LENA
Our arrangement was Big Brother-esque, to say the least.
We moved into a house in a fancy part of Shibuya that was comparable to New York’s Upper East Side, with the difference that it was full of traditional Japanese homes, not fancy apartment buildings. Some of them had been built at the beginning of the twentieth century, while others had been built during post-war Japan. The one we moved into had white walls, and the roof was made of blue ceramic tiles. Both inside and out, it was absolutely stunning, and it made the fact that we had been “forced” into the arrangement a little bit sweeter.
It took us about two weeks to find our footing.
To make the process easier, prior to our arrival, Rika Ishikawa had been busy writing—actually, she’d been dictating the storyboard to her assistant, Akane.
The Japanese storyboard had then been translated into English, but we were only given a few pages at a time. Rika Ishikawa did understand English and could communicate with us pretty well, but trying to convey the vision in your head to someone who was going to replicate your work was not an easy feat, let alone doing it in another language.
I hadn’t loosened up around her yet. I seemed to be on edge whenever she appeared in our common area, the dining room we’d transformed into a work space.
I acted like a scared young maid from some old Japanese play.
One thing I was relieved about was that she didn’t mind if we spoke to her in a less formal tone. She knew our Japanese was limited, and she didn’t care too much about formalities.
She even allowed us to call her the less obsequious Rika-san, instead of using the honorific sama. I was happy about it because even when I was in school, keigo, the Japanese honorific speech, had been my Achilles’ heel.
When we couldn’t find common ground between English and Japanese, we resorted to the help of our translator.
Hiroyuki Soseki was not only our translator, he was a renowned blues guitarist and Rika Ishikawa’s live-in boyfriend. The two had been together for more than fifteen years.
Hiroyuki used to tour the US and had played with many famous American musicians before he decided to quit touring so he could take care of Rika-san.
Apparently, it had taken the doctors a while before they figured out her symptoms were early onset Parkinson’s disease.
We didn’t talk about Rika-san’s illness around her. Hiroyuki, however, was a good source of information, and actually shed some light as to how our collaboration had come to be. We knew that the Japanese publisher had hired us because of how popular our fanfiction had become in just a few months. What we didn’t know, was that Ishikawa had to agree to the deal because her economic situation had changed.
“She hasn’t published a new comic or even just a few pages in…so many years. Between doctor’s bills and living expenses, most of her savings are gone, and it doesn’t help that I have no income. I haven’t worked in years, except for a few—how do you say it in English? Gig?”
“Gig, that’s right,” I told him. “Do you still play a few gigs here and there?”
“Sometimes, when I can be sure she doesn’t need me.”
Hiroyuki gave me a melancholic smile, and I mirrored it.
He was a couple years younger than Rika, but he could have easily passed for barely fifty. There was something youthful and childlike about his face.
His slanted eyes were dark and soulful, and his chin-length black hair was sprinkled with just a few gray ones. His short salt-and-pepper beard and moustache were the only features that revealed his true age. He’d rub his chin whenever he got lost mid-thought, trying to translate a word or a sentence for us.
“Nandarou?” he would ask himself and pause. It meant something along the lines of How can I explain this? I loved the way a single Japanese word could sometimes mean so much.
Hiroyuki was a kind soul, I had no doubt about that.
It was the first impression I’d gotten when I met him two weeks prior after one of the initial meetings. He’d first bowed at Amos and me, and then he’d stretched a hand in greeting. His soft, genuine smile illuminated his whole face, and his mannerisms—half-Japanese, half-American—fascinated me. The more I got to know him, the more I appreciated him.
He refused to be called Hiroyuki-san by us, because he said whenever he traveled, he was just Hiroyuki. Accordingly, he called us Amos and Lena—well, actually my name sounded like Re-na, since the letter L didn’t exist in the Japanese alphabet.
I could see how much Hiroyuki loved and cared for Rika. We’d only been there a couple of weeks, but it was palpable.
I could see it in so many small gestures.
He was always the first one up, preparing her breakfast or her tea and taking it to her room. He was the one making sure she was comfortable at all times.
Rika’s mobility wasn’t the greatest, and on top of that, she suffered from bouts of vertigo, but when she was up and walking around the house, Hiroyuki followed her everywhere with his eyes. He kept a distance, always making sure he was there for her without being overbearing.
It was safe to say that while I got along with Hiroyuki, I couldn’t bring myself to loosen up around Rika-san, even though she wasn’t as icy as she had been toward me on the day of our very first meeting.
Unsurprisingly, Amos didn’t seem to have the kind of problem I had, maybe because she wasn’t his idol, or maybe because he didn’t care as much as I did.
To me, this was the most important moment of my career, and the most terrifying one. I was scared pretty much every minute, and I knew Rika Ishikawa had noticed. I could tell she was making a real effort to be a bit friendlier, but that still wasn’t enough for me to be less of a frazzled mess all the time.
