Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Summer’s breaths skipped as he darted a look at Iseya. “For me...? Wh-why?”
“Because it would appear that I was correct in anticipating your behavior.” Iseya’s gaze roved down Summer’s body, drifting, yet every lingering look as palpable as a touch of liquid fire slipping over his skin, coaxing the breath from his lungs until his chest ached and burned. “You saw to the students...and not to yourself.”
It took a moment to click, to realize where Iseya was looking.
The bruise over Summer’s ribs.
He’d already gotten used to ignoring the pain, so tired that the throbbing was just a quiet counterpoint to his exhausted heartbeat.
He flushed, face and neck warming, and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, craning to try to look down at his own chest. The mark over his ribs was starting to turn a dark, ugly purple in the shape of a kneecap.
Great.
“It’s just a bruise,” he mumbled. “I’ll get it checked out in the morning. Wasn’t worth bothering the nurse again.”
Iseya clucked his tongue, then let out an exasperated sigh. “Inside,” he ordered, then turned away sharply, his hair flicking out in a lash of dark wisps to lick against Summer’s chest before drifting away as Iseya disappeared inside his suite.
Leaving Summer blinking after him, staring through the open doorway.
Iseya...wanted him to come inside?
He stood numbly out in the hallway for several seconds longer, then cleared his throat, glancing side to side. No one in the hallway. Not that it mattered, it wasn’t like anyone would think anything seeing him going into Iseya’s suite this late at night.
So why was Summer so flustered, his face so hot?
“You have ten seconds before I close the door in your face and lock it,” drifted sharply from inside.
Summer scrambled over the threshold, and pushed the door firmly shut behind him.
And stood there like a giant dork, unmoving and staring around the suite.
He’d been here before, but Iseya’s suite looked somehow different by night. The standard-issue furniture had been replaced by quiet things in dark wood, tastefully arranged for a combination of comfort and elegance; the dark wood flooring was, in places, covered over by large tatami mats in paler tan colors, pinned in place by low long lacquered tables and chairs and a sofa made of black wicker so delicate it was like spiderwebs, accented by pale gray cushions.
When he’d been in the room before Summer had incidentally registered the tall, double-doored cabinet against the far wall, its outer finish made of polished, darkly colored rosewood. It hadn’t really sunk in as anything other than a liquor cabinet or a closed bookcase, but now its doors were open and he realized...
He’d been entirely wrong.
The interior of the cabinet had only two shelves, with the lower shelf protruding out further to form a ledge; the cabinet’s backing had been papered over with a delicate watercolor painting of a landscape, loosely written kanji pouring down the side in a story or message Summer couldn’t read. The top shelf was centered by a small golden statue of the Buddha, standing with his hand upraised and fingers parted, and flanked by two unlit white candles. On the bottom shelf was a bronze incense bowl, with two picture frames to either side. In one was a small scroll with more kanji, just a few simple characters and yet they seemed written with a sort of visual poetry that made every line of delicate black ink flow.
In the other was a photograph of a woman.
She was lovely in a delicate, willowy way, with a sort of haunting sadness to her high-cheekboned face and a way of looking to one side as if searching for some secret hidden just out of reach, her black hair swept up from her amber-gold face and knotted ornately behind her head.
Summer’s throat tightened, as he realized...
Oh.
He felt like he shouldn’t be here, all of a sudden.
Like he was intruding on something sacred.
And yet he drifted closer, drawn by that portrait of a woman, and wondered if somehow, somewhere, in some strange place...
She knew that she was still with Iseya even now.
Summer stopped in front of what he could only call a shrine, looking up at the gleaming shape of the Buddha, then at the woman.
I’m sorry, he thought. I’m... I’m sorry for wanting him so much.
“I was never raised Buddhist,” Iseya said softly at his back. “But she was. So out of respect for her memory, I placed her name in the butsudan to honor her and keep her.”
Summer looked over his shoulder. Iseya stepped out of the bathroom with a clean towel draped over his arm, a bottle of alcohol and a tin of some sort propped in the crook of his elbow. His gaze trained over Summer’s head, distant, before lowering to Summer, watching him inscrutably.
“I’m sorry,” Summer said. “I shouldn’t...have... I don’t know.”