曼珠沙華 [Manjushage]

Note: In Japanese language of flowers or hanakotoba, the manjushage, or red spider lily in English, symbolizes abandonment, a lost memory, or the possibility of never meeting again.

He traced the edge of the flat sheet lying on the table with his hand. His pen was uncapped but no blot of ink made it onto the piece of paper before him. He was frozen like a statue, his eyes fixed on his reflection on the window pane. Everything around him was as still as he was and the only sound that made it to his ears was the quiet purring of his cat, Chikin. He had been sitting there for almost an hour, waiting for words to trickle down the black pen—all in vain. The pen was speechless. As speechless as he was when he found her suitcase gone, the closet space he had allotted for her emptied. The only evidence of her ever being there was the smell of her hair, clinging onto the pillow that until then had been hers.

From that day onwards, his apartment had become nothing but a collection of vacant rooms. And like his house, his body too had turned into an empty shell. Through her he realized that while music was the water that quenched the thirst of the soul, only someone could own a heart. And only in her absence did it occur to him that she had already claimed his. Only when she had already fled back home did he feel the void in his chest where his heart was once in.

He came home that night, all worn out from a rehearsal, and found a folded piece of paper on his bedside table. He put his glasses on and unfolded the note. I have to go, she wrote. This is not the right place for me. I have a life back home that I need to return to. You, on the other hand, should find someone more befitting. He stopped reading at that point. He crumpled the note furiously into a ball and dumped it into a dustbin, cursing under his breath as he did. He went back out for some whiskey, only to find himself in the same bar where they had first seen each other. He ended up going back to his apartment and drinking beer alone in the dining room. Chikin leapt to his lap and snuggled close, purring quietly as if telling him that everything was going to be okay. “You’re wrong,” he said as he smoothed Chikin’s fur. “It’s not going to be okay. She’s not coming back.” He followed his words with a swig of beer. If he had not done so, he would have ended up in tears.

The next morning he woke up and found himself still in the dining room. He had fallen asleep while drinking. A can of beer was sitting right beside his stretched hand on the table, where his head lay. Chikin was still sleeping on his lap. He put him down on the floor and cleared the table of the empty beer cans. He then went to the bathroom to shower.

As he peeled his clothes off, memories of her flashed before his eyes. It was like watching a ghost of her travel from his bedroom to the bath, slipping off her nightgown, undoing the ribbon that tied her hair. He watched as the silken clothing fell gracelessly to the floor. She had her back to him, his eyes glued to the bright red blossoms of manjushage tattooed on her spine. He followed her inside and switched the light on. The images disappeared in an instant and he was alone again. As he dipped himself into the tub, he recalled the feel of her skin against his in the warm water. When she was on top of him, she tousled his hair and contorted his face with her hands, amusing herself and laughing at how funny he looked. But when he was above her she would smile coyly and hold him as they kissed. The piercing on his lower lip would graze her skin, and so would hers on his. And as much as she hated him smoking, she never complained about the lingering taste of cigarettes on his tongue.

He looked at the time on his mobile phone. It was almost eight thirty. He had not eaten dinner and was in no mood to. He was hungry, yes, but his hunger was not something physical. No amount of food will ever be enough to satisfy it. He finally gave up. He capped the pen and left his seat. He sat on the edge of his bed and ran his hand along the covers.

“I like this bed sheet,” she once said while looking over the layers of folded sheets in the closet. She pulled it out and unfurled it over the mattress. It seemed to him like she had assumed the title of being his housekeeper. She behaved as though the apartment was hers, and in turn its every wall and corner gave off an ambience that confirmed her ownership of it.

Even the picture she drew for him was gone. It was a sketch of a tiger that she had taped onto the wall by his desk. “That’s how you look like when you’re furious,” she said. It turned out she was drawing it while watching him perfect a riff for a new song he was writing. Now that spot on his wall was blank again and he had no idea where the picture was. He hoped she still had it with her.

It was when he found her missing one morning did he realize that he had grown to like her more than he was supposed to. He had gotten used to seeing her in the kitchen upon waking up, making him breakfast like a good wife. He used to always skip breakfast. Or when he felt like it, he would go out and have breakfast alone somewhere. In the few months they spent together, he had gotten too accustomed to her presence that whenever she was not around, he looked for things that were related to her in one way or another.

“Where have you been!?”

She almost jumped in shock when she heard his voice roar across the living room. He was sitting on a sofa, looking rather vexed. He stood up and walked towards her, while she stood frozen by the doorstep. “I-I went to the store,” she stammered. “I n-needed some e-eggs.”

He started shaking with laughter at the mention of eggs. “If you needed eggs you could have just crept into my bed,” he said, grinning mischievously.

Her cheeks reddened. She looked down and hurried past him into the flat. “If you let me fry your eggs, sure!” she quipped as she rushed into the kitchen.

It was then that he decided that he wanted to be with her for good and told her so as she busied herself with making an omelette for breakfast. “Stay with me,” he said.

She giggled. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“For good.”

She looked at him, stunned.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No,” she said back. “I’m sorry.”

