Revealed – Chapter 12

Things have not been going according to plan.

On Jiro’s third night at Izakaya Tanaka, Sanaa is still nowhere to be seen. He slides into his permanent stool at the bar thanks to Miko and the bartender, Sono. He likes it here. The izakaya is a bright and cheery spot in his otherwise dull and unhappy life. The busy restaurant is crowded at all times, food whipping by him at the bar, and revelers drinking in the private rooms. With all the ceramic cats along the wall, the place feels like home, a comfortable calm amid the storm of the city. When Jiro is here, he enjoys a delicious meal instead of getting takeout or cooking something at home and a great conversation with Sono, a funny older man who has tons of stories to tell. They even know a few people in common.

Jiro keeps his distance from his brother, not wanting to interfere in Yoichi’s dates with Miko. The couple keep a regular schedule. Yoichi shows up around five, and Miko sits with him for an hour before helping with the evening dinner rush. Then she either gets off work, and they spend the evening hanging out at the izakaya or they leave to go out. Their life looks pretty ideal from Jiro’s perspective. Yoichi has a lot of work to do, but he can get things done during business hours. Miko’s schedule is typical for a restaurant owner, but her parents are being more lax about her hours because they like Yoichi so much.

Jiro finishes his meal, and while Sono is occupied, he thinks about the last two days of practice with Sanaa. She came in each day more professional and locked up than the last, and his heart progressively cracked each time. She still chatted with him, but it was small talk, the kind of interaction one relegates to a coworker they have to see but don’t like. It killed him.

But once they started practicing, she opened up because sword fighting is the neutral ground between them. She asked a lot of logical questions and practiced her moves precisely. He made a joke today about moving her arms like pretzels, and she laughed so genuinely he’s still smiling. She gets his sense of humor.

“Oh my gods, my feet are killing me.” Miko sits down next to him at the bar, and he leans back to give her a respectable amount of distance. “I need a day off. I haven’t had one in weeks.”

“Spring festivals will be starting next month. Will you get time off for them?”

“Yes and no, but I need a day off now. I haven’t had one since New Year’s Day.” She sighs and sets her tablet on the bar. “Yoichi said he’d be here soon. He had a business dinner tonight to attend.”

“Yes. It was time to talk about quarterly results.” Jiro spent the morning with his father, Sakai, and Yoichi going over numbers. Not his favorite part of the job but good to stay home for once.

Miko taps through her inbox, sighs again, and sets down her tablet, rubbing around her eyes, careful not to mess up her makeup.

“Something the matter?” Jiro asks, filling up his cup of sake. “Want to join me for a drink?”

“Yes, absolutely. My shift is over.” She leans over the bar and grabs a cup, placing it next to Jiro’s, and he fills it up for her. “I’m just worried about a friend of mine. I never see her anymore.”

“Someone I know?” Hopefully he doesn’t sound like he’s fishing for details, which he is.

“Oh wait. You met her on New Year’s. Sanaa.” Miko tilts her head and looks appraisingly at Jiro. “It used to be I could count on seeing her twice a week. Now, I haven’t seen her in over a month.”

Jiro pushes down his excitement and presents his neutral face to Miko. He’s been waiting the last few days for Sanaa to walk in the door, and now this?

“Is she working?” He just saw her a few hours ago, and before she left the dōjō, she accessed her tablet with a frown and said she had to get caught up on her job.

“Yes. Too much. More than I do. I think she works every day now from eight in the morning to nine or ten PM. Sometimes later. I don’t even think she sleeps anymore since she’s constantly answering my messages at two or three AM. She just wrote to say she’s sorry she can’t come by tonight. I miss her.” Miko frowns, sitting back and crossing her arms.

“Are you good friends?”

“Sanaa and Helena are my two best friends. Helena is also busy, but I still see her a lot. Sanaa is the one I worry the most about. She works so much, and I want her to have a social life. She deserves it.” She fills her cup back up and drinks again. “I was kind of hoping I could fix her up with you. It would have been fun to date brothers.” She raises her eyebrows at him and laughs. “She seemed interested on New Year’s Eve. I’m a little angry her work has been so demanding.”

“I would have liked that. Well, it sounds like something’s changed over the past few months if she used to come here a lot.”

Miko’s eyebrows pull together. “Hmmm, I wonder what. She does sound unhappy, like she would much rather be here.”

Jiro nods at Miko. Sanaa has been more business-like lately in their practices, so perhaps Sakai is giving her stressful work. Jiro wants so many things — to get to know her and teach her, to talk to her and be her friend. But if he can’t have that, he wants her to go away and stop tempting him.

Sanaa seems to have little control over her life, though. She’s always on time, always on schedule. Someone — and Jiro suspects Sakai — has given her strict orders on what to do, and she’s powerless to go against them.

Miko’s tablet flashes at her again, and she types out a response in a chat window. Jiro peeks over her shoulder and sees she’s chatting with Sanaa who’s online right now.

“I miss you and Sono,” Sanaa writes. “Please give him a kiss on the cheek from me. I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I can’t even describe how busy I’ve been.”

“I miss you, too. Love you,” Miko taps out, and Jiro leans back because she’s getting teary. Never interfere with a crying girl. That’s just asking for trouble.

“I love you, too.” Sanaa’s response makes Jiro’s heart clench. She has this whole other life he knows nothing about because he can’t get close to her.

Miko waves Sono over, tugs on his shirt to get him to lean over, and kisses him on the cheek. “From Sanaa. She misses you.”

Jiro rises and grabs his jacket, no longer able to witness other people missing Sanaa. He sees her every day but barely knows her. They know her so well and never see her. “I’m going to get home, Miko. I’m sure my brother will be here soon.”

She takes a deep breath and waves at her face to make the tears go away. “Come back tomorrow. I’m glad you came by tonight.”

