Sasha-chan

The chalkboard read "Welcome" in careful strokes, and the homeroom teacher was saying something about a new addition to the faculty when the door slid open and the room shifted.

Sasha Kournikova sat up straighter in her second-row seat. Her blonde hair caught the fluorescent light as she turned, blue eyes widening, the small fang at the corner of her mouth catching on her lower lip. New person. Interesting person. She leaned across the aisle toward Cana, her voice a stage whisper that carried to the back row. "Cana, look. They're foreign."

Three rows back and one seat over, Fujiwara Kazuki looked up from a doujinshi he had folded inside his English textbook. His pen halted mid-panel. The ink on his right index finger had smudged a dark streak across his knuckle. He watched Sasha lean forward, watched her fingers curl over the edge of her desk, watched the way her whole body oriented toward the front of the room like a compass needle swinging north.

She's doing the thing. The thing where she decides something is interesting and then it becomes the only thing that exists.

"Sasha, sit properly," the homeroom teacher said, but the complaint was half-hearted. Sasha was already half out of her seat, craning to see past the teacher's desk.

"Sensei, where are they from? What language? Can they speak Japanese? Do they like anime?" The questions tumbled out in rapid Japanese, her accent rounding the consonants slightly, the way it always did when she was excited. Her mother's Russian had shaped her vowels, and the shape stayed even after five years in Tokyo.

Kazuki's pen rolled off his desk. He caught it against his thigh, ink smearing his school trousers. He didn't notice. Sasha was smiling at the front of the room, and the smile was the one she gave when she'd found something she wanted to learn about, the same smile she'd given him three months ago when she'd spotted the doujinshi in his hands and said "You're my Master now, okay?"

Master. That's me. I'm Master.

He said it to himself like a kid touching a security blanket.

Sasha turned in her seat, caught his eye, and beamed. "Master! Look, a real foreign teacher! This is so cool!" She waved her hand at the front of the room, gesturing for him to pay attention, to share her excitement. Her school blazer rode up her wrist, showing the pale underside of her forearm.

And then she turned back to the front, and the excitement stayed there, aimed at the person standing beside the chalkboard, and Kazuki was holding his pen again, gripping it at the midpoint where the plastic was already cracked from a hundred other moments of pressure.

She said Master. She's still calling me Master. That's fine. That's fine, right?

The homeroom teacher cleared his throat and gestured for the class to settle. Sasha sat down, but her chair was angled fifteen degrees toward the front, her knees together under her plaid skirt, her fingers laced on her desk. She was vibrating. The fang showed when she bit her lower lip, thinking.

Kazuki opened his English textbook. The doujinshi inside showed a panel he'd been studying for inking technique. A girl with her hand on a man's chest. He closed it.

Cana, in the seat beside Sasha, leaned over and whispered something. Sasha whispered back, too fast for Kazuki to catch. Aoi, one row behind Cana, adjusted her headband and watched the exchange with the quiet attention of someone cataloguing information.

The classroom smelled like chalk dust and floor wax and the sweet trace of whatever shampoo Sasha used, a smell that Kazuki had memorized without meaning to, the way you memorize a song you've heard too many times. It mixed with the old paper smell of his doujinshi and the chemical bite of ink.

He uncapped his pen. He needed to finish this panel by tomorrow or his brother would have his head. The nib touched the page. His hand didn't move.

Sasha laughed at something, high and bright, directed at the front of the room.

The hallway was emptying. The 4:15 chime had sounded six minutes ago, and the shuffle of indoor shoes on linoleum was thinning to individual footsteps. Kazuki stood at the classroom doorway with his bag over one shoulder and his sketchbook pressed against his chest, and watched Sasha Kournikova sit on the edge of the teacher's desk like she belonged there.

She was swinging her legs. The plaid skirt rode above her knees, and her calves were pale against the dark wood of the desk. She had unbuttoned her blazer, and the white shirt underneath was wrinkled from a day of leaning forward in her seat. Her blonde hair was coming loose from whatever had held it that morning, strands framing her face as she cocked her head to listen.

"Sensei, do you know about Sambo?" she was saying, her Japanese slightly accented, the vowels rounder than a native speaker's. "My papa taught me. I threw Kazuki once in judo class, just one arm, like this." She demonstrated the motion, her small hand cutting through the air, and laughed. The fang showed.

