice it.

  I slowly turn back my blankets and quietly reach down to grab my slipper from the side of my pallet. No sudden motion. Slipper in hand, I raise my arm above my head. Aim. The roach’s antennae twitch. I toss the slipper.

  Crunch. The slipper bounces up and down as the roach writhes beneath it. Not dead yet, then, but I’ve wounded it. I charge across the floor and bring the slipper up, watch the roach hobble along, some of its legs snapped, then bring the slipper down on it again. Forcefully this time.

  Then again.

  Then again.

  It’s Akiko. It’s Mariko. Goemon and Yodo and my father and the children in the square. Hideki and Chloe and Chloe’s new girlfriend, face glistening with red. The deacon at Saint Isaac’s. My own real parents, the faceless shadows chained to their startup open–floor plan desks. I smash all of them, watch their guts squish out all over the mats.

  I lean back, sitting on my heels, and look at the thick, yellowish goop the roach has turned into.

  Then I cross the room and open the mini fridge to dig out Mariko’s bag of onigiri. She still has three of them tucked away in here. The soft, sticky rice splits open so easily. The roach’s guts spread across the middle, no problem. I press the rice balls back together, and they’re perfectly formed, the alteration undetectable. I wrap the plastic sheaths of seaweed back around each ball and reassemble the bag.

  It’s Mariko’s punishment for being such a coward, such a glutton, such a traitor to me when she pretends to be my friend.

  * * *

  I dream of the cultural festival. I’m standing on a dais, surrounded by the crowd, as drums beat all around me. As the revelers twirl and clap, something thuds rhythmically, ba-bump, ba-bump, a heart pumping overtime. I stand before the altar and slam the massive mallet into the gong.

  Blood gushes from the gong, dripping down the rim of the metal, pouring forth, flooding over the dais steps. Everyone cheers. The drums pick up. The blood flows around my ankles, sticky against my bare flesh.

  At the back of the crowd, the fog is coming. It is a thick and tangible thing. It swallows up the crowd, mingles with the blood, roars as it gobbles up more and more. It is coming for me.

  I am ready. We are hatred. We are death.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “We saw your friend Sierra at the club last night,” Mariko says over breakfast, looking right at me. “You should have come with us, Rei-Rei.”

  She’s back in her usual syrupy, shy form, but I know better. I know now how she speaks about me when I shouldn’t be able to understand. I refuse to look up as I dish out another heap of rice onto my plate.

  God, but I’m starving. These teensy cups of sweet egg and tiny slivers of fish aren’t nearly enough to sustain me. I’ve been starving for weeks. I shovel another chopstick’s worth of rice into my mouth. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to want to eat.

  “Who’s Sierra?” Kazuo asks, without looking up from his Vita. He and Aki are sitting side by side today; they seem to be hoping the table will conceal the fact that her hand is coiled around his thigh.

  Kenji glances at me for a moment before answering. “The American girl who works the front desk here in the evenings. I believe she said she teaches English in the next town over.”

  “Is she hot?” Kazuo asks, in Japanese.

  Kenji coughs. “I don’t think she’s interested in someone like you,” he replies, again thinking I can’t understand.

  “Why? Because she’s…?” Kazuo snorts. “I’m sure I can show her the error of her ways.”

  Mariko and Aki both laugh, though I can’t tell if they’re laughing with Kazuo or at him. Anger builds inside me, the usual prelude to eruption, but this time I don’t want to let it out. Let him be a gross pig. I will take it and take it, like Miyu took it from Goemon. But I will save it, and eventually, I will use it against him, and then the debt will be paid. And it will be a glorious sight.

  Maybe Miyu’s revenge can help me in my life here, too. She’s focused in her hatred. She’s in total control. If I can master my plans as Miyu, then I can master my plans as Reiko, too. And I can make everyone pay.

  “You’re disgusting,” Kenji says, but the sound of Tadashi entering covers up his words.

