Chapter Thirteen Sen #2
Lee shook his head. “There’s an archive at town hall,” he said. “We can look for your family records there, but it’s not open
this late.”
“ We? ” Sen said. Could she really just step into another world? She could stand in Lee Turner’s room easily enough, but she couldn’t
picture herself out in public one hundred and forty years in the future.
“Well, I doubt they’re going to hand over your family koseki to a foreigner,” he said, like it should have been obvious. “Come
back here tomorrow. We’ll find your truth, and then mine.”
And if I die before then? Sen thought, fear clamping her throat shut. But that was not something a samurai was supposed to say, so she only nodded.
Footsteps creaked in the hall.
Lee whirled around, his eyes wide. Sen didn’t know what kind of monsters existed in the future, but if it was enough to alarm
Lee, it couldn’t be good. A shadow rolled across the paper doors, and Sen’s heart stopped beating.
She knew this shadow.
The crooked spine, the prickly fingers, the way it swelled across the ceiling like the tide of a dark sea that wanted to drag
you into its cold waters. He should not have been on this side of the house.
Sen widened her stance and drew her sword.
“No, don’t do that,” Lee said under his breath.
But the door opened, and it was not Sen’s father.
Another foreign man—this one older—froze at the sight of her. He looked half awake, draped in loose silk clothing with buttons down the front. He had the same dark hair as the younger man, but his face and shoulders were broader, his complexion tanner, his jaw squarer.
The whole house had quieted at his entrance. No breeze sighed through the window, no sword ferns scraped at the porch, no
wood creaked as it settled. Even Lee had gone still, like the whole world was prey waiting for this man to strike.
“Oh,” the older man said in surprise as he turned to Sen. “Hello.”
Sen had learned some English in her lessons at the academy—samurai were expected to be well educated, after all. But she had
never heard it spoken from a foreigner’s mouth. His smile was sharp at the edges, his eyes flat and colorless in the dark.
Lee moved quickly to block the older man’s view of the closet, then said something in English that Sen didn’t understand.
His words were clipped, pressed tightly against each other. The moment the older man entered the room, it was as if Lee had
gone from a churning ocean to a frozen sea. The older man let out a stiff laugh, answering before looking back at Sen.
“Put away your sword,” Lee said under his breath in Japanese. “This is my father.”
That is not a reason to put my sword away , Sen thought, but she conceded and lowered her blade anyway, only because the older man was clearly unarmed, and she knew
she could slay him with or without a sword.
Then the older man bowed and smiled with stark white teeth. “You don’t have to sneak around here,” he said in Japanese, far
more accented than Lee’s speech. “You’re welcome to visit whenever you want.”
Perhaps it was just his accent, but something about his words made her skin prickle the way it did when her father snuck up on her in the forest. Lee’s expression screamed unease at her, so she slid the blunt end of her blade across the back of her hand and sheathed it quickly, bowing.
Sen knew, even then, that she stood on the precipice of something dangerous as she looked between the two men, who wore such
similar faces but could not have been more different.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I apologize for waking you.”
“It’s not a problem,” the older man said, smiling again and waving his hand as if to dismiss the thought. “Good night.”
Then the older man turned and shut the door, footsteps echoing as he retreated down the hallway.
“What did you say to him?” Sen said.
Lee grimaced, but his shoulders had relaxed. It was like he was a creature of the night who’d been forced to bear the burning
sunlight for a few moments, and now was at ease in the cool shade once more.
“What he wanted me to say,” he said. When Sen’s expression didn’t change, he elaborated: “That you’re a girl from town who
I met today.”
“Your father lets you bring strange girls into his house?”
“He wishes I would do it more,” the man said flatly.
Sen didn’t understand what this meant, but perhaps it was a custom of foreigners, so she didn’t question it. She began to
feel sick standing in this room that was not her room. Maybe it was the thought that everything she owned was now in the hands
of foreigners.
“Could I see your side of the house?” Lee said quietly. His eyes burned with an odd intensity as he looked past her at the
mirror image of his own room.
“That is a very bad idea,” Sen said. “Your father might allow me in your room, but my father would not allow you in mine.
He would kill you on the spot.”
The man’s lips pressed together into a thin line, but he glanced quickly at her katana and nodded. “Fine. Then we’ll meet tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Sen echoed, letting out a sharp laugh. “When I wake up, I’ll probably think this was all a dream.”
The man hummed. His gaze darted around his room as if searching for something. He opened a drawer, pawed through it a bit,
then offered her a silver fork.
“Proof,” he said simply.
She took it with stiff fingers. “You do know that there are forks in my time?” she said.
He shrugged. “But do you keep any in your room?”
Sen looked down at the shiny silver teeth. No, there were no forks in her house. They were a relic of the West, something
her father didn’t allow in their home.
“When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll find a fork beside your pillow, and you’ll remember.”
“I... suppose that will work,” Sen said. When Lee kept looking at her expectantly, she nodded toward the shattered sword
guard on the floor. “You can keep that,” she said. “For the same reason.” She had no need for an old, broken sword guard anyway.
Lee turned and picked up the pieces, running his fingers across the grooves. “Thank you,” he said. “Sen,” he added quickly.
Her name sounded strange on his lips, like it had taken on a new meaning that she herself did not yet understand. Sen for one thousand , a name that was supposed to mean longevity but was now the name of a ghost.
“Good night,” she said.
There was nothing more to say, so Sen stepped back through the door, closing it behind her.
“Lee Turner,” she whispered to herself, holding the fork tight in her hand.