The teacher's desk smelled like green tea and printer paper. Kazuki could detect it from the doorway, mixed with the hallway's linoleum-and-disinfectant base note. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His sketchbook dug into his ribs.

She said she'd be five minutes. That was twelve minutes ago.

Sasha hadn't looked at the door once. Her attention was a spotlight, and it was pointed at the front of the room, at the chair behind the desk, at the person sitting in it. Her whole body was oriented that way, knees turned, shoulders square, chin up. The posture of a student absorbing a favorite subject.

"Master!" Sasha called without turning, as if she had eyes in the back of her head. "I'll be done soon, okay? Don't go home without me!"

The title landed on Kazuki like a pat on the head. He adjusted his grip on the sketchbook.

She remembered I'm here. That's something.

Cana passed through the hallway behind him, bag over her shoulder, Aoi in tow. Cana glanced into the classroom, registered Sasha on the desk, registered the teacher, registered Kazuki in the doorway. Her mouth thinned. She kept walking. Aoi's headband caught the corridor light as she looked back once, then followed Cana around the corner.

"Sensei, do you want to see something cool?" Sasha was reaching for her bag now, pulling out a folded doujinshi. Not one of Kazuki's. One of the ones she'd found on her own, the kind with the glossy covers. "Master showed me how to read these, but I found this one myself. The art is different, see?"

She was sharing Kazuki's world with a stranger. Offering it up like a gift she'd found and decided belonged to everyone. The ink on his fingers itched.

Kazuki leaned against the doorframe and opened his sketchbook to a blank page. He started drawing the doorframe. Just the doorframe. The wood grain, the metal track, the dust in the groove. Anything that wasn't the scene in front of him.

The art room smelled like turpentine and old newsprint, the window cracked open to let the fumes escape but not far enough to let in the October cold. Afternoon light cut through the dust and laid a warm stripe across the easels.

The art teacher stopped beside Kazuki's easel and tapped the edge of his panel layout. "Fujiwara-kun, you're the best draughtsman in first year. I want you to sketch Sasha-san for a portrait exercise. She has an interesting face. The bone structure, the eye shape. Good practice for you."

Kazuki's pencil stopped. He'd been working on a panel layout for his brother's manuscript, a two-page spread with a girl in a school hallway. The girl looked like Sasha. He hadn't meant for that to happen.

Sasha was three stations away, bent over a watercolor she wasn't taking seriously, her brush strokes too broad, her attention elsewhere. Her blonde hair was tied back with a ribbon she'd borrowed from Aoi, and the nape of her neck showed, pale and thin, a line of vertebrae visible under the skin. She looked up when she heard her name, blue eyes going wide, and then the fang showed in a grin.

"Me? Sensei wants Master to draw me?" She bounced on her stool, and the watercolor wobbled. "That's so cool! I'll sit still, I promise. Mostly."

She's excited. She's excited because the teacher asked, not because I'm drawing.

Kazuki said, "Sure." His voice came out flat. He gathered his pencils.

Sasha arranged herself on the stool at the front of the room, legs crossed, hands on her knees, chin up. She was trying to look serious and failing. The fang kept appearing. Her blazer was off, draped over her bag, and her white school shirt was slightly too big, the collar slipping to show one collarbone. Her eyes drifted past Kazuki's shoulder toward the back of the room where the exchange teacher stood observing. She straightened up, smoothed her gi top, and squared her shoulders. The posture shifted. She was performing now, not sitting.

"Is it good, Master? Am I a good model?" she called from the stool, striking a pose, one hand behind her head, exaggerated, goofy. The shirt collar slipped further.

Kazuki's pencil moved. He drew the collarbone first. Then the line of her jaw. Then the eyes, wider-set than he'd been drawing them all semester in his doujinshi panels, because he'd been drawing from memory and his memory had been wrong, compressing her face toward a Japanese average he carried in his hand. The distance between her eyes was different. She was different. He'd been drawing a version of her that didn't exist.

He filled in the fang last. It sat at the corner of her mouth like a punctuation mark.

"Done already?" Sasha hopped off the stool and ran to look. She leaned over the easel, then turned toward the back of the room. "Sensei, come look! Master drew me!" She waved the exchange teacher over, then leaned close to the sketch, studying it. "Oh! My eyes are really far apart! I never noticed." She laughed. "Master always draws me too pretty."