  “Hey, losers!” Tadashi calls as he enters the breakfast room. Aki shoots up straight, hand flying out of Kazuo’s lap, then stands and flings her arms around Tadashi’s neck. He shoves her off. “C’mon, baby, I gotta be able to breathe. Listen up.” He pulls his phone from his back pocket. “Opportunity of a lifetime. I just landed Akiko a big interview.”

  Aki squeals—really, truly squeals—and throws herself around Tadashi again. “You’re the best! Oh my God, oh my God! Who’s it with?”

  “Good grief. Come on, get off me!” Tadashi shoves her off and tugs at his loud floral print shirt to straighten it. “Her name’s Morita Suzuki, some shit called ‘Special World with Suzuki.’”

  “No.” Aki clutches one hand to her chest. “No. Suzuki’s Special World? Are you serious? She has over 300,000 subscribers on YouTube!”

  Tadashi’s blank expression gives him away—he’s never heard of her—but he quickly recovers with a sly grin. “Only the best for my girl.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten that second helping of rice. I have the sudden urge to hurl.

  Tadashi turns to address the rest of us. “All right, losers, we need aki * LIFE * rhythm to be flawless today, got it? We’ve got one hour to set up for the interview. Start teasing the interview on social media. Record a few clips for the site, get some shots of the crowd. Remind everyone about the festival, and hint that we’re dropping something big real soon. Big time. We are big time. This is our big opportunity.” He claps twice. “Now act it.”

  Our big opportunity. Aki’s, he means. God, but I’d love to see her fall on her face. I could wreck her interview with Suzuki, but something tells me it’ll only be the stepping-stone. Suzuki’s Special World will turn the hyperconnected J-pop eye Aki’s way. That’s when I need to be ready.

  But first, I need to find out more information for Miyu. Maybe after Aki’s interview, I can slip off to the historical museum. I follow the others, antsy, out the door.

  Kuramagi is awash in tourists. The streets look more alive, more like they do when I’m inhabiting Miyu, but with an extra heaping of tackiness ladled on top like watery gravy. A busload of retirees disgorges wave after wave of elderly Japanese with walkers and parasols and canes. Every souvenir shop and yakitori skewer stand has a slime trail of tourists queuing up outside, waiting their turn to pay for their overpriced handmade bowls and dolls. Parents make halfhearted attempts to usher their children, whose mouths are smeared black and purple from the charcoal ice-cream cups.

  Then we reach the village square, where work crews are setting up all of the stages and side tents for the cultural festival. My breath hitches in my throat like I’ve swallowed something down the wrong way. It looks exactly like the dais in my dream last night. I clench my fists at my sides as a wave of anger rolls over me. I’m just livid, but I don’t even know what I’m angry about. I want to see blood pouring down that stage, feel the bones of someone’s head condense and crunch between my hands—

  Jesus. What the hell is wrong with me? Have I always been this violent? When Chloe put the red-dipped paintbrush in my hand, the violence was only an expression. An allegory. I didn’t actually want to hurt anyone back then—at least, I don’t think I did. Yeah, Rei
ko. You keep telling yourself that. That’s what I told the therapists, after all. It’s what I told our small groups in the ward. I left out the part about my scars, though I knew the orderlies already knew. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

  But I do want to make them pay. Feel them squash like the roach beneath my shoe. Show them who has the last laugh. Make them pay for the hurt they’ve done.

  “How about this platform over here for taking photographs?” Kenji calls, climbing up onto a viewing platform. It connects to the balcony of one of the nicer houses on the edge of the village square, the elaborate finials at the roof joints glint in the weak sun.

  Aki props her fists on her hips and squints up at the stand, no doubt trying to frame herself in the shot in her mind. “Okay. Rei, get up there and see what you can do for lighting.”

  I climb up onto the platform, swaying momentarily as a breeze rattles the plywood, but regain my balance. Kenji’s looking at me suspiciously, so I give him a hearty scowl and pull out my handheld camcorder. The lighting’s terrible today—overcast, with thicker clouds darkening the shadows at irregular intervals—but it’s the best we’re going to get.

  “Okay. If you keep your back to this mountain, it should look good while still giving the right color balance.”

