She somehow manages to wrap me in a bear hug, despite her swollen stomach. “HOLLY-lujah, I can’t wait to introduce you to your True Love. I’ve been wanting to match her for ages!”
My True Love? What in the…
“Krista, darling, remember what I told you about hugging people without asking permission?” Hugh Edgeworth says, peeling his wife off of me. “It really isn’t done. Especially in certain cultures, and Mr. Nakamura is from Japan.”
Krista pouts in a way that can’t quite reach her twinkling eyes. “I know, I know. But come on, he’s here for dinner with my favorite elf in the whole wide world. How can I not hug him?”
“Well, you might start with trying to engender within yourself some cultural sensitivity when it comes to your particular fierce manner of hugging. Then you might—Krista? Krista, where are you taking him?” Hugh Edgeworth called after his wife when she grabbed my hand and started dragging me along behind her in a shockingly strong grip.
“To meet his True Love for dinner, of course,” she calls over her shoulder. “He’s her perfect match! And it’s happening at Christmas. You don’t get more auspicious than that!”
“Aw, yes, I can actually see this True Love match quite clearly as well,” the surprisingly strong woman’s husband says as he follows along after us. “But perhaps we should ease Mr. Nakamura, one of the major investors at the company I currently work at, into this dinner invitation. That way, I might have less chance of getting fired?”
“Who would fire someone who introduced them to their True Love?” Krista asks, shaking her head as if her husband is the crazy one pulling a stranger behind him and not her. “This relationship is going to be sooooo romantic and beautiful. I can already tell. This will be my most perfect match yet!”
Perfect match? Relationship? Alarm bells go off in the back of my mind.
“Excuse me, but I am not looking for a match or a relationship,” I tell her, using nearly all my strength to pull my arm out of her vice grip. “I am only here to find someone who I believe might be at this party. Her name is—
“HEY, KRISTAL!” Hugh Edgeworth's’ wife suddenly starts waving her hand in the direction of a raised DJ stand. “Kristal! Kristal! Over here! Guess who’s come for dinner? This insanely hot Japanese guy. And he’s your True Christmas Love!”
I falter, blood rushing into my ears when I see the DJ standing behind a turntable with actual records. It’s Kristal! Her hair is black now, not brassy blonde, but it is definitely her. Big and beautiful underneath her elf hat and wearing another dress with a sweetheart neckline--this time, it’s red, though. Judging from the turntable tonearm she’s holding up, frozen in mid-air, she was in the process of putting a new record on when Krista called out for her.
The party had been loud and jolly when I walked in, but now it’s silent as all the people wearing elf hats turn to stare at me for a shocked second…before bursting into applause.
“Yay, Kristal! Congratulations! He’s so good-looking!” they call out all around me.
This situation has escalated from awkward to downright embarrassing with lightning speed. But I can’t bring myself to care. I stand there, mesmerized by the sight of Kristal Kringle, still unable to believe that it’s her. It’s really her.
She unfreezes first, dropping the needle into a swirly intro, followed by a male singer wailing about a woman he saw again last night even though he shouldn’t have. The song is by the same band as “California Dreamin’,” I vaguely recall, but with a different man singing lead.
Kristal Kringle is walking toward me now, and somewhere in the distance, I hear Hugh Edgeworth say, “Why are you tugging on my arm, darling? Oh, right, this is the part where we fade into the background so that the True Lovers might meet cute.”
“Exactly!” his wife answers, just as Kristal reaches me.
Though my long lost San Francisco elf would never be cast as the lead in a J-Drama, she seems to have acquired the stopping about a foot away and dropping her eyes move, just the same.
“Hayato! What are you doing here? How did you find me?” she asks, her shy gaze directed at my feet at first. But then she glances up to ask, “And how is Jae-Hyun? I’ve been so worried about him while I was away.”
11
Blue Christmas
I’m so startled by her volley of questions that I let out an “Eh?” before asking, “Who is Jae-Hyun?”
“The man I drew for you!” she answers, her eyes widening with surprise. “The loved one, who only had a year to live one year ago!”
I stare at her blankly, because truth be told, I’d crumpled that drawing up and tossed it in the trash before leaving the hotel room. And I’d forgotten that strange aspect of our morning-after story until just now. “I’m sorry, but I have no idea who this Jae-Hyun is.”
Kristal shakes her head at me, her expression completely stricken. “Jae-Hyun Park? He owns the Elemental Outpost, the most excellent comic book store in all of San Francisco? He draws Nobles and Samurais, which is like the best manga ever. You’ve got to know who he is.”
“Yet, I don’t,” I answer, my voice as baffled as hers is stricken. “You gave me no clue as to who he was, other than someone with a very common Korean name.”
It’s a simple truth, but Kristal reacts as if I’ve hit her with a flying dropkick, her entire body jerking backward.
“Oh no! Oh no,” she says, covering her forehead with her hand. “I only left a name, because I’ve never had someone not know the face in the picture. Ever. But now because of my mess-up, you haven’t visited him. I mean not even once…”
“If I don’t know who he is, does it matter if I visited him or not?” I ask, with the sensation that I’m both participating in our first conversation in nearly a year and trying to catch up.
“Yes, of course, it matters!” Kristal answers, her voice raising several pitches. “Jae-Hyun doesn’t have any family, so he’s been alone this entire year! Alone and dying—”
She cuts off with a choke, tears springing to her eyes. But then she seems to get a hold of herself. She looks up at me, meeting my eyes for the first time without a command. “I am so sorry. So very sorry. But don’t worry, Hayato, I’m going to fix this. There’s Santa now. Just give me a moment.”
“Kristal, there is nothing to fix. This is not why I…”
But she’s already moving away from me. “I’ve got to talk to Santa while he’s still in a jolly mood. Hold on, Hayato! Just hold on. I’ll be right back.”
“But I came here for—”
She turns and runs off before I can finish that sentence with “you.”
And so, instead of taking her back to my hastily booked hotel room at the Tourmaline, I watch her run over to talk to a much older man with a bushy white beard. He’s dressed in a red leather jacket, and a Killers tee, and is the only person in the workshop wearing a floppy red hat with a puffy ball on the end as opposed to a pointy one like Kristal’s and Krista’s or no hat at all like Hugh Edgeworth and myself. He looks like a hipster Santa, much thinner and cooler than the one Nakamura Worldwide used to use in their Western campaigns.