Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kit
Kit was due to leave Tokyo in just a couple of weeks, so Ryo organized a trip for her to Kyoto with a great gang, which ended up being Christian, Amy, and two other friends of Ryo’s from high school, Ken and Edward, who Kit barely spoke to.
Kit had already visited the giant Buddha in the small seaside town of Kamakura, at Yuriko’s insistence.
She had gone to a sumo match at Kokugikan Sumo Arena with Ryo, surrounded by passionate, sweaty middle-aged Japanese men shouting at the otherworldly, fleshy fighters wrestling in the ring.
Kit was beside herself with nerves as the overnight trip to Kyoto drew near.
Her legs felt wobbly as she boarded the train; she sat quietly and watched the view whooshing past her as she tried not to listen to Ryo and his friends discussing everything they had done that summer.
Edward had been having an affair with a married woman, and Ken was working as a photographer’s assistant.
Her hands shook as she pulled her suitcase to the check-in desk of the hotel.
The young man of indistinguishable age with floppy orange-dyed hair kept bowing and apologizing, Sorry, one more time, please spell . He had never heard of Philadelphia.
Kit became distracted and self-conscious. She felt the heat of embarrassment rush over her like an unexpected wave and her face became hot and red.
“Everything okay?” Ryo asked, turning away from his friends.
“Yup, all good thanks,” she replied through a sigh and wrote out P-H-I-L-A-D-E-L-P-H-I-A on a scrap of paper for the desk worker.
Her room had twin beds, and Kit set her bag in the corner and sat on her bed. She was sharing with Amy, who followed her in, threw her bag on the floor, and immediately lay down, clasped her hands on her stomach, and closed her eyes with a loud sigh.
It was the first time she had seen Amy in a week, but Amy barely spoke to her—or anyone for that matter—on the bullet train from Tokyo.
She’d been getting home late and sleeping until the late afternoon, and Kit could see from the dark circles under Yuriko’s eyes that she’d been waiting up for her too.
Kit wondered who she’d been out with every night.
“Hey, are you okay? You hardly said a word on the train.”
“Yeah, I’m just tired. My mom’s on my back about college, and guy problems on top of it,” she said dismissively, eyes still closed.
Kit had heard Amy and Yuriko arguing the last few nights. Their raised voices vibrated through the walls. They shouted in Japanese, so she didn’t know what they said, but felt like she understood as Yuriko’s voice trilled with a sharpness she never revealed in company.
“Wanna talk?” Kit asked.
Amy said nothing, and Kit waited until she began to feel awkward.
“Were your parents on your case about college? Like, did you ever consider not going?” Amy finally asked as Kit started to unpack her bag.
“I never considered not going to college. But my parents did get on my case when I wasn’t studying hard enough. It’s not my bag all the time, you know?”
“What is your bag?” Amy asked.
Kit was surprised, since Amy never asked questions.
“I guess, my friendships, social life. I’m not super academic. My grades are fine, but I’m not very hardworking.”
“I know what you mean. Kind of. I’m the same in a way.” Amy sighed.
“Are you? Well, what’s your bag, Amy? What are you interested in?”
Amy rubbed her eyes with both fists, and Kit saw black kohl smudge across her knuckles.
Amy suddenly laughed. “You know, I don’t know why I said that earlier, I actually do okay at school. My grades are good. But I am not interested in going to a fancy college like my brother. I do better than Ryo. I know, you can’t believe it, right? And that drives my mom totally crazy.”
Kit was stunned by this new information. In her mind, Amy’s reckless behavior with older men over the summer had led her to assume that school and grades were not important to Amy.
“Yeah, it drives my mom crazy that I could go to an even better college than my brother and yet I am showing zero interest or willingness. What about Harvard, Amy-chan? MIT? Oxbridge? But maybe it just won’t suit me, you know?
I might just prefer to go straight to work or something.
Anyway.” She paused and yawned. Kit had to stifle her own impulse to yawn too.
“I’m so tired. I’m going to have a little sleep. ”
Amy sat up and grabbed an eye mask out of her backpack and pulled it over her eyes.
Kit sat completely still for a few moments and stared at Amy.
In that moment, she just looked like someone who was lost and exhausted.
A child who didn’t know when she’d reached her limits.
Kit recognized it, because she too could be this way.
