Phew, a new chapter is here, and you bet I am relieved that I was able to update sooner this time. Please read and review.
11. Confusion, Shame, Red Roses
"Here, have one of mine. They'll make all your worries recede."
Youko eyed suspiciously the man sitting beside him. He had a square face, an unusually sharp nose untypical for Asians and shining black hair he had styled to look messy. There was little else to be seen, as he had huge sunglasses that covered almost half of his face. He was wearing a loose T-shirt and shorts. Judging from the carefree accent of his English, he was probably an Asian American.
It was not unusual for people to talk to her on airplanes, and often she favoured the company of unknown people over tedious, oppressive silence. But right now, she did not fancy the thought of conversing with the stranger, especially with her clumsy English which inevitably sounded ridiculous juxtaposed with his fluency.
"No, thank you. I have been eating too many sweets recently."
"Oh, that's a shame. Are you having a holiday?"
Youko muttered something affirmative, annoyed that the man chose to ignore her very explicit signals that she was not in the mood for conversation.
"Ever tried surfing? The waves in Hawaii are the greatest."
"Unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity."
"Now's your chance, then! The best surfing instructor in the world, at your service."
Although Youko was irritated, she could hardly stop herself from smiling to the man's pretentiously cheerful tone.
"Thank you for the offer, but I guess I will stick to the more conventional pastimes."
"Well, if you ever change your mind, feel free to contact me", the man laughed and turned his attention to the newspaper he had extracted from his backpack.
Youko sighed. She had not wanted to be rude, but she simply could not tune herself to her small talk mode. The whole purpose of her holiday was to get out of it, to give her some breathing and thinking space. It was a vacation she needed, and one she had sincerely anticipated. Nothing would make her forget the emotional roller-coaster of the past year, and neither did she want to forget it. She did want peace, though, after all that had happened. If any more tremors were to surface in her life, she feared she might not be able to take it.
Closing her eyes and inclining her seat backward, she half-seriously considered how it would be like to be with someone like the man beside her. Surfing, reading newspapers, eating peanut butter sweets… It would be a normal life.
Youko hated that word. Normal. What did it even mean? For her, it had always been a word her relatives had used against her. She had not been normal in her ambitiousness, she had not been normal, living and sleeping beside another woman, she had not been and still was not normal, putting off marriage indefinitely.
Once she had been bitter about it, but now she was resigned to her fate. Someone had once told her that in life, every closed door opened another somewhere else. The ordinary life was behind a closed door for her, it had always been. It had opened her the door to the bliss she had caught a glimpse from during her first year in college, but that door, too, had been sealed shut before she had been able to slip through.
Slip through… To the bliss that had awaited her. Or had it? Had it all been an illusion? Destiny… Hawaii…
"Ladies and gentlemen, we will be arriving at Honolulu International Airport in fifteen minutes…"
Youko had dozed off. Opening her eyes slowly, she looked around her, disoriented. People were moving restlessly on their seats, apparently eager to get off the plane. She opened the window shutter and looked outside, where the sun was blazing on a clear sky. The sea underneath her was deep blue, almost too purely so, and in the horizon she could see some islands scattered on the surface of the sea.
"You looked lovely when you were asleep", the man said quietly, but his voice made Youko start regardless.
"Well, thank you, I am flattered."
"You sure you don't want to try surfing?"
"Completely", Youko replied, smiling.
"Okay, I believe you, but feel free to change your mind. Here's my card, you can call me anytime."
Youko flashed another of her cool smiles and turned away, without even bothering to check the name of the man. His shamelessness bothered her a great deal. She made a mental note to burn the card as soon as possible.
The plane was losing height, and it was making her ears feel uncomfortable. To divert her attention, she started to think what she would do once she arrived in her hotel. She had not made any concrete plans for her holiday in advance because she had wanted to leave enough space for her impulses. Now, she was beginning to somewhat regret her decision as her destination was unstoppably drawing near. She knew that the magical ocean in the travel agencies' brochures would only be muddy water in reality, she knew that only too well. She had tried to avoid piling up too many expectations for her holiday in order to avoid being disappointed, but there was no way she could have managed to do that.
It was her well-deserved holiday after the year of working herself senseless, and if it was not to be perfect, it had to be a very good one, at least.
