A Darkly Beating Heart

by Lindsay Smith

  I pull my jeans back up, then, covering my hand with my sleeve, hurriedly wedge the stone back into my camera bag. My life here is already ended, as far as I’m concerned—ended that day I walked down the school hallways surrounded by my paintings, ended that morning I walked into Hideki’s bathroom and dialed 911. The rest is just housekeeping.

  I creep toward the bathroom door and listen to the voices I can still hear in the entrance of the inn. Mr. Onagi’s voice is gone; now I hear Akiko and Mariko, chattering among themselves. “God, where’d she go now?” Mariko asks, exasperated in a way I’ve never heard her be in English. She drips with filth, like something pinched between her finger and thumb.

  “Who cares?” Akiko says. “If we aren’t doing a photo shoot, she can stay far, far away from me.”

  Mariko snorts, that awful laugh she uses only when she’s trying to impress Aki. “Is everything ready for her big surprise?”

  The buzzing, throbbing feeling rises in my skull. Big surprise. A big surprise for me. Somehow, I don’t think it’s anything good.

  “Not yet,” Aki says. “We should go pick up the rest of the stuff for it.”

  No. I don’t need any of Aki’s surprises. I’m not a punching bag and a scapegoat—as Reiko and as Miyu. I swing the door open and charge out into the entryway, molten lava in my veins.

  What “surprise” do they have planned for me? But I can’t let it show that I know.

  I need to worry about planning my own surprise. A final act of vengeance at the festival, something the world will see. Mom and Dad and Hideki and Chloe and everyone else. I need to be brave and fierce, like Miyu.

  I need to make them burn.

  And now I’m getting the seed of an idea. My final masterpiece. I just need to see the festival layout for myself.

  After giving myself a few minutes to calm my breathing and wash my face, I head back out. Aki barely spares me a second glance. “Come on. We need to head back for the afternoon rehearsal.”

  I nod, my face a mask, and follow our group into town. “Akiko, Akiko, Akiko!” Despite the deck being heavily stacked against him, the festival’s “producer” manages to outdo Tadashi in the sleaze department. He’s wearing purple pleather snakeskin pants, a double-wide-lapel button-down shirt, and a soul patch that wriggles whenever he talks like it’s trying to escape its spray tan encampment. As absurd as I found Suzuki’s ensemble this morning, I have to admit, she found a way to unify her look into something coherent. This guy just looks like full-frontal assault and battery made manifest.

  “Hello!” Akiko says, switching rapidly into her falsetto kawaii voice she uses whenever she’s onstage, figuratively or literally. (Right now, both.) “It’s so good to see you, Franco!”

  Franco swoops in for a loud, smacking kiss on the cheek, though Aki visibly recoils from the attempt with a coquettish, nervous laugh. “Listen, Aki, I am such a big fan,” he says to her in Japanese, bashing his palms against his chest with the word fan. “A huge fan. Of the aki * LIFE * rhythm way. A big fan!”

  Akiko titters again. “Oh, thank you, Franco—”

  “No, seriously. I want you to listen to me. Your episode on spreading warmth and happiness? Changed my life. First thing I did, I turned to my assistant and gave her a pay raise. Isn’t that right, Yumi?”

  Yumi stares blankly at us from behind her clipboard.

  “Yeah, Yumi knows. And your cover of ‘Weeping in the Rain!’” Franco tosses his head back and quivers. It goes on long enough that I’m slightly concerned he may be having a seizure, but then he recovers. “Oof! It gave me such chills.”

  Akiko pushes a perfect curl behind one ear. “Oh, thank you, Franco. That means so much coming from you.”

  Franco tosses his hands up and sways back and forth. He looks like the girls who always got way too into the hymns at Saint Isaac’s. “Aki, life, rhythm!” Franco sings as he rocks his hips. “Aki, life—RHYTHM!” He punches forward.

  “So, uhm…” Akiko takes a step back. “How do you want me to do this?”

  “Right! The show.” Franco claps, then spins toward poor Yumi. “Yumi, c’mere, let’s block this out.”

  I sigh and flick my snapshot camera off. This will take some time.

