“Yeah . . . look, though, once we’ve started using these, we can’t change them for a while, okay? I should probably be Masaoka, to make things easier.”
“I’ll be Masa.”
“But . . .”
“No. I want to.”
Her face was stern, the face of a completely different person from the princess who had stared down at those fingernails as pink as seashells, resting in her lap.
At this point, they’d spent ten years on the run.
HEARING THE WATER boil, she stood up and shuffled over to the tiny kitchen, just a sink and stove. A tea kettle and a big pot of hot water blew fresh steam into the air.
“Boiling.”
Thanks, she heard her say behind her. In a place this small, just one room off the kitchen, they could say everything they had to say in whispers.
She set the metal basin on a mat of old newspapers they’d pinched from other houses in the neighborhood on garbage day. When she poured the contents of the pot into the basin, the whole room filled with vapor. She brought cold water in another pot to cool the basin down.
“I’ll be right back, okay?”
Shindo grabbed her wallet and stepped outside in sandals.
The sun was going down behind the low apartment buildings. With sunset came the smell of curries, stews, and grilling fish. She had been “Yoshiko” for ages, while Shoko, living as “Masa,” had taken a job in a wood shop, making furniture. She had a knack for finding people who would hire based on technical ability, without asking personal questions. Working her magic, she had helped Shindo find a job at a cosmetics manufacturer where she inspected beauty products. This was a major operation, way too many people at the plant to get caught up in anybody’s business or gossip about who had quit or gone off on vacation. In short, plenty of drifters like the two of them.
When it came to someone unfamiliar, Shindo tended to let Shoko do the talking, whether it be filling out a lease or ordering them food. Her senses were superior.
“I guess you learn to sense the footsteps, just before you hear them.”
The sound of her old voice came back to her. Shoko’s appearance had changed yet again, transforming from the handsome bartender into an older guy, still youthful but feeling the effects of aging. In a town like this, the new persona fit right in—a taciturn, no-nonsense workingman, who made up for his lack of height with his good looks and knew his way around a shop. People naturally assumed that Shindo was a lady friend that he’d been living with for years but never married. Some of Masa’s coworkers even called them “the odd couple.”
If two people their age who can pass for guy and girl are seen together, people assume they’re married. Lucky for them, the more conventional a person is, the easier they are to trick. Shoko and Shindo only had to pose as your average couple when they met somebody new. If they came across as more or less conventional, nobody cared who they really were.
Glancing through the windows of a bookstore or watching TV in a lunch spot, Shindo had been noticing an overuse of phrases like “true self” and “natural you” and “self-discovery.” Listen to this shit, she thought. Shindo and Shoko might be living under fake identities, but they weren’t fake. They were their true selves, through and through, the way they were. What were these lost people trying to find?
Never once had Shindo pushed Shoko to dress or act a certain way. Nor had Shoko ever pushed her to be anybody else. The quarrels and the meltdowns she expected would erupt as a natural result of living on the run turned out to be a rarity. Cheesy as it sounds, they shared a fate, except they saw their roles in that shared fate as separate and distinct. They were not just going about their lives. They were running. Even now. Any arguments they did have were essentially a sign of their connection. If Shoko was tracked down and killed, Shindo would devote the rest of her life to revenge. Shoko would do the same, without a doubt. And yet, they had no name for their emotional attachment. It wasn’t love—not calling it love saved them from resentment, and without resentment, they were free. Free today, free tomorrow, free next year, until the day they died.
Shindo went down to the shopping arcade to pick up groceries for dinner. Shopkeepers hawking vegetables and pickles and fried fish shouted “Okusan! Okusan!” taking for granted she was someone’s wife. Their voices made her think about Yanagi, for the first time in a while. His bright idea to bring them with him to the home country, pretending she and Shoko were his wife and daughter. Rich. Yanagi knew as well as anyone how well convention worked as a disguise. Did he believe in his conventions? Or did he think he was above them?
Done with her shopping, Shindo arrived home to the smells of cooking rice and miso soup, mixed with the last traces of soap smell in the air. She flicked the vent on, knowing it did little good, and looked at Shoko, whose short hair was still damp.
“Hey.”
“Hey, I made the rice and miso soup.”
“Thanks. I bought a couple of fried aji, so we’re set for tonight.”
“Okay, should I cut up some cabbage?”
It was the sort of conversation you might hear in any house. Two ordinary people, standing in a tiny kitchen. Over twenty years together, on the run.
MAY WINDS COMBED through the yard. Hanging the laundry out to dry, Shindo noticed that the dog across the way was looking at her through the fence. The units of the housing development were small, but each one had a yard. Lots of people there had pets.
She clicked her tongue. The brown dog, some kind of a mix, wagged its tail at her and yapped. It was a good dog. If they saw each other on a walk, it usually wagged its tail.
“Maybe we should get one, too,” said Masa.
She turned around and saw him clipping his toenails on the deck.
“Listen to you,” Shindo said.
“What? It’s time we relaxed and settled down.”
“Sho. No way.”
“Come on, you love dogs. Every time we see one, you go running over to pet it.”
Shindo’s face went red.
“Doesn’t matter if I like them. What would we do in an emergency?”
“We’d figure it out. Besides, it’s gonna be, what . . . forty years?”
Forty years. Gone in a flash. Shindo sighed. She took a break from hanging out the laundry to look up at the sky.
It looked like rain.
Forty years.
