Yellow Thorns (Thorns Duet 0.50)

And since then, it’s kind of become our inside joke.

I never thought this thing with Akira—friendship, as he calls it—would go this far, but I’m glad that I at least have him.

Even if I still don’t know what he looks like.

I contemplated asking for a picture; however, not only would he refuse, but it would also kill the image I already have of him. A cute guy who’s definitely an otaku and talks about porn more than necessary.

He’s corrupted me.

My feet come to a halt inside the front door of our house. It has a wide entryway into the living area that’s diagonal from the kitchen.

Mom stands in front of a mannequin, a pincushion on her wrist and a phone to her ear while she pins a piece of cloth to the mannequin’s chest.

She might have become the CEO of Chester Couture, but she still obsesses over a mannequin at home, trying to come up with her next masterpiece.

I hide Akira’s letter in my bag before she lifts her head. While Mom knows I have a pen pal from Japan, I don’t like her touching his letters. We talk about porn sometimes and that’s not a conversation I want her to be privy to.

“Honey.” She motions at a glitter box and I give it to her.

I opt to go upstairs to my room and grin like an idiot at the thought of rereading Akira’s letter and thinking of an equally sarcastic reply. It’s a game of ours.

“Nao, wait.”

I’m two steps in, but I turn around to face Mom. She has placed the phone in her slacks’ pocket, putting a rare premature end to her conversation with her assistant, her lawyer, her accountant. Anyone who needs the great Riko Chester’s time.

She was born in Japan as Riko Sato, but she changed her last name as soon as she got American citizenship when I was a kid.

Mom is a small woman but keeps her hair long, not short like I do, and she looks like my older sister, not the woman who gave birth to me. She has flawless skin and beautiful small features that she passed down to me. Though she’s paler and has more dark circles than usual lately.

Her eyes are brown, but nowhere as big or as dark as mine. Which I guess is a feature I got from my father, who’s sort of a taboo subject in front of her.

“How did school go?” she asks with a slight accent. Since she’s first-generation, she doesn’t really speak with an American accent as I do, but it’s not for lack of trying. I guess being born speaking in a certain way stamps you for life.

I lift a shoulder. “The usual.”

Mom reaches for her pack of cigarettes and steps back from the mannequin as she lights one, then takes a drag. “How about practice?”

“It was cool.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“As if I could. You’d call the dean and get all the deets. Or maybe the coach, since she was there.”

“Do not sass me, young lady.”

“I’m not. Just making your job easy for you since, I don’t know, you prefer asking others about me instead of actually attending any of the stupid games I bust my ass for.”

“Watch your language. And it’s not like I don’t attend them because I don’t want to. Some of us work, Naomi.”

“Get back to it then.”

“Nao-chan…”

My stomach flips whenever she calls me in that endearing way. It’s like I’m back to being a little girl, when Mom was my world.

Until the red night shattered it.

She approaches slowly, releasing a puff of nicotine into the air. “Are you mad at me?”