From Little Tokyo, With Love

by Sarah Kuhn

  “Let’s liven it up, then,” Belle says. “Let’s try to get Grace Kimura’s attention! Maybe she’ll see how amazing we look and put us in her next movie.”

  “How?” Rory says, intrigued.

  Belle, of course, already has a plan.

  “Grace!” she calls out—loud enough to be heard over the clapping, not loud enough to disrupt the dancers. “Grace Kimura! Little Tokyo loves you!”

  “You’re our, um, queen!” Rory says, her voice less assured.

  “I thought Belle was the queen,” I can’t help but add.

  “Right, you’re our other queen!” Rory attempts, getting a little louder.

  “The whole point of a queen of any given area is that she’s the only one,” I say.

  “Stop ruining our fun,” Belle says, reaching down to swat me on the shoulder.

  “Grace!” Rory yells, committing more firmly to the bit. “Queen Grace Kimura!”

  “Queen! Grace! Kimura!” Belle cries out, giving it a rhythm.

  I don’t know how exactly it happens—these things always seem to happen when Belle decides to bend a large group of people to her will—but suddenly others take up this chant and then it syncs with the clapping and the dancers get in the same rhythm and it’s like we’re all part of a weird spontaneous flash mob with the sole purpose of getting Grace Kimura’s attention.

  “Queen! Grace! Kimura!” everyone yells, Belle’s voice the loudest. “Queen! Grace! Kimura!”

  Grace Kimura finally turns in our direction, because . . . well, how could she not?

  She’s still all smiles, charisma radiating from her every pore, beaming the full wattage of her beatific expression on us. Being on the other end of her smile really does feel like being showered in glitter and sunlight—you can’t help but smile back. She gives Belle a wave and a gracious nod, like they’re communicating in some special queen-to-queen language. Her gaze moves to Rory, and she gives her kind of an “aww” look—but not in a condescending way. It’s like she’s fully honoring Rory’s adorableness.

  “Oh my god,” Belle gasps, and I hear Rory rustling around behind me, sitting up a little straighter.

  Damn, Grace Kimura is really freaking good at being a movie star.

  Grace’s gaze finally wanders down to me, the sweaty person behind the wheel.

  And the blood drains from her face.

  I barely have time to register that before all hell breaks loose.

  Because all of a sudden, Grace Kimura is definitely not acting like a movie star. Her smile has been totally wiped from her pale face, bright red lips turned downward. A shadow passes over her eyes. And then she’s scrambling down from the car and leaping into the street.

  “Holy shit,” Belle says. “What is she doing?”

  A bunch of people start shouting, the dancers stop dancing and look around in confusion. Someone on the flower float whines, “What is going on?” because they can’t see. A man in a dark suit—Grace’s bodyguard, maybe?—springs from the passenger seat of the car Grace was just riding in and takes off after her.

  But Grace, in addition to being a movie star, is surprisingly fast.

  She zigzags through the confused dancers, looking like she’s effortlessly navigating an obstacle course. There’s a bunch of confused murmuring among the dancers as they dodge this way and that, trying to get out of her path. Some freeze in place, unsure of what to do. Like should they try to stop her or . . . ?

  The vibe from the crowd on the sidelines is similarly confused, but they’re calling out to her: “Grace? Are you okay? Grace, what’s wrong? Grace . . . Grace . . . Grace . . .”

  The weird but genial flash mob we had going a few minutes ago has morphed into something else, threads of shared panic and worry and just not knowing what to do winding themselves through the air. Sweat prickles the back of my neck, the tips of my ears. Even now, sweat is finding all new fun places to take root. I hear someone in the distance call for security.

  “Ms. Kimura!” yells the man in the dark suit, Bodyguard Guy, his voice commanding. “Please. Stop!”

  But she doesn’t listen. She darts past the last confused clump of dancers and barrels straight for our car.

  Her face is still ashen, her eyes haunted. Her hair has somehow worked itself into a wild tangle. I lock gazes with her, unable to look away. In an instant, Grace Kimura has transformed from beautiful princess to monstrous wild woman. Something pings in my heart, a strange connection that forms as her eyes hold mine.

