Chapter Fourteen Lee #2
He pulled out his laptop and made a quick table, filling in as many variables as he could think of.
First, the environmental factors: time of day, weather, temperature, moon phase.
Then factors related to him or Sen: last meal eaten, last words spoken, body temp, emotions.
He filled in as much as he could remember about the first time they’d met at night, then the second time.
Last, he filled in all the information about this moment, then marked in the last column that the door remained closed.
He scanned the spreadsheet, but no discernable pattern emerged. He would need more data.
The longer he sat around waiting and adding to his spreadsheet, the more his unease grew. Sen had been real, he was certain.
But he went to his nightstand anyway, clutching the sword guard with the golden turtle—what was it with Japanese people and
turtles, anyway? Lee had read that turtles symbolized longevity, even immortality. They appeared all over ancient Japanese
art and folktales, but hardly seemed fierce enough for a warrior’s sword guard.
Lee turned the pieces of the sword guard over in his hands, pressing them together so he could read the inscription carved
around the hole. He did his best to read it but came up short, so he typed his guess into Google Translate, which helpfully
corrected it for him.
The way of the samurai is found in death .
Death seemed like a strange sentiment to carry with one’s sword, and if anything, contradicted the turtle on the front. Were
samurai meant to die, or live forever?
The door was still dark, so Lee took the sword guard and headed through the kitchen, out to the northern yard. He would take
a walk, and maybe when he came back, Sen would be there as well.
He followed yesterday’s path to the beach. The shore had yawned wider in his absence and was slowly retreating to the mountains. Waves had left indentations in the sand, marking everywhere the water had touched. Lee walked forward, despite Hina’s warning, chasing after the cold sea.
He walked out farther than he meant to, and when he turned around, the house was a tiny brown square in the distance. He felt,
in that moment, that if he only kept walking, he could cross the entire ocean. The sea would part for him, inviting him deeper
and deeper, the ocean floor a white carpet rolled out only for him.
Something sharp pinched his foot.
He hissed and jumped back, hopping while he examined his sole. He’d stepped on a piece of sea glass, and now his foot was
bleeding. The sea was warning him away, it seemed. Maybe one day, he would cross it. But not today.
He cast one last glance at the invitation of the sea, then turned and headed back home.
He rinsed his foot in the shower, then placed a Band-Aid over it, and by the time he returned to his room, light glowed behind
his closet door.
He snatched his laptop off his futon and jotted down as much data as he could before Sen got impatient, then snapped his laptop
shut and opened the door.
Sen looked younger in the light of day.
She had looked celestial in the pale moonlight, but now there were no shadows to hide the tired creases of her eyes, her sallow
complexion, her chapped lips. She wore the cinched robes of a warrior and had tied her hair back harshly, as if to counteract
the way the sunlight softened her cheeks and warmed her eyes with gold. Lee remembered what his father said about Japanese
women, then wished he could crush the thought. Sen was special, he could admit as much. But not because of her beauty. Lee
had no need for something like that.
“Good morning,” Sen said, not bowing.
He stepped aside and waved for Sen to come in, then quietly shut the door behind her.
She kept one hand on her sword as she examined his room in daylight, then turned to face Lee, waiting.
They shared an uneasy glance as they both waded into the wrongness of the moment—what happened at night could pass as a dream, but what happened during the day was real.
“You don’t need to bring a katana with you,” Lee said to break the silence, imagining how many people would stare at them
as they walked into town. “No one is going to attack you here.”
“And I’m supposed to take your word for that?” Sen said. “Samurai don’t just leave their swords behind.”
“There were no samurai in October of 1877,” Lee said before he could think better of it. He regretted not taking any sedatives—they
would have allowed him to catch that thought before it reached his lips and risked upsetting Sen.
But Sen only rolled her eyes. “There are always samurai, no matter what the government says. I’m training for the second rebellion.
After that, the samurai will return.”
Second rebellion? Lee thought. He knew that no such thing had happened, but he worried that saying this aloud would upset Sen and make her
leave.
“I suppose that’s where I’ll die,” Sen said, her gaze falling to the floor. “If I even make it that long.”
The light shifted through the window behind Sen, and for a moment, she looked almost translucent. Lee imagined her skin sloughing
off, flesh falling away, bones crumbling to powder. He wasn’t talking to a girl, but a refraction of light.
There were many things Lee wanted to ask her, but he had the sense that she would say very little until she got what she wanted.
“Are you hungry?” Lee said.
Sen’s gaze snapped to him. She hadn’t expected the question, and the hard mask of fearlessness fell away for a moment, her
brow furrowed. “No,” she lied.
Lee turned and opened the door to the hall, then crossed over to the kitchen, waving for Sen to follow.
He went to the fridge and pulled out a bowl of cold miso soup that Hina had made the day before, portioned it into two bowls and set it on the kitchen table.
People were simple at their core—you fed them and they trusted you, just like dogs.
Sen lingered in the doorway, looking palely around the kitchen. Lee pretended not to notice her hesitation and set a spoon
in front of each place mat, then gestured for Sen to sit. Her gaze darted between him and the soup.
“Do you think I’ve done something to it?” Lee said. He sighed and switched his bowl with Sen’s, but still, she shifted from
foot to foot and didn’t sit down. “Should I mix them together?” Lee said, his feigned hospitality wearing thin. “Drink from
each of them? You saw me pour them from the same container.”
She shook her head, gazing across the shelves, the windows, the wallpaper. “Your side of the house feels strange,” she said.
