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Rikichi didn’t recognize the girl who stood outside the school gate. She was lazily sweeping along the ground, her back turned to him, strands of her hair lifting in the light breeze. She looked young – maybe a kunoichi he’d never seen before? He approached, business smile on, and greeted her with a smooth “hello.”
She turned, and a slap of fear struck Rikichi blunt across his whole body. He had to take her in one part at a time. Blindingly pink lips that devoured the entire bottom half of her face. Cheeks splashed with a color that looked more like blood than blush. Eyes ringed black and wide like some creature of the night. Gooseflesh swarmed up Rikichi’s limbs. He’d felt this dread before. There was something disquieting about her that he couldn’t quite place; he shivered imagining those lips assailing his cheek.
The creature spoke. “Oh, Rikichi,” a familiar voice said. “Please sign in.”
Rikichi took the sign-in sheet, his eyes never leaving Komatsuda’s face. Komatsuda’s eyes never left him, either, staring at him from behind that dark, spindly paint; Komatsuda was an animal tucked deep in the forest in the dead of night, and Rikichi was the prey. Rikichi returned the sheet.
“Your handwriting’s so messy today,” Komatsuda said, holding up the sheet in front of him.
“Say, Komatsuda,” Rikichi started.
“Aww, you saw through my disguise?” Komatsuda said. “That’s why you’re a pro.”
It didn’t take a pro – just someone with eyes.
“But don’t you think my disguise is amazing?” Komatsuda asked. “I must be as pretty as any of the kunoichi.”
“What’s with the crossdressing anyway?”
“Oh, right. Yamada-sensei – I mean, Denko was giving 1-Ha a lesson on crossdressing today, so I asked if I could join in, too. And ta-da! This is the result.”
There was the source of unease Rikichi couldn’t name. Everything fell into place. What was his father doing, making up Komatsuda like this? Burying Komatsuda’s face in powder as thick as Komatsuda himself. Komatsuda’s misplaced confidence annoyed Rikichi, those flights of fancy even more, but the fact that his father had looked at this mess and let Komatsuda go out in it was what annoyed him the most. His father was away from home all the time teaching classes and he couldn’t even teach them properly. Rikichi had to nip this in the bud; Komatsuda couldn’t go on thinking this was how things worked.
“Here,” Rikichi said, holding a hand out. “Come with me.”
Komatsuda’s gaze went back and forth between Rikichi’s hand and face. “Eh—Rikichi, I know I look like a cute girl, but you’re not suggesting you and I...?”
“No, you idiot! I’m going to fix my father’s mistake.”
Rikichi gripped Komatsuda’s hand and pulled him through the school gate. Students stared as they went by, and Komatsuda let out a satisfied little laugh when one of them asked who the girl with Rikichi was. Rikichi looked back to make sure Komatsuda was keeping up with him, watching Komatsuda’s legs tangling beneath his kimono. A flicker of pink tongue from out of those lacquer red lips, cheeks that looked like rounded, ruddy globes. The look of pride in Komatsuda’s eyes seemed out of place.
“Sit,” Rikichi said when they’d reached Komatsuda’s room. Compacts and brushes were still strewn out on the table, and he yanked one of the towels up. Komatsuda, now sitting with legs folded under him, didn’t fare any better in the room’s scattered light. Rouge, blush, and paint smothered him.
“Is there something you needed to do in here?” Komatsuda asked. Then his eyes grew even wider and he opened his garish mouth: “Are you finally going to teach me ninjutsu?”
Rikichi leaned over Komatsuda without a word. Then, like he was cleaning a stubborn stain, he vigorously rubbed the towel across Komatsuda’s face. Over the ridges of Komatsuda’s cheeks and across his eyes, scrubbing his lips, trying to get off that hideous mask his father had painted on. Komatsuda squirmed, pulling back, fighting against Rikichi’s hold. Rikichi closed his hand around Komatsuda’s chin and locked his head in place. “Rigiji,” Komatsuda’s voice wriggled out from under the towel.
When Rikichi released him, Komatsuda toppled back onto the floor. His legs flew up and open, exposing bare calves and knees covered with thin, fine hairs. Rikichi glanced at the mountain of make-up caked onto the towel, then dropped it back on the table.
“Please don’t bully me,” Komatsuda said, rubbing his cheeks. His face was burnished red and framed by straggles of hair that hung like long, wilted grass. Rikichi reached around Komatsuda and yanked his hair loose. The rest of Komatsuda’s brown locks poured out over his shoulders. Rikichi went down on his knees, studying Komatsuda’s face.
