“Yeah, we’re going for a walk,” Lee answered in Japanese.
“Then she needs to leave that behind,” Hina said, jerking a finger at Sen.
It took Lee a moment to understand that she meant thekatana. Lee didn’t know if Sen understood English, but she put a hand on her blade all the same.
“You can’t carry a katana in public,” Hina said, this time in Japanese, turning to Sen.
“Why not?” Sen said, eyes narrowed.
“It’s illegal,” Hina said simply.
Lee clenched his teeth, regretting that he’d brought Sen to the kitchen. It wouldn’t take Sen long to figure out that if carrying a katana was illegal, there were no samurai in 2026. And if there were no samurai, the second rebellion she’d mentioned had failed. If she felt all hope was lost, she might forego their agreement entirely.
Sen pressed her lips together, and for a moment Lee worried she would cut Hina down rather than abandon her sword. But she stiffly worked the katana out of the straps of her clothing and set it on the table.
“Have fun,” Hina said airily, then disappeared into the shadows of the hallway.
Sen stood very still, staring at the space where Hina had been, fists clenched at her sides.
“Lee,” she said quietly, still facing away from him, “there are no samurai in your time, are there?”
Lee wanted to lie to her. Because if he told her the truth, she would know that everything she’d trained for was a waste of time. But he knew from the way her voice trembled that she already knew the answer and only needed him to say it. He wanted the truth, so it was only fair to offer Sen the same.
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Sen stood still for a moment longer, staring into the dark hallway. She hardly breathed at all, her posture so stiff that she looked more like a marble statue than a real person.
Lee knew that human brains could be slow to accept difficult truths, that they would do anything at all to cast that information back out to sea. Even when confronted with the truth, most people couldn’t swallow it whole, or they’d choke.
He watched as this truth washed over Sen, its cold waters rising above her head. Her pupils expanded, her eyes filling with shadows, her breath slowing down. She stared into the empty hallway, but her mind was somewhere far away.
Lee felt the strange sensation that he was outside his body, watching a film of his own life. He had seen this moment before, somewhere, somehow. He could taste the exquisite agony of Sen’s broken heart. He knew this feeling.
He was twelve years old, sitting at the kitchen table, and his father was telling him that his mom was never coming home. And it hadn’t hurt that much at the time, because he’d folded himself into a suitcase in his mind and gone somewhere far away. He wondered where Sen had just gone.
“We still remember them,” Lee said.
Sen blinked slowly, then turned and faced Lee, her pupils gaping chasms of black. “What?”
“There’s a samurai museum in town, and lots of books and movies,” he said. “Even in America, everyone knows about the samurai. So, while you can’t carry around a sword in public anymore, the samurai aren’t really gone.”
Sen tilted her head, looking at him strangely, and Lee replayed the last sentence in his mind to check if he’d made a mistake in Japanese. But then a small smile curved the corner of Sen’s mouth.
“Some things are better left in the past,” she said. “But thank you, Lee Turner.”
Then she turned and headed for the door, through the house that she already knew, for she had lived there a hundred years ago. Lee hurried after her down the front steps, casting one last glance back at the house. Hina stood in the window, her expression dark as she watched them walk away.
Chapter Fifteen
Sen
Long ago, Sen’s mother sacrificed her to the sea.
It was all because of her first katana, which her father had given to her when she was five years old. She’d spent all day chopping sugarcane stalks to get a feel for the sword’s weight. She’d watched her reflection in the river with awe, enchanted by the sight of herself with a katana like a true warrior.
When her mother called her for dinner, Sen ran home with her sword held high, rushing in through the porch.
She tripped over her mother’s feet as she ran through the doorway. Her katana clattered to the floor, nearly chopping her own fingers off. Her baby brother Seijiro started crying in his mother’s arms.
