CHAPTER TWO: SARTRE, CHARCOAL, AND FLAT WHITES
Disclaimer: References to "Kina Grannis" and her song "For Now" are intended for entertainment only. I am not making any profit from the references. All rights to "For Now" and its lyrics belong to "Kina Grannis."
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#Come after 8 tomorrow morning.#
The train ride from Nerima took over an hour.
The address she 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 that way.
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 would be starting there in the next few weeks.
Ranma sighed. The strange air of the exciting and unfamiliar from the night before evaporated. A familiar sense of deflated disappointment settled in as he understood. There was always a catch.
The coffee she had mentioned the night before was merely part of a transaction. She was going to put him to work somehow probably to help her move some stuff to whatever new place where she was going to be living. He would have preferred that she ask him 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.
The remnants of 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)
A sign over the faded, well-worn wooden front door read:
Existence precedes essence.
Music played softly in the background. A girl was singing to notes strummed out gently on an acoustic guitar. The words were in English, but the melody was slow enough for him to manage to pick out approximately every fifth word or so. The gist of the intimate message got through to him more or less. The girl was asking about the meaning of her individual existence within the vast context of all of Time (3).
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. The directionality of the brush strokes in one particular corner of the canvas was nonsensically incongruent. A part of the scene must have been painted over at least once.
Ranma was especially struck by four haunting charcoal sketches that he picked out scattered around the room. Though he could not be entirely sure of their full meaning, these pieces possessed an eerie sense of familiar intimacy, as if these images were speaking specifically to him. Looking up close at the strokes, he knew for sure that the same person had created them. Additionally, 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 (4). 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 stood 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 that someone like me has managed to sneak up on you now."
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 wore a green apron over her pink cardigan and jeans. He was surprised. He had not pegged her – or any of the Tendou 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 been 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 the 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….
The words would not stop playing over in his head. With a mental shrug, he decided to take his own small metaphorical leap off the Stage and ask the obvious question. Especially after last night, the long-running charade between them had grown tiresome.
"What was Icarus hoping to achieve by jumping off the Stage at Kiyomizu-dera?"
"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 boring into him now. "What gave it away?"
He glanced down at the espresso filter in her hand. "You're left-handed. So is the person who drew that sketch. Only 1 in 15 people are left-handed, and even most of them in this country still learn to write and draw right-handed — unlike you. Ya also did the ones with the crippled kid under the Senbon Torii at Fushimi Inari Taisha, 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 ain't 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 real. "
"What's that?"
"What is it that you want, Ranma? In life?"
He found himself 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 little Ranmaverse – that so-called life of yours – people are going to get hurt. The martial artist that you've been trained to be is terrified of that, so you think you have to plod through life wallowing in your own misery, deluding yourself into thinking you're some sacrificial lamb for doing so."
She had news for him though.
"That 's all sh#t, Saotome because by definition living hurts; whether we do something or nothing is irrelevant to this fact. Someone else will always be hurt simply because you exist. There's no way that the Art and its archaic justice principles 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. You might as well do what you can to claim your own fair share of happiness."
"Why is what I want suddenly so important to ya?" he asked with suspicious, narrowed eyes. "And even if I did know, why should I tell ya?"
She leaned in close and whispered in his ear. "You just don't have the guts to be man enough to own your person and answer my question. There are so many reasons why this matters."
"Oh really."
"Yes, really!"
"Name one."
"Fine," she eventually relented with a sigh. "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'm not trying to trick you into anything. I love my sister – pain in the butt that she can be. 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. We've been through enough between my Mom dying and my father still acting stupid the way he does because of it. 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."
"So says the person who actually stopped the wedding when we got back from Jusendo."
She suddenly pressed her face close and up in his own, filled with an unyielding righteous indignation that caught him completely off guard. "Yes, Saotome, I did – because it's actually what you both wanted me to do. In your heart of hearts, you know as well as I do that you and Akane could've eloped, gone to court – whatever it would take – at any point between then and now to get married if you had really wanted; you still can! Yes, people would've gotten hurt by that, but you can't even use the excuse of your honor as a justification for your inaction. Everyone knows that the Tendou-Saotome agreement precedes all other agreements hanging over your head."
How dare she…!
"Tell me that I'm wrong. I dare you. If you honestly can, then I will get on my hands and knees right here and now, apologise to you, and spend the rest of my life repenting for what I did. We both know though that isn't going to happen because you weren't ready then; you weren't ready six, four, or even two months ago; and you sure as hell aren't ready now. You want to be ready – you both do – but you have no f-#king idea where to start."
Ranma opened his mouth to unleash a white hot volley of his own righteous indignation. To his horror and shock, however, no actual words came….
Because no honest words could come.
Because she was right.
"Let me help you, Ranma. Let me help my sister. Please."
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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 found himself 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 began reaching for his wallet, but 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.
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 felt 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, now 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.
Now, all he knew about were transactions and obligations. Everything had already been figured out for him – except how to live. He had nothing of his own, which was why he could not go forward with anything.
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 sat a student with wireless buds in his ears as he typed an assignment out on a laptop. To his right sat a young man and woman talking and laughing over a small platter of croissants and a pair of drinks. At the register, a pair of young girls, presumably sisters, giggled and squealed 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. Now, however, he felt like he could actually talk to someone about what he wanted. More than anything, he wished that he could be like the people around him in the cafe now, living a normal life.
Returning his attention to the normal girl cheerfully working the espresso machine, he wondered if she would be willing to teach him something about how to do so.
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CHAPTER NOTES:
(1) The University of Tokyo (Todai) 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 alumni, 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.
(3) "For Now" is a song by Japanese-American singer/songwriter Kina Grannis. In the song, Grannis questions the meaning of her existence within the context of all of Time. What does her life mean if everything will one day end in nothing? She concludes that maybe just knowing for herself that once existed will be enough.
(4) Fushimi Inari Taisha, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a 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 is the 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.