I looked down at it, but saw no wound.
Sighing, I looked at the next picture and touched my chest.
Mother.
Suddenly I smelled jasmine tea and swallowed down the delicate sweetness. I heard my mother’s soft humming—always a quiet melody mingling with the porcelain teapot’s gentle clicking as the lid tapped against the rim.
I could see and feel the warm steam curling upward and carrying the floral fragrance of her memory.
In the picture, my mother wore a pale blue kimono and her long hair was pinned back.
And because my Tiger must have enjoyed being cruel to us, she’d placed a picture of my brother Jobon next to her.
The Wolf.
I trembled.
The sword who never hesitated.
I recognized this one from his last birthday party. My brother, Jobon wore a black suit and was laughing, probably at something Hiro had said. Only Hiro could make him boldly laugh in that way.
And then I heard my brother’s sword slice into his enemies. Wet sounds came at a brutal rhythm of steel meeting flesh over and over. I saw the red blood dripping down the blade and pooling at his feet. I breathed the scent of death that clung onJobon’s fingers even when he’d spent several minutes scrubbing them clean.
I closed my eyes.
I don’t want this.
I didn’t know how long it took me to open my eyes again, but when I did. . .I took in the last picture.
Reo's mother.
A small woman with dark hair pulled back and gentle eyes.
She was Thai and had worked as a maid in a luxury hotel in Bangkok. Reo’s father had been a Japanese business man who traveled to Bangkok a lot. She became his secret mistress, and he’d had kids with her and kept them in Thailand away from his wife and kids in Tokyo.
That was until Reo’s mother grew sick and passed on Reo’s eleventh birthday. The man was forced to deal with his kids and brought them to Japan, but under the guise of. . .new young servants to work in his house with his real family—a wife, two daughters, and three brothers.
Reo could never tell his half-siblings that he was their brother. All he could do was serve. He did so dutifully, sleeping in the servant quarters, mopping and cleaning his siblings’ bathrooms, and washing their dirty clothes.
Even now. . .after I’d killed his father. . .that secret remained.
I thought about how Reo always kept a bottle of his mother's favorite perfume on his nightstand. We never talked about why he did it, but after a few months he would always need to buy a new one.
Reo was using it in some way.
I often imagined he sprayed the fragrance in the air before he went to sleep and thought of her when he closed his eyes.
Perhaps, the scent would linger in the darkness and give him some sense of peace. And maybe in the morning, he would waketo a room that smelled like his mother. . .and that would comfort him too.
I smelled that scent now and fisted my hands at my sides.
Whiplash.
That was the word for what I had experienced. The only word my mind would hand me. Minutes ago, we’d all been laughing, drinking, and eating.
It had been joy.
And then the curtains opened and the emotions quickly reversed.
