Kyou
A newcomer to the bar might have noticed the preponderance of bejewelled women laughing indulgently at much older men, who drank in the near-dark between screens obscuring waiter from patron and table from table. The entrance to the izakaya was indicated only by a small symbol and an arrow painted on the sidewalk; one would miss it if they weren’t looking. It had an associated carpark complete with a soft-gloved valet. If any of this impressed or scandalised Natsuko, she was hiding it well.
For the past forty-five minutes, over a parade of small dishes and strong cocktails, Natsuko had been recounting the experience of being the baby sister of a straight-A brother. He was a geek. He was a dork. Attending school in his wake was the worst, like being a seedling growing in the shade. He was a nerd. He was crap at messaging back. When he’d been in high school and she in junior high, he had left their family home with his uncle, who worked as a translator. She’d seen off the taxi in a flood of tears, but brother hadn’t even looked out the back window. As a translator’s assistant, he had met the only girl he’d ever loved. He had married her. They had a beautiful apartment. Natsuko, by contrast, was a perpetual student. She still lived at home. She fell in love no less than ten times a day. She loved people and their pets; she loved places and snacks, and movies that she didn’t understand until days afterward.
Kyou, opposite, was wearing Kai’s standard mid-week evening ensemble: a slim suit in charcoal with embossed buttons at the cuffs. She was idly pressing and indenting the design of one such button into her thumb-pad as she sipped and listened. Listened and sipped.
She couldn’t help feeling a growing fondness for this client. There was nothing calculating or secretive about Natsuko; she didn’t fear being seen exactly as she was. It was disarming, refreshing. Kyou felt a little ashamed when she recalled her initial impression. Bimbo, she’d thought. A fool and her money, soon to be parted.
“Anyhow, it’s because of this tutor. He’ll be at the show tonight,” Natsuko paused, pouting, wedging her face into a V made by her palms.
“An art tutor?”
“Maiku Angel.” Natsuko sighed. “He’s, like, such a jerk. But into the whole, y’know, muse thing. Makes you feel like the centre of attention. For a while. Married. Jerk.”
“So you…mused him for a while?”
Natsuko let out something like a shriek, followed by a giggle, followed by a weary “Yeah.”
“Hm. No problem.” Kyou shrugged in true Kai-style. “We’ll walk in together. You let me know if you see him.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re the boss.”
Following one final cocktail, they left the bar. Natsuko had determined it best to approach the evening’s event arm-in-arm. Kyou caught their combined reflection in a passing window. Her client was dressed in the style of a gothic ballerina: mourner’s lace over a tutu, knee-socks, and platform shoes. Ridiculous. Perfect. The Harajuku-style was beautifully out of place in the business district.
Before them, a path of crushed quartz led to great revolving doors. Over six metres of brass and glass, swallowing new attendees with each quarter-turn. Kyou and Natsuko joined the crowd who, after a pause in the dazzling light, flowed over a marble floor to a reception desk serving as a bar. Behind it, six girls in red aprons and red surgical masks poured wine. Highly efficient and totally mouth-less, they bobbed down to open cases and popped back up to present filled glasses. Discharged from the wings of the same bar, girls in white aprons circulated with trays of canapés. They wore full-face masks of matte white, sculpted expressions set in a cheek-achingly wide grin. Frightening and silly, the women seemed to be everywhere, but nowhere for long. The final act, stationed around the gallery in black aprons and ghastly, unsmiling masks of black glass, were girls holding gallery maps.
“Kai! Selfie!” Natsuko cried, ushering both Kyou and a weird-faced attendant into position.
Natsuko beamed, the attendant made a kind of grimace, and Kyou flashed a smile she hoped belied her unease. She was generally not a fan of performance art, and this masquerade shit was no exception.
Natsuko had ‘tipped’ generously, and in advance, for an enjoyable evening. This plan that Yasu had cooked up felt almost too easy. How stupidly simple was it to undercut prices? It wasn’t that Kyou had never imagined skimming, just that she had always feared the fallout. Now that she was exhausted, she was fearless. The managers could go to hell and Club Ganymede could burn—and all the posters of Kai along with them.
“Like, what were we drinking at that last place?” Natsuko cocked her head toward the open bar and its rows of wine glasses.
“18-year-old whiskey,” Kyou answered. “Let me see what’s on offer.”
