The Spider Lily Turns into a Chrysanthemum

Ichimaku: Chapter 10

By the time they pulled up to Renji’s house in Osaka, the place was already in motion. Cars lined the street and crowded the driveway. The front gate stood open, and men in tracksuits and work gloves moved between the house and the backyard carrying coolers and folding chairs, and trays of food sealed under plastic wrap. Someone was running a mower along the fence. By the grill, two men were arguing over whether it had been cleaned or only looked clean, and above them a third stood on a ladder scooping wet leaves out of the gutter with his bare hand.
Yoshino looked out the passenger window. “He’s got them doing spring cleaning.”
“They did this two weeks ago,” Shouma said.
“That has never once stopped him.”
From the back seat, Tsubaki sighed with deep contentment. “I love being a woman.”
Shouma looked at her in the rearview mirror. “What does that have to do with anything?”
She gestured at the yard. “Look at them. Not one of those men is going to ask me to carry something.”
He pulled into the last open space by the garage. “Keep dreaming.”
“I’m not dreaming. I’m beautiful and I’m rich.” Yoshino laughed and got out, and Tsubaki continued, “So are you Yoshino.”
Yoshino did not hear Tsubaki as she had her eye on one of the men hauling bags toward the back spotted her. “Yoshino!”
“Hey!”
“Boss says you’re doing upstairs!”
Her smile went out. “What?”
Shouma shut his door. “Welcome home.”
She turned on him. “You’re helping me.”
“Well duh.”
Tsubaki stepped out of the back and smoothed her skirt. Yoshino pointed at her. “And you’re helping too.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m leaving.”
“You just got here.”
“Akira’s picking me up.”
Yoshino stared at her. “You made us drive you all the way from Kyoto so you could sit here and wait for Akira?”
Tsubaki smiled. “Yes.”
Shouma walked past them toward the house. “I told you.”
Renji came out onto the step, wiping his hands on a rag. “There you are.”
“Gramps.”
He looked at Tsubaki. “Gloves are in the garage.”
Her expression turned wounded. “I’m waiting for Akira.”
“Then work until he gets here.”
“No,” said Tsubaki, serenely.
Renji laughed, loud enough that the man on the ladder looked down. “Ha! As if I’d put you to work, sweetheart. Not while I’m breathing.”
Yoshino’s mouth fell open. “You’re joking.”
“Oh, don’t give me that. The only reason I don’t say the same to you is because you started volunteering in middle school. Now it’ll stay with you.” Renji called.
Shouma kept walking. Yoshino followed him, still irritated with her grandfather because she knew he was right. Before she was in middle school, she never had to lift a finger. Then when Shouma joined and was adopted by the grandfather, she was curious and wanted every excuse to be close to him; so she started volunteering to clean with Shouma.

Tsubaki spent the next hour in a lawn chair in the shade with a cold glass of barley tea, watching everyone else sweat. When Akira’s Lexus finally pulled through the gate, she rose. “Akira’s here.”
Renji looked over from the patio. “Both of you back for the barbecue.”
“Of course, Renji~~.”
Yoshino watched her cousin glide across the driveway. “One day,” she said, “I’m going to be treated like that.”
“No,” said Shouma.
She turned. “What do you mean, no?”
“I’m not encouraging it. You’re great as you are.”
Yoshino gave him a puzzled look, “Shouma, I was joking.”
His eyes came to her. For a moment, neither of them said anything, and she felt her face warm.
He looked away first. “That was different.”
“Oh?”

By the entrance gate, Tsubaki had stopped to watch them. Her smile grew slowly, the way it did when she’d decided something. Akira got out and kissed her cheek. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Did you help at all?”
“Of course not.”
Akira didn’t look surprised. Renji flapped a hand at them. “Take care of her, and you better bring her back for the barbecue.”
“Gladly Renji-san.”

On her way to the car, Tsubaki stopped beside Yoshino and leaned in. “Have fun cleaning.”
Yoshino narrowed her eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” Tsubaki’s glance slid to Shouma and back. “Have lots of fun.”
Yoshino blinked. Behind her, Shouma’s eyes went flat. Tsubaki got into the Lexus. The moment it passed through the gate, Shouma’s shoulders came down an inch. Yoshino saw it. “You look relieved.”
