The Art of Us by Hilaria Alexander (21)

When I woke up, I felt as if I was coming out of a coma.

I’d never had jet lag bring me down so bad. Of course, since neither of us had slept much during the flight, we’d crashed as soon as we got to our hotel room.

Thankfully, the hotel was right in the middle of Shinjuku, and according to Lena, it was close to everything we could possibly need.

When I was finally able to open my eyes, however, I forgot where we were staying and screamed in horror as I took in Godzilla’s hand right over my bed.

We were staying in one of Tokyo’s newest skyscrapers, the Godzilla-themed Gracery Hotel in Shinjuku, which had several rooms decorated with the Japanese nuclear-enhanced sea monster that had starred in more than thirty movies in the last few decades, including what I considered a very unfortunate Hollywood version.

I’d insisted on having a Godzilla-themed room, and the claws of the monster coming out of the wall were impressive.

I’d wanted the room with a view of the monster, the one built outside on the patio of the hotel, but it had already been booked.

Although I knew we had signed up for international phone plans, when I tried calling Lena’s number, I couldn’t get a signal and I was too groggy to try to figure out why my phone wasn’t working yet. I called her room number, and after the fourth ring, she picked up the phone.

“Moshi moshi?” she asked in a raspy voice, and I laughed. “Oh, it’s you. I was worried they were summoning us already.”

“That’s tomorrow. Hey, guess what?”

“What?”

“Godzilla scared the crap out of me,” I said with a laugh.

Her low, sleepy voice broke into a laugh.

“Told ya. What time is it?” she asked.

“Seven thirty-seven.”

“Hmmm, maybe we should get something to eat. Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” I replied.

“Okay. Give me…thirty minutes. Maybe forty. I need to get my bearings. Come to my room.”

“What’s your room number again?”

“Nana zero nana.”

“What now?”

“Seven oh seven,” she clarified.

“I’ll see you in forty minutes.”

Kabukicho, the entertainment district within Shinjuku, had changed quite a bit since the last time I had been there. I didn’t know how it was actually possible, but there were even more buildings in Tokyo’s busy skyline. For starters, the hotel where we were staying had only been opened a couple of years before, and the building was so tall, it towered over the surrounding ones—kind of like Godzilla himself.

Amos wanted to have dinner in an authentic, run-of-the-mill Japanese restaurant, so we forewent looking for a fancier place and opted for a diner that had a selection of classic Japanese bowls like katsudon, a pork cutlet over steamed rice, and tendon, a selection of tempura shrimp and veggies over white steamed rice.

After dinner, we passed a few izakayas, the equivalent of an American pub but with traditional Japanese-style décor.

Amos stared curiously at the doors of one that seemed to be bustling with activity.

“Do you want to go in?” I let out a laugh, amused by the way he stared at everything.

He looked like a child in an amusement park, but I understood it. There was so much to take in, so much to see. It was going to take him weeks to get used to all of it.

“Can we?” he asked with some hesitation. He brushed his hair to the side of his face as he often did, and I fought the impulse to reach out for a stubborn strand that was still covering his eyes. He fixed his hair again.

“Of course we can—as long as you promise we won’t get carried away.”

“Okay, just one beer. Biru ippon kudasai,” he said, holding up a finger and practicing the right way to order a beer. The grin stretching across his face made me smile. When he did that, I could almost forget we were all the way across the world because of him.

“Very good. Did you brush up on your Japanese? Did you take classes?”

He gave me a shy smile. “I used Rosetta Stone. Come on, let’s go in and see what else I can remember.”

We were almost done with our beer, and I knew it was time to get back to the hotel. Hopefully we’d be able to go back to sleep and get some more rest. We had a full day of meetings ahead of us. the beginning of our work the next day.

It was just the two of us in a crowded Japanese pub filled with people who were trying to forget about their busy work days.

I stared at Lena’s face as she looked away, taking in every detail of the place, her lips curved in a smile. I wondered what she was thinking about.

I had so many things I wanted to ask her.

There was so much I wanted to tell her.

I wanted to ask why she’d never tried to come back after spending so much time in Japan. I wanted to ask her what had happened there that had broken her heart.

