Fifty Words for Rain(52)

His gaze softened. “Aren’t I your guardian now?”

“Oh, yes.”

“It’s not my rule. I thought this was what you wanted.”

“It is!” She gasped. Her eyes were starting to burn. “It’s . . . Yes. But you said it wasn’t safe.”

“Obaasama won’t do anything before the arranged meeting. It’s a matter of honor.”

“But . . .”

Akira saw straight to the heart of the matter, as he always did. “You’re afraid.”

She could not deny it. “I just thought you wouldn’t want to be seen with me.”

Akira clucked his tongue. “Don’t insult me.”

Nori had to admit that he had never treated her as an outsider. He found plenty of faults with her, to be sure, but it was always for what she did. Not who she was. Still, it was a serious thing he was suggesting—no one outside the family or the hanamachi knew about her.

Akira’s suggestion was to fly in the face of a thousand years of tradition.

“There will be a terrible scandal,” she whispered. “Grandmother will be very angry.”

“Good. With any luck she’ll have a stroke and we can move to Paris.”

“How can you be so sure it will be okay?”

Akira gave her that look he gave her when he expected her to figure something out.

“Can’t you just explain it for once?” she asked irritably. “You’re too clever for me.”

“Do you know why she has been able to do whatever she wants to you?” he asked, clearly hoping that he could lead her to water and she would be smart enough to drink.

“Because she’s rich. And noble.”

“Besides that.”

Nori racked her brain. “Because . . . because I’m a bastard.”

Akira’s stormy eyes were wide. “And?”

“And . . .” She broke off. “And because . . .”

Akira sighed. Clearly he had lost patience with her. “Because you’re a secret.”

She looked at him blankly. She had always thought that being a secret was the only reason she was allowed to live in the first place.

Akira continued. “Ah, think, Nori. Come on. You have no birth certificate; Mother probably had you at home. You’ve never been enrolled in school. Legally, you don’t exist. And if the law doesn’t know who you are, it can’t protect you.”

Realization finally dawned on her. She covered her mouth with a shaking hand.

“If people knew about me . . .”

“If people knew about you, if you had legal documents . . .”

“I would be safe,” she said, and it sounded like a miracle.

Akira allowed himself a bright grin. “It would help. She couldn’t just make you vanish. People would gossip. People would know that she had done something to you, and she couldn’t bear it. She is desperate not to be seen as a criminal, she is desperate not to have the nobility know of her dirty dealings.”

“And the law?” she whispered. She could almost feel her grandmother’s wrinkled hand on her shoulder, clawing her backwards, away from any glimmer of hope.

“The law is mostly useless,” Akira confessed. “Everyone is in the pay of someone. But they would at least have to admit that they knew you were here, that you were real.”

I could be real?

She hesitated. “But if people knew . . . honor would demand my death, according to the old way.”

Akira snorted. “Honor gives that right to the family of the cuckolded husband. Which, in this case, would be me.”

She met his eyes. “I suppose that ship has sailed.”

He tapped her lightly on the nose. “Aho.”

“Do you really think this could work?”

“I’m going to try,” he said earnestly. “Tomorrow I’m going straight to the courthouse. I’ve been trying to get an appointment for weeks. I’ve already called a lawyer. I wanted to do this before, in Kyoto, but Grandmother has eyes everywhere in that city. The forged papers are still being made just in case, but I’m really going to try, Nori.”

She pressed her face into his chest. “Don’t put yourself in danger for me,” she mumbled.

“I suppose that ship has sailed,” he teased her. “Now, go and get dressed.”

She could hear her heartbeat blaring like a trumpet in her ears.

“Hai, Oniichan.”



* * *





AKIRA



I walk out into the crisp autumn weather and I think, My God, I love this city.

Tokyo is mine and I am hers. I am certain of this, as I am certain of most things.

But I am never sure of her.

Nori trails behind me, wearing a dress of deep navy blue and her hair in two pigtails, each tied with a different color ribbon. She is chewing on her lip, and it’s already starting to swell.

“Dame,” I tell her. “You’re going to make yourself bleed.”

She stops immediately and winds her hand into the crook of my arm. Instinctively, I pull away. I am not used to being touched. My father was a good man, wise but stern. I never saw him laugh. He was sick for years and tried to hide it from me. I noticed, of course, but I didn’t know how bad it was. I didn’t know that he had a cancer eating away at his insides like termites in dry rot.