Not only was I nervous about doing a good job, as we progressed with the story, I kept wondering what kind of resolution it was going to have.
The last published volume had seen the two protagonists apart, living on opposite sides of the world after Aiko Matsumoto had lost everything. She’d lost her boyfriend in a tragic accent and had then lost her musical career, and she’d left Japan without a word to any of her friends about her whereabouts. Aiko Uemura was trapped in a loveless marriage to a rich music producer and had given birth to two kids.
The readers were waiting for the two friends with the same name to finally reunite in the end, but I wasn’t sure how much more heartbreak Ishikawa was going to put her characters through.
Maggie and I had started reading it years ago when we lived in Japan. As two young girls in their early twenties, we felt an incredible connection to the two protagonists.
Just like Aiko and Aiko, our names were similar. Magdalena Pulaski was her birth name, and while no one in her family ever called her Lena, we thought it was a pretty big coincidence. On top of that, our personalities mirrored those of the characters in the comic.
Maggie was the sunny Aiko Uemura—boy crazy, great friend, caring, giving, eternal optimist. I was the dark sheep, Aiko Matsumoto—moody and closed off.
Ever since we’d met in Japanese class, Maggie had been the best friend anyone could ask for, always putting up with me, even when I was at my worst.
She was always there by my side, even during my bouts of sour mood and my moments of drunken, self-destructive behavior.
She was like a ray of sunshine in my miserable life.
For the very first time since I was a child, I had someone who loved me for who I was, who accepted me regardless of my faults, regardless of what I couldn’t give.
When I tried to date and briefly opened myself up to love, she was there to collect the broken pieces of my heart.
Maggie was my best and only friend, the person who understood me the most, the one who would tag along on crazy adventures. It had been my idea to apply for a scholarship in Japan, almost on a whim, and I was the one who’d convinced her to apply.
She went along with my crazy plan, and what had she gotten out of being friends with someone like me?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was the reason she was gone.
I was the reason she never got her college diploma.
I was the reason she would never get any of the happy endings she deserved.
AMOS
I was afraid Lena was going to fuck this up.
At first, she wasn’t being herself. Her sketches were not on par with the quality of her usual stuff. They were not nearly as good as the ones we’d published as fanfiction on the website, and we had to scrap the first couple of days of work.
I was afraid Rika-san would throw a fit and have us sent back to the US, but after a while, it became clear that, like us, she didn’t have much choice in the situation.
I often thought about telling Lena things with Olivia had been over for months. I wondered if that would have changed anything between us.
However, part of me was afraid of how it would impact our already strained relationship. Would it make it better or worse? Was it wise to tell her I couldn’t stop thinking about her? Should I tell her when we were in the middle of working on the most important project of our life?
No, I decided I should probably wait a little bit, especially since we were just now starting to get somewhere with the comic. With the storyboard already written out and three of us working on it, we made good progress. Lena sketched the characters, I worked on the panels in Photoshop, and Akane applied the finishing touches and filled the balloons with text on the computer.
It had been awkward at first, sitting around a table with Rika Ishikawa, waiting for her to give us instructions on how to handle her characters—the beloved, famous characters she’d created and lived with for the greater part of her adult life.
After the first few days of just handing out instructions, she’d started asking Lena and me questions. She asked about Portland, what it was like to be a comic artist in the US, and what our lives were like.
Lena tried to dodge a few questions, but I managed to learn a little more about her. She’d mentioned at the wedding that her parents didn’t have a happy marriage, but I hadn’t known she didn’t have a relationship with her mother or her father.
I wished I could have erased the sadness in her eyes, which she promptly tried to hide when she caught me staring at her.
Rika asked about Lena’s time in Japan, and I noticed her shoulders tense up. She straightened her spine and took a deep breath.
“It was a great experience. Ano jikan de, hontou tanoshikatta,” she said with a slight bow, a Japanese mannerism I’d found myself adopting. Whenever I said something these days, it would always be with a slight bow. I was very happy, she’d told Rika, but there was something in her eyes that told me she was lying.
My eyes met hers and she immediately looked away.
Then, Rika shifted her attention to me and asked about my family, about when I decided I wanted to be an artist.
“It was after my brother died in Afghanistan.” Rika gave me a compassionate look while Lena’s eyes shot up and met mine, clouded by a mix of surprise and confusion. “It’s true,” I said with a slight nod. “After my brother died, I started seeing things differently. I always had this idea that I was going to join the military, but I didn’t want to inflict that kind of pain on my parents again, especially on my mother. I thought my father would agree, but he hasn’t been very pleased with me ever since.”
“I’m sorry about your brother,” Lena said in a somber tone, her eyes cautious. “How old was he?”
I swallowed. “He was twenty. He is…was two years older than me. I was about to start my senior year of high school.”
