Chapter 2

Friday, December 20

11:00 A.M.

Yumi

Something old: the priceless three-layered wedding kimono that had been worn by six generations of Mitsuyama brides.

Something new: the golden zori sandals that had been custom-made for Yumi Hata’s size 8 feet.

Something borrowed: the elaborate Edo-style wig topped with a white silk hood to cover the horns Japanese woman supposedly grew the moment they became wives.

Something blue . . . Yumi winced as she stepped up to ring the doorbell at the Mitsuyama family compound in Hiroo. Something black and blue was more like it. She’d ignored the empty seats on the train all the way across town this morning because it hurt too much to sit down.

Why, oh why, had she let herself be talked into going to the Mad Hatter last night? Even though Coco had phrased it tragically as, “your last chance to have fun before your partying days are O-V-E-R,” she should have known that her best friend wouldn’t let her go home before she’d abandoned all her best intentions.

When Yumi finally dragged Coco out of the Hatter at 1:00 A.M.—both of them on the wrong side of too many White Rabbits—they’d been lured into Yoyogi Park by the nearly full moon and the sound of an all-night Brazilian dance party. But after they’d sneaked past the gate, they stopped in their tracks before they got to the revelers, transfixed by the sight of lights bobbing midair between two distant trees. Drawing closer, they discovered that in fact it was two young men in Patagonia parkas, festooned with glow-rings, jumping and pirouetting on a strap stretched taut about a meter off the ground between two trees. “Come try it,” called the slackliner, whose beautiful smile gleamed in the bright light of the full moon, taking a swig of Asahi Super Dry as he strolled along the line.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Coco’s eight-shot camera burst caught Yumi’s expression mid-jump as it morphed from glee to horror. Her foot had strummed the line like a giant guitar string before she had landed bottom first on a knobby tree root. Coco had helped her hobble back to the Hatter, where the bartender had emptied his freezer to ice the offended region, but sitting down was not something Yumi wanted to do anytime soon.

She hoped Mrs. Mitsuyama wouldn’t insist on serving her tea this morning in the tatami-floored room with the thin floor cushions. Yumi wasn’t sure she could do it without wincing, and she couldn’t let Ichiro’s family guess she’d been out until all hours doing things that would be considered most unseemly for the future wife of their eldest son.

Yumi frowned at the doorbell and rang it again. Where was Mrs. Mitsuyama? Hadn’t Ichiro told his mother Yumi would be stopping by this morning to pick up his hanko stamp so she could register their marriage at the Minato-ku Ward Office?

She called her fiancé. No answer. Scrolling to the number below it labeled “Ichiro’s mother,” she hesitated, gathering her courage.

He had asked her to marry him without consulting his parents. Even though they’d approved Ichiro’s suggestion that she be added to the list of potential Mrs. Mitsuyamas and had been perfectly cordial at the matchmaking lunch that kicked off the o-miai process, they hadn’t been happy when he chose her over the fifty-three more socially suitable candidates.

Since then, Mrs. Mitsuyama had been throwing up roadblocks at every stage of the wedding planning, and Yumi wouldn’t have been at all surprised to discover that Ichiro had told her about the hanko, but she’d chosen to not be home, hoping that a miracle would permanently keep Yumi from checking this morning’s chore off her to-do list. Tomorrow’s wedding ceremony at the Tabata Shrine and the lavish reception planned at the Imperial Hotel afterward were really just window dressing—even without Ichiro’s presence, they’d legally be married the minute their registered hankos were wetted with vermilion ink and stamped on the Ward Office documents this morning.

The gate behind her squeaked. She turned to see the Mitsuyamas’ driver holding it open for Ichiro’s mother, who was toting two bags of groceries from Meidi-ya, the ultra-premium grocery store where produce bore price tags suggesting it had been hand tended by members of the Imperial family.

“Yumi-san?” Ichiro’s mother said, the gate squeaking again as it closed behind her.

“Let me help you with those,” Yumi offered, meeting her halfway and taking the grocery bags.

“What are you doing all the way over here in Hiroo?” Mrs. Mitsuyama asked, fishing in her purse for her house keys.

“Didn’t Ichiro tell you? I’m here to pick up his hanko so I can register our marriage at the Ward Office.”

Mrs. Mitsuyama looked at her, surprised. “You’re doing that this morning? Without him?”

“He said he had to work.”

Displeasure flickered across her future mother-in-law’s face before she fitted the key in the lock and pushed open the front door. Did she think Yumi was sneaking off to marry him behind his back? But all she said was, “Please come in.”

