A Darkly Beating Heart

by Lindsay Smith

  Another breeze lifts the stray tendrils of hair away from my face and neck, and a cold wind reaches inside the gaps of my clothes. I raise my head, looking around the square. The prayer boards sway and clatter; the tree leaves beyond the shrine’s square shush against each other in a fervent roar. My heart is beating like a drum inside of me—a dark rhythm, goading me on. My blood is on fire; my mind is buzzing as if my dark thoughts were wasps, circling, circling—

  And then they collide inside me, like a thunderclap.

  I stagger forward. For a moment it feels like I’m falling out of my body, like I might just keep falling. But then the buzzing and drumming subsides, and I find my balance. The priest—he’s shouting at me. He props his rake against a sign and charges toward me, his wide, pleated skirt giving the impression that he’s floating. He’s saying something—I imagine it’s some variation of hey, you—but the only thing clear is that he’s gravely upset.

  “Sumimasen,” I say, over and over. I’m sorry. Excuse me. “Wakari masen.” I don’t understand.

  “He’s asking if you’re okay. He says that you looked like you were about to faint,” Kenji says, stepping through the outer gates. His sketchbook’s tucked under one arm and his backpack is slung on the opposite shoulder.

  “What the fuck, Kenji.” I turn from the priest to him. “Are you stalking me?”

  Kenji says something to the priest in soft, even tones. Amerika-jin juts out, an ugly boulder in the otherwise even stream of Japanese. American.

  Whatever Kenji says next, though, softens him. Kenji bows at the waist to him. “Dōmo sumimasen-desuita.”

  I stare at Kenji, one eyebrow cocked.

  “He’s trying to teach you about the double—no. Mm. The dual nature of the kami. He wants you to understand that every kami—every spirit—has two natures, all right? That when you respect them, then they are more than happy to love and nurture and care for you. But he is worried you have a—mm, how did he phrase it? A darkened neglect in your heart.”

  Darkened neglect in my heart? I laugh like dry leaves rattling. Yeah, he’s really got my number there. “Whatever. It’s not like I believe in that shit.”

  Kenji makes a strained expression. “It doesn’t matter what you believe in, Reiko. If you feel angry, if you’re destructive, then you draw anger and destruction to you. Your mindset creates your reality, no matter what you believe.”

  I gust out my breath, blowing stray hairs out of my face. “Well, then that’s just fantastic. Really great. I was just trying to—fuck it. Never mind.” I shove past Kenji and head out the outer gates of the square, but he stays right at my side. “You said it always made you feel better to give your problems over to them.”

  “To let go of my problems,” Kenji says. “It is the act of releasing them. Not dumping them all over someone else.”

  “Fine. Whatever. Quit following me everywhere, okay? I don’t need you making excuses for me. And it’s creepy.”

  Kenji hesitates, tugging at the strap of his backpack. “I, ahh, I have to follow you.”

  I stop walking. “Excuse me?”

  Kenji lowers his head, a dark fringe of hair concealing his eyes. “Satori-san. He said we aren’t ever allowed to let you go anywhere by yourself, because of … ahh, because of your condition, and he…”

  “Oh my God. Are you kidding me? He told you all that?” The chill from the breeze is gone; instead, I’m burning up, from the inside out. The smoldering coals of my hatred are crackling to life again, shifting and sparking with fresh fury.

  Kenji doesn’t answer. He won’t meet my eyes. Just another coward, same as me. Why don’t they beat him down, too? Why does he still give a damn?

  “I figured out your superhero’s secret power,” I tell him. My power. My anger, burning me up. I’m going to make as much of a mess as possible when I leave—smear them all with a stain they can’t scrub out. “She destroys everything she touches. And everyone.”

  I will master Hideki’s path of vengeance. I will make everyone listen to the dark pounding of my heart.

  CHAPTER THREE

  There are so many ways to kill myself in Japan—ways to make it matter, make it sting. Suicide isn’t a bad way to make my point, as long as I make others suffer for it. I could find it at the end of a cord—an electric kettle’s cord, perhaps, because Aunt and Uncle Satori won’t let me near anything longer. I picture myself crumpled in the alleyway beneath their ninth-floor apartment in Shinjuku, though it turns out, all the windows are painted shut. Plus, I’d never see Chloe’s face when she hears what became of me. I’d never get to nestle in that dark guilt that would forever weight her steps.

