Chapter 35 Chi
Chapter 35
Chi
It’s been exactly three days since Andy has come into my mansion again, leaving less than an hour later. There are two days until I’ll be on a plane to Japan, shipped off to marry, and await the day that I come into power with my nerdy, clumsy, socially inept husband by my side.
When I saw Andy step into the mansion from the grounds, my heart dropped into my stomach. I know Andy doesn’t want to go to Japan — that there is nothing there for him except me. I understand that even just asking him to go was completely out of line and that I shouldn’t hope for it — shouldn’t even think about it.
But I was still dreaming that he was going to see my father about it. Like every stupid, lovesick girl, I wondered if he simply couldn’t stay away after seeing me at the wedding.
I’ve given up on that by now, though. The idea that Andy came to declare his love for me — to be my knight in shining armor and paramour in Japan — might be romantic, but it’s completely unrealistic. I’m too fucking old to believe in fairytales. In fact, as much as I love them, I never really believed in them anyway.
I guess there was a time when I daydreamed about having a life like the old legends of the knights of the roundtable, but I know now that love and relationships aren’t really like that. When they say, “They lived happily ever after,” they don’t really fucking know. No one lives happily ever after, as if they never have a hardship for the rest of their lives. It’s a beautiful struggle — a constant push and pull, heartbreak and happiness all at the same time.
With the days I have left, my comforts are eating my favorite foods, prepared by the chef we’ve employed for over half my life, and spending time in the library. Walking past my father’s study on my way there one night, I hear his voice drift toward me.
He has left the door open again. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s on purpose at this point. I used to be excited to listen in on his conversations, but it’s become pretty anticlimactic for me lately. Mostly because I know that soon I’m the one who is going to have to decide what to do about everything. Instead of listening behind closed doors and wanting to know more that my father doesn’t want to tell me, I will have to hear these truths, whether I like it or not.
But I listen anyway, if only out of principle. “She must be ready, Daiki-san. There will be no backing down from this. It is important that she take this next step.”
Daiki is in Japan, but he is supposed to be coming back here to accompany my father and me on our trip. I’m not sure why, but my father seems to like to have him around when we travel. Secretly, I think it’s because he’s afraid of flying and likes to have his best childhood friend nearby to fly with him.
“Asuka-san will never stand against her. He will not overshadow her. She has made an auspicious choice.”
Part of me wishes I knew what Daiki was saying on the other end of the line, and part of me thinks that maybe it’s better that I don’t know. If he’s talking about how I’m not ready to lead or marry, it might crack this thin veneer of confidence I’ve been projecting.
My father is the one who has always pushed this. All I want is to be ready. I’m not sure of another path for me. If my father questions this choice now, I will do worse. It will break my thin resolve. And then where will I be? Where will either of us be? We can’t back out of our agreement, in any case. I don’t think we have any other choice but to be ready.
My father lowers his voice even more, so that I have to walk a few steps closer to his door and strain to hear him. Although I kind of hate this conversation, I feel the need to listen, as if it’s a train wreck I can’t look away from. “You know of the reasons we must make these decisions, my friend. You know we need to unite her with someone of his standing. She is too American. I do not believe they will accept her. We must do this.”
My father lets out a long sigh, as if from relief, as Daiki presumably speaks again. His demeanor changes when he speaks next: less of the uncharacteristic apprehension I just heard, and more of the conviction I’m used to. “Of course it will be fine, Daiki. She will be, as well. It will all work out.”
As my father hangs up the phone and I tiptoe past his study to the library, I try to tamp down the fear of the unknown that seems to not only plague me but my father as well. Either way though, the conversation I just overheard simply instills further in me one basic truth: it doesn’t matter whether or not I’m ready or whether I wish I didn’t have to go yet to Japan. I have no choice. And as much as I think I want a choice… I don’t. I’m glad that my father has made the hardest ones for me.
*****
That night, my father comes into the library, startling me with his nearness when I finally notice him. He never comes in here, which likely means it’s serious. In fact, it’s definitely serious. My father is always fucking serious.
