by Camilla Monk
Even though we didn’t get arrested or anything, I doubted I’d ever get used to showing people a fake passport, and I wondered how March could be so relaxed about the whole thing. The huge black case drew some attention to us as we crossed the lobby, and I was extremely relieved when he retrieved the keys for a brown Honda SUV from some high-end car rental counter. After a brief struggle with yet another scumbag foldable backseat—I thought it was me, but that day, I discovered that foldable backseats truly fear no one, not even guys like March—both black mystery cases had been stored in the back. In no time we were driving down the Chūō Expressway in the direction of Tokyo, under a heavy rain.
I hadn’t traveled to Japan since my last year in Columbia. Back then I had spent six months interning for a big French bank’s local branch to develop an intranet application for HR as my end degree project. So, first post-Fukushima visit, you could say. Not much had changed—in Tokyo anyway—and as I looked at the dense traffic and ad-covered buildings through my window, I was filled with a pleasant sense of familiarity.
We were entering Minami-Shinjuku, in the west of Tokyo, when March’s phone started buzzing in his pocket. The slight twitch in his jaw was self-explanatory. He had forgotten to install the hands-free kit—proof he was terribly distracted—and had qualms about taking a phone call while driving.
“Do you want me to pick up and plug in your headphone?” I offered, though I didn’t expect him to accept.
“Yes, thank you.”
I was pretty surprised, to say the least, but I collected myself and pulled the phone and a pair of tiny earplugs out of his inner pocket, careful not to touch his arms, or the wheel. “It’s . . . ‘0’,” I informed him, looking at the single number displayed on the screen in guise of a contact name.
He nodded for me to pick it up.
“Mr. May’s office, how may I help you?” I announced.
A sultry female voice answered me with a laugh. “Oh my, have I been replaced? I liked this job!”
“Oh my God! You’re Phyllis!” I chirped.
Next to me, I heard him cough. “Oh, yeah, sorry! Seems like I don’t have the right to talk to you. I’ll just pass you to March.”
“Thank you, Miss Chaptal. I look forward to hearing more of you when the circumstances will allow it.”
I was tempted to tell her that it was unlikely, but I didn’t want to hijack March’s call, so I plugged in the headphones and placed one in his ear. I know it’s silly, but the brief proximity we experienced as I touched his ear and the soft chestnut hair surrounding it gave me a pleasant little chill.
He made sure nearly nothing transpired of their exchange. All I learned was that she was the one who had arranged the car rental, as well as a hotel in Roppongi Hills. I could tell she had said something else, though, because at some point during the conversation he listened to her in complete silence for almost a whole minute, his brow knitted in an expression of displeasure before answering her. “I thought so. I’ve already taken additional measures.”
What kind of measures was he talking about? The big suitcase he had purchased from Minas? Crossing my fingers, I prayed we weren’t driving with a portable nuke in the trunk or anything like that.
When he hung up, I indulged one last time, even though he hadn’t requested any help to remove the earplug, hoping he wouldn’t notice my fingers lingering a second too long on the shell of his ear. God, I liked the soft fuzz there . . .
“I need your help. Where do I go, Island?”
His calm voice snapped me out of my daze. March seemed to be struggling with a notion I had discovered long ago. In Japan, you don’t find addresses, addresses find you—if you’re lucky. Indeed, with no street names and a complex addressing system relying on nonlinear building numbers, you could find yourself stuck in front of the wrong building with no idea where to find your apartment—which is exactly what had happened to my mom on the day of our arrival in Tokyo. We had eventually spent our first night in a nearby hotel, because she was exhausted and didn’t want to hunt for the right number at one in the morning.
“First on the right, after the drugstore,” I instructed. I could see myself again, at the age of fifteen, stalking Masaharu after his baseball game and watching as he entered the tiny gray house with straw blinds protecting his mother’s bedroom window from the prying eyes of an old dude who lived in the opposite building.
