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It was Taigen who started calling Mizu the babysitter. They’d be hanging out at his place, his sparse one-bedroom apartment with tissues everywhere and empty beer cans lined up neatly against the wall, and Akemi would get a text telling her she had five minutes to be outside. She’d push Taigen away from her neck and say, “I’ve gotta go,” and Taigen would say, “Oh your babysitter says playtime’s over?” And then snort to himself, and go floppy on the mat. He’d watch Akemi leave from the floor, unmoving, eyes following her as she’d pull her skirt back down, re-tie her hair, put her shoes on by the door. “Tell your babysitter I said hi,” he’d say, and Akemi would tell him, “She doesn’t know who you are,” and Taigen would say, “Yeah she does.” And Akemi would grin at him, shrug, like, maybe, who knows.
There’d been a series of threats, about a year ago. Threats, and then the break-in at the house while they were in Paris for a weekend, and then the attempt at her father’s offices, and then one night some guys tried to follow Akemi on her way back from the club and she got away by breaking into some poor family’s house and waking everyone up. They had a baby. The baby cried and cried at 3AM while the police cars came whooshing into the street, lights flaring.
Akemi’s father hired a bodyguard. A burly, boring guy who wouldn’t talk to her and wouldn’t let her leave the house, certainly wouldn’t let her see Taigen. Akemi tried to reason with her father: she was twenty-two, she needed to keep up with her classes, needed her freedom, she had friends to see. It didn’t work. So Akemi, who had never wanted for anything, who had never had anything taken from her—aside from things she knew nothing about, like mothers or loving parents—Akemi didn’t reason. Instead she put on her teariest face, trembling chin and all, and said, Daddy I don’t feel safe, I see the way he looks at me, daddy I don’t know what he’s gonna—
Mizu was hired. At first Akemi’s fury was incandescent. This was not the desired outcome. She tried her father again, and her father said, “Isn’t this what you wanted?”, and she fumed, teeth clenched, face hot. She tried to sneak out and Mizu caught her, grabbed her by the back of the neck—literally, the back of her neck, squeezed until it hurt. Pushed her back toward the house. Akemi screamed, “You can’t treat me like that!”, and Mizu, cold and soulless, said, “Like what?”, and Akemi said, “Like I’m a dog!” And Mizu said: “Can’t I?”
She told her father about this. He smiled indulgently at her and said, “Ah, girls.” Akemi scoured the internet for dirt, found nothing, absolutely nothing, Mizu did not exist. On her phone Mizu’s icon was a blurry picture of a sword. Mizu lived in the pool house and Akemi watched from her room, watched the lights go on at night; watched Mizu do her rope jumping in the cold mornings, watched Mizu lounge by the pool, doing sudokus in a little sudoku book—white tank top and black ray bans and sweats. Like a boy. Like she wanted to be a boy, which she wasn’t. Anger would bloat wide in Akemi’s stomach. In the back of the car she took a picture of Mizu and sent it to her friends saying, psycho bitch time!!! And Mizu snatched her phone from her—immediately, one hand still on the wheel, and smacked it, once and hard against the dashboard. The screen broke and went black. Mizu tossed it back. She said, “Don’t do that.”
One night, tipsy at one of her father’s events, when Mizu was never more than two steps behind her—in her stupid sunglasses, with her stupid bluetooth in her ear, arms clasped behind her back—Akemi told her: “You think you’re soooo cool, you think you’re so much better than me.” Akemi was leaning against a high table. Her dress had a slit that went all the way up to her thigh and it was useless, because no one was looking at her, and no one was talking to her, and she was invisible here.
“Babe,” Mizu said, in her strange low voice, also not looking at her; staring into the crowd. “I don’t think about you at all.”
Akemi had wanted to laugh, incredulous, but the sound that came out sounded more like a sob. She still kept a smile on her face. She swallowed. She said, “I want to go home,” and Mizu took her home. When she guided her into the car she did so with a hand to the small of her back.
But the good thing was that Mizu really didn’t seem to care about Akemi at all, and so Akemi was allowed to do whatever she wanted, as long as Mizu could do her job. She drove Akemi to classes, to Taigen’s, to the club, back. She lingered nearby always and seemed to not be paying attention, her and her little sudoku book. One time, at the club, Akemi was dancing with her arms up, long hair swaying; her top had no back, only a front held together with strings. A guy she didn’t know was riding up against her. She looked back to see if Mizu was clocking this, if she was doing her job, and saw that a girl had sidled up to Mizu, was half in Mizu’s lap, a hand on Mizu’s jaw. Mizu considered this with a cocked eyebrow. She was putting down her book. A bad feeling flipped itself over in Akemi’s belly. She went to the bathroom, and saw herself, sweaty bangs and wayward hairs sticking to her cheek; she looked around her, and saw that the window could open. It was covered in silver foil from the outside. She crawled out of it. She clambered down into an alleyway, and was free, and laughed. “Fuck you,” she whispered. The aircon system was spilling a puddle on the street. A heap of garbage to the side, people arguing in the street. She ran onto the main street in her kitten heels, then ran faster. She could go anywhere. She laughed some more, ran faster still, and then was caught around the waist so harshly they both went tumbling—she and her assailant. Akemi screamed. Mizu held her down, ass heavy on Akemi’s hips.
“Get the fuck off of me!”
“Will you run again?”
Akemi tried to spit. Mizu put her hand over her mouth. Akemi screamed some more. Later, back in the car, Akemi kicked the back of the driver’s seat hard. Mizu grabbed her ankle and yanked, and Akemi cried out—it hurt. Mizu let her go.
Akemi was shaking with adrenaline. “None of this would’ve happened if you’d paid attention instead of fucking flirting,” and was about to kick Mizu’s back again when Mizu took a purposeful sharp turn that flung Akemi into the seat. In the rearview mirror, Akemi could see: she was smirking. She said,
“Don’t make me tie you up.”
That weekend at Taigen’s with him on top Akemi was close, so close, and she put her arms up over her head. He was panting into her neck. “Hold me down,” she said, so close, so close. “What?” he said. “Hold me down,” she told him, and he looked at her, confused, and she groaned, sobbed, grabbed his hair instead—tilted her hips, fucked herself on him, made herself come.
Taigen could talk about Mizu often, did so in a way that made Akemi want to rough him up a little—push him, put her foot to his crotch, squeeze his face between hard fingers. He’d say, “Like how many reps does she do?” And, “She’s skinny as fuck what damage can she possibly do.” And, “I could take her, I could fucking take her.” And, “Your dad should hire me, like what’s this lady gonna do to protect you,” and, “Have you noticed how she’ll never like, look me in the face? That’s weird right,” and, “She’s probably intimidated,” and, “I could take her. Don’t you think so? How many reps does she do? I could take her.”
Mizu texted her: be down in 5 mins.
Akemi told Mizu, on the way back home, the car stalling in the slow Tokyo rush hour traffic, “My boyfriend wants to fight you.”
Mizu didn’t answer right away. The sun was low on the horizon, a spilled egg yolk. The light glinted off Mizu’s sunglasses. The radio was on softly and chattering. Then she said, “So your boyfriend enjoys a good beating.” She said it in such a way. Akemi wasn’t sure what way, only that it was a way, and that it pushed through her, hot and angry.
“He could beat you,” she said. She looked at Mizu through the mirror. “Easily.”
Mizu’s mouth twitched; she was amused. “He talks about me often?”
“Fuck you,” said Akemi.
“Yeah?” And then Mizu laughed, a single harsh laugh. She pulled onto a bus lane. She pushed the clutch into six. The car sped, and Akemi was pressed into her seat like a hand had settled onto her chest.
And then some white guy her Dad did business with was murdered in his bed in the middle of the night in a house surrounded by bodyguards and dogs and security and cameras. A slim neat needle blade into his temple. It left only a pinprick of blood behind. The killer was like smoke in the night. It was all over the news, something about revenge, something about bad business; her Dad had to put out an official statement distancing himself from the whole thing, and at home he was fuming through the hallways, locked himself up in his study. Akemi was under strict instructions not to leave the house. She cried, “But I have classes!” And her dad said, “I pay that school enough for them to bring the classes to you. Figure it out.”
