The Daydreamer Detective Opens a Tea Shop

by S. J. Pajonas

  Goro pulled into a parking spot outside of the emergency room, turned off the car, and we all jumped out.

  “Mei-chan, since when do people make sense around here?”

  “Good point.”

  So far, my return to Chikata had been full of mysteries.

  Chapter Nine

  “We’re done with our initial scans, and I agree with the other doctors on staff. Miss Cheung will be fine. She has a slight concussion that needs monitoring, and her left arm is bruised in several places. It’ll be sensitive for the next week or two. I’d like to see her in a few days and again in two weeks to check on her progress.”

  Yasahiro nodded to everything the doctor said, and Goro took notes. But I positioned myself at the door so I could look in on Amanda. She did her best to fake sleep, but I saw her looking at me through cracked eyes. She pretended not to see me by rolling her head to the side, but I was not so easily fooled. She was awake and assessing her fate while we stood in the hall and spoke with the doctor. She knew only a little Japanese, though, so who knew what was going through her mind.

  “You can take her home in about an hour,” the doctor said, bowing, but Yasahiro shook his head.

  “I’m not taking her home. Why would I do something like that?”

  The doctor’s eyebrows pulled together, and he looked between us. Goro shrugged his shoulders.

  “I apologize. Apparently, I misunderstood.” The doctor bowed again. “If you’re not here to take this woman home, then what are you doing here?”

  “I’m asking myself the same question,” Yasahiro mumbled, turning to me. “What should we do?”

  A tiny bubble of pride welled up in my belly. Yasahiro was asking for my help, not the other way around. “I’m not sure.” Since we didn’t know enough about her situation, the only thing we could do was make guesses. “Maybe we should talk to her,” I suggested, and Goro rubbed his hands together with a smile on his face.

  The doctor pushed the door open, and Amanda continued to pretend to sleep until we were all in.

  “Yasahiro, darling,” she whispered in English. Goro folded his arms, blanking his face into a neutral cop expression. He was probably disappointed he wouldn’t be able to follow along. His English was minimal. “I’m so glad you came.” She reached out to Yasahiro, but he kept his hands in his pockets. She dropped her hand to the bed, a frown blooming despite her cheek being swollen and bruised.

  “I didn’t have much of a choice since you made me your emergency contact.”

  Her lips quirked, and I sensed a note of victory in the way she raised her eyebrows. “Who else do I know and trust in Japan?”

  While she tried to sit up, I studied her like a psychiatrist studies a patient. I catalogued her facial expressions, the tone of her voice, the set of her lips, even how she breathed. I took out my mental notebook, and I started a list. Denial, check.

  “You know plenty of people in Japan,” Yasahiro countered. “Giselle and Robert are here right now, and I’m sure you were well aware of that before you even arrived. And I was told today you dated someone here just last year. Don’t play me for a fool.”

  “Really?” I asked. I looked between Yasahiro and Goro.

  Goro jerked his chin at me. “Kumi,” was all he said. She must have shared her knowledge about the man Amanda dated after Yasahiro. He was in Japan, too?

  “Are you traveling here with anyone else?” I felt confident in my command of the English language now that I was no longer shocked by her presence. “Can we contact someone who can come help you?”

  Amanda stared at me like I had two heads, and I turned around to make sure she wasn’t looking at something behind me.

  She looked to Yasahiro. “You brought your assistant here in the middle of the night?”

  I pulled my phone from my pocket. “You know as well as I do that I am not his assistant. We have been dating for over eight months, and I would appreciate it if you did not flirt with him while I am standing right here.” Amanda’s lips pinched together. “Who can I call to come get you?”

  I paused to glance at Yasahiro. He had relaxed, hearing me handle Amanda. I was sure he was relieved that I took over. When he dealt with her, his only choices were anger (not helpful) or to let her control everything. He’d already told her they were done, utterly and completely over. It was up to me to make it final. Now if only I could’ve used contractions better in English. It was the one thing people said about my delivery, too much like a robot.

