by Diana Renn
“Welcome. I am Hideki Yamada. It is a great pleasure to meet you.”
So this is Kenji’s nephew, the guy who’s caused my dad so much stress this past week. Hideki’s such a handsome man, it’s actually painful to look directly at him. It’s kind of like looking at the sun. Which is embarrassing to admit, since he’s obviously way too old for me. But he’s the first guy I’ve looked at twice since Edge.
“It is an honor to have you here, Glenn-san,” Hideki says to my dad. His accent is heavier than Kenji’s, but his English just as precise. I think of a beautiful dragon emblazoned on silk, his words curling outward like swirls of smoke. “I am an admirer of your work. I feel confident that your mural will impress our visitors.”
“Right,” says my dad. “Please, call me Glenn. I’m not that big on formality.”
“Certainly. Glenn. As you know, Japan has experienced difficulties in recent times,” Hideki goes on. “The earthquake and tsunami. The economic situation. But Japan is building. Japan will hold a strong position in the world again. The bridge is a powerful symbol of this endeavor.”
“That’s all great. But, about that bridge idea. I was thinking, it’s kind of difficult, design-wise, to—”
“And, excuse me, there is one more thing I must mention. My father, Tomonori Yamada, would have been delighted to know that your painting would transform our lobby. He loved art and greatly admired artists, both high-ranking ones and emerging ones, such as yourself.”
“Right.” My dad smiles back. “Emerging. Well, thank you, I guess.”
I try to figure out how I’d draw Hideki. Frame Game. I zoom in while he and my dad talk art. Hideki’s arms are folded tight. The fingers on his left hand twitch. Twice he glances at his Rolex. Unlike Kenji, he’s impatient. Tense and intense.
My dad looks at the gathering crowd. “Just one thing. I can’t work with an audience.”
Hideki blinks rapidly, though does not break his smile. “Oh? What do you mean?”
“Yeah. It makes me nervous. All these people. And distractions can impair my process. Do you think we could get a curtain or a screen or something to put up while I work?”
Hideki nods, still smiling. “Yes, I understand. This can be arranged.” He acts polite, but I get a sense of a cool breeze surrounding him. Or maybe it’s the air-conditioning.
“And the air-conditioning—do you think it could be turned down, or, I don’t know, off?”
Hideki makes a sucking sound through his teeth. “The air-conditioning affects many people, in many offices,” he says. “Actually, I think changing the air may be kind of impossible.”
“Right. But, see, the paints won’t really cooperate in this air. Acrylics can be temperamental.”
I try mental telepathy on my dad. Stop! You’re blowing it! I know from all the manga I’ve read how important hierarchy is in Japan. My dad is violating a social code, asking the second-most powerful man in the company for these personal accommodations.
“I see,” Hideki says through a tightening smile. “I apologize for the space not matching your specifications. I will remedy the situation immediately.”
But now Hideki’s gaze has drifted, past my dad, past me, to something by the door. His face softens. A corner of his mouth turns up.
I turn to follow his gaze. A girl with long, dark brown hair saunters toward us. She wears platform sandals, a tight skirt with black leggings, a green bolero jacket, a plaid newsboy cap, and dangling gold hoop earrings. She swings a yellow patent leather tote bag and chomps a wad of gum. She’s a jarring contrast to the office ladies who are now watching her in wonder.
And she’s the best thing I’ve seen in Japan.
She waves and comes running, a huge grin on her face. “Violet!”
“Reika!” I brush past my dad and an astonished-looking Hideki and throw my arms around the one person in this country who knows me. I’m scared she’ll dissolve like a dream.
1
6
“I was going to call you today,” I tell her. “I don’t have to start work till tomorrow. How’d you find me here?”
“You said you were working for the Yamadas, so I Googled their building and found the address. Am I good detective or what?” She flashes a sly grin.
“Not bad.”
“Good, because I cut Japanese school today to track you down. What’s up with the mystery? I haven’t had an update in days.”
