Ahh, thanks so much for reading. Also, an additional thanks to anyone who's reviewed. (It's all virtual, so it's hard to tell, but I am THROWING BOUQUETS OF GRATITUDE AT YOU!) It's great to be writing this again, and awesome to see that some people are still interested in reading it.
This is a longer chapter. Hopefully, that'll be a good thing.
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Kai always speaks like a bear, and his post-kidnapping communication is no different from the usual. All his noises are guttural grunts and loud, nasally inhaling – all very dismissive and, all in all, not conducive to communication.
After he pulls us onto a bus, I try to ask him about this important thing I am to be shown.
"What is it, Kai?"
A grunt.
I huddle into the back of my chair. I have the impression that everyone is staring at me. It's not entirely unfounded; we attracted a certain number of eyes when he dragged me in by my wrist – near literally, as his speed had me stumbling, and then some more when he shoved five hundred yen into the slot with enough violence to slaughter a civilization of small, furry animals. A skinny woman with a water-spotted leather purse keeps glancing our way.
Why is it that females can get away with this? If she were a beefy man, the police would be all over her. When she looks, it's dismissed as concern.
Women are just as bad as men. Worse, sometimes.
I look away from her, then pick at the threading of my sleeve. "Well, you could at least tell me, Kai. You've already stalked me, you've physically forced me to follow you – the element of surprise is clearly lost. As is any of the minimal respect I once had for you." I'd like it to bite. There's no real purpose, though, apart from harm. I'm discovering that the sentiments I hid behind my glass wall sound better outside of my mouth.
He accompanies his non-committal shrug with a disaffected noise.
"Nothing you throw at me will surp—"
"Will you shut up?" His voice comes out in a frustrated burst. I look over, my eyes carefully lidded.
Simply to be disagreeable, I look him over once, making sure to adopt the same expression that one might wear when observing a squished spider.
Kai's muscles are tense. His eyebrows twist downwards, tying themselves into little knots at their bases. There's something flighty in his shoulders.
"Whatever." I shrug.
He shuts his eyes.
We sit in silence for the rest of the ride.
I watch the landscape go by. Slowly, rough and distended houses meld into middle-class homes. Cardboard windows are exchanged for glass. The atmosphere carves itself into something safer.
At least once, the entire population of the bus is exchanged. We are faced with new passengers, new faces. The staring women gets off. She walks down a street with her head bowed. A little girl following her father gets on her knees and presses her face to the glass.
The houses begin to bloat. They become distended monstrosities, gargantuan and lavish in their frivolity. Driveways adopt strange patterns. They are made of stones in all colors and shapes, and spiral or sweep outwards from triptych garages.
How he knows where we are is a mystery, as his eyes do not open, but when we reach the heart of this plenty, Kai stands up and presses the yellow bar above me. He has to reach over my head. The edge of his elbow clonks my ear. He neither apologizes nor lets go of my wrist.
The bell dings. Squealing, the bus stops beside a shelter.
"You live here?" I ask, and he snorts.
"No, I just come here for my own amusement." His words are toxic with sarcasm. He yanks me off the bus. The driver gives our linked wrists a derisive look, then shuts the double doors and drives away.
"Jerk," I say.
He doesn't say anything, instead leading me down the sidewalk.
The houses are as large as churches, and seem just as judgmental. Why don't you live here? they ask. Aren't you good enough? Aren't you worthy enough? I think their windows look like eyes, and it's all I can do to keep from cowering beneath their unblinking gazes.
We stop in front of what looks like a Gothic castle.
It's got a grey rock path leading from two marble steps. The path is set at a diagonal, so as to slice the yard in half. It throws me off. It doesn't look right. Something is strange, here.
We walk down this path. When we get to the steps, I trail my fingers along the iron railing. It's cold.
Kai flicks a key out of his pocket and inserts it in the lock. Before turning, he turns to me.
His face is tense. He's finally bothered to open his eyes. "Don't say anything to him. If he speaks to you, just shut up and let me talk."
This may be the first time that I've ever heard Kai voluntarily request to handle communication. I shrug.
He does not look away. "I'm serious, Max."
I shrug again. "Fine. It's not like I care."
"That's your issue, isn't it?" Kai turns back to the lock, twists it, and pushes the door open. At last, he lets go of me. I bring my arm up to my chest and rub it like a wounded animal, then follow him when he steps inside and looks ready to close the door in my face.
I wonder what he would have come if I hesitated. It is, after all, he who has compelled me to be here. If I had my choice, I would be –
where would I be?
I do not know. The truth is that I do not wish to be anywhere. The world has nothing to offer but high-heeled shoes and bone-skinny models.
The entranceway is every bit as lavish as the outside. The tiling is green rock.
He shuffles his feet from his sneakers – they're shiny, dark, and new – and sticks them on a little red carpet that already holds a pair of dress shoes his size, and another larger pair in black. I put mine next to his. They're shabby. Childish. Out of style. I don't care.
