And, as Koyamo and I sat together in the foyer, awaiting my father’s arrival, it occurred to me to quietly propose.
“As you know, it would please both our fathers if we joined in marriage,” I said to Koyamo.
Her eyes lit up at my words. But her expression remained smooth and placid as she answered, “Yes, an engagement would please them very much.”
Neither of us had mentioned finding the prospect of an engagement pleasing for reasons that had anything to do with ourselves, but I pushed on anyway. I had learned my lesson about mixing emotion and relationships after my season in the sanitorium. A loveless marriage seemed the best choice for someone in my position.
“Perhaps, then we should…” I cut off, a cold shiver running up my back.
For Satomi had blinked into the parlor without warning.
Her skin was even paler than Koyamo’s, and the blood she spat up as she choked on my father’s poison stained her mouth.
“Is this her? Is this the girl my murderer wishes for his son to marry?” Satomi demanded, her voice crackling with malice. Her eyes were as crazed as one of the spurned women in the dramas Koyamo refused to watch.
“Hayato? Hayato? Are you okay?”
Years later, Kristal’s voice pulls me into the present.
I blink a few times, forcing the memory back into the past where it belongs.
“Sorry,” I say, turning to face her. We’re in the back seat of a Suburban headed to my brother’s house. “Could you repeat the question?”
Kristal eyes me, her gaze full of worry. “What were you thinking about? You seemed really far away.”
Kristal was the opposite of Koyamo. She never let me hide. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
I cast about for a reasonable excuse and found one in the song playing on the car’s radio.
“This song, ‘Get Ready’…it is by The Temptations, yes? But the person singing doesn’t sound like a member of that group.”
To my relief, the probing look drops away from Kristal’s face. “No, it’s not. This is a cover from this white Motown funk band called Rare Earth. Jae–Hyun loves them — speaking of him, here…”
I don’t notice the sketchbook in her lap until she pulls off the top page and hands it to me. “This morning’s drawing.”
I don’t answer. I scowl at the sketch, resentment against this Jae–Hyun coursing through me. He and her job at the workshop are the only obstacles to continuing my relationship with Kristal in Japan.
“Whoa! Is this where your brother lives?” Kristal’s eyes saucer as the car swings right into the carport of my brother’s estate overlooking Lake Washington. “This place is even bigger than the workshop! I can’t believe we’re actually going to spend the night here!”
“Neither can I,” I grumble as we step out of the car. “But the pilot will have to file a new plan to get us to Japan. Yet again.”
Kristal’s expression suddenly goes from impressed to doubtful. And I brace myself to fend off another argument about why we should go to San Francisco to meet up with her Jae-Hyun instead.
But then she says, “I hope no one in your family has a soon-to-be-departed loved one.”
I’m nervous about that prospect too. If the man Kristal keeps sketching is who I think he is…
“Is it too late to go to a hotel?” Kristal asks as we walk up to the stone steps to the estate’s double front doors. “I don’t want to embarrass you.”
Her voice shakes, and just like that, my irritation fades. Suddenly, I’m more concerned with Kristal’s feelings than my own.
An idea occurs to me. “Yes, I would prefer a hotel, but there is a guard here—a spirit as you call him. He was someone who served my brother, Norio, well until his untimely death. I’ve only visited Norio’s home once, but I noticed him wandering the grounds. Back then, I cut my visit short to avoid him, but now…”
Kristal’s eyes light up. Much like Koyamo’s did at the prospect of marriage but for a much more altruistic reason. Eagerness to assist rings in her voice as she asks me, “You want to help him move on to the next realm?”
“Will you help me?” I ask.
“Of course!” she answers, her tone now bright and happy. “Poor soul. I hope we can make this plan of yours work.”
I glance over at her, an affection like nothing I’ve ever felt before rippling through me. Just as I suspected, the prospect of helping someone was enough to banish any nervous feelings about meeting my brother and his family.
“Me too,” I agree. However, I am not talking about the plan I only came up with to distract her.
I raise my arm to knock. But before my knuckles can make contact with the wood, the door swings open, revealing a small, plump black woman who is not my brother Norio’s wife.