  But if I did it—if I killed myself—then I’d really have myself a coup. I’d be the first Azumi child to succeed at something. Hideki tried and failed. Anyway, I want my death to hurt far more than just me. I’m hoping that in Kuramagi, I can find just the right way.

  This trip will be good for you girls, Uncle Satori told us while he helped us pack. Maybe you can learn to get along. Like we’re two puzzle pieces he can force together, and not vinegar and blood. We meet up with Mariko, Kenji, and Kazuo at the main Tokyo shinkansen station and wait for the rip of air as the bullet train arrives. (Tadashi is too good to travel by such plebian means; he’s going to drive his Range Rover down later in the day.) Mariko pops into the convenience shop and returns with a plastic bag full of triangular onigiri and starts nibbling on one while we wait for our train. Kazuo and Aki stand too close to each other while they watch videos on Kazuo’s phone. Kenji reads a thick manga compilation. And I wonder what it would be like to be struck by a shinkansen train while it’s whirring along at 200 miles an hour.

  The train hisses into the station. Disgorges its passengers. The cleaners walk down the aisles, collecting any trash left behind and washing down headrests. The seats lift up and swivel around to face the opposite way. Sterile, sleek, empty. Everything moving in flawless concert. Perfection through repetition. I press the bruises on my wrist. One, two, three, four, five.

  The train ride is a blur of scenery and noise—Chloe’s playlist again, double-bass drumming its way to the speed of our train. Mariko punches away at the cell phone novel she’s always working on—short dribs and drabs of words pushed out to her subscribers, chronicling the ups and downs of a water hostess in Tokyo. She tried explaining the plot to me, but it sounded more melodramatic than my old Legends of Eldritch Journey role-playing forums, which is really saying something.

  I am flinging across the length of the island of Honshu as my thoughts churn ever inward on themselves, ever fixed on single points.

  You’ve made a mistake, Chloe’s email had said, that day it all went to hell. Everyone needs to see you for what you really are.

  Not who. What. And what they needed to see, apparently, was the monster who’d been lurking in their midst all along.

  The email came the week before winter break. Two months after Chloe and her new girlfriend, Selena, shredded up my heart with their pyramid-studded belts. Two months after I left those shreds in Portland, amidst the rainwater flecked with blood and broken glass. Not three days after my early decisions arrived from Stanford and RISD—a yes and a wait list, not that I cared about college. I wanted to go there to develop my art, but none of that mattered anymore. Chloe had pulled my art out of my soul as if it were a thread she’d unraveled herself. Was it even mine, or only something I’d done because she put the brush in my hand? If it had been up to me, would I have made it at all?

  When I saw the paintings I made at summer camp with Chloe again, that week before winter break, all I felt was shame. They weren’t for the student body of Saint Isaac’s to see. What were they doing plastered all over the school? The rotten thing inside of me had gotten loose. Someone had smeared it across Saint Isaac’s halls. Why was everyone pointing, cupping hands around their mouths as their eyes followed me? How did they know they were mine? Why weren’t they looking at the teachers, hurrying to pull the paint
ings down? It wasn’t until I reached homeroom that I saw Chloe’s message on my phone.

  Then the security guards came for me.

  “We’ve received some unsettling information about you, Miss Azumi,” the principal said. Deacon Karlsson, a man as gaunt and Scandinavian as his name, sat across the desk from me, pretending the conversation was strictly between the two of us and didn’t include the three nuns and four security guards crammed into the back of the room. “Some credible information that you mean to do your fellow students harm.”

  I was too stunned to respond. I’d never before considered doing anything like the collages and paintings portrayed. Those were private works—things created in the dead of night in the studio spaces of camp. I hadn’t even turned them in as part of my final portfolio. They were a wonderful secret, a bond between only Chloe and me.

  “Your painting with photographs of the senior class says, and I’m quoting here, ‘Everyone must pay for their crimes,’” Deacon Karlsson said.

