Summer Girl, Winter Boy

Ten | Hatsu - The First

The next time Wim saw Shou, it was at the Shinagawa Estate on New Year’s Eve.

She was ambushed that morning, just outside the kitchen by Yusuke and Daichi.

‘Coat!’ She protested as they swept her bodily out of the gate. ‘Hat! Cold!’

She was promptly smothered in winter wear two sizes too large infused with very expensive Por Homme and boy sweat.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘To a place where you’ll never see your family again!’ roared Yusuke in his best Darth Vader.

‘My house nee-san,’ Daichi folded the beanie from over her eyes so she could see the avenue up which they carried her. ‘You can’t spend shogatsu alone like you did Christmas! Not when we’re here!’

‘You’ll love it!’ Yusuke assured her. ‘Casa Shinagawa throws the best New Year parties on the island!’

Casa Shinagawa seemed an appropriate name for the white marble monstrosity that was much more than a house. It could have been three storeys high, but its modernistic architecture made it impossible for Wim to guess. Spacious window boxes with French windows jutted out at odd angles, powdered snow decorating the ledges. Every inch of the sprawling lawn had been cleared of snow and Wim supposed that in the warmer seasons the garden must be manicured down to a single blade of grass.

The gate that opened automatically to let them through was possibly filigreed in real gold.

Yusuke and Daichi ushered Wim up the granite, front steps onto a tastefully minimalistic porch decorated with bamboo furniture and pots of evergreens.

The front doors were dark chocolate and adorned with little prayer leaves for the New Year, amidst them a rectangular plaque reading, ‘Caution: Hot Boys Inside!’ in English.

‘My mother’s idea of a joke, Daichi shrugged off Wim’s incredulous stare with a good-natured smirk. ‘Fair warning, she says.’ He went to open the doors that swung out before he touched them, spilling a dishevelled Shou onto the porch.

A quick gust rippled past Wim, plunging the assortment of wind chimes hanging off the roof, each a ward against a specific type of yokai; to jangle a merry tune and mussing Shou’s pretty hair all over his sparkly eyes.

Wim recalled Christmas Day and blushed, her throat suddenly parched.

Shou caught himself staring and blushed too.

‘Sister-in-law is here!’ Yusuke told him while Wim tried to calculate how fast she’d have to run to get out of the gate. Shou backed into the door, turning deeper and deeper into shades of salmon and dawn.

‘Shou-chan? Are you leaving?’

A portly woman with thick, ruddy cheeks and arms the size of small missiles shuffled through the doorway, wiping large hands on a washcloth. ‘Did she attack you?’ Her laugh rumbled in her recesses for a good long while before it gushed out of her big, red mouth.