A Darkly Beating Heart

by Lindsay Smith

  I stare at her for a few seconds, trying to parse out her words from the buzzing in my head. I blink. “I’m fine.” Why does everyone keep asking me that? What’s so fundamentally wrong with the way I look, the way I am, that I have to constantly be checked on? Don’t treat me like I’m back in the goddamned psych ward. Don’t send your little orderlies around to check on me. Don’t send Kenji to spy on me, to keep me from hurting myself or others.

  I don’t even feel the urge to hurt myself anymore. I deserve better.

  It’s everyone else who needs to feel pain.

  “Well, where are the rest of your friends?” Sierra asks. “It’s only an hour until curfew. Mr. Onagi knows they’ve been sneaking out.”

  I tilt my head, transfixed by her lips, so lush and velvety as she talks. I imagine how they might feel searing a path down my neck, the way Chloe’s once did. Only a day off the meds, and I’ve finally thawed out the ice that had sealed my libido away. I take a step toward the desk. I could seize her chin in one hand, guide her face toward mine. Just because Kenji’s a coward doesn’t mean Sierra will be, too.

  “Reiko.” She says it urgently, but not with the passion I’d hoped for. “Listen. You need to get your friends back here.”

  I feel my lips smiling, crackling with ice. “They deserve to suffer.”

  The smooth line of her throat ripples as she swallows hard. All of her muscles have turned stiff; she’s gripping something in one hand. “This isn’t a joke. This village, it—” Her grip slackens by a fraction, and I can see what she’s holding now. A letter opener. “It does things. It’s not a good place. The festival, they hold it every year for the priests to purify the town, but we all have to do our part.”

  A frown creases my face. She’s holding the letter opener like she thinks she needs to protect herself. From what? From me? “What do you mean, it does things?”

  “Something terrible happened. A long time ago.” She presses the letter opener back onto the desk, but her fingertips keep moving along it, like it’s an agitated animal she’s trying to calm. “I don’t know what, no one will say. I just know how it feels when you walk the village streets at night.”

  The drums. The whispers. The shadows that swirl and shift like fog. And the earthquake, unleashing its primal howl. “You don’t strike me as the superstitious sort,” I say.

  Sierra smiles. She’s looking more like herself again; something’s put her at ease. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of me. I no longer feel the same buzzing in my head, but I can feel it coiled up, waiting for me back in its nest. I smile back at her, suddenly feeling a little silly for how I’ve been acting.

  Relax, Reiko. It’s just been a strange day. But I barely remember it. All I recall is Jiro’s bare skin warm against mine—

  “I’m not, not really. But living here—it’s hard not to, you know? There’s a bad energy lurking around Kuramagi.” Sierra’s hand finally leaves the letter opener, and she scratches the back of her head. “But hey, the festival helps, and it’s almost time for it, right? Get everything all purified once more.”

  Purify. The word sends a thrill down my spine. Yes. I want to be purified. I want to cleanse these streets. The humming starts up again.

  Sierra’s saying something. I stare at her teeth, like maybe the words will be scrawled across them in some language I can understand. But they’re all just words, dumb words, English or Japanese, I don’t even care. All I hear are drums. Maybe she’s asking me something. Maybe there’s something I need to do for her. Sierra. A pretty name. I do like her, or I did; but that’s unimportant now. I don’t need her or Kenji or anyone else.

  Miyu has the answers.

  Miyu is my future. My purification.

  Sierra shouts after me as I turn and head for the stairs.

  * * *

  As soon as I step back into Miyu, I can tell something’s changed. My stomach twists as I try to adjust, but there are lights, there are voices, there are too many people crammed around me, pointing and talking with strange muffled tones—

  I’ve come into Miyu mid-conversation with no clues about what’s going on. I blink, trying to see past the harsh syrupy light that hardens and casts everyone around me in amber. I recognize Miyu’s father at one end of the low table where we all huddle around, but I don’t know any of the other faces. They wear drab farmer’s clothes or the garb of clerks—maybe they are the daimyo’s attendants.

