The Art of Us

by Hilaria Alexander

  “You said that already. Are you going to get a publishing exclusive out of it?” He hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort, but it couldn’t be only publicity he was after.

  “Of course. The previous publisher’s rights expired long ago, and they didn’t renew the deal because there were no new installments. At the time, it would have been stupid for them to renew a contract they couldn’t make money off of.”

  “What about the previous volumes? Are they going to let you republish them? That would mean huge sales. You would make a profit off of anyone who’s looking to buy the complete series, not to mention all the kids who weren’t even born when Ishikawa started publishing Aiko.”

  “I can’t say no to this, Lena. As much as you think I’m trying to turn your life upside down, I honestly believe this will be a great opportunity for you. How many people can say they get to work side by side with their idol?”

  “Those who do are usually sorely disappointed. What if she’s not as great as I thought all these years? After all, she left her fans high and dry for almost a decade. I know she’s been sick, but if it had been me, I would have found a way to make it work and keep going, hiring someone who could recreate my style and respect my vision.”

  “I know,” he said softly. “We don’t know why she did that. I do know it’s not easy to let go, especially when it’s your baby.”

  “Speaking of, what about my baby? What’s going to happen to Switch? Are we putting it on hiatus now because of this?”

  “I have no other choice, Lena. If you do this, the company will be safe for the next five years, at least. The sales coming from this manga alone would surpass those of all the comics we’ve ever printed and sold combined.”

  “It’s not fair that I have to put my project aside for this,” I grumbled.

  “Maybe you’ll be able to work on it while you’re there. I’m open to different options. The fact remains that this is too good of an opportunity to pass up,” he said firmly.

  I shook my head in disbelief and stared at the pattern of the carpet in his office.

  “You know I haven’t been back to Japan since…”

  “I know,” he said somberly. “And you know what I think about that. You should have gone back a long time ago to make peace with things. It’s been ten years. Besides, you’re missing out. We had an amazing time when we went for our honeymoon. Violet fell in love with Tokyo. She can’t wait to go back.”

  I glared at him. Our situations were far from similar.

  “Marty, you can say whatever you want, but I will never be able to make peace with it.”

  “It’s the only thing you can do. Shit happens. It was an accident, and you have to stop blaming yourself.”

  “And I will have to work with Amos. Have you thought about that?”

  “What are you talking about? You two work great together.” He winked.

  The bastard winked at me.

  “I don’t know if you really are that stupid or if you’re on a mission to irritate the crap out of me today. Yes, we work well together”—I said using air quotes—“but must I remind you that you forced me to work with him in the first place? And don’t give me that look. I know you know.”

  “What do I know?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with entirely too much mischief.

  “I’m not going to say it out loud.”

  “Yeah, I know you two have…history.”

  “We don’t have history, you fucking moron.”

  “Oh, I disagree. Everyone still talks about that party at my house two years ago.”

  “Oh, you too huh? You and your wife are a match made in heaven. I’m leaving.”

  “Lena, don’t. I’m sorry. Sit.”

  I stood by the door and considered leaving for a moment, but then turned around to stare at my best friend. I folded my arms, waiting for him to apologize.

  “I’m sorry about what I said. I don’t want to piss you off, but…I see it, you know.”

  “See what?” I asked indignantly as my heart started racing in my chest at the thought of Amos…at the thought of that damn kiss.

  “This…electricity between the two of you. I saw it that night in my house. I saw your eyes alive in a way that I’ve seen a very few times—maybe just when we published the first volume of Switch,” he said in a low voice, almost as if he were thinking to himself.

  “Everyone was drunk that night, Marty, me included. That’s what you saw in my eyes—drunkenness.”

  He shook his head and gave me a long look. “I know what I saw, and I have seen it recently, too. You’re different around him. We’re not teenagers, Lena. You can say you like him. It’s not going to be the end of the world.”

  “Whatever,” I said with a shrug. “It doesn’t matter if I like him or not. He has a girlfriend.”

  “He does?” Marty asked, surprised.

  “Marty! She was at your wedding. Don’t you remember?”

  “My wedding was a blur,” he said with a sigh. “I only remember parts of it, like Violet coming down the aisle,” he said with a dreamy look.

  “Is that supposed to butter me up?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

  “No, sorry…I got sidetracked. So, Amos? That was his girlfriend? I thought she was just a date,” he asked, scrunching up his nose in surprise, making a face. I knew why he was doing that—because it didn’t add up that Amos was with someone like Olivia.

  “They’ve been together more than a year, I think,” I grumbled. I was on the verge of losing my patience with him. “Are you done now, McFly?” I asked him.

  “You want to know what I think?” he asked pensively.

  “No, I don’t want to know what you think,” I replied.

  “You two…you two should be together,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, not you too! Love has definitely destroyed all of your remaining brain cells. I’m leaving.”

  “Lena, wait.” He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I promise I won’t talk about this anymore. I honestly thought there was something going on between you two. I thought this trip might be good for you guys. I had no idea.”

