To reply to some reviews before I do anything else,

Thank you to everyone for your kind words. I’m . . . wow, I’m absolutely humbled by some of the stuff you’ve said to me, especially the woman who said she recognised her own life in this. I only hope the rest of this story can live up to your expectations.

The story was originally going to be four parts. It’s now going to be five or six. Part 2 was unplanned in my initial outline, but it felt necessary at the time. However, if you’re enjoying it, I doubt you’re going to complain about an extra part or two, right? ^.~

(Nonetheless, four parts or six, the characters won’t be any less the property of Toei and I won’t make any more money . . . . Gotta get that disclaimer in somewhere!)

Everyone keeps saying that this story is like a novel they’ve read. I’d love to know exactly what novel it is, because I genuinely haven’t read it and want to do so. This was inspired by reading I’ve been doing lately for pleasure and for a course in Realist fiction - a mix of O. Henry’s Gifts of the Magi, de Maupassant’s Le Parure and Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. There are obvious echoes of each story in this piece, I’d imagine, but they are only echoes.

Finally, the title of this part is from a poem. Annoyingly, I’ve gone completely blank on who wrote it or what it’s called, but one of the lines in it is ‘You drink too deeply of the blood of roses.’

8:41 PM CORRECTION: Shimatta, you’re quite right. I must have been half-asleep when I was romanising the verb ‘to dance’. It is ‘odoru’, not ‘otoru’. The other would mean “do you want to be inferior?” What is even more annoying is I’ve just finished translating episode 14 of Frontier, and Arbormon repeatedly goes “Odore! Odore!” while whacking Takuya and Kouji. So, I really have no excuse. <weeps a little>

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DANCING

PART 4

THE BLOOD OF ROSES

I wonder at what a short time ago it was -

the injuries that came to an end every time that you were near

when I shone far.

There were eerie fissures -

many sad incidents, but how many were they?

Now, I understand.

~ Reflection, Araki Kae

Hands resting on her stomach, Hikari lay awake in the grey, predawn light and thought about dancing. Tonight, her classmates would be swaying in their partners’ arms beneath tissue-paper blossoms and fairy-light stars. She wanted to be among them so badly. She could almost feel the swish of a silk skirt against her legs and the warmth of her lover’s arm around her shoulders. She would look up at him to see herself reflected in his flame-blue eyes, and the music would fade into silence against his heartbeat, his breath. . . .

With a frustrated grunt, she rolled over onto her side and pushed the thought firmly away from her. There was no point imagining a dance to which she could not go, and she could not go to this one. Of necessity, her plans for that evening were very different. Tonight, she would grab a sandwich from the cafeteria, before rushing to the LAN and checking through her digital portfolio of photographs one last time.

Sudden tears stung her eyes. She tried to fight them back, but she couldn’t. The job she hated, the dress she couldn’t afford, the fight she had had with Miyako, the exhaustion that reached right to her bones, everything rushed back into her head and made her cry all the harder. She buried her face in her pillow in an attempt to muffle her sobs. The last thing she wanted was for Takeru to wake and see her crying; was for him to know that she was unhappy.

When she felt the mattress move beneath her, she knew she had been unsuccessful. Moments later, a pair of warm arms were wrapped around her and a kiss was pressed to the back of her neck. She leaned back into his chest, listening to his heartbeat, feeling his steady breathing ruffle her hair. Eventually, her hiccuping sobs quietened and her own breathing slowed to normal.

“What’s wrong, love?” he asked at last, his voice still soft and heavy with sleep.

“Nothing,” she tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it, “I’m just so tired. With work and school and everything else . . . . ”

“My poor angel,” he rubbed her back with a hand, “But what’s really the matter? What did Miyako say to you the other day that’s upset you so badly?”

Hikari stiffened. She should have guessed he would see through the lie - Takeru always had been able to read her, as if she were one of his books, “How’d you guess?”

“I’ve only known you since you were eight, remember? I can tell when something’s bugging you, and something has been since you got back from shopping with her,” he replied, “Whatever she said, you can tell me. It’ll be okay.”

