The Street of a Thousand Blossoms Read Online Free PDF Page B

grasped his arm more tightly. Was this a dream? Without a word, Akira Yoshiwara slipped his arm under Kenji’s, and holding him up, guided him down the street to his shop. Kenji was dizzy with the thought of finally entering the shop, but not as he had imagined so many times before. In his mind, he had often walked through the door with a great flourish. He never guessed his first steps into the tiny shop would be with the assistance of the master artisan, and in such dishonor.
    Akira Yoshiwara unlocked the door. “Perhaps you’d like to come in and see the masks up close for a change?” he asked, his voice soft and teasing.
    “You’ve seen me?” Kenji licked his lips, tasted the saltiness of blood and mucus, and wished for a sip of water.
    “Once or twice. I take it you like the masks?”
    “Very much,” Kenji said.
    Standing close, Akira Yoshiwara smiled for the first time, which made him look younger, somewhere in his thirties. Without the layerof wood dust dulling his skin and hair, and dressed in a dark blue cotton
yukata
with a white lotus pattern, he looked like a different person. His dark, long hair fell over his slight shoulders and his closely trimmed beard gave him a defiant yet distinguished look.
    Inside, Kenji breathed in the sharp and biting smell of paint, and the more subtle scent of cypress wood, which his
ojiichan
sometimes carved. As the sun broke through the clouds, it filled the room with white light. Kenji saw that everything was covered with a fine powdery dust.
    “Sit right here.” Akira Yoshiwara helped him onto one of the low wooden chairs.
    “Domo arigato gozaimasu.”
Kenji tried to bow low but grabbed his side in pain instead. “I should go home.”
    “Just sit,” he said again, placing his hands firmly on his shoulders. “Let me help you first.”
    Akira Yoshiwara whistled as he disappeared into the back room. Kenji looked around to see there were no masks on the tall shelf against the wall. The room appeared desolate and bare, and in need of a good cleaning. It felt strange being on the inside of the window, looking out, as if he had stepped into another world and wasn’t sure which was the lonelier. He ran a finger through the dust on the table and wrote his name in quick characters. He heard cabinets opening and closing in the other room, water being poured, and Yoshiwara’s calm voice telling someone not to touch something. Kenji grew warm and his heart beat faster at the thought that someone else was there.
    When Akira Yoshiwara returned, he carried a tray with a wet cloth, a bowl of water, and a clay cup of hot tea. He had tied his long hair back, and his dark eyes watched Kenji as he sipped from the steaming cup. “You don’t appear to be the type of boy who likes to fight.” With slender fingers he dabbed the towel lightly across Kenji’s cheek, under his throbbing eye, wiping the dry blood from under his nose, then rinsed it in the bowl of water and wiped again with such gentleness Kenji wanted to close his eyes and sleep.
    “It was an accident,” Kenji said, flushed. “I tripped and fell.” It was what he had rehearsed in his mind to tell his grandparents. Hedidn’t dare look up and meet Akira Yoshiwara’s gaze, knowing how hollow his lie sounded. Kenji wanted to say he wasn’t the type to fight, that he didn’t know what had come over him, but he heard something clatter in the back room and instead asked, “Is someone else here?”
    Akira Yoshiwara laughed. “Yes, of course.”
    Kenji stood up abruptly, almost knocking over the bowl of water.
    “Nazo,” Yoshiwara called. “Come out and meet—” He looked down at the characters written on the table. “Matsumoto, Kenji-san.”
    In the next moment, a black cat with white paws slipped into the room, tentative as he approached the table, stopping a moment to consider Kenji, then circling around their legs twice before leaping up to the table next to his master. “This is Nazo.” The black cat