CHAPTER TWO: SARTRE, CHARCOAL, AND FLAT WHITES
I heard that someday when they look up at the night
They'll see nothing, but a black and starless sky
And they'll tell stories of some old and callow time
Claiming spectacles of brilliant burning lights
Maybe it's enough that I have laid here
Maybe it's enough that I have known inside my head, and
Maybe it's enough to know that we were here together
And that we are the ones for now
— Kina Grannis, "For Now"
# # # # #
Come after 8 tomorrow morning.
The train ride from Nerima took over an hour.
The address she had texted Ranma the night before was in Meguro Ward. As he made his way out of the station and up the main avenue, he caught sight of the clock tower of a school peeking up over some trees in the distance. The walking directions on his phone sent him in that direction.
The place turned out to be a coffee shop tucked away in the sub-basement of an office building a few blocks away from Todai's Komaba Campus (1). The location made sense. After all, she was going to be starting there in the next few weeks.
Ranma sighed. The strange air of the exciting and unfamiliar from the night before suddenly evaporated. The familiar deflated sense of disappointment settled in. He understood now.
There was always a catch. The coffee she had mentioned the night before was merely the pretense for a transaction. He was going to be put to work somehow. She was probably going to have him help her move in some stuff to whatever new place where she was going to be living. He would have preferred to have been asked directly. Of course, that would have been hoping for too much.
The cafe was empty when he arrived. That was not surprising though given the early hour and that it was, after all, a Saturday. He actually did not mind. Moments of peace and quiet were rare and precious luxuries in the world in which he lived.
His annoyance melted away as he took in his surroundings. He was genuinely intrigued by what he saw and heard around him.
The place was called "Sartre." (2)
Over the faded, well-worn wooden front door was a sign that read, "Existence is prerequisite for essence."
There was music playing softly in the background. A woman was singing along with notes strummed out gently on an acoustic guitar. The words were in English. He vaguely remembered that her name was Kina or something like that. The song was slow enough that he could pick out approximately every fifth word or so. Regardless, the gist of the intimate message got through to him more or less. The singer was asking about the meaning of her individual existence within the vast context of all of Time.
Around him were naked brick walls adorned with a variety of art works: oils, water colors, and some sketches. A close look at one of the oils nearest to the door confirmed that the works were actually originals rather than cheap facsimiles. There was a nonsensical incongruence in the directionality of the brush strokes in one corner of the canvas. A part of the scene must have been painted over at least once.
Ranma was particularly struck by four haunting charcoal sketches that he picked out scattered around the room. Though he was not entirely sure of their full meaning, there was an eerie sense of familiar intimacy as if these images were speaking specifically to him. Looking up close at the strokes on each piece of paper, he knew for sure that they were all created by the same person. Unlike all of the other artists who had works on the walls, this person was left-handed.
His father had taught him a long time ago how to discern the handedness of a potential opponent from the texture of katana strokes on hard surfaces. The deepest part of the stroke was always at its origin, which itself was always contralateral to the wielder's dominant hand. For the majority of the strokes in each of the four charcoals, the deepest was up and to the right.
Regardless, the four sketches were beautiful.
The first was a portrait of a very young girl. She was looking up with bright, luminescent eyes and smiling at the viewer as she cupped her face in her hands. The edges of her bob cut of hair warmly accentuated the full, sweet roundness of her big cheeks.
The second showed the arms of a woman wrapped protectively around a frightened child. The woman's face was outside the field of view, but the dress she was wearing gave her away. His tear-filled eyes were haunted with longing as he clung desperately to the sleeves of the arms wrapped around him.
The third was of a school-age girl with a prosthetic leg fighting her way up a set of stairs that appeared to be on some sort of hill or mountain under the shadows of endless rows of torii gates. She was accompanied by a woman – presumably her mother.
The final image was of an anonymised figure leaping off from the viewing stage of a shrine sitting on the steep side of a mountain. Wings erupted from the figure's back as it fell toward the ground.
"If Icarus had been Japanese, he would've jumped from the stage at Kiyomizu-dera."