If she had not felt so bleak, she would have laughed at that. If she told Takeru what Miyako had asked her, nothing would be all right. Nothing would be all right ever again. Giving voice to her fears would make them real. It would mean she had to find an answer to her friend’s question, and some small, secret part of her was afraid it might not be ‘yes’. And that was not even considering the pain her friend’s words would cause him.

“It’s not important,” she demurred.

“I kinda think it is, if it’s eating at you like this.”

“I can’t.”

“You can,” he insisted, “We’re married, Hikari. You can tell me anything, and I won’t love you any less. I promise you that. Cross my heart.”

Pulling away from him, Hikari sat up in bed and looked out of the window. Outside the window, rain was falling. Drops of water glistened on the glass, and the sky was ghost-grey where the clouds reflected the light of the city beneath them. Thunder rumbled distantly in the west. She could feel Takeru shift his position, propping himself up on his elbow to look at her expectantly.

At last, she said, “She asked me if I wished I had never married you.”

The words seemed to hang in the air after she had spoken them, like the echo of a gunshot or a slap. And she knew he could not have known what he was promising, could not have meant what he had said.

“And do you?” Takeru asked in a quiet voice that was not his own. Feeling sick, Hikari turned to look at him. All the colour had drained from his face, leaving him white and pale. His breathing was ragged, and she could tell he was fighting back tears of his own now. The five year-old boy looked out at her through his eyes in pain, fear and confusion. She had known what Miyako’s words would do to him, yet she had spoken them.

She moved across the bed back to him, taking his hand in her own and kissing each fingertip in turn, before she pressed her lips against his palm. He smelt of cotton sheets and her rose soap and his own sweet scent, “No. No, never. You know I love you.”

“Then why are you bothered by what she said?” he asked in that same, terrible voice.

Hikari could not answer him, “I love you, Takeru-chan.”

“I love you too, omae.” (1)

Looking up at him, Hikari was scared by how much of a stranger he felt at that moment. He had never used that formal address with her in the past. To him, she had always been Hikari-chan or one of the ridiculous pet-names that he seemed to take a perverse delight in inventing for her. She almost had to remind herself that the tall, slim, young man lying beside her was Takeru - the boy who had run up to her with a smile on his face that first day at the television station and had announced they were going to be best friends; who had watched over when she was ill; whose fingers had curled around hers as they had fallen from the sky; who had come to her across time and space when she had called him. How could Takeru ever seem like a stranger to her?

Feeling oddly helpless, she slipped her arms around his neck, pulled him down on top of her and kissed him deeply. His mouth tasted of salt, of tears. He returned her kiss, his lips moving from hers to trace the line of her throat, his fingers clumsily undoing the ties of her wedding-gift nemaki. And, even as they made love, she could sense something between them as dark and insubstantial as the shadow of parting. (2)

*

Clutching her school-books in one arm and a paper packet of groceries in the other, Hikari hurried up the steps of their apartment block. She didn’t have much time. Takeru was going to be home in an hour or two from basketball practice, and she wanted to have dinner ready for him. Instead of her usual Chinese or pizza from the closest take-away, she was going to make him coq au vin, which he had sworn he had lived on during his vacations in France. She had even bought French bread and a bottle of champagne for good measure - her cooking was usually best eaten drunk. She had decided that her portfolio of photographs would have to be submitted as it was. She had been through it three times already, and any improvements she could make to it would be minor. Her marriage, on the contrary, needed work.

The events of the early morning seemed like a distant nightmare. She had woken up and had wondered if it had happened, then had remembered the terrible look in Takeru’s eyes and had known she could have never imagined that. Not sure of what she was going to say to him when she saw him, she had gone through to the kitchen to find Takeru humming to himself and flipping pancakes. When he had noticed her, he had grinned and begun serenading her with a ridiculous song he’d evidently made up on the spot about her being the cinnamon-sugar-with-a-squeeze-of-lemon pancake of his life. Takeru was a good tenor and he had almost pulled it off, but, by the end of the second verse, she had been clutching the table and begging him to stop because her sides ached from laughing so much. By all of that, she had taken it that they weren’t going to talk about what either of them had said or done only hours ago. She had been relieved, and ashamed that she was relieved. They had never been anything before about which they had been able to talk. (2)

Fumbling in her pocket for her keys, she unlocked the door of their apartment and her eyes widened in surprise. Like strange pink and silver moons, four balloons were bobbing around their living room. All of them had little cards tied to the ends of their strings, on which something had been written in her husband’s broad, black hand. Setting her parcels aside, she quickly caught all of them and removed the notes. There was a single word on each card, and she shuffled them around until they were in the right order.

