Summer Haikus – Chapter 42

The. Longest. Hours. Of. My. Life.

Halley runs a clean marathon, and I’m sure she’ll finish at less than two hours thirty minutes, but these are the longest two hours of my life, waiting for both her and Masa. I sit in my seat, his empty space next to me, and wonder if he’s going to make it.

Why does this feel like a make-it-or-break-it moment for our relationship? Like everything hinges on him coming here for the big day?

Checking the big screens at the stadium and chatting with Halley’s parents down the row from me, we keep track of Halley’s progress on the racecourse. She’s at the head of the pack, keeping pace with the predicted leaders. When the sun starts baking everyone in the stadium, I apply sunscreen, drink water, and leave my spot to get a snack, even though I’m so nervous I can’t get anything down my throat.

Where is Masa? I hope he’s okay. There were no new messages from him since yesterday afternoon. What if he got hurt with all the moving? Threw out his back or got heat poisoning?

A thick coat of dread covers me. What if he couldn’t convince his dad and has to go back home now? And he’s saving me from hurt by not texting me?

Oh god. I never considered that, and now it’s all I can think of. But his mom was on our side!

My eyes brim with tears as people around me start to murmur.

“They’re in the last ten kilometers,” the woman in front of me says, pointing to the map on her phone.

A tear rolls down my cheek and mixes with the sweat pouring off of me as I take my phone out of my back pocket. I swipe the phone back on and notice I’ve been kicked from the local network, just like during my day trip to Asakusa. Ugh. I knew this would happen again. Literally every person here has their phone out. I power it off and turn it back on, waiting for the home screen to show back up.

Once it’s back, my phone vibrates ceaselessly in my hand, notifications coming in from this morning on Instagram and YouTube, and as they scroll down the screen, my eye catches green icons of missed messages.

I glance around, my hand shaking, and I click on the Messages app.

“The train was packed with people this morning. Heading to see you!”

“Fuck. Why are the streets such a mess?”

“I’m stupid. Of course they’re a mess.”

“I hope you’re getting these messages. I’m sure you’d be worried otherwise. Why aren’t you texting me back?”

“I’m walking. I’ll be there soon.”

Last message sent over an hour ago.

I stand up, shield my eyes from the sun under the brim of my hat, and peer up the stairs, some of my panic abating. He’s on his way, but where is he?

“Hey! Aren’t you the girl with the Japanese YouTube channel?” Behind me, two teens are staring right at me. “Isa, right? We just watched your video on Sensō-ji before we came here today! This is so cool!”

Oh my god, in a crowd of thousands, how does this even happen? But considering that video’s view numbers are now in the 600,000 range, I shouldn’t be that surprised.

“Hi,” I say, nodding my head politely. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Wow. Can we take a photo?”

“Um, sure.” I tip back my hat and turn so they can squat on either side of me, peace signs at the ready, and I snap a photo for them with one of their phones.

“Good luck to Halley,” they say, bowing.

“God, that’s weird,” I mumble, turning back towards the stairs.

My eyes stop on Masa, standing at the end of the row, smiling at me.

My emotions war in my chest, happy, lovesick, and sad all duking it out to become the winner. He edges past everyone and slides down the row to me. I tap my foot and squint into the hazy sunshine at him.

“Where have you been?” I cry, smacking him on the shoulder. “You scared me. I didn’t think you were going to make it.” I chew on my lip, hoping this means good things are coming our way.

“Stop that,” Masa says, flashing his winning smile. “I swear one of these days you’re gonna bite a hole in your lip.” He runs the pad of his thumb across my bottom lip before tugging my hat down. “I’m sorry I didn’t text you last night. I set my phone down at some point, and it got mixed in with my grandparents’ things. Took me forever to find it.”

“And my phone fell off the network this morning. I thought maybe you were on your way back to the States.”

A lonely tear runs down my face and Masa immediately changes, becoming concerned when he sees how upset I am. He wipes the tears from my face and pulls my hat down a little farther.

“Don’t be sad. Today is a day to be happy, and I have just the thing to make that happen.” He pulls a piece of folded paper from his pocket, tucked into the shape of a triangle. I laugh at it because I swear I used to do that as a kid.

“Here,” he says, putting it in my palm. I unfold it, bit by bit, and smooth it out. The crowd grows restless around us as we both sit down, and someone in the distance shouts, “Last three kilometers!”

