Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
Kit
From the moment Kit landed in Tokyo, she was hungry.
Her stomach grumbled at everything she saw: the convenience stores with rice balls, an endless array of iced coffees, machines dispensing soft serves and multicolored snacks.
She passed shops with sliding doors that revealed counters with people sitting in neat rows, eating bowls of savory noodles, the smell of meat grilling floating out into the street.
It could have been the jet lag, but the hunger wasn’t just in her stomach; it was in her eyes.
The buildings were vast and lower than she had expected, unfamiliar.
The facades came alive with bright lights and screens, the buildings curved in ways she’d never seen, and highways snaked through the city.
Kit felt like she towered over people in the street, but nobody turned to look at her; nobody asked her where she was from.
She wondered whether it was acceptance or the anonymity of this sprawling city, so far from the familiarity of home.
The sound of the trains and traffic enveloped her gently.
The arms of the sprawling city embraced her in its thronging silence.
She wanted to examine everything up close, smell and touch it all.
She wanted to run her hands along the ridges of the lanterns that hung just at her eyeline as she walked down the narrow streets.
She wanted to search for the city’s secrets.
Her ears rang with pleasure at the sound of the rhythmic ebb and flow of a language she couldn’t wrap her tongue around, not even a few of the words, a song with notes she couldn’t reach.
On her first day, she rushed out to explore.
Mrs. Buchanan had given her a detailed list of trains to take in order to get home afterward, and a card with their address written down if she got really stuck.
Later, the midday sun burned down on her shoulders, but she continued to walk through the city.
Kit stopped outside a Neko café and looked through the window.
She’d seen these places on Instagram. Cafés with cats that wandered around and relished attention from the customers.
She didn’t like cats, and she watched as three high school girls in sailor uniforms giggled over their iced coffees while a fat cross-eyed ragdoll flopped around on their laps, leaving swirls of hair over the navy fabric of their skirts.
The hair on their clothes made her feel a little sick.
A slim tabby in the window looked out at Kit with disdain.
Further down the street, a group of mothers sat on a small bench outside a soft-serve stall, licking green matcha ice creams as they rocked their babies in their carriers.
Every time they laughed, they covered their mouths in a gesture tinged with embarrassment.
She walked for hours. Kit wanted to see everything.
There was no plan, she just had to take it all in—nobody was going to call her and check on her whereabouts.
She was completely left to her own agenda, and it was intoxicating.
Then, her calves started to ache. She wished she had worn sandals instead of her sweaty sneakers.
There was a thin veil of dirt over her skin.
She could smell it. But it was nothing like the grime she felt in Philly.
She followed her map back toward the Buchanans’ home in 1-Chome, passing the Imperial Palace moat and then going straight toward Shinjuku.
She got a second wind and kept going. The vast crossing and train lines seemed to spread around her as she arrived at Shinjuku’s main pedestrian crossing, facing the massive station.
She headed down a side street and suddenly found herself standing among bars with shutters closed and neon signs outside yet to be lit for the evening patrons.
A red-and-pink sign outside one of the tiny doorways said: short time: 2,000 yen .
The brazen illicitness of the sign seemed to be whispering loudly.
Everything suddenly looked seedy and dirty around her, and she wondered what it was like at night, whether these side streets were still deserted, as the people who booked the rooms by the hour covertly headed up the dark stairways.
Something moved behind the trash cans, and she quickened her pace; she hurried back toward the main roads leading to the central station depot.
She stopped in front of a row of vending machines, lights flashing, offering iced coffee, hot coffee, lemon drinks, peach drinks, and Coke.
She took a picture and posted it, then slotted the coins in and chose a slim can of Coke Light.
She saw her reflection in the glass, her hair light against the jet-black hair of the people passing behind her.
She felt enormous beside the Japanese people crossing the roads, especially the women, a full head taller than them.
She clutched the icy can and followed the signs for her platform.
