“Maybe in your backward country they have some crazy laws, but -”
He sighed and leaned back against the subway seat, fitting the heels of his palms against his closed eyes. “It’s got nothing to do with laws, Hiroe. It’s about consent, and the ability to know what you’re agreeing to – we’ve been through this before. And I wish you’d stop asking all the time.” He took down his hands and gave her a meaningful look. “Do you have any idea what thats like for me?”
“No,” she sulked, and this time her expression was real.
John turned toward her then. He put an arm around her shoulders. “Have you ever heard of the Chinese water torture?”
Hiroe was shocked and amazed. He had his arm around her! In public, no less – like they were a real couple. She fought to keep her breathing even. Betraying her excitement might dislodge him.
“Most likely some product of another barbarian culture,” she said loftily.
“Ah, the youth of today,” he sighed and ran a finger along Hiroe’s forehead, stroking the roots of her glossy black hair. “Please, allow me to educate you.”
“What does this have to do with -”
“Shh,” he whispered. “Now lie back.”
Hiroe felt a gentle tap on her forehead. She knew it was his finger, but it felt as if a drop of water had landed there. She felt another tap after a few seconds, and then another. Hiroe’s head rolled in time to the swaying of the subway car, but somehow he always managed to touch the exact same spot.
“John -”
His opposing hand on her shoulder held her in place. The tapping continued, becoming very annoying very quickly.
“Quit it!” Hiroe twisted away.
He smiled at her. “Terrible, isn’t it? The Chinese used to interrogate prisoners this way. They’d tie people down, suspend a water clock over them, and let the droplets fall, just like that, for hours or days. Sometimes people went insane.”
He leaned in close and his voice was barely a whisper. “That’s what it’s like for me when you keep asking all the time.”
SHI
Hiroe, entranced by the blossoms, has taken longer than usual on her walk home from school. Yet he is there, at the temple.
He is kneeling with his back to her, as still as a lake in winter. She doesn’t dare interrupt his meditation – at least not at first. But after a time, worry steals in. Is he angry that she is late? Did he even hear her approach? It wouldn’t do to call his name, but…
Carefully, she slips off her shoes and kneels down beside him.
“Why are you here burning incense all the time?” she whispers in the semidarkness.
“Usually it’s to ask Amida Buddha for guidance.” His measured words rise like smoke toward the wooden rafters. His gaze is also directed upward, until he directs it to her dark and shining eyes. “But sometimes I also ask for forgiveness.”
She shivers.
On the tatami mat in front of him, Hiroe sees a bag from Kyobuy, the new department store near the university.
“What’s in there?”
“You’re a curious little girl, aren’t you?”
“Is it a present for me?”
“Perhaps. Or it might be for me. One never can tell.”
He rises fluidly, makes a final obeisance to the Buddha image, and then strides to the porch to find his shoes.
“Where are we going?” chirps Hiroe, stuffing her feet into her black tie-ups, usually fashionable but now a nuisance. She lets the laces dangle, clattering down the steps after him.
He strides quickly through the mosaic of fallen cherry blossoms, snow white in the light of the streetlamps. His pace is brisk. She has to run to catch up.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
It is in fact a teahouse in the heart of Gion, one that used to host geisha in bygone days. Hiroe is aghast at being taken to such an elegant place in her school uniform, while he’s almost unbearably handsome in his khakis and a white button-down. But when she tells him as much, he laughs.
“So I was supposed to have let you go home to change? I’m sure your mother would have just let you breeze on out again.”
Hiroe hadn’t thought of that.
“Where do your parents think you are, anyway?”
“At Rei’s house. Studying.”
“Ah, of course.” His expression is unreadable and dark somehow. For the first time, Hiroe feels a bit apprehensive.
The hostess seats them in a private room, with a black lacquered table in the centre. There is a view of the courtyard – some greenery and a pond. A heartbeat after the hostess leaves, the paper screen slides back to admit a cheerful woman with a tea service. There are cups on the tray, a pot of steaming water, and a small porcelain bowl with tea itself. As she leaves, John tips her. The yen notes are discreetly folded, but Hiroe realizes this is much more than the average gratuity.
Once their server has padded noiselessly away, John turns to her.
“Well, my dear, we’re alone now.”
She sits still, wondering what he’ll do next.
“Don’t you want to kiss me?”
She blinks. It takes a moment for her to realize that he really expects it of her, that he won’t move until she acts first. Afraid and yet mesmerized by the beautiful shape of his lips, she slides off of her cushion and crawls to where he sits quite composedly. Her first kiss is delicate – just a brush of his cheek with lips sweetly pursed – yet while he doesn’t flinch away, he doesn’t kiss her back either.
She draws nearer. She takes his face in her hands. With a thumb on each cheekbone she traces them, traces the contours of his eyes and then closes them. His nose and chin are the targets of her kisses, and then his mouth. When their lips touch he returns the kiss at last. The caress of his mouth is indeed as she imagined: as soft as the petals falling silently in the streets outside, but warmer. There is a perfume to him, too – a wonderful manly scent that she’d never noticed because she’d never come this close. His breath wafts across her nose and her lashes, causing a shiver to course through her, and a stirring, farther down.
His kisses are chaste, gentle. After a time Hiroe tries to speed them into something more passionate, but each time he draws away. She is kneeling to one side of him. He has not moved except to turn his head. The effort of rising to meet his lips is telling. Her thighs quiver with the strain of it. It makes her aware of the growing heat between them.
“Hiroe, permit me something.”
She leans against him, the top of her head against the centre of his chest, but she is looking at the tatami mats to one side and not into his lap because she’s shy about what has grown there.
“Anything.”
She can feel his smile. “Just what I wanted to hear.”
He pushes her back and dips a careful finger into the water for the tea, which is still steaming. Fleetingly, he frowns.
“I want you to sit up here on the table facing me.”
Hiroe opens her eyes. He is putting the tray with the tea things on the floor, making room.
“Sit? On the table?” It’s a preposterous suggestion, as if he’d asked her to eat dinner off a chair.
“Shh. I’m going to give you your present now.”
GO
Hiroe shuffled glumly out into the schoolyard. On either side of her, Rei and Asuka chattered merrily, but she couldn’t find it in her to join them. The chill winter air nipped at her knees and nose, reminding her that despite these weeks upon weeks of carefully spaced intervals of flirting with John and ignoring him, nothing had changed.