Author’s notes:
When Sachiko says “Miss Satou,” she means something much like Satou-san.
I say hello / you say hello / we’ll always kiss the sky / spring, summer, fall, winter / what a wonderful world
We’ll walk the unknown path to the sky.
Good for You
Sachiko had a driver’s license, but only on principle—her family had demanded it of her, almost as soon as she was legally able, just in case. Just in case what? She had wondered. Just in case my driver is assassinated by a group of Yakuza, and my cell phone is out of batteries, and there are no police anywhere nearby, and they leave me stranded in a bad part of town, and my only other way to get home is to walk, which means I may as well put on a short skirt and become a whore, because god damned if a member of the Ogasawara Group is going to walk along a perfectly good road. Just in case, that happens, I should have a driver’s license.
The thought had occurred to her rather wildly at the time—a moment of annoyance, perhaps, at the hassle of acquiring something she would never use. Now, however, she was rather happy that she’d gone through the rigorous months of Driver’s Ed—it made the car she was riding in seem less like a roller coaster that had derailed itself approximately as soon as it had acquired enough speed with which to do so.
Even so, for the first few minutes of their drive together, Sachiko had a hard time really believing that she was where she was—perhaps the danger of the situation had not yet impressed itself upon her, or perhaps it had simply shocked her into a pleasant, grinning, humming ignorance common in mental institutions. She observed the car in which she was a passenger blazing down the road, weaving between cars with the speed and skill of a motorcyclist begging for an early grave; observed just how far the speedometer read over the speed limit; she observed other, angrier drivers than Sei honking and flashing rude signs at her. She observed her own natural, perfectly understandable fear, but she did not participate. It was much the same, one might reflect, as a man whose wife has just died, a man on whom the gravity and weight of loss has not yet taken its toll.
For such a man, there is always a point at which it hits him. Where the full weight of everything he no longer has, a vacuum which threatens to turn him inside out and render him a useless hunk of blubber, finds him and does its worst. People rarely remember this point; they only remember the transition. One day they were perfectly alright, coping with their loss, their problem, dealing with it nicely, and the next day they were a mess, a heap, a useless shell good only for producing salt water from the eyes and mucus from the nose at the rate of a toddler with a head cold.
When Sei stopped at her first red light, about five minutes into their drive, two things hit Sachiko. The first was that she was in a life or death situation; that Sei could easily kill the lot of them at any moment, and the only thing she could do about it was shriek, which she had a feeling would go in one of Sei’s ears, possibly echo a bit in her head, and then slide lifelessly out the other. If she hit another car going at this speed, Yumi would fly off her lap, and sail up, between the seats, and through the windshield, leaving only rags of Yumi for her to hold tight to her and hug and pat her head when she was sick and…
And the second thing she realized was that she did not know the half of it. She did not know one-quarter of the things inside of her; she was only now just aware of the prospect of losing Yumi, and was only just now aware of the fear that instilled in her. She was afraid of dying herself, and she hadn’t known this before, either. Two overarching fears which had not been there a single instant before; now threatening to bend her double in pain and anxiety.
And then, a third thing. A third realization, just a little whisper next to the buzzing tension already in her head:
Three months.
Three.
Not true.
Can’t be true.
And yet…something about it made an inexplicable sort of sense; it appealed to some intuition that all of us have at one level or another—just as a man who has lost his wallet is calmly certain that it’s still somewhere in his house and so does not fret, Sachiko was calmly certain that, whether she liked it or not, she would be married three months from now.
Three months.
And, another word as well, one that she could not quite put her finger on; something which danced on the tip of her tongue and on the edge of her synapses, but did not come to her.
But that was just stupid intuition. It was just anxiety nagging at her stomach and her head, and that was all it was, there was nothing to do with
Sei stepped on the gas pedal before the other word could occur to her—Lead Foot to the rescue—and Sachiko found her head thrown back against the fabric of the seat, and Yumi’s head thrown into her breasts, and they rocketed down the road, none of them speaking but rather conveying their emotions in the most primitive way, by the tones of the noises they made—from Yoshino, a delighted screech; from Shimako, a frightened, meek sound, utterly at odds with the smooth confidence she had displayed entering the car; from Rei, an exasperated sigh. From Yumi, a squeal of excitement, a little like Yoshino’s
From Yumi, an excited squeal.
From Yumi.
In spite of all of the fear and anxiety, Sachiko smiled a little bit.
From Sachiko: Barely audible under the sounds of other, louder women, from under the dull hum of the car’s engine carrying them smoothly (in all spite of the driver) to their destination, from under the blaring horns of other drivers, angry and uncertain at how such a pretty woman could drive such a small car like such a goddamn drunken man, a small, happy laugh, touched with nervousness and uncertainty, but displaying nonetheless an unmistakable sense of enjoyment and happiness.
And then, from Yumi, unbeknownst to Sachiko, whose only view of the girl was the small, almond curve of her eye, a small grin which had nothing to do with the car ride, and everything to do with the sound coming from her onee-sama. Onee-sama, whose hands tightened around her waist as she made this small noise.