  Oh, God. I felt the floor opening up beneath me, the lurch before the roller coaster rushed down.

  “I’m sure you understand why I’ve had to contact your parents. And the police.”

  The world turned into a metallic buzz around me. I couldn’t breathe or feel or see. Just noise, crackling like a downed wire in my head. So much noise.

  It was better that way.

  * * *

  The train glides to a stop, and we board a smaller local train. A stop in a pristine bathroom at a train station, the toilet playing pop music at me while I pee. A bus. All the while, Mariko, Kazuo, Aki, and Kenji chattering. I chug another Suntory Boss, the only thing I think I might be able to keep down, while Mariko works her way through several more onigiri.

  WELCOME TO THE KURAMAGI RYOKAN!

  We stand in the front entrance of the traditional bed and breakfast, a ryokan, that Tadashi had booked for us at the sort of nightly rates so high I had trouble translating them into dollars. (“Some Sony execs love to host retreats at this place,” he’d said. “Lots of opportunity here.”) The girl at the front counter isn’t at all what I’d expected: American, dark-skinned, naturally tightly curled hair cropped close to her head, smiling, confident. Gorgeous. Speaking English. I kick off my shoes with the rest of our crew, tuck them in a cubby, and slip on plastic red slippers.

  “My name’s Sierra. You marked ‘English’ on your language preference card, but I’m happy to speak with you in Japanese if you prefer.” She glances down at the card in front of her. “Is Mr. Itoyama here?”

  “He’ll be arriving later.” Aki slides across the gleaming wooden floors to the clerk’s counter. “I can check us in.” They switch into Japanese, and Sierra follows along flawlessly, her intonation sounding—to my ears, at least—as good as any I’ve heard. Suddenly Sierra stands up from the desk and starts up a narrow staircase, everyone following her closely. I scramble to keep up.

  “Can you explain in English, too?” I ask, even as a hot shame washes over me. “Please?”

  She flashes a smile at me. “Sure. I’m just showing you all to your rooms.”

  We reach the top of the staircase. It looks over the front gardens of the ryokan, running along the main street of Kuramagi village. “Kuramagi was once a thriving village along the old postal route between Kyoto and Tokyo during the shogunate period,” Sierra says, then repeats herself in Japanese. “Kuramagi was one of the first villages to choose to preserve its historic appearance by not permitting any electric lights outdoors and burying all cables. The village works hard to retain its original Edo-period feel.”

  I look out the opened windows at the multi-tiered garden beneath us: small stone statues, koi ponds, bristly bushes turning autumn shades. The main street of the town is lined in dark and white wood buildings, few of them more than two or three stories tall, with narrow vertical strips of wood across most windows and steep roofs of overlapping tiles ending in fancy, swirling caps.

  “At night, we ask that you please be indoors no later than ten. The village is lit with gas lamps at that time, and it’s very dark, so for your protection, it’s safer to remain indoors. We will lock the doors to the ryokan each night at ten.”

  Sierra turns to the row of sliding thin wood and rice paper panels set back from the windows and twists a small piece of metal in the center of one panel’s edge. “Ladies, this will be your room. I’ll give you a moment to drop off your things. Then please come meet me downstairs. Gentlemen, come with me, please.” Sierra and the boys disappear back down the stairs.

  The panel slides open to reveal a traditional sitting room: rice paper–paneled walls, tatami mats on the floor, and three pallets like the one I sleep on at the Satoris’ apartment lined up against one wall. Akiko immediately heads toward the one closest to the window. “I’ll take this one.” She picks one of the casual robes, a yukata, off the stack and tosses it at me.

  “I can’t believe we have to be inside by ten,” Mariko says. “This is going to be so lame.”

  Akiko rolls her eyes. “We’re not following that.” She punches at her phone. “Tadashi says there’s a great club the next village over. A real one, not a sad thing like when we went to Nagano.”

  “But Sierra said they lock the ryokan doors at ten,” I say.

  “Yeah. The doors.” Akiko slides open the window. “You’ll stay here and let us in, won’t you, Rei-Rei?”

