Asleep in Nara (Short Story Series, Pt. 1)

While encumbered by yet another twelve-pack of Yuengling, his drink of choice, Sebastian’s grandfather had often recounted the tale of once creeping into a traditional Japanese tomb while stationed in Okinawa. Once inside, he had discovered a number of votives, pictures, and other artifacts obviously left in the recent past. Most intriguing had been a pair of boots. Black, shiny, new. With little hesitation, the American infiltrator became the American absconder.

Once he arrived back on base, he received a number of compliments on his new acquisition. His old boots were fine, of course--standard US military-issued--but no one asked him why he had done it. Before the night was through, the soldier had auctioned off his old boots for a contraband bottle of Japanese whisky.

After everyone had enjoyed a few rounds, Sebastian’s grandfather won his old boots back in an impromptu game of strip poker. There were whispers that he had cheated, but nothing grew to the level of outright accusation. The man who had sneaked the whisky in was reduced to a shivering mass, forced to cut up his bed sheets just to have the semblance of an undershirt. It wasn’t exactly legal, but the man’s ranking officer had beaten him black and blue for being foolish enough to lose what Uncle Sam was generous enough to give him.

Even as a child, and still as an adult, Sebastian always enjoyed that story. As a kid, he particularly liked the sour-sweet smell of his grandfather’s breath as he swayed back and forth to the cadence of his tale. Memories, sweet memories, washed over the old man like a song half-remembered in the moonlight.

Sebastian had been living in Nara for five months now. He was studying abroad and had survived his first semester. He was into the second one now, however, and he still hadn’t formed any real connections. He’d tried. Oh, God, he’d tried, but his efforts were fruitless.

His cohort was incredibly diverse, with representatives from Hungary, Germany, Nigeria, and of course Japan. Sebastian was the lone American. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. There had been one other. She was tall--too tall for Sebastian’s taste. He was average height, and she was at least an inch taller. The problem was exacerbated when she insisted on wearing the heels she had bought in Tokyo.

She liked to talk about Tokyo a lot, too--like it made her more cosmopolitan or something. Here they were, already literally all the way around the goddamn world, and she wanted to engage in one-upmanship--sorry, one-upwomanship. She was from Washington State, the libby part; Sebastian was from Richmond, Virginia, and proud of it.

The girls’ name had been Logan. When she first introduced herself, Sebastian visibly winced. So she’s from one of those families, he thought. The hatred was mutual. But they were Americans abroad and quickly discovered how useful it was to keep someone around who at least somewhat understood one’s own culture. Even as they grated on each other, they kept each other sane.

Over the course of the semester, their mutual hatred softened into mild annoyance. At least Logan took her namesake seriously. She was obsessed with X-Men, with Wolverine in particular, of course. Sebastian pretended to be irritated at first, but as attempted conversations with various Europeans and Japanese students withered up, he learned to embrace her love of the Marvel franchise. After all, who could hate Wolverine? They talked a lot about the forthcoming Logan movie.

After one particularly drunken night, they did their level best to not talk about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or the upcoming election. Sebastian, for the life of him, could not fathom how someone could support a candidate as corrupt as Crooked Hillary, who was so old and technologically inept that she had let like a million emails be hacked.

The one and only night they did talk politics had ended with Logan punching Sebastian on the side of the head. He was pretty sure at the time that he heard the bones around his eye socket crunch, but he would never admit a girl had punched him that hard. So he never went to the doctor or got it checked out. And so long as the lighting was right, and his face was angled the right way, you couldn’t even tell his left eye socket now looked slightly misshapen and larger than the other one.

Logan never apologized, of course. It wasn’t her style. That irritated Sebastian, too. He noticed it also wasn’t her style to let men do favors, like hold open doors, for her. After that night she punched him, whenever they were walking anywhere near each other, he made a show of scooting in front of her before every door and yanking it open to let her through. She never said anything about it--not even a thank you or a resentful grunt--but it gave Sebastian some satisfaction to see the anger glint in her eyes.

So that’s how their friendship proceeded until Logan got diagnosed with leukemia and had to very suddenly withdraw from the University and fly back to the States.

Friendship, Sebastian thought. Is that what we had? They had never been intimate, not even close. Sometimes, in fact, Sebastian wondered if Logan had been a lesbian. With a right hook like that, she must have been, right? He immediately felt guilty for entertaining such defamatory thoughts, especially considering she might be dead within the year.

As he sat at a table alone drinking his Japanese whisky, Sebastian wondered if he would ever hear from Logan again. He chuckled as he swished his drink. To think that he might actually give a damn about some libtard Washington...tonian? His grandfather would laugh at him.

His grandfather was dead, unfortunately. So any laughing would have to be from his grave, which felt fitting enough to Sebastian. He had received the news from his mother earlier in the day. Sebastian wouldn’t be able to fly home. He was in Nara on scholarship and loans and no one had the money to buy him an extra plane ticket home. He knew it was a risk when he first decided to study abroad, but he had gone in the first place because of all of his grandfather’s tales of adventures in Japan. It was a shame Sebastian wouldn’t be able to share any tales of his own.

Before he left, Sebastian had, of course, taken a few semesters of Japanese. Most of his classes were in Japanese, so he had to catch on quickly. Again, his grandfather had been helpful--sort of. Between messing up the singular and plural first-person pronouns and randomly inserting honorifics, Sebastian’s granddad had probably confused more than clarified the language for his grandson. Still, they could at least jabber about how nice the weather was:

Kyou wa ii otenki, desu ne?