  Kenji laughs beside me, a quiet laugh meant for just the two of us. “I’m guessing you don’t know anything about Franco.”

  “I feel like I know him pretty well already,” I say.

  Kenji grins. “He is a former mid-list aidoru. And a mid-list character actor … and a mediocre fashion designer … also a pretty terrible restaurateur.” He ticks each of these professions off on his fingers, then wiggles his thumb. “Now he’s a disaster of a special events planner and promoter, which is why he and Tadashi get along so well.”

  “One of those perpetual motion machines of marginal fame,” I say. “Yeah, we have a few of those in the States, too.” When Kenji looks confused, I explain perpetual motion machines to him in English. I have to stop myself from switching into Japanese. “I’m sure he and Akiko are going to get along just fine.”

  “Seriously? Look at her. Even Aki has some standards.” Kenji gestures to where she’s side by side with Franco, looking at the rig for a massive drum ensemble, trying to edge out of the arm he’s slung around her shoulders. It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for the girl.

  Almost.

  I study the drum rigging, tiered behind the stage like the setup for a percussive choir. In the metal bar rafters of the stage, dozens and dozens of stage lights cram tight, like they’ve packed the setup for a massive opera hall onto this tiny rig. And tangled around everything are the same colored fabric banners, flapping every which way, just like they were in Miyu’s version of Kuramagi.

  The flapping, tangled-up, dangerously flammable colored banners.

  My arms tingle like they’ve fallen asleep. Franco’s nonstop prattling blurs into a dim, distant drone. Kenji’s explaining something to me, something that actually has to do with our job here, but I don’t hear it. All I can feel is the rushing heat of fire and the angry pulse of the drums. I want this. I want this so badly, and I feel no semblance of remorse.

  Akiko deserves to pay—for humiliating me, for mocking me, for plotting even more humiliations yet to come. Laughter rings in my head, something that sounds like me, though I can’t remember the last time I’ve laughed. This feeling unfurling within me, catching the wind of my hate like a sail, feels so goddamned good it’s better than sex with Jiro, it’s better than food, it’s better than slicing open my skin and airing all my scars.

  The perfect revenge, perfectly planned, perfectly formed.

  Dimly, I hear the buzzing in my head once more. I imagine wasps raging inside my stomach. I imagine roaches crawling along my skin. I imagine the blood and entrails dripping down the side of my face, and I wear them like a medal.

  I’ll bring the lights down on Aki. So easy to make it look like an accident, like I was just setting things up for a photo shoot. But it’ll go horribly awry. Set fire to the stage. Chaos. Blood. Screaming. Her dream chance turned to a nightmare. How I can’t wait.

  The drums echo in my brain as the plan forms, as I chart everything I’ll need to do to set it up. It won’t take much. So easy. So easy.

  The revenge we’re owed.

  The thought comes to me all at once, but it feels so right. I deserve this.

  “Reiko?”

  Kenji’s saying my name. Maybe has been for some time. I turn toward Kenji, irritation itchy as wool against my flesh. “What?”

  He shrinks back. “I, uh, just—you had this—sorry. You had this look on your face, and I wanted to make sure you felt—”

  “Felt what?” I snarl.

  “Reiko!” Aki shouts at me from the stage. “Are you even paying attention?”

  I level my gaze right at Aki and Franco. Franco’s smile is gone; even his soul patch is still. “Don’t you worry, Aki,” I shout back at her. “It’s going to be a perfect show.”

&nbs
p; CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Has vengeance always been in my blood? I’m starting to think so.

  I study the festival stage and the metal scaffolding that supports the lights. They’re older lights, like the kind in Saint Isaac’s auditorium, not the sleek modern ones we had at the summer arts camp. Every year the fire marshall fined our school when he did his inspection before the spring musical. I never paid it much mind back then; my job was as the official photographer, posting shots from dress rehearsal to the school’s Facebook page.

  But now his words come back to me. Aging filaments. Easy to catch fire, he’d say, shaking his head. You drop one of these on the stage, it’s not just the weight that’ll hurt you. It’s far too easy for it to catch and spread.