“What is it?” Komatsuda said.
Komatsuda’s face came in two types. One: always moving, smiling, you-wouldn’t-believe-his-face-ever-stopped, talking and crying and yelling. Two: loose and dumb, mouth in an O, eyes that blinked listlessly, a face that only his brother could love. Now, sitting here with Komatsuda in front of him, face freshly undone, Rikichi saw a third type emerging: Komatsuda, mouth drawn but not too tight, eyes forward, staying calm and still – a normal person. Rikichi narrowed his eyes, studying each part of Komatsuda’s face. If he kept his mouth shut, then Komatsuda really wasn’t that bad-looking. Plump, youthful cheeks, full lips, those soft, choppy brows – with all that, he could make a pretty girl if he just knew what he was doing. Even those eyes still wet with the beginning of tears looked less pathetic and more pitiful.
“Are we going to do something?” Komatsuda asked
“I’m going to do you a favor,” Rikichi said. He swept his eyes over the table, taking inventory of what he would be working with. “Crossdressing is all about accentuating your best features and hiding your worst ones. I’m sure my father didn’t tell you that when he hid your entire face beneath make-up.”
Now Rikichi busied his hands, arranging tools, choosing or discarding the colors available to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Komatsuda. Komatsuda rubbed his eyes and dried his hands out on his kimono. Of course Komatsuda wouldn’t know anything about what crossdressing really was, or the work that went into disguises. He was playing dress-up, and Rikichi’s father was letting him. But it wasn’t that simple; it wasn’t just throwing on some clothes and splashing make-up over your face. Komatsuda was always just playing at being a ninja.
Done with sorting and picking out what he’d need, Rikichi studied Komatsuda’s face again. He raised a hand out and ran it over the curve of Komatsuda’s cheek, measuring contours and angles in his head.
“Rikichi?”
Ignoring Komatsuda, he drew an image in his head. Then he nodded and picked up one of the compacts from the table.
“Father really does pick the worst colors,” Rikichi said. “You’ve got a soft face, so use something like this” - Rikichi flashed Komatsuda the muted, coral-colored blush he was about to apply - “instead of that tacky bright stuff. It’ll look best if you put it here above your cheekbones to bring out how round your cheeks are.”
Rikichi dipped two fingers in the blush. Komatsuda’s eyes followed them as they rubbed one cheek then the other. Rikichi spread the blush over Komatsuda’s cheekbones. Then he gently grasped Komatsuda’s face between his hands and used his thumbs to smooth the blush out, blending it toward Komatsuda’s ears. There – now he could actually see those chubby cheeks.
“It’s the same with your lips,” Rikichi continued. “They’re already well-defined, so you can use softer colors.”
Dipping his fingers into the rouge, Rikichi took the moment to look at Komatsuda’s lips. They were still, waiting. A little loose, not too tight. He put his fingers to them, and the lips pushed out a little as if to meet his fingers. Komatsuda stared at him, eyes not moving. Don’t gawk at his face – just pay attention to what he’s doing. Rikichi easily slid the rouge on, the bottom lip then the top, smoothing them out as Komatsuda continued gazing at him. He got the last of it, then swiped his finger away.
“Pucker your lips for a second,” Rikichi said.
Komatsuda brought his lips in and smooshed them together. The tip of his tongue shot out, followed by a look of disgust.
“What are you doing, tasting it?” Rikichi said with a snort. “Your eyebrows look good, so just make sure they’re well-groomed. For your eyes... Hold still.”
Rikichi wiped his fingers off on the towel, then plucked the black paint off the table and took a brush in his other hand. He dipped the brush in, darkening its bristles, then approached one of Komatsuda’s eyes with it. “You’ve got big and bright eyes,” Rikichi said. “Doing them up like my father had them doesn’t make them cute, just ridiculous. We want to make them look more elongated.”
Just as Rikichi was about to make the first line, Komatsuda’s whole face whole face shifted into a smile. Rikichi sighed. “Do you want me to poke your eye out?” he asked. “I told you to hold still.”
“I can’t help it,” Komatsuda said, his grin growing wider. “I’ll get embarrassed if you keep complimenting me like that.”
“Who’s complimenting you?” Rikichi spit, brandishing the brush toward Komatsuda like a weapon.
