by Asha Lemmie
“Hai, Oniichan.”
* * *
AKIRA
I walk out into the crisp autumn weather and I think, My God, I love this city.
Tokyo is mine and I am hers. I am certain of this, as I am certain of most things.
But I am never sure of her.
Nori trails behind me, wearing a dress of deep navy blue and her hair in two pigtails, each tied with a different color ribbon. She is chewing on her lip, and it’s already starting to swell.
“Dame,” I tell her. “You’re going to make yourself bleed.”
She stops immediately and winds her hand into the crook of my arm. Instinctively, I pull away. I am not used to being touched. My father was a good man, wise but stern. I never saw him laugh. He was sick for years and tried to hide it from me. I noticed, of course, but I didn’t know how bad it was. I didn’t know that he had a cancer eating away at his insides like termites in dry rot.
One day I came home from school and they told me he was dead. I moved to Kyoto the day after we buried him.
My mother was different, but she was gone before my fifth birthday.
I remember she played the piano beautifully. She practiced all the time and used to sit me beside her on the bench. When I started playing the violin at two, we’d play together and she would always humor me and tell me that I was her muse.
She smelled of peppermint tea, her favorite. And later, when she started smoking, she wore peppermint perfume so Father wouldn’t know.
She was all laughs and smiles and warm kisses. She would come wake me at five a.m. so that we could play games in the garden. She tried to build castles out of snow in nothing but her nightgown. She was famously beautiful, famously graceful, but she could be as giddy as a little girl. When I found out about the affairs, later, it was hardly news. She needed amusement; she needed to know that she was adored. My father gave her neither of those things.
She cried a lot too. Sometimes she locked us both in the music room and cried for hours.
“Little bird,” she would whisper into my hair. “My poor little bird.”
I remember the day she left. She came to my room and kissed me. She said that she was going into town to run some errands.
And then she was gone.
My father and grandparents sent a search party after her, but I knew, even at four years old, that she was never coming back.
Sometimes I look at Nori and it is all I can do not to flinch. The resemblance is becoming more striking as she grows. I find myself watching her, waiting for the first cracks to show. I have forgiven her for what she tried to do. And I can understand it.
But I’ll never trust her again.
“Oniichan,” she pipes up, in that high, clear squeak she calls a voice. “Where are we going?”
I think that she is my responsibility now and she will be asking me that for the rest of my life.
“Just there,” I say, pointing to a crowded area fenced off with white rope. There are several market stalls and booths, with food, toys, and jewelry. Half the district has come out, bringing their rowdy children with them. “There’s an autumn festival. I thought you would like it.”
Her little face lights up. She stands up on her tiptoes. “You promised to take me to a festival years ago. I thought you’d forgotten.”
At last, she moves me to a smile. She is teaching me her easy joy. I am someone who is not easily satisfied, a consummate perfectionist, but Nori is delighted with everything.
“We’re early now, but there will be performing mid-afternoon—drummers and dancers, all kinds of things—and when it gets dark, there will be paper lanterns. You make a wish on one and then you let it go.”
She wraps her little arms around my waist. This time I let her.
“Arigatou,” she whispers.
I nod. “Do you want to go and play?”
She has forgotten her fear, it seems. Her eyes are bright.
“Are there games?”
“Oh, yes. Bobbing for apples and . . .” I trail off. I really don’t know. I never played games after Mother left.
It doesn’t matter that I don’t know. She is off like a shot. I have to laugh as she bounds towards the festival grounds. The bright autumn leaves form a canopy over everything and the sunlight filters down through their colors so that all of us are bathed in orange light.
I am determined to give her this day.
She flits from booth to booth, and when she finds something that she wants, she looks at me with the slightest hint of a pout and I hand her some money. Eventually, I just give up and give her my wallet.
She buys a large sack to keep her trinkets in, and before I know it she has collected two teddy bears, a box of candied apples, and some jewelry made of seashells from the coast.
I was afraid that someone might say something unkind to her or question her skin, but my fears are baseless.
This is a lighthearted event, and no one is looking for a reason to be unhappy. The war years were hard—not for me, of course, and not for any of the other rich people in the country, but for the common people, they were very hard years indeed, and now everyone just wants to be carefree. Tokyo is coming to life again. Her people have always been decades ahead of the rest of the country. Perhaps my sister will be happy here.
Besides, she is not without a kind of appeal. Her joy is catching, and before long she is playing tag with a group of boys. Someone puts a crown made of leaves in her hair.
She is pretty. I’m going to have to watch her. Pretty and trusting is a poor combination. At thirteen, she is still very much a child, with a child’s desperate desire to be loved.
“Oniichan,” she calls out to me, “I’m hungry.”
I buy her some takoyaki, and she leans her head against my arm as she eats it. We watch the dancers swirling around in their elaborate costumes and she hops up and down in time to the music.