I wanted to ask her if she’d try to make peace with it, and if her tattoo had anything to do with it.

She was slightly buzzed, and her eyes sparkled with an energy I hadn’t seen in weeks.

“What happened?” I asked out of the blue, emboldened by the alcohol.

“What? When?” she replied with a frown.

“What happened when you were here last? Something must have happened. Marty mentioned you not wanting to come back. What happened, Lena?”

She raised her glass to her lips and paused.

“I’ll have to be drunker than this to be willing to talk about it. Can we not just enjoy our first night here? As you might have guessed, it’s not a happy memory. I would rather not talk about it.”

She pierced me with her blue eyes, and I broke our gaze, looking at the glass in my hand.

I nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to understand.”

“I know. In due time, I will tell you, I promise.”

In the morning, before our first meeting, I changed four times. I almost wanted to wear my Hot Mess t-shirt, because that was how I felt.

Instead, I went for a more classic look of slim black pants, a white shirt, and a black jacket.

I tied my hair in a ponytail at the nape of my neck and wore some small stud earrings. I added a cubic zirconia Hello Kitty pin to my jacket.

I looked like a slightly more modern version of the Japanese OL, which was the acronym for office lady—in other words, an assistant or secretary.

I met Amos downstairs in the lobby, and he looked sharp in a slim fit black suit with a white shirt and a black tie with white dots. In the open space of the lobby, he looked statuesque. From a distance, he almost looked like a Hollywood actor promoting the latest installment of a lucrative franchise.

Upon closer inspection, the white dots appeared to be the Star Wars Death Star.

“Star Wars?”

He nodded and smiled, his lips pressed together almost in a pout. He gave me a once-over.

“You look nice. Formal, but nice.”

“My palms are sweaty,” I said, rubbing my hands on the sides of my legs.

“I’m nervous, too,” he confessed, leaning toward me and circling one of my wrists with his hand. He started applying a little pressure on my veins, a couple of inches below my wrist.

“What are you doing?” I whisper-shouted.

“It’s an acupressure technique. It’s supposed to help with anxiety.”

Our gazes met and then I lowered mine to his thumb on my wrist, my eyes tracking the circular motion.

“Take a deep breath,” he coaxed.

I did as he asked and after a couple minutes, I started feeling…different.

Slightly less frazzled.

“Better?” he asked in a gentle tone.

“Better.” I nodded. His brown eyes studied me, and I was suddenly distracted by the way he smelled, the way his lips curled into a charming smile. When he smiled at me like that, his eyes crinkled at the corners, butterflies erupted in my stomach, and my heart galloped in my chest.

When he looked at me like that, I wished I could be a different woman.

I wished I could be the one to hold him at night.

I wished he could be the one to make me feel safe and loved.

I wished he could be the one to make me believe I deserved happiness.

An employee from the Japanese publishing company, Supaa–, which meant super in English, came over and introduced herself.

Megumi Hashimoto would be our guide for the next few days of meetings, until we moved into the house with Ishikawa and our translator.

After exchanging bows and pleasantries, she accompanied us to our car and together we headed to Ginza, where Supaa– had its main offices.

When Rika Ishikawa entered the room, I considered several scenarios to possibly get out of the situation.

What’s it going to be, Lena? Are you going to hide under the table or run out of here saying you need to use the restroom?

I wasn’t overreacting. I had reason to be scared.

My teenage idol looked like she wanted to kill me, and she had every reason to feel that way. I couldn’t blame her. If I had been in her shoes, I’d have hated me too.

The whole situation was bizarre and unprecedented. To her, it must have felt like an insult, an outrage. Hiring a foreign artist was the biggest kind of blasphemy.

There she was, one of the most famous manga artists of her time, having to deal with working with a gaijin, an outsider, brought in to finish her masterpiece.

For months, I didn’t understand why Supaa– even wanted to do this.

They could have gotten anyone else. Aiko could have been finished with some of the younger talents Japan had to offer a long time ago.

However, one thing was for sure: it wouldn’t have made as good of a story.