She stood up and walked quietly to the window that overlooked the city, a vast spread of gray and white low-rise buildings that seemed unremarkable.
This was Kyoto? But then as she looked again, beyond the buildings and peppered in between were the ornate tops of shrines and pagodas.
She wanted to get out. It was midday, and her stomach grumbled and told her it was time to eat.
She could hear Amy’s breathing had slowed and her stomach moved up and down as she slept.
She let out a quiet snore. Kit moved slowly toward the door and closed it behind her with a padded click.
She walked down the hall and heard Ryo’s muffled laugh through the walls.
She hovered by his room, changed her mind, and turned to leave as the door suddenly opened.
“Hey, we were just coming for you guys,” Ryo said, his hair wet from the shower. He wore the hotel slippers, basketball shorts, and a T-shirt.
“Oh hey, I was going to go out, get some food.”
“We’re going to get some soba. Come with?” he said, pushing past Christian as he locked the door.
“Where’s Amy?” Christian asked.
“Asleep, she seemed tired,” Kit said, pinching the neckline of her shirt.
“You guys go ahead,” Christian mumbled and disappeared back into the room before they could persuade him to come. Kit looked back as Ryo led her down the stairs and saw that Christian had reemerged from his room and was walking barefoot to her and Amy’s room.
Ryo opened the door for her and put his hand around her wrist as he pulled her alongside him. “Where do you want to go first?”
She shrugged, smiled, and let him lead her. She didn’t care where they went; she felt as though joy would burst out of her.
They walked in silence down the street, and before the bus arrived, he kissed her hand.
There was a strange sphere around her when she was with him; she felt like the world was still and nothing outside this very moment mattered.
It was like she was two people. She was always two people—split into two halves that wouldn’t fit: one part Kit Herzog, one part the adopted girl.
But with Ryo, the two pieces that were always floating apart came together: Philly Kit, and Tokyo Kit. She might be whole.
They walked around the glittering lake surrounding Kinkakuji where the golden walls of the temple sparkled over the surface of the pond, and when the sun hit the water and reflections danced against Ryo’s face, its impossible beauty rippled through her.
She felt as though she weren’t actually there, but dreaming.
They slurped soba noodles, after they watched the soba master pull and knead and cut and pull and knead and cut in front them, never once getting a speck on his crisp white uniform.
They jumped back onto a bus to Ryoan-ji and sat on the steps in silence, their knees touching, while they watched tourists walk in and out of the shrine.
But the heady silence set off a strange hysteria between them.
It started with Kit clumsily tripping over her own feet as she walked to the edge of the garden; she gasped, and her face flushed.
Ryo grimaced but his eyes were laughing, and as they looked at each other the silence became bigger.
Some of the other tourists tutted, which only gave Ryo an even broader smile.
Kit started to shake from the back of her throat down to her stomach, a giggle threatening to escape her mouth.
Her eyes began to well up with hot tears of laughter, and Ryo kept his eyes on her, biting his lip, trying to hide his smile.
They stood up noisily and rushed out, eliciting disapproving looks.
The day was slowing, the sun falling lower, and there was a pink blanket over the rooftops.
The cicadas’ humming quietened as they climbed up the hill toward Kiyomizu-dera .
The stairs to the deck surrounding the main shrine were at a very steep gradient, and went on and on.
Her thighs began to burn, but she tried to keep up with Ryo, who skipped two steps at a time. Show-off.
They watched the sun go down, and the lights of the city took over from the day.
There were two girls, dressed in kimonos, purple and red obis around their waists.
She watched the small, delicate steps they took as they tottered carefully over the uneven floorboards.
Kit thought of Yuriko at the midsummer party dressed in her yukata .
“I don’t want to go back,” Ryo said suddenly as he leaned over the ledge, keeping his eye on the horizon.
“I know what you mean, it’s amazing here.” She sighed and let herself lean against his shoulder, emboldened by their day.
“No, I mean, I don’t want to go back to the hotel, to everyone, I just want us to have some alone time before we join up with them again. I don’t want to think about the fall, about you going back to Philly, about what’s coming next. I just want to stay here now, like this.”
“Me too.”
“I guess Amy probably knows about us by now. I haven’t said anything because she seems to be going through one of her moments right now. Unless you already told her.”
Kit said nothing and shook her head.