“Really? Who says that to a young artist? That’s horrible! Young talent should be nurtured, not put down.” His jaw locked tight and his eyes unfocused, staring far off, probably remembering all the times his talent was cultivated so it could grow into this wonderful thing he’d created.
“Please. I’m not an artist, and I’m certainly not talented. I love art and I love painting, but I just don’t have the knack for it. I figured I would channel my love of art into a career in advertising or graphic design. I wanted to manage big projects and teams of people, but companies kept sticking me in sales jobs. I learned pretty quickly I’m a horrible sales person.” My voice caught, so I swallowed to keep it clear. Anymore talk of this and I would break into tears. I was still not strong enough to be okay with my failure.
I picked up my chopsticks and snagged some tofu. It slid between my tongue and teeth, slightly sweet and no aftertaste. “Wow, this is so good. I’ve never had tofu like this before.” I grabbed another mouthful and sighed over it. My mom never made tofu, so I didn’t eat much growing up. Yasahiro’s was wonderful, and I was grateful for the change in conversation.
“Maybe you’re a horrible salesperson because you’re actually an artist. The two don’t always mix well. That’s why I have a business manager, an accountant, and a PR person for the advertising.”
“Cooking is an art form all its own, right? I never thought about it like that until now.” I looked down at my devastated plates of food. When they arrived on the table, they were worthy of a photograph. And I should have taken one! Cursed me. My Instagram account would be barren now. I took out my phone anyway and snapped a photo of the octopus rice.
Yasahiro laughed. “It’s weird when people take photos of my food.”
“I’ll post it online too. Free advertising!”
He shook his head and chuckled. “I get a lot of that already. Yeah, cooking is like painting. You work with a canvas, brushes, and paints. I work with ingredients, the stove, utensils, and plates.”
I nodded my head, turning to the rice. “That would be true if I painted anymore, which I don’t.”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“Or maybe not. Maybe I was never meant to be a painter. Maybe I was meant to be a farmer like my mom. I certainly won’t be a chef. Not after I set the kitchen on fire that one time.”
He waved his hand in front of his face. “Whatever. I’ve set my own kitchen on fire a bunch of times.”
I shuddered, a wave of tingles crawling up my spine. “Fire is not my friend.”
“What?” he smiled, a quirk of his lips goading me. “Did you burn your fingers and never want to cook again? My sister tried that once, but my mom forced her to keep cooking. I’m surprised your mom was so lenient with you.”
A geyser of anger erupted up through my chest and I held it back long enough to ask myself one question: how far away did I want to push him?
“No. And stop being a jerk. When I was a kid, I fell into a campfire after some kids pushed me around. So I don’t joke around about fire. Ever.”
He dropped his chopsticks and his face whitened. “Oh god, what happened to you?”
“I spent a month in the hospital, lost more than half my hair, and I have scars on my back.” Actually, scars covered my entire back, but I didn’t want to be explicit. I was glad I couldn’t see them on a daily basis unless I looked in the mirror. It happened when I was eight, and I’d been afraid of fire ever since. I never saw who pushed me into the flames, and no one ever confessed. My mom almost held me back in school, but I worked hard to keep going. I was advancing in reading and math, and I didn’t want to fall behind.
Yasahiro sat on the other side of the table, his eyes on me, and I began to sweat. I flip-flopped between being attracted to him and scared to death of him. Not because I feared he’d be violent or anything. More like, I was sure once he knew what a loser I was, he’d blab it all over town. Not only would I be the failure that got fired from her big Tokyo job and became a farmer again, I’d also be the woman who was turned down by the hottest young chef in town. Everyone wanted him, in some capacity or another. I would bet that, if I looked out the door, I would see young, desperate women circling the restaurant like vultures hunting for a fresh meal.
I needed to put some distance between us because a romance with him, if he even liked me, would be a disaster. I had to make that crystal clear. He could never be interested in someone like me, and I had to avoid falling for him, if only to keep my meager reputation intact.
I couldn’t get up and leave. I’d already tried that a few times, and he was watching for signs of flight.
