Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 38: Rose: Cherishing Girls Village

One day, Rose was reading a text from Saori when she realized the last time she could remember playing Candy Crush was in the taxi from the airport to the ryokan, that first day in Japan. What was more, despite the fact that she'd been so obsessed with it she had to get three stars on every level, she didn't miss it. She'd been too busy, what with seeing the city, studying kanji, texting friends, and crashing pretty much every night because her days were so full.

Right now, she was in the back seat of the rental car on the way to the ski resort, passing the time by reading a manga—and not a translation into English, either.

"I think I understand now exactly why there's as much manga as regular fiction books out there," she said, turning the page.

"Because even when you can read kanji, it's so obstruse that having pictures to go with the words is a great help?" Yukie offered.

"Exactly," Rose said. "It's like, a haiku is pretty much the perfect length for a poem in Japanese, and a sonnet is perfect for English."

"When you can pass an online literacy test in kanji, as a prize I'll teach you how my grandmother taught me to hide secret messages in letters." Yukie chuckled. "I love to read, and even for me it wasn't always easy. There was one book in high school, The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki. It was the first modern epic novel written in Japanese and it was written in kana out of necessity, because women were not allowed to learn kanji back in the eleventh century. It is very, very long. We had to read it in kanji, because all literature has to be in kanji. Reading it was a form of torture for me—until I found a manga version. What are you reading?"

"The Legend of Shutan Doji, and how he was defeated by Minamoto no Yorimitsu. Was that the same Minamoto who was your hero Tomoe's husband?"

"No, that was Yoshinaka, not Yorimitsu. But I loved that tale as well, especially when Yorimitsu cuts off the demon Shutan's head, and it leaps up and keeps biting at him."

"Aaah, I hadn't got to that part yet! Way to drop the spoilers, Yukie!" Rose wailed.

"Sorry!" Yukie apologized. "Forget I said anything about the demon's head."

"It's okay. Shutan Doji was a yokai, right? We've found ghosts everywhere—the coin locker baby, the mom and the little girl in the abandoned apartment building, the haunted tunnel where the prison laborers were walled up alive, and Dad even ran into that marine's ghost the other night—but no yokai. Do you think we're ever going to, or are they mythical?"

"The difference between ghosts and supernatural creatures, is that yurei, ghosts, are isolated individuals. Their lives are over. Yokai are alive, and they're part of a community—or so they say. It's like the difference between watching a movie and interacting with real people. Why should they put themselves on open display for our benefit? Maybe they exist and they're simply very good at hiding."

"Quiet," Slade Wilson snapped. "I need to concentrate on the road right now."

Rose glanced out the window. "Sorry." It really did look bad out there. Although it was mid-afternoon, there wasn't even a bright spot in the sky to show where the sun might be, that was how cloudy it was.

Ski resorts were by necessity located in areas that got a lot of snow, and the Hakkoda Ski resort was no exception. In fact, the snow was coming down so fast and hard it was close to blizzard conditions. Visibility was not good and it was getting even worse, so for the next quarter of an hour, everyone was silent except for the GPS. Even though the rental had four wheel drive and snow tires, the going was still treacherous, and Rose was even starting to get scared.

"Rather than push on through this, we could take a left at the next crossing. There's a village with a ryokan and a natural onsen," Yukie suggested, working away at her tablet phone. An onsen was a hot spring. "I can contact the resort and tell them we'll be there tomorrow. They'll hold the room—we did take it for a week, after all."