“Shh.” I lead her a few yards away to a cluster of black Eames chairs, aware of Hideki’s eyes on us. On Reika, I mean. Even as he’s talking to my dad, his eyes flick toward her. I sigh. This always happens when I’m out with Reika, and a guy comes into the picture. Guys notice her. I fade away. “The FBI said I shouldn’t talk about the case in public or even email anyone about it,” I whisper. “They don’t want us to do anything that might compromise the investigation.”
“You talked to the FBI? No way!”
“Shh! I’ll fill you in as soon as we’re alone, I promise.” Except I’m never alone now, I remember, as Yoshi slowly circles.
“Hey, who’s your dad talking to over there?”
“That’s Hideki Yamada. Kenji’s nephew. Soon to be CEO of the Yamada Corporation. I mentioned him in one of my emails to you.”
“You never mentioned he’s like a movie star. He’s totally kakkoii!”
I roll my eyes, even though I have to agree he is hot. “I know you have a thing for older guys, but he’s ancient, Reika. I’m sure he’s over thirty.”
“So? Talking to him isn’t a crime, is it? You have to introduce me! We can go over there and ask your dad if you can go to Harajuku with me. Then I can meet him.” She straightens her skirt and swings her purse. “Do I look okay? Do you like the lipstick? It’s new. I’m not sure.”
“You look great. As always.” I sigh. Whenever there’s a cute guy around, Reika gets this gleam in her eyes. She starts calling the shots, changing our plans, and trying to reel him in. Whenever she’s going out with someone, she disappears on me and my friends, and returns to us only after it’s over a few days or weeks later. My mom calls it Hormones. I call it Annoying.
I guess Reika’s already made up her mind. She’s walking toward Hideki.
Dragging my feet, I introduce her.
“Otsuki-Silver?” says Hideki. “What an interesting name. You are Japanese and . . . ?”
“American. My mom’s from Tokyo. My dad was born in Seattle, and so was I.”
“Do you speak Japanese?”
“A little.” She tips her head and smiles.
Hideki and Reika chatter away in Japanese for a few minutes. I knew she spoke some Japanese, but I had no idea she was this good.
Hideki seems impressed, too. “Your Japanese is excellent,” he says in English.
“I’m just a student. I hope I can improve.” She nudges me and looks at my dad. She mouths the word Harajuku at me.
“Hey, can I go shopping in the Harajuku district with Reika?” I ask my dad.
“Not today.”
I’m already turning to go when it hits me that he’s actually said no. “Why not?”
“Best to stick close to the building.”
“But it’s just blocks away. I need something lighter to wear. I’m dying in these clothes.”
My dad presses his lips together and considers this. “All right.” Then he takes me aside and adds in a low voice, “But stay close to Yoshi. If you see anyone remotely suspicious, don’t follow them. And please don’t tell your friend anything about the investigation. If you do, you will be spending the remainder of this trip in your hotel room. Oh, and take my cell phone.” He hands me the rental phone the Yamadas arranged for him. “Kenji and Mitsue are one and two on speed dial. If for any reason you and Yoshi get separated, call them.”
I pocket the phone, wondering why he’s chosen now of all times to lay down the law. Strangely, I’m almost happy about it. He sounds like a Real Dad.
“After all, I can’t concentrate on my work if I’m wondering where you are and if you’re safe,” my dad adds. “I have to focus on the mural.”
I scowl. Same old story. Just as I think he’s enjoying my company, I find out it’s all about his work. Keeping his precious headspace clear. “Got it,” I snap. “I’ll keep it on the downlow. You focus on the mural.” I turn on my heel and leave.
* * *
“START TALKING!” SAYS Reika when we’re outside. “What’s up with the van Goghs?” She glances behind us. “And who’s your wingman? That guy was following you in the lobby.”
“Oh, him? Yoshi Tanaka. Personal security.” I try to sound like it’s no big deal to have a bodyguard. But it’s hard not to gloat. Though Reika doesn’t flaunt her wealth like Mardi does, I’m always aware that Reika’s family has money. Nice cars. Regular housecleaners. The ability to wear a different outfit every day of the month without repeating. Annual summer trips to Japan. This is the first time I’ve had something that really seems to impress her.