I incline my head in respect without making eye contact. “Good evening, Oto-san.”
“Good evening, my daughter,” he says in Japanese. Yes, definitely a serious conversation. “I’ve come to speak to you about the upcoming two weeks.”
Over the next two weeks in Japan, I will be getting ready to be a wife, making meetings with our families, and following Japanese customs. I swallow thickly. “Yes, Oto-san.”
He takes a deep breath, shifting his feet. Rarely — very, very rarely — this has been a sign of indecision from him. I know it, but can’t fathom it having any place in this conversation, so I ignore it entirely.
“Are you ready to leave in three days?”
I keep my gaze averted, but do not hesitate. “Of course, father.”
“Good. Good girl, Chichi-chan.” My father takes an uncharacteristically deep breath in. “You have always been such a good girl. Always brought pride to your family. Always followed the path set out for your life.”
I nearly look up at him in confusion, but drop my eyes again just in time. My father is never so open in his approval. Most of the time, he’s only expressing displeasure. “Of course, father. It’s expected. And you have let me live my life. I’ve had a good one.”
My father seems to sigh all of his breath out before he answers. “You speak as though it’s ending, Chichi. You have so much ahead of you. You will have new adventures.”
I’m not sure how to respond to this. I’m certain we’ve never had an exchange like this, and it is so strange. “Certainly, Oto-san.”
My father drops heavily into the chair across from me, and this time I do look up into his eyes. They are tired. They’re almost imploring. It’s as if he wants to ask me a question that has been keeping him up at night but can’t bring himself to do it.
He looks out the window. “I always wonder what you would do. What you would choose if you could choose anything you wanted. But you know what, my Chichi-chan? I don’t think any of us can really choose. We only think we can. And if we really could, we would just be confused and disoriented, too overwhelmed with all the choices to make a good decision.”
I lick my lips and bite down, suddenly wanting to say so much but unable to at the same time.
Then my father pins me with that beseeching, curious look again, and I just know I’m about to spill everything, even though I can’t. I have never been able to confide in my father. I’ve never been able to confide in anyone, because he’s right; I don’t know what I would want if I could choose. But I know for certain it’s not to marry Asuka.
I do want everything that will come with that, though. It’s who I’m meant to be - who I’ve always wanted to be. I am good at it. I just… want love. I know love can only come with one person, and Asuka will never be him.
My father calls me a “good girl,” but I’ve only been this way because it was easier than not being one. It was easier than swimming against the tide, slammed down by the waves, and being thrown back onto the beach with a mouth full of saltwater over and over.
But what if I could have learned to swim through the waves? Under and over, moving with the tide? What if I could navigate a new path without having dire consequences each time? Would I have chosen differently for my life?
Would I now?
“Papa, I—”
“It does not matter,” he says, as we both switch to English now. “It does not matter what either of us would want.” He makes such strong eye contact that it pushes me back into my seat. “We cannot have that kind of life, my Chichi-chan. You cannot have everything your heart truly desires anymore than I have ever been able to. You have always understood that. You still understand, don’t you?”
Again, his eyes are beseeching, as if asking me to say the wrong thing. As if begging me to contradict him. But as he knows, although I’m the life of the party because he allows it, I’m still his good little Chichi-chan.
“Yes, Oto-San. I still understand. I will always make you proud.”
He blinks hard, nearly wincing, I think, before giving me a firm head nod. “Good girl.”
*****
I fall asleep on the couch in the library for the second night in a row, not wanting to leave the comfort of my favorite room in this mansion for a moment before I leave for Japan. I’m quite aware that I’ll be back often after I move out there. I know that this won’t be my last time in this library. But for some reason it feels like it will be intrinsically different in a way I can’t even put my finger on. Like as a married woman, I won’t even be able to make the decision to fall asleep on a hard leather lounger in this spacious room with natural sunlight and all the books my little heart desires.