“Do they do this every season?” she asks me.
“Yes.”
Her eyes fill up with quick tears, but she is off again before I have a chance to say anything about them. I spot her throwing some rings around glass bottles.
Unbelievably, I do it. I manage to tolerate an entire day of something that I have no interest in whatsoever. Nori is teaching me patience I never knew I could possess. It’s like a well that I am constantly digging.
When the sun has set and the stars are starting to wink down at us, she finds me again. She is holding her paper lantern and her hands are wet with ink because she has tried to scribble in kanji, using a brush in the old way. She has a smudge of ink on the side of her mouth, and there are leaves sticking out of her hair.
“I could have done that,” I chide her. “Look at you, you’re a mess.”
“I can do it myself.” Her voice drops an octave, the way it always does when she is serious about something.
I frown at her illegible scribble. “I can’t even read that.”
She shoves it into my face so that I can see clearly. “It says kibou.” Hope.
My lecture dies on my tongue. I told her to make a wish, and that is what she has done. She is determined to help me, to help us, and this is all she can do. She wanted to do something herself.
I look into her honest eyes, and I know that she is a rare creature, this little half sister of mine.
“Very well, then.”
She beams. “Do you think God will understand? Even though I drew it wrong?”
I don’t want to crush her spirits, but I can’t lie. I have never believed in anything but my own talent, death, and the ability of people to fall far short of expectations.
“I don’t believe in anything. You know that.”
She smiles as if she knows a secret that I don’t. I can never keep track of her mercurial faith. One moment, she is devout; the next, she swears that
she has outgrown it. I think she just needs someone to complain to.
I can’t say I blame her.
“So who are we wishing to?” she presses. “Where does the lantern go?”
I am driven to honesty. “I think it goes as far as it goes, Nori.”
She presses the lantern into my hands. “That’s okay. We’ll let it go together.”
After a moment, I let it go. She is a second behind me. It floats upwards, a glowing little ghost among hundreds of others, before disappearing into the night.
She tucks her hand into mine and sighs deeply, as if a great weight has been lifted from her tiny shoulders. Mine are still heavy. I lack her faith. In truth, I have very little in common with her at all.
I am still coming to understand, every day, what it is that makes her feel like mine.
* * *
The day of the meeting finally dawned. If Nori believed in omens, she would say that the thunderstorm raging outside last night was a sign that it was all over for them.
As it was, Akira had assured her that it meant nothing. He was confident of their success.
“She needs me,” he insisted. She wondered which one of them he was trying to reassure.
He had drawn up a list of demands that he would not let her see. Nori assumed that he didn’t want her to be disappointed if they didn’t get all of them.
She had asked to be present for the meeting and was turned down flat. She was to stay in her room, with the door bolted shut.
Akira spent the afternoon pacing in the garden, rehearsing his speech. She watched him from the porch but did not approach him. She had dressed in her finest, with her pearls wrapped around her neck like a heavy chain. Somehow, this made her feel better.
Akira had not bothered, and was wearing a simple button-down and black pants. But then, he had less to compensate for.
She could wear a crown of solid gold and he could wear a dirty sheet, and it wouldn’t change the way that the world viewed either of them.
Akira breezed back into the house, his anxiety seemingly spent.
“Can I get you anything?” she offered.
He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Like?”
“Coffee?”
“Do you even know how to make coffee?”
She bristled. “I’ve seen Ayame-san do it.”
“And if I want coffee, I’ll ask her. That’s what we have staff for.”
Nori rolled her eyes. Not for the first time, she wondered if he was as willing to part with his status in life as he claimed. She doubted that he had ever cooked a meal for himself, or even thought about how to wash his own clothes. That was servant’s work, and what’s more, it was woman’s work.
Not that she had either, but she was prepared to learn. She liked to be useful, and she had no pride to speak of.
“Can you keep paying them out of your inheritance?” she asked nervously. “If Obaasama doesn’t give you the allowance you want?”
Akira shrugged. “For a while, at least. My father was not so rich as others, but he left me everything, and I received it last year. Mother came with a dowry worth a fortune, but I can’t touch it until I turn twenty.”
She shifted from foot to foot. “I could take up some duties around the house,” she suggested. “We don’t need quite so many staff. I could cook and clean.”
He offered up a small smile. “Really? Shall I send you down to the fish market with the rest of the housewives? Will you mend my clothes? Are we thrifty now?”
She flushed. “I don’t mind.”
He laughed at her, and though it stung, she liked to see the light spring to his eyes.
Now was as good a time as any to broach the subject again.
“I want to be with you today,” she said, barreling on before she lost her nerve. “I want to sit next to you.”
Akira’s face darkened. He did not miss a beat. “No.”
“But—”
“No.”
“Oniichan!”
