The seawater is continually exhaled onto the shore nearby. It breathes something into me with every wave that crashes onto shore. I had no idea that water could make me feel this way: small and vast, and ancient and new, all at the same time.
The sun has almost disappeared into the horizon, and the breeze has turned cool. I shiver and rub my hands over my arms. Kyon walks up with an armload of firewood. He stacks the wood in the sand. Straightening, he glances in my direction and frowns. “Are you cold?” he asks.
“A little,” I admit, “but I don’t feel like moving right now to get a jacket.”
He dusts the stray pieces of bark from his dark, long-sleeved shirt before he pulls it off over his head and hands it to me. “Here, this is warm.” He straightens the short-sleeved shirt he still has on before flopping down in the sand at my feet and using a long stick to stir the fire. He leans back against the leg of my chair.
I hold his shirt in my hands for a moment before I straighten it out and pull it over my head. As it falls over my shoulders, I’m hit again by how much bigger he is than me. He’s a freaking giant. I’m swimming in his shirt. His scent is all over it too. It’s the scent that I’ve associated with fear. It’s at war with the warmth enveloping me.
Kyon cooks our dinner on the grill over the fire. I watch him in fascination, since I never expected any of this from him. From his seat on the ground in front of me, he hands me a plate over his shoulder. He glances back and asks, “Do you need me to taste it for you?”
I hold the plate in my lap and shake my head. “No,” I reply. “I think we’re past that now.”
We eat using our hands. It’s so good I find myself licking my fingertips. “Where did you learn to cook like this?” I ask.
Kyon smiles. “I was a soldier. I learned basic survival: hunting fishing, trapping. Part of that entails preparing food.”
“I think this is my favorite thing about you,” I say, eating another delicious morsel from my plate.
He laughs. “You’re so easily bribed. I had no idea I could score points with food.”
I laugh too. “Food has always been a priority. There were days when I was younger that I made a meal by just smelling something like this.”
Kyon sobers. “What do you mean?”
I shrug as I continue to eat. “Oh, you know—I just know what it’s like to be hungry. Sometimes I didn’t have any money, so I used to sit in this alley outside my favorite pizza place in Chicago and inhale the aroma coming from the oven vents. I got really good at pretending to eat.”
“How often did you do that?” he asks. I glance up from my plate to see that he has stopped eating.
I try to minimize what I just said. I don’t even know why I told him that. I shrug again, “Not that often.” No one really wants to know things like this. They think they do, but poverty is seen as a failing—a weakness. He turns to me and puts more food on my plate. “I’m good!” I laugh. “I can’t possibly eat all this!”
“You’ll tell me when you’re hungry,” he orders sternly.
“Okay,” I reply, bewildered.
He rises from the ground and brushes the sand from his clothing. When I’m finished, he takes my plate. I let him. He walks away with it to the house and disappears inside. Absently rubbing my hands on my napkin, I watch the fire and wonder at Kyon’s demeanor. I don’t know what to make of any of it. He’s being decent, for a psychopathic kidnapper. Friendly. I don’t like it. It’s confusing.
Returning to the beach, Kyon carries with him a silver salver and a couple of long skewer sticks. He sets down the silver tray on the low table by the fire; it has a short, fat porcelain carafe with two porcelain shot glasses. Pouring a splash of the white liquid into them, Kyon looks over the rim of one at me as he takes a sip. He extends the other cup for me to take. I stand and walk to where he is by the fire. Taking the cup from him, I’m not at all sure that I’ll drink it. “What is this?” I ask. I sniff it. It smells like pears.
“It’s a mild alcohol.” I try to hand it back to him, but he puts up his hand and says, “It won’t hurt you. It goes with this.” He bends and picks up a little red bead of goo from the silver tray. Taking one of the skewer sticks, he impales the red bead on it and hands the stick to me. Holding the implement in one hand and the cup in the other, I watch him pick up another bead of goo from the tray and impale it on the other stick. “You’ll need both hands for this,” he remarks, eyeing the cup in my hand.
Reluctantly, I drink the pear alcohol; it burns my throat. I try not to cough as I set the porcelain cup back on the silver tray. “Mild,” I gasp ruefully.
Kyon chuckles. “You don’t really think that was strong, do you?” he teases.
“You see my eyes watering?” I reply as I wipe the mist from my eyes.
“You’re small—maybe you can’t tolerate it like I can.”
“I’m not small,” I sigh.
He snorts. “One only needs to see you in my shirt to see the truth in my statement.”
I shake my head. “Just because you’re all giant freaks does not make me small.”
He grins. “Perspective is everything. Now, do you want to see this or not?” he asks.
I shrug. “See what?”
“Dessert.”
He walks closer to the fire and places the end of the skewer with the red bead on it in the flames. He rolls the skewer between his palms. The sugar paste activates with a sizzling sound and begins to puff out like cotton candy does. Whirling it around the stick, it hisses as Kyon creates a lovely red flower within the flames. He pulls it out, and the delicate petals open and bloom before my eyes. Plucking a petal, he extends it to me. I try to take it from him, but he pulls it back. Instead, he dangles the petal near my lips. I relent, allowing him to place the dessert on my tongue. The warm sugar melts in my mouth.
“Mmm.” I savor the taste. When I glance at Kyon, he’s watching me with fascination. It unnerves me enough to turn away from him.
I push my long sleeves up to my elbows and thrust the cherry-red sugar bead on the end of my stick into the fire. Trying to copy what Kyon had done, I roll the skewer between my palms, but I lack his technique. Mine quickly becomes a lopsided cobra weaving chaos on the end of the stick, and then all of a sudden, it explodes with a loud pop and falls into the fire. I laugh as I make a face. I pull the empty stick from the flames. Smoke wafts up, spreading the odor of burning sugar. “Aww! I’m so bad at this! I broke mine!” I feign a forlorn expression, and then laugh.
“Do you want to try again?” Kyon asks.
I nod vigorously and hold my stick out to him. He expertly impales another cherry-colored sugar bead to the end of it and then helps me with my technique as we cook it together. When we pull the stick out of the flames, the corners of some of the petals are a little singed, but it’s not too bad. “You did well,” Kyon says as he bends his face nearer to mine.
“Thanks,” I say breathlessly. Turning away from him, I take it back to my seat and pull it apart slowly, eating it as I watch the fire flicker. Kyon sits by my feet, eating the other sugar flower.
When we’re finished, I help Kyon clean up. Then we sit again in front of the fire and Kyon feeds it huge logs, making it leap and dance. It feels good, staving off the chill of the night air. Kyon sits in the large seat next to mine. He lifts a guitarlike instrument from where it was propped against his chair.