  I looked down and nodded, my jaw taut. For some reason, maybe because I loved him like a brother, I decided to let Marty off the hook.

  “Easy mistake to make, I suppose. I’m still not happy about having to travel to Tokyo and having to work with him, but I’ll do what I have to. I’m not going to hold a grudge for much longer, rest easy. I promise I’ll be on my best behavior.”

  “So, we’re good?” he asked.

  “We’re good,” I lied, giving him the best fake smile I could manage. None of what I was about to face sat well with me. Inside, I was absolutely terrified of everything that was about to happen.

  I walked back to my cubicle, still wishing deep in my bones that it was nothing but a prank. I kept wishing it wasn’t really happening, that I wouldn’t really have to go to Tokyo and work with the one artist I admired the most. Yes, it was thrilling—terrifyingly so.

  I knew nothing about her, though. The world didn’t know much about her besides her comics and her art. She was very private, and even with all the social media platforms we had at our disposal these days, she kept to herself. She’d never even had an official Facebook page or Twitter account. She would hardly communicate to her Japanese fans, much less with the rest of the world, but good God was she brilliant.

  Over the course of her career, she’d created her own style. Her manga and her characters had a unique look that you could recognize in a sea of lookalikes.

  She was one of the very first to utilize Photoshop and use real photographs as backgrounds for her layouts. Her characters lived in the same city, the same metropolis a lot of her readers lived in. Her heroines and heroes had the same struggles many of the teens and twenty-somethings moving to Tokyo faced.

  It was all true: life in the big city wasn’t easy.

  Tokyo could be both astonishingly beautiful and downright terrifying.

&
nbsp; I knew all about that.

  AMOS

  “Do you want to kill me, yet?” I asked her as I took a seat across from her.

  “Oh, believe me, I’ve wanted to kill you for a while, now,” she deadpanned, and I laughed. It always took me by surprise that she could be so witty every single time we had an exchange. I hadn’t been in her good graces for months now, and I missed the time when we could sort of have a conversation without throwing jabs at each other—although mainly, she was the one throwing them at me.

  I missed her, and I often wondered if I should tell her Olivia and I were done.

  It had been months.

  At first, I knew it was too soon. Then, she was pissed at me for telling Marty about our secret fanfiction project…and now we were supposed to go to Japan together.

  Part of me believed if I told her now, it would be detrimental, but the impatient, impulsive side of me was tired of waiting in the wings.

  “Also, I suppose this wasn’t really your fault after all. How could you have known the Japanese publisher would want us on board, am I right?” She exhaled.

  “I’m at the point where I can’t tell anymore when you’re mocking and when you’re being serious.”

  “I’ll never tell,” the golden-haired vixen replied, and I bit my bottom lip to hold back a laugh. I looked away, but when I looked back at her, I found her staring at my lips.

  A new hope blossomed in my chest.

  Lena Andrews still wanted me. It was only a matter of time before I could convince her to abandon her ivory tower.

  LENA

  The general consensus around the office was that I should have been ecstatic about working with my favorite comic book artist ever, but even though I knew my colleagues were generally thrilled for me—and maybe even slightly jealous—they had that deer-in-the-headlights look about them, the one you have when you’re perfectly aware that things could go very, very wrong.

  It was the same look I had in my eyes lately.

  On top of getting through the lists of all the bureaucratic things Amos and I had to deal with—visas for Japan required an insane amount of paperwork, but I knew this already since I’d had to go through it once before—I had been losing sleep over the enormity of the situation and the fact that I would be with Amos pretty much twenty-four seven.

  I would soon be surrounded by his masculine smell, his deep voice, his body, starting with our twelve-hour long international flight—PDX-SEA-NRT—and after that, every day until we finished the comic.

  There was no way I could avoid him anymore. From now on, working together would not be the way we’d handled it so far. It was no longer a ping-pong project, going back and forth from me to him and vice versa. We’d be working side by side, all day long, every day, for who knew how many weeks, or even months.

  Our visas were good for up to eighteen months.

  Eighteen months.

  It reminded me of the same visa I’d gotten before. I could still remember so clearly the day Maggie and I had gotten them at the Japanese embassy.

  Amos had offered for us to go to the embassy together, but I’d found an excuse to go alone so as to not be alone with him. Now, I was running out of excuses, and I was running out of time.

  I wasn’t just nervous because of the task ahead; I was nervous because I was afraid of what I was feeling for him. I couldn’t keep lying to myself anymore.

  I want him.

  Everything I’d done to stay away from him was in vain, because in just a matter of days, we’d be together all the time.

  I didn’t know how I would survive being back in Japan, working on the most terrifying project of my life and being near him all the time. How was I going to convince myself to stop looking at him and wishing he’d kiss me again?

  I wanted him so much, sometimes I felt as if my body were on the verge of exploding; the more I didn’t want to feel that way, the more I did.

  He taunted my fantasies. His face was the first thing I saw in my head when I awoke. His lips…I felt and imagined his lips on mine more times than I wanted to admit. I imagined those lips covering every curve and achy part of my body.

