No One Knows My Name Chapter 1
i may not have finished cleaning my room today, but im totally posting the first chap. oh yeah, im awesome :D
btw, you may notice there are many blue colored words. im experimenting with hovering text so that a word bank will no longer be necessary. to check the meaning you just have to hover over them. this way it'll be easier to read. i admit, im like ridiculously excited about this XD
Chapter 1
New York Manhattan
Megumi
I always skip the first page. You know, the one where it’s partially caught on the glue of the binding, awkwardly angled and thus uncomfortable to write on.
Oh beginnings, so awkward and formal. Where should I begin? How did it begin?
“Nee, kimi. Do you know who I am?”
I could smell the heavy alcohol rising from those bitter, Japanese words he spat at me. Despite his intoxication, he spoke without slurring, his words coldly clear and biting. I attempted to shift him toward the wooden bench against the wall, wrapping his arm about my shoulder. “Ninomiya Kazuya, de shou,” I reminded him in the same language, a bit out of breath from my exertions.
“Ninomiya Kazuya,” he repeated the name strangely, making no attempt to assist my efforts.
Growing impatient with his dead weight I snapped, “Hora suate kudasaiyo. Taku…do you want to be carried?”
But with sudden, unexpected strength, he turned out of my grasp and pressed me against the door, peering at me with blind intensity for terrifying seconds. My heart beat frenetically within his drunken grasp, and I remembered that I was only wearing a flimsy night gown. A few more seconds passed, and the crazy gleam in those lovely, dark eyes faded, leaving a face blank and puzzled.
“…who are you…?”
2 weeks earlier
“who are you?” indeed!
Which reminds me, I haven’t introduced myself properly yet. Megumi Cohen to moushimasu. Haha. As you may have guessed, I am half Japanese through my mother, and my father is a British Jew. However, I was born and raised in New York City and now I attend NYU as a senior.
Hmm? What else…my major is history. There is something comforting about its concrete stillness. It’s the present and its messy relationships I find most inscrutable. But we don’t need to talk about that… My favorite food is nattou, this sticky, fermented, smelly soy bean dish you probably don’t want to know about. I play the piano and have recently picked up the guitar. My favorite artists are Belle and Sebastian and DBSK. I like Korean guys who wear thick rimmed glasses and T.O.P, though I’ll settle for Kei who sits near me in our Ottoman history class. My mom wants me to marry a Japanese doctor, preferably a surgeon, but I don’t think she realizes how few of them there are.
Okaasan and my otouto Elijah live in Queens, so I occupy a tiny apartment in alphabet city with my best friend Yeun Saori, who is also half Japanese and a music production major attending NYU. I trudged slowly through the cruel wind on this unusually frigid December morning, resolutely clutching plastic grocery bags in each hand as I made the three block journey to my flat. Despite my apparel-thick woolen muffler and hat together covering three-fourths of my face, bulky down parka beneath my long winter coat with gloves, several socks within my “ugg-like” boots which made me look like a tool-I could feel the cold biting into my being, the thin cord of the bags piercing frozen fingers. A grimace after meeting the shock of remorseless wind running through the long and wide second avenue remained etched upon my dry and bleeding lips until my apartment entrance entered my sight. Even more welcome, the door slowly creaked open, meeting a significant resistance by the wind before abruptly swinging widely open.
Muttered curses vaguely carried by the wind floated by my muffled ears and I recognized my landlord, similarly attired, stepping out the door with no little reluctance. Surprised to see him, for he lived in Chelsea and rarely came by, I hollered out, “Good morning!” Seeing my bags he politely held open the door for me. Perhaps looking for an excuse to linger in the apartment’s warmth, he offered to carry my bags to the elevator.
“Megumi isn’t it?” he asked, peering into my red, chapped face.
“Yup. Megumi Cohen,” I confirmed without taking offense. He only saw me a couple times a year, out of the fifty residents in the building. “What brings you here today?” I asked, partly to make conversation and partly out of real curiosity.
He gave a yawn. “Just checking on a room. Tomorrow or the day after I have a new tenant moving in. Actually, I believe it is the apartment next to yours.”
The apartment in question had been empty for the past three months, an improvement on its previous occupant with his penchant for weed and strange noises throughout the night. Aloud I said, “Well there’s nothing I love more than neighbors.”