He remembered her first night in the house. He was a fool to take a stranger in, a foreign one even, who could not properly speak his language and whose hobbies included tripping on nonexistent wires and pretending she could walk into walls, only to end up hurting herself. But he had always had a weakness for girls who spoke good English and hers was beyond good. She was a native speaker after all; he was more than impressed.

He first met her at a bar in Roppongi. She was alone, sipping a glass of vodka, her suitcase sitting on the floor by her feet. They were one seat away from each other and he could not help glancing in her direction. Her white skin clashed with her black hair, the dark eye makeup she had on further highlighting the green of her eyes.

“Had enough yet?” she suddenly asked, in English.

Embarrassed, he looked the other way and ordered a shot of Jägerbomb.

She moved to the seat beside him. “You owe me a drink,” she said, this time in Japanese.

He turned to her, only to be swept away by the sight of her grinning at him. Having forgotten what she just said, he found it hard to answer. So instead he asked, “What?”

“I charge people for staring,” she said.

“I wasn’t staring.”

“Fine, glancing then.”

Guilty as charged, he had no answer to that. “Fine. What do you want?”

“What are you having?”

“Jägerbomb.”

“I’ll have that too then,” she said, sealing her lips with a smile.

He found out through their conversation over alcohol that she had just left the house she had been staying in because the woman had gotten in her nerves. “I was staying with a middle aged couple. They had two kids, both in grade school. They were really nice at the beginning, but lately the wife has been like a total bitch around me. She kept making snide comments when her husband wasn’t around. The husband was really nice, you know. So maybe she was being insecure or something.”

He ended up laughing at her story. He probably had too much alcohol at the time because he ended up saying things he could not have said if he were sober. “Any woman would feel jealous if her husband got friendly with you,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It means you’re not supposed to stay with a married couple. You’ll end up ruining their relationship.”

“What!?”

“I mean, you’re too pretty for any man to ignore.”

She blinked thrice, her mouth slightly gaping in an attempt to say something but not words came out.

“You owe me a drink this time,” he chuckled.

In his eagerness to improve his command of the language, he hired her that same night as his private English tutor. With nowhere to come home to and with a more economical thought of her saving money by not staying in a hotel, she accepted his invitation to sleep in his apartment.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty three. And you?”

“Twenty eight.”

“Wow. You look younger than that.” She took her boots off and slipped her feet into a pair of indoor slippers he took out for her.

“No need to flatter me. I won’t pay you extra for that,” he said.

She pouted. “Excuse me, but that was not my intention.”

“I know,” he snorted. He took her suitcase from her and laid it on the sofa. “Sorry but you’d have to sleep here tonight. I don’t have another room.”

“That’s fine,” she said. She looked around her, amused with how neat his apartment was. When Chikin saw her, he hid underneath one of the sofas. “You have a cat! How cute!” She came towards the sofa and bent over, trying to take a good look at the cowardly cat. “What’s his name?”

“Chikin.”

She got back on her feet and straightened out her shirt. “Are you serious?” she laughed.

“Yes. I’m sure you can see why I named him so.”

“Seriously. That’s really cute though. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Are you seeing anyone right now?”

“Eh?”

“I mean, you know, dating anyone?”

“No. I’m too busy for that, I’m afraid.”

“Then—” she was fiddling with the silver band on her left ring finger, trying to decide whether or not she really wanted to ask him the question she had in mind.

“What?”

“—can I stay here for the time being? I’ll teach you English without you having to pay me. I just badly need a place to stay.”

To her surprise, he smiled at her and said, “Sure. As long as you don’t mind sleeping on the couch, that’s fine.”

She smiled back and bowed in gratitude. “Thank you!” she said, unable to hide the gratitude in her voice.

He knew an email would only take a few seconds to reach her. And he had already turned his computer on when he realized that he did not have her email address. He tried to call too but he did not have her number either. Frustrated, he tore another piece of paper and went back to his seat. As before, he stared at his blurry image on the glass pane. Nothing had changed. He still wore the same morose expression he had on hours ago. He had been trying to write something for days—to no avail. With so much to say, he did not know how and where to begin. It was almost his birthday, he realized, and almost time for the manjushage to bloom. He had planned on taking her to the Imperial Palace in Chiyoda on the day of the equinox to see the flowers that grew along the banks of the moats. But she left.

With these images in mind, he started moving his hand. Instead of writing, he sketched. Each drop of ink on the page was a remnant of the heart that he had lost to her; whether he lost it or he gave it to her, he still could not decide. Either way, he knew he could not put the blame on her. She had always belonged to somebody else; he was merely borrowing her. The ring on her finger was tangible proof. Soon it became clear to him that what he had been drawing was her tattoo, but without the blood red color of the manjushage blossoms. A few words came to mind after that, and he wrote them down hastily, fearing he would lose them. He taped the picture onto the bare spot on his wall. He would have sent it to her.

If only he knew her address.

Sometimes I touch the things you used to touch, looking for echoes of your fingers. Then I realize that your fingerprints had been burned onto my skin like indiscernible scars, screaming at me all this time.

End Note: Sometimes I touch the things you used to touch, looking for echoes of your fingers. This line I got from pleasefindthis.