“I am.”
“She bothers you that much?”
“She watches too much.”
Yoshino looked at the gate where the car had gone. Then at him.
She watches too much, she thought. Which means there’s something to watch. Dammit.
A smile came over her face. He looked at her. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Yoshino.”
“NOTHING,” she said again, and walked into the house, “C’mon, let’s get the second floor cleaned up.”
He stood in the driveway and watched her go.

Renji sent them upstairs with a bucket and yelled out to Yoshino, “Bathroom. Storage room. Both bedrooms. Hallway. Floors last.”
Yoshino folded her arms. “Why us?”
“You live up there when you’re in Osaka.”
“It looks fine.”
“You haven’t cleaned your room since the last time you came by.”
“What the heck…”
“Work.”
He went back downstairs.
Yoshino stared at the empty staircase. “Dictator.” Louder: “YOU’RE A DICTATOR, GRAMPS.”
Shouma picked up the disinfectant. “Stop complaining.”
“You’re such a suck-up.”
“I want to finish.”
She dragged the word out as long as it would go. “Ugh, fiiine.”
He took the bathroom. She took the storage room. For the next hour they fell into a rhythm older than either of them could remember learning. He scrubbed the tile with what she considered an irresponsible amount of disinfectant. She cleared out a stack of boxes nobody had opened since she once in her 2nd year of high school, vacuumed the hallway, and went through both bedrooms collecting phone chargers and old magazines, and one of his socks from under her bed that she chose not to ask about. They kept passing each other. Each time, something small happened. When he took a garbage bag from her, his fingers ran along the back of her hand. In the narrow storage room, they turned at the same moment and her shoulder met his chest, and neither of them stepped back as quickly as they should have. Once, she crouched to pick up a fallen hanger just as he bent for it, and their hands landed on it together. They both stopped. She looked up. He looked down. Neither let go of the hanger.
It’s a hanger, she thought. I’m holding hands with him over a wire hanger.
Someone shouted downstairs about a missing extension cord, and they came apart. He went back to the bathroom without a word. She went back to her room to finish moving all her clothes in the drawers.

Eventually only the floors were left. Yoshino came into the hallway holding two old towels.
Shouma looked at them. “No.”
Her grin spread. “Yes.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“You’ve done it every time since we were kids.”
“We’re adults now.”
“So it should be easier.” She threw a towel at his chest. “Get down. We’re racing.”
He caught it and looked at her for a long time. “…Fine.”
A minute later they were both crouched at one end of the hall, palms flat on their towels, like sprinters at the line. She looked at him. He looked at her.
“Ready?”
“This is stupid.”
“Three—”
“Yoshino.”
“Two—”
“I’m not racing you.”
“One.”
She launched, “Last one is a loser that smells like natto!”
She was already sliding, laughing so hard she could barely keep her arms straight.
He went after her. “You cheated.”
“There were no rules!”
“You go on zero. It’s always been zero.”
“You said you weren’t racing!”
He caught up and their shoulders hit. Her towel twisted out from under her and she shrieked. He grabbed her arm before her face met the floor. For a second they were both crouched in the middle of the hallway, breathing hard. She looked at him. He looked at her. They broke at the same time, laughing the way they used to when they were children and had gotten away with something, helpless and out of breath, with no dignity left to protect.
She dropped onto her back on the damp floor. “My knees.”
“You’re getting old.”
“You’re older than me.”
“By a year.”
“Old man.”
She pushed the hair off her forehead. It was stuck to her skin. The collar of his shirt had gone moist with sweat.
She looked up at him. “You smell.”
“So do you.”
Her mouth fell open. “Excuse me. I meant you smell like your cologne and sweat, and it’s—” She stopped. “It’s nice.”
One eyebrow went up. “Oh?”
“And for your information, women don’t smell when they sweat.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s a fact, and the source of this information is me.”
“You smell like floor cleaner.”
She threw her towel at him. “So do you. We both need showers.”
“Agreed.”

They showered separately. Yoshino came out feeling like herself again and changed into soft grey knit capris and a matching top that wrapped and tied across the front. Shouma came out of his room a few minutes later in loose black cotton pants and a plain black T-shirt, his hair still damp, and followed her down the stairs. Most of the work below was finished. Hashiro was leaning against the kitchen counter in a tracksuit, his black hair streaked with blond. “Hey!”
