Chloe’s smile spread wide. Art gives us the power to change.
I wanted to change myself. Into whatever she wanted me to be. Anything to be loved. To be needed. Then I would have the power. Then I could possess her, too.
“But it wasn’t meant to last,” I say. “She had chaos in her veins. Restlessness. She was always seeking. She went back home after camp, and that’s when I lost her.”
I leave out the part about my violent photographs, the ones she hired someone to hang up at the school. And the night that came before, cold and rainy, watching Chloe and her new girlfriend, hand in hand. The shattered glass that glittered like raindrops on the street. My hands. Trembling.
“You aren’t alone,” Kenji whispers.
I fight back a laugh. I’m always alone.
“I had a girlfriend all through high school. Our parents wanted us to marry. She was best friends with this other guy, Hiro—everyone knew he was gay. So I never worried about her spending time with him. He’d go shopping with her, hang out at the cat cafés, all the things my friends would laugh at me for doing. I didn’t do those things because they would say that I was gay, too.”
I feel the restless twitch in my legs that I used to get during small groups in the psych ward. A weariness with all these people, all their tales. All their stupid problems, sucking like lampreys at their brains. I fight the twitching down. I don’t hate Kenji, not in the same way I hate all the rest. At least, I don’t hate him yet.
“But I resented that I wasn’t getting to share a part of her life, you know? So I made an effort to spend time with them both. At first, it was awkward; I didn’t think Hiro and I had much in common aside from her. He didn’t care about comics, anything like that. But then something … changed.”
I turn my head toward him.
“He was kind, when he wasn’t putting on a show for people. Encouraged my art. When my girlfriend insisted I go to university and get a good salaryman job, he suggested I focus more on what I wanted to do. And then, the better I got to know him, learned all the things he longed to do with his life…” Kenji trails off, his cheeks burning deep crimson.
“Oh, no. You and Hiro had a fling, didn’t you?” I laugh when he doesn’t deny it. “Wow. Falling for your girlfriend’s boyfriend. Straight out of a shonen-ai manga.”
Kenji peers at me from the corner of his eye. “It wasn’t cheating—not like it means in English. It was never that physical, and she—she knew about us. Thought it was cute, you know, like the Boy Love comics she read. It didn’t change how I felt about her, except that I felt weird, being pulled between two people … And then I started to see the jealousy in each of them. They weren’t best friends anymore. They weren’t even on speaking terms.
“So I ended it. With both of them.”
I let out a low whistle. “What did your parents say?”
“Well, this was around the same time I decided not to go to university, so … let’s just say they had plenty to yell at me about those days.”
“Hey! Quiet on the set!” Tadashi shouts up to us, from the platform. I roll back up to sitting and nearly fall over. Suzuki’s hair is styled in a hot pink bouffant, and she’s wearing skin-tight baby blue vinyl pants. The streaky aftereffects of spray-on tanner mar her arms and her exposed belly button. Actual full-sized action figures—they look like some sort of mech suit from one anime or another—swing from both of Suzuki’s ears. Special World, indeed. I’m starting to see what Aki meant about not even wanting to try competing with all of that.
I pull out my snapshot camera and grab a few quick shots—the texture of Suzuki’s hair, the way she has to peel the curls out of her makeup in the wind—then crawl down to the edge of the roof to frame her with Aki at her side. I manage to catch a good shot of Aki and Suzuki both laughing, looking about as genuine as I imagine either of them is capable of being. Aki glances at me, questioning; I give her a thumbs up, then crawl back up the roofline to join Kenji again.
“You’re like a regular Peter Parker with that camera,” Kenji says. “Nice acrobatics.”
Aki’s trembling as Suzuki’s cameraman gets ready to record. God, this stupid little staged chat means so much to her. And then this whole big production. The festival performance, and the meager aidoru media attention she hopes it will draw.
At first, I thought I could use the performance to humiliate her. I could sabotage her costume, for instance. An epic wardrobe malfunction would be just the thing to get her plenty of press, and none of it the kind she wants. I could rig a light to fall on stage, or set up the microphone to shock her.