“A bodyguard?” Her eyes dance. “What’s going on?”
Now I can’t suppress my grin. “Tell you later,” I say. “Not in front of him.” Yoshi might catch some key words, like van Gogh. That might get back to Kenji, then to my dad.
“Okay. Safe topic for now. Edgerton Downey. How’s film camp going?”
His name feels like pins on my skin. “Um. No idea.”
“Aren’t you guys in constant communication? Like through your brain waves or something?”
“Actually, his camp is really strict about using email.” I don’t want to talk about our fight. Reika’s so experienced with boys. She always knows what to do or say around them. I’m embarrassed to tell her how I blew a possible relationship with Edge right out of the starting gate. We might have been about to kiss, and I exploded on him. Then again, it’s not all my fault. He said I didn’t want him to make other friends, that I wanted him always around for me. That is completely warped and wrong.
I’m also trying to convince myself that the camp email policy really might be why he hasn’t written me. I’ve checked my email at the hotel business center six times, but there’s been no word from Edge. I keep hoping he’ll break the silence first.
That fierce hope makes me feel worse. Maybe there’s truth in what he said to me that day. Maybe I do sometimes take him for granted. Good old Edge. He’ll come around and apologize first.
“But you’re emailing him, right?” Reika’s giving me this strange look.
“Sure. Of course.” Actually, I am, but not in the way she thinks. At each email check, I’ve been drafting a long note to him, listing things I wish I could tell him. I’ve written about how everyone slurps their noodles loudly in restaurants. I’ve described taxis with lace doilies on the headrests and white-gloved drivers. I’ve explained what it’s like to hear Japanese all the time, the soft staccato like the patter of rain. I’ve mentioned the birdsong noises piped into the hotel hallway in the mornings, and the fake cricket sounds every night. The wedding parties that come through the hotel lobby at least once a day: flocks of women swishing slowly in their full kimonos patterned with cranes. The swoosh of zori—fancy flipflops—on the marble floors. And the toilet in my room that plays five different songs, including “Jingle Bells,” to cover up the sound of bodily functions and flushing. But I can’t finish this epic email, or bring myself to hit SEND. I’m not going to cave in first. I’m the lone madrona tree in my dad’s painting, with really thick bark.
Reika’s still staring, clearly dying to know more. I change the topic. “Hey, aren’t you going to fall behind if you miss a day of Japanese school?”
“I’ll live. God, I’m really happy to see you, and to speak some freaking English.”
“What’s wrong with Japanese?”
“I like Japanese, but being forced to speak it is so not fair. You know how my mom likes me to do the whole connect-with-my-Japanese-roots thing? My aunt and uncle are under strict orders to prevent me from speaking English. So they have this ceramic pot in the kitchen, and I have to put in two hundred yen every time they catch me talking in English.”
“That sucks,” I agree. “But don’t your friends here want to practice English with you?”
Reika slides on a pair of aviator sunglasses and tosses her hair.
“What friends? My relatives live in the most boring suburb, and I don’t fit in with the other kids. Tokyo equals Dullsville most of the time.”
Dullsville? How can she say that? I’ve spent most of my time so far just running from window to window in my hotel room, gawking at the city that sprawls in all directions. And Tokyo has this quiet but pulsing current of energy, like the buzz and thrum from the electric signs everywhere. “Why don’t you fit in?”
She shrugs. “I’m a haafu here. Half Japanese. Half gaijin, foreigner. I confuse people.”
Suddenly, Reika doesn’t seem as sure of herself as she usually does. I want to ask her more about how she doesn’t fit in here.
