Fake (Prologue)

Here I know / how it feels / to be misunderstood / to reach for the sky / I thought you never would / you don’t know how it feels / to be misunderstood / to reach for the sky, I thought you never would

But I’m bleeding, and my hands are bruised / from the grip that I once had on you / and I’m open for a new way / cause there’s not much more that I can fake

You love him, don’t you? she said. It must be hard to marry the one you love when you know they don’t love you in return.

Please remember that this marriage has been arranged by your parents, and that any difficulties might upset them greatly, he said. They are providing us with much to be thankful for, so you would do well to begin being thankful now.

If you’re determined to go to university, then Suguru will, as well, so that you can be together there, they said. This union will not wait for some useless scrap of paper displaying your knowledge to the world like a cheap banner.

None of them really understood. But of those who did not understand, only Yumi came within a field’s length of understanding. Only Yumi.

Suguru didn’t understand that it wasn’t the word marriage that had hurt her when he said it. It was the word arranged. It was the way he said it like it was something normal, but normal like a pap smear was normal. Normal and not spoken of.

Her relatives, the key members of the Ogasawara group; they didn’t understand that she wasn’t going to university to escape what they wanted her to be. It was to try and merge that with what it was that she wanted to be.

And Yumi...

Yumi didn’t understand how she could be both right and wrong at once. She didn’t understand the depths of Sachiko Ogasawara’s hatred for Suguru Kashiwagi, nor the magnitude of her love for him. Nobody understood that, least of all Sachiko herself, though certainly not for lack of trying. The true issue was not her hatred for men, after all. It was her hatred for the men she loved.

Her grandmother had told her before she died that it was a family trait.

If that was true, Sachiko wasn’t sure she wanted to be a part of her family anymore. Not that she could escape it; running away from rich people was even harder than running away from taxes, because rich people were allowed to be ruthless, while the government forced itself to limit its methods to ‘methodical’, only half of the two necessary ingredients for ruthlessness.

Sachiko didn’t know what the second ingredient was, but she had been told that being the trophy wife to a very rich, very powerful man would soon teach her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to learn. Maybe that was why she wanted to go to get a degree in Japanese Literature, and then move on to a Master’s degree in Japanese Language with an emphasis in creative writing. So that she could write her own definition of what ruthless was.

Or maybe she just wanted to have someplace to retreat to. The true blessing of the learned is that they can always retreat to their learning; the higher pay is just icing on the cake.

These were things that Sachiko Ogasawara contemplated silently over her tea, every night before bed. She contemplated them, and other things, in front of her fiancé, and he never knew, because he never cared to find out. He had told her many times that he loved her, and she thought that maybe he had even meant it once or twice, but it had never been enough to allow him access to her bed; not that he would want such a thing, in any case. She knew that on their wedding night, they would probably have to do their matrimonial duty to each other—if only because both families would be watching them so closely that they might as well be in the room with them—and, failing some ovarian curse, that would be the only time that they would even sleep in the same room.

Tonight was no different from any other summer evening: The sky had melted into a full, rich hue of dark, dark blue, splattered with myriad shadows of white clouds which contrasted the moon and the dim stars with sometimes breathtaking beauty.

It was breathtaking to Sachiko, anyway. She didn’t know how her fiancé felt about it, because she, like him, never cared to find out.

He sometimes spoke of it, as he did tonight. “The moon is lovely tonight, don’t you think?” he said, his deep, rich voice as soothing to her as it was repulsive. “Although the clouds make it seem like it will rain soon.”

“Yes,” she replied, falling back on the training that the Lillian School for Girls had supplied her. “It is.” That one irreplaceable truth, the ultimate fall-back option: If you have nothing to say, or if you do not wish to speak to the person who demands that you speak to them, simply agree pleasantly with whatever it is that they are talking about. They will think, ah, what a fine lady, and you may think whatever it is that you like. Sachiko had many things to think about, some of which did in fact concern Suguru, of which very few were particularly flattering.

And what about you? The thought appeared in her head without warning. If he retreats to his...she had often pondered what to call a male mistress, however, and had yet to come to a conclusion…to satisfy his …needs—

—a lady does not speak of such things in public—

Where will you satisfy yours?

Sachiko thought first, ironically enough, of Sei Satou. Certainly not due to any lasting impressions the girl had made on her, either romantically or sexually; she would be more likely to seek out Youko’s help if all it was was sex, or even some sweet illusion of love, that she would be looking for. No, she thought of Sei because of how she knew Sei would react if she were to simply show up at her doorstep and beg for Sei’s affections for the night: Sei would simply smile, invite her inside, and hug her gently for a minute or two, and then remark, in a way that was not snide but was equally not polite or coddling, that she should probably go talk to Yumi, and that she, Sei Satou, would even be so kind as to escort her over to make sure she got there without angsting all over too many random passer-by. She wouldn’t mean any of the hurtful comments; she would just say them, because that was how she was; but at the same time, Sachiko’s pride would be satisfied by what would inevitably turn into a form of repartee, if only because Sachiko would never, ever “angst all over” anybody.

And then…just maybe…

“Sa-chan?” her fiancé said with a note of concern to his voice. She looked up at him and smiled politely. Suguru Kashiwagi, 19, she thought musingly. Very nice to meet you for this business venture. Please take care of me while I rip your sill-beating heart from your chest and consume it whole. “I’m going to bed.” The note was gone. Maybe it had never been there.

Funny, she thought. For a moment, he even sounded concerned.

“Good night,” she said. “Sleep well.” Simply agree politely…

Bitterness is unbecoming of a lady.

He smiled. “I trust you will as well. Please don’t stay up too late, or you’ll be tired tomorrow.”

