9. Now Comes the Power
Chapter nine
Now Comes the Power
Nyomi
The weight of my own eyelids pinned me somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness.
I floated in darkness, until finally, Deja's voice cut through the black. "Ladies, keep that pussy in those panties, if you have a set goal."
Huh?
Several women shrieked.
Others chuckled.
I struggled with opening my eyes, but couldn’t.
What kind of dream is this?
I lay still, and more feminine conversation settled over me. But at least my senses were slowly returning. I could feel my chest rising and falling, and my hands rested on a soft, thin blanket.
Cold air ran across my forehead.
The smell of antiseptic and burnt incense layered over each other like two songs playing at once.
I’m not dead. Right? But where am I?
Then Deja kept going. "If you want marriage, make sure he marries you before he gets that pussy.
If you want a down payment on a house, he doesn't get the pussy until the bank confirms that the shit is paid.
Fuck, if you just want a nice bag, don't bring that pussy out until the bag is dangling from your shoulder. "
Yep. Definitely not dead because this is surely not heaven, and I doubt it is hell.
A new voice rose from somewhere on the right. The accent was Japanese. The tone polite. "What if he doesn't have the money right now? I am secretly dating someone. . .his name is Masaru. My father doesn't like him because he is not where he needs to be. But I want to help him grow."
"And this is what I mean." Deja's voice climbed. "I'm with your daddy on this. Why are some women so obsessed with helping a man grow? Like damn, bitch. Get some plants or start a fucking garden."
Tons of women laughed.
But where am I? And how is Deja here? Wouldn’t she be off the island?
The last thing I remembered was the forest, the red robes, the torchlights, the Death Guardian crouched over Kenji while he writhed in the dirt, and hooded figures carrying me away.
And now Deja's giving a TED Talk on how to get a man to pay your mortgage.
Slowly, I opened my eyes.
The world swam back to me. A wood ceiling ran low above me with bamboo beams running across it. A lantern hung on a hook. The light was a soft gold, and it ached in my eyes.
Where the fuck am I?
I opened the other eye and tried to pull the room into focus. It wouldn't come fully. Edges blurred and doubled. A figure passed at the foot of my bed in white and moved on.
“This isn’t back in the day when men had a little sense and some traditional manners.” Deja kept going. "We’re in a new age, where the biggest downfall for a woman is a broke man.”
My vision was still blurry, yet getting better second by second. I felt the soft pillow under my head and turned.
A few feet away, on the cot next to mine, Zo lay flat on his back.
A thin blanket was pulled up to his armpits.
His mouth hung open. His blonde hair was a perfect mess across the pillow, the way only Zo could make a mess look styled.
A long snore ripped out of him, climbed for a beat, and then dropped off into a soft whistle.
Oh, Zo. I hope you get to sleep through this whole war.
Warmth opened in my chest at the sight of him. Then Zo let loose another snore loud enough that one of the women across the room glanced over and shook her head with a small smile.
“We've got too many Pick-Me chicks and Wanna-be Good Girls. In this world as a woman, you have two choices for success.” Deja snapped her fingers. “Either be a Gold Digger or be about your own personal growth. The latter means. . .you're focused on your own paper, and you must decenter men."
I widened my eyes.
The room came in clearer. It was a long basement space. Low lit. Bamboo posts ran the length of it like the bones of a building turned inside out.
Cots lined both walls. Men in bandages slept on most of them. One groaned in his sleep. Another had an IV running into his arm and a nurse moving around him with quiet hands.
Facts hit my head without my understanding why.
We’re in the Bamboo Garden building. Underneath it. East side of the island.
I blinked.
How do I know that? I mean. . .I KNOW it without any doubt in my mind.
I looked in front of me.
At the far end of the space, Deja sat in a wooden chair like she was holding court at a barbershop.
Twenty women had pulled cots and stools into a half circle around her.
Some looked like nurses. Some wore civilian clothes.
Two of them, on the outside of the circle, had pens in their hands and were writing every word Deja said into small notebooks.
Oh my God. Class is in session.
And in the holster at Deja’s hips rested her gun.
Oh, damn. She brought Betty Boop to Tokyo?
Betty Boop was Deja’s small handgun. The grip was a deep cherry red with black scrollwork curling across it. The barrel was matte black. A little red bow had been engraved into the slide near the back.
A young Japanese woman raised her hand the way a girl did in school. "Miss Deja, what does that mean? Decenter men?"
"Oh, girl." Deja leaned forward. "So decentering men from your life is definitely not about hating men.