She texted Taigen. He came over. He lounged in the wheely desk chair while Akemi sat on the bed, gloomy with her knees knocked together, and Mizu stood by the doorway, leaned against the wall in a dark blue sweatshirt, doing her sudokus.
“Why the fuck can’t your babysitter leave us alone?” Taigen snarled, for the third time since he sat down.
“Dad said,” Akemi said, at the same time as Mizu said, “Watch your language.”
He asked Mizu, “You think I’m gonna hurt her or something? Her dad thinks I’m gonna hurt her? I love her,” he said, which he’d never said before, not to Akemi. The word love descended on her with a wave of embarrassment. She didn’t want Mizu to hear it.
“No one gets to be alone with Akemi right now,” Mizu said. “Not even little boys.”
Taigen got out of his chair. “What did you call me?”
“Sit down,” Mizu said, not looking up from her book.
“You think you can protect her? You think you can keep anyone from hurting her? You’re deluded. You’re just a glorified babysitter, you’re . . .” He trailed off. Mizu had tossed her sudokus to the floor, her pen too. She was marching at him. She took on her fighting stance.
“Come,” she said, and gestured with her fingers—come.
Taigen laughed. “What?”
Akemi said, “Don’t.”
Mizu spoke only to Taigen: “You want this. Let’s do this. Get it over with.”
“Uhhh…” He looked around, cocked smile, mock disbelief. He was acting big. Akemi could see he was nervous. “If you’re sure?”
Mizu sucked her teeth, bent through her knees, deepened her stance.
Akemi said, “Don’t! Both of you!” And no one listened. Taigen took off his jacket, put up his fists. The fight was quick, to-the-point, and humiliating. Taigen was on the floor in a headlock within seconds. Mizu got off of him, and he tried again, and she floored him again. They did this five times, and the last time Mizu stayed on top of him, breathing only slightly faster. She had a hand on his throat, both his arms twisted in her grip, and she was looking down at him with her mouth open. Her eyes, usually such a bright blue, were all black.
Taigen whimpered. Akemi cried, “Let him go!”, as if he was in danger, though she could see that he wasn’t. She could see that he wasn’t at all. But something snapped, then, and Taigen shoved Mizu off and scampered to his feet and muttered something like, fuck this, and left. Just left, arms awkward in front of him.
And then it was just Akemi and Mizu in her room. Her childhood room, with the desk and the clothes a mess in the wardrobe and the bed where she’d slept all her life. Two stuffed toys under her pillow. The band posters on the wall—pictures of her and her friends as teens—she hadn’t taken them down yet, though she felt like she should’ve for a while now. She was old enough to take them down. Mizu considered all of it with slow, uninterested eyes. She picked up her sudoku book and pen and sat down in Taigen’s chair.
“You’re an asshole,” Akemi told her. “Why did you do that?”
“Do what?” She made a note in her book.
“Humiliate him.”
“Ah,” Mizu said. “He did that himself.”
“Get out of my room.”
Mizu looked up at her. Her hair was ever so slightly tousled now.
“Get out!” Akemi threw a pillow at her.
Mizu got out. Slid the door open, slid it closed, and stayed there—right there, on the other side of the divide, close.
That night Taigen broke up with Akemi over text. Sorry, he said, I wanna be with u but it’s more like I’m in a relationship with u & your babysitter. Not here for that. Akemi called him and he didn’t pick up. She called, and called, and he didn’t pick up. Just yesterday he’d said he loved her, not to her but to Mizu, and now this. Now, this. Akemi did the next best thing: marched down the stairs, out the porch, past the pool and the garden path to the pool house. The lights were on. Akemi knocked, and knocked, and banged on the door until it opened and when it did she stormed inside.
Mizu let her. She had just showered, had a towel over her head. That tank top, those sleet grey sweats, elasticated at the ankle. The pool house was designed as if to house a bachelor, something you’d see on TV: sleek kitchen and an island with bar stools, a couch, a massive screen. The other side of the room, thick mats and a chaotic collection of workout gear, bellbars and weights and a Bo staff. Socks that had been carelessly rolled off, a discarded jumper, inside out; the jumper Mizu had worn earlier that day, when she was fighting Taigen, pinning him to the floor. A sports bra. She was messy. Mizu was messy.
Mizu said, “Yes, princess?”
“You fucked up my life,” Akemi said. She showed Mizu the text, holding it up to her; Mizu was taller. Akemi’s hand was shaking. “You fix it.”
Mizu considered this calmly. “I’m sorry your little boyfriend broke up with you. It’s not my problem.”
“You did this! You made him do this!”
Mizu huffed and threw the towel over a barstool—messy—and sat on her couch, knees wide. “I wrestled the boy once. You were in a relationship with him for—how long? A year? Two years? You’re giving me a lot of credit and yourself very little, if you think I had a hand in this.”
Akemi had a big noise balled up inside of her. She wouldn’t let it out. “Your job is to protect me. I shouldn’t even know you’re there, you should be invisible, and instead you’re in my room, touching my boyfriend—”
Mizu cackled, once and mean. “This fucking shit,” she said, as though to herself. Her sudoku book was on the coffee table. She picked it up, and Akemi snatched it from her, and threw it across the room. Mizu let it happen, bemusedly. Akemi growled at her: “You’re heartless.” It did nothing. Mizu only looked at her. She added, “Probably because no one wants to fuck you. I mean look at you. You look like a teen boy, look at what your life is, I mean! You babysit me, what else do you do? Nothing, is what you do. Nothing with no one. You’re a lonely heartless bitch and you’re taking it out on me.”
Mizu took one big breath in, and then one big breath out. “Well. You got one thing right,” she said, and leaned back on her couch. Widened her knees, just a bit more. Her eyes were so, so blue. “No one fucks me.”
Akemi took a step back. Two. She stumbled, a little. Gave Mizu the finger, and walked back, still giving her the finger. She fumbled with the door handle, leaving. Mizu called after, “Don’t get lost on your way back,” and Akemi fled, back out into the night. It was cold. Winter was closing its fist over the city. It would snow, soon; the pool would be drained for the season. Tonight it steamed into the air, icy blue.
Akemi did not sleep that night. She raided the kitchen at 2 in the morning, knocked back some expensive sake, tried to sneak out through the garage. Mizu pulled up next to her before she even left the premises. “Get in,” she said, passenger seat door open.
“Suck me,” Akemi said, which she had never said before in her life. Her tongue felt heavy. She was unsteady on her feet.
“Get in, kid,” Mizu said, again. “I’ll drive you around.”
“Drive me around where?”
“Get in,” Mizu said, “and you’ll see.”
“Will Dad not fire you?”
“Well,” Mizu said. “Daddy won’t know.”
Akemi kept walking. She hadn’t even brought her coat. She was hugging herself. Her bangs were wet, for some reason, stuck to her forehead. She wasn’t wearing make-up, felt a certain way about it; in the car, Mizu was in a button-down, had a white scarf tied tightly around her neck, tucked in. She was wearing reading glasses. They seemed tinted in the dark.
Mizu said, “Princess.”
“Don’t call me that,” Akemi said, and got in.
Mizu said, “Seatbelt,” and sped off before Akemi had clicked it in. Getting into the city was a smooth cool ride in the night. Lights wicked off of tall buildings, trees stood proud and skinny. Mizu took her to a bar. A small, uninteresting looking bar; the kitchen smelled like fish and there were only old men there. Most of them were playing Go. Akemi felt like a child dragged along on some adult’s errand. Mizu got her a drink, and Akemi looked at it, suspicious.
“You think I brought you here to poison you?” She said, “That’ll be me out of a job. Or, as you put it, the only thing I have to live for.”
Akemi drank it all in one go. Mizu said, “Easy, babe,” and Akemi said, “Don’t call me that either,” and Mizu said, “What do I call you then?”
“Akemi,” Akemi said. She looked straight at Mizu. She wanted to cry, for some reason. Her toes were still cold.
“Akemi,” Mizu conceded. “I’m sorry about your boy. He was silly. You’ll get over him soon.”
“I’m over him,” Akemi said immediately. Mizu gave her a look. Akemi opened her mouth and didn’t know how to put it, whether she trusted Mizu to say it at all—that she wasn’t sure there was anything to get over. Taigen was important. Taigen was something to get something else, but what she felt now wasn’t loss. It was anger. She said, “I hate him.”
