The River Kami Asked Before Taking My Hand novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: May I Come In

Nagi asks permission at every door, and Akari sets house rules she keeps breaking by being kind.

Akari stayed the night because the last bus had gone and her phone had eleven percent.

She told herself that was the only reason.

The river started talking again as soon as she said yes.

Nagi stood up from the veranda for the first time, and the white robe moved around her ankles.

She stopped at the open door and did not go through it.

"May I come in?" she asked.

Akari stared at her.

"It's your house," she said. "You've lived here longer than I've been alive."

"It is yours now."

"You can't just walk in? Tomoe's been dead since April."

"Tomoe said yes to me every day for thirty-one years," Nagi said. "She is not here to say it. So I wait until you do."

Akari felt her face go hot.

"Yes," she said. "Come in. Please. You don't ever have to ask at the front door."

"Thank you."

Nagi stepped in, and the floorboards did not make one sound.

The house smelled of old wood and dry persimmons.

There was a low table, a kerosene heater, and a shelf of children's workbooks with a woman's neat handwriting on every spine.

A photo stood on the shelf in a plain frame.

It showed a short-haired woman in a canvas apron, laughing so hard her eyes had closed.

Akari picked it up.

"That's her," she said. "I haven't seen her laugh since I was nine."

"She laughed more here," Nagi said.

She stood a polite distance away and did not move closer.

Akari carried her suitcase down the hall.

There were three rooms.

One was a kitchen with a window onto the garden. One was a bathroom with a cedar tub. One was a tatami room with a futon rolled in the closet.

"This one's Tomoe's," Nagi said from the hall. "I have not gone in since April. May I show you the quilt?"

"Okay."

"Shall I come in?"

"Yes, you can come in!"

"Thank you."

It was such a small word.

Akari kept noticing it.

Nagi unrolled the futon with careful hands and smoothed the quilt flat.

Then she knelt on the tatami and did not look at the bed again.

"The bath is hot," she said. "I heated it before you came. The river never comes inside the house, so your bed will stay dry."

"Good to know."

"I also would not come into your bed," Nagi said. "That was a poor joke. I am practising."

Akari laughed, and it came out of her before she could stop it.

Nagi's eyes widened a little, then crinkled at the corners.

It was the first time she had smiled in the whole evening, and it changed her whole face.

"I have some rules," Akari said.

She said it fast, because her heart was going fast.

"Rule one. I'm not your wife."

"Yes."

"Rule two. Nobody sleeps in my room."

"Yes."

"Rule three. If I say no, it's no, and you don't look sad about it."

Nagi opened her mouth.

She closed it again.

"I cannot promise the last one," she said honestly. "I cannot lie. I can promise to not argue."

Akari felt the rule fold itself up and go away.

"Fine," she said. "Then just, don't argue."

"Yes."

"And you don't have to ask before everything."

"I do."

"Why?"

"Because the river takes only what is given," Nagi said. "If I do not ask, I do not know if it is given. If I touch what is not offered, it is a flood."

She said it so plainly that Akari felt the weight of it.

"Has that happened?" Akari asked.

"Once," Nagi said. "A long time ago. I will not do it again."

They ate rice balls Akari had packed on the train.

Nagi did not eat.

She watched with so much interest that Akari ended up giving her half of one.

Nagi accepted it with both hands.

"What's it like?" Akari asked. "Being, you know. A river."

"Cold," Nagi said. "Long. Mostly I look at the bend and think about the mountain."

"Do you get lonely?"

It was a rude question.

Akari wanted to take it back the moment it was out.

Nagi turned the rice ball over in her fingers.

"Yes," she said. "Since April. Before that I had Tomoe."

The house was very quiet.

Akari put her own rice ball down.

She did not know what a nineteen-year-old said to a river that was sad about her aunt.

She said, "I miss her too."

Nagi looked up, and her grey eyes were bright and wet.

She did not cry.

She put her hand flat on the low table, palm up, an inch from Akari's wrist.

"May I hold your hand?" she asked.

Akari's pulse jumped.

Her hand wanted to move.

Something in her chest wanted it badly, and that scared her more than anything had since she got off the bus.

"Not yet," she said. "Sorry. Not yet."

"Thank you for telling me," Nagi said, and she drew her hand back.

There was no sulk in her face, only gratitude.

On the table between them, the two teacups sat side by side.

Akari had not touched hers in an hour.

It was still steaming.

It had grown warmer.

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