Hai, sou desu ne.

Ja mata!

Iie, sayounara.

There was a sense of finality in the loud clink Sebastian’s ice cubes made as they hit the empty bottom of his whisky glass. He looked up at the bartender, but the man was busy pouring whisky into the glass of some Asian girl at the bar. Every time the bartender turned the bottle back up, she would tap the rim of the glass, and he dutifully poured again--a double, a triple. She held up a hand for him to stop, and then she downed the whole drink in a gulp before pointing to her glass again. Again, the bartender obliged.

Sebastian was at first concerned about the depleting volume of whisky, but after watching this scene transpire three times, he figured there must be another bottle back there somewhere. He settled in to watch the bartender begrudgingly fulfill the woman’s request.

After the man refused her once, she shouted at him, and, startled, he poured another drink. She was content for a while.

Sebastian approached the bar, at the far end opposite of the ornery woman, and requested another pour. As Sebastian had suspected, the bartender had to go to the back to retrieve another bottle. He returned with a bottle of higher-shelf whisky.

“Iie, iee!” Sebastian shrieked. He fumbled around in his inebriated brain for the words too expensive. “Taka sugi desu!”

The man shook his head and poured the whisky, repeating, “Sumimasen,” like a mantra.

Sebastian tried to work his mouth and mind in sync, but couldn’t quite make them meet.

“No extra charge,” the bartender said with a smile. To punctuate his point, he poured another splash on top of Sebastian’s drink.

Flabbergasted, Sebastian mumbled, “Domo arigatou gozaimashita…”

“Dou itashi mashite,” the bartender replied. He poured another splash, with a wink.

“Sumimasen!” Sebastian yelped as he snatched his drink and retreated, covering the top of the glass with one hand. He looked back over his shoulder several times, but the bartender watched him all the way back to his seat. A moment later, the woman at the end of the bar was shouting for the bartender again, and the man returned to her with the biggest smile he could muster.

Sebastian returned to his table and to his thoughts. So here he was, stuck in Nara, a month into a semester alone, no friends or anyone who spoke good English, with a bartender who seemed to be hitting on him, unable to afford a plane ticket home to attend his grandfather’s funeral, and worried about some sick libtard lesbian former exchange student he didn’t even like. Ain’t life grand? he thought.

Before he could finish his drink, a group of young Japanese people came in. They looked around the bar, debating where to sit. One of the young women kept pointing toward Sebastian’s table. One of her male friends said something, and she laughed, covering her mouth of course. It was a habit Sebastian understood as completely cultural, but it annoyed the hell out of him, anyway. She had good teeth and a great smile. Why didn’t she just move her hand and laugh like a human, damn it!?

The group made their way to Sebastian’s table. Oh, here we go, Sebastian thought. Seconds later, one of the guys was asking if his group could join him. There was only one acceptable answer, of course. They scooted in, but of course, the guys decided to flank Sebastian. He had been hoping one of the girls would sit next to him, at least. Seemed only fair to him. Instead, he was stuck next to a guy who had a far too tight shirt and wretched onion breath. They did buy Sebastian a few drinks, though, so that made the encounter better.

As the night wore on, and the group got progressively drunker, one of the guys started nudging Sebastian every time one of them made a joke. Normally, Sebastian would have felt uncomfortable about it, but they were all loose enough at that point that he didn’t care at all. In fact, he started nudging the guy right back--so hard, in fact, that he nearly toppled him into the girl seated on the guy’s other side. The girl laughed uncontrollably, using her hand to cover her perfect white teeth. Sebastian thought she looked adorably cute.

When the guy righted himself, he leaned in close to Sebastian and stage-whispered in broken English, “How about gaijin, end of bar?”

“Gaijin desu ka?” Sebastian asked. He tried to over-exaggerate his reaction, raising his eyebrows and waggling them in an approximation of what he thought Japanese emoting looked like.

“Ee,” the Japanese guy said.

“Nihonjin desu ka?”

“Uun,” the cute Japanese girl said, high-pitched, of course. She refused to make eye contact with Sebastian.

“Kanojyonihanashimasenka?” the guy on Sebastian’s other side asked.

“Nani?” Sebastian replied. “Uh, uh, girlfriend? Uh, ka-no-jyo...iie…”

He was losing track of words. The cute girl was giggling harder, leaning against her less cute friend. The guy who asked Sebastian why he didn’t just go talk to the girl at the bar stood up and gestured for Sebastian to try his luck. Sebastian tried to argue, but he couldn’t come up with a good excuse now that he was nine (ten?) drinks in. He stood up. His audience cheered. He walked right up to the girl at the bar, ordered her another whisky, and then beamed at her. His audience was snickering now.

The girl at the bar glared at him. Once her drink was poured, she gripped it, downed it, and returned the glass to the bar--never breaking eye contact with Sebastian. He summoned all his courage to not falter under that glare.

“So, uh, uh, uh, Amerikajin desu ka?” he asked.

She glared at him. He thought about repeating himself, but before he could, she cut him off.

“Iie. Kanadajin desu,” she said abruptly.

“Oh,” Sebastian replied. “Sumimasen.” He started to turn and walk away, defeated. His audience was waving their hands and shaking their heads.

“We speak English in Canada, you dumb fuck,” the girl said from behind him. Sebastian stopped and turned back toward her. She gave him her most charming, convincing smile.

“Are you going to buy me another drink or what?” she asked.

Sebastian hesitated, but only for a moment. He took a seat next to her and introduced himself. He ordered another round. Little did he realize in that moment he had already sealed his fate.