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Kono Naka: Takatsuki Shiori Ga Joukyou
[In Which Takatsuki Shiori Returns to Tokyo]

"The master took a book from its box.
When he opened it there was the smell of drying clovebuds."
- The Hagakure

 
I knew when I saw him that he was the One. Not because he was tall, nor because he was the most popular guy on campus, or because his family was wealthy, though I'd all dated men in the past because of those reasons. No, what set this man apart was not even the brilliance of his smile (which I suspected had been fixed by some godlike dental work) or the immaculate way his hair fell over his right eye (the result of hours of fine hairspray work in the morning).

It was because Mark Andrews was American.

He was "studying abroad" at my university, and I use that phrase lightly and in quotes, because the most studying Mark did was of the womanly figure. Call it lessons in female anatomy.

I'd just broken up with my last boyfriend, he of the BMW and a long history of ancestors sitting on the Diet. We only lasted six months. That was longer than the boyfriend before him, who only lasted four months before I decided to move on to bigger and better things, and besides, it was the end of the school year. I walked into my parents' house feeling newly reborn, single, flying free, and my mother looked up from her cooking and said wearily, "Hello Shiroi. Have you found yourself a man yet?"

Mark Andrews was different. He smelled of clean sheets and fresh breezes of faraway lands. When I looked into his eyes I saw the distant skyline of New York and when we kissed, I tasted exotic American dishes on his lips. We moved in together. The months rolled by and became a year, then a year became two. I decided that drastic measures were in order, because I'd not heard the magic words from his lips yet, and he was due to go back to New York that summer. It didn't matter that he had occasional flings on the side, because hadn't that been what I used to do? It didn't matter that sometimes he came home so drunk that he would point his finger at me and scream epithets in English that I didn't understand, but knew from his tone of voice that he was not telling me that he loved me.

Because Mark Andrews was not Japanese, and he was my ticket to freedom.

I made sure of this by scrounging around in his desk drawer at school until I found his mother's email address, sent her an email in what I hoped was passable English, telling her how I looked forward to coming home with Mark and meeting his family. The next week, I waited patiently for him to mention how odd it was that his mother assumed we were going back together, but he didn't say a word.

Two weeks before he was due to step on the plane back to the United States, I got a phone call from him at work requesting me to please meet him at school afterwards. We argued. I begged, I pleaded, I cried carefully rehearsed tears. I told him that I'd only done it because I couldn't bear to see him go, because I loved him.

I only did it for your sake...

That was the first time he hit me.

It was not hard, just a slap to the face, and as I stumbled back to the wall, stunned, I thought hazily that even so, I could not hold this against him. After all, hadn't this been what I used to do?

I felt fingers caressing my face, his voice in my ear, telling me he was sorry, that he didn't mean to, he wouldn't do it again. I wrapped my arms around his neck and sobbed into his chest, and he asked me to go home with him. I waited for the small glow of victory to warm me all over, but it didn't come.

The next week, six days before we left, I received a small packet in the mail. There was no return address, the letter was not insured, but it was carefully wrapped. I opened it and poured out the contents into my hand: a small locket, and a short note. The note said, I am sorry. I hope you are well.

I flipped open the locket. It was empty.

I met Mark's parents in New York when the plane came into the airport and they were there to greet us. They took us out to dinner but the jet lag had upset my stomach and I sat picking at the expensive steak dinner as they conversed meaninglessly in English. The hotel room was too large, the bedsheets too smooth, and when I tried to take a shower, I couldn't figure out how to work the tap.

When Mark had described Chicago to me, I thought it a grand city, full of life and adventure and gaiety, unlike the drabness of Osaka. The reality of Chicago set in about two days later, when I was staring out the window of his apartment at the horrifically wide streets below, watching the cars drive on the wrong side of the road as the wind howled and the rain came down, turning everything into a grey, muggy mess, and I wondered what I was doing there, twisting the cheap metal band on my finger that was Mark's version of a wedding ring. We'd buy real ones when we could go shopping together, he said, just like we'd have a real wedding someday soon.

It wasn't so bad when Mark was home at night. Sometimes he did not come home. I made dinner, I cleaned, I took short walks sometime when I was brave enough to venture out, but I still understood no English, and it was four months before I trusted myself to buy groceries. He told me I needed to get out more. I told him I would try, and then I cried myself to sleep at night.

It was all right until Mark started drinking again. I would look at myself in the mirror in the mornings and think it was good I did not get out more, because who would want to see me with these bruises on my face? Sometimes when he did not come home, I was afraid to go to sleep, afraid what he might do when I was not aware, and then sometimes I hoped I would go to sleep and wake up and find the bed empty.

The night he pushed me down the stairs, I knew it was time to go home.

I had no money for a plane ticket, but my thoughts went to the golden locket that I had kept hidden in a secret pocket of my suitcase. I left the apartment the next morning, holding my jacket shut against the chilly October wind, scrabbling my brain for the few words of English I had learned, wandering corner after corner until I knew I was lost.

I collapsed against the wall and cried. When I looked up, I saw in the store window next to me a display of jewelry, leather bags, musical instruments. The sign above the shop read PAWN.

When I showed the locket to the man behind the counter, he rattled off a long string of English words, to which I shook my head in confusion. If he thought that strange, or was perhaps alarmed at the bruise across my left cheek and my swollen right eye, he made no indication, simply closed his mouth with a sharp snap and put the locket very gently on the counter, marched to the cash register and pulled out $60.

I stared at the money, stared at the locket, then very slowly reached out and gathered the jewelry back into my palm. $60 was not enough, I thought at him, and he seemed to understand, nodding slightly to me as I left the shop and stumbled through the streets, disoriented and empty.

It took me two hours to find my way back home, and when I finally unlocked the door and collapsed against the front stairs, I noticed something winking at me from the corner table.

Mark had left one of his credit cards by the front door.

He did not come home that night. The next morning I packed my bags and went back to the pawnshop, showing the locket again to the man behind the counter, took the $60 he offered me once more, and hailed a taxi.

"Airport?" the driver asked, and I nodded. When we reached the airport and he handed me my bags, I gave him two dollars as a tip and then twisted off Mark's ring that I wore on my left hand, took the remnants of Mark's cut up credit card from my pocket, and threw them both in the trash.

I arrived in Narita airport the afternoon of that same day, thirteen hours later, but this time I was not tired, needy, clinging to the arm of a man. I held my head high as I went through the customs line labeled "For Japanese Citizens," collected my bags at the carousel, smiled at the man at the airport exit who wished me a pleasant stay in Japanese, and headed downstairs to the basement to book myself a Shinkansen ticket to Osaka.

The man in front of me in line was tall, like Mark, but he had the build of a fencer, not a jock. A worn backpack hung from one shoulder and the Burberry suitcase at his feet had seen better days. His hair was wavy, shoulder-length, and as he crossed his arms over his chest and turned to lounge against the wall, I caught the sleepy, self-indulgent look in those familiar violet eyes, eyes that blinked and sharpened politely as he turned to look at me, but no sign of recognition.

"Well, look alive, miss," he said laconically, just as I remembered, but there was something else in his voice that hadn't been there before when we'd parted year ago, a sort of flicker of self-awareness that became sudden worry as he took in the marks of Mark's hands on my face.

I wondered what he thought when he looked at me, a girl become a broken woman he didn't recognize, the bruise still half-healing on my cheek, my coat wrinkled from thirteen hours of trying to sleep on the plane. But that didn't matter, because once again I was newly reborn. I was flying.

I was free.

"Tsuchiya Ruka," I said, "Fancy meeting you here."

22 October 06