He squeezes her arm and nods. He will. He’ll come back every night if he has to and wait for Sanaa. He wants to know her even more now.

—-

On the way home from Izakaya Tanaka, Jiro’s tablet pings with a message from his father. Mariko, his mother, is asleep, but Koichi needs to speak with Jiro now. Why isn’t he at home? Jiro writes back that he’s on his way home and arranges to meet his father in his apartment instead. He grumbles, storing the tablet away in his bag. Why isn’t he at home? He’s trying to have a life, that’s why.

“Jiro, I know you haven’t been training Sanaa for long, but we need to accelerate the process.” Koichi can’t even sit still and is up pacing the room.

“What do you mean, accelerate the process? I already feel like she’s doing well for someone who has never held a sword before. And come on, it’s only been ten days. What do you want me to do? Work miracles?”

“I know. It’s ridiculous, but you have to admit, she’s catching on fast.”

Jiro nods, bobbing his head from side to side. “Yes. Her kata are shaky, but she memorized them quickly. I’ve been teaching her some defense…”

“We need to enhance that. Lots and lots of defense. Spar with her, if you have to. Push her hard.” Koichi is not one to panic about anything, but the waves of urgency smack Jiro in the face.

“I can continue to push her, if you want me to, but she’s going to break into tiny pieces. I don’t know what kind of work Sakai has her doing but she’s stressed out, a mess most days. Miko was just saying she never sees Sanaa anymore, and they’re best friends.”

Koichi halts, examining Jiro, with eyes narrowed to slits. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing, honestly. I was at the Izakaya Tanaka tonight to relax and get work done and Miko mentioned her. That’s all.” He stands up and faces his father. “But really, she’s my student, and you’ve told me not to get involved, but it’s becoming impossible.”

Koichi folds his arms across his chest.

“I see her every day. Every day!” Jiro exclaims, throwing his arms up. “I can’t not talk to her. I can’t not have some concern for my student. We need some kind of relationship. What you’re asking for just can’t be done.”

Jiro takes a deep breath and lowers his voice. “You know the relationship between a sensei and his or her student is life-enduring. It’s a big deal. Every teacher has some sort of feelings for their student, platonic or not. I can’t continue to teach her and not feel anything.”

Koichi thinks, rubbing his face and bright red eyes. “The most important thing here is that she learns the sword fighting.”

“Is she in danger or something?” Panic clutches Jiro’s chest like his four-year-old cousin who hugs and won’t let go. If Sanaa’s in danger, he should be carrying his sword and escorting her around, as far as he’s concerned.

“Not yet, but she could be, which is why you must accelerate the process. Enough kata for now. You should concentrate on clashing swords.”

Jiro takes a deep breath and plays back today’s practice in his head. “I can get her to spar with me for defensive purposes but asking her to strike me will be more difficult. She’s hesitant to hurt someone else but will defend herself.”

“Okay. That’ll have to do.” He turns and walks to the door, pausing to slip on his shoes. “I’ll think about what you’ve said, but you need to keep it professional.”

“Why?” Jiro asks, exasperation coating that one syllable like summer sweat at a festival. His father halts. “Do you not trust me anymore? What if I told you I like her? She’s smart and funny and learning to sword fight, for gods’ sake. She’s a bit of an outsider, but you knew her family, right? I don’t understand this at all.”

“We did know her family, very well. Her mother and father were our best friends, and if this were a different place and time, you would have grown up together. But it’s not. Just try your best for now. I’ll think about this, and we’ll talk again. I promise. Good night.”

Frustration mounts as the door clicks closed, and Jiro’s vision turns to red. He reaches out to grab something, anything, to throw against the wall, and stops himself short of breaking his favorite jar of tea. That’s it! He’s had it. He needs to know more about her. Where can he start?

Sanaa said she lives in Ku 9 with her aunts. She’s best friends with Miko and the other girl Helena. Sakai has her working mornings and evenings. Besides the fact that she doesn’t work for the Colonization Committee anymore, that’s all he knows about her.

He sits down with his tablet and opens the NishikyōNet search engine, types in her name, and waits. Her address comes up in Ku 9. There are a few technical papers she’s published on drainage systems for housing complexes on Yūsei (Gods, she’s smart). She’s registered with the Engineering division and the Nishikyō karate league. He finds an article about the top ten graduates from her class and where they went, and it just proves again that she’s intelligent and ambitious. She beat out five other people for her position at the Colonization Committee.

How common is the last name Griffin? He types the name in and thousands of hits come up. Apparently, it’s very common. He tries searching ‘Griffin Itō,’ her last name and his, hoping his family’s association will bring up older stories, but there’s nothing.

‘Griffin Sakai’ proves more fruitful. One story about an explosion eighteen years ago in which several people died including a man named Max Griffin and a woman named Junko Itami. Were these her parents? Must be. The first day in the dōjō, his father said, “She’s Junko’s girl, for sure…” Mark Sakai is quoted in the article as being one of the first people on the scene after the explosion, but that’s it. The reporter didn’t even state if Max and Junko had a child who survived.

But with more names now, he can dig even further. There’s not much in the database about Junko Itami except homeschooling records. Max Griffin is associated with a family that now lives in Ku 4, and he lived in Ku 6 for much of his life before moving to Ku 9 shortly before his death.

So, Sanaa’s an orphan raised by her aunts, and his family knew her parents before they died. Sakai was one of the first people on the scene the night of their deaths, so he knew them too. But it seems as if there’s more information gone missing than available. If Jiro searched for himself right now, he’d find an embarrassing amount of data on all of his habits. Sanaa is a specter with very little information available about her. His neck tingles with suspicion, and he rubs it before yawning.

He turns off the tablet and lies down on the couch. He’ll have to find some other way of figuring her out.