II

In her two year residency, Yuri learnt a lot about herself, and her elderly host, Eiko Yoshinobu.
  Eiko was a widow, to the love of her life. He had died while at sea, while he was still a young man. She told Yuri the story with little more than a slight warble at the end, when she uttered the words, ‘And then he never came back’. They never found his body, but that did not surprise the - at the time - 25-year-old Eiko. The sea devoured all with its gnashing white teeth. Some even said Japan would be eaten by the sea, consumed into the abyss, alongside the other island nations, Australia, the English isles. To Eiko, she considered it a blessing in disguise.
  “I think,” She had said, “when Japan slips into the ocean, or I decide to walk out to the coast, and fall off a clifftop, I will be near him again. My bones with be swept up with his, and we will be united again. That will be the time when I’m happy again, to my fully capacity.” A warm smile filled her face, in the icy cold of their grim conversation.
  Yuri watched the woman as she leant over her tea, lost in thoughts. She presumed the elderly woman was dreaming of swimming in the sea, her lungs filled with sea water, a smile frozen on her face, a cheery mask. She then conjured an image in her own mind, of her bumping into her father’s corpse swaying by the neck in the woods of Aokigahara. He too looked happy, the same death mask as Eiko’s. He looked so serene, hanging in the filtering sun beams of a summer’s day.
  The old woman shook her head, then looked to Yuri, who was now looking out the window.
  “You look like someone who has experienced many losses in her life. I take it you are an orphan?”  She probed.
  Yuri nodded quietly.
  She had not really spoken to anyone about her situation, nor the way that everything came about. She wondered if she could even remember everything correctly. Looking back, everything was such a blur of emotion and imagery from her once adolescent mind. Moving towards 20, and her progression into ‘womanhood’, whatever that meant to whomever thrust it upon her, she had looked back on her actions as one of a mature adult. Maybe, in the execution of them, they were influenced greatly by adults, but everything since the train journey to Hokkaido, her flight into an unknown, dark and uncertain future, was her own choosing. She smiled.
  “I think, Eiko, I could be an apprentice to you.”
  Eiko laughed. For the first time, Yuri noticed.
  “Oh, my dear young lady.” Eiko placed a hand on the Yuri’s shoulder. “We tortured souls come every which way, from all walks of life. Every person walking down the streets, every man, woman and child, of all different social classes and lifestyle has been slighted against. I would argue life, being born, existing itself is a slight against mankind.” The smile, the laugh were gone.
  Yuri nodded again.
  “I understand.”
  “The troubles of an individual may not be the troubles equal to that of another, but they are still troubles nonetheless.”   
  Yuri bowed her head again.
  “I believe those afflicted with a worse life can be the most help,” Yuri said, vacantly looking at the tea steam rising to her face. “And that’s what I want to do. Help people.”
  Eiko cupped her hands around her mug. She nodded.
  “And how do you propose to help the many swaths of individuals that live on the Japanese isles.”
  Yuri looked into the steam, the pale green tea underneath catching a glare of sun from the open window, reflecting a slightly detailed black figure into the warm, flavoured water. Yuri looked at what detail she could make out.
  Her childish features had disappeared. They had formed into the shape of her body, her angelic features melting into herself, becoming lost in her new person, her new being of woman. He face had melted into maturity along with the fat that had lined it. She wondered if her old class mates changed the same. If their small features had become large, and their bodies absorbed the youthful fat of their childhoods, becoming something, someone totally new, unlike those forms she watched on the playground. She wondered if they had had the same life as her, if they had any traumas, or anything wrong. She tried to remember if Akiko ever did get together with Akira. She thought back to the police officers, the train station personnel, the mobsters, did they have fruitful and well-lived lives, or was there something wrong? Did they need someone to talk to?
  “I know.” Yuri replied.
  “How?” Eiko snapped back.
  “I will set up something up, on the computer, where I can help others.”
  Eiko’s eyebrows raised high. She puckered her lips, as she always did as something out of the bounds of her own philosophy came barging into, bashing down the walls of common sense she had built around her.
  “The internet age is a fruitless and self-fish endeavour.” She drained her tea, then stood up. “But, I understand, as a young individual, you crave that attention.”
  Yuri looked up to the woman, following her as her little figure shuffled off into the kitchen. She did not care if Eiko thought it was foolish, her heart was set on it. She would set something up, a blog or advice website, where the people of Japan would be able to message her with all their petty nags or major drama’s, their agony’s and grief, their woes and sorrow’s. It made her happy, the idea of being allowed to help a wide range of people.
  In truth, she had begun to feel isolated in Hokkaido. For two years she had worked as an understudy to Eiko Yoshinobu, understanding the way that the hotel worked and how the seasons affected the trade. Winter was for the skiers, the people seeking cosiness. The summer was for the average joe, the normal tourist you would get in any other city in the world. She thought about winter, and the need for cosiness, and her own mother’s remembrances of her and her father’s time away here. She could see why they had become so enamoured and intimate in wanting to form a child together. It was a way to knit things closer together. The bonding of human genes, from two different pools, into one creature to call their own.
  It was also, with Eiko’s utterances about the wider world, the philosophical manner in which she dealt with everything. Even the smallest motion, or the tiniest idea carried the weight of mountain boulders. Yuri presumed it was from an unresolved grief over her husband’s death, and the premature, violent ending to their young and budding relationship. But, the nihilistic tendencies of the elderly woman were entirely her own. Yuri resisted the woman’s dark nature, the acceptance of hopelessness and acceptance of death. To Yuri, she had been born and destined to survive, even with the way life had treated herself.
 