“You think my round cheeks and my eyebrows are my best features, huh?”
“This isn’t about what I think! It’s about what’s going to make everybody who looks at you think you’re a cute girl instead of the unkempt klutz you really are.”
“So this is what you find cute.”
“I told you, this isn’t...!”
Rikichi squelched the rest of his sentence. He was right: the second Komatsuda opened his mouth was when he lost all semblance of charm. Komatsuda opened his mouth again: “I’m happy that you’re helping me. You’re always saying you don’t have time to teach me anything.”
“Just hold still for me,” Rikichi said.
Komatsuda tightened his mouth, let his lips slip into a smile, then tightened his mouth again. Rikichi waited to see if he’d move again. After a moment, he brought the brush to Komatsuda’s eye and drew the first delicate line below it. Komatsuda’s eye scrunched.
“I said hold… Here, just close your eyes.”
Komatsuda did as he was told, scrunching both eyes shut.
“And relax them,” Rikichi added.
Now Komatsuda relaxed, making that loose and droopy face Rikichi was used to. Rikichi brought the brush up to Komatsuda again, starting at the inner corner of Komatsuda’s eye and slowly coloring along the lash line. Komatsuda’s eye quivered beneath the lid. Then he pursed his mouth, set his eyebrows. He bunched his hands into fists and sat them on top of his lap. Rikichi held a hand to his mouth, stifling a laugh. What a ridiculous sight. Komatsuda tried his best at the strangest things. Rikichi took his free hand and placed it on Komatsuda’s shoulder, holding him steady. He finished the first eye, then moved his brush to the other. Again he started at the inner corner and made his way across. Komatsuda held still, face almost reddening in exertion. With a flourish at the edge of Komatsuda’s eye, Rikichi finished painting.
“I’m done,” Rikichi said, placing the brush on the table and examining his work. Anything was better compared to the mess earlier, but Rikichi had managed to make Komatsuda’s face look clean, almost girlishly innocent (almost, Rikichi told himself). Subtly painted eyes, a dash of color on his lips. The blush was natural, the pink flush of a girl in the summer heat, or a girl with a shyness that she’d try hiding behind her sleeves. Komatsuda looked like the proper little lady of his family’s store that his brother would drive suitors away from. Rikichi nodded. He really did do a good job making Komatsuda look this cute.
Hm?
Cute, wasn’t exactly... Rikichi’s face grew into a grimace. He did make Komatsuda look better, but cute... He composed himself. It was just like he said: this wasn’t about what he thought, just what everyone else would find cute.
“Um, Rikichi,” Komatsuda said.
“What?” Rikichi snapped.
“Can I open my eyes?”
“Yes, open away.”
Komatsuda blinked, black lids and lashes fluttering. Like a little doe.
“Your hair’s a mess,” Rikichi said, standing up. “Do you have a comb?”
“Let’s see... I think there’s one somewhere in the drawers.”
Rikichi hefted himself up, walking past Komatsuda to the closet behind him. He pulled the door open, leaned down and pulled the top drawer open. Nearly empty; on the left there were a brush and inkwell, and on the right a stack of papers. When Rikichi took a closer look, he could read the fine, neat handwriting on the top sheet: “Dear Shuusaku, are you doing well? Your big brother’s proud to hear how hard you’ve been working at your job and your training. Don’t forget to keep eating properly to keep your energy up.”
Rikichi glanced back. Komatsuda was still sitting there, hands on his lap, staring straight ahead. Working hard, huh... They weren’t words he’d use to describe Komatsuda. Not for what he did at his job, and probably not for what he did while training. But Komatsuda was undeniably – sometimes annoyingly – earnest. Rikichi could at least give him that.
Rikichi shut the drawer and opened the one above it. This one was the mess he’d expected: broken bits of wood, a few loose coins, snacks stashed away to be eaten later, and, buried in the middle of the chaos, a comb. He yanked it out and shut the drawer again. He walked back to Komatsuda, then got down on his knees behind him. He took the bottom of Komatsuda’s hair in his hand, started the comb at the top. He dragged the comb down and immediately met resistance. He pulled harder.
“Ouch!” Komatsuda cried, looking back at Rikichi with wet eyes. “What are you doing?”
“I’m just trying to get your hair into order. The question is, what have you been doing? Your hair’s one big knot.”