“Where’s Gramps?” Yoshino asked.
“Boss had errands. He’ll be back before dinner.” Hashiro picked up his phone. “We’re about done. A few of us are going downtown. There’s a food festival.”
Yoshino brightened. “Oh?”
“You two should come.”
“No,” said Shouma.
Hashiro laughed. “I didn’t even finish the sentence.”
“Yeah, we’re not going.”
Yoshino looked at Shouma, and then at Hashiro. “I’ll stay with him.”
Shouma’s eyes moved to her.
Hashiro shrugged. “Suit yourselves.”
Someone called his name from the yard, and he went. One of the younger men, Shouta, lingered by the dining room, and Yoshino turned to ask him about the festival. Shouma stood where he was a moment longer. Then he walked behind her. As he passed, his fingers hooked the back waistband of her capris and gave it one short tug. It was gone before she could turn. She lost the end of her sentence while she spoke to Shouta. By the time she looked over her shoulder, he was at the foot of the stairs. He glanced back and moved his head a quarter of an inch toward the second floor. She knew that look. He’d been using it since he was twelve, to tell her a teacher was coming, or that Renji was in a mood, or that it was time to leave a party before someone did something stupid.
“Come on.” was what that head tilt meant.
Something tightened low in her stomach. She turned back to Shouta, “Sorry. What were you saying?”
“The festival. All kinds of food. Lots of tourists.” He grinned. “Lots of foreign girls.”
“That’s your priority?”
“Obviously. The last one I talked to ghosted me.”
“Maybe take that as a sign.”
“A sign that I’m available.”
“That’s not what that means.”
“It means what I want it to mean.”
She shook her head. “Have fun Shouta, and don’t do anything crazy.”
“I won’t. See you at dinner!”

She waited until the screen door shut behind him. Then she went up the stairs faster than she meant to. The hallway was empty. Her room was empty. “Shouma?”
Nothing. His door, across the hall, stood a few inches open. She pushed it. “Shou—”
A hand caught her wrist from behind the door. She gasped. He pulled her in, and the door swung shut, and his back met it as he drew her against him. Her hands landed flat on his chest. Neither of them laughed. Neither of them reached for a joke. The quiet in the room had changed its weight. She could hear her own breathing. His hands settled on her waist. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, and came back. Without looking away from him, she reached past his hip, found the lock, and turned it.
Click.
His eyebrows lifted slightly. She reached higher and slid the door chain across.
His eyes followed her hand. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“That’s for emergencies.”
“This is an emergency.”
The corner of his mouth moved. “Is it?”
“Every time we get close, somebody interrupts us.”
He considered that. “Fair.”
She slid her arms over his shoulders and laced her fingers behind his neck. His expression shifted, and his hands tightened at her waist and brought her the rest of the way in.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi.”
“You dragged me up here.”
“Did I? Pretty sure you followed me.”
“You told me to.” She smiled. Their foreheads met. For a while neither of them moved. Then she lifted her face and he lowered his, and she could feel the warmth of his mouth before it reached hers—
At the last moment, something in both of them flinched. Their faces turned at the same time, and her lips landed on his cheek instead. He closed his eyes and she stayed there. She kissed his cheek again, slower, and then a third time near the edge of his jaw, and he turned his face into hers until their cheeks were pressed together, and neither of them seemed able to go any further, or willing to go back.
His hand came up and cupped the side of her face. His thumb moved along her cheekbone. “Yoshino.”
“Mm?”
Her voice had gone soft and far away. He looked at her for a long moment. “Do you want to take a nap?”
She blinked. Then she burst out laughing. “What?”
“I’m serious.”
“You pulled me into a locked room to ask me to take a nap?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm.”
“Whenever the boss made us clean,” he said, “we’d come up after and sleep.”
That was true. She’d forgotten. Every time, all through their teens, they’d finished the floors and climbed the stairs and slept through the worst of the afternoon heat.
“You took the floor cushion,” she said.
“You took the bed.”
“True”
“So now,” he said, “we both take the bed.”
She looked at him. Is this you being careful, she thought, or is this you being brave?
“That’s your whole plan?”
