Chapter Text
Just over a year after her father had returned from Britain, Susato was sitting at supper, listening to him talk about the research he was doing at the recently founded Imperial Yumei University. He was to begin teaching there in the next term, and he seemed excited about it. Susato was happy to listen. It was still strange having him around, but despite her previous nervousness, she decided she quite liked it. He encouraged her to talk to him about the things that she learned in school or the questions she had about the world or the friends she was making.
Once or twice, she asked him about his time in Great Britain, which he didn’t seem to want to talk about. He mentioned working in a coroner's office, which made Susato equally curious and repulsed, but Grandmother said that it wasn’t an appropriate conversation topic. Despite his reluctance to share details, he didn’t talk down to her.
There was a lull in the supper conversation as Grandmother and Father both took their last bites of food, which Susato took as her chance to break in.
“Father?” He turned to look at her. “Could we, after supper has been cleaned up, practice jiu-jitsu some more?”
A smile spread across his face as he said, “I think that sounds like a wonderful idea.”
Susato celebrated internally, springing from her cushion to take the dishes to wash, “Thank you for the meal, Grandmother!”
But just as she lifted the first bowl, a call came from the front of the house, announcing someone’s arrival at the home. The voice sounded like that of a boy in his teens. Whoever they were, they had better not take up too much time; the sun would be setting before long, and they needed light to practice.
Father looked at Grandmother, his eyes wide, and something seemed to pass between them. Susato furrowed her brow.
“How about,” he turned back to Susato and set a hand on her head, “I will talk to… our guest, then after I’m done, we can practice some.”
Susato nodded. Her plans were safe.
While she was in the kitchen cleaning, she heard Father escorting someone she didn’t catch a glimpse of into his study. Once she and Grandmother had washed the dishes, however, Father was still in his study. And he stayed there. Grandmother brought tea into the study, but rather than leaving promptly, she stayed for some time before returning to the kitchen with the cups.
Susato waited as patiently as she could, but it seemed as though it had been dreadfully long since dinner. She knew Grandmother wouldn’t approve of her disturbing him, but was fairly sure Father wouldn’t actually mind, so when Grandmother returned to her room, Susato crept over to Father’s study.
Strangely, she heard no conversation at all coming from the study. The door was partially ajar, allowing the dying light coming through the screen to spill out onto the hall. She peeped in through the opening, trying to get a glance at what he was doing before she entered.
Her attempt at stealth was an immediate failure, however, as Father took notice of her at the door. He had been staring at the wall just through the sliding door, but now his eyes sharpened to focus.
“Susato,” he addressed her.
A shock of guilt went through her. She shouldn’t have disturbed him, much less tried to look in on him without his knowledge. She bowed her head. “I apologize for intruding—”
“Oh, no, don’t worry about that, my dear. I was just about to ask for you to come in. Please.” He beckoned her in with a wave of the hand.
She slid the door open further and stepped in gingerly. As she did so, she finally caught sight of the boy sat across the table from her father. He turned to look at her with piercing eyes, wearing a simple red kimono with a katana laid across his lap.
“Come, sit by me. There’s something we ought to talk about,” Father said.
She immediately began to wrack her brain for what he wanted to speak about. What could this boy have to say that necessitated her involvement. A fear darted across her mind: he was leaving again after just returning, except it would be worse this time because now she knew what she was missing. She kept her lips sealed as she crossed the room and knelt beside her father.
Father nodded to the stranger across the table, “Why don’t you introduce yourself?”
“Hello, Mikotoba-san,” he smiled at her, “I am Asogi Kazuma. It’s very nice to meet you,” he said, bowing.
“I’m Mikotoba Susato, it’s nice to meet you as well, Asogi-san,” she responded in kind, speaking stiffly.
Father began, somewhat stilted, “Asogi-kun…he made a promise to his father, and in light of that, he’s begun studying to become a defense attorney. I would like to try— I am going to— guide him along this path.”
She didn’t understand what any of this had to do with their family. She wondered why he couldn’t just find a mentor actually involved in what he was interested in. She balled her hand into fists in her lap.
As Father continued, she watched Asogi’s face shifting rapidly through barely concealed emotions that all went by too quickly for her catch. “He’s going to be… staying here, for some time. Joining our family.”
She felt anger she didn’t understand bubbling up and turning her stomach, even though she wanted to be welcoming. She turned to Father, feeling betrayed. Though he wasn’t leaving, suddenly there was someone who was going to invade the fragile family they had just barely constructed. It wasn’t fair.
“Asogi-kun,” Father said, seeming to choke on the name a bit as he said it, “would you excuse us for a moment?” He must have observed the tears forming at the corner of her eyes.
“Of course,” Asogi nodded.
Father stood, held out his hand to her, and led her down the hall to their garden. They sat on the edge of the engawa in the light of the swiftly setting sun.
“Susato, what is wrong?” he asked her quietly.
“Why does Asogi-san have to stay here?” She felt the unkindness in her words, and she knew Grandmother and Father would be disappointed in her for her lack of hospitality, but it was spilling out all the same. She balled her hands up in her lap and stared at them. “It’s not fair. He has his own father, he can’t have you! Why can’t he find someone else to help him? You’re not a lawyer. Why does he have to stay here anyway! Why not just stay with his family—”
“Susato,” Her father spoke gently but authoritatively. She looked up from her lap into his eyes, and again felt ashamed. “His father… died of illness in London. He has no extended family with which to reside. I was one of his father’s very closest friends, like his next of kin.”