“‘Odotte hoshii desu ka’,” she read, then repeated it in confusion, “Do you want to dance? What is that supposed to mean? He knows we aren’t going to the spring ball.” (3)

Puzzled, she went to their bedroom to get changed out of her work clothes before she started the meal. It wasn’t like she was going anywhere that night, but the bright-yellow shirt always made her feel like a walking, talking banana. In Hikari’s opinion, the uniform was almost the worst part about the photo studio, after the kids who wouldn’t smile and the teenagers who insisted that they looked fat in all their pictures. The bedroom door was closed, and there was a single, wine-dark rose taped to it. She pulled off the flower, holding it to her nose and breathing in its wild, sweet scent. The petals brushed against her skin, like a lover’s kiss. She wondered what Takeru was planning, what she would find when she opened the door.

Excitement champagne-fizzy inside her, Hikari twisted the knob and pushed the door open. Her hand went to her mouth in an instinctive, little-girl gesture when she saw their bed. It was covered in rose-petals, ranging from the palest pink to the richest red. Their musky fragrance filled the room. In the middle of them rested a sleek, white box, tied around with a crimson, chiffon ribbon. She had seen boxes exactly like that at the expensive boutique at which Miyako had bought her own outfit for the ball.

Hardly daring to hope, she walked slowly to their bed to sit on its edge. The scent of roses was overpowering, and, together with her excitement, made her feel dizzy and light-headed. Drawing the box closer to her, she undid the ribbon with shaking fingers and lifted the lid. Inside, it rustled with white crinkle-paper. She carefully parted that to see what it hid and felt her breath catch in her throat. . . .

It was her dress.

Takeru had bought her dress for her.

Even after what had happened that morning, Takeru had bought her dress for her.

She buried her face in it, smelling its clean, new scent, feeling the softness of the silk and chiffon against her skin. She was ashamed, thrilled and sad all at the same time. Who was she to deserve a man who tied messages to balloons, who scattered her bed with roses, who knew without asking the right dress to buy?

Hikari looked up in sudden horror, realising something. Where had her husband gotten the money? She had seen the price-tag on this outfit. She knew exactly how much it cost, and he couldn’t afford it any more than she could. He earned a modest salary from his coaching, enough to cover his share of their expenses and to give him a little liquid cash. However, anything left over at the end of the month, he had been putting towards his trip to America. Suddenly, she remembered what he had said to her the other day while she had been dressing for the Kobayashi wedding. I’ve got the money I was saving for the basketball camp in America at the end of the year. You could . . . .

Her stomach twisted within her, as she realised what he had done.

“No, Takaishi Takeru, I’m absolutely not going to let you to get away with this!”

***

to be continued

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NOTES:

(1) In this context, omae is a slightly formal, old-fashioned way of addressing your wife in Japanese. I’m using it to emphasise the distance they feel at that moment, because I can’t in a million years see Takeru referring to Hikari as omae on a regular basis. For those who are curious, the formal address for a husband is goshujin-sama! O.o;;

(2) Nemaki: traditional Japanese night-gown. It’s like a robe with a tie at the side.

(3) Yamamoto Taisuke has a rather lovely voice when he sings tenor. His alto is a little suspect, though. I can put a verse or two of ‘Focus’ and ‘Steppin’ Out’ up for you on my webpage, if you don’t want to download the whole songs.

(4) ‘Odotte hoshii desu ka’ would literally mean ‘is dancing a wish?’ It’s a structure I’d only use with someone I knew fairly well, though.

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Review-te hoshii desu ka. ^.^