March reluctantly parked the SUV on the sidewalk lane, for lack of a better option. It was still raining, and warm drops ran down my neck and under my beige T-shirt as we made our way toward the house’s entrance. Halfway there, I felt him move closer to me, and it took me a couple of seconds to understand that he was shielding me from the rain, draping his right arm around my shoulder and keeping close to me so most raindrops would fall on his jacket rather than on my back. I didn’t look up because the way his body brushed against mine had me turning pink. If things kept going like this, he was probably going to ruin me for any other man.
A strange impatience filled me while we waited for someone to answer the door. Would Masaharu recognize me? Would he even remember me? I took a deep breath when the small wooden door slowly opened to reveal . . . Masaharu’s mom. There was no denying that all the weird beauty products Haru had been putting on her face back then had worked. She still looked amazing, even in her mid-fifties. I felt March stiffen behind me as he observed Haru’s long black hair, broad shoulders, elaborate makeup, and lilac cotton dress, but he said nothing otherwise, allowing me to introduce us.
I cleared my throat, worried that my Japanese might have become rusty since my last trip. “Konnichiwa, Niyama-san. Watashi o oboete iru ka dō ka wa shirimasen . . . Namae wa Island Chaptal desu. Jyuuni nen mae, Sumiyoshi ni Haha to sunde ita. Masaharu-kun no yūjindatta.” Hello, Mrs. Niyama. I don’t know if you remember me . . . My name is Island Chaptal. Ten years ago, I lived in Sumiyoshi with my mom. I was a friend of Masaharu’s.
She blinked a couple of times, and March and I waited as an expression of shock formed on her smooth face. Her pink lips puckered in a small O before stretching into a large grin.
An ear-piercing shriek soon welcomed my introduction. “Shinjirarenaiyo! Hontou ni shinjirarenaiyo!” I can’t believe it! I really can’t believe it!
I could tell March didn’t like witnessing a conversation he couldn’t understand, but I figured translating the exchange would take too much time, so I kept on chatting with her in Japanese under his confused gaze.
She cradled my cheeks in her hands, speaking in a cheerful, excited voice. “You’ve grown sooooo much! How’s your mama? Is she here in Tokyo too? You two left so suddenly I never thought I’d see you again!”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “She’s dead, Haru-san. She died here, in Tokyo. I came back to see Masaharu.”
Her hands left my face to squeeze my shoulders. “I’m sorry to hear that, Island-chan. Masaharu-kun isn’t home, but would you like to come in for a second?”
I turned to March. “He’s not home, but she’s inviting us in. Is it okay?”
He nodded and followed Haru inside the living room, but not before having removed our shoes, as was customary. I didn’t miss the glint in her eyes as she watched March do so. Unbeknownst to him, March had scored big-time with Masaharu’s mom.
Masaharu’s house was the same as I remembered, with its small, dimly lit rooms, cream wooden floor, old ink paintings, and celebrity posters on the walls. I gathered Haru still had that big rice cooker in the kitchen, as a pleasant smell of hot rice floated in the air. Once we were all seated around a wooden table with ice coffees, she shot March a smoldering look. “Who’s that hot gentleman with you? Is he American?”
Presumably identifying the word “American” in her sentence, March shook his head, with an unexpectedly shy smile. Damn, Masaharu’s mom knew how to tame men!
“This is March. He’s—” I hesitated for a few seconds. What was he, to me? No longer a threat, not really a friend, not a lover e
ither—although that particular point was rapidly becoming ambiguous. “He’s . . . an acquaintance.”
As I said this, I felt March’s gaze on me. I peeked up to find the faintest trace of disappointment in his eyes, as if he had expected a better answer. I looked away to focus on Haru, who was still ogling him like a succulent piece of meat. “Haru-san, do you know where we can find Masaharu-kun?” I asked between two sips of the sweet, cold coffee.
“Oh, he’s found a job. He distributes tissue packs in Shibuya,” she said, checking a delicate golden bracelet watch on her wrist. “He’s still on Hachikō Crossing at this hour.”
I translated her explanations for March, and he gave me a look that prompted me to bring our little visit to an end. “Thank you so much for everything, Haru-san. I’m sorry we have to leave so early. We’re in a bit of a hurry, and I’d like to see Masaharu before we leave Tokyo.” A half lie . . . always better than a full-blown one, I guess.
