“Rika. Chan!” Belle claps her hands on her hips and stomps her foot to get my attention.
I snap back to the present and blink at her a few times, trying to remember what I climbed onto the stepladder for.
“You want to bring that Worcestershire sauce over here? And really, no reaction to my hair being on fire?”
I slowly turn to look at the bottle in my hand. Oh, right. I was getting the Worcestershire so we could make more katsu sauce. The restaurant has been chaos all afternoon. Nikkei Week is always extra busy, but today’s positively off the charts.
“Your hair looks beautiful,” I say, hastily clambering down from the stepladder and passing her the bottle. “You’re the only person I know who could pull off fire.”
“Hmph,” Belle says, somewhat mollified. I’m relieved that she seems to have forgotten yesterday’s mochi demo debacle, but that’s Belle—she’s on to her next royal task, no need to dwell on the negative. She pours the sauce into a bowl and starts mixing in the other ingredients. “What is going on with you today? Your face is very red.”
I reach up to touch my cheek and realize it’s even warmer than Katsu That’s un-air-conditioned kitchen. Actually, my whole body feels warm, suffused with an inexplicable flush that’s crept from my toes to the roots of my brassy hair, which is currently contained in my brand-new LAPL baseball cap.
“Are you sick?” Belle reaches over to feel my forehead, and I bat her hand away.
“Not sick,” I insist. “Just . . .” I trail off, trying to think of what lie I can tell her. Because I definitely do not want to say: Just can’t stop randomly thinking about this maddening boy who’s helping me find my long-lost mother and how it felt when he sort of touched me—not really in a sexy way, it was all very accidental, yet my brain cannot seem to stop itself from playing these three seconds of footage over and over and—
“Ah, of course,” Belle says, snapping her fingers. “You’re preoccupied with your Mom Quest! I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to help much the past couple days, Rika-chan. My queen duties have been keeping me so busy, but rest assured I’m still ready for your entrée into Asian Hollywood—”
“Rika!” Auntie Och strides into the kitchen, her bushy eyebrows drawn together. Belle’s and my heads snap up from the half-finished katsu sauce. I feel a little flutter of something deep in my gut—and am surprised to realize it’s disappointment that Belle didn’t guess what I was actually thinking.
But . . . why? Did I want us to have some kind of sisterly bonding moment over my obsessive thoughts, which sound like they belong in a rom-com? Don’t I hate rom-coms?
That confuses me and sends me down all sorts of spiraling thought paths I definitely do not like, so I focus on Auntie Och. “Go take table four’s order,” she says, jerking her formidable mane of hair toward the dining room. “They asking for you.”
“Me?” I say, my brow furrowing in consternation. Has the queen of the Beckys, the one I dumped soda on last week, returned for her ultimate revenge?
“They want ‘the girl with the red hair,’” Auntie Och says, her tone brusque. “That must be you, ne?”
“I . . . right,” I say, exchanging a puzzled look with Belle. “Okay, then.”
I dutifully straighten my apron, make sure my hair’s tucked securely under my hat, and check my watch. It’s only a few minutes to five—I can make this my final task of the shift. And even if it involves the Return of Queen Becky, well, I can suck it up, grit my teeth, and ignore her pleas for an “authentic Japanese accent.” Because right after that, I’ll be set free—ready for the fateful meeting with my mother. I imagine myself as a princess escaping the suffocating confines of her castle, gleefully tearing through the woods, her long thicket of hair streaming behind her—
Wait, why am I imagining myself as a princess? I have literally never been able to get that image to appear in my mind. Not even when I was little and had a very brief moment of wanting to join Belle on #TeamPrincess.
I glance at my reflection in the big metal doors leading out to the dining room. I still see the nure-onna: fangs bared, ruby eyes flashing. Ready to snap at anyone who looks at her funny. I pause as the image shimmers in and out, those brilliant eyes staring back at me.
And I’m not sure why, but that weird sense of disappointment flashes through me again. Like maybe I was hoping to see something different this time?
I shake it off, stuffing that wild curl of red hair that keeps escaping back under my baseball cap. Then I reach into my pocket and touch the three photos I’ve stored there: the pictures of young Grace and Auntie Suzy and the one of baby me being held by new-mom Grace. They’re like a talisman, calming me. Reminding me of my ultimate goal.
I imagine my nure-onna armor rising up and enveloping me, that essential layer of protection. Then I straighten my spine and push through the double doors, emerging into the chaos of the dining room.
The long table in the middle is taken up by the usual assortment of raucous Uncles, who come in every week for brunch and spend endless hours gossiping, downing Sapporos, and commending Auntie Och for weaseling a liquor license from the city’s nefarious clutches. This is, quite honestly, all part of Auntie Och’s brilliance—she knows the Uncles love to spend their days getting absolutely tanked, and an abundance of Sapporo gives Katsu That a huge advantage over other would-be
