Summer Haikus – Chapter 20

We take the JR Line into Tokyo Station after getting breakfast at the local bakery and killing an hour’s worth of time so rush hour is completely over. Sitting next to me in the air conditioned comfort of the train, Masa is quiet, alternately playing some game on his phone and asking me questions about how I handled my departure from the ryokan. I tighten all the muscles in my body to keep my leg from bouncing and my hands from shaking. I’m not good at being spontaneous. I suck at being spontaneous, actually. Flying by the seat of my pants makes my anxiety level skyrocket. I couldn’t refuse a day with Masa, though I wish I had planned it out ahead of time.

“Are your grandparents mad? I hope they didn’t give you a hard time.”

“No. They’re not mad. They understand.” I play with the flap on my messenger bag until my phone rings. I pull it from the inner pocket and my mom’s name is on the screen. She’s probably calling me to find out why I’m not at work. It’s not like she checks in every day or anything, but I told Reiko to send all my usual calls to Mom. I’m sure Mom heard from the baker, the florist, and the new fishmonger I just contracted. Masa reaches over and silences my phone.

“Don’t answer this today,” he says, handing it to me. I slip it back inside my bag.

We exit the train at Tokyo Station, and I pause, looking left and right, not sure where to go because I usually head straight to the Marunouchi Line and take it to Akasaka-Mitsuke to see Halley. The station, even though rush hour has come and gone, is swarming with people speaking a dozen different languages, including Japanese. Happy tourists wearing Olympic t-shirts and bearing flags of their home countries mill in tiny groups, several standing at the train maps and gawking at the electronic billboards that give Olympic information in every possible language. The Olympics are still a month away, but the hardcore fans are already here.

I stop and stare at their happy faces, their tourist guidebooks, and animated chatter. I close my eyes and remember that, if I do finally get a salary and go back to work, I need to ask for those Olympic weeks off, or at least the few days around the marathon when Halley will need me most.

Need me most… Guilt swirls through me, causing the small shred of panic at the back of my head to grow like a cancer, dividing and multiplying incessantly.

My mom needs me. She was hit by a car, and I’m being a spoiled brat. What the hell am I doing?

“Are you all right?” Masa asks, his side pressed against mine. Usually I hate when people ask me that. I’ll let it slide today.

“I just… I feel really bad about letting everyone down.” My head falls forward. “I let you down, Halley, and now my mom and grandparents. I should go back to Kichijōji and get back to work.”

I start walking to the train, halting when I realize I don’t have enough money to return home. Masa runs into my back.

“Ouch, sorry,” I say, grasping his shoulders and righting him. “I’m out of cash for a return train ticket. Can I borrow money, please? I promise to pay you back.”

My thoughts ping-pong wildly through all my current issues. I want to spend the day with Masa, but I don’t want to have to ask him for money because I owe him money for all the time he’s worked at the ryokan. And I owe my mom for everything she did for me, but I can’t work for free because then I will have nothing. I should be back in Kichijōji with her, not here with Masa. But I want to spend the day with Masa! My breathing starts to speed up.

“Fuck, no. I’m not giving you any money, Isa, and you are not going back. You haven’t let anyone down. Certainly not me.”

I bite my lip, remembering my pledge not to bring up the kiss. Maybe I should put it out in the open? No. I promised.

“I owe you, just for being here. I owe my mom, too. She’s right.” I deflate, the weight of my mom’s past settling on my shoulders. “She spent all of that time raising me, and I’m being ungrateful.”

“You’re far from ungrateful, and you’re not going back. They need to show you some respect. Come on.”

This time he takes my hand confidently in his, intertwining his fingers with mine, and my face warms. I love these intimate moments, and I don’t want to ruin things again between us.

We exit the station, walk along Sakura Dōri to Takashimaya, one of Tokyo’s prestigious department stores. Masa points it out but tugs my hand, leading me down the stairs to the Ginza Metro Station. Downstairs, the floor is bright and shining, clean and orderly. I wait with him at the subway ticket machine while he expertly drills through the screens.

I feel my phone buzzing in my bag, so I grab it and glance at the screen. It’s Mom, of course. When the screen blanks out, I check my notifications, and I’ve had five missed calls from her. Nothing from my grandparents, though. I show Masa the screen as he starts feeding cash into the machine. He shakes his head.

“Don’t be tempted,” he says, as the machine spits out a pink and white card with a robot on it. “Here. This is for you. It has five thousand yen on it. You can use it for the Metro and JR trains and like a million other places. The convenience stores take them and vending machines too.” He tries to hand me the card, but I push it back to him.