She nodded her understanding and walked us to the door, all the while smoothing nonexistent wrinkles on the back of March’s jacket. As we were about to pass the door, I decided to leave Haru a little souvenir I knew would make her happy. “Let’s say good-bye the French way, with a kiss on each cheek!” I suggested enthusiastically.
Haru clasped her hands in delight, and I kissed her on both cheeks, encouraging March to do the same.
There are looks you can’t forget, such as the look of pure gratitude in Haru’s eyes when I gave her a naughty wink and allowed March to bend down to kiss her in turn. She let go of him with flushed cheeks, bliss clouding her dark eyes, and I stifled a laugh at March’s obvious discomfort. He would make me pay dearly for this, but Haru was happy, and that was all that mattered.
Outside, the rain had stopped, and after she had closed the door behind us, he finally spoke, his voice uncertain. “Masaharu’s father—”
I giggled. “Don’t be so conservative! If Haru wants to live her life as a woman, you shouldn’t judge!”
“I’m not judging—” he muttered as he unlocked the passenger door for me.
“Then stop calling her Masaharu’s father.” I shrugged, fastening my belt as the engine started.
TWENTY-FOUR
The Tissues
“Lady Maythorn had to choose between two men: Barnaby, the dark, mysterious rake, and Georges, the stern officer whose cold facade concealed a burning passion.”
—Christina Thorbrad, Regency Hearts #3: Two Earls for the Virgin
March had parked the SUV a few minutes north of Hachikō Crossing, and we were strolling down the Inokashira Dori, determined to find Masaharu somewhere within the crowd. March looked down at me as we passed building after building, all covered in colorful ads. “So, why did your mother refer to Masaharu as ‘the man you loved’? Was it a crush?”
I sighed. “Yeah, big-time. I was sort of stalking him a little. I went to his house a few times to watch him from the street, or I’d hide in the aisles to spy on him when he went to Life with his mom.”
“Life?”
“The supermarket,” I clarified.
He grimaced. “You stalked him when he was at the supermarket with his mother . . . That’s—”
“Pathetic, I know. I was fifteen!” I groaned, remembering that I’d done the same thing with Ethan-the-Gorgeous-Law-Student. Then twenty-three, though, I had been fully accountable for my laughable attempts at finding true love.
“What was so special about him?” March asked, genuine curiosity filling his voice.
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “He was kind of badass. Not great-looking, but he was an aspiring bōsōzoku.”
His mouth twitched as he had been stifling a laugh. “Bōsōzoku . . . What does that mean?”
“The tough biker type . . . Well, actually he had a scooter, but you get the idea,” I mumbled.
This time March laughed in earnest, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “Unrequited love for an aspiring tough biker riding a scooter?”
“Hey! A girl can dream! I eventually mustered the courage to talk to him, and he took me to see a movie in Kinshichō with his friends. I framed the ticket and hung it on my bedroom wall,” I concluded, smiling at the memory of my mother helping me choose the frame at a nearby mall.
March chuckled one last time and casually ruffled my hair as we walked, raising my body temperature slightly above Mercury’s—that’s seven hundred degrees Kelvin, for those of you who skipped physics to have a life. “Do you plan on framing the underwear I bought you as well?”
I shook my head. Unlike Mercury, I wasn’t gravitating too close to the sun, but rather to a tactless jerk, and I had a tendency to forget it too easily. “Get over yourself . . . You’re nothing special, and we haven’t even dated yet.”
“Really? What’s so special about my ears, by the way?”
Lord, why do you never let me get away with these things?
“Nothing,” I huffed in embarrassment.
“Oh. Nothing at all?”
I balled my fists in aggravation as Hachikō Crossing came in sight. “Okay, they’re soft. You have soft, fuzzy ears. Happy?”
“More like disconcerted, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”
I was about to tell him that his ears weren’t that cool, anyway, when I stopped dead in my tracks. In front of the Tsutaya Music Store was a lean, lanky silhouette I had dreamed of often enough as a teen to recognize when I saw it. March’s posture changed, and the relaxed guy I had been joking with seconds before vanished before my eyes, leaving in his place the guarded professional. For the first time since I had met him, I realized how much younger March seemed when he wasn’t “working.”
