by Asha Lemmie
When we reach the main stairs, she freezes. Her free hand clenches the banister with a kind of desperation that I cannot comprehend. She surveys the surroundings below, alert and trembling. I suppose she is looking for her grandfather, Lord Kohei. But he is not here, and I am as relieved by that fact as she is.
The master is difficult. He has been known to strike the servants in fits of rage. He complains about the food and throws dishes he does not like in the faces of the cooks. I have even seen him strike his wife when they disagree, though he rarely dares. Yuko-sama’s blood is far greater than that of her husband. It was her father’s money that built this house and that earned her husband a place among the Emperor’s advisors. She is a formidable woman; she is a Princess of the Blood, cousin to the Emperor. She runs this house with a firm, precise hand, and when there is anything that needs doing, we all know who ensures it gets done. Though she is just as demanding as her husband, everyone who works here respects her. She is a fair mistress. She is royal to the tips of her fingers, and one cannot help but bow to it.
I have allowed the child enough time to stand like a startled colt. I pull her forward and she comes, as I knew she would. She walks down the stairs on those unsure legs of hers, and I hold her firmly, afraid she will fall.
I lead her down the main hallway, and she is craning her neck behind her to take in as much as she can. She knows well that it may be a long time before she sees this part of the house again. She marvels silently at the rich surroundings, the fine rugs, the tapestries and the paintings.
She is trembling like a leaf as we approach the foyer. I can hear her mumbling something under her breath, a mantra of some sort. She sounds half mad. Maybe, after all these years in an attic, she is.
I have always wondered about her mental state, poor thing. And I have read that bastard children are of unstable constitution naturally. Not to mention the Negroes, who are said to be hopeless from birth, wild as lions.
We round the corner and can see him now, though he is not facing us: the slim frame of a young man staring absently out of the large window. She stops walking and stands perfectly still, like a woman transfixed by some merciless light.
As if touched by the sheer intensity emanating from the tiny creature beside me, the boy turns around.
I have done my duty for the moment.
I will leave them to their business.
* * *
Very few things would remain clear in her mind in the years to come. The passing years would force her memories of her time in her grandmother’s house, like her memories of the time before, into a space too small to hold them, and they would meld together like watercolors on a page.
But the memory of this moment would remain, uncorrupted and undiminished.
He had a perfectly heart-shaped face with the same color eyes her mother had. His lashes were long, almost feminine. His lips had a slight fullness to them, and his skin was so pallid that his black hair came as a shock to the eye. And yet, of all his features, she loved his nose the most because it was exactly the same as hers. He wore a loose-fitting white button-down shirt with the top two buttons undone and a pair of black slacks. The way he stood indicated that he was used to being in front of people; the slight drop of his shoulders hinted at a casual indifference to his surroundings.
Nori looked away then, blinking rapidly as she focused her gaze on the floor. She could feel his eyes on her.
She wanted to become something else then, something more deserving of view. Under the intense scrutiny of that gaze, she suddenly felt nude, though the grip she had on the skirt of her dress assured her otherwise.
Because there was nothing else to do, nothing her mind could possibly conceive of to say that would be significant enough for this moment, she simply did as she was told.
She lowered herself into a stiff bow.
It seemed incredible to her that she had ever possessed the power of speech, so far removed was that ability from her grasp now. All she could do was wait: for seconds or years, depending on his preference.
“You’re Noriko?”
She straightened up, but still, it took her a moment to fully realize she had been spoken to. This voice was unfamiliar, distinctly unfamiliar in her mental reserve of sounds. It was a quiet voice, soft but silky enough to indicate frequent use. She had nothing to compare it to, nothing to make the impact any easier on her senses. Her mind had no choice but to reluctantly absorb the foreign sound and, slowly but surely, give it a name: Akira’s voice. Her brother’s voice.
“Yes,” she managed to respond, in a voice so clear that it actually startled her. “I am.”
It seemed that at some point, her body had reached its maximum capacity for panic. As a result, it ceased to register. She felt herself go blissfully numb.
Akira’s brow furrowed slightly, but he did not appear to be vexed. It seemed more like a habit than a reaction to anything she had done.
“They tell me that you’re supposed to be my sister.”
Nori could feel her nails cutting into her palms through the fabric of the dress. And still, she could muster no feeling because no feeling could ever be adequate for this.
“You look like her,” Akira remarked casually. He took a step towards her before seemingly thinking better of it and halting. “Or at least, as much as you could.”
“I don’t remember,” Nori managed. “I can’t remember her face. I try, but I can’t.”
The boy in front of her looked as if he might say something but stopped short. He took two more steps towards her. Nori could feel him towering over her; he was at least a foot and a half taller than she was.
The ticking of the grandfather clock beside her seemed obscenely loud all of a sudden. It filled up her eardrums, selfishly hogging their attention.