Cracking a smile for my sarcasm he replied in a reassuring manner. “This guy is an international student, from Japan actually. Seeing how much he’s paying to come here I can’t see him being too much trouble. Anyway I suppose it won’t get warmer outside by standing here. If I don’t see you, have a great Christmas!”
“Thanks, you too!” I called after him, thinking it ironic as the child of a Buddhist and a Jew. I guess he’s just unlucky, I thought as I entered the elevator, unwrapping my muffler. Still, my last name is Cohen. You’d think he’d stick with a more general “Happy New Years” or something.
The long hallway was fairly quiet but for the padding of my rubber soled boots. I turned at the very end to the smaller enclave which held only two doors, separated by a wooden bench (which as far as I knew only existed on this floor), where I settled my groceries to unlock the door. Before turning the handle I spared a brief glance at the door behind me, for now quiet and innocuous, and made a face.
“Tadaima,” I announced, entering the apartment with a weary sigh. I blinked. The lights were off, and an open suitcase overflowing with clothes occupied the hallway. Several reject items lay piled on the couch, but a couple had fallen to the floor. Pursing my lips, not so much in disapproval as in confusion, I quickly put my groceries away, and hurried over to Saori’s room, where I found her sleeping, fully clothed, sprawled above the comforter.
Unrestricted to dorm furniture and standards, Saori expressed herself in voluminous damask and sheer drapery about windows and bed. Instead of the usual thin, twin frame there was her full sized bed from home, outfitted with turquoise jersey sheets and a pale blue comforter accompanied by embroidered, lacy beaded pillows. I grabbed hold of a decorative pillow and smacked her firmly on the bottom.
A low groan escaped from beneath a mass of fine, dark hair touched with honey, though traces of a deeper shade were noticeable around her scalp by her neck. She curled around a pillow, from her posture, unwelcoming my presence.
“Nee, Saori,” I tried again. “Shouldn’t you be packing? It’s 12 o’clock. You only have about an hour till your brother is coming to get you.”
The tousled head shot up abruptly. “Shit. It’s already 12??”
I watched with bemusement as Saori threw herself from the bed and scrambled to the floor, crouching upon her hind legs as she peered under the bed skirt. Muttered Korean expletives issued forth as she rifled through a plastic crate with one hand, the other tying a hasty bun of her shinning unnaturally hued tresses. Though fully trilingual in Korean, Japanese and English, Saori spoke Korean as her mother tongue, and often lapsed into its inscrutable consonants when stressed, at once familiar and mysterious to me. A child of mixed parentage myself, I can only boast at English fluency and mostly fluent Japanese, a smattering of Hebrew and a few words of Italian after I submitted to the language requirements of high school. Though testing out of Japanese for NYU’s similar demands, I’d always wished to learn Korean. Alas, despite hours of Korean drama I remain dismally inept.
“What are you looking for anyway?” I asked curiously, my gaze drifting over the disarray her room had become. There were open drawers and crates pulled from her small closet and clothes democratically piled in what used to be a comfortably sized apartment bedroom floor.
Saori rose from the ground, forcing long bangs behind an ear with a scowl on her pretty face. Still glancing about the room she spoke distractedly. “I can’t find the thing…”
“The thing?” I asked, the following her from the room.
“Yes yes the thing…”-more Korean mumbling, forgive me for not transcribing them faithfully-“the thing, um Yuh Jin’s present! Have you seen it?”
I settled upon the couch, fluffing the large flowered pillow which occupied a significant portion of its space, and wrapped my arms about it. I watched as Saori reshuffled the suitcase in search of said item.
“Yuh Jin’s present?” I remembered her question. “It’s in the coat closet remember, on the top shelf.”
Saori paused in her search, a comically arrested look on her face. “Ohh! You’re right, you’re right!” She bounded to her feet, rushing to the closet, twisting its handle with what appeared undue force to find the precious item. Once within her grasp, she clutched the package to her chest exclaiming, “Hontou ni yokatta! Meguchan sankyuu!” She rushed to the couch and threw her arms around me.
I laughed breathlessly. “Hai hai… eto… cheonmaneyo,” I told her, proudly using one of the five Korean words I know.
Saori gasped. “Omo, what amazing pronunciation! You're really Korean aren't you!”