With her work with Eiko, too, she had saved a good sum of money, taking a few ¥100,000 every month from the hotel profits – given to her by Eiko – in exchange for housekeeping services. They had dropped the rent idea after two months of her staying. Eiko realised Yuri would be a more permanent tenant than first imagined. A fair deal too in Yuri’s eyes. If not only because the money she saved up, only added to the money her father had left her. She had a total of ¥6,000,000 or so yen saved up. No need for mobsters either.
  “Eiko. I must confess something.” Yuri called out after the old woman, over the clatter of pots and pans being moved and jostled about. “I’m leaving for Tokyo in a few weeks.”
  The clattering stopped, all of a sudden. Eiko’s distinctive shuffling feet could be heard returning to the room. Yuri looked up to the doorway. Eiko, head cast down to the floor waddled back into the room.
  “You’re leaving.” Eiko said as she sat down.
  “Yes. Eiko, I must thank you for letting me stay. This place has become home, in some small way”
  Eiko raised her head, her eyes meeting Yuri’s. “And you want to leave it?”
  Yuri nodded.
  “I have things I want to do. I want to help people, and what better place to do that but at the hub of life, Tokyo. I’m from there originally, too.”
  Eiko now faced the young woman.
  “And you’re sure?”
  Yuri nodded again.
  “I am. I have been saving the longest time, and have been using an internet café to look for places. I found a great one bedroom apartment, cheap for where it is too.”
  Eiko straightened herself.
  “It was strange. When you walked in through those doors, and I took your fragmented room request, I always thought you would stay forever. I saw a young woman, in a state of distress like myself, so many years ago. I never re-married after my beloved died. I never had children. If anything, you’ve been like the child I never had the pleasure of conceiving and raising.” A solitary tear drop fell down her cheek, landing with a splash on the tea mat. “But, I suppose you have grown up.”
  Yuri felt her heart skip a beat. What had begun as a happy announcement, for herself anyway, had turned into a massive fork in the road. Once again.
  “I just feel, that…” Yuri did not have the words to console her elderly carer.
  Eiko bowed her head, hiding her face. She did not cry loudly, or sob and shake. She simply looked down, not looking at Yuri.
  “I honestly don’t blame you.”
  Yuri pressed her hand against her own cheek, feeling a weight crash down on both of them. How could she have been so callous, so careless in her approach? And how freely she had spoken about the internet café, like an adulterous lover bragging about their lovers to their spouse. It was an ultimate betrayal. “Go, Yuri.”
  The elderly woman’s voice startled her.
  “Leave here. You have bigger things to do. I will miss your company, but you’re only a young woman, not even over the age of 20. You have so much more life to live, and you can’t spend the rest of your days tucked up in the north of Japan, sitting with some elderly woman who has thoughts bigger than her role.” Eiko raised her head, her eyes to meet Yuri’s again. “Go help those people you want to help.”
  Eiko smiled another rare smile.
  Yuri grinned back, tears dripping down her face. She placed out a hand and grabbed Eiko’s bundled hands.
  The old woman laughed through her sadness, her voice breaking only slightly.
  “I guess I’ll still be here.”
  “I won’t be leaving until the end of the month.”
  It was July, and the lease had been agreed for the start of August until April, rolling on after that every 8 months, ensuring Yuri kept the apartment to a good standard.
  “Then I’ll still have my little helper around until August. Good. You can help with the early summer rush.” Eiko did not stop smiling.
  Nor did she stop smiling for the three weeks. It was the most life that Yuri had seen in the old woman.

Maybe it was the chance to say goodbye to a loved one for once. Maybe it was the maternal instinct being sated, the one that she had always yearned for, and although shorter than a normal lifespan – born of consequences far more bizarre and intricate than Yuri had ever cared to go into detail with – it was a magical time in the older woman’s life. It was, in Yuri’s eyes, like an opportunity to finally bury and make peace with old ghosts that had haunted her.
  Yuri would not be surprised if the elderly woman went mad, or died upon her leaving. However, to Yuri, that was up to Eiko.
  The two woman had such a profound effect on each other, one jaded by old age and trauma, the other, young and optimistic about the bright possibilities of life regardless of her trauma.
  The light and dark.
  The Yang and Yin.
  And as Yuri stood, her precious suitcase, clutched once again by handle, she left the dark old woman by the steps in summer. No party, no big meal, just a pack up of onigiri and an extra ¥500,000 for the pot. Yuri did not stop waving as she left through the back way, the way she had come in over 2 and a half years ago.
  On the train back to Tokyo, she slipped back into her meek and reserved self, trying not to cry.  

Next Chapter: Part 3 - Petals: I