Read Online Raiju: A Kaiju Hunter Novel (The Kaiju Hunter) by K. H. Koehler - Free Book Online

yummy, I couldn’t imagine anyone teasing her about anything , especially not anything so pathetic as being half Japanese. “But I always figure, if someone is stupid enough to just look at the differences and nothing else, and that bothers them, then that’s not someone I want to hang with.”
    Her eyes grew as large and grave as space. “I never thought of it that way. I usually just get mad. Then things happen. Then my dad gets mad at me for losing control, then it all gets worse, you know?”
    I nodded, thinking about what I had read, all the schools she had been thrown out of, wondering if that was it, and what it must have been like for her. “There are times when I wish I had gotten mad. But I never did, not till…not till I moved here.” I almost said not till my mom died , but I decided I didn’t want to go there. Aimi didn’t need to shovel my emotional crap.
    Aimi bit her lip in sympathy. “Things must be really different here than they were in San Francisco. It must be like another planet.”
    I shrugged. Yes, no, maybe. “A little,” I said. But I didn’t want to talk about San Francisco. That was like another planet, one that didn’t exist anymore. “You play a wicked cello,” I said to change the subject. “I mean, I never thought of it as a ‘cool’ instrument, not until tonight.”
    She smiled a smile that could have lit up all of downtown Brooklyn. “Snowman taught me. He can play seven instruments,” she said, glancing fondly over at the club. Then she read something in my face—I guess I was pretty transparent about my opinion of Snowman—because she added, “I’m not dating him, just so you know. Snowman is Snowman. He’s…well, he’s different too. He’s like a big brother to me. The brother I wish I’d had.”
    She had been going to say something else. What, I didn’t know, but like me, she had changed her mind mid-sentence. I just wondered what that other thing was. “In the beginning it was just the two of us, playing guitar,” she said, glancing off into the night. “Then the others joined. Morta. Dust and Ashes.”
    The twins were named Dust and Ashes? I mean, were they serious?
    Aimi dropped her eyes, lashes like fallen soot on her porcelain cheeks. “I know you think it’s silly. That we’re silly. All of us. Maybe we are. Maybe nothing will ever come of the band. But Snowman’s music helped me. He helped me through so many bad times, Kevin. You have no idea.”
    “ He said you two were best friends.”
    I didn’t want to actually say it, but there it was, lying between us like a small mountain. I waited for her to look up, to tell me that was none of my business, but she only looked sad and a little defeated. “He is my best friend. He tutors me when I’m too sick to come to school. He’s always been there for me, even when my dad wasn’t.” She looked up with an expression of profound pain. “Oh Kevin, there’s so much you don’t know. So much you don’t understand about me. So much out there that’s bigger than us.”
    I didn’t know what to say, what was appropriate, so I just took her thin little lacy hand in mine. She looked up at that, surprised by that simple contact, which broke my heart. She looked so fragile, so small, in the big black dress. I just wanted to take her and hold her and take away all the pain and loneliness she had undoubtedly dealt with for years.
    Honestly, I wanted to kiss her in that moment, more than I had ever wanted to kiss anyone. I think she knew, because she tilted her face up and said, “C huushite kudasai ,” with a small, playful smile. “That means—”
    “ I know what it means. And I know that it’s polite in Japanese culture to always ask.” I’d been hitting the language books, you see. “Um… chuushite kudasai ?”
    “ Hai ,” she answered.
    I moved my hand up to her hair and touched it softly. It felt as soft as the fur of a kitten. I wondered if her solemn white face would feel just as soft.