“That’s too much money.”

“It’s not enough money. Don’t worry about it.”

I flip the card over and over in my fingers, thinking about money and the problems it’s caused us both.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, taking out his pink and white robot card and topping it off with money at the machine. If I take this money from him, will I be as bad as Toni? Will he think I’m just using him? Suddenly, I would do anything to rewind back to this morning and stay in Kichijōji before we got to this point.

I lock my arms down at my sides, gathering confidence. “I promise to pay you back. I… I don’t want to end up like Toni.”

He grabs his card from the machine and puts it in his wallet. “You could never be Toni… not like that, I mean.”

My lungs unlock and the breath I take is massive. I hope this means I could be like Toni, like a girlfriend, in other ways. I open my mouth to ask but stay silent. I don’t want to know for sure. I want to believe I have a chance.

Masa shows me how to tap the card on the special turnstiles and gain entry to the subway. I had always bought one-way tickets in the past and this is much easier. I need to tap it on the turnstile on the way out of my destination too so that it calculates my fare properly.

We take the Ginza Line all the way to the end at Asakusa, and along the way, my nerves fray to pieces. My stomach is turning over and nauseous, my thoughts are with my mom, the ryokan, Masa, and what we’ll do today, and I’m sweating a river down my front that’s snaking through my bra. When we exit the station, the sun is far overhead, and the city is hot to the touch. The pavement swims, and my heart beats wildly. Don’t panic. Don’t. Panic.

I dig into my bag and pull out my sunglasses. They won’t be enough today if I’m going to be in the sun a lot.

I fan myself with my hand. “I’m going to need a hat or something.” My voice shakes, but Masa doesn’t seem to notice.

“If we see one, I’ll pick it up for you.”

“Okay,” I say, sighing and glancing around. I have no idea where I am. I open the flap of my bag to reach for my planner, which has all my maps, when I remember that I left it at home today. I didn’t think I’d need it.

“Did you forget something?” Masa asks, his hands in his pockets.

“My planner.” My head starts to buzz, the sound of a misaligned fan whirring in my ears. “I don’t know where we’re going or what we’re doing.”

Masa laughs, his head thrown back. “You don’t need a plan for this.”

“Yes, I do.” I throw the bag closed. “I need a plan for everything.”

“Why?” he asks, leaning over to look me in the eyes.

“So I don’t get lost…”

“Get lost. That’s the best part.”

“So I don’t miss anything…”

“You’ll miss everything if you’re too careful.” He kicks his foot out, steps off the curb, and begins to walk away from the station. The humming in my head screeches to a frightening pitch.

“I don’t think you realize how much anxiety this is giving me.” I struggle to catch up because my chest is constricted like a too-tight hug from my overzealous dad. “Masa… please…” I start to wheeze, a panic attack blacking out the buildings surrounding me. I stumble and my ass hits the pavement, the jolt reverberating up my spinal column.

“Isa!” Masa runs to me, his fingers brushing along my face, jaw, and chin, and his knees butted up against my side.

“Can’t. Breathe.” The combination of heat, panic, and uncertainty halts oxygen to my system, shutting me down. I close my eyes, hoping to just sink into oblivion.

“Listen to me!” Masa’s breath on my face forces me to blink. “You’re gonna be fine, Isa. Breathe. Nothing’s going to happen to you today. You’re with me. Breathe. Come on.”

I close my eyes and breathe, in through my nose and out through my mouth, over and over, until the buzzing quiets and the sound of an approaching Metro train is all I hear instead.

“Is she okay? Does she need water? Let me get some water.” I open my eyes, and the figures of two young girls in sundresses swim in front of me. One crosses the street to a vending machine, buys a bottle of water, and runs it back to Masa.

“Here,” he says, cracking the bottle open and holding it up to my mouth. I lean back and sip, letting the cold water douse the heaping load of shame in my belly. I haven’t had a true panic attack in months. Not since winter break. “Thank you,” Masa says to the girls. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’s just had a hard morning. Can I pay you for the water?”

“No, no,” the girl says, bowing. “Please. It’s fine. Take care.” They walk off, throwing glances over their shoulders at me.

“I’m sorry,” I burble out against the stream of tears flowing down my face. I usually don’t cry during panic attacks, maybe a few tears until the panic fades, but this is a full-on river, complete with blubbering. Masa has never seen me cry until now. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“What happened?” he asks, leaning over and hugging me.

I cry stupid tears into his shoulder and rub my cheek on the fabric of his shirt over and over, comforting myself with the repetitive motion.