Yumi exchanged her shoes for slippers and followed her down the hall with the groceries, setting them on the kitchen counter.

“Let me put these things away and we can have some tea before we figure out where Ichiro left his hanko,” Mrs. Mitsuyama suggested.

She bustled around stowing her purchases, then lifted an Imari teapot from a shelf above the stove. After tossing in two scoops of loose tea, she filled it from the hot-water pot, added two cups, and arranged everything on a black lacquer tray.

“Shall we drink it in the tea room?” she asked.

Yumi managed not to groan as she lowered her bruised bottom onto the thin cushion that was the most luxurious seating tea ceremony participants were allowed. Mrs. Mitsuyama poured. They drank a few sips together and commented upon the final preparations for tomorrow’s ceremony, then Ichiro’s mother excused herself, asking Yumi to wait while she checked something.

Ignoring the scroll in the tokonoma alcove that was brushed with calligraphy so artful she couldn’t read it, Yumi strained her ears to overhear the phone call her future mother-in-law was making in the next room.

“Moshi-moshi, this is Michiko Mitsuyama. I’m sorry to bother you suddenly like this while you’re so busy, but could you tell me if today is a suitable day for my son and his bride to register their marriage? Yes, of course, I’ll hold.” Silence. Then, “Ah. Is that so?” More silence. “No, no, that’s why I called you. It’s better to know. It wouldn’t do at all for them to do something so important on such an unlucky day. Thank you, Lily-san.”

Ichiro’s mother reappeared, apologizing for her absence, and topped up Yumi’s cup.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “But as I suspected, today is butsumetsu, a very unlucky day for doing something as important as registering your marriage. I think you’d better wait until tomorrow, before the wedding.”

“But . . . Head Priest Yano wants me to be there at ten to meet the kimono dresser, and the Ward Office isn’t open before ten. Do you think Ichiro will be able to take care of it?”

“I’ll call him.”

Ichiro didn’t pick up his mother’s call, either.

“Don’t worry,” Yumi said, finishing her tea and shouldering her bag. “He must be in that meeting he told me about. I’ll stop by his office on the way home and catch him when they break for lunch.”

Twenty minutes later, Yumi rang the call button outside Mitsuyama Corporate Headquarters offices in Akasaka. The receptionist buzzed her in.

“Oh, hello again. Forget something?” she asked with a friendly smile. Then she peered at Yumi, confused. “Wait . . . perhaps I’m . . . did you just get your hair cut?”

Now it was Yumi’s turn to be puzzled. “A week ago. Why?”

The receptionist colored. “Oh, I’m so sorry. You’re not . . . You’re Mitsuyama-san’s fiancée, aren’t you? Forgive me—there was a woman here earlier who . . .”

And suddenly Yumi knew who Ichiro was having his “important meeting” with. With a small forced laugh she said, “Don’t worry—it happens a lot. There’s a woman who works at . . . wait, you know, the meeting Ichiro had this morning . . . ?”

“The Asia Development Bank?” the receptionist supplied helpfully.

“That’s right,” Yumi said. “The Asia Development Bank.”

Just as she feared. Why hadn’t Ichiro told her his ex-girlfriend was in Tokyo?

She’d met Ami Watanabe just once, but that was all it had taken to discover that Ichiro’s ex looked so much like Yumi, they could be sisters. Ichiro’s parents had forbidden him to marry the business school girlfriend who looked Japanese but had been born and raised in America and couldn’t speak Japanese well enough to order sushi, let alone move in the rarefied heights of Tokyo society that being a Mitsuyama wife required.

Ichiro had insisted he’d accepted their decision and had pursued Yumi as if he’d met her at a party instead of across the table at the o-miai luncheon. He’d convinced her that she was the one he’d set his heart on marrying.

But a month ago, Yumi had spotted him with Ami at a café on Omotesando Boulevard. When they met later at the wedding planner’s office, he’d avoided mentioning who he’d spent the afternoon with, even though she’d asked who had helped him pick out the stylish new shirts in the fistful of shopping bags he’d been carrying. She told him she’d seen him with Ami, and he’d become angry, demanding to know what she was accusing him of. He hoped she wasn’t the kind of pathetic, insecure woman who got jealous every time he had coffee with an old friend.

Since then, she’d been watching for signs he was cheating on her, that he was having second thoughts about getting married. But in the month since she’d spotted them together . . . nothing.

And now it was too late. Even if her suspicions were confirmed before their hankos were stamped on the registration form tomorrow, it would be impossible to stop this wedding without causing a train wreck that would leave her father’s career and her family’s social position in ruins.