But it all sounds so tame to me now. Like a childish prank. I need something grander. Something more powerful.
The buzzing rises in the back of my mind. Violence, I find myself thinking. Upheaval. Renewal.
Okay, Reiko, you’ve got to get it together. Don’t be the monster Chloe made everyone think you are.
But what if I am? What if I’m so much more?
Suddenly I’m on the red-stained dais again. All eyes are on me as the blood drips from my slit throat. All eyes are on the blood, bathing my arms, pumping from my veins. So much blood. It can’t all be mine. Fog snaring my ankles and wrists, devouring everything in its path—
“Hey. Are you okay?” Kenji touches my arm, gentle.
“I’m fine,” I snarl, which I realize doesn’t exactly make my point.
He pulls his arm back. “You just … had that look.”
“For fuck’s sake, Kenji.” I curl my arms around my legs. “Stop trying to be my goddamned nanny.”
He lowers his pencil; his face looks so soft, like if I punched it, my fist would just sink in. God, I want to punch him. I want to punch everyone. “Can I just try to be your friend?” he asks.
Friends. Right. Everyone wants to be friends with the antisocial whackjob. Because I’m such a caring and thoughtful friend. Because I’m so charismatic and charming. “I’m not a good person, Kenji,” I tell him. When I blink, I still see the bloody trails. I still hear the roaring buzz. And I crave the feel of hot red on my hands.
Kenji lets his breath out slowly. “There’s a difference between doing something bad, and being bad.”
“No. No, you don’t understand.” I tug at the leather bracelets on my right wrist. One, two, three, four, five. “There’s something … inside of me.” I squeeze the five bruises hard. Can’t let them fade. “A rotten core.”
I don’t know how I expected him to react, but he only watches me, as calm as if he were waiting for his tea to steep. “Why do you think that?” he finally asks.
I squeeze harder. The pain spirals through me, painting fractals on the backs of my eyelids. Everything is framed in black, like I’m trying to watch the world through a pinhole. I have to tear it wide.
“I want to do bad things,” I hear myself say, fuzzy and distant. “To others. To myself.”
I thought Chloe was wrong about me. I thought they all were wrong. That I didn’t really want to do those things I painted in the collage. But this is more than vengeance. This is a primal need. To hurt, and be hurt. That rottenness inside me is stronger than ever before.
I want—need—to make everyone pay. Let them see my hurt laid bare. My final masterpiece, wrought from my need from vengeance. It burns inside me. It’s what Miyu would do. And I want to do it, too.
Suddenly, I know how.
“Reiko…” Kenji looks at me like I’m something fragile, something he shouldn’t expose to direct light. It makes me hate him. “Why did you come here?” he asks. “To Japan. I mean—” He shakes his head. “I’m glad you’re here, but I don’t know why you thought it would solve your problems.”
“You think I’m trying to solve them?” The laugh that rises out of me is harsh; it scrapes against my throat. “It doesn’t matter where I go. It only makes everything worse.”
“What are you afraid of?” he asks. “What are you running from?”
“I don’t know, okay? I only know tha
t—” And then it hits me, right in the chest, powerful as a boulder. “This is where I’m meant to be.”
Yes. This is where I’m meant to be—this valley, this festival, this confluence of time and space. The perfect setting for my last revenge. I can almost feel the comforting chill of the black stone in my camera bag. This is the place. This is where it all has to happen.
I’m going to help Miyu. And then I’m going to bring the whole festival down.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I thought Aki’s interview with Suzuki went just fine, but she’s in rare form the whole way back to the inn. “Let me see the photos you took, Reiko.” She tries to yank my camera bag straight out of my hand. “I can’t trust Suzuki’s team to pick the ones that flatter “me most. They’re going to pick the ones that look best for her.”
I yank my camera bag right back. Anger crawls up the back of my neck, prickling the wispy hairs there. “They turned out perfect, as always. Leave me alone. And don’t you dare touch my bag again.”
Aki stops dead in her tracks, appalled that I could even think to defy her. “Excuse me?”
