the rash on her cheek inflamed, and even targeted by MIKI who made a disappointed sound when AJ-3 started trying to mix Korean and Japanese as TUSK had been doing as a collective mind game for three weeks now. Lots of noise flew around that auditorium room; a previously unknown Japanese boy, nice-looking, talked briefly to AKEMI. (The other, older one but not the grandfather was seemingly not there; he had hit on SHINO but wasn’t seen again.) TUSK reflected that AKEMI had very small hands, somewhat dry skin, and a fat black leather handbag. Let me remember this moment forever he thought. She was not dissimilar to a certain fond recollection of his earlier life. The girls went off to a private girls' only karaoke session, after forming a democratic circle to vote--HATTRICK, fond unmentioned HATTRICK, who had tried to enter 2/1 in the second week, who had loudly claimed he was only after AJ-1 or AJ-2, tried to insinuate himself into that group but was denied.
HATTRICK was just one more disappointed American. His behavior had offended Korean staff members at a bakery; his loud domination of the class had annoyed the Japanese-German continent of 2/1 (ROLLER had briefly considered it a welcome American note in a culturally Japanese class); his life as a sixty-year old English teacher seemed to him a failure. But sympathies for him should not be too high; what would Americans think of a sixty-year old Japanese who pretended to be interested only in middle-aged women at his language programme but at the last hour tried to join the eighteen year olds out for roller-skating?
As JOHANN and TUSK were later to agree, "everything is determined." Had not SNIPER appeared on Sunday, had not TUSK been propositioned to a criminal act, had not TUSK really needed one cute score (previous life history requiring this), he would not have acted the way he did. AKEMI was his symbolic victory, the girl seduced purely as a matter of concept, not even nudity required to know that he had finally mind-gamed a delightful Japanese maiden... err, 3-boy veteran into fornication. The sad thing was that TUSK was thirty before he finally got this score, future scores, if any, would be a tad more difficult, and he would have to spend more than the 13 USD he spent on karaoke (ERI) and 60 USD he spent on bar tabs (AKEMI) to win such good will.
"But why did you have to invest such resources into a Japanese score? Didn't you live there for two years?" wondered JOHANN.
"Well, that is a story in and of itself," replied TUSK. "Two minute precise would be 'two-year' quantitative finance programme that required living in company dormitory, 14-hour work days, six days a week, essentially I just go to see and see and see even pathetic English teachers get laid while I was always running to make curfew. Code of conduct signed also, strict behavior requirements as they accepted only 0.5%, qualitative/arts types unique opportunity to learn quant trading."
"But at least you got rich."
"I damaged a company VP's car, unfortunately, and in the end, only got the experience and connections out of it."
"Ahh, yikes."
A single hand placed on the back of Lit Girl in Kyoto: that was the final consummation of the Relationship That Never Was. Costs invested in these final four days also entailed loss of membership in a peer-to-peer invitation only web-based favor trading ring as TUSK made requests but not upload enough tasks of his own. And Yale kicked him out of alumni interviewing, his report on SNIPER was just a little too high-strung.
Week 3 was not all about TUSK. The beauty beauty beauty of narration of course is that everyone is the central character in their own mind's unfolding novel. TABUN is without question the other hero figure of that final week, the introverted withdrawn 19 year old (yet also some-time bass player for Tokyo City’s indie group ‘Zanzibar’) who had elected not to attend the first weekend’s get-together over drinks nor all that many 2nd week class lunches, made her decision slowly to go on the offensive and define something about herself other than the perpetual also-ran in classroom interactions. Her second week stiletto stab at AKEMI was an act of courage, after all, and though shot-down, she had succeeded in becoming something other than an almost SHINO or almost AKEMI. Now in week three, she calculated and launched another esoteric verbal characterization, this time against RITSUKO.