  I snap a few photographs of the winches that hold it in place. Old metal, oxidized and soft. The stage managers have plenty of timed catch-release devices set aside in a box; Aki’s even going to use a few to drop banners and confetti during her big finale.

  “Are you okay?” Kenji asks, breaking me from my reverie.

  I blink a few times and realize I was smiling.

  Vengeance. My blood. My birthright. Just like Hideki and me. He inflicted a thousand tiny torments on me over the years, but I’ll get mine in the end.

  “I feel amazing,” I say.

  * * *

  By the time Aki’s rehearsal is finished, my plan is set. I head back to the ryokan to gather the final pieces I need while the others head to dinner or to the onsen to relax in the hot springs. I assemble everything I’ll need for tomorrow. I have a plan. I will make sure everyone knows my name.

  But there is another kind of determination thrumming through me, and I’m not ready to settle in for the night. I shed my clothes and dress for the hot springs. Something in me wants to feel the burn and sting of the water; something in me is pushing me on.

  I am surrounded by the buzzing. It carries me forward, like a tidal wave. Urges me onto the streets, onto the path to the onsens.

  The sun is spilling across the edge of the western mountains like a runny yolk, all oranges and yellows that I’d love to capture in my DSLR camera, but I’m on a mission this evening. My feet carry me as if on their own volition. The wooden sandals feel like second nature now, the slow shuffle and scrape; the white and blue yukata feels like a second skin. I’ve never felt so alive—not in any recent memory, that’s for sure. Invigorated.

  I can’t stop to question it or the moment will be gone. I’m slipping away, watching my body surge forth. Letting this rotten core within me take control. And it feels so good. It feels like what I’ve been reaching for all along.

  I unlatch the gate and slip into the outer garden of the private onsen Mr. Onagi owns. Clack, clack my way into the wooden bathhouse. A sign warns me the onsen is already occupied, but I pay it no mind. I’m an electric arc of energy that can’t be stopped. Shed my outer robe and shoes. Rinse myself off in the shower stand in the bathhouse corner. Then slide open the doorway and step out into the inner courtyard, where the sunken hot spring sits, offering a beautiful view of the valley beyond under the final throes of the sunset.

  Where Kenji sits, naked, inside the spring.

  “Oh—oh.” He scrambles backward, water flying, and curls up at the far end of the stone basin. “Hi, um, Reiko. What are you, um, doing—doing here?”

  He tries to keep his gaze down, but I can feel it—I feel it feathering along the bony ridges of my ribs, my shrunken breasts, the stretch marks around my stomach. It trips up on the rows and rows of scars, those dark gray furrows against the lighter skin of my thighs. I step toward the edge of the pool, letting the steam snake up around me and greet me like an old lover. It smells faintly of sulfur, just enough to wake me up.

  I am alive. I am so alive. No one can stop me.

  I sink one foot into the basin, then the next. The scalding water is as hot as a slap against bare skin. I feel like I’m being roasted alive. It’s wonderful. It feels so angry, so vicious, like the water’s defending itself against intruders. But I am winning.

  I always win.

  I don’t know where the thought comes from, but I am so certain of it that it must be true. I always win in the end. I always have my revenge. And I’m going to have it again.

  “Don’t you ever wonder,” I ask Kenji, who’s still curled up at the far end of the pool, “what happens to our pain when we die?” I’m not quite sure where the question comes from—but I like the molten way it tastes in my mouth. “Maybe it lasts and lasts. It powers the earth and heats these springs.” I tilt my head. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “I, uh, I’m not sure what you’re talking ab—wait.” Kenji squints at me; for a moment, his arms unfold from his legs, and I can glimpse the murky expanse of his chest and stomach beneath the rocking, fracturing surface of the water. “You’re—you’re speaking Japanese.”

  “Am I?” I ask. Then I’m laughing—I recognize the laugh like something I heard in a movie once, something that feels familiar and yet foreign. “I guess there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

  Yes. Yes, this is me. The water is burning away everything I used to be—weak, ugly, cowardly, hated. What remains is only what truly matters. My power. My hate.

