Chapter Fifty-Seven The Choice Ishikawa Chiyo Stole
Chapter Fifty-seven
The Choice Ishikawa Chiyo Stole
Twenty-one years ago
The map on Chiyo’s skin glowed in the rain and came to life over her reflection in the pawnshop’s pond. She traced the map with her eyes, knowing fully where every single road tattooed on her body led. She ran into the garden behind the pawnshop each time the sky grew dark, nursing the tiniest hope that one day, if she stood in the rain long enough, a storm was going to reveal a path she had missed.
“Chiyo.” Toshio walked up from behind her and held a coat over her head. “You’re soaked. Come inside.”
“Just a little longer.” Chiyo held out her hands to catch the rain.
“Come. I will make you some tea.”
Chiyo looked at her husband and watched his fate glow on his skin. She stroked his wet cheek, running her thumb over the path that led to her name. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Be content. How do you keep yourself from wanting more than what the Horishi has written?”
“I am sorry.” The rain streaked over Toshio’s face and made it impossible for Chiyo to tell if he was crying.
“For what?”
“For not making you as happy as you make me.”
“You do make me happy, Toshio.”
“Just not enough,” Toshio said, leading her back inside.
—
Chiyo waited for Toshio to fall asleep before she slid out of bed and crept downstairs. She took great care to avoid the stairway’s last step. The storm howling outside would have kept her husband from hearing the creak the step made, but she did not want to take any risks. Toshio was not going to understand why she needed to open the pawnshop’s vault in the middle of the night.
Chiyo could not get the choice that had been pawned that day out of her mind. It was the brightest one she had ever seen. Toshio had told her that if that choice had been made, it could have changed the world. Chiyo had lain in bed, listening to Toshio’s breath, counting down the minutes until she could see the choice again.
Her fingers swiftly found the notch on the side of the bookcase in the dark. She pushed it and let the bookcase swing open. The birds in the vault greeted her with a song. Chiyo hurried inside the vault, forgetting to shut the door. A bird perched in a cage to her right glowed brighter than all the rest. Chiyo unhooked its cage with no other plan than to get a closer look. The bird frantically flew around the cage and slammed into its bars. “I won’t hurt you,” Chiyo said, trying to calm the bird down. “I promise.”
The bird crashed into the top of the cage and set the other birds in the vault into a chirping frenzy.
“No…no…please be quiet. You’ll wake Toshio.” Chiyo glanced at the vault’s wide-open door. She hugged the birdcage to her chest and ran out.
—
The bird grew quiet on her desk. Chiyo gently lifted the silk tea box wrapping she had thrown over its cage. The bird calmly preened its glowing blue feathers. When Chiyo took off her glasses and set them on top of the month’s record book, a bottle of sake took the bird’s place.
Chiyo reached inside the cage and carefully pulled it out. This bottle contained all the sake its former owner never drank, on all the nights that she had refused invitations to have a life outside her gray work cubicle. She had a plan and schedule for herself and refused to be distracted. In time, her gray workspace grew larger. Eventually, it turned into a corner office on the building’s top floor. The invitations grew fewer and farther between the closer she got to the top. One day, they stopped coming. The woman sat in her office every night after everyone had gone home, wondering what kind of life she might have had if she had believed that she was worthy of rest. She imagined the conversations she would have shared, the people she might have met, the man she could have fallen in love with, and the family they might have had. She liked to think about the names she would have given her children. She was especially fond of the name she had picked for her daughter.
Chiyo stared at the bottle of sake, envying her client. Regret was a luxury no one in her world had. Chiyo wondered what it tasted like. She raised the bottle to her lips, telling herself that no one would ever know if she took just one sip.
—
“Chiyo?” Toshio walked over to her desk. “What are you doing down here?”
Chiyo yawned and stretched her arms over her head. Glass glinted in the corner of her vision. Chiyo rubbed her eyes and blinked. An empty bottle of sake lay on its side. “No…” Chiyo gasped, remembering, in a flurry of images, how a sip of sake had turned into many, the last sip the longest of all.
“What is this?” Toshio picked up the bottle and set his glasses on his nose. Toshio’s hand shook and dropped the bottle as though it were on fire. It shattered on the floor.
“Forgive me…” Chiyo said.
“Chiyo, what have you done?”
“I…I took something that wasn’t mine.” She pressed her hand over her belly and felt, in a way beyond what any words could ever explain, the path she had been denied growing inside her. “And her name is Hana.”