“All right,” Mizu said. And then, more seriously, “You shouldn’t trust men with your heart. It makes you weak.”
“Is that what you did?”
Mizu didn’t answer. She stared, glasses catching the glare of the overhead light.
Then Akemi said, “Uh, okay Dad,” and saying it bubbled in her like it’d been something daring, and Mizu didn’t look away from her, went very still. Akemi had a flash of a thought—a hunting animal sinking into his shoulders, crouching in the underbrush. She said, “Let’s play.” A Go board had cleared, the men gone home. They played several rounds. Akemi won every time. Mizu seemed entertained by this, indulgent; leaned back, that same loose stance, legs wide. Akemi didn’t know how old she was, couldn’t imagine her as a child, a child who liked things—sweets, a rushing flock of birds, being held tightly.
Mizu said, “You’re good at this.”
“You’re bad,” Akemi said, and won a sixth time, and then Mizu took her home. It began snowing. Akemi fell asleep in the passenger seat. When she woke up they were parked in the driveway, and there was a jumper covering her arms as a blanket. Mizu’s. It was dark blue, had an embroidered emblem over the heart: an X, with a dot between the arms. It smelled like someone’s body, someone’s sweat.
Mizu was beside her, dome light on, finishing a sudoku. Akemi could see now: the margins were covered in options, possibilities, Mizu working out outcomes. The squares themselves remained empty.
“You let me sleep?”
“You wanted me to carry you upstairs, princess?”
“No. Wake me up.”
Mizu put the book in the glovebox. Her arm brushed Akemi’s. The alcohol was still a dark swirl, and the heating made her slow, and Mizu’s neck was a long line; her hair a deep ink. It was cut neatly, shorn at the back. Akemi had always liked that spot, on boys. Cupping their shaved neck, that tender back of the head.
Mizu looked at her—a flickering look. Down, up. “Bed,” she said.
“What?”
“Go to bed.”
Akemi ran all the way to the house. She felt a gaze on her as she went. When she looked back all she saw was the car’s tinted windscreen. The yard, the topiary, the pebble garden—all were covered in a thin layer of snow.
Akemi woke up at midday, groggy and as if she’d cried for a long time, even though she hadn’t cried at all. Outside the world was muffled and bright. Several men were draining the pool, rolling a tarp over it while the snow was coming down, down. Akemi saw no one that day, spoke to no one; the house was empty and silent. She watched a whole season of some reality TV show, slept, dreamt she was on TV herself, trying to beat Mizu at Go, and that Mizu kept winning. Akemi screamed and threw a fit. Mizu gave her her scarf, said, For the beautiful loser.
The next day was much of the same. Her friends sent her pictures from class, sad-faced smileys that she wasn’t there, and Akemi sent back one with a filter that made it looked like she was a weeping baby. She had dinner by herself in the semi-dark kitchen. Through the window, the pool house, lit from the inside. She asked one of her father’s people: “Where’s Dad?”, and the assistant said, “Away,” and that was that.
Akemi knocked on Mizu’s door. “Drive me somewhere,” she said.
“No,” Mizu said, and was about to close the door again, but Akemi pushed it open again and said, “I’m boooored!”, and Mizu said, “So?”
Akemi gave her a face: pouting, bottom lip out.
“No,” Mizu said, voice darker.
“Aren’t you bored? We’re not even allowed to go anywhere.”
“I’m allowed to go wherever I want.”
Akemi shivered, held herself. “It’s cold why are you making me stand in the doorway it’s back luck just let me in,” she said, and shouldered her way inside. Mizu allowed this with an icy air of frustration. She closed the door behind Akemi.
“Wow,” Akemi said, looking around, picking a towel off a drawer chest. The place was a tip. “You’re not housewife material huh.”
Mizu grabbed Akemi’s wrist and squeezed until the towel dropped. Akemi squeaked, it hurt, it hurt badly. She rubbed it, and panted, and Mizu was already gone, stepping over the mess that was her floor—settling into her couch, picking up a controller. She was playing some kind of game on the TV. Akemi rubbed her wrist, sipped air.
“You’re not allowed to hurt me,” she said.
“Says who.”
“Dad.”
Mizu sucked her teeth. “What do you want?” And then, when Akemi didn’t answer, just stood there and dithered, she said, “Sit down.” She meant next to her, on the couch. Akemi still wanted to be angry, still wanted to get back at Mizu for the pain. She held it close to her chest and toed her way to the couch. She sat as far away from Mizu as possible.
“So I’m just gonna watch you play games,” Akemi said. “Like we’re fourteen. Like you’re some dude and we’re fourteen.”
“No one’s making you do anything,” Mizu said, and glanced at her, as if—as if this was a question. As if the question was whether someone was making Akemi do something, or whether she wanted to be told to do something.
Akemi’s face felt hot. It had felt hot since the moment she walked across the garden—the moment she knocked on the door. She said, “Whatever,” and looked away, and watched Mizu play some dumb fighting game—a first-person perspective, sword fighting, slicing through hoards of armies. It was cold inside. Mizu hadn’t turned the heating high enough. Akemi was in a t-shirt, cropped. Across the chest, in gems, a bird in flight. She had put it on before she’d come here. It was a stupid thing to wear. She grabbed the blue sweatshirt from the back of the couch and put it on. Mizu watched this happen from the corner of her eye, and showed no emotion.
Akemi pulled the sleeves over her hands. Her wrist still ached. She looked at the X emblem, and traced it with her fingers. Mizu was watching her. On the screen, someone sliced their sword through Mizu’s gut.
“Ha,” Akemi said. “You died.”
Mizu looked back to the screen.
After a while of this Mizu put aside the controller, turned off the TV, said, “I’m going to bed.” And then she looked at Akemi.
Akemi didn’t move. Mizu’s bedroom was a faint suggestion at the back of the house—an open door, lights off, the foot of a bed a strange and humanizing factor. Mizu slept. Mizu needed sleep. She didn’t seem like she did.
Akemi’s heart did a rumbling fall. Mizu was strange. She was so strange, and violent, and Akemi didn’t know what she was doing here, coming here, sitting here at her side. She tilted her chin up, did something she thought was attractive with her mouth, said, “Oh yeah?”
“Go home, Akemi.”
“Fine, you’re boring anyway,” and left. She didn’t take the sweatshirt off. She took it with her to her bedroom, and left it on her bed when she showered, and then put it back on when she went to sleep. She didn’t think about it. She almost thought about it, then turned sharply away from it. It smelled like Mizu’s dirty room and like sweat. On the inside it was a soft jersey. The fabric dragged against her nipples. She searched her wrist for a sign of a bruise, a trace, but found none. She woke up turned on, half in a dream where someone fucked her up against a wall and she shouted No no no ahhh, and jerked off frantically—sweating against the sheets, coming quickly, coming hard and confused.
She ignored the pool house that day. Ignored because the pool house seemed to be looking at her, a hooded look, following her around as she went from room to room. And then evening came, and none of it mattered because Mizu was there in her bedroom saying, “Get dressed. Your father needs you.”
Akemi was sitting on her bed, socks and shorts and Mizu’s sweatshirt, watching a video on how to pour tea to perfection. She had her hair up high in a ponytail. Mizu’s gaze swept over her quickly, and Akemi’s stomach flipped—an elastic pulled. She recalled in flash jerking off this morning. She didn’t feel well. She said, “Are you his henchman now?”
“Get dressed,” Mizu said.
“I’m dressed.” She said it just to get Mizu to look at her again—look at her. Look her over. Mizu didn’t. Mizu said at the wall,
“He said a dress.”
Akemi laughed a dry, humourless snort. “Great. Do you want to choose that for me, too, or may I do that myself?”
Mizu was quiet. Akemi meant for the comment to be scathing but Mizu seemed like she was thinking about it, expression impassive. Akemi went to her closet to hide the heat in her face. She took off the sweatshirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. This was a power, too: the ease of her body, the way she knew how to turn it, let people glimpse it. She picked a dress, slipped it on, back-zip. She held the hem and walked over to Mizu, who considered her with hard eyes, mouth a pressed line. Akemi turned, presented her back. Mizu zipped her up. Her only reaction was a puff of air, cold, against Akemi’s neck.