He walks inside. From the way his shoulders collect around his neck, I'm half expecting to see guillotines.
In lieu of that, the floors are all covered in sparkling clean wood. There are oil paintings on the wall. A bookshelf stands at attention beside a cushy white sofa.
His shoulders go a little higher. "Grandfather?" He sounds small.
I walk in and stand beside him.
"Grandfather?" He's a little louder, this time. The answer is still non-existent. He tries two more times, then snorts and turns in my direction. "Whatever. You don't have to worry about talking to him anymore."
"Oh, yeah, because that was really praying on my mind."
"Shut it." Kai starts towards the stairs, and, obedient being that I am, I walk after him.
It's a spiral staircase, a curving thing with gaps between each of the steps so the floor beneath can be seen. His house has three floors. I catch glimpses of it as we go – a kitchen with stainless-steel appliances, a wall hanging that looks straight from a medieval castle, a fireplace. He leads me down a hallway with a purple carpet, then to a dark wooden door.
He pauses, then opens it. Both of us go in.
I stop, completely, and simply stare.
The walls, painted a bloody red, have holes in them. The plastic around the light switches and electric sockets are all cracked, smashed, broken. He's got a desk in the corner, looking almost normal and studious with its neat piles of textbooks, paper and writing utensils – but it has been scored all over with deep knife marks. Even the metal legs are scratched. When I look down at my feet, I see that there are words carved into the wood paneling. I try to read them. I can't. They're all in a foreign language; Russian, I assume. Either way, the letters squish so close together that they might well have been illegible in Japanese.
There's a surface layer, yes, of functionality. Everything easily replaceable had been fixed. The sheets on his bed are clean and neatly made. Plaid curtains hang in front of the windows. The basic structure of the room, though, the muscle mass – that has been destroyed.
The inside of my head feels almost exactly the same way as his room looks.
"Dranzer!"squawks something from beside his desk. Panic shoots through me, then subsides when I turn my head to investigate the danger. It's only a parrot in a cage. Behind it is a floor-length mirror, encased in a gilded frame. The glass has been cracked. There's a long, ragged shard missing from it.
Kai sits on the bed and gestures for me to do the same. I do.
We rest, for a moment, quiet.
There's a sort of zen that rises from destruction.
Finally, I shrug, like this is no big deal. "So what did you want to show me?"
He holds up his hands. "I want to show you that you're not alone."
"No, yeah, I know that." I shake my head and look away, tired of this old line, tired of this crap people like to feed me. I hadn't been expecting it from Kai. Oh, sure, he's a walking ball of angst, but he's never actually tried to manipulate me with it. Not until now. I do not appreciate the change. "You're here, aren't you? You shouldn't be, but you are."
"Anorexia, wasn't it?"
I twist back, ready to tear out his throat – but he's got both his gloves off and I'm suddenly realizing that maybe they're not just decoration.
There are scars across them, tight twisted things. Lines chase themselves up his arms. They look hungry.
I look away. I don't care. I don't – I really, really do not.
His voice is harsh. "We all want a way out, Max."
"She just wanted to be skinny." I lift my legs up and fold them to my chest. I'm drowning, I swear I am. I'm falling off the bridge. He thinks he's saved me, but I'm right back there, if only in my mind. I will drown. I will die. I will do it all in my head and no one will be able to call me back, ever. I'll die and he'll stop telling me these stupid things.
"And what do you want?"
Stop it, stop it.
He does not.
"Hiding is stupid," he says, "if you're not doing it for any reason."
There's a dim, creeping silence. I look at the frame of his bed. It's metal, but he's managed to twist it up somehow. It bends inwards. Somehow, the mattress prevents itself from collapsing. Sheer will, I think.
The desperation to survive is supposed to be one of the most powerful motivators. People do hard, painful things to live. They cut their arms out of trees. They shove urine-soaked cloths down their throat. And then you've got Sena, who didn't want to be anything but bone-thin. You have those scars on Kai's wrists, too deep and mangled to be much but a failed suicide attempt.
And you've got me.
In the corner of my vision, I see him looking up, determined. His eyes close briefly, then open again. It's the same look he sometimes gets before a battle. I don't know why he's fighting. If it's for him, I don't see what he could possibly be getting out of this, and if its for me, I'm only a few pieces of shattered glass.
Still.
As much as I hate him, as much as I want him to quiet down and leave me alone – at least I've finally got someone on my side.
"I'll show you," he says. "These –" he holds up his wrists. "These are not the important thing. I just want you to know where I've been." He jerks his chin upwards. His voice becomes hard. "You'll see." It's both a promise and a command.
My chest hitches. I feel that pain, that aching in my eyeballs – symptomatic of sleeplessness, insomnia, crying. I let go of my legs but that doesn't help at all.
I cry.
There's a shuffling, a noise behind the sniffles and wet breathing I am generating. Then, something warm descends around my shoulders. I flinch. It takes me a moment to realize what is happening.
Kai is holding me.