  Amanda winced as she sat up further, and the doctor scurried forward to raise her bed. “There’s no one. I’m here by myself. Everyone says Japan is safe, and there’s nothing to worry about. The press will hear from me about this.” Amanda tried to toss her hair, but she grimaced in pain, and it looked genuine. Whatever had happened to her, she wasn’t faking it. “I see you brought a policeman,” she said, turning to Goro. He pulled his notebook from his pocket. “Are you going to take my statement?”

  Yasahiro quickly translated.

  “I’ll help,” I whispered to him in Japanese. I felt I should be involved as much as possible, just to show Amanda I wasn’t window dressing or anything.

  “First, I need to know how you got to Chikata and why you were there.” Goro waited patiently, his pen poised above the paper, while we translated.

  “I attended a book launch party in Shinjuku this evening. I invited Yasahiro to be there…” Amanda slid her eyes to Yasahiro, but he crossed his arms and glared at her. “Anyway, I guess he was with you.” She looked at me and said it with such venom that I refused to translate it for Goro. “I left the party and hailed a cab. I knew it was too late for me to get the train out here, so taking a cab was my only choice.”

  She sighed dramatically, producing a tear right on cue.

  “I’m horrible with Japanese addresses, and even though I showed the address to the cab driver, he had trouble finding Yasahiro’s apartment on GPS.”

  The very thought of Amanda having access to both Yasahiro’s workplace and home address made me itch with anger. I scratched my nails along the length of my arm and pulled my sweater sleeve down to prevent myself from rubbing the skin raw.

  “You had his home address?” Goro asked. His eyebrows lifted to his hairline.

  “Of course I did.” She huffed and rolled her eyes. “Originally, it was going to be our apartment. He bought the building about six months before…”

  Before they broke up.

  Amanda cleared her throat. “I remembered the neighborhood, so I asked the cab driver to drop me off in a place that looked familiar. I figured I could walk and find it.”

  “At two in the morning?” Goro was scribbling away, and he asked without even looking up.

  “I’m a night owl.” Amanda shrugged her shoulders, and I translated the phrase literally to Goro, then changing it to “yoippari” with a smirk.

  He laughed as he flipped the page in his notebook. “A night person, huh. So, what happened next?”

  Amanda produced another tear, and her lip quivered. If I hadn’t already hated her and known she was a talented actress, I would’ve believed her. As it was, I was having a hard time not kicking her and telling her to quit it.

  “I heard footsteps approach me from behind and someone said, ‘Hey!’ Then I was knocked up side the head, and I fell to the ground. He ran away, and I called for help.” She sobbed a few times, but nobody rushed to hand her a tissue.

  “How did you call for help?”

  “With my phone, duh.” She snapped from crying to annoyed. “I always get a native phone in each country, or I swap out my SIM card if I can. I called 1-1-9. I remember it because it’s the opposite of 9-1-1 in America.”

  “Okay. This coincides with the data I got.” Goro nodded and indicated I should keep translating by poking me in the arm. “So you saw nothing? How tall was he? What was he wearing? What did he look like?”

  The questioning went on for twenty more minutes. I pulled a chair up next to Amanda
’s hospital bed, and Yasahiro sat in the corner. Amanda didn’t have a lot to say about the person who attacked her. She saw nothing. She remembered nothing. She cried and she pleaded she didn’t know anything except what she’d already said. By the time we were finished, the sun was coming up, and my chest ached from lack of sleep. I had so much to do this weekend, and with all this drama, I wouldn’t get any of it done.

  Goro yawned and rubbed his eyes, flipping his notebook closed and securing it in his pocket. “Okay. We have enough to get started. I have your contact details, so I’ll call you when we have more information.”

  “Wait!” Amanda reached out to us as we got up to leave. Her IV line caught on the bed and she cried out in pain. I jumped forward to help her untangle the tubes, and this time I felt bad enough for her to give her a tissue. “What if he comes after me again? It’s not safe.”