Before we left, Marty told us that was the main reason why they wanted us. They were impressed by our fanfiction project and how popular it had gotten in just a few months.

On top of it, the Japanese publisher liked the idea of this one-of-a-kind collaboration; it was great publicity for both Supaa– and Paz Media.

It was a collaboration for posterity.

As soon as our eyes met, I immediately bowed, aiming for a fifty-degree angle.

The angle of your bow showed your respect—the more you bowed, the more respect you showed. Ninety degrees was common, too, but I felt it was overkill. I held my position for a few seconds, as a sign of reverence, and when I looked up, I noticed something.

A slight tremor of her hand.

As I straightened myself up, I kept my eyes down and looked at her hand again.

Her hand kept shaking. It wouldn’t stop.

Ishikawa’s mystery illness was Parkinson’s.

She couldn’t draw anymore because of Parkinson’s disease.

It finally made sense. What still didn’t make sense, though, was why she hadn’t given up the fight before. She could have worked it out with the publishing company and had someone else finish for her under her guidance before it came down to this.

It was something she obviously didn’t want to do, and now we were there, against her will, forced on her by the publishing company. I suspected they must have had some sort of leverage on her, like her contract ending, fewer royalties, something. They must have had something to corner her and make her agree to this.

My stomach churned. I felt sick, ashamed. I wanted to run out and never look back. When you’re growing up, you dream of meeting your idols, not making their lives miserable at a time when they’re already vulnerable.

Ishikawa looked so frail, so much older than her sixty-two years, the smoke lines around her lips as deep as the ones around her eyes.

Years prior, she’d always joked about how much of a chain-smoker she was, but that was a common thing in Japan. Manga artists notoriously lived on a tough schedule of deadlines and self-loathing, of stress, bad nutrition, and smoking.

Parkinson’s was manageable to a point, but you had to commit to a healthy lifestyle. By the way she looked, I wasn’t sure Ishikawa had taken as much care of herself as she should have. My chest tightened and a knot formed in my throat, my eyes burning with tears.

Shithead, you can’t cry now.

I felt horrible. I didn’t want to do this to her. I sighed heavily, trying to blink my tears away and swallow past the knot.

Amos’ voice distracted me. It sounds different, I thought, and then I realized he was saying something in Japanese.

“Ishikawa-sama, yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”

Nice to meet you, Ms. Ishikawa. Ha—literally, yoroshiku onegaishimasu meant, please treat me kindly.

Sure.

Sure she was going to treat us kindly. I glanced at her again, her eyes narrowing on both of us, her thin red lips pursed together.

Amos bowed, and I bowed again with him, because that was all I could think to do, given the circumstances. It was a sign of respect, and above everything else, I wanted her to know that we did respect her.

I more than respected her.

I adored her.

She had created such a unique style over the years, one so detailed it could never quite be achieved or replicated by anyone else.

Manga in Japan were the equivalent of newspapers or magazines. They were designed to be cheap and disposable, a product designed for fast consumption.

Manga were the fast food of Japanese comics—well, at least most of them.

As such, a lot of stories weren’t embellished. So many were drawn and written quickly, with little attention to graphic details.

But her work was different. Her work was incredibly detailed. Her stories were microcosms of beauty and peculiarities. From the longlines-look of the characters to their hairstyles and the clothes they wore, each detail was so unique.

Each one of her characters was infused with that certain Ishikawa look.

One of the execs motioned for us to come forward and sit at the table. Amos and I took a seat across from Ishikawa, and a translator sat at her side.

The meetings lasted a while, and in the next hours we went over what we were required to accomplish according to a very detailed schedule.

It boiled down to this: we were to finish the manga under the direction of the original creator, without objecting to her wishes or straying away from her style.

As if I would even dare to do that.

My idol kept shooting daggers at me, so I started massaging the inside of my wrist the way Amos had done earlier. I must have been doing something wrong, because it didn’t seem to work as well as it had when he’d done it.

I glanced his way and stared at his stunning, serious profile as he looked over some forms they had given us.

He caught me staring.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“This is all your fault,” I mouthed, and an amused grin stretched across his face, lighting up his mischievous eyes in a way I couldn’t ignore.