It's just that men aren't the center of your universe.
Your success, career, and health is. They're not the prize.
They're not the proof that you're worthy.
They are not the thing you are praying and waiting for to make your life fulfilled. "
The two women on the side wrote it down.
O-kay. . .how did this TED talk happen? And why wasn’t I able to register?
A deep voice sounded beside me. "How are you doing, Tora?"
I slowly turned my head and Yoichi sat on a stool by my cot. His hair was loose and shadowed half his face. The other half was lit by the lantern. His expression was unreadable.
"Yoichi." My voice came out rough. "How did I get here?"
"I brought you."
"How long have I been here?"
"Twenty minutes." He leaned his head to the side. "How do you feel?"
I assessed my body. I was breathing. My skin was warm. The deep grinding pain that had hollowed me out in the forest was gone. My thighs ached, but it was a faraway ache, dull and slow, like the memory of a bruise more than the bruise itself.
Did the ritual work? Was the. . .sacrifice. . .enough?
I pulled my hand out from under the blanket and tried to touch my throat. Instead, my fingers brushed the front of my robe and stopped on Reo’s soul pin.
And somehow. . .I mentally left the room and went somewhere else.
In my head, a large bedroom appeared.
The bedside lamp was the only light.
Reo sat on the edge of his bed in a dark blue robe, whispering a prayer as he held the soul pin between his thumb and finger.
Once done, Reo lifted the pin to his mouth and pressed his lips to it. His eyes closed. His jaw tightened. He held it there a beat longer than I expected.
“I love you, Mom.” Then he set the pin on the nightstand, turned out the light, and lay down in the dark.
I came back to my body and gasped.
The cot beneath me. The lantern. The wood ceiling. Yoichi's face suddenly closer than it had been. "Tora? You looked like you. . .were about to pass out again."
I yanked my hand off the pin like the metal had burned me.
"Tora.” Yoichi leaned back. “What about him?"
“Reo. . .I saw him praying to his pin.”
“You were touching it.”
“I was. . .”
“I imagine he did pray to that pin when he had it.”
“Yeah. . .” I panted. “But. . .it just felt so real. Oddly real.”
"Like you were there?”
“Yes. . .”
“Interesting.”
“Why did I see that? What was that?”
Yoichi turned his head and spoke to someone behind him. "Get the doctor."
A man in scrubs straightened up from a cot down the row and walked over.
In the background, Deja kept on going. “Any other questions?”
"I want a nice man like in the romances I watch," a thin woman spoke in front of Deja. She had this dreamy expression on her face. "I want someone who gives me flowers and does nice things. I have a crush. His name is Izumi, but he is not like this."
"Master your femininity and this Izumi will give you everything," Deja bobbed her head.
"See. A man will spend money on you, even if he barely knows you.
And he will do that for you, if you make him feel a certain kind of way.
This is beyond looking good and smelling nice.
That's basic shit. I'm talking about being soft, playful, and hard to fully access.
This creates obsession. Also. . .make him feel needed but not controlled.
And the most important thing. . .know your value and don't over give. "
Jesus, Deja. You need to write a book.
I made a note to tell her that.
The doctor reached my cot.
He was middle-aged, tall, with a thin face and tired eyes behind small round glasses. He bowed once to Yoichi, then turned to me with a bright expression. "Tora, may I check you?"
"Yes."
He picked up my wrist for a pulse, and I looked at his face for the first time properly.
Then, I left the space again.
A hospital room came to me and beeping from a machine. An old man lay in a bed with his eyes closed and his mouth open. A tube was taped to his lower lip.
The doctor sat beside the bed in a hard plastic chair with his shoulders shaking. His hands covered his face as he cried. “Father, I’m going to miss you.”
And then the monitor flat-lined.
I gasped.
The doctor blinked down at me. "Are you in pain? Tora, where—"
"I'm so sorry about your father."
His hand stilled on my wrist. "My father?"
"Yes." I swallowed. "You have my condolences."
“Thank you, but. . .” His brow knitted. "He passed ten years ago."
"Oh." A shiver ran down my back.
"How did you know that my father passed?"
"I. . .uh. . ." I glanced around and saw the lantern, Yoichi, and the women laughing in the background as Deja said something else. "I think I saw you crying by his hospital bed."
The doctor stepped back. “But no one else was in there when that happened. And. . .I have told no one this.”
"You saw it, Tora?" Yoichi raised his eyebrows.
I nodded. "Y-yes."
"Even more interesting."