“Anyo anyo.” I told her airily, “you praise me too much.”
She rose from the couch, with her excess energy dancing about the coffee table. Over her shoulder she called, “Now if only you could show Kei-kun some of your lilting Korean tongue,” she coursed back to the couch grinning evilly, “he may disobey his stifling mother’s restrictions for a Korean wife.”
I stuck my tongue out. “If I wanted advice I’d have called my mother,” was my somewhat resentful reply. There was more truth to Saori’s joking than I liked to acknowledge. Despite myself I begged for a bone. “How’d your mom bag a Korean?”
Saori laughed her lovely, rich laughter that made people turn to look and want to know her, that transformed her from merely pretty to fascinating. “She learned to make a soon dobu that’ll make hard men weep,” she told me solemnly, but she was hard-pressed to keep a silly grin off her face as she did so. That was another endearing quality of Saori. She couldn’t help but laugh at her own jokes.
“But I’m going to miss you Meguchan! A whole three weeks in Korea, what will you do without me?” her tone shifted to plaintiveness suddenly.
“Which reminds me,” I said, rising from the couch and walking to the kitchen. I grabbed a bag left on the counter and drew up a chair at the small dinner table. “Hora, look what I bought at Sunrise Mart.”
Saori gasped and rushed over to inspect the treasures which poured from its plastic depths. Sunrise Mart is a small Japanese supermarket a couple blocks away; as far as I know the only reasonably priced one in Greenwich Village. T_T Just saying. I bought all her favorite snacks-Kasugai gummies, spicy crackers, osenbei, umeboshi onigiri and even a ramen bowl. “I would have got you a ramune but you can’t take it passed security anyway. Still, a care package was in order, so I thought.”
“Aww that was so sweet of you!” Saori told me, and I thought there may have actually been tears in her eyes. “Meguchan…this is worth four, nay seven Kei-sans!”
I laughed, though I knew if she could, she would. It was our usual parting joke (until Saori began her more serious relationship with Yuh Jin) before any trip abroad to bring back any eligible men. I clasped her hands in mine with exaggerated heartfelt-ness. “Saori, sankyuu, sankyuu.”
Still-I thought with a sigh, as Saori remembered she was supposed to finish packing before Jae Ha came in less than an hour and rushed off in a frenetic two step-it would be a dull three weeks. As a senior I was struggling in writing my honors thesis paper, which, unfortunately, had as yet little reduced the massive pile of research on the Ismaeli Hassassins into anything resembling a thesis paper. As much as I would have loved to rot at home with my family, I had a date with my computer. Hearing Saori burst into song from her bedroom, some kpop I recognized from previous occasions, I sighed again.
Little did I know my life was going to become much more interesting, and much sooner than I could have imagined.
Somewhere over the Pacific; 13 hours ago
Ninomiya Kazunari
I hate airplanes… is the conclusion I came to after a grueling four hours of wrestling for space on the armrest from my much bulkier neighbor, playing my DS for an hour before it made me plane sick, sampling the economy dinner option, and trying my damnedest not to think about the reason for this trip. Thinking about him.
I shuddered, unconsciously flattening the gray skullcap upon my head, causing my thick rimmed, ornamental glasses to jut forward uncomfortably. Scowling, I pushed them a bit harshly against the bridge of my nose, wincing at the unnecessary force applied. Really, as luxurious as a private jet can be, I’d forgotten just how awful economy is. Not to mention a 12 hour plane trip to America. I sighed, turning in my seat to face the window, as much of my back as possible to my pushy neighbor. But flying even first class wouldn’t be conducive to keeping a low cover. Thought of this critical factor was sufficient to dampen the worst irritation with economy.
I closed my eyes with determination, as if sleep would inevitably follow if I hoped enough. Recent events have proved the utter futility of such hopes. As if wanting anything badly enough equated reality. I was an idiot. Deluded to think-
STOP. Don’t think of him.
…
Sho-kun will be furious. I smiled bitterly, remembering the text message I sent him before the plane took off, revealing my true intentions, my true destination. Well, at least that they aren’t what I said they were. How would he guess that this journey abroad, this “sabbatical” escape is pretty much what the jimusho told the media I’d be doing?
