“Whew.”
Shindo leaned back in the driver’s seat and sighed.
What a couple of days. By now she should be wearing a ridiculous pink apron, running errands for the flower shop. This counted as a no-show. She was liable to lose her job. The hissy fit her boss would throw was all too easy to imagine.
It had been about a year since she picked up a second steady gig delivering cut flowers for a shop in Ikebukuro. Not exactly her dream job, but apart from her boss rubbing her the wrong way, she enjoyed it. She liked driving. It came naturally to her. She even thought of someday buying her own truck and going solo as an owner-operator. She had no education or good looks to lean back on. Going solo. It made sense for someone who loved getting into fights and hated bowing to authority. Ever since she was little, she had always hoped to find a job that she could do herself, for her entire life. Deliveries and truck driving weren’t the worst ways to make a living. The work suited her, though she never dreamt she would wind up driving around a yakuza princess.
Done with her errands, Shindo drove back to the college, parked on the street within sight of the main gates, and promptly reclined her front seat for a nap. If she ate well and slept well for the time being, she’d heal up quick. In the meantime, she could let them think that she would do whatever work they asked of her. Once she had regained her strength, she would give more thought to what came next.
NODDING OFF, SHE had a little dream.
White sky and blue ground stretched out to the horizon. She could hear a child crying. At first it sounded sad, but with time she realized it was yelling in a voice shaken by distress. A giant bird slipped over the blue ground.
HER EYES OPENED to the sound of a knuckle on the window glass.
“Unacceptable.”
It was Shoko. What was her problem? She slipped triumphantly into the front seat.
“You need to be parked right outside of the main gates at least ten minutes before class ends. I shouldn’t need to walk more than ten paces to the car.”
She had parked under some trees, maybe fifty feet from the gates.
“It’s my first day.”
“I don’t care. You messed up.”
“What now? Is your father gonna make a lunchbox out of my hand too?”
Shoko glared at Shindo with a look of unmitigated scorn.
“I’ve warned you once already. Watch your mouth. Remember: I’m the boss. Your master. No more lip. You understand? Show some respect.”
“Yes, Miss Shoko, anything you say, Miss Shoko . . . Is that better?”
“You’re giving me a migraine. Hurry up and drive.”
Shindo checked Sumida’s cheat sheet. Ikebana class. Cooking lessons. And that was just today. The week was packed with lessons of all kinds. Tea ceremony. Kitsuke. Wasai. Piano. English conversation. Every single day. No rest. She caught herself staring at the side of Shoko’s face.
“Hello? Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?”
“Is all of this stuff . . . fun for you?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Like ikebana, and tea ceremony.”
Shoko laughed. Most of the time laughing makes a person appear younger. In her case, she looked strangely more mature.
“I’m not doing this for fun. It’s to build character. A woman has to learn these things before she can get married. For your information.”
“Ha. I’ve never done any of this stuff.”
“That’s because you’re an ugly country bumpkin with no money. I’m jealous of people from poor families. They’re so free.”
Now it was Shindo’s turn to laugh. She started up the car.
“Poke fun all you want, Miss Shoko, I’m not breaking the speed limit.”
Through the corner of her eye, she thought she noticed Shoko blush.
SHINDO’S JOB AS bodyguard and escort was no different on the holidays and weekends, because Shoko never stopped. If she didn’t have some kind of class or lesson, the hours were crammed with other plans. Shindo couldn’t believe there were so many ways of building character. The girl took horseback riding, archery. You wouldn’t think she had it in her, but she did it all without complaining. As someone who had had a hard time making it through high school, Shindo wondered what it must be like to have a brain like that. She almost wanted to ask Shoko how her brain didn’t explode, busy with all that crap. The princess didn’t seem receptive to that kind of question, though. She was only interested in giving orders or lobbing insults dressed in fancy language.
Something puzzled Shindo. She had never seen Shoko interact with other girls from school. Before and after class, she saw the students hanging out in twos or threes and sometimes bigger pods around the gates. Almost none of Shoko’s peers showed up alone or left alone like her. They all came across as having money, though plenty of them wore minidresses and thick makeup, and the girls who had big friend groups took their modestly immodest fashion choices even further. Shoko was the only one with an old-fashioned style.
Shindo knew she couldn’t have been that much older than these college girls herself, but they all looked so young to her. She hadn’t graduated college or even thought of going. School wasn’t for her. It had been a long and painful process, surviving elementary school and middle school and high school, before somehow graduating in one piece. All those years, she never felt like she fit in. Every grade was a bland mixture of kids who all had some way of relating to somebody else. An anomaly like her, though, nothing in common with the other kids except her age, was treated like a reject. School spat her out like vomit. It was hard to believe she had once seen herself that way, as vomit, scared of kids who, looking back, were as helpless as a bunch of baby chicks. She could remember almost nothing that she learned back then. She had to wonder whether Shoko was accepted by the other kids at college, in her classes, whether the girls saw her as one of them, and not as an anomaly.
SHOKO EMERGED FROM cooking class, her last item for the day, and slid into the car on a cloud of perfectly browned sugar. Shindo sniffed the air, earning herself a dirty look.
“Stop sniffing. What are you, a dog?”
“Did you bake cookies?”
“Florentins.”
“Floor and what?”
“Ugh. They’re a cookie from France. Made with almonds.”