  Then I glance overhead at the peaked roof so low above us. Ahh. We are in the secret room.

  Father and his co-conspirators.

  “—and if the soldiers are watching this side alley, like Miyu claims…” Father gestures to the rough sketch spread on the table before us. Slowly, the hatch marks and symbols on it begin to make sense. It’s a model of the village square, and the streets immediately surrounding it.

  “How can we trust her word?” The man to my father’s right asks—a rounded, lopsided man, with one eye that rolls like a fish. “She’s never kept it before.”

  I itch to feel a blade’s hilt in my palm. I itch to see the rivulets of red.

  “Even a cowardly dog has its uses,” Father says, words falling like a gavel. “And my daughter will have hers.”

  I don’t feel half as grateful to him as I suspect I am supposed to.

  When the man says nothing else, my father continues. “—So our best place to position is here, along the secondary path. They will be coming along the guarded one, but we’ll have the advantage of height. We can inflict great damage before we are spotted.”

  “No. It’s not enough.” It’s Yodo speaking—the only other woman around the table. “Great damage is not all we are aiming for. We’ll have to draw the soldiers away, when it is too late for them to communicate orders to hold off.”

  The man to Yodo’s left, wispy and gray-haired, nods. “We need a distraction.”

  My muscles tense as I study the map. They are planning something for the festival—that much is obvious. But what? It almost looks like they are trying to seal off the square. But they are also talking about bringing something into the square. What are they after?

  “Perhaps,” the round man says, “this is the perfect occasion for our cowardly dog.”

  All eyes turn toward me.

  “Miyu.” There is no warmth in my father’s tone as he speaks; if anything, he stinks of desperation. “We need you to make this happen.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” The round man bashes his fist against the table. “She was born with failure wrapped around her throat. She killed your wife on her way out of the womb and she’s been a harbinger of failure, an ill omen, ever since.”

  So that explains some of my father’s hatred for me, then. I shrink back, my anger momentarily quelled. But it comes roaring back almost immediately. How dare they blame me for my mother’s death? As if it is some sort of choice I made—something I had control over! I clench one hand into a fist and drive my knuckles against my thigh. I hate them. I hate all of them. They deserve to pay.

  “I know what she has done.” My father’s gaze never leaves my face; it is steady as a surgeon’s knife, peeling back all the layers of my skin. For a moment it almost feels as if he can see past Miyu entirely, to me, Reiko, underneath. “And so does everyone else in this village. That’s why she’s the perfect distraction.”

  The perfect distraction. Oh, but I am so much more than a momentary diversion. I can do so much worse.

  “Fine. But if we get disemboweled because your idiot girl couldn’t do anything right—” the round man starts.

  But Father raises his hand. “Miyu will play her part. She knows better than to fail me again.” He stares right through me. “You will cause a scene in the square on my signal. Understood?”

  I nod, sharp. “As my father commands, so shall I obey.”

  I make my way down toward my room, one of the first to trickle out of the hidden chamber—we spread out our departures, so as not to rouse the samurai from their sleep. Not that we need t
o be concerned—the snores coming from their room are powerful enough to rattle the wooden panels in their tracks. Goemon’s doing, I have no doubt. I round the corner into my room—and nearly scream as I run right into Jiro.

  He throws his arms around me. “Shh, shh, it’s only me. I’m sorry.” He helps me into my room and slides the panel closed behind him. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I only … I wanted to see your face.”

  Yes. This is the response I deserve—someone eager to see me, hungry for whatever I give them. Not like Kenji. Not like Sierra, who has no need to be afraid. More proof that this is the world I belong in. I cradle my fingertips along Jiro’s jawline and pull him in for a kiss, desperate and starving.

  He sinks down beside me on my pallet, and we kiss each other as if we’ve been away for years, not hours. How quickly I’ve come to feel for him—for this whole strange world—in a way that I can never seem to muster for my own life. I no longer care how Miyu feels about me taking over her body, her life. I’ve earned this. I deserve to have a life that is actually worth living.

  I tug at the V of Jiro’s collar and nibble at his collarbone. He stifles a laugh. “No. No, Miyu. Wait. There’s—there’s something I want to speak to you about.”