Nihon, sayonara. Riida, sayonara
Ninomiya Kazunari
once of arashi
btw, you may notice there are many blue colored words. im experimenting with hovering text so that a word bank will no longer be necessary. to check the meaning you just have to hover over them. this way it'll be easier to read. i admit, im like ridiculously excited about this XD
Chapter 1
New York Manhattan
Megumi
I always skip the first page. You know, the one where it’s partially caught on the glue of the binding, awkwardly angled and thus uncomfortable to write on.
Oh beginnings, so awkward and formal. Where should I begin? How did it begin?
“Nee, kimi. Do you know who I am?”
I could smell the heavy alcohol rising from those bitter, Japanese words he spat at me. Despite his intoxication, he spoke without slurring, his words coldly clear and biting. I attempted to shift him toward the wooden bench against the wall, wrapping his arm about my shoulder. “Ninomiya Kazuya, de shou,” I reminded him in the same language, a bit out of breath from my exertions.
“Ninomiya Kazuya,” he repeated the name strangely, making no attempt to assist my efforts.
Growing impatient with his dead weight I snapped, “Hora suate kudasaiyo. Taku…do you want to be carried?”
But with sudden, unexpected strength, he turned out of my grasp and pressed me against the door, peering at me with blind intensity for terrifying seconds. My heart beat frenetically within his drunken grasp, and I remembered that I was only wearing a flimsy night gown. A few more seconds passed, and the crazy gleam in those lovely, dark eyes faded, leaving a face blank and puzzled.
“…who are you…?”
2 weeks earlier
“who are you?” indeed!
Which reminds me, I haven’t introduced myself properly yet. Megumi Cohen to moushimasu. Haha. As you may have guessed, I am half Japanese through my mother, and my father is a British Jew. However, I was born and raised in New York City and now I attend NYU as a senior.
Hmm? What else…my major is history. There is something comforting about its concrete stillness. It’s the present and its messy relationships I find most inscrutable. But we don’t need to talk about that… My favorite food is nattou, this sticky, fermented, smelly soy bean dish you probably don’t want to know about. I play the piano and have recently picked up the guitar. My favorite artists are Belle and Sebastian and DBSK. I like Korean guys who wear thick rimmed glasses and T.O.P, though I’ll settle for Kei who sits near me in our Ottoman history class. My mom wants me to marry a Japanese doctor, preferably a surgeon, but I don’t think she realizes how few of them there are.
Okaasan and my otouto Elijah live in Queens, so I occupy a tiny apartment in alphabet city with my best friend Yeun Saori, who is also half Japanese and a music production major attending NYU. I trudged slowly through the cruel wind on this unusually frigid December morning, resolutely clutching plastic grocery bags in each hand as I made the three block journey to my flat. Despite my apparel-thick woolen muffler and hat together covering three-fourths of my face, bulky down parka beneath my long winter coat with gloves, several socks within my “ugg-like” boots which made me look like a tool-I could feel the cold biting into my being, the thin cord of the bags piercing frozen fingers. A grimace after meeting the shock of remorseless wind running through the long and wide second avenue remained etched upon my dry and bleeding lips until my apartment entrance entered my sight. Even more welcome, the door slowly creaked open, meeting a significant resistance by the wind before abruptly swinging widely open.
Muttered curses vaguely carried by the wind floated by my muffled ears and I recognized my landlord, similarly attired, stepping out the door with no little reluctance. Surprised to see him, for he lived in Chelsea and rarely came by, I hollered out, “Good morning!” Seeing my bags he politely held open the door for me. Perhaps looking for an excuse to linger in the apartment’s warmth, he offered to carry my bags to the elevator.
“Megumi isn’t it?” he asked, peering into my red, chapped face.
“Yup. Megumi Cohen,” I confirmed without taking offense. He only saw me a couple times a year, out of the fifty residents in the building. “What brings you here today?” I asked, partly to make conversation and partly out of real curiosity.
He gave a yawn. “Just checking on a room. Tomorrow or the day after I have a new tenant moving in. Actually, I believe it is the apartment next to yours.”
The apartment in question had been empty for the past three months, an improvement on its previous occupant with his penchant for weed and strange noises throughout the night. Aloud I said, “Well there’s nothing I love more than neighbors.”