“Pretty much.”
She pretended to think about it. “Okay. But carry me.”
He stared at her.
“Like in a movie,” she added.
“Yoshino—”
“I know I’m five-seven and not exactly small—” She didn’t get to finish. His arm went under her knees and the other behind her back, and the floor was gone.
She yelped. “Shouma!”
“What?”
“Warn me!”
“You asked.”
Her arms went around his neck on their own. He crossed the room as if she weighed nothing in particular. “Show-off,” she said.
“You asked me to.”
“Still, now I feel a bit self conscious.”
He set her down on the mattress with more care than the trip had suggested, and climbed in beside her. Before he could settle, she pushed his shoulder.
He fell onto his back as she swung a knee across him and sat up.
He stopped breathing, and it was because she was astride his hips, her hands on his chest, looking down at him. For a few seconds neither of them moved. She watched the surprise go out of his face. What replaced it was harder to name. Heat had come up through her legs and settled somewhere under her ribs, and she didn’t know what to do with it.
I want him, she thought. And I don’t know what I’m doing.
Beneath her, he was thinking something close to it. I want her. And if I get this wrong, she’ll remember it. “Yoshino.”
She waited.
His brows drew together. “Lie down.”
“What?”
“Let’s just rest.” His voice was low. “You don’t have to do this.”
She looked at him. Then her eyes narrowed. “Shut up.”
His eyes widened.
“You don’t get to tell me what I have to do.”
“I’m not trying to—”
“You are.” She leaned down and set her hands on either side of his face. He went still. She lowered her head until her lips touched the side of his neck, just under his jaw, and his breath caught. She kissed him there.
Her mouth is so soft, he thought, and couldn’t think of anything else.
Again. His hands came off the mattress toward her waist.
“Don’t move,” she said.
His hands stopped in the air. She almost smiled. She found the hem of his shirt and pushed it up.
He caught her wrist. “Not now.”
She met his eyes. “I’m not going to do that.”
He searched her face. “Okay.”
“But I want to look at you.” Her fingers slid under the cotton. “I want to feel you.”
His jaw tightened. He let go of her wrist. She pushed the shirt higher and laid her hands flat on his stomach. The muscle under her palms drew tight at her touch. She moved her hands up slowly, then down. He stared at her as his breathing had gone deeper, and she watched the microexpressions he was making.
He’s nervous, she thought, and the knowledge steadied her more than anything he could have said. He’s actually nervous.
She sat up straight, took hold of the hem of her own top, and pulled it over her head.
Grey lace, Shouma thought. His face went red. He looked at the wall.
She frowned. “Don’t look away.”
“I know, but—” He kept his eyes on the wall. “I can’t think when you look like that.”
“You’ve seen me in a bra before.”
“I never let myself look.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly, leaning closer. “I know.”
He went on staring at the wall. She took his chin and turned his face back to her. “If you don’t look at me, I’m taking this off too.”
He gave her a defiant look. Her eyebrows went up as his eyes narrowed.
“Believe me when I say this.” His gaze went down, slowly, over her waist, and came straight back up to her eyes. “I want to look at all of you.”
She stopped.
“But not now.” His voice softened. “Right now, I want this.”
All at once she became aware of herself: her bare stomach, the lace, the way she was sitting on him. Every bit of nerve she’d gathered went out of her. “Oh my God.” She covered her face.
The corner of his mouth went up. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought I could be confident and seductive and now I just want to die.”
“Don’t say that…”
“Ugh, Shouma, I want to touch you slowly and feel you and I don’t know how anyone does this without being embarrassed.”
He sat up in one motion. She squeaked because that movement was so fast and deliberate. His hands caught her waist, and he turned them both, and her back met the mattress. He was above her. While she stared up at him, he took hold of the hem of his own shirt.
“Since you took yours off,” he said, and pulled it over his head, “I’ll take mine off too.” Whatever she’d been about to say left her. Her eyes moved over him. The ink began at his wrists and climbed his forearms and wrapped over his shoulders, and she knew it continued down his back. She’d seen pieces of it all her life. Nothing about it was new. And none of it looked the way it had yesterday. He let her look. Then he lowered himself beside her, one arm taking his weight, and slid his other hand into her hair. She looked at him. They were close enough that she could feel the heat of him through the thin lace. Something went through her that made her head swim. “I feel lightheaded.”