“There’s something different about it, but I’m not sure what.”
“There are many differences,” Lee said, setting down his spoon. “It’s been over a century.”
Sen ignored him, examining the kitchen cabinets, the clock on the wall, the messy counters. Then she faced the doorway and
stilled as her gaze locked on the far wall.
“What is that stain from?” Sen asked, pointing to the stain by the kitchen doorway—the same stain Lee had seen when he first
entered the house.
Coldness crept up Lee’s spine. Sen shouldn’t have been able to see the stain—Lee had scraped most of it away, and what remained
was barely visible against the dark wood. Yet, somehow, she was looking straight at it.
“I don’t know,” Lee said, though his words suddenly felt like static in his mouth. “It was here when I moved in.”
Sen went rigid at his words, her gaze fixed on the doorframe, her face drained of color.
“Is something wrong?” Lee said.
Sen swallowed hard, then turned to Lee. “No,” she said, though it was a lie. “I just... I don’t like stains.”
A hot wind sighed through the open window, rustling the pages of the calendar on the wall. Lee and Sen remained perfectly
still, fixed under each other’s gazes like bugs pinned to a board. The sun shifted across Sen’s face, but she didn’t flinch
at the sting of sunlight skewering her left eye.
“Neither do I,” Lee said. The words felt sacred as they left his mouth, the secret he had never said out loud because no one
would understand. But in that moment, Sen was his god, swallowing his prayers in silence, offering nothing in return.
Hina appeared in the doorway.
“You’re up early,” she said to Lee, reaching to pluck her apron off the hook with a smile, but her hand froze a breath away
as her gaze fell on Sen. She let out a quiet sound of surprise, then quickly bowed.
Sen bowed tentatively, her eyes locked on Hina. When Hina rose from her bow, all the brightness had left her expression, her
face oddly gray.
“This is Sen,” Lee said. “Sen, this is Hina, my dad’s girlfriend.”
Neither woman spoke. Silence swelled between them, even the wind suddenly breathless as sunlight shifted across the kitchen
floor. The Hina who Lee knew would have been jumping up to offer Sen food. But instead, she was dissecting Sen with her glare.
“Are you two going into town?” Hina said at last, turning to Lee and smiling. She spoke in English, which was unusual when
Lee’s father wasn’t there.
“Yeah, we’re going for a walk,” Lee answered in Japanese.
“Then she needs to leave that behind,” Hina said, jerking a finger at Sen.
It took Lee a moment to understand that she meant the katana. Lee didn’t know if Sen understood English, but she put a hand on her blade all the same.
“You can’t carry a katana in public,” Hina said, this time in Japanese, turning to Sen.
“Why not?” Sen said, eyes narrowed.
“It’s illegal,” Hina said simply.
Lee clenched his teeth, regretting that he’d brought Sen to the kitchen. It wouldn’t take Sen long to figure out that if carrying
a katana was illegal, there were no samurai in 2026. And if there were no samurai, the second rebellion she’d mentioned had
failed. If she felt all hope was lost, she might forego their agreement entirely.
Sen pressed her lips together, and for a moment Lee worried she would cut Hina down rather than abandon her sword. But she
stiffly worked the katana out of the straps of her clothing and set it on the table.
“Have fun,” Hina said airily, then disappeared into the shadows of the hallway.
Sen stood very still, staring at the space where Hina had been, fists clenched at her sides.
“Lee,” she said quietly, still facing away from him, “there are no samurai in your time, are there?”
Lee wanted to lie to her. Because if he told her the truth, she would know that everything she’d trained for was a waste of
time. But he knew from the way her voice trembled that she already knew the answer and only needed him to say it. He wanted
the truth, so it was only fair to offer Sen the same.
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Sen stood still for a moment longer, staring into the dark hallway. She hardly breathed at all, her posture so stiff that
she looked more like a marble statue than a real person.
Lee knew that human brains could be slow to accept difficult truths, that they would do anything at all to cast that informa tion back out to sea. Even when confronted with the truth, most people couldn’t swallow it whole, or they’d choke.
He watched as this truth washed over Sen, its cold waters rising above her head. Her pupils expanded, her eyes filling with
shadows, her breath slowing down. She stared into the empty hallway, but her mind was somewhere far away.
Lee felt the strange sensation that he was outside his body, watching a film of his own life. He had seen this moment before,
somewhere, somehow. He could taste the exquisite agony of Sen’s broken heart. He knew this feeling.
He was twelve years old, sitting at the kitchen table, and his father was telling him that his mom was never coming home.
And it hadn’t hurt that much at the time, because he’d folded himself into a suitcase in his mind and gone somewhere far away.
He wondered where Sen had just gone.
“We still remember them,” Lee said.
Sen blinked slowly, then turned and faced Lee, her pupils gaping chasms of black. “What?”
“There’s a samurai museum in town, and lots of books and movies,” he said. “Even in America, everyone knows about the samurai.
So, while you can’t carry around a sword in public anymore, the samurai aren’t really gone.”
Sen tilted her head, looking at him strangely, and Lee replayed the last sentence in his mind to check if he’d made a mistake
in Japanese. But then a small smile curved the corner of Sen’s mouth.
“Some things are better left in the past,” she said. “But thank you, Lee Turner.”
Then she turned and headed for the door, through the house that she already knew, for she had lived there a hundred years
ago. Lee hurried after her down the front steps, casting one last glance back at the house. Hina stood in the window, her
expression dark as she watched them walk away.