Ranma spun around, startled.
She was standing there smirking at him with a genuinely amused twinkle in her eyes. Several interesting thoughts occurred to him as he saw her and the shot of espresso she was holding out to him in her hand.
"You're getting sloppy. That's twice in less than a day now that someone like me has managed to sneak up on you."
Ranma felt his cheeks flush. His initial instinct was to come back with some sort of denial. Then again, given who he was speaking to, that probably would have been futile.
"Ya work here," he said evenly, trying to change the subject. She had on a green apron over her pink cardigan and jeans. He was surprised. He had not pegged her – or any of the Tendo sisters for that matter – for the type of person who would take a part time job.
She nodded. She had been working on and off at the shop now for nearly a year, ever since Jusendo and the failed wedding. He suddenly became aware of how scarce her presence had seemed around the house and the dojo for some time now.
"I needed to get out," she said. "I think you can understand that."
Something else occurred to him as he considered where they were. Meguro was hardly convenient to get to from Nerima. "You were that certain that you would get into Todai…? For that long…?"
She replied with the wordless smile of a Cheshire cat. She had always been a brazen and audacious person, but still, he found himself seeing her now with a newfound respect – on many levels.
"You should drink that," she said, eyeing the shot in his right hand. "Before it gets cold."
Ranma was hardly an expert on coffee. Still, the sophisticated string of flavors in the black liquid as it washed over his tongue impressed even him. It began with a vicious, bitter bite that quickly mellowed out into something smooth and soothing. There was a hint of chocolate and strawberries that he could discern at the very tail end of the shot. He found himself wanting more.
"How much for this and another?"
"Samples are always on the House – as long as you actually buy something at the end."
She accepted the now-empty shot glass back from him and turned in the direction of the bar. He followed her and planted himself on a stool off to her left. As he studied her hands working the machine with an obvious, practiced ease, her strange, cryptic words from earlier suddenly came back to him:
If Icarus had been Japanese, he would've jumped from the Stage at Kiyomizu-dera….
Listening to the words echoing over and over in his mind, he came to a decision. "What was Icarus hoping to achieve by jumping off the Stage at Kiyomizu-dera?" he asked.
"Why're you asking me?" she called out over the sounds of the machine.
"Well, who else would I ask?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Of course ya do. You're the only one who would know."
"Because I said that Icarus would've been at Kiyomizu?"
"Because you're the one who drew Icarus at Kiyomizu."
Her fiery, soul-piercing eyes were staring directly at him now. "What gave it away?"
He stared down at the espresso filter in her hand. "You're left-handed. The person who drew that sketch is left-handed. You also did the ones with the crippled kid under the Senbon Torii at Fushimi Inari Taisha (3), the woman embracing the scared boy, and the smiling girl with her cheeks in her hands."
A deafening silence settled in the space between them as the loud hissing of steam in the line suddenly died away.
"Do you even know who Icarus is?" she eventually asked.
Ranma laughed. "Of course I do. He's not Daedalus. That and I'm well aware that this empty cafe we're sitting in is named after a dead French philosopher. Ya know what else? I think ya know that I know all of that."
"What made you decide to finally lay your cards out on the table?" she asked.
"What made you?"
"Because you noticed me. Because I'm running out of time. There's something I need to know before I can leave Nerima for Todai. "
"What's that?"
"What is it that you want, Ranma? In life?"
He was torn between irritation over her persistence and curiosity over her motives. "This again? Come on!" he scoffed. "It's not like anyone's ever given a sh-t about that before. Least of all you."
"That's not true. I've known for a long time that you're not really an idiot. I can respect your choice to play your cards close to the vest, being someone who does so myself. I even think I understand why."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," she replied. "You know that if you even budge a centimeter in any direction in that f-#ked up Gordian web of entanglements of your so-called life, people are going to get hurt. That foolish illusion of nobility you have has you thinking that's irreconcilable with what you think you and the Art stand for. I've got news for you though, Saotome. Living hurts. There's no way that the Art or anything else in the world can change that simple, cold, hard, and nasty fundamental truth about how things are. We talked about this last night. The world does not bloom without rain. Beauty does not exist without pain."
