AMOS
“I think you should talk to Rika when we get back. Tell her what this project really means to you. Tell her about Maggie. Let her know the real reason you’ve been looking for a happy ending all these years.”
Lena looked at me pensively, but then she nodded.
“I think you’re right. I need to. I’ve been wanting to tell her everything ever since we got here.”
We held hands on the train back to Tokyo, both sad to leave Kyoto and excited to get back to work. When we made it back a few hours later, the atmosphere in the house was not as strained as it had been when we’d left.
Rika seemed to be in a much better mood, and even greeted us with a smile.
Hiro offered me a beer right away, which I accepted.
Lena sat on the floor next to Rika-san, and I heard her ask in Japanese if they could talk in private.
They got up and started walking along the path of the garden. I stood up in the living room so I could keep a closer eye on Lena.
I could see her talking to Rika-san, who seemed to be listening closely.
I knew Lena was telling her about Maggie when she started wiping her tears away. I couldn’t really see Rika-san’s expression, but when I saw her reach for Lena and pull her into an unexpected hug, I understood that she wasn’t indifferent to her words.
Despite our setbacks, we managed to get back on track.
I was still trying to make sure Lena wasn’t overworking her hand and making her carpal tunnel worse. Her friend Yuri had recommended an acupuncturist friend of hers, and Lena had been going for therapy twice a week. Thankfully, it was helping. She was feeling good and was confident about her work.
Rika Ishikawa seemed to be on her best behavior.
After Lena had told her everything about losing her best friend there in Tokyo and the similarities they shared with the protagonists of Aiko, Rika-san seemed to be a little more understanding and easier to work with on most days.
If she was terrified to finish her manga like Lena had pointed out when we were in Kyoto, she didn’t show it.
Instead, as we neared the end, she seemed more and more excited.
There was a lot of buzz around the imminent return of Aiko and the publication of the final three volumes.
If we’d thought Supaa–’s marketing was aggressive before, it was nothing compared to what it became around the holidays.
Aiko was scheduled to release at the end of January, and Lena and I were planning to stay until the official release date of the manga. We had some press to do before then, and afterward, we wanted to see a few more places in Japan before going back home.
The last months had been exhausting, and it didn’t make sense to go back to Portland right away when there were so many things we still wanted to do and see in Japan. Plus, we didn’t want to miss the celebrations for Aiko’s final release.
Marty would just have to understand and deal with it.
LENA
Amos started making a list of the things we wanted to do once we were done with the work.
Part of me was elated. We were almost done, and things were finally going well with Ishikawa. We’d seemed to enter a new phase of our relationship, and now I believed she actually liked me.
She teased me constantly about Amos, asking me the most inappropriate personal questions. I wasn’t one who blushed easily, but she managed to embarrass even me, asking me about my beau’s size and such, thankfully only when it was just the two of us.
I was glad we were finally friendlier with each other, but it also saddened me.
Once this was all over, we were going to leave and I’d probably never see her again. She’d been such an important part of my life growing up and although she hadn’t always been easy to work with, I did love her and admire her.
I was sad to be nearing the end of my stay in Japan, but I had so much to look forward to. I had Switch to complete, an idea for a new comic book, and on top of that, I had signed a contract with Amira Farouk, selling her the rights to produce an adaptation of Switch. She wanted me to be involved with the project, and I couldn’t have been more excited. But, for the time being, I had other things to focus on.
The days leading up to the last pages of Aiko were the most taxing and emotional ones, not just for me.
One day during our last week of scheduled work, Akane was assisting Ishikawa with something in her room. They started arguing in Japanese and I couldn’t understand what it was about. Minutes later, Akane stormed out of Ishikawa’s room and left in tears before I could even ask her what was going on.
Amos looked at me, baffled, waiting for an explanation.
“Did you understand what they were arguing about?”
I shook my head no. I’d never seen Akane react like that in all these months.
She was quiet, shy, and loyal—fiercely loyal. On more than one occasion, I’d seen proof of the kind of love and admiration she had for Rika-san.
“I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying. I could only hear Akane say ‘no’ over and over.”
The mystery thickened as days passed and Akane didn’t return until the end of the week. When I asked her, she said she was okay, but I could sense something was still off between her and Rika-san. Their exchanges were entirely too formal compared to the way they’d interacted in the past.
I tried to stay out of their drama and focus on the task ahead. I blamed it on the fact that we were nearing the end and emotions were flying high.
I finally had the script of the end of Aiko in my hands.
Rika-san handed it to me and I went to my room to read it, impatient to know what was going to happen.
I cried as I read the last two chapters, wishing with every part of my being that my best friend and I could get the same ending as Aiko Uemura and Aiko Matsumoto.
Their reunion was everything I had wished for. It was heartbreaking and emotional, but I knew the fans were going to love it.
On top of being reunited, Aiko Uemura had finally decided to divorce her cheating husband and rekindle the romance with the boy she’d loved in her twenties. The manga concluded with Aiko Matsumoto starting a new band with a new love interest, introduced to her by her best friend.