  I glimpse a wonderful fantasy. A dark, hateful world—monsters pursuing Aki through the streets of Kuramagi. She’s trapped in the darkened garden, thick, sinuous shadows coiling around her. Please, let me in! she screams, while the shadows carve deep furrows into her flesh. Reiko, help!

  If only. I smile, imagining my teeth thick and bright as a shark’s. “Of course I will.”

  The screams echo in my thoughts while I unpack. The path of hatred carves deeper, greased on thoughts of Aki’s pain.

  * * *

  “So what are you planning to do around here?” Sierra asks, while I sit in the lobby and wait on Aki and Mariko to finish primping for dinner and their inevitable nightclub trip later tonight.

  I close the magazine I’d been flipping through. “Do?” I laugh, throaty. “Follow my cousin around, I guess. She’s the exciting one.”

  “Sorry, you came to the wrong town if you’re looking for excitement. People come here to relax.”

  “Fine.” I smile in spite of myself. She’s easy to talk to, and not just for her English. Again I feel that tug in my gut, pulling at the space where my attraction to human beings used to be. But the antidepressants have hollowed me out. “What relaxing things are there to do around here?”

  “Well, there are the onsens, of course. Natural hot springs along the mountainside. Mister Onagi owns a couple of them, and he’ll rent them out to you guys by the hour. There’s the hiking trail that runs between this town and the next one on the old postal route…” She drums her mint-green nails on the counter. “You can always check out the historical museum. It’s in the old travelers’ inn down the road. Or there’s the shinju shrine, if you’re feeling morbid.”

  Like I’m ever not. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh—I figured you knew about it. It’s why a lot of people come to Kuramagi, aside from the festival. It’s a monument to two doomed lovers, you know, a Romeo and Juliet thing.” Sierra’s eyes roll. “They, like, pray to the doomed lovers to bless their own relationships. Pretty twisted, if you ask me, but it keeps me employed, right?”

  I curl back, my mouth suddenly parched. “Oh.” I force myself to swallow. “Is that why you live here?”

  “Please, are you kidding? I don’t live here. Just work here a couple afternoons a week.” Sierra smiles again. “I teach English a few towns from here. No, I think you have to be a special brand of disturbed to live in Kuramagi.”

  “Because of the shrine?” I ask.

  “Sure, that’s part of it. But mostly they’re such sticklers about the whole historical setting. And then there’s th
e curfew…” Sierra closes her hand on the counter into a fist, and leans forward, checking the hallway toward the dining rooms. “Like, don’t tell Mr. Onagi I said so, but they get so caught up in preserving history around here that I think they sometimes forget the rest of the world’s moved on.”

  I nod and fiddle with the belt on my yukata. Stuck in time, unable to move forward. I know the feeling well. My thoughts are buzzing, wordless, in the back of my mind.

  “It’s just creepy, is all. Stick around here a couple days—I bet you’ll see what I mean.” She looks toward the staircase that leads toward our room, her extra-wide smile returning. “Welcome back, ladies! Are you ready for me to show you to your dining room?”

  Aki and Mariko clomp downstairs. Even though they’re wearing their yukata, they’re clearly wearing another outfit underneath, and Aki’s makeup is thick as ever. Mariko’s three-inch platforms jut out of her handbag.

  Sierra leads us to the dining room, reminds us to take off our slippers, and explains a few of the dishes. Our dining room is traditional-style as well, with small legless chairs propped around a low table. I survey the explosion of tiny ceramic plates before me. Pickled radish, maybe? That one definitely holds sashimi, though I’m not sure what type of fish it is. Raw beef, which may or may not end up cooked before the night is out. All the sorts of food I’d have loved to devour, before I lost my taste for everything.

  And—raisins?

  “Those are really good,” Aki says, leaning over my shoulder. “Miniature sugar dates.”

  But when I pick them up, I see the tiny legs on their undersides.

  I narrow my eyes at Akiko and pop them in my mouth. Grin darkly as her upper lip curls back.

  “Eww, I can’t believe you ate them!” Aki squeals, as I finish off the bowl. “Don’t you know what those were? They were wasp larvae. Wasps.”