“I’ll have you know that you’re mistaken. You probably think that I’m a sheltered, clueless airhead, but you’re wrong. I know what’s going on. Way more than you. I know exactly what kind of a life I can expect. Spare me your phony sympathy.”
Shindo almost told her she was wrong, that that wasn’t what she meant, but then she started wondering if maybe she was right.
“This stuff is gross . . .”
Watching the princess struggle through the sweetened Mandheling, Shindo let the classical music crash over her, no idea what any of the songs were called.
“MY EYES ARE puffy. This is bad.”
In the car outside the café, Shoko pulled a compact from her handbag and gave her face a serious inspection.
“It’ll be fine in the morning.”
“I know that. But not by dinner. Father will ask what happened to my face. Maybe I should tell him I was bullied by my driver.”
“Go ahead.”
“. . . Would that upset you?”
“If you want me to be upset, then sure.”
“. . . You’re the worst. So twisted.”
Look who’s talking, Shindo almost said. Instead she started up the car.
The last of the daylight was retreating from the streets. Salarymen heading home and students in their uniforms and moms with kids walked through the sunset, each at their own pace. Tokyo was full of people. The thought hit Shindo at least once a day, even after years of living here. So many different kinds of people, doing different things. Different ages, different jobs, faces and bodies, clothes and interests. Living here, Shindo was just another person in a sea of differences.
Ten minutes down the road, Shoko spoke up.
“I can tell him that I saw a dead kitten on the road and cried because I was so sad. Father will believe me. When I was little, on a walk together, we saw a cat that was run over by a car. It made me cry. Father told me I was nice. You’re such a nice girl, Shoko . . .”
It was like she was talking to herself.
Shindo focused on the road.
DINNER WAS TONJIRU soup and rice with takuan. Sitting at the corner of the table in the big room, Shindo ate the first half of her heaping bowl of white rice garnished with the bright yellow pickles, then dumped the other half of the rice in the pork and miso soup, which she sucked down in slurping gulps. She had always been a big eater, but for the past day or so, her appetite had been insatiable. She had a headache and felt spacey, like her period was coming. It’s not like she could borrow pads from the princess. I’ll buy some at the pharmacy tomorrow, she told herself, as she tasted the last grain of broth-soaked rice. Just as she was thinking about grabbing seconds, another bowl of tonjiru appeared in front of her.
“Really? Arigato.”
It was the youngest guy living in the annex. He bowed and shuffled off. Thankful for the gesture, Shindo took big sips of the piping hot pork soup.
After dinner, some of the junior staff tidied up while others played mahjong or watched baseball on TV, and still others took up posts or returned to other tasks. Shindo knew she wasn’t welcome at the mahjong table and couldn’t join the men at the TV, so she went to take a bath. The annex had its own communal bathing area, where the men bathed in groups. Since this was obviously off-limits for her, Shindo was allowed to use the bath in the main house. Shoko took a long bath at the same time every night. Once she was finished, Shindo was next.
In the changing room, she took her clothes off and used the mirror to inspect her back and shoulders. The cuts had healed, the bruises mostly disappeared.
Perhaps she had her youth to thank for this rapid recovery. Her grampa saw things differently. “You have a gift,” he used to say. A person couldn’t get as big and strong as her, or heal as fast, simply by training all the time.
She couldn’t say exactly why her grampa made her train so hard, or why she kept it up. There was a vague memory from early on, a time she asked for his advice. Kids had been bullying her because her hair and eyes were different. How could she make them go away? A normal question, for a kid. That on its own should not have been enough to start a regimen of training so intense it verged on torture.
Shindo touched her bulging arms, her chiseled stomach. Her grampa never told her where he came from. Nobody ever told her. Not even her gramma. As much as she liked to talk, she never even mentioned how the two of them had met. The most Shindo could say about her grampa now was that he showed no mercy. He was dangerously strong. He saw nothing wrong with throwing his own grandchild on the ground or stringing her up by the ankles from a tree so he could whack her with a wooden sword. He used to make her stand out in the snow and practice punches until she nearly froze to death. In sparring matches, he broke her bones on three different occasions. Shindo almost never cried. When her grampa asked her “Wanna stop?” she shook her head.
Because she liked it.
It was fun.
In the heat of it, she could let go of everything. Winning was great, but she also found it thrilling to be up against an overwhelming force. Shindo even liked the pain and bitterness that came with it. They stimulated her. Way more fun than manga, pop music, or clothes. A day came when she realized violence was her only interest.
If she hadn’t been cut out for it, she probably could have bailed and led a different life entirely. But she didn’t, because Shindo had a gift. Or at least her grampa thought so. She was a natural. Born to train. To build muscle. And to use it.
Her grampa knew judo, karate, kenpo, and the fighting styles where you used weapons or equipment. He knew every way there was to win a fight. And he taught her everything. His lessons weren’t based on any school. No bowing or formalities. Every move or method was fair game. The objective was to ruin your opponent. This wasn’t martial arts. It was violence.
At fourteen, one of Shindo’s teachers asked her to try out for kendo. An athlete of her caliber, they said, could easily pick up a scholarship to a top school. She told them college didn’t interest her. The teacher urged her to at least compete, assuring her that she could take a national title, but when Shindo told this to her grampa, he gave her a stern warning.
“Start with the martial arts, and you’ll never fight again.”
Martial artists had to separate themselves from violence. As a discipline. This meant violence was a pleasure saved for people like her and her grampa. People who came from nowhere, who belonged to nothing.
By eighteen, Shindo had lost both of her grandparents. With no one left to fight with but the brown bears, she left home and set off on her own, heading to Tokyo in search of a new fight.
As she stepped into the changing room after her bath, a drowsiness consumed her. Must be her period after all, she thought. Back in her room, however, she collapsed face down on the row of cushions where she slept.
That’s when she burped.
(Huh?)
The burp tasted like chemicals.
(Shit, they got me)