Cracking a smile for my sarcasm he replied in a reassuring manner. “This guy is an international student, from Japan actually. Seeing how much he’s paying to come here I can’t see him being too much trouble. Anyway I suppose it won’t get warmer outside by standing here. If I don’t see you, have a great Christmas!”
“Thanks, you too!” I called after him, thinking it ironic as the child of a Buddhist and a Jew. I guess he’s just unlucky, I thought as I entered the elevator, unwrapping my muffler. Still, my last name is Cohen. You’d think he’d stick with a more general “Happy New Years” or something.
The long hallway was fairly quiet but for the padding of my rubber soled boots. I turned at the very end to the smaller enclave which held only two doors, separated by a wooden bench (which as far as I knew only existed on this floor), where I settled my groceries to unlock the door. Before turning the handle I spared a brief glance at the door behind me, for now quiet and innocuous, and made a face.
“Tadaima,” I announced, entering the apartment with a weary sigh. I blinked. The lights were off, and an open suitcase overflowing with clothes occupied the hallway. Several reject items lay piled on the couch, but a couple had fallen to the floor. Pursing my lips, not so much in disapproval as in confusion, I quickly put my groceries away, and hurried over to Saori’s room, where I found her sleeping, fully clothed, sprawled above the comforter.
Unrestricted to dorm furniture and standards, Saori expressed herself in voluminous damask and sheer drapery about windows and bed. Instead of the usual thin, twin frame there was her full sized bed from home, outfitted with turquoise jersey sheets and a pale blue comforter accompanied by embroidered, lacy beaded pillows. I grabbed hold of a decorative pillow and smacked her firmly on the bottom.
A low groan escaped from beneath a mass of fine, dark hair touched with honey, though traces of a deeper shade were noticeable around her scalp by her neck. She curled around a pillow, from her posture, unwelcoming my presence.
“Nee, Saori,” I tried again. “Shouldn’t you be packing? It’s 12 o’clock. You only have about an hour till your brother is coming to get you.”
The tousled head shot up abruptly. “Shit. It’s already 12??”
I watched with bemusement as Saori threw herself from the bed and scrambled to the floor, crouching upon her hind legs as she peered under the bed skirt. Muttered Korean expletives issued forth as she rifled through a plastic crate with one hand, the other tying a hasty bun of her shinning unnaturally hued tresses. Though fully trilingual in Korean, Japanese and English, Saori spoke Korean as her mother tongue, and often lapsed into its inscrutable consonants when stressed, at once familiar and mysterious to me. A child of mixed parentage myself, I can only boast at English fluency and mostly fluent Japanese, a smattering of Hebrew and a few words of Italian after I submitted to the language requirements of high school. Though testing out of Japanese for NYU’s similar demands, I’d always wished to learn Korean. Alas, despite hours of Korean drama I remain dismally inept.
“What are you looking for anyway?” I asked curiously, my gaze drifting over the disarray her room had become. There were open drawers and crates pulled from her small closet and clothes democratically piled in what used to be a comfortably sized apartment bedroom floor.
Saori rose from the ground, forcing long bangs behind an ear with a scowl on her pretty face. Still glancing about the room she spoke distractedly. “I can’t find the thing…”
“The thing?” I asked, the following her from the room.
“Yes yes the thing…”-more Korean mumbling, forgive me for not transcribing them faithfully-“the thing, um Yuh Jin’s present! Have you seen it?”
I settled upon the couch, fluffing the large flowered pillow which occupied a significant portion of its space, and wrapped my arms about it. I watched as Saori reshuffled the suitcase in search of said item.
“Yuh Jin’s present?” I remembered her question. “It’s in the coat closet remember, on the top shelf.”
Saori paused in her search, a comically arrested look on her face. “Ohh! You’re right, you’re right!” She bounded to her feet, rushing to the closet, twisting its handle with what appeared undue force to find the precious item. Once within her grasp, she clutched the package to her chest exclaiming, “Hontou ni yokatta! Meguchan sankyuu!” She rushed to the couch and threw her arms around me.
I laughed breathlessly. “Hai hai… eto… cheonmaneyo,” I told her, proudly using one of the five Korean words I know.
Saori gasped. “Omo, what amazing pronunciation! You're really Korean aren't you!”