“Masa,

I have finally heard back from the admissions office at the Tokyo University of Arts, and I have been assured that they are looking forward to your admissions packet for consideration during the October window. They have my letter of recommendation for you, and I have stressed that you are of considerable talent and a hardworking student. I hope this will be enough to get you in with little difficulty. Please let me know when Miss Brown is ready to consider a university for herself, and I will facilitate her admission as well.

I must say I’m sad you both will not be with me next year, but I know the opportunity to study in Japan and be with family and loved ones does not come around often. If you’re ever back in East Lansing, I would love to have dinner with you and catch up. Enjoy your time in Japan and keep us all in the loop about your academic career.

Best, Professor Fukuda.”

“Holy shit,” I whisper, covering my mouth with my hand. “Masa?”

“This came yesterday.” He smiles and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I showed it to my dad, and he finally gave in. I’m not leaving,” he says, shaking his head as my heart welds itself together, better than before it was cracked a week ago. “Well, I am. You’re going to go with Halley to Kyoto for two weeks, and I’m going home to pack up things and have them shipped here. I got you the time off from your grandparents. I called them yesterday. I figured you could use it.”

My breathing stops, tears flooding my eyes. I look back at the letter and drops fall in little circles on the paper.

“Don’t cry, Isa. I hate that.”

I burst into a laugh and throw my arms around his neck, pressing my wet lips to his cheek. His face colors, but he clutches me back.

“I owe this to you,” he whispers, squeezing me. “My dad’s been asking me questions constantly since you told him about the government program and the resurgence of traditional arts and crafts. I even saw him looking things up on his laptop. I think he always believed that our family would have a future in being modern and on the cutting edge. He never expected me to find a job or career in something so traditional.” He pulls back and squeezes my shoulders. “But he never would have listened until you said those things at dinner.”

I press my forehead to his. “I did that for you, for us. I’m so glad it worked.”

“It did.” He kisses my forehead and lets go.

“I can’t believe you did this. You’re really going to go for it? Geidai, right?”

“Yeah, Geidai, University of Arts. My dad is skeptical, but my mom is so happy. I promised them that if I stayed here to go to school and they gave me the apartment, I would go see my grandparents once a month and help take care of them.” He shrugs his shoulders. “It seemed an easy price to pay so I could be here with you.”

“Wow. I’ve been…” I sigh and more tears fall. “I’ve been preparing my heart the last couple of weeks for you to leave. I never expected this.” I press the letter to my chest and remember Professor Fukuda saying, “If you want to talk it over, you can call me or email me. Whichever works for you. I’ll be glad to help you in any way I can.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think to contact Fukuda-san myself!” I laugh again and wipe the tears from my face. “I can be so stupid sometimes.”

“Stop. You were blindsided by a million different things. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks doing all this…” He waves at the letter. “And now I know what to do so I can help you. When I get back from the States and you get back from Kyoto, I’ll help you find a school, get your transcripts, and get in. We’ll both go to school, work at the ryokan, and be together. It’ll be like MSU but here instead.”

I stare down at the letter, amazed by the turn of events.

“Isa, you will hire me at the ryokan, right? The one thing I am not getting is any spending money.” He laughs nervously. “I get a roof over my head and tuition, but I’m on my own for food and everything else.”

I grasp the front of his shirt, smile into his warm, sweet face, and kiss him. His lips against mine tighten in a smile, and we both laugh before inhaling and softening onto one another.

I break off with a sigh. “Of course. I can’t have a destitute boyfriend.”

We pull away from each other as the crowd begins to shout, cries and cheers echoing up the stadium towards us.

“The marathon is almost over! I missed so much.” He smiles but touches my exposed skin and frowns at how red I am. “Did you wear enough sunscreen? It’s hot today.” I nod. This is more from the embarrassment of kissing him in public than the sun.

It’s one of the blistering hot and humid days I was worried about when Halley and I were training a few weeks ago. When Tokyo was chosen for the Olympics and the dates were set, the summers were hot and humid, sure, but not as extreme as they are now. Over the past ten years, summers in Japan have steadily climbed the charts, hotter and more uncomfortable than ever before. I’m really thankful my grandparents’ house and the ryokan have central air.

“I’m wearing SPF 70, and I brought more if you want some.”

“I’m fine.” He stands on his tip-toes and peers down the stadium towards the entrance. The athletes will enter and do three-quarters of the track to the finish line. I take my phone from my pocket, and I’m glad I’m getting service again.

“They’re about three blocks away.” I clutch Masa’s arm and show him. “Look, Halley is in the top five! Right at the front.” Her name is mentioned in the lead pack of runners. She’s so close, and she can usually pull out a sprint in the last meters of the race. Please, please, please let her make it.