Haru had been right. Masaharu was here, distributing advertising tissue packs in front of the buzzing store. He hadn’t changed much. He looked a little older, maybe a little tired too. His dark eyes had lost most of their badass spark, and his hair, while still long enough to reach his shoulders, didn’t shine like it had in my memories. There was an expression of utter boredom on his angular face, and I could tell that the black suit pants, white shirt, and colorful apron he was wearing were a necessity rather than a choice. Masaharu had become a grown-up.
Gesturing for March to follow me, I crossed the street along with hundreds of hurried salarymen, confused tourists, and tanned, giggling girls skipping school to go buy makeup at the 109 department store.
It felt weird because at first he didn’t look at me. I was just another shadow in the crowd to him, and he mechanically handed me one of those tissue packs, claiming my life would never be the same after I had tasted HotHotHot Donuts. I took the tissues under March’s attentive gaze and smiled at Masaharu. “Thanks. I just went to see your mom. How are you, Masaharu-kun?”
There was a fleeting moment during which I saw that old spark light up in his eyes, and a heartwarming smile spread on his lips, revealing a row of misaligned teeth that I had always found adorable.
“Island . . . san, is it you?” He had seemed to hesitate before placing the polite suffix after my name. I was now a grown-up too, after all.
Trampling most basic Japanese courtesy rules, I reached up to wrap my arms around Masaharu’s bony shoulders and pulled him in for a hug. I didn’t miss March’s stiffening behind me as I did so, but I thought nothing of it. No better way to assert I was totally immune to his teasing than hugging another man in front of him.
“It’s been ages! I’m so glad to see you! Haru told me you were doing great!” I cooed. We both knew he wasn’t really doing so great, distributing tissues at thirty-three in a ruthlessly stratified society such as Japan, but he still mattered enough for me to want to make him happy, even at the cost of a lie.
My old flame welcomed the attention with obvious embarrassment, averting his eyes, and I thought it was cute. “I’m happy to see you too, Island-san. How long will you be staying in Japan? How is Léa-san?”
He had said my mother’s name almost reverently, and it hurt to give him the bad news.
“She’s dead. She died shortly before I left Japan.”
His lips pressed in a pained expression, and I was almost tempted to hug him again, but behind me March placed a hand on my shoulder in a silent reminder that we hadn’t come here to cuddle with Masaharu on the street.
“Masaharu-kun, my friend and I need to talk to you. Can we go somewhere quiet, please?” I asked, gesturing to March.
Masaharu winced, his bag of tissue packs still in hand. His eyes darted to a young girl enthusiastically promoting HotHotHot Donuts in front of a nearby store, and I figured he couldn’t leave his spot without asking a supervisor first. I joined my hands in a praying gesture. “Please!”
He swallowed and laid his bag on the ground before raising his palms up to indicate we needed to wait. We watched him run toward the bubbly girl with silly pigtails, bowing at her over and over. She seemed to accept his request, and as soon as he had left, the girl resumed hopping up and down and yelling HotHotHot’s slogan in a shrill voice. Masaharu went back to us, and he seemed relieved, but also a little sad.
“It’s okay. I’m free for the day,” he told us with a weak nod.
I guess March was a better judge of people and characters than I was, because, as we walked away with Masaharu, he figured out something I hadn’t.
“She fired him,” he whispered to me.
We were all sitting in Tsutaya’s Starbucks Coffee, waiting for our drinks. A cute waitress walked to our table and checked the names on the cups before giving me my mango passion tea, Masaharu his mocha espresso, and . . . Mr. July his simple brewed coffee.
For a minute or so, all that could be heard were low sipping sounds, until March broke the silence, looking at me as he spoke. “What did Léa tell him? Does he know where the stone is?”
I translated, and Masaharu started nodding over and over again, his eyes widening. Near me, I felt March tense in anticipation, waiting for my mother’s messenger to talk. “I still have it! I still have your box. Léa made me swear to keep it. I still have it!” he said, his hands gripping his cup tightly.