  Goro’s forehead crinkled. “But you said this man attacked you out of nowhere, and that leads me to believe this was a random incident. Unless?”

  Amanda dropped her eyes to her hands.

  “I knew it,” Yasahiro said, his voice dropped low. He continued in Japanese. “She’s lying about something. I could feel it the whole time. She’s holding something back.”

  At least I had stopped translating. Sweat broke out on the back of my neck as I turned to Amanda. “What are you not telling us?”

  “I’m…” She swallowed, her eyes widening. “I’m afraid I’m being stalked. Again. Okay? Okay, fine. I did get a glimpse of him. He wore a dark hooded sweatshirt, and he looked familiar, and… And I thought he said my name.” She sighed, defeated. “I’ve tried body guards and investigators and, well, everything, and there’s nothing I can do to make it stop. They pop up when I least expect it.”

  “So, someone is stalking you here, in Japan?” Yasahiro asked, his voice hardening. My body grew even colder. I didn’t want Amanda hurt, really I didn’t, but I also didn’t want Yasahiro thinking about protecting her.

  “Maybe? I’m not sure. Sorry. It all happened so fast.”

  The room was silent for a few moments but for the sound of the hospital machines.

  “So you came to Japan alone to do this book tour, without a guard, without any help, even though you’ve been stalked in the past and now may have another stalker?” Yasahiro ticked off these points on his fingers and Amanda’s face grew even paler.

  She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment.

  “What?” he pressed.

  “I thought I’d stay with you. That we’d get back together. I didn’t plan on… this.” She waved her hand at me as I translated her words for Goro, and for once, Goro had the good sense to look sorry for me. For months, he’d teased me about Yasahiro, not believing we were dating. After a while, it was a running joke, and I didn’t take it personally. But now, I wanted nothing more in the world than to feel like my relationship with Yasahiro was so stable, nothing could shake it. I was far from being secure though.

  “This is so like you,” Yasahiro said, his voice climbing. Rage built in the set of his shoulders and his fists, so I stepped closer to him and tried to put my arm around him. He shrugged me off, and my heart skipped a beat, aching from the rebuff. “You only ever think of yourself.”

  He turned and stalked right past me, out of the room. Goro and I looked at our shoes.

  “How about I come back after you’ve rested, with an interpreter, and we’ll talk more about this? Get some rest.” I relayed Goro’s statement to Amanda, and he nodded and left. I followed him to the door, but Amanda called my name.

  “It is Mei, right?” She tilted her head and looked at me, all the fear and sadness washed away, leaving only cold calculation behind. “Thanks for translating. I know it must be hard to see me here, but it was bound to happen sooner or later, right?”

  I stood silent, all the haughty, head-strong words getting caught between my brain and my mouth.

  “I was engaged to him. We” — she drove her index finger into her chest — “were going to marry. It’s not over. He never said it was over. It would be best if you just stepped aside.”

  I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t be that weak, not with her right in front of me.

  “We’ll get you settled so you can get on your way out of my country. You don’t need to hear from Yasahiro that it’s over. You already know it is.”

  I opened the door and stepped into Goro and Yasahiro talking low. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to rage. I wanted to leave and run a million kilometers. My emotions tumbled through me, making me dizzy and agitated, but I had to pull it together. This was no time to fall apart.

  “I suppose we have to help her since she’s alone here in Japan.” I interrupted and sighed, not wanting to believe it. “Why doesn’t she have an assistant or a manager or somebody?”

  Yasahiro shrugged his shoulders. “She never had an assistant or manager when we were together. She had an agent, but her father took care of most of the money and the investments. She was always really independent, not trusting anyone but family… And me, I guess.” His jaw tensed, and I swore I heard his teeth grinding together. “I could call Giselle and Robert?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll be receptive to having her stay with them.” My voice oozed sarcasm which twitched Yasahiro’s lips, but Goro stared at me blankly.

  “Then why don’t you call them?” he asked, getting out his notebook again. He scribbled something and put it away.