He started to move. “Do you need water?”
“No.”
He stopped.
“It’s not that.” She looked embarrassed. “I’m happy.”
He looked at her.
“I’m so happy I don’t know where to put it.”
His face changed. A faint, crooked smile came over it. “Come here.” He shifted onto his back and drew her against his side until her head lay on his chest. His heart was going fast under her ear. She smiled. “You’re nervous too.”
“No.”
“Your heart’s running.”
“Go to sleep.” He kissed her hair and ran his fingers slowly through it, and after a while, their breathing evened out. The house was quiet, and eventually, they slept.

She didn’t know how long she’d been out when she surfaced. She was warm. He’d turned toward her in his sleep, and his face was tucked against her neck, his breath slow against her collarbone.
Shouma.
She kept her eyes closed. She drew him in, and his arm tightened around her without his waking. She shifted down a little until her lips found his neck, and kissed it.
I’m half asleep, she thought. I’m allowed.
Another kiss, and another. He woke slowly and he didn’t stop her. For a while he lay there with his eyes closed and felt her mouth moving lazily over his skin, and then a low sound came out of him that he didn’t decide to make. “Yoshino…”
He rolled toward her and came up over her, and his weight settled above her, held off her by his elbows.
He’s on top of me, she thought, and her hands found his back and moved over it.
He looked down at her. Neither of them spoke. He lowered his head and took her face between his hands. She understood, very clearly, that there was no version of this afternoon where she got up and pretended it hadn’t happened. This time, neither of them turned away.

She lifted her face. He lowered his, and their mouths met.

Finally.

Her eyes closed. For a moment, neither of them moved. There was only warmth, and the shock of how soft his mouth was. Then he moved, slowly, carefully, and she followed.
I didn’t know, she thought. Everything else about him was hard. His hands were scarred across the knuckles. His stare cleared rooms. His voice could drop a grown man’s eyes to the floor. His mouth was nothing like any of that. She let him lead. They parted and met again, and the second kiss was longer and deeper, and her back came up off the mattress without her meaning it to. When it eased down, her hips moved against him, and the feeling startled her so much she made a small sound into his mouth. He matched her without thinking, pressing closer each time she rose. She broke away just far enough to whisper. “I didn’t know it would feel like this.” And then, so quietly he almost missed it: “Don’t stop.”
“Shh.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. “Close your eyes, and let me love you.”
Inside, he was not calm. It wasn’t that he wanted to stop. It was that he didn’t, at all. Years of wanting her had turned real under his hands, and every part of him that had been trained to take what it wanted was awake and pulling.
Forget the barbecue. Forget the gumi. Forget Kirishima and every man who ever looked at her wrong. She’s mine.
But this was Yoshino. He had loved her longer than he’d understood what the word was for. He wasn’t going to let their first kiss turn into something hungry and hurried that she’d look back on and wonder about. So he slowed down. He made himself slow down. He’d told her he would close his eyes, and he did. Part of him wanted to open them, to see her face like this, to know what she looked like when she wanted him. He kept them shut. This was her first kiss. She was going to have all of him in it. She sighed against his mouth.
His eyes opened before he could stop them. She hadn’t noticed. She was already kissing him again. But that sound had gone straight through him, and he’d never heard anything like it from her in ten years of hearing her voice. One of his hands went down to her thigh. The other settled at her hip and drew her closer. She went soft against him. Their kisses deepened without speeding up.
I love this, she thought. I love doing this with him.
Every so often they broke apart far enough to breathe, and then one of them closed the gap again. Neither of them was keeping count of the time. Eventually he made himself lift his head. “Okay.”
She pulled him back down.
He lifted it again. “Okay. Okay.”
She looked up at him. Her eyes had gone wet. She didn’t know why. Too much had happened in her body at once, and some of it had to come out somewhere.
He was breathing hard. “I love you,” he said. “But we have to slow down.”
“You…love me?” Her face was flushed from her throat to her hairline. Under the heat in her cheeks, her eyes looked darker than he’d ever seen them, almost red, and dazed, like she’d forgotten where she was.
Look at her, he thought. Look what she looks like.
