Page 92 of Crossed By the Stars
“You dishonored me and my family by coming today. You’ve dishonored your own family for too long. You’ve had more lives than you deserved, Mori-san,” she said with more twisted sarcasm on the honorific than ever before. “And now, it is time for you to do your duty.”
“And what duty is that?” I demanded, chin raised, even though I already knew.
“To die at your own hand in repentance for your sins.”
“I’m not a samurai or his wife. I have no intention of committingseppukuorjigaior any other form of killing, ritualized or otherwise,” I told them.
Akari pulled a knife from her kimono, one so similar to thekaikenin the initial note threatening revenge that it was obvious it had been the model for the drawing. Akari was behind the threats. Akari and Isamu.
“If you do not do it on your own, we will do it for you,” Akari all but snarled. “It is the only thing that your coming today has been good for. We didn’t have to seek you out.” She turned with a shy smile at Isamu. “Although Yano-san is quite adept at finding you.”
I ignored her, trying to appeal to my cousin, trying to buy time I desperately needed. “I understand why she feels this way. She loved her brother. But you? Why are you doing this? My father has taken you in and made you a part of his world. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“A world he has no idea how to rule any longer. He refuses to see the new ways, to keep pace with the Russians or the Yakuza. Technology is the future, not guns and drugs that are being legalized right and left.”
“Oyabundishonors his people as much as you!” Akari added on fiercely. “His affair with my mother is only one of the many ways.”
I looked from Isamu to Akari. I was confident that he knew about her father’s illness.
“You haven’t told her the truth,” I said, eyeing him, hoping that I could keep them talking, that I could cause them to argue long enough for me to escape the pagoda. If the sides of it were the traditional cloth or paper, I’d be able to push through them. My pulse pounded, my muscles tightening as I tried to ready myself to run.
Isamu’s eyes narrowed at me, and Akari turned to him with concern on her face. “The truth? She cannot mean that nonsense of my father being ill?”
Isamu raised his gun at me, pulling from his pocket a silencer and screwing it on. I couldn’t even count on the sound of a gunshot drawing anyone from the house.
“Stop talking, Jada-chan,” Isamu said darkly. “Take thekaiken,or Akari will slit your throat for you.”
“Will she? So you can keep your hands clean? What will you tell my father? That you stumbled on us and tried to stop her?”
“No. I love Akari. We will both be distraught at finding you slain by your own hand.”
“Isamu, my father is ill?” She tugged on the lapels of his jacket. “Tell me!”
I eased toward them, and Isamu lowered the gun slightly to wrap a hand around her waist as he tugged her toward him. “I didn’t want you to feel the pain of it, to know that your mother was cheating on him as he was dying.”
She pounded his chest with small fists. “No. No. This cannot be true.”
I could argue again that our parents weren’t having an affair. I thought maybe Isamu had told her this lie in order to increase her agitation and encourage her down this path. As Isamu struggled with Akari, I leaped toward the side nearest the door. The fabric tore with the pressure of my body, but it was slow going. It allowed Isamu to swing his arm with the gun in my direction. I pushed harder on the cloth, heart pounding, thoughts of Dax and the words I hadn’t told him, of the life we’d never have flashing through my head as his finger pulled the trigger. My body fell through the material as the bullet penetrated the cloth where my head had been.
I landed on the ground, tangled amongst rose bushes. Pain ricocheted through my already sore body. Thorns stabbed and slashed at me as I struggled to my feet. Isamu’s face appeared in the ripped fabric with the gun pointed in my direction again. I tore the dress, heels tumbling from my feet as I scrambled to right myself. Just as I’d gotten free, another body collided with mine, pushing me away as Isamu pulled the trigger a second time. I watched in horror as the bullet landed in my father’s chest, blood spurting onto the white shirt below the gold bow tie of his tuxedo. A tie that matched my dress.
He’d saved me… He’d saved me when, all this time, I’d thought he was trying to kill me. Bodies filled the yard, my father’s security as well as the other attendees, but it was Kaida’s pale face that registered, horror and pain crossing it as she watched my father fall to the ground. I reached him before she did, pressing my hands against the wound.
“Otosan,” I cried softly.
His eyes squeezed shut and opened. “Go,” he muttered.
I shook my head. I would not leave him.
I turned back to the pagoda and the gash in the side of it. Isamu’s face was no longer there. Ichika hurled herself toward the building, yanked open the door, and began screaming. I had an idea of what she’d found: her daughter with thekaikenat her throat.
I turned my eyes back toOtosan, pushing with trembling hands on his wound and hoping I could save him the way Violet had once saved me.
Kaida was on the phone, whether she was calling 9-1-1 or aKyodainadoctor I couldn’t tell because my ears were ringing again, the fall from the pagoda having jarred my body and head.
“Jada-tan.” My father’s ragged breath and the tender endearment said with love and no scorn drew my gaze to his face as my eyes filled with tears. How long had it been since he’d even said my name, let alone the sweet nickname? “Go, Jada-tan.”
I shook my head again, the tears trailing down my face and onto my chin.