A loud thud followed the contact the tyres of the plane made with the runway. It made Youko feel just a little better. She had two secret weaknesses; fear of crowds was one, and fear of flying was another. She had been able to cope with the latter one quite well, but she still felt a wave of relief surge over her as she acknowledged the plane was no longer in the air.
Soon the plane came into a full stop, and the safety belt –lights went off with a beep. It was followed by a loud buzz as everyone rose up in a flurry, discreetly pushing each other out of their way as they reached for their luggage above them. Youko, who could not stand unknown people touching her, let alone pushing her around, sat calmly in her seat, not even bothering to unfasten her seatbelt yet.
She had somehow gotten over her fear of flying, but her dislike of crowds had persisted. For her, it had always been a terrible thought that there were so many people in the world not giving a damn about each other, and she hated the indifferent way people pushed and squeezed each other. Whenever she was forced to use the Tokyo underground during the rush hour, she would feel the very real sensation of suffocating.
Also, she would feel lonely. She would want to scream so that everyone could hear her, she would want to make them understand the underlying perversion in all of it, and what she feared the most was not that they would not listen, but that they would all nod politely and smile patronizingly.
So what if we are living in an advanced capitalist mass society? So what if we have strayed far from the roots of humanity, so what if life does not go according to the stories told to the children?
Suddenly, Youko wanted to cry. Something was constricting her heart, it was painful like nothing else, and she wanted to scream, vomit and faint at the same time.
Someone, please save me.
Please.
Suddenly, the man with sunglasses who had already been on the aisle was beside her.
"Candy? I assure you will feel better if you eat this. I always do when I am sad."
Youko could not move. Even when the man tied his arms around her, she was not able to resist. She could only watch as he peeled off the wrappings from one of his repulsive sweets and slowly put it into her mouth. The disgustingly sweet taste exploded in her mouth, and only that awakened her from her comatose state.
"It's all right, everything will be alright", the man said, but the way he said it made it sound almost ridiculous.
"Don't touch me. Who…"
Youko's voice had come out as cold as steel, but it quickly faded away to nothingness as she realized the shades had dropped from the man's face when he had reached for her in one swift motion.
"My apologies, I don't think I remembered to mention my name. Then again, it was on the card I gave you, if you had only given it a glance."
He was now speaking very fluent Japanese.
"You…!"
"Forgive my earlier rudeness. I did not recognize you, Mr. Kashiwagi."
"You don't have to talk that formally, revered Rosa Chinensis. The fault was partly mine;I did not want to be recognized too soon. Also, I should apologize for being so shameless earlier. I had to pull a show."
After the scenario on the airplane, Kashiwagi had taken care of everything from retrieving their luggage to ordering a taxi, and they had arrived to Youko's hotel in no time. Now they were sitting in the hotel restaurant, she had finished an omelette and an ice-coffee Kashiwagi had bought her, and she was feeling somewhat embarrassed.
She had no idea what it was all about, but seeing Kashiwagi made her uneasy. It was not only that he was the heir to a huge business empire, because Sachiko had been one too, and she had never had any problems in handling her petite soeur. What Kashiwagi had always had was his overflowing confidence, which positively radiated from his face. She was not used to such self-satisfaction, self-centeredness, almost arrogance, and it was as ridiculous as it was upsetting.
"I am afraid I don't understand what is happening. Forgive me if I am wrong, but I guess that our meeting was not pure coincidence."
Kashiwagi laughed.
"Yes, you are right, it was not. If you want to know, a certain someone sent me to look after you."
Youko had expected something like this deep inside her mind, but still actually hearing it made her gape like a fish on dry ground. She could see Kashiwagi's amusement in his eyes, and only through extreme effort could she compose herself.
"I am very sorry for causing you so much trouble. But, may I ask for a more detailed explanation? You must understand I am confused by this unexpected meeting."
"It was a few weeks ago, I think, when I met Saa-chan, and she told me that Ms. Toudou had called her and expressed concern for you. Because I was planning to go on a vacation to the Hawaii's anyway, Saa-chan kindly asked me to fit my schedule according to yours and keep an eye on you. That we actually ended up in the same plane beside each other was a pure coincidence, though."
"Shimako told Sachiko and she asked…? But how…?"