I wake up with a start and realize immediately that I’ve heard the unmistakable pop of a gun with a silencer. I know the sound, even though it’s clearly a well-chosen silencer for an already quiet gun. The lights in the library have been shut off, which I don’t remember doing myself.
I pick up the phone next to me and hear no sound. My own phone won’t make a call out. Someone has cut the landline and jammed the signals. Oxy should still be on top of this, but whoever this is knows what the fuck they’re doing and came with a plan. It’s clear after the next pop that I don’t have much time left to figure out what to do.
I feel acid burn the back of my throat as I remember the last time an intruder snuck up on me in my bedroom just a few months ago. I was powerless. But I didn’t have a weapon at that time, and I had a much more cavalier attitude toward possible threats. Now that I’ve been through what I have, even while I can feel my terror grip and claw at me, I also think of what I need to do.
Get your knives. I hear two more pops, closer now, and I realize it’s time to hurry. Although I can shoot, I’ve never been given a gun, but I can get my knife belt from the display case here in the library. I’m proud of my knives and my skill with them, but since I’ve never had a real life reason to use them and they were nearly a quarter of a million dollars, I keep them as a conversation piece in the library.
I creep over to the display and find the key as I hear scuffling down the hall. I know I need to hurry. I open the display with shaky hands and grab my knife belt from its shelf. As I finish closing it quietly, I hear another pop, so close this time, and then what I’ve dreaded most: voices. They’re loud, as if they don’t care who hears them. As if they know I’m trapped the way I feel I am. As if they think there’s no one coming for me, even though there is always someone coming for me.
I strap on my knife belt in seconds before tiptoeing quietly to the door of the library and cracking it open, allowing me to better hear the muffled voices. They speak in English, and I can catch almost the entirety of their conversation.
“Where is she? He wants us to grab her and get her out of here.”
They’re talking about me, obviously. I’m the only girl around here, always and forever surrounded by men. But how are they not worried about my father? I start to feel panic rising in my chest. Where is he? If he hasn’t come for me, he must be hurt.
They’re coming closer, and I feel an urgent need to get the fuck out of here. They say they need to grab me, which must mean they aren’t here to kill me. I have this one advantage.
I creep to the library double doors and peer out down the hall. Only a few steps until I get to my room. Everything is deadly quiet and still. My bare feet are soundless as I sprint down to my suite, but they must sense something anyway.
“You hear that?” One of the men’s voices is way too close — I know they are just around the corner. I swallow the lump in my throat and slow down a bit to mask my footsteps even further, but I know it won’t work. All I can do is get ready for the inevitable.
“Shhh,” I hear far quieter now. “Hey princess, we’re not here to hurt you.” There’s a sinister, snarling chuckle from the other man, and I crouch down, getting into position.
The very moment I see a flash of arm, gun in hand, I throw my knives and sprint the rest of the way to my room. I hear a cry, a moment of hesitation, and then footsteps pounding down the hallway seconds before I throw myself through the door to my bedroom, locking it behind me.
They are going to break the door down any time now, I’m sure, but I have just a few seconds to collect myself. I can’t figure out why my father hasn’t come for me, and I wonder if Daiki is on his way. He should be here any time now. Why hasn’t anyone come for me?
There are two entrances to my wing. I hope they don’t realize this, but I’m sure they must have looked at blueprints before they came here. If they got through security, they have a lot of manpower behind them. But all I can do is hope they won’t think to follow me out the other exit to my suite, or that I injured one bad enough that it slows them down, at least. If I run over to the other exit, I’ll be near my father’s suite. He won’t have left without me. Maybe he’s hiding, although as soon as I think it, that doesn’t ring true for me. All I can think to do is go to his room to see if he’s there though.
I tiptoe to the other door, praying that they don’t hear it. The door to my suite is deadbolted and made of the best wood, but they are almost through it as I pass by the TV in my sitting room. I have to try to throw them off my scent - make them think I’m hiding. I take the remote controland fling it into my bedroom as hard as I can before making it to the alternative exit and opening the door. They break the door down just as I shut the alternative exit door as quietly as possible, and I pray they took the bait and didn’t hear me leaving.