“Are you going to eat?” I gestured to his meal, growing cold. He dragged his hand through his hair, sighed, and started on the green beans. “Wouldn’t want you to get too skinny now.” I winked at him and laughed. “I’m sure your girlfriend doesn’t want you starving.”
He barked a laugh. “I don’t have a girlfriend. The restaurant keeps me pretty busy.”
“Oh, really? Kumi-chan, Hokichi-san’s daughter-in-law, you know her, right?” He nodded as he ate his octopus rice. “She was telling me she has a friend who’s interested in dating you.” He stopped with the chopsticks paused in front of his mouth. “I could have her set you up, if you like.”
Message sent. I’m not the right person for you, Yasahiro. And it was way too haughty of me to believe he’d be into me anyway.
He leaned across the table to look into my empty bowl and stood up. “No, thanks. How about we leave the matchmaking up to fate, okay? Would you like more octopus rice?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
He nodded and took my bowl into the kitchen.
I sucked in a quick breath to halt a flood of tears. I’d tried to light myself on fire and he stomped out the flames before they climbed up my clothes.
Was it wrong to be relieved?
Chapter Nineteen
The day dawned chilly again, a thick mist of rain coating everything outside in a blanket of water. Mom didn’t want to work in this mess, so we took the morning off, but I stood at the house’s back door and stared at the barn while drinking my morning coffee.
That barn symbolized so many things for me. It was the place I played when I was a kid with my older brother. It was where we stored our winter vegetables. Mimoji-chan was born in that barn when we had horses. When we renovated the space after we sold the horses, Mom asked me what I wanted, and I wanted a loft, a place to be alone and to create. Back then, I was certain I was going to be an artist someday with my own studio, attending gallery openings, and making enough money to stay home with my kids. Yep, I would have at least three kids and be married to some successful CEO. I sipped on my coffee and sighed.
The barn’s loft turned against me some time in my teens. I lost my way with my art, not knowing what to paint or even why I wanted to paint. Then I poisoned the place by bringing Tama around. We would drink saké, get drunk, and have sex whenever we felt like it. I never got pregnant or even got a disease from him so that was good. The barn was cursed, but at least I hadn’t completely ruined my life with him.
I set my coffee down, grabbed my rain boots, coat, and the kerosene space heater, and headed into the barn. When I opened the door, a small bird burst past me and out into the rain. It must have been trapped inside yesterday when we were loading in the potatoes. The air inside smelled musty, but as always, the barn floor shined immaculate and clean, the sealed concrete slab well taken care of over the years. The rest of the barn, made of wood and gypsum board, was a step down from a true Japanese storehouse made of timber and clay.
I hung up my coat inside the door, and taking off my rain boots at the foot of the loft’s stairs, I climbed up in socks. In the loft, I set the heater down and turned it on, cracking open a window to let out any fumes it may produce, and then I stared out the window for twenty minutes.
What was I doing? I promised myself I would give up painting, get a real job, and get on with my
life. When I made that decision over five years ago, I thought it was the best decision I’d ever made. I had made a life long choice that would put me on the right path to success. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’d always had the desire to create, to make something for myself with my name on it. Each job I applied to, I tried to get in on the creative side of the business, but each time, they funneled me into a sales position instead. So I would spend my weekends at museums or at art gallery openings looking at other people’s art. If I couldn’t make art, at least I would appreciate it.
The barn’s loft floor creaked under my feet as I rocked side to side and stared at the blank canvas on the easel. I’d placed the canvas there over the weekend and hadn’t looked at it since. I’d had so much fun at Sekaidō, buying the missing supplies I needed. I got excited just seeing all the colors, new brushes, and fresh stretched canvases. I really loved so many things about painting: a fresh paintbrush, a brand-new tube of paint, a clean canvas. Until the canvas was staring me in the face, and I had no idea what to put there.