She shivered. Mizu held her by her waist. Her fingers twitched.
Mizu said, “I’ll wait in the car.”
When she left, Akemi stared at the ceiling for a long, drawn-out moment. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, from here; a flush down her chest, up her neck. She did not feel well. She did not know this game. She had started it herself, she had set the pieces into motion, and she did not know what it was, to what goal; what a winner would look like, and whether she wanted to win at all.
It was a business dinner. Her father’s business partner had a son, only a little younger than Akemi but who looked like he was still in his teens. His mustache was a faint fuzz on his upper lip. He wanted mostly to talk about car racing, and wondered what Akemi knew about car racing, and was disappointed to find it was nothing. Could she drive, he wondered?
“My babysitter takes me wherever I want,” she said, loud enough that Mizu would hear it.
“Your who?”
Akemi nodded at Mizu, who stood in the corner of the room, eyes dark, hands clasped before her. “My babysitter.”
“Okay,” he said, embarrassed by a joke he didn’t get. He looked at Akemi’s mouth often and for long stretches of time. Akemi’s father gave her a pleased, warm smile at the end of the dinner. When they all parted, he said, “Perhaps Akemi and Seiji would like to spend more time together sometime? They seemed to get along so nicely.”
“Okay,” Seiji said, again, looking down. Akemi smiled, showed off her dimples, bowed her head prettily. In the car on the way back Mizu went over the speed limit. Akemi said, “Did you like babysitting me tonight?” She turned in her seat to look at Mizu straight-on. She’d taken off her shoes, pulled up her hem, had her whole thigh out. “Was that fun for you?”
“Sit properly.”
“Or what?”
“Do it.”
“Or what?”
Mizu jerked the car to the left. Akemi was thrown against the window, laughed louder and like it was all very funny. Mizu put her hand on Akemi’s bare thigh and pushed it—pushed Akemi’s leg into position. Her hand was big. It was warm. Mizu hissed, “Fucking brat.”
Akemi’s amusement petered out. Air left her. She settled. She watched the highway flash by. There was a patch of heat on her thigh, and she put her own hand over it. It wasn’t the same. It didn’t work.
Back at the property, Akemi did not say a thing as she followed Mizu back to the pool house. Neither did Mizu. Mizu moved around her like she hadn’t noticed Akemi was even there: going to the bathroom, to the bedroom, coming back changed into sweats; turning on the TV, setting up a game. Akemi was at the kitchen island, leaning against a bar stool, swaying back and forth. The muffled sounds of the game started.
“Did you eat tonight?” Akemi asked.
Mizu grunted.
“I’ve never seen you eat.”
Mizu did not respond.
“I feel like you actually don’t eat. Do you sleep? I know you go to bed but do you sleep? Maybe you’re a robot.”
Mizu did not respond.
“I can’t believe you’re my only friend right now and you’re so boring.”
“I’m not your friend,” Mizu said. The screen flashed several bright colours.
“No I mean,” Akemi started, “because I can’t see my actual friends right now, I mean.”
“Sit down,” Mizu said. “You’re agitating me.”
“Am I?” Akemi asked, pleased.
“Sit down.”
Akemi sat down on the couch next to her. Mizu’s knees through her sweats looked knobbly, bony; her feet, bare, were calloused and pink-soled. She kept her toenails short. Akemi asked, “Where did you learn how to fight?”
Mizu answered after a long minute: “My uncle.”
“Was he a bodyguard, too?”
Mizu licked her lips. “No.”
“What did he do? Where did you grow up? Were you an only child? You seem like an only child. If not, poor sibling of yours, wow, that can not have been easy, you’re so bossy. Did you boss everyone around always? Did you—”
Mizu got up, left the room. A moment later the shower started running. Akemi stared at the bathroom door, mouth open, sounding out a puff of shock.
The pool house filled with the distant smell of soap, steam from under the door—fogging up the windows. Akemi went back to the main house before Mizu came out of the shower. On her way out she stole: the little white scarf from the coat rack. “Fuck you,” she said to no one, and wore it. It was silky, not made for this season. In her room she fiddled with it while the YouTube algorithm played in the background. She went over the night, a circle of thoughts—her father, the dress, Mizu zipping her dress, Eiji’s bored droop of a mouth, Mizu’s clasped hands, Mizu in the car, her thigh, so mean, so rude, she’d never been nice to Akemi, not a single time, not for one second and for what, for what reason, even though Akemi tried with her and asked questions and hung around and—
Her dress was a pooled heap on the floor. Akemi wrapped the scarf around a wrist, around and around; on her laptop, someone was recreating their home in miniature using popsicle sticks. A memory—Mizu in the car. Don’t make me tie you up.
Akemi quickly unwound the scarf from her wrists. She threw it away from her, and it fell to the ground. And then, recalling the state of Mizu’s house, got up, and hung it over the back of the chair—neatly, folded.
The next day Mizu said, “Does your father always trot you out like that?”
They were in the front room of the main house. It was lunchtime. Someone had come to fix a leak upstairs, and Akemi was still not allowed to be alone in the house with strangers. She made Mizu sit down with her, eat with her. It was strange, watching Mizu eat—not what Akemi expected. She did it as if she’d never done it before. As if she hadn’t eaten in weeks, not properly, and had to wolf it all down in one go—the soup, the rice, the pickles, everything.
Akemi watched her, lip curled. She wanted to be disgusted. She wasn’t. She said, “What do you mean, trot?”
“Parading you at dinner parties,” Mizu said. “Like you’re an incentive.”
Akemi put down her chopsticks. “My father does what he needs to do to keep this family afloat.”
“Oh yeah,” Mizu said, still focussed on her food. “Is this what afloat looks like?”
“Who are you to judge what—”
“All I’m saying,” Mizu interrupted her, looking up from under her lashes—ice blue. “Is that you should consider what you want. And if this is it.”
“So that I can be my own woman, you mean. Like you are, still working for men like my father.”
“I don’t—” Mizu didn’t finish her thought.
“What?” Akemi said. “Work for my father? What?” She smiled as mean as she could. “Who do you work for? Hmm? Me?” And then, watching Mizu straighten, watching her put down her chopsticks too, added: “Do you work for me, Mizu?”
Mizu’s gaze flickered—down. Mizu was wearing her jumper. X, dot. Mizu said, “Sure, princess.”
Akemi got up and in the process knocked over Mizu’s cup of tea on purpose, walked away from it, did not look back. And then the next day her father said everything seemed calm again, that Akemi was allowed off the premises again, as long as Mizu accompanied her. So Mizu accompanied her. Lunch with her friends, a group of five of them at a high-end bar in the city, daytime drinking, talking about a friend who wasn’t there—and her boyfriend, who dated someone else once, who’d told everyone that he fucked like a rabbit. And then one of Akemi’s friends mimicked the movements, and made a sound of someone grunting and coming very quickly, and they all laughed. Mizu sat in the next booth over, face like a thundercloud. Akemi went to classes and made Mizu hold her bag, Akemi made Mizu drive her to a nail parlor on the other side of town; Akemi went out on a date with some friend of Taigen’s—Shigeo—just so that news would come back to him. Shigeo kept saying, “Let’s go wild! I want to go wild!” And took them from dinner to the club to another club, and seemed to be amused by Mizu’s teeth-grinding presence. “This guy!” he said, several times, a hand on Mizu’s shoulder, shaking her slightly.
Akemi smiled at this, wide, full of teeth.
And then, on the dance floor, Shigeo put his hands on Akemi’s ass and Akemi took his hands and put them on her hips. He tried it again, and again, she placed his hands on her hips. It was only supposed to be a night, only something to do, something for Taigen to hear and for Mizu to be pissed off at; not actual hands on her ass.
He said, “Aw, come on,” and palmed her ass, and then yelled: Mizu had him bent backwards by his finger.
It was a whole ordeal. They got thrown out of the club. Shigeo had to be put in a cab home, runny-nosed and angry, nursing ice around his hand. He promised he’d sue. Mizu said, “Sure, buddy,” in the same way she’d said, sure, princess, just the other week.
Back at the pool house, Mizu gave Akemi a beer, and had one herself. Akemi leaned back against the counter. Mizu said, “Are you gonna calm down now?”
Akemi tapped the bottle against her lips. Against her teeth. She shrugged.