The action flowed naturally. The weekend’s trip to Pusan to see her Korean relatives had inspired some amount of confidence in her Japanese upbringing, as once the KTX bullet train left Seoul it was instantly clear that Korea was far less developed than Japan. Parts of the down-town Seoul district were richer, even more developed than the best of Osaka or Tokyo, but just an hour outside the city, the Korean countryside was clearly far dustier, far less industrialized than its Japanese counterpart. In Japanese countryside towns of only one hundred thousand souls, video screens could be seen, gangs of various teenage tribes walked about. But in Korea, the dust rose: it seemed to infiltrate even the downtown core of secondary cities and the people walked about looked browbeaten, thoroughly countrified. The stores just looked cheap, covered with light dust, oldish signs in Hangul. “How about even an attempt at style?” TABUN thought.
Reception at the Korean family only confirmed matters. They took her out to a grand dinner; they showed off their car and their fairly decent house, family tomb, but it was obvious than three hundred meters from the dwelling place, there was just farmland. Nothing looked much different from raw nature five hundred meters away, and there was a sort of straitened air to things; even luxury here had a different quality, a bit cheaper in material, a bit less polished.
On Wednesday back in class TABUN launched her assault. Dividing vocabulary extremely esoterically between alternatives that lay on the exact shade of syllables, TABUN spoke with RITSUKO and characterized her in a way that was tilted just the aggressive side of normality. It was perfect. MIKI agreed with things; AKEMI nodded; and SHINO, though pretending not to pay attention, felt the same way. The best part of it was that RITSUKO did not even notice. She was lost in thought. She looked at TUSK; TUSK looked back.
Following TUSK’s breakdown, TABUN thought she had a chance to score one on him as well. She felt the red-face incident could just as easily apply to her as it did to the obvious candidates AKEMI or SHINO and with MIKI confirming that things were going on exactly as one could see for oneself, she made a play to suborn TUSK. But although it was noticed, it was not reacted to, and her first reaction on the final breakdown at the closing ceremony was one of puzzlement. TABUN also felt cheerful enough to friend JOHANN on Facebook. It was the first girl to boy friending of 2/1 that year, and the last.
TUSK had told JOHANN she was “minority and therefore unable to express herself as a woman, for she will be criticized,” but JOHANN had picked this one right. TABUN was, always was, on the table.
Matters as they developed leading up to the final night out, Friday, were simpler and purely psychological for the rest of 2/1. JOHANN, TUSK, ERI, COPENHAGEN all met up for a bright and sunny lunch one of the days, wherein JOHANN wore black German sunglasses that were in the aesthetic of the BMW Z3 or the Gestapo uniforms of the 1930s: sleek, black, evil. They met on a second floor restaurant, a kind of establishment that didn’t exist in most European or American cities. ERI flirted back and forth with COPENHAGEN; she would not close the deal this particular week. They trooped down the stairs; they could have just as easily gone down a level to basement options, which were invariably politely staffed, gratuity free, and often frequently packed. Keiwha girls everywhere, sometimes very elegant looking, something naïve. KANYE, remembering that he had entered the program intending to learn Korean and not to meet 180 Japanese girls, returned with renewed focus to his studies; he was chosen as class leader at the closing ceremony and gave the representative speech, although more than one individual felt the hand of politics at work.
All forces converged. Disgusted with the social obligations thrown on her by TUSK, AKEMI texted QUARTERBACK, the very first American to pursue her and agreed to meet up with him and JOHANN for drinks that night before clubbing. She would choose the p
lace: NB rather than M2, more closely packed, more highly recommended, more suitable for that final crazy night with the Americans, with the club kids, with all the forces that had met up that night. She began this thing; she would end it. And firmly pressing the “reject” button on Facebook, she closed off all possibility of future relationship with TUSK, though doing it just early enough for him to pick up on things.
Everyone met up that last night. The Fulbrighters, without the half-Swedish girl or KANYE, took up a corner at NB and QUARTERBACK was drawn out for one last ploy by AKEMI, who also took TUSK for a ride for at least 30 minutes, making him believe he still had one last ghost of a chance when in fact she would just dance with Korean boys and MEDIA-CHAN for the rest of the night. JOHANN read it instantly; he went off for solo hunting but would not achieve any kills that night.
Let us devote one last beautiful paragraph to the magic of that alcoholic beatbox. TUSK would never again see AKEMI. He would have taken her had she gone for him at the first; he would leave her his jacket as a symbol of remembrance. It had to happen this way; he had to draw out what was in her like he had
The Flowers of Keiwha Page 14