Temporarily freed, Kyou took in the atrium. There was certainly money in attendance. Impressive for a student show. Perhaps that’s how it went with an impressively ranked university. Further off, before a large window, she noticed Ana Kutsuki. Beside her was a man—the husband, presumably. They made an elegant pair: him tall, dark-suited and scholarly-looking; she in an award-winner’s gown, auburn hair piled atop her head, cradling a bouquet of lilies. The flowers were plainly expensive, a work of art in themselves—they seemed too showy for the husband, but perhaps not. The couple were looking out over the heads of their fellow attendees. Mr. Kutsuki was scanning faces. Mrs. Kutsuki, had the gaze of a sailor seeking out a long-forgotten shore.
Kyou re-joined Natsuko with two glasses of an uninspiring house red. They followed the flow of visitors to the first sculptural work. It featured a field of aluminium sunflowers, six feet high and six feet deep, each flower head moving mechanically. It was simultaneously mesmerising and nauseating. Natsuko—who was unperturbed by her complete lack of formal art education—took mediocre pictures with her phone. Kyou—who had spent her teens working as a guide for Bijushima’s art sites—retook the photos from a higher angle.
Next was an installation piece entitled ‘Nuke 2.0.’ Multiple screens displayed footage associated with the power plant disasters. The white water cascaded and swallowed up shrubs, cars, and houses, like milk over cereal. Over speakers came snippets of recorded interviews with survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“...so white I thought the sun had hit the earth. Then it was black as hell…” croaked a man’s voice.
“...found her shadow but not her body. Afterwards we didn’t know where to go to remember…”
“...lost his mind…”
“Earth to Kai…!” Natsuko waved a hand. “This one’s bumming me out. I bet they don’t even know these people.”
“Ha. Yeah,” Kyou answered with a half-smile. She didn’t say: ‘I know one of these people.’ She didn’t ask: ‘Don’t you fear becoming one of these people? Becoming old? Forgotten?’
Instead, she poked a fingertip to Natsuko’s nose, eliciting a delighted ‘Eep,’ and asked, “You check out the cupcake guy?” And on they strolled at a respectful pace to hem and haw politely over a series of larger-than-life, hyper-realistic portraits of nudes sporting baked goods instead of heads. Sure, if you had enough cash, why not enjoy an oil painting of a sexy donut dude?
“This one’s my favourite,” Natsuko announced, stopping before a heroic depiction of a lean man standing contrapposto with a decidedly attractive pastry for a face. “It would be obvious to use a croissant to hide his—” she cut herself off with a giggle. “Ah, Kai. It’s so much easier not having to worry about that, you know?”
“What’s that?”
“Men get so jealous. They think with their—”
“Croissants?”
Natsuko shriek-laughed again. “Those. They’re so precious about those.”
She was slurring slightly.
“Like, I think I get it,” Natsuko continued, “why all those people—women—come to your club. It’s a break from the drama, isn’t it? A nice night out, no agendas, no pregnancy. I mean, not that—or do you…?”
“Me? I’ve not caused a single pregnancy,” Kyou answered.
“No! I mean, like, do you ever get asked to, like…?”
Kyou simply raised her eyebrows in an impression of shock.
“Kai!” Natsuko grabbed her arm, nearly spilling wine.
“Anything I say would be purely hypothetical. There are club policies. There are laws.”
“Okay?”
“Hypothetically, if we’re talking about a working arrangement, it isn’t something I would undress for. Don’t really need to. Hypothetically, it would be something I would consider as part of a role. A Job. I need to keep a part of myself for myself.”
“Untouched?”
Kyou let out a snort of laughter. The cocktails had been strong. “So to speak.”
“So no one has ever…?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Why was she saying any of this?
“Then you’ve had boyfriends?” Natsuko asked. “Or girlfriends?”
“A few, yes. Women. But only terrible, beautiful, miserable women. Takes years to recover.”
Natsuko, silent for once, had settled on a soft, nearly-sober smile. “I hope you do.”
They continued to pass through halls of exhibits, most of them impressive in scale and cost. One student had assembled a small aircraft; that seemed a little on the nose. At some point, Natsuko unpeeled herself from Kyou’s arm in search of the restroom and Kyou found herself at the front of the line for entry into the display by none other than Antoinette Kutsuki, Master’s Student.
The title stopped her dead.
There, stamped on the wall in undeniable vinyl lettering, was “The Prince Who Would Not Be King.” Below was a summarised transcription of the story she had relayed on the beach.
She felt mildly dizzy.
“One person?” enquired a black-masked usher.