The pencil in Kazuki's hand snapped. He stared at the two halves of graphite in his palm, the wood splintered, the lead crumbling. He excused himself to the bathroom. He didn't go to the bathroom. He went to the stairwell and sat on the concrete step between the second and third floors and pressed his ink-stained hands against his face.

She said I draw her too pretty. She wanted the other teacher to see it. She wanted to show someone else what I made of her.

The cafeteria was loud with the particular din of two hundred middle schoolers chewing and talking at once, the sound bouncing off concrete walls and laminate tables. It smelled like curry rice and milk cartons and the sour undertone of gym clothes stuffed in bags that should have been taken home three days ago.

Sasha was not at her usual table.

Cana set her tray down across from Aoi and looked at the empty seat. "Where's Sasha?"

Aoi adjusted her headband and pointed with her chopsticks toward the faculty corner. Sasha was sitting on the floor beside the teacher's chair, cross-legged, her tray balanced on her knees. She had brought two milk cartons. One was unopened, pushed toward the teacher. An offering.

"She brought them extra milk," Cana said. Her voice carried the specific flatness of someone who has seen something and hasn't decided how to feel about it.

"She's been doing that all week," Aoi said.

Across the cafeteria, near the vending machines, Kazuki sat alone. His bento was open but untouched. He was drawing in his sketchbook, hunched over it, his body curved around the page like a shell. His chopsticks lay across the bento box at an angle, abandoned.

She used to sit with me on Tuesdays. Tuesdays were our day. I showed her the Cuvie volume and she said the couple reminded her of us and I said that's stupid because they end up married and she laughed and said "Maybe, Master!" and I couldn't tell if she was joking.

Cana watched Kazuki for a moment. Her jaw worked. She looked away.

"That's messed up," she said, quietly enough that only Aoi heard.

"You used to hate him," Aoi said.

"I know." Cana stabbed a piece of curry with her fork. "I know I did."

Sasha's laugh cut through the cafeteria noise. She was showing the teacher something on her phone, holding it up, leaning in close. Her shoulder pressed against the teacher's knee. She didn't seem to notice the contact. She never noticed contact. She was a girl who touched people the way other people made eye contact, automatically, without registering it as a decision.

Kazuki's pen stopped. He looked up. Across the cafeteria, Sasha's blonde hair caught the overhead lights. She was smiling the smile. The one that meant she'd found something interesting.

The "Master" didn't come. She didn't wave. She didn't call across the room. She was inside the conversation, sealed in it, and the rest of the cafeteria had ceased to exist for her.

Kazuki closed his bento. He packed his sketchbook into his bag. He stood, and his chair scraped the floor, and nobody looked, and he walked out of the cafeteria into the hallway where the sound was just footsteps and the smell was just floor wax and the silence was the kind that has weight.

Cana watched him go. She set her fork down.

"I'll be right back," she said to Aoi.

Aoi caught her sleeve. "Don't."

Cana stopped. She sat back down. She ate her curry. She didn't taste it.

Rain hit the entrance awning in a steady sheet, turning the school courtyard into a gray wash. The gutters overflowed. The air smelled like wet concrete and the green-leaf sharpness of the trees along the fence. It was the kind of rain that would soak you to the skin in four seconds.

Sasha stood at the entrance shoe lockers, bag over her shoulder, no umbrella. She patted her skirt pockets. She patted her blazer pockets. She turned toward the faculty lockers with the specific expression of a person who has just discovered a problem and finds it funny rather than distressing.

"I forgot it again! Mama is going to be so annoyed." The fang showed. She didn't look annoyed. She looked like someone who had just been handed an interesting situation. She glanced at the faculty lockers, then at the doorway where the exchange teacher stood waiting out the rain.

"Really? Like in a manga!" She clapped her hands together once, having spotted the folding umbrella in the exchange teacher's hand. "Master is always saying rain scenes are important for romance. He says Cuvie does them best. Sensei, have you read Cuvie?"

From the stairwell landing one flight up, Kazuki watched. He had his umbrella. He'd been standing there for three minutes, since the final chime, waiting for the hallway to clear so he could walk out without having to pass Sasha and the teacher at the lockers. He'd heard every word. The acoustics of the stairwell carried voices upward like a cupped hand.