“Babe.”
Mizu’s voice dropped as she said it. Akemi looked up at her. Her skin felt tight, tight over her cheeks. The bottle was sweating in her hand.
Mizu considered her. Her gaze was slow. She said, “Easy now.”
Akemi didn’t know what that meant. She lowered her bottle. She tilted herself up. She couldn’t breathe.
Mizu walked to the couch, put her beer aside, started playing a game. Said to the screen, “When am I getting my sweatshirt back?”
Akemi closed her eyes. She swallowed. She swallowed again. The following day, early in the afternoon, Mizu came to find her and Akemi was on the floor of her room, on the phone with Kazuyo, and Mizu towered over her and said: “Hang up. We’re going for a ride.” She looked flushed, like she’d just worked out; sweat along the line of her hair. She looked antsy, too, not as collected—something about her stance, the darker shade of her eyes. She held out a hand for Akemi to take.
Akemi hung up. Took her hand. Mizu drove them around seemingly aimlessly, endlessly. She kept looking at Akemi out of the corner of her eye, mouth like a frown.
She said, out of nowhere, “You know we’re all better off alone in this world.”
“Wow,” Akemi said. “Nice. Real cheerful.”
Mizu’s hands tightened on the wheel. She took them out of the city—winding roads up, through woods, hills. She parked, eventually, near a road that ended in nothing; just a cliff that cut off into air. The snow made everything look the same, the same white flat surface, trees and rocks and indents in the earth. Beyond, the valley was a faint purple hue.
They stood outside of the car for a few minutes, doing nothing, and then Akemi asked, “Why are we . . . here . . .?”
Mizu seemed to take this as an insult. “Never mind,” she said, and got back in the car, and made Akemi get back in the car too—opening the door for her from the driver’s seat.
“It was just a question,” she said, relieved to be inside again. The heater was nice. It was so cold. Mizu was snarling as she drove them on—snarling, unhappy. Eventually she said,
“My uncle used to live nearby here.”
“Oh,” Akemi said, and looked back at where they were coming from. There was nothing to see: just bare trees, and winter. “The one who taught you how to fight?”
Mizu nodded, once and firmly.
“Oh,” Akemi said. Mizu’s leg was bouncing. Akemi stilled it with a hand. It was the first time she touched Mizu. The thought reeled through her, even as she took her hand away. It felt like she’d just put her hand in the waiting mouth of a tiger, and the tiger had allowed it.
Mizu took her to the bar instead, the one they’d gone to together, the one where the old men played Go and everything smelled like fish. They shook off their snow at the door. Some men cheered at Mizu—recognition. Mizu led Akemi inside with a hand to her waist, and Akemi swallowed, and counted down the seconds before the hand would be gone, and then it was.
They huddled at a small table.
“Do you miss him?”
Mizu looked at her in question.
“Your uncle,” Akemi said. Her face felt cold-pinched, warming up quickly. The drink was helping, too, and Mizu’s leg knocking accidentally against hers, and she was awash with heat.
“Yes,” Mizu said: the first true answer Akemi had got out of her, perhaps ever. Akemi let it linger between them. She didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t had an uncle that wasn’t really just a tutor, and her mother had died when she was very young. She’d lost people. She’d not been close to many. She didn’t know, not exactly, what it was to miss.
They made no conversation. Mizu went to the bathroom. Akemi joined a Grandpa at his game of Go. He welcomed her, laughed, said, “Your boyfriend allows this?”, and Akemi, heart flipping over in her chest, said, “He allows this.”
When Mizu returned, she stood by the table and watched the two play. She held on to the back of Akemi’s chair. When Akemi leaned back, Mizu’s thumb brushed her shoulder, the collar of her shirt. She glanced up. Mizu looked down, pleased. She liked it when Akemi won—that much was clear. There were three moves left, and the game would be settled.
“Go on,” she nodded at the board. She put her thumb to the top of Akemi’s spine.
Akemi moved her stone and saw nothing. The next move, and then she won, and Grandpa clapped his hands together—sat back, sucked his teeth. Shook his head. On the way back to the car, Akemi told Mizu, “He thought you were a boy.” She told her, “That you were my boyfriend.”
“Hmm,” Mizu said, and opened the passenger door for her. Akemi waited for a hand to her back. It didn’t come. Akemi didn’t watch Mizu rounding the car—held her hands tight in her lap. She told herself what she felt was relief. The game was weird. She was playing a weird game. Everything had been all a muddle, since Taigen left, and her wires were crossed, and what she needed was to focus.
On what, she asked herself, in a voice that felt a lot like Mizu’s.
Consider what you want. And if this is it.
Soft snow. The windshield wipers went back and forth in a rhythm. Mizu asked, “Are you talking to Taigen?”
“What?” A thud of a heartbeat. “No. Why? Why would you think that?”
“I assumed.” Mizu slowed for a right turn. The indicators ticked. “That he would reach out again, once he calmed down. Try and get you back.”
“He hasn’t.”
“Hmm,” again, that indifferent sound.
Akemi took a breath to speak—didn’t speak. Did it once more, and then again, and then said: “Thank you for taking me to that place today, I liked it.” She hadn’t, not really, it had just been a cliff. But she’d liked that Mizu drove her there. She had liked that Mizu had wanted something from her—wanted to show her something.
Mizu nodded. The snow got worse, came down in sheets. The wipers went back and forth faster and faster. Mizu said, “He raised me. My uncle. My mother died when I was young.” And then, a moment later, “In a fire.”
Akemi watched her. The stoplight reflected red off her reading glasses. “Mine died giving birth to me,” Akemi said.
The car was quiet. Quiet, and warm, and a little bauble of time. Mizu said, “Not . . . good.”
Akemi laughed, and it was genuine, startled out of her. “No,” she said. “Not good.”
They arrived at the house. Mizu led her to the big house, and Akemi, still warm in the evening’s blanket, said, “Can’t I come with you?”, and Mizu said, “Not tonight, babe,” and Akemi said, “Call me that again,” and tried to lean into her. They were in the entryway to the house. Mizu indulged her, for just a moment. Allowed it, for just a moment.
She said, quietly, “Sweet thing. Go to bed.”
Mizu’s knitted jumper smelled faintly wild; a barn smell, an animal smell. Akemi put her face to it, rubbed against it. Snow came down in soft taps. Mizu held her by the back of her neck, pushed her away. “Good night,” she said, and stepped away.
The snow was so heavy, the night so dark, that within two steps, she disappeared from sight.
That night another of her father’s associates, some Irish guy living out in the countryside, was found dead. News broke the next morning. He was out of town; it happened at a brothel. Mizu and Akemi had to sit in on a meeting where her father ranted as if the world was closing in on him. As if he was the protagonist, and every step of the plot leading to him, his demise. A thought came to Akemi, fully formed and exasperated, a thought she’d never thought before: you are insignificant.
Mizu sat in the back of the room, eyes red-rimmed, gaze on something distant; something that wasn’t there. She wasn’t listening to any of it. Akemi waited for Mizu to snap out of it—to look at her. Give her a scathing look, or an irritated one, or the one where she just looked—eyes going dark, dipping down.
But she didn’t. At the end of the meeting, when the orders were given for a whole new household lockdown, Mizu got to her feet; left, without a word.
Akemi followed her down the hallway, then stopped. What was she going to do, anyway? Pull at Mizu’s hems? Cry? Demand something? Demand—what?
In her room, that night, Akemi watched the pool house doused in darkness; the lights had not gone on. She waited for the lights to go on. She waited, and pretended not to wait, and did other things—re-folded her socks, sent a selfie peace-sign to a friend, back in lockdown mode blaagh—and watched the house. With the darkness came a chill. An eerie stillness.
The house’s noises were familiar. She began to question them all the same. A creak in the floorboards, a clicking sound from the walls—she imagined, suddenly, that her father was right after all. Someone had come to get them. An assassin, like smoke in the night. She could be a target. She could be—what had Mizu called her?
Incentive.
The pool house light turned on. It was 2am. The garden was cast into sharp shadows.
Relief, tangible, flooded Akemi. She moved without choosing to. Put on Mizu’s sweatshirt, wrapped herself in a scarf, stepped into shoes by the door and rushed through the high snow—across the yard, past the tarp-covered pool. She knocked. She called out, “Hello!” It was freezing. It was so cold. She knocked again. “Mizu!”