“Seems so,” Kyou answered.
“Please take your time.” A door was opened. When it closed, all of the noise was left behind.
Kyou stepped alone into a stretching, twisting corridor. The walls were curved, mirrored, and overlaid in vines of blue light that ran its length for as far as could be seen. She noticed the sound then: a sort of deep humming, like a bow being drawn over cello strings. Very strange. Wherever the speakers were, they were well hidden. Occasionally, there came the knock of a wind-chime or temple bell.
Kyou walked slowly, her footfalls sounding like a rude accompaniment. Following the light ropes, haunted at each turn by the mournful soundscape, she finally found the end. Ahead, the light converged to a far-off point and became an impossibly-bright white. She winced. The source, however, was not accessible. Through some trick of mirror work or glass panes or something, the destination appeared impossibly distant, cut off from the walkable plane. The hum died down. In the stillness, she heard her breath again. She felt colder, smaller.
“Do you like it?” Antoinette Kutsuki’s voice echoed down the chamber. The click of her heels became more pronounced until she appeared, cast in blue. She stopped several metres short of Kyou, clasping her empty hands. She didn’t have her bouquet.
“Huh. The light at the end of the tunnel?” Kyou said. “Quite a show.”
“Hm.” Kutsuki paused. “I thought my sister-in-law would be here.”
“No you didn’t.” Kyou stepped closer.
“No I didn’t,” came the confirmation. “I wanted to know what you thought.”
“Well, it’s interesting. Your colleagues have presented on climate change, artificial intelligence, nuclear threats, neo-feminism...whereas you,” Kyou cocked her head, “built a monument to grief.”
Mrs. Kutsuki made a sound like a sigh, but she seemed almost amused. “Well, aren’t all monuments made to grief?”
“I don’t know.” Kyou pocketed her hands. “I’m sure there are plenty made for victories or saints.”
“Victories and saints,” Mrs. Kutsuki echoed, stepping closer, “are born of loss.”
“Very clever.”
“So you don’t like it?”
“If I were a rich woman—” Kyou started.
“Woman?” Ana interjected.
“If I were,” Kyou continued, “with my big house and endless funds, I would probably choose to purchase every other piece but yours.” Kyou walked past Ana, back towards the entry point. “But,” she shrugged, “as I am poor, I expect your piece will be the only one that stays with me.”
Antoinette laughed. “What a beautiful insult!”
“You used my story as your statement.” Kyou said.
“Does that offend you?”
“It’s a lie. It’s nothing to do with you. Or your work.”
“To be fair, relevance is in the eye of—“
“How about this one? There once was an emperor who wanted to save his daughter from sadness…”
“Is this the true story?”
“...for the Crown Princess was all alone,” Kyou continued. “She had lost her mother. She sought solace in painted colour. She spent hours in a locked chamber, at her desk. It was her father’s only clue.”
“I know you know who I am, but—“Ana began.
“And so he built a monument. And not just any monument. He took an entire island—a quiet little fishing village. He thought no one was watching. He sent in ships, and architects, and builders and their machines. They overran the island like ants on mochi. And then, in the end, the island was a gallery. A Monument.”
Kyou finished and watched the expression of the woman across from her as concern turned to fear, then to realisation.
“Bijushima.” Ana breathed. “You’re talking about Bijushima.”
“It was good to see you again, Mrs. Kutsuki.”
“Is it—Kyou?”
Kyou stopped walking. She looked down at her suit—Kai’s suit—and cursed. She cursed her need to challenge, her stupid arrangement with Natsuko, and her all-around crap luck.
“That’s right, isn’t it? From Bijushima?” Mrs. Kutsuki continued, “Amazing! When I tell—”
“Please don’t.”
“No?”
“I don’t want to have it all joined up. I need to keep things separate. I’ll—I don’t know—stay away from your sister, if that’s—”
“No. Well, I mean, that’s hardly for me to dictate. Stay or go. Just don’t be an asshole.”
“No promises.”
“I can’t believe this.” Ana beamed.
“I’m surprised you remember.”
“Of course. Of course I do. It’s you underneath those lenses and dye and—will you…?”
Whatever she was about to ask, she seemed to rethink it, biting down on her lip. Kyou waited.
“Would you come back here again?” Ana said, “Would you let me take your picture here, in this space?”
Kyou was silent a moment longer, then asked “Is this for art?”
“Yes.”
“Am I the art?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Tomorrow then. When it’s quiet.”