The heat of anger spreads like a rash. It gives me power and strength. Soon enough, this will all be over. And everyone will be sorry. “I said to leave me alone.”
The late autumn chatter of birds swells around us, thick as a fog. Tadashi, Kazuo, and Mariko all seem to take a step back. As if the world is nothing but me and Akiko, and this heavy, roaring quiet.
Then Akiko shrugs and plunges down the ryokan’s main path.
My anger keeps buzzing, tearing through me, swelling all around. I have to let it out. Normally I would cut, but this time I think I need another sensation. I need Miyu. I need to slip back into her life, live as someone else, escape from this panic and rage. It’s safe for me this way, I tell myself. A healthy outlet. I can spend just a little more time in Miyu’s life, learn a bit more, and then I can gather the information I need to help her. I can muster up the will to do what needs to be done in my own life.
Mr. Onagi’s face is as deep red as his bean paste when we return to the inn. He swoops from behind the counter and plants himself right in Akiko’s path.
“I know what you’ve been doing,” he says with deathly calm, his Japanese as ragged as a saw. “I know you’ve been sneaking out of my inn after curfew.”
Akiko blinks a couple times. “Huh?”
“You don’t understand, do you? The rules are there for a reason. Rules are meant to be obeyed.” Fear coats his words. “I can’t let you threaten the safety of my inn. “I’ll throw you out. I have no moral obligation to keep you here. If you can’t follow one simple rule—”
“Would you relax?” she snaps right back. “It’s not a big deal. This town is so dull, and your inn is so dull. Of course we have to go elsewhere for entertainment.”
“You have no idea what you’re messing with!” Mr. Onagi whispers. “The rule is here for a reason. And it must be observed!”
I suddenly remember I’m not supposed to be able to understand what they’re saying, so I turn toward Mariko, who’s hanging near the inn’s entrance with me as I unlace my boots. “What’s he so scared about?’’ I ask.
“Oh…” Mariko pauses for a moment, then shrugs. “He’s just, uh … excited for the show. You know how old guys are. A little batty, right? Is that how you say it?”
“Yeah. Batty,” I say through gritted teeth. I slide out of my boots, hop into the red plastic house slippers, and shuffle my way past the altercation to the restrooms and lock myself in a stall. By the time I click the stall shut, I’ve got the stone buzzing in my hand.
* * *
I am hunched down in the kitchens of the honjin, arms submerged up to my elbows in sudsy, filthy water. I stagger backward, nearly losing my balance, finding myself manifested in Miyu’s body in the midst of her doing something else. The thought makes my stomach churn—Miyu living her life, proceeding along, existing, without my involvement. My life in the present pauses while I’m with Miyu. But whatever happens here seems to exist in some hidden pocket of time.
Miyu is a real person, with a life all her own. Well—obviously. But where does she go when I inhabit her? Is she still within this body, controlling the memories I can access? Or, maybe she didn’t know about me? The possibility gives me a thrill. A stolen joyride in someone else’s life. Does she remember the time I spend in her body, even if only in a fog? Or does it leave her grasping for clues, just like the rest of her life left me?
I know that feeling of falling asleep in my own life, when my conscious thought shuts down and muscle memory takes control. Sometimes, I jerk awake in the middle of driving, or walking a familiar path, and can’t remember the thoughts and acts that led me there. That’s how it feels when I am Miyu, and I find her body carrying out processes that my mind has never learned. Like that moment of jerking awake. But being in Miyu’s body is the real awakening; it makes my life as Reiko feel like a blur. And I want to be awake, to stay alive as Miyu. Her hate burns so clear, while my own is a murky flicker. If I could become Miyu, then Reiko could doze forever.
“Quit daydreaming,” says a sharp voice behind me. Yodo. “Those dishes won’t scrub themselves.”
I rock forward again and dive my hands into the washbasin. “Sorry,” I mutter, and resume Miyu’s work. Weak daylight, the color of runny eggs, dribbles across the kitchen; I was probably scrubbing away the remains of the samurais’ breakfast. Unbidden, I feel a pang at the thought of having missed out on a chance to talk to Jiro. I grip the rag tighter as I scrub away his leftovers. I wonder if he recited any more poetry to me or if he commented on our conversation from last night. I wonder if Miyu reacted to him the same way that I did, or if she was confused by their new camaraderie.