There was the sound of a scuffle—something falling over, someone getting up. And then the door opened, a rush, and Mizu—Mizu, half undressed. Sweats, an open button-down, no bra. She was flushed. The bottom half of her face, her chin, shiny. Wet. The porch light caught it, the glisten of it. She said, “What’s wrong?” Asked, “Is everything all right?” looking around for danger, one hand keeping her shirt closed, the other on Akemi’s arm.
Behind her, someone called out, “Everything okay?”
A woman.
Akemi inhaled—understanding. “Oh . . .”
Mizu’s gaze went from searching—one eye on danger—to sharp, and Akemi saw her own understanding dawn: there was no danger. There was nothing the matter. Only Akemi, the fool. Only Akemi, a child, here at her doorstep. Wearing Mizu’s clothing, wanting to be let in.
“Baby?” the woman asked, from inside the house.
“All’s good,” Mizu said. She didn’t look behind her. She didn’t look away from Akemi. “Go back. I’ll be with you in a second.” And then, quietly, privately, to Akemi, she added: “Akemi . . .”
Akemi smiled. It was a bad smile. She felt the shape of it on her face—bad. “Haha,” she said.
“What are you doing here? You should be asleep.”
Akemi grimaced, could’t help it. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and then shook the emotion off. She didn’t need to have any emotion—never did, could always rid herself of it, if she really wanted to. “I’m going now,” she said in her most regal tone.
“Yes. Go,” Mizu said.
Akemi pulled her lips over her teeth. She’d said ugly things at Mizu, in the past; kicked her, flipped her off, spilled tea over her, and none of it worked. None of it made her feel any less angry. None of it made Mizu come any closer. It was a balloon that pushed at the walls of her chest, grew and grew and grew, and now she was so full of it her throat was closed of; she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do anything but swallow around the tightness, turn around, and go back home.
She snuck out on the edge of dawn. Packed a bag, left her phone behind, stole the cook’s big coat—it hung from her, puffy and large, fur-edged hood hanging over her face—and went out the front door. She didn’t expect it to work. It worked. She punched in the numbers to the security gate, and the gate swung open and out she went. She slowed her steps. The path from the house to the main road was snowy and long. Perhaps now Mizu would crash out of the underbrush, would fall from one of the trees, would screech the car in front of her—tackle her, tell her no, tell her she wasn’t going anywhere, she was only—
The path was silent. A bird scuttled across, a pheasant, its long tail trailing in the snow.
Insignificant, Akemi thought, bitter, her heart shrinking in size. Mizu was too busy. Akemi would live her own life, now. She hoisted the weekend bag on her shoulder and continued on.
Taigen was sleepy and confused to have Akemi in his apartment. He made her tea. He watched her sitting at the table, cross-legged on the mat in her dirty sweatshirt and pants. “You look different,” he said. She pushed her hair behind her ears and grumbled, “I’m a fugitive, okay.”
His hair stuck up where he’d slept on it. His pyjamas were a greying green. He’d got an undercut since she last saw him, and seemed self-conscious about it. He sat with her. “Where’s your babysitter?” He seemed abashed, asking this.
“I’m smarter than her,” Akemi said. The tea was nice. Her fingers were frozen. She had fallen asleep on the metro and then missed her stop, had to wait at the station for the next one back, shivering, teeth chattering.
“You know she promised me a rematch,” Taigen said, looking into his tea.
“What do you mean promised?”
“I texted her.”
“You have her phone?”
Taigen shrugged. “She said I needed to apologise to you first.”
“You take directions from her?”
“Whatever,” he said, face red.
“Why is everyone so obsessed with this bitch!” Akemi said it with a toothy smile, an incredulous smile. She blinked rapidly. Her throat was tight. She put her arm to her eyes, stayed in the crook of her elbow.
“She’ll come find you, you know,” Taigen said.
“Don’t you fucking text her.”
“I won’t. Sorry.” He said, “For what it’s worth.”
“I’m going to sleep,” Akemi said, and got up, and took her bag to Taigen’s other room. She closed the doors behind her, closed him out in his own main room. She got into his bed in her underwear, under the blankets. The bed smelled familiar. The sheets hadn’t been changed in a while, and the fabric was soft, slept-in. She wiped at her face angrily, hid under the blanket, she refused to cry, and if refusing didn’t work then she would just pretend it wasn’t happening.
She woke up because Taigen was yelling. And then there was a thud, and his yelling stopped abruptly. And then there was a man in the bedroom—a balaclava over his face, an open maw of an animal painted onto the chin. Akemi took one shuddering breath, and the man was on her. She rolled away, grabbed Taigen’s bedside lamp, tried to smash it over the man’s head—it did nothing. He was strong, flipped her over, she screamed. He put a rope to her throat and pulled. Not a clean, pretty death for Akemi. She gurgled, clawed at the rope, choked. No air. No air. She clawed, mouth open. There was a painting over Taigen’s bed—a village in the woods, a cliff. A long way down.
A swooshing sound, a gurgle, and the rope fell from her throat. The man collapsed. Someone pushed him off her. Akemi was gasping, gasping and she felt so lightheaded, not quite real. There was blood on the bed. Mizu in running gear and big leather boots—two blades, one in each hand. She sheathed them somehow—clicked them into her sleeves. She grabbed Akemi’s face, turned it this way, that. She was considering her throat. Akemi reached for her and Mizu stepped away to take off her jacket, draped it over Akemi’s bare shoulders, made her stand with a hand to Akemi’s elbow. Akemi was unsteady.
“You—” she tried to say, you killed him, but her throat wouldn’t make the sounds.
“Don’t talk,” Mizu said, and hurried them through the apartment. Her grasp on Akemi’s arm was harsh. Akemi had to walk on quick tip-toes to keep up. Taigen wasn’t there—but the unconscious bodies of several men were. Akemi tried to pull from Mizu’s hold, and Mizu noticed and said, “I sent him away. He’s fine.”
They were out on the gallery. The concrete was freezing. On the street below, a parking lot, cars covered in snow. Mizu said, “Quickly,” hurrying them down the stairs, and Akemi, teeth chattering again, said, “Cold,” and Mizu said, “We’ll warm you up soon, princess, just—”
More men. Mizu got Akemi into her car, nearly tossed her, spared a second to tell her, “Stay down,” and then slammed the door. Akemi shook. She pushed her arms through the jacket, closed it around herself, and slumped over—peered over the edge of the window.
It was a sight. In near silence, smooth like silk pulled over a hard surface, Mizu took down a dozen men. A blade to the back of a knee, a blade to the side, using the one for leverage to kick the other. Akemi had never seen a human move like that. The men fell with soft thuds, the sound of a pack snow falling from a branch that could not bear the weight.
And then it was done. Mizu was back in the car, panting gently through her nose. The dashboard lights came alive. They drove off at high speed.
There was a splatter of blood on Mizu’s jaw. Akemi could not look away. She was in her underwear under Mizu’s jacket. Her legs stuck out from under it long and naked.
Mizu’s eyes were on the rearview. She took several sharp turns, took them out of the city and then back in. She was driving like she was ditching someone, but there was no one; no cars behind them, no one on their tail. She held her body tightly. Eventually, after an endless hour, she leaned over and clicked open the glovebox. Inside it: Akemi’s phone.
“Text your father,” Mizu said.
Akemi took her phone. Her hands were still shaking. Five missed calls from her father. Sixteen missed calls from Mizu. She licked her lips. She texted her father: I’m safe, with Mizu, on my way home.
The brick sat cold in her palm. She tried, “I didn’t . . .”
“Shut up,” Mizu interrupted. Akemi went quiet. Mizu’s nostrils were flared: the most emotion Akemi had ever seen on her.
The gates to the property opened as the car approached, then closed behind them. Mizu parked gently, and did not move; they both sat in the car, a thick, cracking silence between them. Akemi said, “Who were those men?”, and Mizu said, “Ask your father,” and Akemi swallowed. Her throat hurt. Mizu looked at her. She hadn’t looked at her since they got in the car, and now she was looking—looking. A lowered gaze, tight at the mouth; eyes on Akemi’s throat. A flicker: her legs.