  I would soon be alone with him…a lot.

  Me, him, and Riki Ishikawa—what a trio. We’d been told there would be a translator. My Japanese was rusty at best, and while I might still be able to carry on a conversation if I tried really hard, I mostly likely didn’t know how to explain myself in technical terms when it came to sketching and drawing.

  I had to get my shit together.

  I couldn’t think about Amos and how he affected me, not at a time like this, when I was on the verge of taking a giant leap with my career.

  I felt like a baseball rookie about to play his first World Series.

  I had come to accept that yes, I had a crush on Amos, but I wasn’t going to do anything about it. I wasn’t that kind of woman, and although Olivia didn’t seem like the right fit for him, it wasn’t up to me to decide or try to change the fate of their relationship.

  Even though I knew better, I couldn’t stop myself from looking at him during meetings, and we had to endure a few more than usual to prepare for our upcoming trip.

  Violet was sitting in on them, too, since we had some budget things to go over.

  Marty had gotten the rights for the comic he wanted so badly, but he was also fronting every expense for our travel and stay in Japan. When Amos would speak and ask Marty a question, I would inevitably look at his face, at those eyes that seemed to want to know my secrets, and I would glance over those full lips, those lips that for a few minutes had seemed to erase everything I didn’t want to remember.

  My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket to read the text.

  Violet: You’re staring at him again.

  * * *

  Me: No, I’m not.

  * * *

  Violet: You’re in complete and utter denial. It’s kind of cute, actually. I’ve never seen you crush on someone so hard.

  * * *

  Me: Shut up.

  I put my phone on silent and placed it on the conference room table, glaring in the direction of my friend. My reaction enthralled Violet, whose red lips curled in a smirk while she adjusted her glasses on her nose and kept typing on her phone with one hand. I saw my screen light up again and again with several messages—from her, no doubt—but I ignored them. I tried to focus on the conversation between Marty and Amos. He was asking questions about what was expected of us when we arrived.

  “What do you want us to do when we get there? What are their terms? Are we allowed to make any suggestions, ask questions, or are we just supposed to execute what they want us to draw?”

  “I’m really not sure,” Marty answered. “But since we’re talking about a Japanese company and Japanese artists, my guess is you’ll do what you’re told. You’d better keep your ideas to yourself, unless asked. You’re only going to complete a task, almost like a videogame mission.” Marty laughed, but Amos just nodded in agreement, his expression somber.

  I wondered what he was thinking. Did he regret it now? Did he regret starting all this? Sure, it was a great opportunity, but it was also an incredible pain in the ass. We were both putting our comics on hiatus for this, to basically be the scribe of a mangaka who couldn’t—for some reason the world wasn’t aware of—finish her own comic.

  Aiko was her magnum opus, her best work to date, probably the last of her lifetime. I didn’t understand why she hadn’t tried to find another way to finish it—like enlisting the help of a fellow Japanese artist, for starters.

  We’d gotten a detailed schedule of our first days, both in English and Japanese.

  The English translation was a bit off, but nothing too bad.

  “I see some things don’t change after all,” I joked. Not everyone was aware of the fact that finding someone who could speak English well in Japan was as hard as finding a needle in a haystack.

  “I hope you will keep your snarky comments to yourself on
ce you’re there, Lena,” Marty admonished me.

  “Noted, boss,” I said, bowing my head and joining my hands together as Japanese people did.

  The papers also showed that we would stay in a certain hotel in Shinjuku when we got there.

  “This is weird,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What is?” Violet asked, obviously eager for me to chime in on the conversation.

  I glanced at the papers and then flipped the page over and back again.

  “Marty, what is this? It says here we are going to stay in a hotel, but there’s a check-in- and check-out date. Looks like we’re only staying there for five days. What does that mean? Do we have a reservation for another place?”

  “Yes and no.” He let out a deep breath and looked at me then at Amos for a few seconds before speaking again. “You will only be staying in a hotel for the first five days.”

  “Okay…and where are we staying after that? Did you rent us an apartment? It better not be at the edge of Tokyo. I really don’t want to have to take multiple subways to wherever it is that we’ll be working. Isn’t the publishing company in Ginza?”

  “Yes, but that’s not where you’ll be working. No one has mentioned Ishikawa’s illness, but they said she is very frail. The publishing company is moving her from her apartment to a bigger home not far from Shibuya.”

  He paused, and I frowned.

  “I still don’t understand.”

  His nostrils flared up as he let out a breath. “They want you guys to stay with her. They say this should facilitate things, and I agree. This way you won’t have to come and go from a place. I have pictures, look,” he said, distributing some papers around. “It’s a really nice house. It even has a Zen garden in the back.”

  “Fuck the Zen garden. I’m not going to live with her.” My eyes immediately met Marty’s angry glare. “I mean, can this situation get any more fucking awkward than it already is?” I said, dramatically waving my pencil in the air.