8•15

5. Naoto and Maki

Maki knew that leaving Japan was a bad idea, but she had been planning this trip for the past 6 months, so nothing could stop her at this point. Her plan was to call JT on August 15th, but she also wanted to be there to surprise him. She held a Sandan (3rd Dan) black belt in Kendo which allowed her to teach, so she'd been teaching children on weekends at her father's dojo to save money for the trip.

The car has been running fine so far. She has two days to make it to Arizona and she's already close to the border.
Sometimes, it was hard for her to tell how fast the car was going with no working speedometer, especially when no cars were around. To avoid getting stuck because of no fuel gauge, she's decided to refuel every 200 miles just to be safe. The temperature is in low three digits and there's no air condition in the car so all the windows are down. The radio worked only intermittently so she listens to her ipod classic instead. She mainly plays Naoto's band Kodama39. Kodama means echo, but it uses kanji symbols for "tree" and "spirit". In old days people thought all the echoes they heard were created by trees hence the symbol for "spirit" and "tree". 39 is pronounced san-kyu or sanju-kyu in Japanese and san-kyu is the Japanese version of thank you. Kodama39's songs were a dolorous experimental electronic music with sinewy beat which Maki liked.

Naoto had been studying industrial design and his goal was to be accepted into Rhode Island School of Design in America after finishing the university in Tokyo. He hadn't been sure whether he wanted to take over his father's business because he was more interested in designing products than selling somebody else's furnitures. He'd worshipped Jonathan Ive: Apple's chief designer and despised companies that copied Apple's product. "There's only one shepherd and rest are sheep." Maki remembered him saying that often. Naoto's untimely death hadn't brought his families and friends any meaningful closure.

Maki had slept with Naoto once. It was more accurate to say five times in one night. This was almost a year before Erika and Naoto started going out. Maki envied Eriko's gracefulness. Because of Kendo training, Maki kept her hair short but Erika had straight long hair and a slender body which Maki didn't have.
Two summers ago, Erika was staying in a summer house with her parents in Izu Peninsula which is a popular summer resort about 60 miles southwest of Tokyo. Maki, Naoto and two of his friends were hanging out at Naoto's apartment doing a movie marathon which they'd started two days ago.They'd rented 20 movies or so mostly foreign movies, a few Kurosawa's and just kept watching. Once in a while, Naoto's friend would run to a convenience store two blocks down and bring them chips, cup noodles, soft drinks and some cheap wine. They'd also ordered pizza at one point. Eventually, Naoto's friends left and Maki and Naoto were alone. It was Saturday and Maki felt bad for missing her training because she seldom did, but she also felt liberated doing things she'd never done before: watching movie after movie for three days straight. Sometimes, she would doze off on his shoulder; it wasn't intentional, so she would correct herself but eventually she became comfortable enough to rest her head on his lap.There was an air conditioning unit in the living room but he preferred to just keep all the windows open, even though temperatures stayed hot and muggy throughout the summer, so once in a while, he would jump into the shower and so did Maki but separately. That night, Maki didn't put her shorts back on after the shower. Since the room was kept dark, she didn't feel shy; besides, Naoto had no shirt on most of the time and was walking around wearing just his Calvin Klein boxer briefs. She liked the feeling of his bare arm against hers and sometimes she could hear her heart pounding fast. No words were conversed as their two bodies eventually became one and intertwined seamlessly.
Maki had tried to remember which movie they'd been watching when they were physically intimate, each time that night, but her memories were all conflated to create one unforgettable vignette.