Akemi pulled at the hems of the jacket.
Mizu got out of the car. She came to the passenger side, opened the door, waited for Akemi to get out. Feet in the snow again—Akemi hissed. Mizu gestured: that way. The pool house. Akemi was tired, her body was tired, her eyes burning and her throat bruised, her voice shot. Heat bloomed, unwelcome and foolish, low in her belly. A flash of memory—Mizu opening the door—Mizu’s wet chin—a voice, from inside, saying—
“You don’t have company?” Akemi said, gravelly and snide. “I’m not interrupting?”
“Get the fuck inside,” Mizu said. She put a firm hand to Akemi’s lower back.
Inside the house seemed in a worse state of chaos than before. Akemi couldn’t fully take it in, couldn’t fully see what it was—things on the floor, tossed aside, traces from a wild night perhaps—and then in one quick movement she was grabbed, pulled; couldn’t parse the movement, gasped, taken by a tide. Mizu’s hands on her, under the jacket: her bare waist, her back, her thighs, grasping. Akemi whined, the noise loud and involuntary; she had her arms around Mizu’s neck, hands in Mizu’s hair. She let Mizu grab her, reeling. Mizu’s face was in her neck. She was warm, so warm, smelled like body and like sweat, the neat shorn back of her head; the tender cup of it, rasp of the shave. Akemi pulled under the fall of Mizu’s hair. Mizu groaned, bit her shoulder hard—teeth sharp. Akemi sobbed, was slammed back into her own body, rocked against Mizu, and Mizu collected her close—then stepped back. Akemi had never seen her stumble before.
Her pupils were blown. Her eyes were pitch black.
She turned from Akemi, put the back of her hand to her mouth. Said, voice even, “That was some stunt you pulled.”
“It wasn’t a stunt.” Akemi sounded smoked out, end-of-night hoarse. She pulled the jacket closer around herself.
“No. It was a death wish.”
“You didn’t even know I was gone. You didn’t care.”
“It’s not my job to care. It’s my job to keep you alive.”
Akemi hiccuped a sound, said, “Is it—” Tried again, “Is it your job to f-fuck—” And again, “—to fuck some—some—”
Mizu’s attention snapped back to her, a plucked rubber band. Her bottom lip was spit shiny. “Say what you mean.”
“You lied. You said—” Akemi was trying to speak in clear lines, but she was cold, and sore; someone had wanted her dead, and Mizu had wanted her alive. She had touched her and then pushed her away. “You said you didn’t fuck. You made me think that . . .”
Mizu came to her. She did in the way a big animal might approach a small one: careless of its size. She said, “I said what? I made you think what?” She said, “What did I say, Akemi?” And then, when Akemi could only look up at her, mouth pressed into a tight line, Mizu added: “I said no one fucked me. That’s what I said.” She was so close. Her breath was a puff on Akemi’s cheek. “Princess. I do the fucking.”
Akemi closed her eyes to it. She shuddered. It wasn’t pain. It felt like it. It felt like pain. She said, “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
Akemi said, “Please.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.” Mizu’s voice had dropped; her body was a very near heat.
“Please.”
Mizu grabbed a fist of her hair, yanked; Akemi was forced to look at her. Head back, jaw cocked. Mizu, face a storm, eyes on Akemi’s mouth, said, “Again.”
“Please.”
She hadn’t finished saying it. Mizu licked into her open mouth, bit her; licked into her again, hoisted her close. Akemi sobbed, didn’t know how to move, could only take it for a beat; Mizu’s tongue in her mouth, Mizu’s hard hands on her body—a fist of her hair, a squeeze to her waist, rolling the skin of her back. Mizu growled and the sound shocked a stuttering roll out of Akemi’s hips, and then Mizu took her in one swift move: took her arms and twisted them behind her back, held two wrists on one hard hold—took Akemi’s hip, pushed a thigh between her legs, ground her down. Akemi was nearly on the tips of her toes. Akemi said, “Ah—ah ha—” all puffed air, pitched and breathless. She was wet, so wet, barely any friction between her underwear and Mizu’s leg. Mizu hissed when she felt it seep through. Akemi’s head lolled down, and Mizu sought out her mouth again, ducked for it—sucked at her, fucked her tongue in, let Akemi moan into it. Mizu guided her hips, held her in a lock. “Good girl,” Mizu said. Akemi sobbed some more.
“Please,” she said again, smeared against Mizu’s mouth.
“Please what?”
“Ah!” Akemi’s face in Mizu’s neck, lips wet and slipping.
Mizu got her on her knees. It happened in a blur. On her knees, chest over the low table, arms briefly free and then in a lock again. Mizu was grinding her crotch into her, grinding as if she was fucking her—as if she had a dick and was fucking it into her. Mizu held on to Akemi’s locked arms like a lever, pushed her hard mound against Akemi—against her clit, her cunt, and Akemi was close, could come like this, cheek against the table top, neck on fire and soaking through her underwear, crying and begging—she thought she was begging, perhaps she was, perhaps she was just making sounds, whiny and nasal and continuous as Mizu—
Mizu bent down. “Why did you run away?” The question was panted into her jaw. The pressure on her cunt was gone. Akemi pushed her hips back but Mizu sucked her teeth, tsk’d, said: “Say it.”
Akemi whined. “I,” she tried, couldn’t. The world was hazy. She needed—she was so—
“Is it because you’re a spoiled brat?” Mizu growled the words at her. Her nose was behind Akemi’s ear. “Because you didn’t get what you wanted?” She dragged against her again, all of her, and Akemi cried out, pussy clenching. She tried to move. Mizu wouldn’t let her. “Is this what you wanted? To get fucked into the floor?”
A hot wave of humiliation, then a spike of anger chased by a hot wave of something else; something that coiled hard in her cunt. She was drooling. She struggled against Mizu’s hold.
“That’s right,” Mizu said. “Can’t run away from me when I’m fucking you into the floor.” And then she pushed Akemi’s underwear aside, shoved two fingers in, yanked on Akemi’s locked arms and fucked Akemi back onto her. She took them out, slipped a wet V of a touch down Akemi’s pussy, around her clit, then pushed back in. And again—and again, pumping into her hard and fast, crooked her fingers, rubbed, bit into the centre of Akemi’s spine, and Akemi clenched—shouted, came on Mizu’s fingers. Came, and came, shuddering, fucking herself wildly back against Mizu. It went on for a long time. She didn’t realise she wasn’t breathing until Mizu told her,
“Breathe. Babe, breathe, shhh—come here, shh—”
Collected her. Mizu on the rug, back against the sofa; Akemi in her lap, breathing in small, shaking breaths. Mizu pet her—fingers in her hair. Kissed her cheeks, her mouth. “Shh, sweet thing. It’s okay.”
The jacket was gone. Mizu’s sweater—gone too, somehow. She was in a white tank top. There were the straps on her arms, holding the blades. Mizu took them off slowly, carefully. Akemi watched her do it, and thought about what those blades had done, what they could do.
“Let me see you,” Mizu said quietly. She meant Akemi’s neck. She inspected, tilting Akemi’s face gently, stroked her with a thumb. “Akemi,” she said, a crack in her voice.
Akemi pushed her hand away and kissed her. She was taller, like this, could take control; Mizu allowed it for a peaceful moment. Slowed the kiss. Akemi tried to speed it up, whined. Mizu slowed it down. Mizu’s hands were warm, stroking up and down her back.
Akemi looked down at her. Said, “I survived a long time without you, you know. I survived twenty-two years. You’re not, like. The reason I’m alive.”