  “Rei?” It’s Kenji. Looking at me with eyes rounded in fear. He should be afraid. Everyone should. “What’s going on with you, Rei?”

  I shove off the bottom of the pool and lurch toward him. “Isn’t this what you wanted, Kenji?” My voice flows from me like honey. I remember Jiro’s face as he caressed my skin. I can make Kenji do that, too. I have that power. “It’s why you asked me, right? Earlier today.”

  Kenji’s face darkens, and he lowers his hands to try to conceal himself. As if I give a shit about modesty.

  “No need to hide. I know it. You want me like this.” I try to crouch in front of him, but my toes slip on the stone floor of the basin. I stretch one hand toward him, run my fingers along his cheeks. “You want me like I want you.”

  “I—uhh, umm—” He shrinks back from my touch, head pressing against the stone ledge of the pool. “I really like you, Rei, but I don’t think either of us—I mean, I don’t think this is—”

  Anger flares through me. I imagine the water boiling around me. Boiling us alive. “You don’t think what?” I snarl.

  “You’re not acting like yourself.” Kenji gulps, loud.

  I seize his knee in one hand and shove it out of my way. Swim over him, my face looming before his. Yes, he wants me. “Don’t be stupid.” And I want to devour him whole. “I’ve never been so … me.”

  He slides one hand between us. “Seriously. I’m in no rush—this isn’t the way I want—”

  I grip him by his shoulders. Why is he being so stupid? Why fight? I am power, I am divine. How dare he reject me?

  Kenji shoves me—hard, hands right in the center of my chest, pushing against my solar plexus. The wind rushes out of me as I go drifting to the other side of the pool. It hurts. “Who are you?” he cries. “Who are you, seriously? Because this isn’t the girl I’ve been getting to know.” Stars swim before my eyes as I try to right myself. Kenji stands up, water sliding off him; he’s shaking. “The Reiko I know would actually listen to me.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” He doesn’t understand. I’ve never been so alive. Of course he doesn’t know how that feels. I’m so hungry for life, for making use of this gift, this incredible power I feel coursing through me, to command everyone, to avenge everything.

  Kenji is nothing. I need more. I need better. I need …

  Suddenly all the fight drains out of me. The confidence is gone. I look at Kenji, and I see fear in his eyes. He’s looking at me the way Chloe did. After I’d already done what couldn’t be undone.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. What have I become?

  Steam rises from my body, swirling around me like a fog. I need to get back to Miyu.

  “Rei?” Kenji calls to me, as I head back into the bathhouse. �
�Rei? Talk to me. Are you—are you sure you’re okay?”

  I wrap my yukata around me—left over right, the correct way that I learned from being Miyu, despite what Aki told me in the past—and stomp away from him while he’s still scrambling to get dressed.

  No. I’m not okay. I weave back through the streets of Kuramagi with fire in my veins. Night’s dropped swiftly across the village, dampening everything into blackness punctuated only by the golden pockets of the paper lanterns every twenty feet or so. My sandals scrape scrape along, ringing through the night. Two older tourists stumble from an izakaya, laughing, but the laughter fades as they catch sight of me, and they hurry down the other way.

  Is that my heartbeat throbbing in my head? Buzzing around me? No—no, I hear it now. The drums. Practicing for tomorrow’s festival. But they feel like a warning. I have to get away from those drums. I plunge into the swirl of shadows around the staircase that takes me back up to the ryokan.

  The shadows are thick, congealing like a stew around me. For a moment, I can’t see anything but blackness. Can’t hear anything but those drums. The only thing I feel is the sizzle under my skin, the yearning to break free.

  The yearning for revenge. On Kenji and Akiko and Miyu’s tormentors, all tangled into one.

  I will have it. I’ll have my revenge.

  Tomorrow is the festival, Aki’s big day. But it will be mine. And then I can go back to where I belong.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Most of the lights are out in the public spaces of the ryokan; Sierra hunches over a logbook, illuminated by a single desk lamp. “Oh, hey, Reiko,” she says, starting to look up as I kick the wooden sandals into a far cubby. “—Oh. Hey. Are you, um … Is everything okay?”