“Yes, I love you, but take a deep breath,” he murmured, and wiped the wet from under her eyes with his thumb.
She took a breath and immediately leaned up toward him again.
He laughed and caught her face. “Yoshino.”
“What?”
“Not right now.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
“I know.” His thumbs moved over her cheeks. “I’m right here.”
Her face softened.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She looked at him.
“We’ll do this again,” he said.
“I believe you but my body wants to keep going and now I want to cry? It’s actual torture…”
He laughed under his breath. “Yeah.” He kissed her forehead. “Trust me, I feel that way too.”
She sighed with enormous drama.
“But we need to calm down. There’s a barbecue in an hour.”
She blinked. “Oh.” Then, as it landed: “Oh. No.”
“Yeah.”
“I hate this. I want to stay here.”
“Me too.”
She rolled her eyes as she stretched her arms out, “This is your fault.”
He laughed quietly. “Mine?”
“You kissed me.”
“You kissed my neck while I was asleep.”
“I was half asleep.”
“You were awake by the third one.”
“Well, if you know that, then you were awake too.”
He considered this. “Caught me.”
She lifted her face. “And you liked it.”
He looked at her. “Obviously.”
She smiled. I’ve made him go red three times today. Then she noticed his arms were still locked, holding him off her.
“Lie down,” she said. “You can’t hover like that forever. You’ll get tired.”
“This is nothing.” But he came down beside her anyway. “I want to be next to you.”
He propped his head on one hand and laid the other on her bare stomach, his thumb moving slowly back and forth. She pulled the blanket over them both. For a while they just held on.
Then he looked up at the ceiling. “So.”
She knew that tone. “So?”
“You’ve liked me for a while.”
She scoffed. “I can’t believe you never noticed. I had to get good at hiding it, because I didn’t think you’d ever look at me that way.” She paused. “And it isn’t like. I’m in love with you.”
He was quiet. Then: “Since when?”
She thought about it honestly. “I think I decided you were mine to keep about three months after Gramps brought you home. It took me years to understand what that meant.”
He turned toward her. “Three months?”
“You were strange.” She traced a line on his chest with one finger. “I’d heard some of what happened to you. Not all of it. Gramps wouldn’t tell me much, I was too young. But I knew enough.” Her voice softened. “You looked so strong. And you were so angry. And underneath it, you were sad.”
He said nothing for a while. Then he cleared his throat. “I kept waiting for somebody to tell me I had to go,” he said. “Every day. And then nobody did.”
“I know,” she said. “I could see it in your face. I hated it.” She looked up at him. “So I bothered you.”
“You did.”
“Every day.”
“Constantly… you were kind of annoying.”
“I talked to you when you wouldn’t answer.”
“You talked enough for two people.”
She slapped his chest lightly. “You didn’t say a word for months.”
“I would talk…”
“To Gramps. Yes and no. That’s not talking.”
He didn’t argue. He remembered the day it ended. She’d trailed him around the yard the whole afternoon firing questions at him. What food do you like? Can you swim? Do you like bugs? I don’t. Is there a ghost in Gramps’s basement? I think there’s a ghost in Gramps’s basement. Do you like dogs or cats better?
He’d finally said, just to make it stop: “Dogs.” She’d reacted as though he’d recited a poem.
He’d wanted to laugh. He hadn’t. He’d been twelve, living on charity in the house of the most dangerous man in Kansai, and he hadn’t been sure he was allowed to laugh at that man’s granddaughter.
“The next day,” Yoshino said, “Gramps thanked me.”
He looked at her.
“He said I was the one who got you talking. That after that, you started actually answering people.” She lifted her chin. “So obviously I decided I was very important.”
“You already thought you were important.”
“I was important. I was an extremely important eleven-year-old.”
He laughed softly. Then his face turned thoughtful. “I never thought you were annoying,” he said.
She raised her head. “Really?”
“Really.”
“You acted like I was the most annoying person alive.”
“I didn’t know what to do with you.” He looked at the ceiling again. “At first I thought you were spoiled. Then your grandfather told me about your father. And your mother. You never met your dad. And your mom couldn’t—” He stopped there, because she knew the rest, and he wasn’t going to make her hear it from him. “So Renji raised you. Renji and Hotei. And after that I thought, no. She’s not spoiled, and you’ve always been sweet…to everyone.”
