CHAPTER 5
Aiko slowed to a halt as awareness washed through her, a sensation that she was being watched. She turned on the busy shopping street in Shibuya and looked around.
“What’s wrong?” Kumiko moved closer to her, and Aiko sensed her concern as the distance between them narrowed.
Megumi didn’t seem at all bothered as she watched a man a little older than her walking past, heading towards the crossing and the station.
Aiko knew he was here. She could feel him. She moved to the side of the street, gripped the pole of a lamp and tiptoed, trying to see above the heads of the crowd. She scanned them, a sense of desperation growing inside her as she failed to find him.
He was here.
She was sure of it.
She swept her eyes back over the crowd, might have caught a glimpse of his wild black hair and the grey-blue scarf he had been wearing the night they had met.
The night he had saved her.
She had been thinking about him ever since, struggling to focus on her studies and her part-time job. Even her friends had noticed her spacing out and had started teasing her about it.
“Seriously, what’s wrong?” Kumiko tugged her arm, pulling her down from the lamp post.
Aiko forced her gaze away from the other end of the street and shook her head. “I just thought I saw someone I knew.”
Megumi giggled. “A man?”
“No.” Aiko waved her hand in front of her face and tasted the lie on her tongue.
There was no way she was going to talk to Kumiko or Megumi about men. They were friends, but they weren’t that close. They were in the same class at the University of Tokyo, and had grouped up during the week they had started there, but their backgrounds were very different and sometimes she felt it keenly.
Kumiko and Megumi came from rich families and had grown up together in a prestigious area of Tokyo, and she had grown up in a run-down suburb in a family that had often struggled to make ends meet. They were learning medicine because their families had decided upon it, neither of them really interested in having a profession at all, happy to live off their families’ money.
Aiko was studying medicine so she could help out at her family’s clinic.
They couldn’t have come from more polar worlds. They couldn’t have been more different in personality either.
Megumi made that abundantly clear as she grabbed her and Kumiko, and pulled them towards the next street. “Come on. I want to go this way.”
Aiko didn’t want to go that way, but she didn’t say anything as Megumi dragged her along and Kumiko joined in, smiling from ear to ear as she talked about how she was going to get the host boys that always loitered on that street to flirt with her. They were men who made a living by being paid to drink with women in the host club, entertaining them for an evening, as if they were the woman’s boyfriend. She had heard rumours that some of the men even took things further.
Both Megumi and Kumiko were open with relationships, and had told Aiko about several of the ones they had indulged in after joining university, many of them with older men, but most of them with men in other classes. When Aiko had found the courage to ask how long they had been sleeping with men, Megumi had confessed she had slept with a partner of her father’s when she was fourteen, and Kumiko had given herself to the son of a wealthy neighbour at a party when she had been sixteen.
No, they couldn’t have been more different.
But Aiko still loved spending time with them, even when she had no experience of many of the things they talked about—grand parties, lavish lifestyles and expensive holidays, and men.
She looked back the way they had come.
How had he gotten the scars on his arms?
They had looked as if he had been bound and had struggled. She had seen similar wounds on someone almost a decade ago, when she had been in high school and helping her father out over the summer. The woman had been brought to her family’s clinic for rehabilitation after police had rescued her from a man who had kept her tied up and had done terrible things to her.
Had he been tied up like that, held captive against his will?
Aiko was so lost in thoughts of him that she didn’t notice the host boys flirting with her until one was so close to her that his breath washed across her face and the heat of his body brushed hers.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
Prickles swept over her skin and panic surged in her veins.
She shoved him in the chest, pushing him away from her as flashes of the train came back to her and she relived the terrifying feel of the man’s hand locked around her wrist, his grip so tight she hadn’t been able to break free, and how powerless she had been as she had struggled, the other passengers watching her and doing nothing to help her.
The host boy stumbled and fell into one of his companions, who caught him.
Megumi bowed as she muttered to the men, “We’re sorry.”
Kumiko shot her a worried look.
Aiko turned on her heel and hurried away from the men, her throat tight and breath wheezing as it tried to push through it. Her heart thundered, blood rushing as her legs shook and her hands trembled. She was safe. She wasn’t back there.
A flash of the dark-haired man towering over her, his blue eyes tranquil and locked on her, filled her mind and her heart steadied at last, the adrenaline flowing from her as she slowed to a stop at a junction on the street.
She breathed a little easier as she focused on him. He had saved her. Nothing bad had happened to her. He had made sure of that. He had stopped the pervert, and he had walked her home, and for a brief moment, she had felt connected to him.
In a way she had never felt connected to anyone before.
“What happened?” Kumiko stopped beside her, a little out of breath, and Aiko waited until Megumi had caught up with them before she let the memory of the man slip from her mind and looked at her friends.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “The other night, after we went out for dinner, a man on the train home… he… someone stopped him but he tried to…”
“Oh, Aiko.” Megumi pulled her into a tight hug, one that squeezed the air from her lungs again. “I never would have suggested we go near the boys if I had known.”
She nodded, closed her eyes and held her friend. “I know. I should have said something. I just thought I was over it.”
But she wasn’t, and she hated it. She hated being weak and letting things like that frighten her.
She released Megumi and plastered a smile on her face, when all she really wanted to do was give up and let someone see what she was really feeling. Only she didn’t want it to be her friends. She wanted to show him.
She wanted him to see that whatever pain he held inside him, he wasn’t alone.
She hurt sometimes too.
Sometimes, she hated this world, but she picked herself up, held her head high and kept marching forwards, bravely embracing whatever came next and not letting fear hold her back.
“I could use a parfait,” she muttered, and when Kumiko laughed, it was infectious. She smiled too, feeling it this time, because there was nothing in this world a good amount of ice cream, fruit, whipped cream and toppings couldn’t fix.
It was something they had all agreed on shortly after meeting.
Megumi looped her arm around Aiko’s left one. “Come on. It’s been a while since we went to Nishimura Fruits Parlour.”
It had probably been no more than a week, but their strawberry parfaits were by far her and her friends’ favourites in the city. They had once joked about forming a weekly Nishimura Study Club, that they had decided would honestly involve some study and not just gossiping and eating parfait until they were sick.
Kumiko led the way back towards the main crossing, a bounce in her step now, and Aiko tried not to think about what had happened to her on the train, or the man who had saved her, but as she passed the spot where she felt sure she had seen him, she glanced that way and a feeling struck her.
She hadn’t been afraid of him.
He had hurt the man who had tried to assault her, and had looked as if he had wanted to kill him and had barely restrained himself. He had a tattoo, scars and had been injured in a fight. He was probably dangerous.
Yet, she didn’t fear him.
In fact, she ached to see him again.
Was it because he was different to the men around her?
She tilted her head back as it started to rain, and Megumi broke away from her together with Kumiko, both of them rushing for the parfait parlour nearby. The streets were quick to clear, and umbrellas popped up above those who had been more prepared for the unpredictable spring weather.
Aiko didn’t run. She didn’t put up an umbrella.
She let the drops hit her face, warm against her skin.
Let them linger rather than wiping them away, enjoying the feel of them, finding them comforting and soothing.
Because they made her feel connected to him again.
A single thought formed in her mind, a question her heart answered in the affirmative.
Was this his doing?