"Why is what I want suddenly so important to you?" he asked with suspicious, narrowed eyes. "And even if I did know, why should I tell you?"
She leaned in close and whispered in his ear. "You just don't have the guts to answer my question. There are so many reasons why this matters."
"Name one."
"Fine," she eventually relented with a sigh. "Yes, I have a reason for asking you to come out here to meet me, but I'm not trying to trick you into anything. I'm going to let you in on a secret."
"Yeah? What's that?"
"I think we actually want the same thing."
"Oh really."
"Yes, really. I love my sister – more than anyone or anything in the world. I think you love her too. If you're really going to become a part of our family one day, I need to know that I can trust you to actually bring your fair share of happiness to the table. Between my Mom's death and my father still acting stupid because of it after all this time, we've been through enough. You can't make anyone else happy if you're not first happy with yourself. You don't have any chance of achieving that if you can't even start with admitting what you want."
# # # # #
Ranma studied the flat white sitting on the table in front of him. It was quite good. The temperature was pleasantly warm rather than scalding. The milk was still creamy, and its natural sweetness was still discernible at the end of each sip.
They had been interrupted by patrons starting to make their way into the cafe. "I have to go," she had said when she heard the chatter starting to filter in around them. "Can we continue after I come off? I'm only on for half the day today."
He was surprised by how genuinely crestfallen she seemed about their conversation being cut short. He agreed to stick around and buy something to justify remaining at the shop. He was began reaching for his wallet when she surprised him again by stopping him.
"A gesture of good faith," she explained. "Like I said, samples are always on the House – as long as you actually buy something at the end." She pulled a 500 yen coin from her own wallet and smiled as she slipped the money into the register.
"The owner is pretty strict with all of the accounting," she explained in response to his unspoken question. The thought of her, of all people, having to answer to someone about money made him laugh.
Glancing down at the now-empty mug in his hands reminded him of hers. His father had told him to always remember to study a person's hands. It was a fundamental teaching of Anything Goes. The hands always gave away things about a person.
Her hands had brushed for a brief moment against his own as she had handed him his flat white. Strangely, he had no prior recollection of her hands before that moment. They were soft and delicate – unlike the rough, calloused surfaces of his own. Her fingers were slender and dainty, but still sure, unyielding and unapologetic about what they were. They felt exactly how he imagined the hands of a normal girl would feel.
A normal girl….
The very idea was intimidatingly alien to Ranma, so completely and impossibly out of reach. He found himself trying to reconcile the image of her normal girl hands with the blind faith and folly in the notion of Icarus leaping from the Stage at Kiyomizu; the drive that would possess someone with one leg to endure the agony of hobbling up the endless steps under the Senbon Torii on Mt. Inari; and the beautiful, raw, unapologetic innocence and joy of being a child. She was the very last person in the world who he would ever have imagined capable of seeing and communicating so clearly about such things. The sound and the fury of her soul as she had sung the night before had clearly only been a superficial hint of something much more profound.
All the more, she seemed somehow more mystical than real to him now. He was dealing with a complete stranger who had been hiding in plain sight for so many years. Yet, he somehow felt as if he had happened upon a long lost old friend for whom he had so very many questions.
The very thought truly excited him for the first time in a long time. When he thought about it, he did not actually have any real friends. He had stopped believing all together some time ago that there were still such people left in the world. All that he knew now were transactions and obligations. Everything had already been figured out for him – except how to live.
In short, he had nothing of his own.
What is it that you want, Ranma? In life?
He looked around him at all the normal people quietly enjoying their Saturday morning. At the table in front of him was a student with wireless buds in his ears as he typed an assignment out on a laptop. To his right were a young man and woman talking and laughing over a small platter of croissants and a pair of drinks. At the register was a pair of young girls, presumably sisters. They were giggling and squealing as they chased each other in circles around their flustered mother, who was struggling to pay.
