Sedge shuddered. He was relieved Nozomi had left him when she did.
“I guess he’ll get what he deserves,” Riku said. “I feel sorry for the old man, though. My grandparents said he was stabbed a half-dozen times.”
Mariko was shaking all over. Sedge pulled her close and held her. He didn’t know what to do or say.
After a few minutes Riku said, “Who’s going to drive us home now? I have school tomorrow morning, you know.”
The violence Mariko’s husband perpetrated left Sedge shocked for several days. Because Kōichi was already notorious for his behavior around Yamanaka Onsen, and because people knew he had left his wife and son multiple times, there was more empathy than scorn shown Mariko. Where there was scorn, however, Sedge sensed that it was part of a general disappointment in her having taken up with another man and started living with him in her own home.
As for Riku, he admitted to Sedge that his classmates targeted him more. In and out of class, they told him they knew all the horrible things his father had done. School had always been a place where he suffered for being different, but his father’s imprisonment, and the frequent reportage on his crime, tested Riku like never before. Every day he got into skirmishes, though he swore he never started them. The increase of teacher complaints about him talking back, he also contended, was because they, too, brought attention to what his father had done.
In the evenings when Riku should have been working on his homework instead of watching TV inside the house, Mariko and Sedge counseled him to be patient and asked him to tell them whenever someone at school treated him unfairly.
Sedge was alone at home one day when a car pulled up to the house. The doorbell rang, and when he slid the door open he wasn’t sure who was more astonished, the high school administrator, who clearly wasn’t expecting a foreigner to greet him, or Sedge, who couldn’t imagine why this man had driven Riku home in the middle of the day.
“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I have the right house. Riku said he lived here, but . . .”
“This is the right place. Is something wrong?”
“Is his mother here?”
“She’s my stepmother,” Riku corrected him.
The man glanced at Riku irritably.
“She’s at work,” Sedge said. “What’s going on?”
The man looked again at Riku. “He got in a fight, not just with students, but with the vice-principal, too. He was lucky we didn’t call the police.”
It was only upon hearing this that Sedge noticed the scratches on Riku’s hands and the swollen lower lip and point of his chin. He saw now, too, the stretched school uniform collar and scuff marks on his sides.
“What happened to the boys who started it?” Sedge said.
“Who says they started anything? We’re investigating what happened and why. We think it’s better if Riku doesn’t come to school again for some time.” From his shirt pocket he removed a small, lacquered case and handed Sedge a business card from inside it. “Please have Riku’s stepmother call me as soon as she can. The school considers the matter urgent.”
Sedge remembered Mariko telling him that Riku’s summer vacation would begin in three weeks. “He’ll be able to finish the semester, won’t he?”
“That’s something we need to decide. Again, please tell his stepmother to contact me as soon as possible.”
When the man left, Riku pushed past Sedge to enter the house. Sedge found him standing in front of the bathroom mirror, inspecting his face.
“I’ll be at the dining table if you want to talk.” Sedge walked away and sat down where he’d been before the school administrator brought Riku home.
“There’s no need to talk because my side of the story doesn’t matter,” Riku called from the bathroom door. “They’re discussing among themselves what story to agree on. I’ve said it before, but this time I mean it. I’m done with school. There’s no reason for me to go back.”
“What are you going to do, then?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
Sedge walked back to him before he could disappear inside the kura. “Why was it necessary to fight those people?”
“They started pushing me around. They wanted to fight because they thought the three of them would demolish me. Plus, there were other people egging them on. Tell me, what would you have done?”
“Walked away.”
He laughed. “They would never have let me.”
“And you beat them all up? Even the vice-principal?”
“It takes more than three students to take me down. The addition of an adult makes it a fairer fight. But I’d already taken care of them before the vice-principal showed up and started yelling at me.”
“You’re going to have to learn a different way to deal with people.”
“Tell that to the bullies at school. You know I only get into fights there.”
Sedge couldn’t believe that Riku had forgotten attacking him just over two weeks ago. Or did he not consider that a fight since he didn’t actually win?
“That’s untrue. You’ve gotten into fights with people in this neighborhood—and with me.”
Riku’s face clouded over. “Anyway, I’ve chosen a different way. I’m quitting school for good.”
He headed again for the front door. For someone who claimed that his violence was always provoked, his slamming the door and stomping to the kura suggested differently.
22
Several craftsmen in town said Riku was too young to apprentice with them full-time, but the woodturning studios where he’d again been working a handful of hours agreed to let him come more often. By mid-July he had secured part-time jobs at three separate studios and would put in a total of thirty hours a week at them. Mariko, to Sedge’s surprise, had consented to this arrangement. From what he could tell, she didn’t know what else to do.