She's quoting me. She's using things I taught her to flirt with someone else. She doesn't even know she's doing it.

Sasha stepped close, positioning herself under the edge of the umbrella. It was small. Her shoulder pressed against the exchange teacher's arm. Her hair, loose and blonde, caught on the fabric of the teacher's jacket. She didn't fix it. The rain drummed on the umbrella's surface, a sound like static, and their shoes hit the wet pavement in an uneven rhythm, Sasha's indoor shoes already darkening with water at the edges because she'd stepped out before the umbrella was fully open.

"Ah! Cold!" She laughed and pressed closer. The fang showed. Her arm looped through the teacher's, casual, the way she linked arms with Cana, the way she touched everyone, the way she had once linked arms with Kazuki on the walk home and he had felt the warmth of her for four blocks and hadn't slept that night.

Kazuki gripped his umbrella. The metal ribs creaked under his fingers. He watched them cross the courtyard, two figures under one small canopy, Sasha's blonde hair the only color in the gray.

He didn't go down the stairs. He sat on the landing, his back against the cold railing, his umbrella balanced across his knees. The rain sound was different from up here, thicker, closer to the roof. The stairwell smelled like concrete dust and the rusted metal of the railing.

He opened his sketchbook. He drew two figures under an umbrella. He drew the rain as crosshatching. He drew the space between their bodies, which was no space at all. He drew it carefully, the way his brother taught him, the way he drew everything, with the precision of someone who understands that getting the details right is the only thing he has.

The faculty office smelled like printer toner and the slightly bitter green tea the older teachers brewed in the pot that never got properly washed. Late afternoon light came through the window at an angle that turned the dust into a visible haze.

Sasha had come to deliver homework for a classmate who was out sick. She'd been in the office for twenty minutes. The homework was on the desk. She hadn't left.

"Sensei, can I ask something?" She was sitting in the chair beside the teacher's desk, her legs folded under her, her school shoes lined up neatly by the door. Her blazer was off. Her uniform shirt had a small stain near the hem where she'd dropped curry at lunch. She didn't seem to notice.

"Before, there was a person. Mama's friend's brother, I think. Or maybe just a friend. He watched anime with me at our apartment when Mama was working late." She said this the way she said everything, bright and direct, no hedging. "He was funny. He knew lots of shows. He would bring snacks, like pocky and those strawberry rice crackers."

She was quiet for a moment. The specific quiet of someone who is trying to remember how to frame something they don't fully understand.

"Mama said we don't see him anymore. I don't really know why." She touched the stain on her shirt, rubbing it between her fingers. "I told Kazuki about it once. He got very quiet. Quieter than normal Kazuki quiet. He didn't say anything for a whole day."

She looked up at the teacher. Her blue eyes were clear and puzzled, the expression of someone examining a shape they can't quite identify. "Sensei, was that a strange thing to tell him? Kazuki gets strange about some things. He reads those manga, the ones with the weird stuff, and he says it's for research, but sometimes I think he believes the world works like that."

The fang caught on her lower lip. She was thinking. Sasha thinking looked like Sasha doing anything, just with more stillness.

"Master is a good person," she said. "He draws me too pretty. He buys me drinks from the vending machine even when I don't ask. He remembers which ones I like." She listed these things like inventory, not like compliments. "But I think he wants me to be different than I am. He wants the manga version. Does that make sense?"

She turned her head slightly. The late light caught the left side of her face, the blue of her eye, the pale line of her jaw.

"I like who I am. I don't want to be a manga version. I want to be me." She said this with absolute simplicity, the way someone says the sky is blue. "Sensei doesn't want me to be a manga version, right? Sensei just talks to me like I'm regular."

Outside the faculty office, pressed against the wall beside the door frame, Kazuki stood with a stack of printouts his brother had asked him to retrieve. He'd been there for four minutes. His hands were white on the paper. The printouts were crumpling at the edges.

She told the teacher about the uncle. She told the teacher, not me. She told me and I couldn't say anything for a day, and she told the teacher and it took her thirty seconds, and she's asking the teacher if the teacher sees her the way I do.

And the answer is no. The teacher doesn't see her the way I do. The teacher sees regular Sasha. And she likes that better.

He set the printouts on the floor outside the door. He walked away. His footsteps were quiet on the linoleum. He didn't take the printouts. His brother would be angry. He didn't care.