  “Rika!” Belle hisses. “Do something!”

  I snap to attention, reacting instinctively. I unbuckle my seat belt, throw the car door open, and catapult myself in front of Grace Kimura.

  And for the second time today, I’m part of a unit of two people crashing into each other.

  Only this time, I’m the one being crashed into.

  Belle’s and Rory’s screams ring in my ears as Grace and I slam to the ground. I feel the impact of my backside on concrete and wince. She lands on top of me, and my arms fling themselves around her waist, as if trying to protect her.

  Ow. I know how to brace my falls pretty well thanks to judo, but being unexpectedly knocked to the ground still hurts a whole hell of a lot.

  Grace looms over me, her eyes searching my face. She looks like she’s really panicking now, her breath quick and uneven.

  She reaches out with shaky fingers and touches my face.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to sound comforting. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You . . .”

  She shakes her head quickly, as if to indicate that she’s definitely not okay. She leans in close to me and manages to push a single word from her lips, barely a whisper.

  Then she slumps against me, passing out.

  It all happens so fast, but it seems like time slows way down as Bodyguard Guy finally catches up to her and scoops up her limp form. Security guards for the parade are hot on his heels, and they swarm around him and Grace, blocking them from view.

  “Rika-chan!” Belle is at my side, and she looks terrified. Rory’s head pops up behind her. “Are you okay? Do you need a doctor? Should we take you to the hospital or call an ambulance?!”

  I sit up slowly, totally dazed. I’m barely aware of the tears that have filled my eyes, and I don’t register any of her questions. Because my brain has hooked itself onto one thing, and it’s totally obsessing on this one thing, and there’s no way anything else is getting in there.

  Right before she passed out, Grace Kimura whispered one word.

  It was my name.

  FOUR

  How does Grace Kimura know my name?

  And why did she look at me like she’d seen an onryo—an extra-terrifying kind of Japanese ghost?

  The whole thing is just too weird.

  I replay the beyond-bizarre sequence from the parade as I make my way down the street to Suehiro, one of the prime sources of Japanese comfort food in Little Tokyo. My family’s decided they want takeout (or, to be more precise, Auntie Och decided, waving a commanding hand at the rest of us and declaring, “I make katsu all day for parade-goers and then what happen? Bananas Hollywood lady make a scene, everyone lose their appetite. Someone else cook tonight, ne?”). I volunteered to go get it. I was kind of trying to get away from Auntie Suzy, who was not happy about the fact that I’d totally disobeyed her and gotten myself wrapped up in some sort of disruptive parade drama on top of it all. Definitely not “respectable.” Definitely calling the wrong kind of attention to myself and rocking the boat.

  If there’s one thing Auntie Suzy hates, it’s rocking the boat.

  After Grace and Bodyguard Guy were swarmed by security, the parade was cut unceremoniously short. I’d thought Belle might sulk about her reign as queen getting overshadowed. Instead she’d been overly worried about me, attaching herself to my side and making concerned clucking s
ounds about how I needed to go to the hospital. I kept saying I was fine. I’d just have some bruises in really interesting places.

  Because the judo demonstration never actually happened, Auntie Suzy never found out about my ruse—she bought my lie that I’d had a change of heart about being a princess. I’m disappointed to have missed my chance to impress the UCLA scout, and if this were an ordinary day, I’d be obsessing over it.

  But it’s not an ordinary day, and I have other things to obsess over.

  I can’t stop thinking of that moment when Grace locked eyes with me, her movie star persona giving way to something less polished. She’d looked almost . . . feral. And then she’d uttered those two syllables.

  Rika.

  I rewind the scene further in my mind, going back to the Belle-instigated flash mob. Grace turning to look at us: impressed with Belle, charmed by Rory. Her gaze finding me.