“What year were you born?”
Nori let out a startled little hiccup. Akira waited patiently for a response, seemingly unperturbed by her stammering. It took her a moment to do the math, scaling backwards in time to find her origin.
“Nineteen forty,” she finally concluded, flushing with pride at being able to figure it out. Her birthday was one of those things she didn’t think about very often. She knew it was when the warm months came, but it didn’t interest her much.
“Nineteen forty,” Akira repeated bleakly. “Just before things got really bad. Makes sense.”
Nori’s mounting confusion must have been palpable because Akira shrugged his shoulders, a distinctly Western gesture. She knew because she had read it in one of her books about manners.
“Go figure. They haven’t told you anything, have they? About what happened when you were born?”
Nori was completely unequipped for this line of questioning. She just looked at him, gaping helplessly and trying to rack her brains for an answer that would please him. Predictably, she came up with nothing.
“I’m sorry . . . I don’t understand.”
Akira shrugged again. Nori felt her heart attempt to vacate her chest and drop into her socks.
“I can read,” she blurted out. The color began to rise in her cheeks. She had hoped to conceal her trademark knack for annoying those around her for just a little while longer.
Akira blinked at her. “What?”
“I can read,” she repeated, like a total imbecile. She had already botched the thing completely; it seemed only logical to keep going. “I read books about Tokyo. I know that you used to live there. Kyoto is not very interesting in comparison, I’m afraid. But I don’t really know because I’ve never been into the city. I’ve . . . never been anywhere, really, but you can find things to do, if you try. Did you know there is a summer festival coming up? Akiko-san . . . Akiko-san is one of the maids here, she is very nice . . . everyone who works here will be so happy you are here. Grandmother has always been sorry not having a boy in the house, she will be thrilled. But anyway,
Akiko-san sometimes brings me the newspaper when everyone else is done with it. I know there was a war going on before I was born . . . when I was little. I know . . . that’s part of the reason I look like I do. I have something to do with that war. But I’m a good girl, for the most part. Okaasan said so herself. When she comes back, maybe I can ask her about the rest. But it’s good now because we’re in the same place and she can get us both at the same time. Oh, and we have a pond in the backyard, with fish and everything. It really isn’t so bad here, I mean. It’s not so bad.”
She finally brought herself to look up at him. He met her gaze calmly, his porcelain face impossible to read. There was a serenity about his expression that Nori could not fully grasp. His demeanor, his stature . . . all were things that would ordinarily have frightened her. But he didn’t.
“You can read,” he repeated after her. If she didn’t know better, she would’ve said he sounded slightly amused.
Her skin burned so hot she wondered if he could feel it radiating off her. “Yes,” she whispered.
She could sense that Akiko had reentered the room. The maid stood dutifully behind her, pressed against the door. To the untrained eye, it might have looked like Akiko was waiting on Nori’s convenience. But Akiko never acted of her own volition. There was a greater hand behind it pulling the puppet strings and the message was clear.
It was time to go.
Nori resisted the urge to whimper. She had no way of knowing when she would be allowed to see Akira again. The knowledge that he was under the same roof but that she could no more access him than if he were on the far side of the moon seemed like a perverse practical joke.
She bowed once more, careful not to look at him as she rose up. She did not trust herself.
“Oyasumi nasai. Good night, Obocchama.”
“Good night.”
Nori swallowed the bile that had suddenly accumulated in her mouth. She turned around and walked back to where Akiko stood, taking the hand that was offered to her without question. Her caretaker offered up a mildly apologetic half smile.
Nori did not return it. She allowed herself to be led away.
“Oh, Noriko,” Akira called after her, as if remembering some thought.
She turned at once to face him. Her eagerness must have looked downright cartoonish.
“Yes?”
“You don’t need to call me young master. It’s weird.”
The wind deflated from Nori’s sails so rapidly, it was a wonder she didn’t crumple to the floor in a heap.
“Hai. What shall I call you, then?”
Akira’s brow furrowed slightly, and once again, he shrugged. “Whatever you like.”
Akiko tugged firmly on Nori’s hand. There would be trouble for them both if they lingered here much longer.
She continued her march forward, up the first set of stairs, then the second, and finally the third. Akiko excused herself and Nori was left alone.
Her attic seemed so much smaller than it had before.
When she removed her new clothing and put it away, she did so briskly, without taking the time to admire the fine craftsmanship. It no longer interested her.
It seemed so deeply silly that she had ever cared about the new dresses her grandmother gave her from time to time. They were just objects—bolts of dyed fabric. They could never be enough to fill a life.
She reached behind her head and unbound her hair, tying the ribbon her mother had given her around her neck as she sometimes did. She did not like to have them too far from her. Knowing her luck, if she let them out of her sight, they would be gone when she woke up in the morning.