I scroll through more news of the race. “Oh no. So many runners have dropped out. Dehydration and heat stroke.” I frown, looking at the long list. This is such a tough race, especially with the media attention, the race conditions, and the route the committee chose through Tokyo. They certainly didn’t want to make it easy on the runners. I’m proud of myself for mapping out so many local runs for Halley. Many of them mimicked this route, and she had an advantage over many other runners because of my work.

“Do you have a sign?”

“Of course I do.” I pull a folded up cardboard square from my bag. I worked for three days on it as silly as that is, but I wanted something small, so I designed the whole poster, cut it up, and then taped it together with clear tape so I could fold it along the seams.

“This is brilliant,” Masa says, as I unfold the sign.

“Yeah, well, I had a lot of time on my hands since my boyfriend was gone these past few weeks.”

“I promise to make it up to you.” He locks eyes with mine and cocks a sure grin.

“There better be sex involved.” My mind flashes back to the dream this morning.

He winks at me, and my face blushes a few degrees hotter.

I lift my sign up as the athletes enter the stadium. In big, pink and black bubble letters, I wrote GO HALLEY GO! Nothing too annoying or inspirational. I’ve been on the receiving end of signs for many races, and the best are the ones that urge me on, or the ones with cursing on them. But since people actually know who I am now, I didn’t think I could get away with that.

Even from a dozen rows up, I can see Halley, and the big screens in the stadium capture her determined face on camera. I hold the sign and start screaming, urging her legs faster. The leaders are women in several nations’ colors, but Halley is right there with them. She’s… four people back.

“Come on, Halley! Go, Halley, go!”

I glance at the giant screen and a tired smile peeks out as she picks up her pace. I calculate her steps in my head against the other leaders and… shit. It’s just not going to be enough. She’s so close but it’s not going to be enough.

The crowd erupts in cheers, flags waving in every direction. I look up at the huge television screens over the finish line to see a Kenyan woman cross the finish line first at 2:22:34, a new Olympic record. Behind her, a Japanese woman crosses the line, Japanese fans going completely wild in the audience. People are jumping around me, pushing me around. Masa’s arms grasp my waist and pull me to him before I’m pushed into the next row.

“What happened? What happened?”

Masa holds me to his chest with one arm and he steps onto his seat to get a better view of the screens over the finish line.

“Oh no!” he cries down to me. “A Russian woman took the bronze, and Halley came in fourth.”

She was so close! But with the happy, crying, and hysterical Japanese people around me, I can’t help but smile and cheer with them. It’s been a long time, twenty years, since a Japanese woman won the marathon, and the news had been hopeful lately with everyone cheering this new contender on.

Masa jumps down next to me and hugs me, our sweaty and gross bodies jumping around with everyone else. Nothing is better than this moment.

He peels back from me and smiles. “Should we go find her?”

We weave through what feels like billions of people, our hands linked so we don’t get separated, towards the finish line, and after thirty minutes of searching, we finally find Halley outside the gates, wrapped in an American flag, and standing with her family and a bunch of reporters. She finishes up a statement, sees me, and launches herself straight at me. I hug her tight around her shoulders as they shake. Is she crying? Halley’s usually too strong to cry, just like me.

She pulls away and laughter is all I hear. “Can you believe that?” she yells before screaming “Wooooo!” at the top of her lungs, lifting the flag into the air behind her. “Fourth fucking place! That was awesome!”

“Oh thank god. I was worried you’d be pissed.” I laugh and clap my hands as people snap photos around us.

“No! It was so great. Yeah, I was close to the bronze, but whatever. I’ll clinch it next time.”

A reporter jerks into our circle, his microphone out. “Halley, you’re going to run again in the next Olympics?”

“Definitely! I’m going for it. I’m only twenty. I have plenty of years ahead of me for this.”

As I watch her smile and clutch the flag around her shoulders, I remember I’m only twenty as well. My whole life is ahead of me. Halley could win multiple more Olympics, and I could have an awesome career and family, hopefully with Masa. I could take time off to run with Halley around the world. There’s so much more out there for me.

I hold Masa’s hand in both of mine and let myself believe all of this is really true.

He’s staying, and we’re going to make this work together. School, ryokan, life, and love, all waiting to be entered into my planner. My heart leaps for joy as Halley jumps into the air and pumps her fist, and Masa squeezes me to his side, his lips at my ear.

—-

“Mornings, days, and nights

All time spent in her orbit — 

Summer and always.”