“Anyo anyo.” I told her airily, “you praise me too much.”
She rose from the couch, with her excess energy dancing about the coffee table. Over her shoulder she called, “Now if only you could show Kei-kun some of your lilting Korean tongue,” she coursed back to the couch grinning evilly, “he may disobey his stifling mother’s restrictions for a Korean wife.”
I stuck my tongue out. “If I wanted advice I’d have called my mother,” was my somewhat resentful reply. There was more truth to Saori’s joking than I liked to acknowledge. Despite myself I begged for a bone. “How’d your mom bag a Korean?”
Saori laughed her lovely, rich laughter that made people turn to look and want to know her, that transformed her from merely pretty to fascinating. “She learned to make a soon dobu that’ll make hard men weep,” she told me solemnly, but she was hard-pressed to keep a silly grin off her face as she did so. That was another endearing quality of Saori. She couldn’t help but laugh at her own jokes.
“But I’m going to miss you Meguchan! A whole three weeks in Korea, what will you do without me?” her tone shifted to plaintiveness suddenly.
“Which reminds me,” I said, rising from the couch and walking to the kitchen. I grabbed a bag left on the counter and drew up a chair at the small dinner table. “Hora, look what I bought at Sunrise Mart.”
Saori gasped and rushed over to inspect the treasures which poured from its plastic depths. Sunrise Mart is a small Japanese supermarket a couple blocks away; as far as I know the only reasonably priced one in Greenwich Village. T_T Just saying. I bought all her favorite snacks-Kasugai gummies, spicy crackers, osenbei, umeboshi onigiri and even a ramen bowl. “I would have got you a ramune but you can’t take it passed security anyway. Still, a care package was in order, so I thought.”
“Aww that was so sweet of you!” Saori told me, and I thought there may have actually been tears in her eyes. “Meguchan…this is worth four, nay seven Kei-sans!”
I laughed, though I knew if she could, she would. It was our usual parting joke (until Saori began her more serious relationship with Yuh Jin) before any trip abroad to bring back any eligible men. I clasped her hands in mine with exaggerated heartfelt-ness. “Saori, sankyuu, sankyuu.”
Still-I thought with a sigh, as Saori remembered she was supposed to finish packing before Jae Ha came in less than an hour and rushed off in a frenetic two step-it would be a dull three weeks. As a senior I was struggling in writing my honors thesis paper, which, unfortunately, had as yet little reduced the massive pile of research on the Ismaeli Hassassins into anything resembling a thesis paper. As much as I would have loved to rot at home with my family, I had a date with my computer. Hearing Saori burst into song from her bedroom, some kpop I recognized from previous occasions, I sighed again.
Little did I know my life was going to become much more interesting, and much sooner than I could have imagined.
Somewhere over the Pacific; 13 hours ago
Ninomiya Kazunari
I hate airplanes… is the conclusion I came to after a grueling four hours of wrestling for space on the armrest from my much bulkier neighbor, playing my DS for an hour before it made me plane sick, sampling the economy dinner option, and trying my damnedest not to think about the reason for this trip. Thinking about him.
I shuddered, unconsciously flattening the gray skullcap upon my head, causing my thick rimmed, ornamental glasses to jut forward uncomfortably. Scowling, I pushed them a bit harshly against the bridge of my nose, wincing at the unnecessary force applied. Really, as luxurious as a private jet can be, I’d forgotten just how awful economy is. Not to mention a 12 hour plane trip to America. I sighed, turning in my seat to face the window, as much of my back as possible to my pushy neighbor. But flying even first class wouldn’t be conducive to keeping a low cover. Thought of this critical factor was sufficient to dampen the worst irritation with economy.
I closed my eyes with determination, as if sleep would inevitably follow if I hoped enough. Recent events have proved the utter futility of such hopes. As if wanting anything badly enough equated reality. I was an idiot. Deluded to think-
STOP. Don’t think of him.
…
Sho-kun will be furious. I smiled bitterly, remembering the text message I sent him before the plane took off, revealing my true intentions, my true destination. Well, at least that they aren’t what I said they were. How would he guess that this journey abroad, this “sabbatical” escape is pretty much what the jimusho told the media I’d be doing?
Nihon, sayonara. Riida, sayonara
Ninomiya Kazunari
once of arashi