Ranma knew what he wanted. He had always known.
The difference now was that he thought he could actually confide in someone about what he wanted. He wanted to live a normal life, and he wanted to learn from the normal girl how to do so.
# # # # #
"What's it like to be normal?"
She sat back and studied him with a poker face as she mulled over his words. Her eyes though gave her away. His question caught her off guard.
"Funny that you think I'd know," she eventually said. "I'm a Tendo, remember?"
Ranma laughed. "Point taken. Seriously, though, I think you're probably the only person around me who does know."
She laughed too before telling him about a quote by Sartre that she really liked. "He said that life has no meaning a priori, that it's up to each one of us to give it a meaning and that the concept of value is nothing but the meaning that we choose for ourselves."
He could not resist the easy opening. "Money?" he teased. "Isn't that the ultimate contrived measure of value?"
The forced smile that appeared over her features was completely unexpected. She was not amused at all. "Sartre would've rolled over in his grave at what you just said."
"Sorry," he said, though he was not entirely sure what he was apologising for. "It was meant as a joke," he added.
"It's okay. I don't have any illusions about who or what you think I am. I'm used to that. It's just that I was desperate. I really just had to do whatever it took for me to get out."
"Whaddaya mean?"
"You said it yourself last night. I hate Nerima. Todai is my way out, but cram school wasn't cheap, and tuition and board are even worse. It took me years to come up with what I would need. We're not exactly a family with much in the way of means."
"Oh." He was suddenly extremely self-conscious of he and his father's years of unapologetic freeloading in her family's home much less the repeated bills incurred from the collateral damage of all the fights. "Sorry. "
"Don't apologise," she said. "If anything, I blame my father more than anyone. It's his house, and he invited you and your father to stay with us. Besides, it's not like anyone cares about what I say."
Ranma recognised the same anger that he had glimpsed the night before flashing in her eyes. She also had her fists balled up again unconsciously at her sides. This time though, she looked like she was about to cry. She seemed uncharacteristically fragile and vulnerable. His heart went out to her.
"Do ya wanna talk about it?" he asked worriedly.
She smiled despite herself as she shook her head. "Not right now. Maybe someday."
"I'm sorry for making ya – "
"I told you not to apologise," she cut him off. "You're not making me tell you anything I don't want to."
He understood. She wanted to prove to him that he could trust her.
"Besides, you wanted to know what it's like to be normal. Being able to feel pain is a good start. There's no beauty without it, remember? You're even allowed to cry and get angry about it. That's not a sin or a crime. What would be a sin is choosing to do nothing about it. After all, freedom is what we do with what is done to us."
"Another Sartre quote?"
She smiled. "It's true though."
"When did ya get so enlightened?"
"When I realised that I was on my own and that I had to be okay with that. I had to learn to see things for myself as they were and not as I was told they were."
"How did ya learn?"
Her eyes lit up with an excitement that he had never seen in her before. She pushed her chair back from the table and stood. "Come with me. I'll show you."
# # # # #
CHAPTER NOTES
(1) Todai (The University of Tokyo) is widely considered the most prestigious and selective University in Japan. Todai is the only University in Japan where undergraduates have two years of a general curriculum before choosing a specialized field of study. Among the University's alumnii, faculty, and researchers, there have been 17 prime ministers, 18 Nobel laureates, 4 Pritzker laureates, and a Fields Medalist. The University has 5 campuses, including the main campus at Hongo and the undergraduate campus at Komaba.
(2) Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (1905-1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, and literary critic. A key figure of modern Existentialism, he was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature.
(2) Fushimi Inari Taisha, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, is Shinto shrine in Kyoto dedicated to Inari, the deity of rice and agriculture. The shrine sits at the base of a mountain also eponymously named Inari. The most famous feature of the shrine isthe Senbon Torii, the approximately 1,000 torii gates that line the path ascending up the mountain. Since the Edo period (1603–1868), there has been a custom of donating a gate to have a wish come true or in gratitude for a wish that came true.