  Aki gives me a wink and a smooch, and Mariko climbs up to give her a final powdering.

  “Go easy on the bronzer,” Aki tells her in Japanese. “Suzuki always cakes it on way too thick, and I want to make sure I look soft and refreshing compared to her.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll stash it away for our later … plan.”

  Then they very definitely both look at me.

  Um. What the hell are they planning? What does it have to do with me? And bronzer? I’m almost tempted to give away my secret, that I understand them now, but there would be too many questions I’m not ready to answer. Too many things to explain.

  “Okay!” Aki forces a wide grin on her face and adjusts her cropped shirt. She’s going for a fresh-faced, wholesome girl-next-door kind of look today. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to sell aki * LIFE * rhythm to Suzuki’s fans, but who cares what I think? “Reiko, get ready to roll.”

  I flip the camcorder open, give her a bored countdown, and hit Record.

  “Hello, my beautiful aki * LIFE * rhythm lifestylists! It is such a deep honor to be reaching you today from the village of Kuramagi, in Gifu Prefecture! You may wonder what such an old-fashioned place like Kuramagi has to do with our life rhythm, but you’d be surprised—there’s plenty we can learn about our future by weaving in bits of the past!”

  It’s all I can do not to drop the camcorder in disgust. Her stupid videos are even worse now that I know what she’s actually saying.

  “I’ve curated quite the collection of unusual Aki pieces for you already, and I’ll be featuring them here in a little bit. But first, I’m so excited to announce that later this evening, you can find me on Morita Suzuki’s channel. The address is right … here!” She points to the empty air beside her, where we’ll add a link button in post-production. I can already hear the twinkling sound effect that will accompany the button’s appearance. “That’s all for now. Keep your heart pure and your eyes open, and enjoy … aki … life … rhythm.”

  I flip the camcorder shut.

  “Great work, babe, great work.” Tadashi is applauding behind me. “Suzuki’ll be here soon, so make sure you’ve got everything the way you want it.”

  “Am I done?” I ask, in terse English. Between the uneven light, Aki’s saccharine performance, and my enormous—in relative terms—breakfast, I’m feeling pretty queasy. Like something’s trying to take root right in my gut.

  “Are you kidding? I need you to get behind-the-scenes photos.” Aki jabs one finger at me. “This is Morita Suzuki. Of the Suzuki’s Special World channel. I need documentation. Bonus features for subscribers.”

  I grimace and stuff the camcorder back into the bag. Kenji waves me over to the tiered roof of the building, where he crouches, sketching Aki. “What the hell is so special about this Suzuki, anyway?” I ask, as I climb up beside him.

  “Well, let’s see. She lives in a beautiful apartment in Akakusa, funded entirely by revenue from her YouTube channel … Hmmm … She used to be in an aidoru band, but that actually came about from her internet fame, and not the other way around like it usually does.”

  Aidoru—the manufactured pop groups that are as much about marketing their members, or aidoru (idols) as the weapons-grade pop music. Just one portion of the market aki * LIFE * rhythm is seeking to infiltrate. “And why is she bothering with someone like Aki?”

  Kenji shrugs. “Probably because she used to sleep with Tadashi.”

  “No. Wait. Seriously?” I laugh. “Tadashi?”

  “You realize he used to be a big name, don’t you?” Kenji asks. “It was a long time ago, but you can probably still find schoolgirls with his poster taped up in their rooms.”

  “Ew. No.” I wrinkle my nose. “I thought his money was from his dad, or something…”

  “Oh, it is. He burned through his aidoru money a long time ago, trying and failing to be a big-shot manager. Now look where that landed him.”

  “Right in our pathetic midst.” The cosmic justice feels delicious.

  “What’s the matter?” Kenji asks, squinting at me with that wry grin on his lips. “Tadashi isn’t exactly your idea of an Asian heartthrob?”

  “Gross. Definitely not.” I tuck my knees under my chin. “I don’t go for the big meathead guys.”

  Kenji is quiet for a few moments. “But you do, um…” Then he brushes his hair down over his forehead. “Never mind.”