Then I remember Goemon’s awful reptilian stare, and I’m glad not to have seen it again.
Yodo is beating something behind me like it owes her money; the smell tells me it is rice balls she is turning into mochi. “I see the way you chatter with that junior samurai,” she says, in between vicious thwacks. “Don’t forget yourself. That your father promised you to Tsurube.”
My shoulders tense. Who is this Tsurube who thinks he can lay some sort of claim to my life? “Nothing wrong with being kind to our guests,” I say, though for all I know, it violates some vital Confucian principle. The ones my father has supposedly beat into me, although I can’t remember them. The dishes rattle in the basin.
“Careful! Don’t break those dishes,” she hisses, then returns to the beating. “Such a clumsy fool, for someone who thinks herself a great seductress. You could have done us all a favor and run off to the Gion District in Kyoto. Beg some whorehouse to take you in. I suppose you think a hatamoto will offer you a better life than Tsurube? You’re even more foolish than you look.”
I stop. In the basin, my fist closes around the hilt of a filleting knife. The bone handle fits just right in the fold of my palm. I take a deep breath and let it out. “Why are you so cruel to me?” I ask. “What do you care what becomes of me?”
Yodo isn’t my mother—I am certain of that much. She is too awkward around my father and too boastful around me. I don’t have any definite memories of her, but I have a sense she’s worked for Miyu’s family for some time. A widow, maybe, looking to make ends meet now that she doesn’t have a husband to care for her. Isn’t that what Jiro said? Women have no property, no independence in this age. Maybe her own insecurity in her lot led her to lash out at me.
But as she laughs, I can tell she feels certain I am the one at fault.
“You think you are blameless? A senseless victim? Don’t be absurd. Go ask your mother why I hate you. Better yet—your sister, too.” She scoffs. “You’re nothing but a gutter snipe. A useless scrap of fabric, the wrong size and shape to stitch into anything good.”
Sister. My breath falters. The lopsided emptiness of Miyu’s bedroom. Of course she had a sister—it all makes sense. The room was built for two girls; without the sis
ter’s things in it, it looks all wrong. Two girls, just like the wall scroll depicts. But what happened to her?
What did Miyu do to her? With a feeling like a puncture wound, I probe Miyu’s mind but my memories offer up nothing. Maybe Miyu can sense me, feel me taking over her body and mind, and refuses to share her secrets with me.
Fine. She can keep her secrets. I have other plans.
Once I finish with the dishes for Yodo, she leaves to tidy up the rest of the honjin, and Father finds me before I have a chance to track down something else to occupy myself with. “Miyu. Quietly. Listen to me.” He grips me by the shoulders with his thick bear paws. “I need you to handle some errands for me. It’s absolutely vital that you do them properly.”
Good lord, what is everyone’s problem with me? I’ve driven off my sister somehow, I understand that much now, but I’ve yet to see any hard proof of Miyu’s incompetence that vexes everyone so much. “Of course, Father. What do you need?”
His grip tightens; it feels like talons digging in. It reminds me, with a dull ache, of Hideki. Then he releases me with a curt nod. “Head to the town center. You need to purchase sake from the brewer there—but I want you to pay careful attention to the village square and how it’s being decorated for the festival. I need to know everything. The layout of the structures, where the town guards are positioned, whether any of the shogun’s forces have arrived yet.”
Father needs information about something he doesn’t want the samurai to know.
“Hai, Father. I’ll give you a full account.” What does it matter to me? I have no stake in politics, in the constant tug of war between the nobility and the military. From what Jiro said the night before, neither does he, beyond the bare minimum of duties he is obligated to observe by his rank. I’ll observe and report, and who cares what Father and his friends do with the information.
“Everything, Miyu.” His stare fixes me through like a sword pinning me in place. “I need you to remember everything. But don’t let anyone notice what you’re doing.”
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