  I frown, homing in on those brief few seconds. That’s when her whole expression changed. When her dazzling smile vanished. It was when she saw me. She leapt from her car, bulldozed her way through an entire dance troupe, and ruined the whole parade because she was trying to get to me.

  Why?

  My brain simply can’t wrap itself around what this could possibly mean.

  I arrive at the restaurant and push the door open, the bell jangling in what usually sounds like a friendly greeting. Tonight it sounds different. Almost . . . creepy? Maybe because Suehiro is uncharacteristically deserted. It’s usually packed on weekends. But everyone seems to have fled Little Tokyo post-parade.

  I nod at the Auntie behind the counter. She recognizes me, gives me a curt nod back, and bustles to the kitchen to retrieve my order. I instinctively pull my phone out of my pocket, but realize I don’t want to look at it. Eliza’s been texting me all day—she, of course, saw all the social media pics with Grace crashing into me and is demanding to know what’s going on. Sensei Mary has also been texting me, wanting to know if I’m okay and if I’ll be at practice tomorrow.

  I don’t know what to text back. For some reason, when I think of anything involving the dojo, I feel so guilty. Like I was part of ruining the parade and am therefore responsible for the demonstration not happening, which was probably embarrassing for Sensei Mary and may have ruined . . . well, not just my chance to be seen by the UCLA scout but also Eliza’s chance.

  I also don’t want to look at my phone because the Grace Kimura Incident has blown all the way up on social media, shaky phone-camera footage of her leaping from the car playing its way across all platforms. Someone managed to zoom in and get a close-up of her distressed face, mouth half open, hair flying everywhere. Her reps haven’t commented yet, but of course everyone’s speculating about what caused her to fling herself into the chaos of an in-progress parade.

  Does the squeaky-clean rom-com queen have a secret drug problem?

  Is she cracking under the pressure of the new movie?

  Was it just, like, heatstroke?

  Seeing the images from today juxtaposed against so much breathless #discourse . . . I don’t want to look at that. Weirdly, when I replay what happened in my mind, it feels private. Like Grace Kimura and I were suddenly the only two people in the world and experienced a brief moment of pure mind-meld. Even with the mob around us, I was the only one who heard her whisper my name.

  I haven’t told anyone about that part. What would I say? Grace Kimura knows my name and looked completely freaked out at the mere sight of me! Yay!

  It’s even weirder since, you know, I’ve never really cared about any of her movies. She should have had that mind-meld moment with Belle or Rory.

  But Grace said “Rika.”

  I stuff the phone back in my pocket and cross the room to Suehiro’s massive photo collage. Through the years, the restaurant’s owners have taped a wide assortment of Little Tokyo snapshots to one wall. No frames, no explanatory text, and no discernable organizational system involved. The photos go back so far, however, that the wall has ended up being a kind of unofficial historical chronicle of the neighborhood. It looks to me like a wild, unkempt garden of images.

  My eyes wander over the photos, some of them shiny and new, some of them faded and disintegrating around the corners. There’s a snapshot of a little boy cramming taiyaki into his mouth, his eyes lit with glee. A worn photo of an elderly couple sitting side by side on the plaza—not touching, but giving each other a tender sidelong look that makes you feel the warmth of their companionship. It’s that thing I always see when I look at Belle and Rory bonding, at my Aunties being all romantic. That connection and sense of belonging to each other.

  And of course there are so many shots of Nikkei Week, smiling faces and the kaleidoscope of bright colors that is the parade. A particular color catches my eye, a flash of vivid orange. My gaze skitters to that photo. It’s near the top right-hand corner of the wall, nearly covered by the other photos that have been taped around it.

  It almost seems to give off a little extra shimmer, as if calling to me.

  Two teenage girls beam at me from the photo, arms around each other. They’re both wearing brightly colored yukata—it’s the orange yukata on one of the girls that’s caught my eye. I’ve looked at this wall collage thousands of times and that orange has never stood out to me before. It probably wouldn’t have stood out to me ever . . . except that I was wearing the exact same color today. The fabric is identical, down to the intricate pattern of intertwining blue and yellow flowers. I’m pretty sure that is my yukata. Or Auntie Suzy’s yukata. Most of her vintage kimono and yukata were inherited from various distant branches of the family. Maybe this is one of them?

