Seduction Game (Art and Soul) Read online

  Whoa, his room was massive. And a total mess. I’d expected him to be Mr Organised and Orderly but this place was a pigsty. And, to be honest, it smelt a bit. That boy smell.

  I walked over to the desk, dodging my way around all the crap on the floor.

  “Why are you ignoring me?” I yelled.

  He looked up, then did a double take, rolling backwards in his computer chair. The look on his face cracked me up. It was then I noticed the headphones he wore.

  He hadn’t heard me.

  He slipped them off and folded his arms.

  “What do you want?”

  I moved away.

  “Nothing now, Mr Crankypants.”

  “Ha, you’ve disturbed me so you must want something. You could be a bit more respectful of other people’s privacy, you know.”

  “I knocked so much my knuckles turned red, see?” I held out my hand to show him. “It’s not my fault you couldn’t hear.”

  “Well, you could text or something.” He didn’t quite look at me but didn’t sound annoyed either. That lock of hair hanging down drove me crazy. Did he do it on purpose?

  “That is a possibility but a super lazy one.”

  “Hey, you don’t want to climb all those stairs for no reason.”

  He smiled at me then, a special smile that hit me, bang, in the girlie bits. I’d never known a smile could do that. I couldn’t stop myself from returning that smile even if I’d wanted to. Butterflies buzzed in my belly. Huge, industrial sized butterflies.

  “Anyway, I wanted to ask you a favour. This stupid haiku we have to write, I need help with it.” I blushed.

  “What kind of help?”

  I wanted to look at him but I didn’t want him to catch me looking. He’d make me go all mushy again and, even though that’s what I wanted, I wasn’t sure I could handle all the feels going on. I wanted a more controlled kind of mushiness. The lustful, throw you on your back kind of feelings, not the holding hands and carving our initials into a tree kind. Those mushy thoughts would get me nowhere.

  “The kind of help where you write it and I hand it in with my name on it would be the best kind of help.”

  “Cheating?”

  “Yep, exactly. Cheating would be totally awesome.”

  I cleared away some of the clothes from a corner of the bed and sat down. If he did this haiku for me, that would be a total win. From where I sat, I could see a bunch of certificates hanging on the wall. They were in expensive frames but hung haphazardly as though he didn’t really care about them. I wasn’t close enough to read what they said and I resisted the urge to get up and check. It just emphasised the difference between us. He was a guy who got certificates and awards. The only certificate I’d ever got was for swimming when I was in grade four.

  “I can’t do that. You can’t just write a haiku for someone else. The words don’t lie. They are as individual as your fingerprints. It would be automatically recognisable as my work.”

  I wasn’t sure about that. You had a limited number of words you could use. There wasn’t that much room for mixing things up. I kept my mouth shut, though.

  “I’ve got some work to finish off. Then I’ll help you write it. Give me about an hour or so.”

  “No worries. And maybe we could meet in the kitchen because, seriously, your room isn’t so pleasant.” I walked over to the window, planning to open it and let some fresh air in.

  “Don’t touch that.”

  My hand dropped in mid-air. He was serious.

  “Okay, if you feel like that…”

  “I don’t like my things being touched.”

  I had a childish impulse to run around the room, touching things at random, just to annoy him but then I needed help with this stupid poem. It’d be a bitch to flunk my exchange semester just because I couldn’t write it.

  “Sweet,” I said, then left.

  I didn’t have a whole lot to do but I needed to sketch out some ideas for a series of three paintings. Since I couldn’t afford to ship a huge canvas home when I finished my exchange, I had been working around that. Smaller, more detailed pieces and lots of sketches. But my soul ached to work on a giant canvas where I could really open my body up. It seemed that as my work got smaller, my ideas were cramped.

  I sat on my bed with my sketch pad on my knee, working through some ideas. I was supposed to use this exchange year for inspiration and that should be reflected in my work. After an hour of doodling though, I looked at my ideas only to find Junichi’s face woven through all my drawings. What the hell was he doing there?

  My phone buzzed and I went down to the kitchen to meet him.

  The kitchen in this place was huge, of course, with an island bench separating it from a casual sitting area with a big sofa. That sitting area was the only casual part of the house. I rarely used it because I preferred to be in my own room where I was out of sight but sometimes Shun and I watched TV there. The main living area was so stiff and formal, there wasn’t even a TV in the room.

  Hell, Junichi sat at the kitchen bench with a bunch of books on haiku. He took this very seriously. I had my notebook with the stuff I’d done so far.

  He flipped through it, then glared at me.

  “You are lousy at this,” he said.

  Whoa, no need to sugarcoat it.

  “I’m an art student, not a poetry one. I only did this stupid class because I thought it’d be the easiest one.”

  “See, that’s your problem right there. You’re taking this too lightly. If you want to be an artist, you should be able to create art with words as well. It’s the same thing.”

  “It’s so not the same thing. Words are not my tools. Brushes and paints are.”

  Junichi sighed.

  “Before you start, think of the image you want to evoke. Since it’s summer, a summer image would be best.”

  Ah, that made sense. Still, I only stared at the blank page, nothing working in my brain. A summer image? What words did you use for that?