But I’m distracted. We’ve come to a wide, tree-lined street full of shops and sidewalk cafés. Music spills out of some of them, even at ten in the morning. The tourists and businesspeople I saw in Shinjuku have been replaced by Japanese teens sporting wild outfits—colors and styles I’ve never seen together, like magenta and turquoise, or chartreuse and orange. I see all shades of dyed hair, from brown to purple to blue. There are even some hard-core manga fans, dressed up head to toe in Loilta goth attire or other cosplay outfits. Schoolgirl skirts with froufrou petticoats. Glittery makeup. Even a guy dressed up in a furry, blue, alien-rabbit costume, totally kawaii, walking by himself and sipping an iced coffee.
I don’t even know where to look. There’s so much. “This is like Sakura-Con gone wild,” I say just before I trip over a bicycle rack. “Is there a convention going on?”
Reika laughs. “Isn’t it great? My aunt and uncle’s house is so freaking repressed, I come here for a breath of fresh air. Here, people are actually trying not to be clones of each other.”
I try to imagine what would happen if I could walk around my school so confidently, sharing my interests openly instead of retreating to manga or hiding my ideas in my sketchbook. I wonder if people outside my small circle of friends would eventually come to accept me.
Reika spins around. “We’re in the heart of Harajuku! Omotesando-dori. The main drag. There’s Issey Miyake and Comme des Garçons. Over to our left, Hanae Mori. The flagship store! So.” She flashes a mischevious grin. “Retail therapy?”
“There’s nothing I can wear in these stores, Reika.” I pause to stare at a boutique shop window. Mannequins strike contorted poses—as if they all suffer from severe cramps—and sport tube tops and miniskirts in metallic fabrics. One wears thigh-high pink leather boots with a twisting pattern of peacock feathers. “They’re not going to have a thing my size.” In four days, I haven’t seen a lot of five foot nine, curvy women walking around these streets. And I’ve already tried looking for sandals at some shoe stores near our hotel. I had no luck finding anything for my monstrous size-nine feet. Salesclerks just shook their heads.
“You’re not working in that, are you?” Reika looks at my jeans and Sakura-Con T-shirt.
I’m too embarrassed to admit how little spending money my dad gave me. “I’m working in archives. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, all these shops have are club clothes.”
“They have normal clothes, too. Come on. This store has a good fitting room. Nice thick doors. Private.” She glances back at Yoshi, then looks hard at me. “Very private.”
Oh. Got it. I let her drag me by the arm into the crampy mannequin shop.
Reika grabs an armload of outfits o
ff the racks and beckons me to a hallway.
Yoshi follows us, but a clucking saleswoman shoos him away.
The fitting-room door clicks behind us. “Mystery time!” says Reika. “Spill it!”
I bring her up to date, ending with the FBI sting, now just twenty-four hours away.
“That’s intense,” Reika breathes when I’m done. “Oh, FYI? You shouldn’t say the Y word in public. People kind of freak out if they hear yakuza. Gangs have a lot of power in Japan, and everyone’s afraid of them. Let’s call them ‘yahoos.’ Here, try this shirt.”
“We’re seriously trying on clothes?” I look doubtfully at the clingy fabric of a red blouse.
“Yes! You don’t want Yoshi to think we were in here dishing about the case, right?”
“True.” I slip the sleeveless blouse over my head while wriggling out of my T-shirt. An old locker room move I perfected for those dreaded PE classes.
“So now you’re just waiting to hear news from Agent Chang tomorrow morning?”
“Pretty much. What else can I do? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to track down some gang boss on my own and get the drawings back.” All the determination I felt back in Seattle faded when I got to Tokyo and saw how vast it was. I realized this mystery was way bigger than me, covering two countries, more than two decades, and a key player who’d died long ago. It was like trying to look at an enormous mural and never being able to take it all in.
“But you worked so hard. How can you just stop thinking about the case?” Reika persists.
“I do think about it. All the time. I think about how if the sting operation fails, something bad might happen to Kenji and Mitsue and the people who work for them. There’ve been all these bad accidents on their company’s construction sites ever since Kenji found the drawings in his office.” I swallow hard. “Reika, what if this Fujikawa guy does something to the Yamada Building? While my dad and I are in it?”
“That’s exactly why we have to get to the bottom of this.”
“By finding Fujikawa?”
