He shrugged and shifted his gaze back to the moat. A couple more joggers ran past, music playing through their headphones. We were in the park, but the city wasn’t far away. The roads around us were heavy with traffic, and the paths were swarming with tourists.
“Look.” I sighed and surprised myself when I said, “You’re not the only one who screwed up that day, all right?”
He leaned against the railing. “No shit.”
“It was—” I started. “Well, it was the worst day ever, if you want me to be honest.”
He turned to face me, his eyes warm but cautious. I didn’t know what we should do. Where we could possibly go from here.
What do I say to him now?
“Okay…” He tipped his head toward me and my breath went sharp. “Are you hungry?”
“What?”
“I’m hungry.” He nudged me with his elbow and bounced on his heels. “Starving, actually. We should find a konbini.”
I exhaled. My veins were still thrumming, but there was something different, some minute change in the atmosphere I couldn’t quite place.
Maybe this was a truce?
Or maybe I was nuts.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“Excellent,” Jamie said. “But we have to do it fast.”
And then he started to run.
The morning sun reflected in the skyscrapers that circled us, and a rainbow-patterned kite flashed above, glittering like fish scales. There was a miraculous breeze, maybe because I was running.
“I’m not Mika!” I shouted. “I don’t run!”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me along. We guessed streets to turn down until we found a konbini. “Success!” Jamie said, tightening his grip to stop me from skidding forward.
“Is it like you remember?” I asked and tried to see the konbini the way I would have if I’d been gone for the last three years—small and fluorescent and stacked with every snack and drink and plastic bento box one could begin to imagine.
“Everything and more.” Jamie pointed to the fridges at the back of the store. “Behold! Caffeine!”
The fridges brimmed with sodas and green teas with kanji and pictures of flowers on the labels. But most importantly, they had coffee. Milky coffee and black coffee in bottles and cans and cartons with straws attached to their sides. Some of them weren’t in fridges at all; they sat in a separate section under warm yellow lights.
“Heated coffee in a can.” Jamie’s face lit up. “I forgot about these!”
“Well, it’s called a convenience store for a reason,” I said.
“Because it’s konbini-ent?”
“Good one.” I reached out to press the palms of my hands against the cold fridge. Palm prints appeared briefly and then faded.
Jamie wandered around the store, picking out food: a bag of seaweed potato chips, chocolate-covered almonds, Tomato Pretz sticks. I watched as he examined different bags of senbei and wondered if any of this seemed new to him. When I’d moved back to Tokyo, some things had seemed like shadowed memories brought to life. Snippets from dreams.
I realized I was staring at him and pretended to read a label I couldn’t understand on a bag of lychee gummies. Some things about Jamie seemed new, too. (Or maybe they weren’t?) Like the fact that he was sort of funny. Or the easy way he laughed, his eyes and nose crinkling up so much, it was practically bunny-like. He was broad on top and tucked-in at the sides and not exactly unattractive.
Or, at least, some people probably thought so.
“Done?” he asked.
I dropped the gummies. “What do you mean?”
He was standing in front of me, holding enough food to feed a family of rabid bears. “I mean, what do you want to eat?”
I actually felt my eyes bulge. “You’re getting all that for yourself?”
“No, of course not. But this is my first week back, and your last week, so what we have to do is eat everything.” He grinned. His regular grin this time, enormous and goofy. “Everything in Japan.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed a Meiji strawberry chocolate bar from the nearest shelf.
“Holy crap!” Jamie said. We were sitting on a stretch of grass in the park, downing our iced coffees and tearing our way through chocolate bars and potato chips. “I really missed this. I missed all the junk foods of Japan!”
I breathed in the metallic city air. “What else did you miss?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, and I fidgeted with the foil on the corner of my chocolate bar. Bah. Terrible question.
He leaned back on his elbows and stretched out his legs, crossing one ankle over the other. “I missed my brother and sister. Alex is only eight, so I’m pretty sure he doesn’t remember living with me. And I missed walking around the city. Everyone at Lake Forest drives, and nobody understands the wonder of karaoke, and a lot of people are under the impression that Tokyo is the capital of China.”
“Is that why you wanted to come back?” I asked.
His eyes were teasing. “Because they thought Tokyo was the capital of China?”
“I just—” I shook my head. “I don’t get how your parents could send you away. You clearly didn’t want to go.”
He sat up. “They sent me because of my grandfather. He gives a lot of money to Lake Forest, so it was all about ‘keeping up the family name.’ They care about that. Looking good on paper.” He paused and mulled something over. “And they thought it would be good for me, I guess.”
“Was it?”
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Why are we still talking about me? Sophia Wachowski”—he held an imaginary microphone up to my face—“what are you going to miss about Tokyo?”
“The lower crime rate,” I said.