  I pause. Words like that usually send a shock of ice through my veins. But he is still smiling, still holding me close to him. “You have my attention,” I tell him. “As always.”

  He smiles and brushes a stray wisp of hair back from my face. “I’m thinking of leaving the shogun’s service. Forsaking my income, my standing in the samurai. Washing my hands of the whole bakufu government.”

  I tighten my grip on the hem of his robe. Abandon the shogunate and the way of the blade. Is he really willing to do that? But then I recall what he said about the samurai’s path being meaningless these days. Either they are clerks, like he and Goemon, sent on endless pointless errands, or they are frightful bullies, like the shinsengumi who roam the countryside sowing terror and compliance. Jiro deserves better than either of those paths.

  “Is that … is it really safe for you to do so?” I ask. “You’d become ronin—masterless. Doesn’t it betray your code?”

  “I’d rather have no master than serve one I don’t believe in. But it does present some … challenges.” His jaw sets in a hard line. “There are still some details I must figure out. But yes, I think it can be done. Maybe. I don’t know.” He winces, and curls forward, nose pressing against my throat as he plants a fresh kiss there. “All I know is, I can’t keep on this current path. It isn’t the life I want. And I think … I think this isn’t the life that you want, either.”

  It is all I can do not to laugh at that. If he only knew how badly I want Miyu’s life instead of my own. But he has a point—Miyu, and me as Miyu, deserve better than to be her father’s and her village’s whipping post. Whatever she has done, it’s not worth their hate. It is time for her to become something more.

  “You’re better than this tiny place. Its simple grudges and narrow-minded ways.” Jiro kisses me again, and then sucks at my exposed flesh, sending a hot flare of desire straight through me. I curve toward him with an unbidden moan. He kisses back up to my jawline, then pulls back to stare me right in the eye. “What if we could escape?”

  I pause. “Together, you mean.”

  Jiro nods, squeezing me closer. He smells so comforting—of pine and plums, of a hearth in wintertime. “Yes. Together.”

  I tightened my embrace. He is a man of keen edges but a soft heart. A blade when he has to be, but otherwise, a safe haven. This is so different from losing myself in Chloe. This isn’t expecting someone else to save me. This is someone opening the door for me, showing me the path to my own salvation.

  All he did is give me the opportunity. It is for me to take.

  But I hesitate. My situation here is precarious. If I ever lost the rock …

  Yet if I can find a way to make this more permanent, to somehow isolate myself back in my world so I can be free to live Miyu’s life for the rest of my days … There had to be a way. I have to think of something.

  “I understand. It’s a big decision. You don’t have to decide right now.” Jiro kisses me again, and slides one hand to cup the back of my thigh. “But don’t think too long. I’m afraid I have to leave soon. I’d just…” His sigh aches right through me, stoking the fire in my gut. “I’d rather not go without you.”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I can,” I tell him honestly. And then I surrender to his touch once more, our muffled sighs concealing the faintest shuffle of bare feet as Father’s conspirators trickle out into the night.

  * * *

  For the first time in forever, I wonder how I might make a collage again. How would I frame Kenji? He’d have to be hunched over his sketchpad, with a cascade of color and life roiling out of the pad like a rogue wave. Blues and golds and purples spilling over the canvas, dwarfing his black-and-white shape. I’d put him off center, to show him escaping the rigid school system and the even more rigid animation studios and art collectives he wants nothing to do with.

  Sierra’s canvas, too, would glow from within. Her mint-green nails would jump off the canvas, and I’d pepper the blank space with gold leaf. Weave in photographs from all over the world to match her wanderlust. A hand reaching out, warm, just waiting to be grasped.

  The village of Kuramagi, though, would be a closed-off image. Locked up gates, buried power lines, lists of rules that cannot be bent. The image grows and grows in my mind, like poisoned water seeping into the ground from a dark well. A dark shadow locked away here, and every attempt to contain it makes it thicker, heavier, collapsing in on itself.