  “Maybe you could draw something first.”

  I got my sketchbook out of my bag but then remembered all those drawings of Junichi’s face. I did not want him to see that. I tore out a page and shoved the book back in my bag.

  I started drawing images of summer. I wasn’t sure what summer was like here but I knew summer at home. I drew pictures of the beach and BBQs and all the things you associate with summer. The heat and the flies and the total exhaustion after a long swim.

  When I was done, Junichi looked at the page. Then he asked me to come up with words for the pictures. I just blurted out the first things that came into my head. He wrote them down.

  When my brain ran out of words, he put his notes in front of me. He moved closer so our bodies touched. With a red pen, he circled some words.

  “See these words, they would be good to use. They are evocative.”

  His hand brushed against mine, then he paused. I drew in my breath. We both froze with our hands barely touching. Time stopped. A slew of emotions tumbled through me like odd socks in a washing machine. Happiness, joy, embarrassment, shock.

  Then we pulled apart. He folded his arms, I sat back on my chair. An empty space existed where we’d been touching. Suddenly haiku seemed like the most beautiful thing in the world.

  CHAPTER 13

  “I guess we should order pizza,” I said.

  “Yep, I’m almost done studying.”

  Junichi sat at the bench studying, while I’d taken to the sofa to work on the haiku. I’d been shuffling those words around so much that they didn’t even make sense to me anymore. I’d finally gotten something that wasn’t too bad, in my opinion anyway. I’d surely get a pass mark for the class and that’s all I aimed for. Pizza would be an adequate reward for my work.

  “I’ve got my stupid haiku written so I’m happy.”

  “Haiku are not stupid!”

  “What? Are they your best friend? You’re so offended. Maybe you should marry them.”

  He gave m
e a look like I was too immature to bother with. That meant things were back to normal. Good. Having weird emotions floating around about Junichi was not what I wanted.

  “What sort of pizza do you want? Pepperoni?” Junichi asked me.

  “Yep, that’s fine.”

  Wow, that’d been easy. I thought it’d end up being a huge discussion about pizza and what to order and if it was sophisticated and how many calories were in things. Apparently, that didn’t matter about pizza, though.

  While he ordered the pizza, I grabbed some beers out of the fridge. After all, Mama Tachibana had told us to drink beer. I wouldn’t argue with that.

  I handed Junichi one then flopped down on the sofa and opened mine. Beer was good. I took a deep chug.

  “So, what are you studying?” I asked him.

  “Business.”

  “Well, der, yeah, I know that. But I what specifically?”

  There was a huge gap between us. A huge gap with cushions and other crap. There was no way I could bridge that distance, not this soon and not easily.

  “This semester? Probably stuff you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Yeah, that’s likely but you know what, Sunshine? It’s not really good manners to say that to someone. I mean the whole point of going to uni is that other people don’t understand what you’re studying. Otherwise, why would you pay heaps of money to study it? If Joe Average out on the street already knew it, then you could just go ask him.”

  Junichi laughed. “You have a point. I’ve been working on economic theory this afternoon.”

  I held my hand up. “Okay, you can stop right there. It’s not that other people can’t understand it. It’s that other people are bored to death. Why aren’t you studying music?”

  Junichi shrugged.

  “That’s what you love, though.”

  “It’s just a hobby. I have to take over the family business one day. I need to prepare for that.”

  I took another sip of my beer. The can was nearly empty already.

  “You don’t have to.”

  He glared at me like I’d suggested he murder a cat or something horrible. Surely, in this life, he’d actually considered that option. It wasn’t like he didn’t have free will.

  “I have to.”

  “You could just say no. ‘Mama, Papa, screw you. I’m doing my own thing with my life’.”

  He gave a joyless laugh.

  “Maybe that kind of thing is possible for people like you, but not for me. These are the things you don’t understand. I can never, ever do that. I have goals and aims, those goals and aims are in sync with what my parents want too.”

  “Ha. You said goals and aims. But you didn’t say dreams. What is your dream?”

  He had a faraway look in his eyes before the mask came back on.

  “It’s the same thing. It’s my dream. You are just getting pedantic about words.”

  “Says the guy who has gone on all afternoon about the precision of words in haiku.”

  “Haiku is different.”

  I had a whole argument to counter that but, before I could say any more, the doorbell rang.

  “Pizza!” I jumped up.

  “You stay here. I’ll get it. He might ask a question and you won’t be able to understand him because your Japanese is terrible.”

  I sat back down. He wasn’t wrong but I’d only been studying since I’d arrived. He’d been studying English for years. It wasn’t my fault I’d not had proper language-learning. I’d done French for a year in school then the teachers had changed and I’d done a bit of Italian. Then I’d dropped languages altogether. A month and a bit of Japanese wasn’t enough to learn anything useful. I could say things like “I like pizza” and “where is the toilet?” but, if someone actually told me the directions to the toilet, I’d not understand them. Most of the Japanese students in my classes preferred to talk English to me anyway, even if it was just for practice and not any real desire to get to know me. I’d never learn the language that way.