She had never seen such crowds of people.
In New York, yes, in Times Square, but this was different; everywhere she looked there were throngs of people.
Occasionally she would notice another gai-jin , a foreigner, and feel a strange comfort in seeing someone else who didn’t quite fit in.
The train carriage was almost empty. She looked out the window and stared at the metropolis: bumper-to-bumper traffic and crowds trickled along outside.
The light was magnificent in the late afternoon, as billboards were illuminated and the reflective windows of office buildings glittered as if to show themselves off to her.
She watched the tiny figures of people move in and out through the roads.
She stared as she passed the multiple traffic lights, highways, and bridges that all intersected somehow like the most exquisite twisted metal across the vista of the city.
The sun was orange here in Tokyo, shining down from the deep blue summer sky, and everything it touched eventually became pink and soft.
She was suddenly overwhelmed with joy, and her eyes welled up with tears.
Her soul felt quiet, her mind silent except for the words I’m here.
She wouldn’t experience that feeling again, of arriving and being entirely out of herself and her body, because afterward it would be as though she had always known how it felt to be in Tokyo.
The sunburn from three days of sightseeing made the temperature in her body rise from the inside out.
She had ended up at the Asakusa shrine at midday and dawdled over the stalls and then the omikuji .
Her post had gotten 117 Likes, and Dave had put a pair of clapping hands beneath the picture.
That night she fell down the rabbit hole of his Instagram and Snapchat, taking screenshots and zooming in on his pictures.
Before she left, they didn’t even speak about college or what had passed between them.
He had just said Have a great time as he dropped her back at her house.
There was no end because, if she was really honest to herself, there had been no beginning or middle between her and Dave Harrison.
But Kit forgot about Dave the moment she set eyes on Ryo Buchanan.
She had lost track of time and forgotten her hosts were having a party that night when she had returned to the Residence after a day of sightseeing.
She arrived to the house lit with pretty lights and humming inside from the chatter among the guests.
Panic descended on her as she stood at the entrance and looked down at her dusty shoes, filthy against the glistening shine of the marble floors.
Kit had also forgotten that Ryo and Amy, their children, were back from their respective trips.
When she saw Ryo for the first time, he was standing in the middle of the cocktail party talking to three middle-aged men. One of them had their hand on his shoulder, and his silhouette was like an infrared figure in a film—with a heat that drew her to him even when she tried to look away.
Mr. Buchanan brought his son to her before she could rush up the stairs to change her dirty clothes from the day out in the city. Ryo greeted Kit with a familiarity she didn’t know how to handle.
“You’re both the same age,” Rick said as he steered his son toward Kit. “This is Sally Herzog’s daughter, Katherine, remember I told you she was staying with us.”
“Kit…” she whispered, but her own name was caught in her throat.
“Welcome to Tokyo,” Ryo said and kissed her on both cheeks like she’d seen French people do.
More heat. She could smell his soap. The scent was something she recognized, but it smelled better here, coming off his skin under the black ceiling fans that whirred above her and the muted hum of the conversations around them.
“I hope you had a good day around the city. Tokyo can be a little overwhelming at first. But Ryo can show you around—he knows all the hidden spots around this town.” Rick winked at his son.
“I sure do. Wait, I have to get something for Mom, I’ll be right back for you, Katherine,” he said and hopped back into the crowd. When he moved she felt like he leaped—as though simply walking was too ordinary for him. She watched him and realized her mouth was hanging open.
She suspected Ryo was less a boy, almost a man.
He had the kind of triangular, broad-chested body that narrowed at the waist, with skin the shade of tawny gold, and he filled his clothes as though they had been made for him.
She knew right away he was neither American nor Japanese, but somewhere on a different plane she might have recognized a little in herself.
He did return.
“What can I get you to drink? I knew you were staying with us, but I guess my folks were distracted by this party and forgot to remind me when you were arriving. Are you all settled up in the guest room?”