“Zettai ni. Absolutely not.”
“I’m old enough to speak for myself,” she protested. “I could help you.”
“You’ll ruin everything,” Akira said crossly. “I don’t have time for this. They’ll be here in an hour, go to your room.”
Her body moved to obey before she could stop it, her muscle memory absolute. But she stopped herself, digging her heels in. She remembered the first time she’d seen him, in a house like this, in a room like this, surrounded by old heirlooms that seemed to radiate disdain towards her presence. She had decided then and there that she would follow him anywhere.
But she wanted to walk beside him now. Not behind him. Not anymore.
“No.”
Akira looked at her incredulously. No one told him no.
“I said—”
“And I said no, Oniichan.”
She doubted if Akira had been interrupted in seventeen years. He looked bewildered, as if he had been presented with some strange new language that he could not decipher.
“Noriko,” he started, his voice low with anger. “I’m not going to ask you again.”
She winced but did not fall back. “Are you going to beat me if I disobey? Like Obaasama? Or drag me by the hair like the man she sold me to?”
He looked away from her. She had caught him on the raw, and she pressed her advantage.
“I’m going to be grown up like you one day. I need to learn these things. I need to learn how to negotiate, how to get people who don’t like me to give me my way.”
Akira hesitated. “It’s . . . not time for that yet.”
“We don’t know that.”
He gave her a weary look. “It’s easier for me if you aren’t there.”
For the first time, she saw the vulnerability on his face. He was motherless, like her. He was fatherless, like her. He was the golden child, and she was the cursed child, but they were both caught in the same web.
“I’m your sister,” she said awkwardly. Her words failed her; she had never been a great speaker like him. She spread her palms open in a gesture of surrender. “I’m . . .”
He sighed and looked her in the eyes for a long moment, searching them for something. Then he took off, starting towards the kitchen, before changing course and darting towards the stairs.
She trailed after him, wondering if she should accept her defeat or pester him further. He paced back and forth, whirling on her as if he were going to yell and then biting it back. She had never seen him so unsure.
Then.
“Ayame-san,” he barked.
She appeared out of thin air. “Obocchama?”
Akira didn’t look at Nori.
“See that there is a place set at the table for my sister.”
Ayame nodded and left as quickly as she’d come.
Nori’s eyes widened and Akira turned to face her.
“No crying. No speaking. No moving. You keep your face as still as a corpse, do you hear me?”
“I promise,” she said quickly. “I do promise.”
“We’re soldiers today. Do you understand?”
She nodded. For him, she could be brave. His face softened.
“If you get scared, think of some music,” he told her. “Think of it and you will feel safe.”
* * *
The dining room table was set for afternoon tea. The porcelain china was in perfect condition and the silver was freshly polished. Someone had designed a beautiful arrangement made of white chrysanthemums and a red flower that Nori could not name and placed it in the corner of the room.
Akira’s chair had been placed at the head of the table, with another great chair set across from him. There was a smaller chair set a little behind each of the larger ones.
Nori liked the idea that she would be able to hide a lit
tle. Her bravado had vanished. Akira was still as a stone, his tea untouched in front of him. Nori kept her hands folded tightly in her lap. She was once again conscious of her skin, which was now tan from spending so much time basking in the sun, and her hair, which had been straightened for the day but was already starting to frizz again.
She decided not to focus on that. She focused on the back of Akira’s neck. His hair curled a little at the nape, just as hers did. He smelled like clean linen today.
The doors slid open, and Ayame announced that the guests had arrived.
Yuko came in first. She was wearing a purple kimono with a gold obi, with a matching gold fan tucked in her obi.
Nori’s hands and feet went completely numb. She kept her face perfectly still.
Next came her grandfather, a man who she had before only seen in passing. Now, from beneath the veil of her hair, she looked at him fully for the first time.
Kohei Kamiza was as large as an ox. He seemed to fill up the entire room just by stepping into it. He had dark eyes as hard as diamonds, gray hair, and a beard that was still black.
Even beneath his flowing robes, there was a solidity that hinted at strength.
She felt his eyes on her like a physical pain, and she nipped the inside of her cheek with her teeth to stop herself from crying out.
Yuko took in her surroundings with a cool glance. She waited a moment, but Akira did not rise to greet her. Akira hadn’t moved at all.
She nodded, as if making a note.
Then she sat in the smaller chair, allowing her husband to take the larger one. But the way her slim body was angled forward left no mistake as to who was in control of this conversation.
For a long moment, no one spoke. Nori was sure that everyone could hear her heart beating frantically inside her chest.
Then Yuko smiled. “Honorable grandson. I have missed you.”
She gestured for the servant standing in the corner to pour her some tea.
“I’m happy to see that you are well,” she continued, and anyone who didn’t know her would think that this was nothing more than a friendly social call.