Nori scrambled onto her bed, standing up and pressing her face against the cool glass of the window. It was too dark to see outside, but her mind’s eye had memorized the backyard so meticulously that she did not need her sight to see it. She trailed her pinkie finger in the condensation, scrawling the letters of her name as she had done hundreds of times before.
No-ri-ko.
She scrawled the letters over and over again, until she had all but run out of space. The repetition was her familiar lullaby. She felt her grip on consciousness beginning to slip and was instantly filled with relief.
Though it often eluded her, she liked sleep. It presented her with something that her waking moments perpetually denied her: freedom.
She lay down and slid underneath the warm covers. Just as she was about to drift off, a thought occurred to her. Tentatively, she traced a different name onto the misty glass, directly beneath her own: Oniichan. Elder brother.
CHAPTER THREE
HIKARI (LIGHT)
Kyoto, Japan
January 1951
Nori had once read in one of her science textbooks about the concept of gravitational pull. It had made little sense to her at the time, but she grasped the basic principle: the small revolves around the large. The earth revolves around the sun. And the moon revolves around the earth. It was part of the grand hierarchy of existence.
No matter how lonely, how frightened, how miserable she had ever been on any given day, it had never once crossed her mind to leave the attic unattended. Never. Her grandmother felt no need to lock the door, so absolute was her confidence that her charge would never dare to venture past it.
Nori’s obedience lasted exactly six days after Akira’s arrival. If it had not been for her extreme reluctance to disobey the parting words of her mother, it would have lasted half that long. As it was, an entire week was fairly impressive.
Even the most absolute obedience gave way to necessity eventually. It was like giving a starving dog a command to stay and placing food on the other side of the room. The dog would eventually forget the command entirely.
Her mother had told her that the only thing more important than obedience was the air she breathed. But a new center of gravity had come to the house on the hill. And it had somehow managed to suck the air out of everything outside of a certain radius. One could only survive so long without returning to the center.
And the way Nori saw it, she was running out of air.
She spent those six days pacing back and forth, refusing to do anything but eat and bathe. Her books sat untouched on the shelf; her hair had gone wild and branched from her head like the leaves on a tree.
She ate only enough to keep the hunger pangs at bay. She replayed her meeting with Akira over and over again in her head, tweaking every little imperfection. Rehearsing conversation was a game she liked to play with herself.
Next time she saw Akira, it would be perfect. Next time, she would be prepared. Akira had to approve of her. That was the test her mother had laid for her. But that was not the reason she felt as if her very flesh were tearing from her bones in an attempt to get closer to him. She was not quite sure why she had formed such an instant attachment. Perhaps it had something to do with being related. Or perhaps it was because God was finally trying to tell her something.
She waited until Akiko brought her dinner on the sixth day to make her first move. This too had been carefully rehearsed.
“Hamachi tonight? Is it a special occasion?”
The maid shook her head. “I don’t believe so, little madam. I think your grandmother is just in good spirits of late.”
“I hope that my brother is adjusting well. Is he happy with everything?”
“I believe so, as much as he could be. It must be difficult for him.”
Nori paused, for the first time remembering the unhappy reason he was here in the first place. She wished she could bring herself to feel more guilt than she did. It was unseemly to take pleasure in her brother’s presence when she knew it was the death of his father that had brought him to her.
“How did he die?” she inquired as Akiko poured her a cup of warm milk. For the very first time, she was tempted to disclose how much she hated warm milk, but then thought better of
it. She received a bemused look in answer to her question.
“You are talkative today.”
“I wish to make his stay here as pleasant as possible. I just don’t want to make any blunders, is all.”
“Yasuei Todou was sick for a long time.”
Nori hesitated, not wanting to push her luck. But it was rare that anyone answered her questions so willingly. She attempted to look focused on eating her dinner and tried to make her next statement sound as nonchalant as possible.
“Hopefully someone has given him a convenient room. He’ll probably end up getting lost in this house.”
Akiko chuckled, as this was a joke she often made herself.
“I believe he is near the staircase, little madam. I think your grandmother thought the same.”
Nori made sure to keep her face perfectly composed lest it betray the gleeful little jig she was tapping out on the inside.
There were too many rooms on the second floor to search them all without being caught for sure. Now she had narrowed it down.
If one walked up the main staircase, there were two doors immediately on the right side of the hall and two immediately on the left. It had to be one of those four.
Akiko excused herself, and Nori ate the remainder of her meal in silence.
She then proceeded to tame the jungle on her head, dragging the comb through with such vigor that she thought it might break. It would not be the first time she’d broken a comb. She did her hair into two separate braids and tied the ends of them together with her lily-white ribbon. She did not wear her white ribbon often—she was always afraid it would get dirty. She saved it for the most special of occasions.
It matched the simple white nightgown she put on. She studied herself in the mirror. Surprisingly enough, she happened to think she looked quite decent.