  “What?” I ask. My stomach tightens around too many servings of rice.

  He darkens the line of Aki’s chin on his drawing. “You do go for…” He winces. “Guys.”

  I stare at him.

  “It’s okay if not. It’s just—” His shoulders draw forward as he curls around his drawing. “I saw how you and Sierra talk, back at the inn, and I thought maybe…”

  The tightness inside of me is imploding, crushing down hard, turning into a diamond of hatred. “Is that a problem if I’m bisexual?” I ask. “So what if I like boys and girls? What if I don’t like anyone at all?” The darkness flashes through me—the rivers and rivers of blood. I raise my hand in front of me and imagine it drenched in red. It feels sticky, throbbing, alive. Yes, this is what I’m after. This is what I—

  No, Reiko.

  God. No. Now I’m truly losing it. Why the hell did I get rid of my meds?

  Oh, right. Because I thought they were making me crazy. Now how’s that for cosmic justice?

  “Well,” Kenji says, “then I think that’s your right. And if you don’t want to tell me, that’s your right, too.” He flips his pencil over to erase. “I only thought I’d ask.”

  I roll back onto the roof and stare up at the splotchy sky, the mountains that erode into the clouds across the valley from us. “How much time do you have?”

  Kenji looks down at the interview, just getting under way, and gives me a look.

  “Fine.” I close my eyes. “There was this girl at summer arts camp. Chloe. And she … possessed me.”

  She’d done far more than possess me. She had crawled under my flesh and taken control of me. I danced to her tune; I moved on her strings. And the worst of it was that I believed she’d set me free.

  “She told me I could be more,” I said.

  Oh, she’d said, looking at my camp application portfolio. She’d cooed the word like she was reviewing a toddler’s first stab at art. Look how cute you were. Your gossamer-winged fairies and shit.

  I’d snatched the portfolio back from her. It was a collage featuring my elven sorceress from Legends of Eldritch Journey; I’d pasted the deep, gray-throated blue of the Sound into the shape of her hair, and stitched her dress together from my photographs at the botanical guardians. She’s … she’s an elf, I’d muttered. Not a fairy.


  “I wanted to impress her. Prove to her that I could be a serious artist. That I could be a serious person.” I swallow. “Be hers.”

  I’d flipped through the folio until I found the piece I was looking for—the one I knew was serious enough, meaningful enough, art enough to impress her. All her art was meant to accomplish something, to tear down the patriarchy or chastise the oppressor class. She stood for something. She cared. Back then, I wanted to care, too. Here, this—this is my favorite. A meditation on … What would catch her attention? Prove to her I understood things? War.

  It was a montage of Hideki photographs, meandering across a sand-strewn canvas. Hideki, the boy who ran off to the desert so he wouldn’t have to rely on our parents to pay for med school. I’d assembled it from photos he sent back from the front. Grainy webcam snaps of him in the computer room with exhaustion plump and oily under his eyes. Hideki in his scrubs, probably smiling beneath that surgeon’s mask, not that it ever reached his eyes. In the bed of a truck, the photographer (handsome, shirtless, I noticed) reflected in his sunglasses. Snippets pulled from his official discharge.

  They only told half the story. My canvas of bodies and wounds and nude figures told the rest.

  One, two, three, four, five. I’d pressed the bruises while I waited for Chloe to approve.

  Her gaze lingered on the rivers of red that fed the canvas’s desert. Yes. Her fingers traced them. I wondered how she would look, sticky with blood. I knew there was a revolution in you.

  Upheaval. I wanted my own upheaval. I wanted to become what Chloe believed me to be.

  “I call it. Don’t Tell,” I’d said, and pointed to the bits of gauze I’d taped over Hideki’s bruised mouth. The photo his prosecutor used as proof against the defendants, to secure Hideki the lightning-fast honorable discharge and his quick ticket back to the States. The portfolio photograph didn’t quite capture the effort I’d made to soak the gauze in red paint, to arrange it just so on the canvas. But I think she got the idea.