She persisted once more, weakly, “But it’s not fair…”
Something like sadness crossed Father’s face as he took her hand. “I never should have left you like I did, Susato. But imagine if you hadn’t even had your grandmother here all this time. Imagine if you didn’t have a home to return to.”
“Oh…” She would have been so lonely. And it would have been really hard if she didn’t have Grandmother to take care of her—cleaning her scraped knees and making her food and teaching her manners.
“I know having Asogi-kun around will change things, but we should welcome him as we would want to be welcomed in his situation.”
She sat there for a moment longer, then slowly nodded. “How long will he stay?”
“Well, that depends on a lot of things, but the boy is 14 right now, and he’ll likely stay at least until he attends university.”
If he was 14, then that meant he would be around for at least five years. That seemed like forever to have a stranger in her home. She wanted to be a good hostess, though, if only to honor Father and Grandmother, so she swallowed down the frustration she felt.
Father wrapped an arm around her, and she leaned up against him, but he soon withdrew, saying, “I need to go discuss things further with Asogi-kun and Mother.” In a gentle reproof, he added, “You ought to apologize to him for the cold welcome you gave him earlier, but you may wait until tomorrow if you wish.”
She stayed out there in the dying light, still wishing Asogi had never shown up at their door, even as she tried to work up how to apologize to him. It was too dark to practice jiu-jitsu now.
-
The next day, Susato observed Asogi with bewilderment. He showed up one evening and was suddenly living alongside her family the very next morning. It hardly felt real. It was, though, and that meant she had to figure out how to apologize to him, and how to fix the part of her that hated his presence.
He seemed reserved, though that could just be due to the recent tragedy he’d suffered and the fact that he was a new resident in a stranger’s house. He was extremely focused on his studies, passing the time reading textbooks, despite the fact that it was summer break. Susato couldn’t help admiring his dedication; she loved to read, but mostly read for fun during breaks.
She watched him from where she was standing in the central room. He was sitting on the engawa reading. Absent-mindedly, he ran a hand over the hilt of the katana he always kept at his side. It was a bit odd, him carrying it around in the house.
She was getting bored just standing there, but as she moved to walk away, Asogi turned to look at her.
He blinked once, before cracking a smile, “What are you up to?”
She pressed her lips together, unhappy to be questioned, and a bit embarrassed to say she was watching him.
“I’m working on some of my English,” he said, unprompted, “Your father tells me you’re advanced at it for someone your age.”
Some part of Susato was pleased to hear that praise from Father, though she still resented the person it came from. She took a few steps toward him. “I like reading English fiction,” she said, as a way of explaining.
“Oh? What sort?”
“I read a lot of folk stories,” she continued, finding herself stepping forward again, “Father brought back some copies of a magazine called The Randst that have these wonderfully fantastical fairy tales. And he brought back a collection of stories with the most charming narrator. Oh! And there’s a book called A Christmas Carol that I’ve been studying. A lot of times I don’t really understand passages, but it’s sort of like a puzzle to try and guess what each part says.”
“Sounds like you’re quite proficient.”
With two more steps, she was looking over Asogi’s shoulder to see what he was reading. It was dreadfully difficult to understand. “What is that?” she asked.
“A play by the English playwright Sao. It’s quite…complex.”
Despite Susato’s squinting, the strange vocabulary and sentence structures refused to make any more sense. “Can you read it?”
“Well… I could sooner read one of your fairy tales.”
She grew excited at the idea, even though it had been proposed as a joke. Asogi surely knew more of the language than her—he could help her with the parts she didn’t understand.
He must have sensed her excitement, because he asked, “Would you like me to read one for you?”
She paused before she let herself nod. It felt like surrendering to allow him to read to her. Still… it was a pretty convincing offer. She stood over Asogi’s shoulder, looking at the work of Sao in his hands, wavering between accepting or rejecting. But watching his diligent work made her feel as though she wanted to improve in her studies this summer too, wanted to prove to her father that she was just as good.
“Yes,” she finally agreed, “Let me go get one.” She ran off down the hall to her room, and retrieved a magazine. As she approached Asogi once more, she slowed to a walk, the guilt from last night washing over her.
He turned to see her return, saying “What’ve you got there?”
She clutched the magazine tight to her chest and knelt down next to him. “I— I’m sorry Asogi-san. I was very rude last night. I’m sure you were very upset, and I was unkind.” She was looking down at the boards of the engawa, but she looked up as Asogi responded.
“Do you mean that?” he stared at her with his piercing grey eyes.
That wasn’t the response she expected. The response from Father, Grandmother, or her peers in school was always ‘I accept your apology.’ The divergence stopped her in her tracks and she thought for a moment. The resentment was still there, but much smaller than it had been. To her own surprise, she found herself honestly answering, “Yes. I mean it.”
“Then I forgive you,” he held out his hands and smiled, “now show me this Strand magazine.”
She flipped to the page where “The Enchanted Whistle” began, saying “It’s the Randst magazine, Asogi-san.”