For a moment, Sachiko recognized something in his voice, something familiar to her; perhaps they had taught him how to be a proper lady at that boys’ school of his as well?

She wasn’t allowed to smile at that thought until he was out of sight.

As soon as he was gone, she leaned back in her chair, just slightly, allowing her neck to crane backwards so that she could see the stars more easily; they really were beautiful tonight.

I want to go for a drive, Sachiko thought without warning. I want to drive as far away from here as I can, and I want to see the stars from somewhere outside this

compound

house.

Unfortunately, Sachiko Ogasawara could not drive. People drove her places; butlers, chauffeurs, people like that. On one occasion, even Su…even Kashiwagi drove me somewhere. An incident she was not likely to repeat. Ever.

Can I walk somewhere, instead? She wondered, and then immediately chastised herself for it. One does not simply walk out of prison. There were limits as to where she could go. Boundaries. Far ones, yes; her family owned a large stretch of land, and nobody was likely to stop her from wandering about, but there were walls eventually, and security guards. The Ogasawara family was not known for its trusting sentiments. Perhaps earlier, she would have been allowed to simply leave. Before she expressed an interest in going to University, anyway.

Or perhaps simply before they planned the wedding date.

That word forced her stomach into a knot every time it passed through her mind; wedding.

Suguru had said to her, if this is to be a marriage of convenience, then we can be married without interfering in each other’s lives. Maybe that didn’t bother him, but then, she thought privately, in the same part of her brain that nurtured her devout Catholicism, Suguru also stopped, put his hands together, and said a brief prayer in front of a statue of Buddha every morning during his thirteen years of mandatory schooling.

But that’s not the only reason you don’t want to marry him…

Maybe it was pretentious of her to think something like that, or maybe even something worse than that, but, ironically, it had been one of her most treasured thoughts ever since her marriage had been announced to her by her parents.

And maybe…just maybe, it’s a little hypocritical of you, too.

Oddly enough, this had become one of her most treasured thoughts of late, too.

The voice that interrupted her thoughts was respectful, yet utterly disinterested. It was their head butler’s foremost talent. “Miss Sachiko? There is a phone call for you.”

Ah, yes. The Ogasawara family’s most recent invention: The phone servant. They had rerouted all calls to a single phone, which could then be transferred to any other phone in the house. They paid a man (or woman, Sachiko had no idea) to answer this phone and transfer it to the nearest available butler, who would give it to whoever was asked for. The phone-servant would do this, but their prime function, Sachiko knew, was to remember the voice and relate it to a caller-ID. Perhaps her relatives were now concerned that she was getting illicit phone calls from her…

ex-

petite seour? The thought made her want to smile.

A lady should move slowly and deliberately. The hem of her skirt should always be tidy.

Indeed, even now, Sachiko was wearing a skirt, and it was, indeed, tidy, as she stood from her seat, gently, and walked slowly to the head butler, who displayed no impatience. He handed her the phone when she stopped moving, and then bowed and vanished somewhere.

“Ogasawara residence,” she said politely, even though she knew whoever she was speaking to had heard it already from the phone-servant. “This is Sachiko speaking.”

“Sachiko!” the voice maintained just the vaguest hint of the kind of formality that she would have expected of the girl on the other end of the line, the only girl in existence that could possibly have made her smile in quite the way that she was suddenly smiling now. She had, after all, trained her petite seour better than this.

“How many times,” Sachiko said gently, allowing the grin on her face to extend to her voice, “must I remind you to call me onee-sama, Yumi?”

“I—I’m sorry, onee-sama,” Yumi seemed a bit taken aback, which was to be expected of the girl. She had a tendency to react rather exaggeratedly to most anything. “I called because I wanted to ask…ah…” she broke off; her nervousness was practically radiating off of her voice. Sachiko could envision just about exactly what her face looked like right then.

All at once, Sachiko had about a million things she wanted to say to Yumi. It had been nearly a month and a half since her graduation, and she hadn’t had a chance to see Yumi since then, and all of a sudden, her head was filled with words.

She spoke none of them. Rather, she said, “What was it you wanted to ask me, Yumi?” gently. Prompt, but do not demand. What’s up and what is it are not acceptable ways to begin a conversation.

At some point, the line between what her family and what Lillian taught her about being a lady had blurred in her mind; she could no longer distinguish between the two.

“Oh! Yes!” Yumi blurted. Sachiko could hear her forcing her voice to be something other than a blurt, and after a moment, she continued, more controlled this time, “I called because I wanted to …to invite you to come on a picnic with Yoshino, Shimako, Rei, and I. On the, ah…the day after tomorrow.”

It was strange. Yumi had improved vastly in her discipline in her second year at Lillian; she would rarely have made this much of a fool of herself there. Somehow, this warmed Sachiko’s heart just a little.

She didn’t allow herself to react that way to the invitation, however. “I would very much like to,” she replied calmly, and from there, the details were worked out in an unexciting manner; They would all make their respective ways to the bank of a river not far from Sachiko’s house—really, the driveway would be the bulk of her trip—and eat there at one in the afternoon. After that, they would retire to the house of someone with whom Sachiko was familiar—a friend of her grandmother’s, who had seen her just before her passing—and have tea there.

Sachiko made her promises, and hung up shortly after. Somehow, the head butler was there only a moment after the phone beeped off to take it from her. Perhaps this should have unnerved her, but it didn’t. Not now.

She was going to see Yumi, after all.

For the first time in more than a month, she was going to see Yumi.

Yumi.

Then she banished the thought and went back outside to consider the stars for a moment longer. They seemed, somehow, even more inviting than they had before.

Sachiko slept peacefully that night. Moreso than she had in weeks, and though she looked, the next day, precisely the same as she had the day before, she was utterly different inside.

Yumi.