I wasn’t ready to paint Chiyo’s pine forest yet, but I needed to do something, anything, to get back in the groove of things or else I’d walk out and never look back. I closed my eyes and the first thing to pop into my head? I shifted my shoulders around, my bra strap rubbing against the damaged skin on my back. The first thing in my head was the campfire I fell into when I was a kid. My head jerked, and my eyes flew open remembering that moment of sheer terror as I dropped onto the hot coals and screamed.
My heart raced into a gallop and my forehead slicked with sweat, but I immediately turned the terror into a challenge. I sank to my knees in front of my three tackle boxes of paint and started digging. Black, green black, and mars black. Burnt orange, ochre, brown black, and burnt umber. A handful of reds from carmine and crimson to alizarin. I lined them up on the floor in hue order, flipping a few around and keeping them in place with the tips of my fingers. I needed to start with black, build up the night sky and ground, then the fire pit, and the flames that danced up into the smoke. Did I even have a black primed canvas? I opened the big plastic bags Mom stored some of my old stretched canvases in and there was one, 50 cm by 40 cm, a decent size. I’d forgotten I had that! And it was still in great shape. Perfect. I placed it on the easel and got to work.
I worked for hours without stopping, layering on the shades of black first, shaping them with my brushes, my fingers, or a palette knife. Whatever I needed, whatever I felt like using. The strokes on the canvas came from deep inside, a memory flowing out my fingers, feeding off the agony and the pain, and turning it into an image in front of me. I was consumed with the energy to push harder, to dig deeper, and to make the shadows speak volumes.
When I backed away from the canvas for the first time, I drew a shaky breath and looked down at myself. Dabs of paint covered me from my shirt down to my socks. In fact, I’d left little sock prints all over the floor because I didn’t put down a drop cloth. Careless, Mei!
“Oh no,” I breathed out. Mom was going to be pissed with me if I didn’t clean it up. I glanced out the windows and the rain was really coming down instead of just spitting mist everywhere. I grabbed a clean towel from the pile next to my supplies, opened the window, and thrust the towel in my hand out into the rain to get it wet. We should’ve considered installing a sink.
While I waited for the towel to wet, I watched a small car in the distance grow bigger as it got closer. Daichi Senahara, Kano’s next door neighbor, slowed down as he drove to his driveway and pulled up to the house. I wondered where he’d been. I had to remember to go by his house with a bottle of alcohol and pump him for information on Kano’s supposed plans to sell his house and land to Midori Sankaku.
Thankfully, once the towel was wet, I could clean up my paint spills. I had to take off my socks because they were soaked with paint, and my feet immediately became bricks of ice in the cold barn. Brrr. I needed to go back inside and take a hot bath.
I folded my arms across my chest and stepped away from my painting. The scene, a mess of black, unfolded into the division between land and sky. The eventual resting place of the fire that nearly killed me sat in the center. It was a good start, and amazingly enough, I didn’t hate it. Huh.
As I put the caps back on the paints, I thought back on all the things I’d seen on my twisted path to this moment: the fall we ate almost nothing because the crops were devastated with mold, my mother cooking food at the school as a side job so we could eat, the summer festivals in town, Tama’s body over mine on the loft couch, the shrine on the mountain where we would pray every New Year’s Day, and my boss’s face when he fired me. My life had been filled with ups and downs and constant flip-flopping.
Was I heading for rock bottom or was I on a climb to the top of the mountain? I honestly didn’t know yet.
I turned off the kerosene heater, reached for the handle to close the window, and stopped when flashing lights caught my attention. I narrowed my eyes at the distant blinks of blue heading out our way, hoping they didn’t slow down. Please, don’t slow down!
But they did and turned straight into Akiko’s driveway.
I acted fast, sprinting down the stairs to the barn door, stuffing my bare feet into my rain boots, and grabbing my coat. I ran into the pouring rain, reaching into my pocket and feeling for my phone. My fingers locked around it and let go.
“Mom!” I called out as I raced past the back door. “Mom! Akiko!”
I hoped she heard me because I wasn’t stopping to find out. Pumping my legs hard, I crossed the road and headed down her driveway as fast as I could. The two cars in the driveway besides Akiko’s were both police cars. I feared one of them was an ambulance. She’d been so down lately, I worried she may be suicidal.