I sprint as silently as I can down the hall, rounding the dark corner not a second later and disappearing down the hallway toward my father’s quarters.
As I approach, a feeling of dread covers me and weighs my limbs down. The feeling gets heavier and heavier the closer I get, and opening the door to his wing is like moving a two-ton boulder. But I do it and enter his humble little sanctuary.
It’s no longer a sanctuary, however. It never will be again. Because my father lies on the floor next to the table in his sitting room, bleeding out onto the rug, clutching his side, still as death.
And that’s what I feel as I walk closer. Death.
I try to find my voice as I freeze in place, dread weighing my entire body down. When I think I’m able to, a moment later, I test it out quietly into the darkness. “Oto-san?”
There’s no answer.
Something breaks my muscles out of their temporary torpor, and I spring into action. “Oto-san! Please be okay. Father, please.”
I reach him and turn him gently, but I see that he’s been shot a number of times; his old wounds reopened so soon. This time, I doubt closing them will bring him back to life.
“Papa?” I ask, in complete shock, as I feel his blood cooling in a puddle around the both of us. I go deaf and dumb while staring down at him for what I know will be the last time.
Amazingly, he stirs and wheezes a rattling breath.
“Father!” I whisper-yell, clutching his shirt, hoping to keep him here with me until I can figure out what to do. “Father, give me your orders. What should I do?”
His eyes focus. “Chichi. Don’t let them take you. My… my girl.”
“Akio!” Daiki’s voice rings out from the doorway to the bedroom, and I look up with wide eyes, feeling some hope flicker in my cold chest.
“Daiki! Help him! Help…” My brain finally processes Daiki, crumpled in the doorway from my father’s personal study, dragging himself toward us with a trail of blood behind him. This is a massacre, only made worse by the fact that both my father and Daiki seem to have escaped being shot in the head. These wounds, I know, will still kill them both.
Daiki grunts in pain as he makes his way to us, and although I’m too frozen to cry, I know I’ll never forget what I’m seeing right now. I know this waking nightmare will come back to me every day of my life. The only people I love — the men who raised me — dying together in the same room while I watch. Truly my worst nightmare come true.
I stutter badly when I speak next, but I somehow get the words past my chattering teeth. “D—Daiki, help me. I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”
He has made it to us both. My father is clearly gone now, and Daiki will follow soon, I can tell. His head drops down onto my father’s stomach as he takes the hand I have resting there. “Chi-chi… leave us. Get out of here and don’t let them take your title from you, Sakura. You are ready.”
“No — I can’t do this; I can’t do it alone!”
He takes my hand and puts it on my father’s chest near his mouth, pressing a blood-stained kiss to my knuckles. “You can. I… I believe in you and so did he. You will be a beautiful queen.” Daiki pushes the last sound out before his chest starts to work overtime, and his eyes lose focus.
“No, no, no!” I whisper frantically, completely unsure of what to do or where to go now — anything in my entire life, really.
He tries to keep a grip on consciousness. “The tunnels, Sakura. Andy knows the tunnels.” Daiki’s hand on mine trembles and loses its grip, loosening and flopping to the floor.
I hear the men who have just killed the only family I’ve ever known coming down the hall. I want to kill them. I want their hearts in my fist, their blood dripping down my hands and forearms to the floor. But I know I can’t fight them, and I know my father doesn’t want me to end up the way he is right now. I need to follow his last command and get myself out of here.
“I will make you proud, Father. And you, Daiki. I… I love you.”
They are dead, I know. But at least I said it. At least I said it to them one time.
I grit my teeth and stand up, my entire body shaking, goosebumps lining every inch of skin. I hold in my rising nausea, focusing on the escape route I went over with Andy from every wing of the house. As I hear the men approach the room, I run to the emergency doors in the study, push them open, and disappear through them, wondering if Andy will find me, too numb to care whether he does or not.