“I’m still not feeling well, so I think I’ll go to sleep now.”
He walked softly to her door and stood there for a moment. The door had no lock, and she always kept it ajar; this was the first time since he’d moved here that she had shut it. He sat in the doorway of the middle room that separated them and listened to the night through the thin windows and walls. The cicadas had fallen quiet, but, following a short rainfall after dinner, the frogs were louder than ever. The winds remained from the storm, and Mariko’s house, as it always did, creaked in their battering gusts. It was a lonely feeling, sitting in the dark by himself and listening to the sounds of an old mountain village.
He didn’t hear Mariko rise from her futon and walk to the door. When she opened it and stepped into the hallway before the doorway where Sedge sat, she gasped.
“What are you doing there?” Mariko entered the room and kneeled in front of him. She was wearing a summer yukata, clutching its opening to her chest.
“You said you weren’t feeling well. But when I came to check on you, I thought you might prefer being alone.”
“I never want to be away from you. It’s your absence that made me ill. Come here.”
She led him into her bedroom. Of the three curtained windows along her walls, only the one behind her futon had been left open for the sky to pour its light inside. It was enough to see her figure when she slid her yukata off, light and darkness moving over her body: her nipples, her navel, the space beneath her armpits, the barely visible bars of shadow between her ribs, the constellation of scars—the sea of skin that surrounded these things, like water keeping islands afloat.
She lay down and pulled him beside her. Her hands never left him, and even for a time her feet became hands, she was everywhere pulling him into her body; they would have been pummeling each other if not for the sweetness of it. Eventually the violence of their union settled into the slow and steady rhythm they had taught each other to follow. Their breathing marked the realness of their existence, and when they came together it felt like falling through stopped time. As always, it had passed too quickly. He wanted more of her but would have to wait.
She lay on her back beside him, and he turned to her, letting his fingers find her scars in the dark like a code they wanted him to decipher. He closed his eyes but opened them again when she pushed her body into his and drew in an anguished breath.
“What is it?” he said softly.
“I thought we closed the door.”
Sedge looked across the room. The door was wide open, exposing a rectangle of darkness where the outside light couldn’t reach. He glanced around them. A silvery light still illuminated their bodies, the futon, and the back window, beyond which stood the kura. The wind howled, knocking the glass windows against their frames.
“We did,” he said. “I pulled it shut. It must have opened in all the wind.”
He stood to shut the door again and when Mariko called to him, “Stop!” he turned around to see what she meant.
He never saw Riku rush into their bedroom, nor did he hear him—not clearly, anyway. Mariko shrieked as Sedge crumpled under the force of Riku launching into his back. Together they toppled to the floor in an explosive thud that shook the house.
At first Sedge thought an overhead beam had crashed down on him, but he quickly realized it was the boy. Riku had pinned him down. With his chest pressing on Sedge’s curled-up body he smashed his head into the floor and kneed him in his back. Sedge was sure he’d be killed if he didn’t find a way to fight back.
Flailing with the one arm not trapped beneath him, he pulled Mariko’s discarded yukata toward him, thinking he would shove it between his head and the floor, but as Riku’s position shifted and Sedge’s other hand came unstuck, he managed to wrap the yukata around the boy’s neck. He twisted it quickly and pulled it taut. As Riku grabbed at it, Sedge rolled out from beneath him but kept close enough that he never relinquished the yukata. Perhaps it only distracted Riku, or put fear into him, but in another moment Sedge had reversed his disadvantage. They now faced each other. Sedge crouched naked beside the futon, blood trickling down his face and into his mouth. The boy sat on his buttocks and flung the yukata from his neck.
Riku stood and hovered over Sedge. “Get up!” he shouted. “I’ll kill you! I should have killed you when I saw you together like that!”
Perhaps the clouds parted then, but the light from outside brightened slightly. Sedge kicked at him in a warning, aiming for his legs and not caring if he hurt the boy. He struck his knee. When Riku toppled forward a little he kicked him again, this time in the chin. Riku fell and rolled to his side, and with his legs pulled to his chest began sobbing. Sedge didn’t think he had hurt him badly. From what he could tell, Riku had only given up.
Mariko ran along the wall to the room light and switched it on. She stared with Sedge at the scene. Sedge stepped into his boxers and picked up his t-shirt to wipe the blood from his face. He tossed Mariko her yukata and she wrapped herself in it again.
Sedge didn’t know where the instinct came from, but he bent down to Riku and pried the boy’s fingers from where he gripped his own body. Riku relented, and Sedge brought him to a sitting position. He hugged the boy, bringing his face to his shoulder and palming the back of his head.
Mariko hovered in the doorway, her hands over her mouth, clearly unsure what to do. “You’re both bleeding. Are you okay?”
“Bring some wet towels and a medical kit if you have one. Our injuries aren’t life-threatening.”
When she was gone Sedge pulled Riku’s face from his shoulder. “Why did you attack me? Were you watching us from the door the whole time?”
Riku’s tear-soaked eyes blinked in the room’s bright light. Sedge repeated his question. Riku only nodded.
Sedge listened to Mariko as she ran around the first floor and hurried back upstairs. Her hands were full of the things he had requested.
“He was sleeping down there,” she said, “not in the kura. There’s a futon in the room beneath the stairs.”
“He must have heard us. He came up to confirm his suspicions. And when we stopped and I walked toward the door, he couldn’t control his anger and attacked me. Isn’t that what happened, Riku?”
When he didn’t answer, Mariko screamed at him: “Riku!”
The boy nodded again.
Sedge let go of Riku as Mariko checked the gash on the boy’s chin. It trickled with blood, but she didn’t think he needed stitches. “Let’s apply some pressure to it, and when it stops bleeding we’ll bandage it.”
She turned to Sedge and grimaced. “Look at you.”
“I’m fine,” he told her.
Riku’s cut soon stopped bleeding. They led him downstairs, Mariko ahead of him and Sedge behind, and sat on either side of him as he lay back down to sleep. Sedge suggested that Mariko try to sleep, too. He would stay with Riku, and in the morning she could deal with the incident however she wanted. When she came back downstairs, it would be his turn to sleep.
She pulled Sedge into the hallway. Stepping behind the sliding door of the room where Riku lay, she hugged him again and started to cry.
19
Sedge arrived early at the hotel’s streetside café, opposite the apartment he and Nozomi once lived in. He guessed she had chosen this place to appeal to his nostalgic side. Had their life together proceeded as he once believed, they would still be here in Korinbō, and from his table inside the café he might now be watching either of them through their apartment window.
He recognized a resident from the building cross the street, and he looked away, not wanting to be seen and recognized himself.
How had he and Nozomi appeared in other people’s eyes all the times they’d crossed that intersection hand-in-hand; spent their evenings wandering along the rivers and through the old geisha districts; or attended Kanazawa’s many festivals? What did the owners of the izakaya they frequented say about them after they left? The café workers where they spent their weekend mornings? The mutual friends they ate and drank with? Had he overlooked what all of them might have seen clearly? Upon learning of her leaving him, had they been as astonished as he?
Nozomi entered the lobby at the exact time she’d suggested they meet. Removing her sunglasses and sunhat, she turned into the café and spotted him. Tentatively she smiled.