“Hmm,” Mizu said, and ten minutes later had Akemi over her lap, and slapped her ass. The shock-humiliation-anger of it, the rocking movement of it, and Akemi gasped and tried to push onto her elbows, saying, You can’t--! And Mizu pushed her back down, stroked her, said, Be good, and slapped her again. Akemi’s face felt beet red. She hid it in the crook of her arm, spread her legs, lifted her ass. Yes, Mizu said, that satisfied, indulgent tone. Akemi remembered—Mizu’s thumb to her neck, Akemi winning at Go, Mizu’s honeyed low voiced when she—
Mizu got her crying. Then Mizu put her on her back, hoisted up her hips, ate her out. Akemi clenched her legs hard around Mizu’s head as she came on a punched-out shout—Mizu’s tongue to her clit, three fingers in her cunt. When she put her back down, Mizu looked up at her—eyes black, face a mess; rubbed red, wet from her nose to her chin. Mouth a dark open cave. Another memory, just last night—Mizu opening the door, her chin, her—
Something tight and possessive clenched down on Akemi’s heart. She dragged Mizu up, kissed her, kissed her. Mizu was shaking against her. Mid-kiss, Mizu pulled down one cup of Akemi’s bra, pulled away from her face—leaned down, put her whole tit in her mouth. Sucked, bit. Akemi arched. Mizu rubbed her face against Akemi’s nipple, rumbled against her skin: “God I’ve been wanting to do that . . .”
“Do it,” Akemi said. “Do whatever you want.”
Mizu, leaned on an elbow, looked up at her. Her hair was in a state.
Akemi said, “Just do whatever you want.”
Mizu went frighteningly still.
Akemi’s heart tumbled. She was scared. She raised her voice to say: “Just fuck me however you want.”
Mizu did. In the bedroom, a long breath-held sprint: Akemi on her belly, a pillow shoved under her hips, Mizu’s strap deep inside her. It was mean and it was hard, Mizu’s hips tight against Akemi’s ass pumping in fast. Mizu grunting, mouth to Akemi’s sweat-soaked back. The blinds were drawn. The sheets were a dark grey. Mizu had done little to make the room her own, nothing but one postcard propped against the bedside lamp: an old one, looked like it’d been crumpled and then smoothed out again. A red picture of a phoenix. The bedframe shook and shook and the postcard slipped, fell. Against the wall Mizu had a sheathed sword—at hand’s reach. On the floor, her worn sudoku book, face-down.
Akemi was so wet she felt it all the way down her thighs; felt it on the sheet under her. She couldn’t move much—she tried, ass pushing back. She might have come already. She wanted to come again. She didn’t want to stop. “Fuck,” Mizu said, and pinched her waist, and fucked in faster, “you need it, look at you, you need a good fuck, no one’s giving it to you, you need—”
Akemi clawed at the sheets, said, “I need—I need it—ah—!”
Later, Mizu on the bed beside her; strap still on, shiny and proud, pointing up. Akemi was boneless, draped over Mizu’s side, playing with her dick. Mizu was still catching her breath. She had come grinding deep inside Akemi, and had stayed there a long time, shaking. She was still sensitive when Akemi pushed the strap down on her clit, hissed, pulled Akemi’s hair, tsk’d at her again.
Akemi showed her her teeth.
“Don’t ever run away like that,” Mizu said.
Akemi tested Mizu’s grip on her hair. It had no give. She said, all venom, “Hmm, was daddy Mizu worried?”
Mizu yanked, Akemi cried out; her hand was a loose circle around the base of Mizu’s dick. A kiss happened, somehow. Mizu said, “Don’t,” and Akemi said, “Then make me stay,” and Mizu said, “Akemi.”
“Don’t fuck other girls. Keep me with you,” Akemi said. “You won’t worry about where I am if I’m with you.”
Mizu said, “That’s not a solution.”
“Why not?”
They’d rolled over. Akemi was rubbing against Mizu’s strap, slippery against her cunt. Mizu said, “Little girls get in the way.” She said, “Little girls are a distraction.”
“Mmm!” Akemi said, a closed-mouth moan. She liked Mizu inside of her more than she’d liked anything—anything she could think of, though she couldn’t think of much, mind a humming wide horizon.
“I’m a distraction?” she asked, later, Mizu’s sweaty face in her neck. Akemi was running her nails through Mizu’s hair. Mizu, to her surprise, shivered every time she dragged them over her scalp.
“You’re a demon,” Mizu grumbled, “sent from hell, to challenge me, specifically.” And Akemi laughed, and laughed, delighted.
“Have you been suffering?” Akemi asked joyfully. “Because of me?”
Mizu sat on top of her. “You know I was.” Akemi hadn’t known. She didn’t say anything, and Mizu held Akemi down, laced their fingers. Said, “Where’s my sweater?”
It took Akemi a moment. “At Taigen’s, I think.”
Mizu’s hold tightened. Akemi gasped. Mizu had small, pointy tits, a trail of hair between her navel and her crotch. She was covered in scars: her ribs, her shoulders, a terrifying slash as if from an animal’s claw low on her belly. Akemi writhed under her. “He was my first, you know. No one else had touched me before him. Not a finger.”
Mizu put her weight down. Akemi arched, tried for a kiss, failed; flopped back down. She told Mizu, “And now you have.” She said, “And now you’ve fucked me.”
Another derailment: Mizu straddling Akemi, holding Akemi’s head between her legs, fucking her mouth. Take it, she said, once and harsh, and Akemi moaned into her pussy. She tasted dark and salty. Mizu reached behind to pinch Akemi’s tit meanly, ground down, guided Akemi’s head exactly where she wanted it—exactly how she wanted it. God, she said, and called Akemi a brat—said it like it was misery, like it was an ache pulled from her—and came in Akemi’s mouth, on her tongue.
She made Akemi go shower. Akemi said, “I don’t wanna,” and Mizu said, “Go shower.” And Akemi said, “Whyyy,” face in Mizu’s armpit, and Mizu lifted her chin with a firm touch, said: “Akemi. Go shower.”
Akemi whispered, “Yes daddy.”
Mizu made a disturbed sound. Akemi smiled with her canines. She felt Mizu’s eyes on her as she went and the shower was good. Her skin rose in goose bumps and then calmed. She was sore; she was too sensitive, she was so tired. Someone had wanted her dead, and Mizu had wanted her alive. She had wanted Akemi so, so alive. A hungry thought crossed her mind, suddenly and quickly: Mizu here with her, Mizu who could walk in, get into the shower booth, grab her again like she had before: hard fingers to her ass, between her legs. Akemi hissed, cupped her pussy; it was puffed and raw.
It took a long time for Akemi’s feet to warm. It took a long time for her to find the movements needed to turn off the tap. There was no fresh towel, only a used one, damp. Akemi wrapped it around herself. She caught her foggy reflection in the mirror. Her neck was bruised red, already turning blue. Her hair was wet and stringy. That’s how she stepped back into the living room: aching and red-faced, in a big damp towel.
Mizu was gone. On the table, Akemi’s phone, and on the phone, a text: Went to update your father. Don’t move. Will be back.
Akemi took a deep breath. She thought two words, vaguely and distantly to herself: not good. She had never wanted anything with a grand abandon, had always described herself to others as not having the personality type that allowed for addiction; saw it as a strength. There was nothing anyone could take away from her. She had tried smoking, did not like the scratching itch of it; tried coke, did not like the tired comedown of it; had never read a book breathless in one day, had never watched a show and continued to watch it, wanting more. She had needed what she needed, took it when the desire came: food and sleep and touch. If the desire struck her, she would reach out and there it was.
Now she stood in the middle of Mizu’s disgusting bachelor pad of a pool house, and outside the world was bright clean snow, and Akemi wanted. Akemi’s belly was hollowed out, flipped over. Ten minutes, she thought. Ten minutes, and if Mizu wasn’t back by then, she might scream; or cry, or punch a wall, or go look for her. Open doors, shout her name.
Debasing. Desire was debasing.
She laughed at herself. Shook her head: get rid of the emotion. It didn’t work. She’d never hungered much; she was starving, now. She went through the cupboards and found a sad pile of noodle packets. She boiled water—dressed in Mizu’s clothes—the heady smell of sex in the bedroom—sweatpants tighter on her than on Mizu—made herself ramen, ate—ten minutes passed—
Starving. She looked out the window, at the path: the tarp over the pool piled with snow, the big house. It looked different from here. Less impressive, more self-important.
She texted Mizu. Waiting.
She tidied up. Put a wash in the washing machine. Her phone pinged a message. She rushed to it—
Mizu had replied: Good girl.
Akemi’s hands were shaking. Her belly went wide. She licked her lips.
Another message blinked into existence as Akemi was looking at the screen.
Coming.
Akemi looked up, out the window.
Mizu, coming down the path; coming to her. Hair wet, slicked back, mouth wide, eyes ahead. Akemi exhaled. Mizu was coming.