She frowned. “So were you.”
“Not really, and how I treat others doesn’t really matter.”
“It matters to me.”
He let that sit, and didn’t argue with it, which for him was a kind of answer.
“You always fit,” he said instead. “You’d walk into a room and everyone in it knew you belonged there. I didn’t belong anywhere.” He tapped her forehead with one finger. “And then there’s this girl following me around every day trying to make me talk.”
He smiled faintly at the memory. Then the smile went. “I didn’t think I was allowed near you.”
Her brows drew together. “Why?”
“Because I knew where I came from.” He said it plainly, the way he’d say what time it was. “I knew who my father was. What people said about him. What he’d done.”
“That wasn’t you.”
“I know that now. I didn’t then. I was twelve.” He paused. “You were clean. I don’t mean like soap.”
“I know what you mean.”
“You were safe. You were happy. And I didn’t want whatever was wrong with me getting on you.”
She wrapped her arm tighter around him. “Nothing was wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you… except the cigarettes.”
He looked down at her. “Yoshino. Something was wrong with me. Something still is. I’ve killed men with my hands. Some days the only thing between me and doing it again is that the boss hasn’t asked.”
She pressed a kiss to his chest. “You don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it.”
His fingers moved through her hair. “That’s a line I draw. It’s not a line I can’t cross. I know what I am.” He was quiet a moment. “I think the only reason the boss let me near you was that he noticed you were different around me.”
“Different how? I wasn’t different.”
“He said you played more when I was there.”
“That old man doesn’t know anything. I played with everybody. I played with Hotei.”
“That’s what he told me, though. And it fits. I was only a year older than you. Once I’d settled in, he decided I’d be the one next to you whenever he couldn’t spare someone from the gumi.”
She nodded slowly. “At school.” It came together in her head. “That’s why. Before you, they homeschooled me. They tried sending Hotei to kindergarten with me once.” She winced. “The other parents had opinions.”
“I was a better fit,” he said. “A kid in a uniform, but I could put a grown man on the ground if I had to. That’s why you got to have school, and festivals, and the arcade after class… and the dance classes too.”
“And you always came.”
“Yeah…”
She rested her chin on his chest. “Okay. Your turn. When did you—” She stopped, and tried again. “When did it start, for you?”
He went quiet. She narrowed her eyes. “Shouma.”
“Before that.”
“Before what?”
“Before the boss took me in.”
She stared at him, with her eyes wide open. “WHAT?”
“I’d seen you before.”
She sat up. “When, literally WHEN?”
“At a festival. I don’t remember which one. I was eight.”
“Eight??”
“You had to be seven. You were surrounded by guards. And Hotei was carrying you.”
Her face changed. “Hotei,” she said quietly.
“I knew who he was. My father was always in trouble with somebody. And Hotei scared him more than anyone.” Shouma made a short sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Every time my father saw him, he’d go. Cross the street. Duck into a shop. Once he left me standing outside a pachinko parlor and ran.”
She didn’t say anything.
“So I figured Hotei must be a monster. And then there he was, walking through a festival, carrying this little girl with a stick of strawberry dango in her fist, like she was the only thing in Osaka that mattered.” He looked past her, at the window. “It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t stop staring at it.”
“At me?”
“At both of you. At how safe you looked.” He kept his eyes on the window. “I saw you after that, sometimes. We lived close enough. My father owed money to half the people your family did business with. Every time I saw you, there was someone standing between you and everything else.” His voice went quieter. “I didn’t want your name or your money or your grandfather’s house. I wanted that. Someone who’d stand in front of me instead of running.”
Yoshino’s throat had gone tight.
“My father saw Hotei and ran,” Shouma said. “I saw Hotei and you were laughing at something he’d said. So I thought, if she isn’t afraid of him, maybe I don’t have to be.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment.
He moved a strand of hair off her cheek. “Eventually the boss found out who I was. Two years later, he took me in.”
“And the rest is history.”
“More or less.”
She looked at him. “Wait.”
“What.”
“You didn’t answer what I asked.”
“I did.”
“You told me when you first saw me. That’s not what I asked.”
