At lunch, Kara opened her bento box and discovered a small, folded piece of paper, stained with the juice of the shredded steak and peppers her father had packed for her. She unfolded it to discover a short note in his messy scrawl. Have a good day, it read. Love, Dad.
Six simple words, and yet they made her feel so good. And less alone. Smiling, she folded the note and slipped it into her jacket pocket.
The one thing she couldn’t shake, though, was her concern for Sakura. Ume had gone a little nuts yesterday, which could probably be forgiven, since Jiro had apparently been her ex. But clearly something simmered underneath all of this that no one had bothered to share with Kara. She didn’t understand the dynamics. Ordinarily she wouldn’t mind, but she had found a friend in Sakura and she wanted to be helpful and supportive, which was difficult without knowing the whole story.
On the other hand, she also knew it was none of her business, and she’d have to live with that.
After lunch, the principal called an assembly in the gymnasium and spoke to the students, discussing Jiro’s death in only the most peripheral ways, as if he had passed away in his sleep or something equally innocuous. A counselor spoke next, announcing that appointments would be available to anyone who wished to come in to discuss their feelings about the tragedy.
When the assembly ended, the principal announced that all afternoon classes were canceled. After o-soji, the day students would be allowed to go home and the boarders back to their dorm. But he also noted that most club meetings scheduled for the afternoon and evening would still take place, so Kara thought the gesture of canceling classes seemed pretty pointless.
Mr. Matsui, her homeroom teacher, approached her in the corridor after the assembly.
“Today is your turn to help with the girls’ bathroom on this floor,” he said, smiling oddly.
Kara caught herself before she could make a sarcastic remark, but the expression of dismay on her face must have been clear, for the teacher chuckled softly.
“Don’t worry. I have given you a reprieve until next week. You can sweep classrooms today.”
She bowed in gratitude, relieved but also curious.
“Sensei, I am thankful, but why would you do this?”
Mr. Matsui glanced around. Students were moving busily through the halls, preparing to perform their tasks for o-soji. No one was paying them any attention. His brown eyes narrowed behind his glasses, his square head inclining toward her.
“You may be used to working hard in school, but I thought you might need time to adjust to cleaning toilets.”
Kara smiled. “You’re very kind. Honestly, I would prefer never to clean a toilet. I suspect everyone feels that way. But I don’t want to be treated differently just because I’m not Japanese.”
He studied her, smile slipping away. Serious as his expression became, she felt his approval.
Mr. Matsui bowed. “An admirable choice.” He arched a graying eyebrow. “Report to the girls’ bathroom, then.”
She returned his bow and hurried to her duties. For the first four or five steps, she felt proud of herself and grateful to Mr. Matsui. By the sixth step, all she could think about was cleaning toilets, and she began to wish she was the kind of person who would have accepted Mr. Matsui’s gesture. He had done it out of kindness, but if she didn’t like people being cruel or ignorant toward her because she was different, she didn’t think people should treat her better because of it, either.
The door to the girls’ bathroom swung open as Kara approached, and Miho came out lugging two bags of trash.
“Hi,” Miho said, stopping in the hallway. She made a face. “Listen, I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for running off yesterday. I didn’t want to leave Sakura on her own-”
“It’s okay,” Kara interrupted. “I understand. Or, I guess I do. As much as I can, since obviously there’s a lot going on around here that I don’t know, with Sakura and Ume and all of that.”
Miho started to reply, probably to apologize, but Kara held up a hand.
“No, no. It’s just an observation. I’m not upset about it. I’m new, and we don’t know each other that well yet. It’s okay.”
Miho looked unsure. “Really?”
Kara smiled. “Really.”
“So, what are you doing for o-soji? I’ve already got the trash, so
… oh, no. Don’t tell me you have toilet duty?”
Kara executed a deep, theatrical bow.
Miho laughed and shook her head at the same time. “Well, the good news is that after today, you won’t have to do toilets again for months.”
“The worst part is that I sort of volunteered for it.”
“What?”
“A long story,” Kara said. “I’ll explain later.”
She opened the bathroom door. Miho started down the hall with her garbage bags. The door had started to swing shut when Miho called back to her, and Kara propped it open with her hand.
“Yeah?”
“You only have a week left to decide what club you’re going to be in,” Miho said. “Miss Aritomo will be doing a presentation for new members at Noh Club today. You should come.”
Kara thought about it. She’d done some research online over the weekend about Noh theater, mainly because Miho had already suggested she join the club. Some of it seemed really interesting, though it sounded like a ton of work.
“Okay. I’ll come.”
Miho beamed.
Kara sat with Miho in the middle of Miss Aritomo’s classroom, listening to the art teacher talk about the Noh theater club. The woman spoke with contagious passion, eyes alight with a love for her subject. No wonder Dad has a crush on her, she thought. Petite and very pretty, Aritomo-sensei had a quiet intelligence and a bright smile, and Kara had yet to see her in an outfit she didn’t envy. Today she wore a simple white blouse and beige skirt, but the cut was so stylish that she looked like she’d just stepped off a runway.
Any time Miss Aritomo’s name came up, Kara’s father got a certain look in his eyes, a glimmer of a grin that he couldn’t hide. He might not even know how attracted he was to her, but Kara knew him too well to miss it. She’d seen him grieve and, though he had laughed a lot as well in the past two years, when things were quiet, he often got a lost, distant look in his eyes that she could never seem to erase. He might not think he was ready to fall in love with someone else, but every time she saw that glimmer in his eye, Kara made a wish that it could happen for him.
As for Noh theater, Kara found everything about it fascinating. As an art form, it dated back seven hundred years. The masks, the costumes, and the precision of the performances all seemed to her to reflect the magic and mystery that Japan represented in her heart.
Miss Aritomo had welcomed them all and seemed very pleased to see Kara, which made her feel good. She had spoken briefly about the origins of Noh theater and the respect that its greatest practitioners received, as well as the seriousness with which all those involved approached their work.
“In total,” Miss Aritomo told the gathered students, “there are only about two hundred and fifty Noh plays.”
Kara raised her hand. From the surprise on Miss Aritomo’s face, she realized she probably should have waited until the end of the presentation to ask questions, but her hand was already up.
“Yes, Kara?”
“I’m sorry, Aritomo-sensei, but didn’t you say that Noh theater had been performed for seven hundred years?”
Miss Aritomo nodded. “That’s right.”
“And there are only two hundred and fifty plays?” To her, it seemed like Noh theater could be no different from novels, with millions of stories to be told.
The teacher smiled. “It is a precise art form, not something that can be created quickly. But you are right to question the number. Over the centuries there were certainly many more, but still not as many as you might imagine. Only specific kinds of stories have ever been considered appropriate for Noh theater, so the number of works is naturally limited.”