The tears wouldn’t stop rolling down my face. I was happy, because it wasn’t one of Ishikawa’s bittersweet endings.
It was the happy ending so many had wished for.
I wiped my tears away and emerged from my room.
Akane, Rika-san, and Amos were all sitting at the table, and they all looked up when I entered the room, triumphant.
“Hajimemashiou.” Let’s start, I said with a smile on my face. I was ready to make the last few chapters my best work yet.
AMOS
“I can’t believe we’re done done,” Lena said, wiping her tears away.
“We did it. What do they say in Japanese? Yatta?”
“Yes. Yatta. We did it,” she repeated.
It had been a stressful few weeks, trying to get everything perfect for the very last volume. We had worked so hard to make our deadline, I was afraid Lena was going to strain her wrist again.
But, everything worked out in the end, and now we were all working on the media portion of our release. We did interviews for Japanese and American magazines and were even invited along with Rika-san to a Japanese talk show.
Everything was as surreal as I’d imagined.
It was one thing to be in a room drawing alongside a famous Japanese comic book artist; it was a completely different thing to be out in public, trying to listen to the interpreter talking through the earpiece in your ear and not look like an absolute moron.
Lena, surprisingly, was great with the press. She appeared cool and relaxed answering questions. She could manage some in Japanese, but she politely asked them to repeat or translate to English if she didn’t understand.
After two weeks of press, we were all wiped out.
I felt elated on release day, because after that, we were finally done and could go on with our lives.
Lena and I were happy, and I couldn’t wait to live our next chapter.
Supaa– was confident the last three volumes of Aiko were going to be the best-selling comics of the year, and it was going to bring Aiko’s total sales to a new, higher record.
We celebrated throughout the day, watching the news, reading about the earliest reactions, watching interviews of fans who’d been lined up for days outside the stores to get the first few copies.
The reviews and reactions of the press and fans were great, and both Lena and I were praised for “recreating Ishikawa’s style so perfectly it looked like it had come from the artist herself.”
That night, we headed to a big party organized by Supaa–. Rika-san and Hiroyuki both wore sleek tuxedos without ties. While Hiro’s tuxedo was black, Rika’s was made with a print of all the previous covers of Aiko. Rika-san had always been very fashion-forward, and she looked sharp and badass in her suit—almost as much as the woman I loved, who surprised me by wearing a knee-length dress made with the same fabric as Ishikawa’s outfit. She looked beautiful, but the line of the dress looked decidedly more feminine than her usual style.
“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t feel very comfortable in this, but when she said she wanted us to wear something similar, I couldn’t say no. Plus, look at this fabric. It’s so perfect. This dress is something Maggie would have loved to wear. For some reason, it seemed fitting.”
“You look beautiful,” I told her, pulling her into a hug.
The party was crowded but fun. There were a bunch of execs from Supaa–, several manga artists, a few Japanese TV celebrities, and a couple of musicians. Much to Lena’s dismay, none of them were the Japanese musicians she knew and was fond of.
The food was among some of the best I’d ever had, including excellent sushi, sashimi, yakitori, and Japanese fried chicken.
The waiters kept bringing around pitchers upon pitchers of beer.
The restaurant was located on a skyscraper in the middle of Atago, an upscale district not far from Shibuya. The party went on for a few hours, and we even got to meet and greet a few readers who had won a contest. When they met Ishikawa, their reactions were priceless. There was nothing quite like meeting the person who had written beautiful stories that had helped you during your formative years.
Toward the end of the night, we snuck away to a corner of the restaurant, admiring the view of Tokyo by night, feeding each other mochi.
When the party at the restaurant ended, many of the attendees moved the celebrations to the nearest karaoke place. We were all pretty drunk and loud, and no one wanted to go home.
To our surprise, Rika-san didn’t join us. We’d been to karaoke together before, and she never missed an opportunity to show off her skills. She didn’t sing a lot of pop songs, but she enjoyed singing enka, a more traditional style of Japanese music.
Instead, we saw Hiroyuki give her a long hug and kiss her. Then, he put her in a taxi and waved goodbye. When the taxi drove away, Hiroyuki stared at it until it disappeared.
“Did you see that, too? Did they really hug and kiss in front of everyone? How strange,” Lena said.
“And even more strange, he’s staying here and letting her go home by herself. Do you think there’s something wrong with them? Do you think they had a fight? Where is she going? This party is for her.”
“I don’t know. I need another drink, and it’s cold out here. Come on, let’s go. I’m ready to sing my heart out,” she said, pulling my arm. It was late January, and it was a bitter, cold night.
“What are you going to sing this time?” I asked her as we got a karaoke room big enough for thirty of us.
“I don’t know yet, maybe some American hits…probably a Madonna song or two…but I definitely want to sing some Utada Hikaru.”
“Who’s that?”
“She’s a national treasure, and hands down my favorite Japanese pop artist.”
“Well, let’s go then. After you, pretty lady.”