"Yes, she did. And don't bother asking about the details on how I was supposed to find you, it is not important. In fact, I should not even be telling you this, but I believe there is nothing to be gained by secrecy. It is not as if we are strangers, more like old friends. As far as I understand Saa-chan, I think right now she is very worried about her grande soeur, and I am sure Saa-chan would be glad to hear from her."
Youko was disoriented, to say the least. Through the window of her luxurious hotel room, she could see a swimming pool where there were children swimming with their parents, and beyond the hotel grounds there were a few patches of vegetation before the beach began. It was a peaceful, relaxing sight, but she could not feel calm.
Kashiwagi had retreated to his hotel a few kilometres away from Youko's, but his presence lingered on Youko's mind. She could see his casual, yet challenging posture, hear his velvety voice filled with sardonic amusement, and it unsettled her. She was ashamed of her own weakness in front of him, she was ashamed that Shimako and her petite soeur, who were both younger than her, felt a need to take care of her. She had hoped that she would be all right and would need support no longer, but the affair on the plane had proven her wrong.
But of all people, why did it have to be Kashiwagi who saw her weakness?
If it had been up to her, she would have of course fancied a meeting with Sachiko a million times more than with the latter's glib cousin, but the Ogasawara heir could not possibly have personally tended to everyone from her past she was concerned about, could she?
But Youko did want to meet Sachiko, Kashiwagi's words had made her realize that. The two former Red Roses had cared for and loved each other very much, but their relationship had been more like a conventional high school friendship than a deep bond between souls. They had never been as close as some of the other pairs in Lillian, so it had been almost natural for them to slowly drift apart after graduation, and their separation had been underlined after Youko's first year in college. After graduating, Sachiko had begun to take more and more responsibilities as the Ogasawara heir, and at the same time Youko had become more and more closed inside her own, dark world following her break-up with Sei.
Now, she regretted that she had been so distant, to Sachiko as well as to everyone else.
Sighing deeply, she reached for her backpack and dug out her laptop. She had not planned to spend the first hours of her holiday in front of a computer screen, but she was afraid that if she did not write to her friends right away, she would not be able to muster the willpower to do it later either.
She shook her head. Her holiday had hardly started off according to plans.
Dear Sachiko,
how long has it been? A year, five years, a decade? It certainly feels like a lifetime since I last sat down in front of my laptop and typed your address to the receiver's field on my webmail application. For a moment I considered using the traditional mail, but I decided against it, as it would have been too slow.
I am sorry. For not being in contact with you, for neglecting my duty as a grande soeur, for making you concerned, for troubling you and Mr. Kashiwagi. A very wise person told me some time ago that, for those younger than us who were in Lillian, we were Roses, mighty, almost omnipotent beings, and we were supposed to look out for the younger ones, not the other way around. I am aware that it might sound silly to think about the relationship between us as something still defined by us once being soeurs, but it is so hard to think outside that box. So, I am ashamed, and I am sorry.
Knowing you, I assume you are doing well. I hope you are not pushing yourself too much. I know I might not be in the position to say it, but just remember that you don't have to be perfect. I would love to know what you have been up to lately, if you still want to tell me.
I guess it won't surprise you that I have not been in contact with the others from Lillian, either, not after my first year in college, and that was an eternity ago. Looking back on it, I realize how foolish it was, replying to their (as well as your) emails with such cold brevity, never taking a good deal of time to call them, let alone see them (or you). I wanted to move on, but too late did I notice that I had taken a path which would only lead to a dead end.
You know, I visited Lillian last autumn with Sei. It was such a surreal experience, because nothing had changed there. If I had not known the students of our time, I would have had no way to know whether time had passed or not. And yet it has been almost eleven years by now, but it consoles me that there are some places where time holds no meaning.
I think it was that visit and its aftermath which changed the course of my life. I don't know how much you have been able to piece together about the events of that summer when I stopped coming to the Yamayurikai gatherings, and I don't know whether I am ready to share those experiences with everyone just yet. But I would like to, one day. One day, I would like to see everyone gathered around a table, smiling, laughing, just like before.
Forgive me for imposing myself on you. Recently I have been speaking too much of myself and caring too little about other people, and I regret it. One day, I would again like to be the Meddler Sei used to call me. I look forward to hearing from you. If you are in touch with the others, please let them know I am thinking about them.
Kind Regards,
Youko
A/N: Just had to include the term "Saa-chan". Such a lovely pet name, don't you think?