  I got back up again and got some plates out of the cupboard. We could eat sitting on the sofa, though. There was no way I’d sit in that stuffy dining room if I didn’t have to.

  The pizza smelt good. Junichi sat the boxes down on the coffee table.

  “Want to watch something?” I asked.

  “Not really. We can just listen to some music.”

  “None of that stuffy classical stuff, though.”

  He put on some rock and we sat on the sofa. It was a huge sofa and he sat right down one end. I sat the other. None of this touching.

  We both gorged ourselves on pizza. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was until I’d started eating. The pizza was so good, with gooey cheese dripping from it. The pepperoni was perfect and crunchy around the edges. Before I’d even realised, we were finished.

  I checked the boxes carefully for any hidden slices. Surely there was more in there. Japanese pizza was heaps smaller than pizza back home. If I’d known that, I’d have ordered a third one. What’s the point of pizza if you don’t have leftovers for breakfast the next day?

  Junichi handed me a napkin.

  “You were about to wipe your greasy fingers on the sofa.”

  “Was not. I’m not a complete slob.”

  He rolled his eyes as if to suggest that maybe I was. Well, I guess I could be sometimes but I could imagine Mrs Tachibana’s face if she come home to find grease stains on her sofa.

  “So, what now?” I asked. I got up and got us more beers.

  Junichi shrugged.

  When I handed him the beer, our fingertips touched for an instant. We both froze.

  “Have you ever played Truth or Dare?” I asked.

  “No, what’s that?”

  “We take it in turns to ask the other truth or dare. If you pick dare, I dare you to do something. If you pick truth, you have to answer a question truthfully.”

  “That sounds like the stupidest game. What’s in it for me? You just get to torture me for your own amusement.”

  He said that but he shot me a look that was hard to decipher. That look challenged me to talk him into it. Anyway, torturing him for my own amusement sounded good to me.

  “You get to torture me too. Oh, and if you forfeit, you have to chug down a beer.”

  He got up and walked to the dresser, opening the bottom cupboard. He got out a bottle and two shot glasses. “Let’s make this really interesting,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure what that stuff was but it looked lethal.

  CHAPTER 14

  Junichi set the glasses on the table.

  “You start,” he said.

  “Truth or dare?”

  “Truth.”

  Hell, I’d suggest this game but I’d not really prepared anything. I needed a question to ask him but nothing too intimidating. I didn’t want him backing out this early in the game.

  There was something I’d wondered about. Screw it, I’d ask him that.

  “Is it true you dated Kyoko Tanaka?”

  He gave a small laugh. “Not really. I went out with her once. Our parents are friends.”

  “She tells everyone you dated for ages.”

  Kyoko was in our haiku class too but I’d never seen Junichi do more than greet her. She told everyone they used to date but then she got sick of him. I’d always doubted that because she fussed around with her hair and makeup so much before she went into class.

  He laughed again. I don’t know why that made me happy. If he dated her or not, it was none of my business. I didn’t like her one little bit, though. She had a smarmy, smug face.

  “I can’t help what people say about me. Truth or dare?”

  “Truth.” I figured he’d not ask anything too risky.

  “How many times has Shun been to cram school since you got here?”

  Shit. I was not expecting that.

  Even if Junichi was being more friendly than usual, I still didn’t trust him. Would he tell his parents? Had I set a trap for myself? My br
ain screamed set up and I backed away from him a little.

  “Most days.”

  He just reached over and filled the shot glass. “Drink up. You lie.”

  “Okay, maybe he’s missed a few days.”

  He kept holding the glass out to me.

  “A few days a week.”

  He rolled his eyes. He knew I was lying.

  “Oh, okay, he’s not been more than two or three times. But you can’t tell anyone. It’d cause a lot of trouble for Shun, not just me.”

  “You still have to drink. Your first answer was a lie. And don’t you feel guilty that my parents are paying a lot of money for that cram school when he never goes?”

  “Nope, not one bit.” I tipped the drink down my throat. It didn’t have much taste but the afterburn was a killer. The heat spread through my body, making me relax.

  “You’re playing this truth game and you still can’t tell the truth?” He shook his head.

  Of course, I wasn’t telling the truth when it meant I could get booted out onto the street. I wasn’t a fool. Trust wasn’t something I was good with.

  “Truth or dare?”

  “Dare.”

  Again I had nothing prepared. I was totally lame at this. I could dare him to do something stupid like eat something gross or prank call someone but that all seemed childish. I needed something that would be fun and torturous. I really should’ve planned this better.

  Then I remembered something we’d learnt in my Japanese class.

  “I dare you to sing that Japanese song about the acorn. And do the actions.”

  It was a simple kid’s song but had some stupid actions where you put your arms over your head to make an acorn shape, that kind of thing.

  He grinned. “Donguri Korokoro? Sorry, I don’t know that one.”

  “Oh yeah, you do.”

  “I don’t know any actions. I just know the words.”

  I grabbed his shot glass. “Spoilt sport.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it but you will tell no one.”

  He sang the song. He had a good voice. I knew that from when I’d seen his band.

  “Your acorn is a bit lacklustre. Put more feeling into it.”

  He kept singing. He looked like he wanted to kill me.