Komatsuda faced forward again. As he spoke, Rikichi watched his rounded cheek move, the streak of pink by his ear bobbing up and down. “I take care of my hair,” he said. “Every morning I run my fingers through it before I tie it up.”
“I’d hate to see what it looks like when you don’t ‘take care’ of it. I’m going to break the comb on these knots.”
Rikichi ran his fingers through Komatsuda’s hair, catching on each little gnarl. Soft, heavy – and tangled. “I’ll have to comb it a section at a time,” Rikichi said. “Otherwise you’ll be crying and screaming.”
“Don’t say it like that. You’re making me sound like a big baby.”
Rikichi pushed the mess of hair onto Komatsuda’s shoulder, and the scruff of Komatsuda’s neck came into view. It was a skinny and smooth neck that lapsed into his solid shoulders. Beneath Komatsuda’s clothes, under the jut of bone where shoulders met neck, was pale skin that made Komatsuda’s nape look bright as sunburn. Body heat radiated off of Komatsuda, the slight scent of sweat clinging to the small hairs on the back of his neck. Like he’d been outside working hard – or standing out in the sun too long, hardly working. Rikichi reached his hand out and lightly ran his fingers across Komatsuda’s neck, their tips just barely brushing over skin.
Komatsuda giggled and wiggled around. “That tickles,” he said. “What are you doing back there?”
“Nothing,” Rikichi said, taking a section of Komatsuda’s hair and slowly running the comb through it. Komatsuda sat humming and swaying. Humming a little, losing the melody. Repeating a note over and over until, finally, he found his place in the song again. Rikichi’s grip on the comb tightened. He might lose it if he had to sit listening to this. He looked at Komatsuda’s neck again, that red and sweaty skin.
“Were you out training this morning?” Rikichi asked.
Komatsuda’s hum abruptly broke off. “Eh? How did you know?”
“Just a guess.”
“You really are a pro. You’re right, I was training this morning.”
“Is that something you do a lot?”
“Mm-hm. Well, sometimes. If I have a minute. But I always make sure I’m training really hard when I do.”
That’s probably what he’d written to his brother. “What kind of training?”
“Let’s see...”
Rikichi continued running his fingers and the comb through Komatsuda’s hair, straightening it out one bit at a time while Komatsuda continued talking. He caught himself smiling at parts of Komatsuda’s stories; compared to the humming from before, he was almost enjoying them. Slowly, carefully, Rikichi combed Komatsuda’s hair until the last of the knots had been undone. Then he gathered it in his hands and brought the very ends of it up, tying the strands into a bundle that rested between Komatsuda’s shoulders. He lowered himself so that he and Komatsuda were level. The hair was smooth, even, looked like it’d been carefully done up by a girl’s own delicate hands. Rikichi smiled, satisfied.
“Rikichi?” Komatsuda said, glancing back at him.
Rikichi brought his eyes down to the table. “There, all done,” he said, putting the comb on the table. He took the mirror and held it out. “Take a look for yourself.”
Komatsuda picked up the mirror and brought it in front of him. He turned his face, looking at one side then the other, a smile pushing the blush up towards his eyes. “I look even more amazing than this morning,” he said. “You really are amazing!”
Rikichi folded his arms and turned his eyes askance. “What’s amazing is how awful my father made you look.”
Komatsuda continued examining himself in the mirror, bringing it closer to look at his lips, cheeks, eyes, brows, then bringing it back to look at his whole face again. “Rikichi,” he said, “I bet I’m so cute right now that looking at me makes your heart go ba-thump, ba-thump, doesn’t it?”
Rikichi added a lump to Komatsuda’s head to complete the look.
“Ow, ow, ow... You could have just said ‘no.’” Komatsuda rubbed his head; if he had more eye make-up on, it’d be trailing wet down his face. He perked up. “Then it’s my turn!”
“Your—”
Armed with rouge, Komatsuda attacked. The speed and the suddenness, and the sight of Komatsuda all done up with that same goofy smile of his still there, they caught Rikichi off-guard; he was flattened beneath Komatsuda’s grip. Graceless fingers sticky with safflower roamed across Rikichi’s cheeks, the stink of wax and paint suffocating him. He’d just called Komatsuda’s face cute, but when it was this close to his own, colors and open mouth, teeth, and wide eyes taking up his whole vision – the churn in his stomach that he’d felt when Komatsuda first turned around to greet him returned even heavier. Again he imagined Komatsuda’s lips on his face. He grunted, reaching to push Komatsuda off of him. Komatsuda’s hands shot behind and pulled Rikichi’s hair loose in one quick tug before Rikichi sent him tumbling backwards.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Rikichi asked.