  * * *

  Afterward, I return to my time, and stare into the darkness of our room back at the ryokan, fingertips resting just beyond the stone. The room is silent, but I’m gasping for breath; all the thoughts in my head are crowding around, pulling tight like a noose around me. I need to make a plan. Something permanent. Do it. You can run. You can leave your life behind. Surrender this life. Live a long and full life as Miyu instead; abandon your broken body and broken world for good …

  I just need a plan. I need guarantees. So far, it doesn’t seem like any time passes at all in my world when I’m inhabiting Miyu’s, but what if that’s not true over a longer period of time? Say, years? What if someone takes the stone out of my grip?

  And say I did live out Miyu’s life—say she lived to eighty, to ninety. A long and fulfilling life. When it comes to its end, will I wake up right here in Kuramagi, still eighteen years old, still waiting to get dragged along to Akiko’s performance at the cultural festival? No. I can’t face that. I came here barely wanting to live one life—I definitely don’t want to live two.

  I hear voices outside, in the garden below. I can’t make out what they are saying but I know I hear my name. It snares me like a fishing hook, and I am unable to resist. I slide out of bed, slowly, quietly, and creep toward the window without ever rising up high enough to show my face.

  “—telling you, there’s something wrong with her. Really, really wrong.” Kenji’s voice, shaky and uncertain. He’s trying to keep it down as he speaks in Japanese.

  “Of course there is. She’s Reiko,” Akiko’s voice replies. “You should see her giant bag of pills. The ridiculous ‘instruction manual’ her parents sent us when she came over. Runs on her father’s side of the family, I guess—she didn’t get it from ours. Her brother tried to kill himself, you know. And they say she threatened her classmates.”

  “Yes—yes, I know about her brother, her hospital stay. I know she’s been—struggling for a while. But this is something different.” Kenji’s trying so hard to speak quietly. Idiot. “She came to me in the onsen, and there was something about the way she was moving, the way she talked—it’s like she wasn’t herself at all—”

  “Wait, did she try to seduce you?” Akiko’s laugh punctures the still night. “That’s hilarious! Tell me more!”

  W
hat the hell is Kenji talking about? I never—

  Wait.

  I remember now. I remember the steam whispering against my bare skin and Kenji pushing me away. God, it feels like a lifetime ago, like a grainy camera phone video I watched of someone else’s life.

  What was I thinking, trying to seduce Kenji? Sure, I felt something for him before, the faintest of flutter that could penetrate my medicated haze, but I never really wanted Kenji. I just want Jiro. I just want …

  The buzzing in my head turns ravenous, angry. Still, Kenji was a fool to deny me. Can’t he see me, the power I have? My vengeance won’t spare him, I decide, as red wreathes my vision once more. The fire in me grows and grows.

  “This isn’t funny, Aki.” Kenji’s adamant now, speaking louder despite himself. “There’s something wrong here—really wrong. The look she had in her eyes…” His voice drops once more, quavering. “I’m scared of what she might do.”

  Oh, poor, foolish Kenji. He’s right to be scared. They all are. But they have no idea why—not yet.

  Soon enough, though, I’ll make them all see. The buzzing inside of me answers like a happy sigh. Everything is coming together.

  Footsteps on the stairs jar me back to myself. Someone’s coming up to the room. I scramble back into bed and squeeze my eyes shut just as the panel slides open and the sound of two slippers getting kicked aside rings out. Someone huffs into the room. “Rei? You here?” Mariko asks, in English. “Are you awake?”

  I don’t answer. I have nothing to say to her. No use for her at all.

  Mariko sighs and pads over to the mini fridge. I tense. I’m practically vibrating with anticipation—yes. Eat your stupid onigiri. Darkness swirls on the backs of my eyelids, the humming swells, I feel like an insect about to split open, all my innards spilling over—

  Then Aki enters the room. “Ugh. You’re eating again?”

  Mariko hesitates. “Well, you said we can’t go to the club tonight … I thought it would be okay…”

  “Quit whining. You saw what a creep Franco is. He’s just going to harass me all night if we go. Besides, I need my beauty rest.”