  “It was a joke. Yasahiro said they don’t like each other. Now what?”

  Goro cleared his throat and straightened up from leaning on the wall.

  “I can’t tell you what to do here. Obviously, you have no legal obligation to take care of her. We can leave, and she’ll be discharged as soon as the doctors are done with her. Then she’s on her own. But I can’t stop her from turning around and coming straight back to Chikata.”

  I nodded as I followed his train of thought to the logical conclusion. “Yeah. She’s not giving up anytime soon.” Her words bounced in my head, “It’s not over. He never said it was over,” but somehow I doubted that. He told me it was over. He told his family it was over. I’m sure he told her as well, but she didn’t want to believe it. His only ambivalence was whether or not they could ever get back together.

  Yasahiro appeared defeated, his face gray and sad, his shoulders slumped, and his hands in his pockets. I had to do something, anything, to make this better. We couldn’t go on until she was gone, and she wouldn’t be gone until she was sure her relationship with Yasahiro was over. She wasn’t listening to him, so maybe she’d listen to me.

  When I thought of the people that did listen to me, though, I hesitated. Convincing people was not my strong suit. Just look how long it took everyone, including me, to believe Yasahiro and I were dating, happily.

  I waved to the doctor at the nurses’ station. “We’ll take her home whenever she’s ready.”

  “Mei-chan,” Goro said, gasping, and Yasahiro waved his hands at me.

  “We don’t have to do this. She’s poisonous, you know that.”

  Doubt rolled through my head. I was strong. I could be strong. I’d show her our life was good, and she had no place in it. But then I imagined her cutting me off at every turn, turning the charm on Yasahiro, and them walking off into the sunset together.

  No. I wouldn’t let that happen. And she wasn’t going anywhere until I could convince her to go on her own.

  “Yes, I know, but we can’t ignore her or she’ll keep coming back. I’ll make sure she knows our situation and turn her loose in the afternoon. It’ll be enough.”

  “Are you sure?” Yasahiro whispered at me. His voice was pained, so I hugged him tight, and this time he let me hold him. Warmth spread back into my bones, keeping me strong.

  “I promise it’ll be fine. I’ll even try to help figure out who attacked her so we can end this for good. Then we’ll send her on her way and tell her to never come back.” I let go of him and kissed him on the cheek. He
melted into me for a brief moment. “I’ll take care of it.”

  I knew it would be hard to convince Amanda, but I had to make it happen. Had to.

  I wished I had as much confidence inside as I did on the outside.

  Chapter Ten

  The alarm rang through Yasahiro’s bedroom, and I groaned, rolling over to turn it off. 10:00 AM and I was not ready to get out of bed. Not even close. Neither was Yasahiro. He rolled over too, slipping his arm over me and pulling me to him, which was his usual morning routine whenever we spent the night together. I froze, aware Amanda was sleeping on the couch, but that was silly. She couldn’t see through walls.

  “I heard your alarm go off,” she yelled from the other room.

  “Oh God. It wasn’t just a bad dream,” Yasahiro whispered into the back of my neck. “I thought it was some hallucination brought on by mushrooms I shouldn’t have picked in the woods.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, keeping my voice low. I didn’t want her to hear us. “I’ll keep her occupied today, and you can go to work.”

  “But we were going to handle the last minute tasks for the tea shop today, right? That way we can return from our trip and get right to opening the shop.” He propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at me. “We shouldn’t change our plans because of her. That’s what she wants.”

  “I know what she wants, and she can’t have that.” I smiled at him, reaching up to run my fingers through his hair. I loved doing that. “But it’s the weekend, and we can’t go see the lawyer today, can we? The best I can do is watch her and drag her along with me to do errands. Maybe I can talk her out of this.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me before rolling out of the bed. “I hope you don’t think you can just convince her to stay away. She’s too hard headed for that. You should be rid of her as soon as possible,” he whispered, grabbing his clothes for the day. “I’m going to take a shower.”