“We’ll be fine. It’s not just my adventure, Kara. It’s ours. All of it.”
She leaned against the counter. “Then you won’t mind if I go over to school after lunch? I have a study date with Sakura and Miho.”
With a fork, he split a piece of chicken in the pan to make sure it was cooked through, then looked up at her. “Like your father’s ever gonna stop you from studying. Or from checking out what it’s like to live in the dormitory. Go and have fun. Will you be home for dinner?”
“Definitely.”
The first thing Kara saw when Sakura opened the door to her dorm room were the masks. There were three of them hanging on the far wall, to the left of the window, lined up one above the next like a totem pole. The top and middle masks were ugly, monstrous things, but the bottom one was the pretty, elegant face of a woman.
“Wow.”
Miho looked up from the book she was reading. “English? You must like them.” She smiled and sat up on her bed.
“They’re amazing,” Kara said. “Noh masks?”
“Yes!” Miho beamed.
“She collects them,” Sakura explained as she closed the door. “Fortunately, she leaves most of them at home.”
Kara admired the masks as Miho stood and pointed to them each in turn.
“The top one is Karura, a great bird of legend, who flies in four heavens and eats dragons,” Miho explained, and now Kara saw that the green-painted mask did have a beak and a red crest so that it looked vaguely like a bird. “Next is Daikijin, Great Devil God, who protects festivals and ceremonies from evil spirits.”
Kara blinked. The white and silver mask had been crafted with such care that its beauty was undeniable. But with its horns and shaggy mane and the sharp fangs in its wide-stretched, blood-red mouth, it was also ugly and frightening.
“It looks like an evil spirit,” she said.
Miho frowned in disapproval. “You should not judge only by appearance.”
Kara gave her a small shrug. “Of course. I meant no offense.”
Sakura laughed. “Don’t let her get to you. She loves those ugly things too much.”
Miho shot Sakura an unpleasant look and then smiled and gave them a small shrug. “I can’t help it.”
“What about the bottom one? The woman?” Kara asked.
“That is Zoh-onna. She is not a goddess or spirit, only a woman of purity and serenity,” Miho said.
Sakura sat on a cushion in the floor. “I always ask if there’s one that is the opposite of those qualities. I’d like to wear that one.”
The girls laughed. They were both in T-shirts and pajama bottoms, and seeing them like that gave Kara a relaxed, familiar feeling. She’d worn black jeans and a green hooded sweater and felt comfortable enough, but Sakura’s silky-looking red pajamas and the cotton, very American-looking bottoms Miho had on-white and covered with the red and yellow S-crest that Superman wore on his chest-made her wish she’d worn pajamas as well.
Kara surveyed the rest of the dormitory room. There wasn’t much more to see. The beds were wooden boxes with soft futon mattresses that unrolled for sleeping. At first she thought there were straw tatami mats on the floor but then realized the whole floor was tatami. There were a couple of big zabuton cushions on the floor. The two desks were tiny, and a slender laptop sat open atop one of them. There were bamboo sliding doors that must have been closets and two bookcases. One held mostly school books, but the shelves of the other were lined with manga digests.
“I can guess whose bookcase that is,” Kara said, pointing to the manga.
“I’ll let you borrow some,” Sakura replied.
Miho crossed her arms. “Why not show her your art?”
Sakura’s smile evaporated and, for the first time since Kara had met her, she shifted and glanced around awkwardly, unsure of herself.
“You draw?”
“She draws manga,” Miho said. “She’s really good.”
“I’m not. I’m awful,” Sakura mumbled.
Kara dropped down onto another cushion beside her. “I’m sure you’re not. I’d love to see some of your art. But I understand if you don’t want to show me today.”
They were friends now, but they were new friends. Sakura’s art clearly meant a great deal to her, particularly since she kept it mostly secret. She only shared it with people she trusted.
After a moment, she nodded and went to her bed, sliding out the drawer built into its wooden base. She withdrew a thick sketchbook and handed it over. Kara felt honored that Sakura would share this with her but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.
The three girls spent twenty minutes just flipping through pages and then looking at other drawings Sakura pulled from her drawer. To Kara’s delight, she was really talented.
“Wow. Between this and Miho’s Noh theater stuff, I feel like I have nothing to contribute. I don’t do anything special.”
Miho sprawled on her belly on the bed, ankles crossed, and poked her face between Kara and Sakura, hair falling across her glasses. “Don’t say that. You are a photographer. And you told me you play guitar.”
“Yeah,” Kara said, “but you guys haven’t heard me play or seen any of my pictures.”
“We will,” Miho promised. “And I’m sure you’re very talented.”
“And if you’re not, we just won’t be friends with you anymore,” Sakura said.
Kara blinked, hurt, and then Sakura laughed. Miho whacked the top of her head and Sakura turned to attack her. Despite their obvious differences in personality and style, the two girls had become like sisters. Perhaps the way their families had cast them aside had made them closer. They didn’t really have anyone but each other.
Sakura pinned Miho in about six seconds.
“I surrender,” Miho said, and Sakura got up, pretending to react to nonexistent cheering from a nonexistent crowd.
“You watch too much television,” Miho told her.
Sakura went to sit in front of the window. “You listen to too much bad music.”
“Rock’s been dead since before I was alive,” Miho countered.
“I’d rather have resurrected rock rot my brain than pop candy so sweet it can rot your teeth.”
Kara watched this back and forth like a tennis match, grinning in amazement. Miho had such a quiet demeanor during school, but here in her own room, she obviously enjoyed sparring.
“What do you think, Kara?” Sakura asked. “Rock or pop?”
Kara shook her head. “Oh, no. You aren’t getting me in the middle of this. Besides, there are a thousand definitions for rock and pop. You’d have to play me some music to compare.”
As Miho started for the laptop-presumably to play music- Kara held up a hand. “No, no. That wasn’t an invitation.”
Sakura laughed. “Okay. We’ll leave you out of it, this time. But you’ll have to play your guitar for us soon.”
“That’s a deal. Next time we’ll study at my house. There’s a lot more room there anyway.”
Miho looked concerned. “You don’t think your father would mind?”
“He’d be happy to have us there,” Kara said.
Sakura sighed.
“You don’t want to come to my house?” Kara asked.
“It’s not that. You just said a terrible word,” Sakura said.
Kara reviewed what she’d just said, fearing that she had somehow offended her friends. “What word?”
Miho threw a small cushion at Sakura. “ Study. That is what we’re supposed to be doing today.”
“Right,” Kara said. “I was doing my best to forget.”
Reluctantly, the three girls dove into their studies. Most of their assignments for the weekend involved reading, and Kara still had math homework she had been avoiding.
They spent a contentedly quiet hour in one another’s company, until finally Sakura let out a groan and stood. She walked to the window again and gazed outside.