“I don’t do anything without a plan. I can’t. I’m broken… Incapable of spontaneity.”

Masa rests his head on top of mine, and I clutch handfuls of his shirt in my hands. “I thought the plans were just your way of staying organized. I didn’t think they were a … thing.”

“Thing,” I repeat. “Yes, they’re a thing.”

“How in the hell do you handle emergencies?”

I laugh because I must seem an incredible enigma if I can’t handle an easy, carefree day of aimless sightseeing, but I handled my mom’s accident and an emergency trip to Japan with grace and aplomb.

“I plan really quickly. I’m good at it now. Lots of practice.”

I’m also extremely nervous to spend a whole day with Masa without the ryokan buffer, but I don’t mention that. We haven’t been alone together since the banquet, and the unpredictability of a random day with him is too much for me.

He sits down, rearranging the hair around my face and scanning my eyes and cheeks. “The color is back in your face. What do you need to feel better about today?”

I sigh, relieved he seems to understand. “My phone.”

He nods, pulling me up to my feet. I sway but lean against a building, the side of a parking garage. I extract my phone from my bag and ignore the text messages and calls from my mom, navigating to the maps. The local map loads, and I see where we are, a little blue dot amongst streets crisscrossing near a river. I swipe around, orienting myself. The temple is north of us by a few blocks.

I switch to the browser as Masa leans against the wall next to me. “Do you want me to take you home? You look exhausted now.”

I shake my head. “Panic attacks always take a lot out of me.” Just to drive the point home, my voice shakes. “But I don’t want to go home.”

I search for “Asakusa” on Google and scan a blog post about visiting the temple. The grounds are pretty big with plenty of places to see and things to do. With these details, a plan begins to form, and my body calms slowly.

“I want to go to the shops first,” I say, pointing to a photo of a row of open stalls along the side of the temple grounds.

“And then?” He draws himself away from the wall and eyes me critically.

“The temple and lunch?”

“Sounds like a plan.” He smiles and winks, jutting out his arm for me to take it.

—-

We amble through the long corridor of shops outside of Sensō-ji Temple, peering around tourists and pointing out everything we come across. Masa is chattier than usual, commenting on everything he sees and every person who walks in front of us. He’s probably nervous I’m going to keel over and pass out on him. Halley does this speed talking thing too, which only proves that Masa and Halley are so alike and so perfect for me, the quiet and contemplative one.

“Here’s a place that sells hats.” Masa disengages his arm from mine. “Will you be okay here?” I nod and smile reassuringly before he heads into a kimono and yukata shop. While he’s talking with the store owner, I look up and down the row in case I need anything later. Postcards, fans, snacks, mobile phone charms, tiny statues to put on one’s dresser, hair clips — the list of wares is endless and stretches as far as I can see.

A wide-brim straw hat descends on my head, and I jerk away before I realize it’s attached to Masa.

“Relax,” he whispers, settling the hat on my head. I glance around and most of the people around me are wearing similar hats. At least I don’t stick out. “See anything you want?”

I shake my head. “No. Not really. I don’t have the money for this stuff anyway.”

“There’s not anything you want?”

My eyes linger on a white fox mask. That would be cool to hang on my wall.

“No. I’m fine.”

“Let’s get a snack before we go in.” He angles towards a sweet shop, and I hide a small smile behind the wide brim of my hat. Masa loves sweets.

“Oh! Let’s get dango.” I point to the multicolored, red, white, and green mochi rice balls covered in syrup on sticks. Masa buys two, and we stand outside in the shade of a tree and eat them.

“Mmmm, my favorite,” I say, humming as I finish off the last one. The sugar seeps into my bloodstream, and the panic attack fades even further away. “I feel so much better. Sugar saves the day.”

“I’ll have to remember that.” He takes my trash and deposits it in the nearest bin. Is this what a real relationship is like? Talking and spending time with one another? Taking care of each other? I never witnessed much in the way of doting between my mom and dad growing up. Not that Masa and I are dating, but I bet this is what it’s supposed to look like. Whoever gets Masa one day will be a lucky woman.

The entrance to Sensō-ji Temple is Kaminarimon Gate, a giant red and green, single pagoda roofed gateway into the temple grounds. Right in the center of the gate is an enormous paper lantern that has to be at least twenty feet tall. According to the website I looked at earlier, it’s called Thunder Gate, and standing next to it, I’m like a tiny human being under the foot of an all-powerful god. I tip my head back, hold onto the hat, and gaze up at the gold letters on the plaque above me.

Masa elbows me. “It’s been a while since you uploaded a video to YouTube. Take some footage today.”