Yumi folded her hands overtop Sachiko’s. “How do you like joyriding, onee-sama?”
Sachiko didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
They did.
They pulled into Rei’s alley about ten minutes later, and piled out of the car in as orderly a fashion as they entered it, which was to say that they managed a fairly decent single file, but they lost, momentarily, the image of genteelness to which most were accustomed to seeing them possess so adequately. First to get out were Sei and Yoshino, being up front, and by the time the mess of piling out of the back seat was through, the two of them had vanished.
“Rei,” Sachiko said warily, “Do you know where your petite soeur has gone?”
Rei shook her head, shrugging, and Sachiko saw she was thinking precisely the same thing she was: It’s not the fact that Yoshino has gone off somewhere that is troubling. It is the fact that Sei is there as well.
“What is it, onee-sama?” Yumi asked, shaking her head out as she closed the car door behind her. “Is something wrong?” I probably look as troubled as I ever do in public, so of course she’d be concerned.
“Not at all,” Sachiko said mildly. “Nothing to be concerned about, just—”
“Just that Yoshino and Sei seem to have gone off somewhere.”
Yumi blinked, apparently nonplussed. “Is that bad?” Sachiko couldn’t help but find this mildly annoying—Yumi was probably the only one who didn’t see that Sei could sometimes cause genuine trouble along with her harmless jokes; if only because she seemed to lack the restraint which the rest of them—and really, most every other graduate of Lillian—possessed. Honestly, Sachiko could not think of anything more dangerous than a woman who was considered to be a Lady by the entire world, but did not think of herself as being bound by any such title. It was like allowing a well-dressed thief into a roomful of unsuspecting gentry, though Sachiko was sure Yumi would have told her that she was being overdramatic.
It wasn’t that Sei wasn’t a good person, or at least Sachiko didn’t think so. The girl seemed to honestly care about her friends, and seemed willing to go to great lengths to help them if they were in need—why else would Sei have done what she had done for me?—rather, it seemed that Sei simply cared nothing for her title or status, and so she could lure Ladies who were conscious of title and statusinto doing things which might damage their reputation, and she could lure them simply because they were not suspicious of her in the least. Maybe Rei, Yoshino, and Shimako do not have a reputation to consider, but I do, and so does Yumi, because Yumi is mine.
This did not seem possessive in the least to Sachiko. Sei would have understood.
Sachiko sighed. “I believe it may be, Yumi,” she said. “I believe it may be.”
“I don’t understand, onee-sama,” Yumi said. “What—”
“Oh. Oh dear.” This from Shimako.
Oh. Oh dear. Sachiko turned to face where Shimako was looking, towards Yoshino’s house, where two feminine figures were advancing on them, their arms laden with…
Oh.
Oh dear.
Pack? Yoshino had asked when Sei had first brought it up in the car.
You bet. We’re going on a trip, you know? We need to pack for that.
I didn’t hear anything about that.
Is that a problem?
I don’t remember saying that.
It wasn’t a problem at all.
Or at least, it wasn’t a problem for them. Walking towards the group, their arms laden with what Yoshino (and Sei as well, though for some reason she didn’t admit it openly) simply called stuff, Sei wondered briefly if it would be a problem for any of them.
Probably, she decided with a small, predatory grin.
After all, if one was to take a trip to an unknown place for an unknown length of time, it was probably best that at least one of the people found the whole thing inconvenient. Inconvenience, after all, was a damn good indication that what you were doing was not only spontaneous, but utterly unusual. And wasn’t spontaneity the mother of honesty?
Sei thought so. Trips were a good time to be honest.
Isn’t that a little like kidnapping, though?
Once again, Sei decided that it probably was, a little grin on her face that Sachiko would not have entirely trusted if she saw it. Not that Sachiko trusted her anyway—Sei was fairly certain Sachiko had precisely zero trust in her, in fact, and it was probably because Sei sometimes acted as though she was out to steal Yumi.
Or at least, that was probably what Sachiko thought. Really, Sei found the whole thing to be a sign of almost pervasive insecurity in the tall, dark-haired girl; maybe that was what she was hoping to get at.
That she was probably being too nosy never crossed her mind. Sachiko was Yumi’s onee-sama, and the insecurity this girl felt led a lot of people—Yumi included—to a lot of hurt sometimes. That was what insecurity did, after all—that was all it did. It hurt people. And the only way to get at such a closely guarded woman was to get her when she wasn’t guarded—something one could only do unexpectedly, spontaneously.
So really, somebody who wasn’t Sei might have thought, all Sei wanted to do was help.
Somebody who wasn’t Sei was Yoshino, who was cleverer than she let on. She had picked up on this, not by prying at Sei, but simply by listening to her, by watching her.
All she wants to do is help. God save them all, but I’m going to help too.