He was quiet for a long time. “I didn’t call it anything at ten…or even at twelve,” he said finally. “The day I came to the main house, I didn’t even know what Renji looked like. I only knew Hotei’s face, and his men. We pulled up, and you were standing out front with Hotei and a dozen others, and I knew you right away.”
“You never said.”
“What was I going to say? ‘I’ve been watching you at festivals for two years’?”
She laughed despite the ache in her chest. “Okay. That would have been strange.”
“You ran over. Renji had told you someone new was coming to live with you, and you asked my name like you’d already made up your mind I was staying.” He looked at her. “I didn’t have a word for it then. I just knew I’d put myself between you and anything that came for you. By the time I was old enough to understand what that was, there wasn’t a version of me left that didn’t love you.”
She nodded. Her eyes had started to burn. “Mine started small too. It just kept growing.”
“Even when I acted like you were a pest.”
“Even then.” Her face shifted. “Even when you started seeing other people.”
He saw it. The hurt in her eyes as she said that. He wiped the tears from her eyes, “We’ll have to talk about that. I want to know how you feel.”
“We absolutely will, but I want more time to say it. I don’t want to feel rushed.”
“I understand,” He cleared his throat. “But I never stopped. Not once, have I stopped loving you.”
“Not even when I left?”
His face went still. “Least of all then.”
She swallowed. He cupped the back of her head. “I thought loving you and having you were two separate things. The first one was mine. The second one wasn’t.”
Her eyes spilled over. “Idiot.”
“I know.”
She put her face against his chest. He wrapped both arms around her.
“You’re such an idiot,” she said into his skin.
“I know.”
“I would have said yes.”
“I know that now.”
“Years ago, I would have said yes.” She lifted her head. “Why didn’t you—” She stopped. Then she laughed, wet and short. “Never mind. I know why. Gramps. My family. It was too much.” She shook her head. “I’d have been scared.”
She lay back down against him. The room went quiet. She yawned. “I wish we could stay like this.”
“Mm.”
“Are you falling asleep?”
“I’m tired.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re tired. You wore me out.”
His eyebrows went up. “I wore you out?”
She smiled into his chest. “I could recover with more kissing. But you won’t let me.”
He pinched her side.
“Ow!”
“Trust me,” he said, “I’d give you anything you asked for right now. That’s the problem. The other night you asked me to stop you from doing something stupid.”
“How is this stupid?”
“If we keep kissing and you ask me for more, I’ll say yes. And this is the boss’s house. Lock or no lock, if we don’t come down for dinner, somebody’s going to come up and take the door off its hinges and find us like this. Renji would have my hands.”
She grimaced. “Okay, that’s fair.” Then she frowned. “Wait. Do you think Gramps wouldn’t accept you?”
“It’s not that.” He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know what he’ll say. I don’t think he’d stand in the way. But if I made you mine without courting you properly, without going to him first and asking to be allowed, without pledging myself to you in front of him—” He shook his head. “That, he’d never forgive.”
“When would be the right time?”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow we start on the building for the spa, and neither of us is going to have a minute to breathe. Once you’ve opened, we’ll go to him.”
“But what if he sees me looking at you?” She put her hands over her face. “I can’t stop now. I’m going to look at you across the grill and he’s going to know.”
“We’ve held hands in front of him before. We’ve hugged.”
She thought about that. “True.”
“The looking, though.” He tapped her nose. “That we can’t do. Not until we’ve told him. It’s about respect.”
“I know.” She was quiet. Then: “Since you told me all of that, there are things I need to tell you too. About why I hid it. All through middle school and high school.”
His hand kept moving through her hair. “When you’re ready, I’ll listen.”
He looked toward the window. The late sun came weak and gold through the curtains. Below, the house was quiet for now, but it wouldn’t be for long. She lay against his chest with one arm across his stomach. Their legs had tangled under the blanket. He looked down at her and kissed the top of her head, and she stirred and moved closer, and his arms tightened. For once, he wasn’t thinking about what came next. They stayed like that until her phone alarm went off.
“Shouma. We have to get dressed. I can hear people coming in.”
“I know.”
Neither of them moved. They’d spent most of their lives in the same houses and the same cars, a few feet apart, each certain the other was out of reach. Now there was nothing left between them but a blanket, and neither of them was in any hurry to get up.

CHAPTER 11 ->