I reach into my bag for my phone. “I know. I have a post on hidden away gardens and the vocab for that episode is done.”

“When did you do that?”

“With Halley last week. I took video after our run and then wrote out all my cards that evening. Plus, there’s the video we shot in the bakery, and now I guess I’ll do one on temples.”

I stand back and take a few photos of the gate. I turn and snap some photos of the shopping area and one of a little girl holding hands with her mom. The little girl reminds me of me when I was small. I always held my mom’s hand and still did until I was in my teens.

Masa takes my phone and points it at me.

“Don’t,” I say, covering up my face. “I’m sure I look terrible after that panic attack.”

“You look fine.” He waves me on, so I don’t address the camera, and I walk into the outer temple grounds. I take care to walk slowly, examine all the buildings with their traditional Japanese offerings, and enjoy the sun on my shoulders. It’s hot, but I like summer better than winter. At the end of the entranceway to the temple stands Hōzōmon Gate, a larger version of the gate I just passed through, double red and green pagoda roofs with another giant paper lantern inside. I stand next to it and Masa snaps a photo and smiles. He rakes his hand through his damp hair and it becomes delightfully messy, a better version of his crazy bedhead I’ve seen the few times I’ve crashed at his place.

“Together,” he says, standing beside me and holding the phone at arm’s length. This time I look directly into the camera instead of at him, unlike I did the last time we took a photo of us together, but I wrap my arm around him so we’re close. I’ve had more physical contact with Masa today than I have in two whole years.

Click.

“Are you going to compose a haiku in honor of this selfie as well?” I tease, poking him in the side.

“Of course.” He pauses, his thumbs over the keyboard on the phone. He types and hands the phone back to me.

—-

“A summer with you

Sun, heat, sweat, travel, and sights —

Love in days and nights.”

—-

I swallow, my mouth dry. In the photo, I’m looking at the camera but Masa is looking at me, the opposite of our last photo together. Love in days and nights. “Quiet men say things with gestures,” my grandma said.

“A summer with you… A summer haiku.” I smile and turn off my phone, wondering where he posted the image besides Instagram.

He laughs, tilting his head to look at his shoes. “You could say that.”

We wander through the temple grounds together, taking photos and reading plaques, absorbing the long history of this ancient temple. I stand in the main hall, bring my hands to prayer position, and place my trust in the Bodhisattva Kannon like my mom taught me ages ago when we used to pray together at home, though we normally just prayed to Buddha.

When we leave the main hall, the temple grounds are crawling with tourists and the sun is straight overhead.

“Let’s get lunch and then go to Ueno Park for ice cream,” Masa suggests, pumping his shirt to get some air around him.

“Sure. Let me check my messages.” I pull my phone from the bag, but the screen is blank and the antenna indicates NO DATA. “Oh great. My phone’s been off the network.”

“Mine gets kicked at least once a day. Power it off and on.”

“I never turn my phone off,” I say, following his instructions. But as soon as my phone comes back to life, I find missing notifications, messages, and a missed call from my grandpa, so I call him back.

“Hi, Grandpa. Is everything okay?”

“Isa-chan, your mother is in a fit at the hospital. She’s calling all the doctors and nurses and telling them you’ve been kidnapped.”

I sigh again and walk towards Masa so he can hear my end of the conversation.

“Did you tell her I’m fine and I’m not coming in till I get paid?”

“Yes, but she didn’t believe me. Can you call her?”

“I can but I don’t want to. She’ll only guilt me into coming back.”

“Probably. All the vendors have called her today, wondering where you are.”

I bite my lip and stare down at my feet for a moment. What should I do? Masa mimes texting with an invisible phone.

“I’ll text her and let her know I’m fine. Okay?”

“That should be good enough. Thank you, Isa-chan.”

“How’s the ryokan?” I wince as I ask. I shouldn’t ask.

“Everything here is fine. Don’t worry about it until your mom comes to her senses. Where are you today?”

“Masa took me to Asakusa. We’re sightseeing.”

“That’s good. You should get out and see the city more often.” I can feel his smile through the phone.

“I will. I’ll call you later. Bye, Grandpa.”

I wait for him to hang up first, go to my messages, find my last conversation with Mom, and start typing.

“I’m fine, but I’m not coming in to work until you pay me a wage. I won’t work for free. I’m spending the day downtown, and I won’t be answering my phone or messages.” Send, turn off phone, and put it away.

“Come on. You can tell me all about it at lunch,” Masa says, taking my hand again. I smile and allow myself to be pulled along for the ride.