  I’m so laser-focused on the yukata, it takes me a minute to actually look at the girl’s face.

  When I do, my mouth goes dry.

  How . . . can this be? How . . .

  I swallow, trying to regain my bearings. I stare at the photo harder, willing it to give me answers. But it’s so high up, I can’t make out every detail. I am suddenly consumed by the desperate desire to see the photo up close, to be able to study it. To have just one thing today make sense.

  I need to see more.

  Normally I’d never even think of disrupting Suehiro’s seating arrangement—the silent, judgy wrath of the Aunties is not something I want to be on the receiving end of. But all of that is overwhelmed by my need to see more of this photo. I don’t think I’ve wanted something this much in my entire life.

  So I grab a chair that’s pushed into one of the tables, my hands shaking as I drag it over to the photo wall. The chair squeaks against the cheap plastic of the floor—a noise made all the more ominous by the restaurant’s eerie quiet. The only other sound in the place is my labored breathing. I consider myself in pretty decent shape, but my need to see this photo ratchets up my nerves, makes my heart beat faster.

  I climb on top of the chair and stand on my tiptoes, reaching out to graze my fingertips against the photo. Now that I’m closer, I can see it more clearly. And the thing that sparked my need to see it up close becomes all the more real.

  The teenage girl on the left is most definitely a young Grace Kimura.

  She’s not quite Grace Kimura, Movie Star, yet—her hair is a long, unstyled thicket, falling artlessly to her waist. Her front teeth are a little crooked. And she’s not wearing a speck of makeup. But the brilliance of her smile, the way it draws you right in, that undeniable charisma—that’s all there. You can see the future Grace Kimura she will become.

  It feels like my heart has dropped into my shoes, and I get all light-headed. I rest my hand against the wall to keep myself from toppling off the chair and crashing into the carefully laid out table setups—that would really make the Aunties mad.

  The answer to the question in my head is floating around me in pieces. But I’m suddenly too scared to put them together.

  I’m staring at G
race so intently, I almost don’t see the other girl in the photo. When my eyes finally slide to her, I get the last piece I need.

  “Rika-chan?”

  I let out a high-pitched squeak of alarm, my heart catapulting into my throat, and whirl around to see the Auntie bustling in from the kitchen with my food. She gives me a quizzical look, her brows drawing together as she takes in the image of me perched precariously on a chair for no apparent reason.

  “I was just, uh, checking something,” I say, flashing her a bright smile.

  She frowns but doesn’t inquire further, facing the register to ring me up. While her back is turned, I snatch the photo from the wall and stuff it in my pocket.

  I clamber down and put the chair back where I found it, taking extra pains to make sure it’s aligned exactly right. Then I pay and hurry out of there, barely noticing that the Auntie is already readjusting the chair and tsk-ing at me under her breath.

  Once I’m back out on the street, I pull the photo out of my pocket so I can stare at it some more. But all my staring doesn’t change what the photo’s telling me.

  The other girl in the photo is Auntie Suzy. She must’ve been in her early twenties at this point, but she still looks like a teenager. The way she and Grace Kimura are embracing is undeniably sisterly—it reminds me of Belle and Rory. And Grace is wearing the very same yukata I was wearing today . . .

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I yank it free, jamming it to my ear.

  “Hello—”

  “Rika!” Belle shrieks on the other end. “Where are you?! You left forever ago, and I’m worried you passed out because of your injuries and fell into a ditch and died—”

  “There are no ditches in Little Tokyo!” Rory yells. They sound like they’re on speaker. “And if she was dead, she wouldn’t have answered her phone!”

  “I’m not dead!” I squeak. “And I’m not in a ditch. And . . .” I pause and take a deep breath, the truth of the photo sinking into my bones. I can’t stop myself from blurting it out. “I think Grace Kimura is my mother.”