“Hm? You showed me how to do hair and make-up, so I thought it was my turn to practice on you.”
Rikichi stood up, straightening his clothes. Maybe that ridiculous move Komatsuda just made was his version of “working hard,” of trying his best, but that didn’t mean Rikichi wanted to be a part of it. “I don’t know where you got that idea, but it’s wrong. If you want to practice so badly, then practice on yourself.”
“I see. Oh, but! Do you think you could keep teaching me about disguises?”
“This was just a one time thing.” Rikichi peered down at Komatsuda. “Make sure you show my father how much better you look now.”
“Eh? Okay, but... Rikichi, wait!”
“I’ll come find you when I need to sign out.”
Rikichi was out of the room before Komatsuda could reply. He walked to the end of the hall, then stopped. With silent steps, he went to the door again and took one last look inside. Komatsuda was examining himself in the mirror again. His lips – no longer bright pink and devouring – raised up in a simple, artless smile. He really was like a child sometimes, getting happy at the smallest things. Looking at himself from one angle, then another, he always had that silly grin plastered on his face. Rikichi took off down the hall.
A smile like that was almost sort of cute.
No. No, not cute. Komatsuda wasn’t cute. Even if he was tolerable sometimes, he was still a nuisance. Komatsuda’s face almost pressing against his, lips close, the earnest and honest Komatsuda on top of him – and then there was that smile. It had haunted Rikichi before; all he had to do was rid himself of thoughts about Komatsuda again. He raced down the hall, as if he could escape those thoughts just by outspeeding them. Right then he had a certain man – or perhaps he should say a certain lady – to pick a bone with. He opened the door to his father’s room and announced himself: “What were you trying to pull with that lesson of yours today?”
***
For the second time that week, Rikichi strolled up the road, the walls of Ninjutsu Academy coming into view. By the gate, the figure of a girl came into view as well. Rikichi slowed his approach. He recognized that dark brown hair, he recognized that stooped, wide-legged stance and, even if he didn’t want to, he recognized that light green kimono
Komatsuda turned, eyes lighting up in recognition as well. “Oh, Rikichi,” he said.
Somehow it was worse than before. Komatsuda’s make-up looked like it’d been drawn on in drunken circles and left to curdle out in the midday sun. The hair – combed through only with Komatsuda’s grubby fingers, Rikichi guessed – lay dead flat in a low, crooked ponytail.
”What the heck happened?” Rikichi asked, finding some new detail each time he looked. This time it was the small dash of black paint that’d ended up on the bridge of Komatsuda’s nose.
“What do you mean, ‘what happened’?”
“What happened to your face?”
“Oh, you noticed? I did it myself this time.” He made a strange play of his mouth underneath all that rouge; Rikichi guessed it was a smile. “And I need to thank you, since I followed all of the instructions you gave me. So?”
“So what?”
“So, how’d I do? Don’t I look great?”
Rikichi sighed. What was he supposed to say to that face? Silence seemed the only possible reply.
“Maybe I look so cute that you’re speechless.”
Perhaps it was cute – in a pathetic sort of way. Like a child, or a dumb animal you wanted to protect. That plain smile of Komatsuda’s flashed in Rikichi’s mind again. Komatsuda was always sort of cute in that pathetic sort of way.
“You still need to sign in,” Komatsuda said, holding the sheet out.
“Yes, yes,” Rikichi said, taking the sheet. Right, Komatsuda was a pathetic sort of cute. The way he tried hard but never succeeded, how his expression hung slack and how he bumbled around like a baby animal who hadn’t quite learned how to walk. It was that pathetic kind of cute that might make someone smile at a child who trips then picks themselves back up. That’s all it was.
“But I didn’t think,” Komatsuda said, “that a popular freelance pro ninja like you would be stunned silent just because he saw a pretty girl. I guess even pros have weaknesses they need to work on.”
The brush splintered beneath Rikichi’s hand.
“Ah,” Komatsuda said, “you broke the brush.”
“Komatsuda,” Rikichi said, shaking, simmering.
“Hm? What is it?”
“I was wrong...”
“About what?”
The whole school must have heard as Rikichi’s voice echoed across the grounds: “You’re not cute at all!”