The mention of my brother darkened the mood, and thankfully Rika decided to switch topics. I was glad she hadn’t asked about my current personal life.
“Why did you two start drawing Aiko together?” Her English wasn’t bad at all, but when she pronounced words with the letter R, her voice had a bit of the Japanese drawl that came out with certain consonants. She’d asked Lena the question, but when Lena didn’t answer right away, I jumped in without even thinking.
“Lena started drawing first. I was inspired by her,” I replied without missing a beat. “I started drawing in her notebook, and I then convinced our boss to put it online,” I proudly stated. Lena narrowed her eyes at me, and Rika-san’s face was leaning toward an expression that said she was not amused.
“Thanks, Amos,” Lena said, her face scrunched up with an expression of playful disdain.
“You’re welcome, Lena,” I replied, mimicking her snarky tone.
“So, we have you to thank for this,” Rika chimed in, pointing her index finger at me. Her eyes were a shade of brown similar to that of coffee beans, darker than mine and a bit smaller. She was wearing very little makeup, and her age showed more than usual. Up close, I could see all the little wrinkles around her eyes and the sides of her mouth.
Although she seemed to spare us when we were working, we had seen her smoking in her room and outside in the garden. Smoking wasn’t good for anyone, and I doubted it was good for someone in her condition. She probably did it in hopes of easing her tremors, but I wondered if it made her feel any better.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I guess it’s all my fault.” My tone was sarcastic to say the least, and I was worried she wouldn’t get the joke, but a smile stretched across her face and then she let out a laugh.
“Demo, shikataganai ne?” Shikataganai—if I recalled correctly, it meant, There’s nothing we can do about it. She laughed again, giving me one more look before turning to Lena and going back to work on a panel she’d been sketching for the last hour.
Weeks went by, and as summer approached, so did the monsoons. It had been raining almost every day for the last week, and I had been told it would last for a month or so. In a way, the rain reminded me of Portland, so I didn’t mind it much, but the weather seemed to affect Rika-san’s health.
The rainy weather seemed to make her vertigo worse, and for this reason we hadn’t been able to make much progress today. We had opened all the screens of the patio to watch the rain fall. Rika was lying down and had asked Hiroyuki to bring one of her blankets, so she could still hang out with us.
“Hiroyuki,” she said in a low voice, “chotto engaku enshite kudasaimasenka?” I didn’t get the whole sentence, but I understood one word, engaku, and after Hiroyuki complied with her request with a lazy smile, grabbing his electric blue Gibson Les Paul, I understood she wanted him to play some music. He tuned his instrument first, and then connected it to a small speaker. The rain kept coming down steadily, creating a soothing background noise.
As soon as Hiroyuki started strumming the guitar, Rika-san closed her eyes, her lips pressed together in a content smile.
I knew she loved listening to him play. She’d asked him to play many times since we’d been there.
Lena had been staring at the rain, her back pressed against the frame of the screen window we’d opened up. Hiroyuki was sitting on the opposite side, right across from her.
Her eyes snapped open, as if she’d suddenly remembered something.
Hiroyuki met her eyes.
“Kono uta shitte iru no?” he asked her—Do you know this song?
“Hai.” She nodded a yes, her face illuminated by a smile. She explained that it was a song by a band she liked a lot. She looked over in my direction and said, “I used to sing their songs all the time when we went to karaoke.”
Hiroyuki let out an exaggerated, “Hontoni?” asking if it was true. “Rena-san, kotoba obete? Utatte kudasai,” he said, asking her to sing the song if she remembered the words.
A faint pink colored her cheeks, and she nodded hesitantly. She wrapped her arms around her legs and began to sing.
I’d never heard her sing, let alone heard her sing in Japanese. For some reason, we hadn’t yet gone to a karaoke place.
Her voice was a bit hoarse, but she could keep a tune. She kept her eyes closed, only opening them to exchange a look with Hiroyuki from time to time. The song was a bluesy, melancholic tune, with a few English words here and there.
Lena seemed to remember the lyrics well enough to keep along with Hiroyuki’s playing. Her voice was full of emotion, and I wished I could understand what she was singing about. I could only make out a few words, like yume, which meant dream, ame, the Japanese word for rain, and inu, which meant dog.
A knot formed in the pit of my stomach, and I found myself moved by the song in a way I didn’t expect. My racing heart was pulsing in my throat, and before I could get ahold of my emotions, my eyes welled with tears.
I wasn’t sure what had gotten into me. I was taken aback by how honest she sounded, how vulnerable. I blinked my tears away and sniffled just as she stopped singing. Hiroyuki strummed his guitar for a few more seconds, a smile stretched across his face, and Lena replied with a shy nod. She looked my way for just a second, cheeks flushed, eyes glossy, and then promptly looked away.
Questions raced through my mind as a warm ache spread through my chest.
I wanted to ask her what the song meant for her, but I didn’t get the chance.