Yoshino decided that and never once looked back. She decided that she liked Sei quite a bit.
“Come now,” Sei said with a big, open smile. “I’d think that was obvious to somebody as sharp as you, Sachiko. It’s a bag of sleeping gear—blankets, pajamas, toothbrushes, and the like. See, look here; you can even see one of the shirts poking its little arm out of there. It’s quite large, but it’s not heavy, so please, don’t fall over yourselves to help me.”
Sachiko and Rei could only gape in open-mouthed astonishment; Yumi was watching intently, her face denoting something that was not entirely excitement, but was certainly close; Shimako looked very much like a death-row inmate who has just been informed that, no, her sentence has not been overturned, and would she like to be well-done or extra-crispy. Sei could actually see some of the color drop from her naturally pale face, and she couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the girl, who had probably already caught onto what was going on. She’s sharp. She’s gonna do fine.
Sharp, yes.
Good at dealing with people…
Not so much. If Shimako were ever to come to her for help—an impossibility, undoubtedly—that would probably be where she started and finished.
Who the hell are you to offer to help a girl like that anyway?
Sei shook her head, and Sachiko frowned; not because of the unexpected movement, but because it was a motion she recognized—it was the quick toss of the head of somebody who felt that their situation necessitated a clearer mind but now. Of somebody whose head was nagging at them, and of somebody who could think of no other, no better way than to try and rattle it into submission. A twinge of empathy crossed over her chest, though she kept it from her face.
“And what,” Sachiko said, “are you planning on doing with a bag of sleeping supplies, Miss Satou?”
“I plan on using them to sleep,” Sei said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I hope you plan on doing the same, because otherwise you’re probably going to smell quite bad quite soon, and I’m not sure Yumi or I will particularly appreciate that.”
Yoshino giggled at this, and Sachiko, suddenly redder in the face than she had expected Sei to be able to make her, stepped back. “I don’t think I understand, Sei. Please, explain yourself.” Her tone suggested that she understood perfectly, and Sei knew in an instant that she was trying to overpower her, trying to get her to back down—not because she didn’t want to go, necessarily—she hadn’t had enough time to make up her mind about that yet, and she may not even be certain that that was precisely what was going on—but because that was what Sachiko did if she was confronted by one of her own in a place where nobody was watching: She pushed back. Yumi could attest to that. She would never do it in public, nor to anybody who she was not intimately familiar with. Sei supposed that she should take that as flattery unto itself.
Sei took a deep breath and then grinned widely again, trying to drown out that little niggle in the back of her head that kept informing her as loudly as it could that she was making a huge, terrible, unimaginably large mistake as best she could. “I mean that we’re going on a trip. Think of it as an extended joyride in a van instead of a beetle, only instead of going home after a few hours, we have to try and find a place to sleep.”
It was indeed what Sachiko was thinking. Her expression did not contort but her insides did. She prepared a verbal rebuke, which she thought as she prepared it to be a milder, more modern equivalent of a feudal lord demanding the suicide of a vassal for a comment made in ill company.
“And what makes you think that I will have anything to do with—” but she stopped, because in her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of what was near her: a short, pretty, pigtailed girl, with a delighted expression on her face—one that, Sachiko knew, she could not have covered up if all of existence depended on it. She saw Yumi’s face, and she realized something: She wanted this.
Aren’t you just fighting this because it’s absurd?
Of course I am! It’s absurd! It’s beyond absurd, it’s positively stupid! You can’t just disappear for god-knows-how-long without telling anybody, and if you tell anybody, you’ll be forbidden to go. Your life is not your own and has not been for as long as
Then do something about it. The thought forced its way into her head with a startling speed and power—and what was more interesting was that it was not in her own voice, but rather in the voice of the girl who was now staring at her so intently; that short, sweet, indefatigable girl. If it’s not yours, take it back. Who cares what they think? Call Suguru and tell him you’ll be out for a few days, that you’ve decided to take a trip to the summer house. Tell the Sawamuras that you’ll be there in a few days. Suguru can draw his own conclusions and I’m sure I can…
I’m sure I can plan this out.
I can do it.
I will.
She stopped, deflated, her shoulders relaxed, (though her expression was not) and, after taking a moment, nodded. To the amazement of everybody—everybody—she even smiled a little.
“What will you need from me?”
Sei was actually taken aback. She recovered quickly, and said, “Get Rei to pop her trunk for me, for starters. I’d like to park my car in place of hers until we get back, so we’ll have to do a neat little business with her parents. After that, all I need is for you to promise me that you won’t have a bunch of balls of muscle and testosterone out looking for you when you disappear for a few days.”
“I can do that.”
Sei nodded at her. “Alright. In that case, all I need from you is your sweet little self.”
Sachiko frowned. “I would prefer not to be referred to as such in the future, if you believe you can bring yourself to refrain.”
Sei only laughed.
Sachiko had a funny, happy feeling that she might be doing that too. She hoped that feeling wouldn’t fade; she wished this very much.
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