Her front door was open, and I attempted to climb the steps and run inside, but a harsh voice told me to halt.
“Don’t come in, Mei-san!” Goro’s partner raised her hand to my face. I wiped the rain from my eyes and tried to peer past her. “Akiko is coming down to the station voluntarily. Don’t cause a scene, please.”
Inside the house, Goro bent over and whispered into Akiko’s ear as she nodded her head and cried.
“I didn’t do it, but if coming down to the station for a few days will help, I will.” She shook her head side to side. “But it wasn’t me. I won’t confess to something I didn’t do, could never do.”
Goro kept his voice low, so I couldn’t hear anything. I could only tell Akiko was in far worse circumstances than I imagined her to be. I daydreamed she was exonerated and apologized to, and she went back to her job and her life, her home and family name intact. This? I wasn’t prepared for this.
“Mei-chan?” Akiko saw me in the doorway and came forward with Goro’s hand on her shoulder. “You know I would never do this, right? There’s no way I’d kill my own father.”
I glanced between Goro and his partner, knowing full well that neither of them gave a crap what I thought of her. Of course I would back her up. We’d been friends since we were born.
“You know I believe you,” I said to her. “And I’ll do whatever I can to prove it.” I turned to Goro. “What the hell is going on?”
He sighed, probably because he knew he couldn’t put me off for long. I’d badger everyone until I got answers.
“I need help,” Akiko said, glancing at Goro. “They questioned my patients on the day Dad was killed, and two of them don’t remember me being there. But I was, I swear it!” Tears fell down her cheeks. “You know how it is. They’ll keep looking for evidence until the prosecutor is satisfied, but it wasn’t me. It wasn’t.”
My brain tried to process this new development as Goro directed her from the house with the help of two other officers. Her workplace had verified everything! How did things change? They headed into the rain, and I followed doggedly behind.
“Wait. There must be some mistake.” I pulled on Goro’s sleeve, but he shrugged me off, handed Akiko to the other officers
, and turned to face me as they helped her into the back of a police car. Raindrops bounced off his officer’s cap while my hair plastered to my head.
“Don’t make a scene of this. If no one knows we brought her to the station and everything turns out fine, she’ll go on with her life, and no one will suspect anything. I know we said we’d wager on this, but we need to stop because I don’t want to ruin her life. We can’t account for her whereabouts the day of the crime, and Tama says she’s been depressed and out of sorts for months now.” He glanced left and right.
“She just wouldn’t do this.” I threw up my hands in exasperation. “What do I have to do to get her cleared?”
“Come by the station later and we can talk about this more. But not here.”
“But… I don’t want her to go alone!” I yelled at him as he got in his car and pulled away. How could I let my own best friend be carried off by the police? She seemed so terrified and depressed. I couldn’t let her deal with this on her own.
Screw it. I wasn’t going to let them take her there all by herself.
I ran down the gravel driveway, my feet burning in my rain boots as my bare skin chafed against the unforgiving rubber over and over. I ignored it and kept going. I made it to the gas station on the edge of town before I slowed down to a limping crawl. It’d take me another twenty minutes to walk to the police station. Why had I not run across the street to get Mom’s car? Because I was stupid, that’s why.
I limped in a daze, remembering Mom’s words from the day before. “Unless you remember that Akiko is a good, honest, and sweet person. She’s devoted her life to taking care of others. We can’t forget her character in all of this.” Had we been blind? Could Akiko really be a murderer? Or had her character never wavered and this was a ploy to pin the guilt on someone else?
“Mei-san? Mei!” I came to an abrupt halt on the corner, and Yasahiro stood in front of me with an umbrella in one hand and a bag of garbage in the other. “What…” He scanned me from head to toe, and I wiped the rain from my eyes and realized I was walking the stretch of sidewalk just past his restaurant and its back door. “What happened to you? Are you okay?”
The Daydreamer Detective Page 13
