Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

MADDOX

I’m on edge the whole rest of the flight to the point that I can’t fathom how Hiro is feeling. He’s strong enough that he just gives me a smile and is already back to reassuring me, like everything is perfectly fine even though I know it’s not.

Our seatmate has stopped trying to set him up with her daughter, and I can’t tell if it’s because she finds us both a bit sketchy or the fact that she got the hint with me holding Hiro’s hand.

“Ground! Maddox! There’s ground!” Hiro says as he pops up and smacks his head on the luggage compartment above us, having forgotten it was there in his excitement.

“Is it worth hurting yourself over?” I ask as he refuses to sit. Instead, he stands with his head cranked at an odd angle, prepared to fight his way off this plane if it comes to it.

“It is. Because it is land! It is ground! And dear god, stop reminding me I have to fly home,” he says, telling me one of the three said something about the flight home.

He hurries off the plane but stops in the tunnel that leads into the airport where he waits a moment until the steady stream of people dies down.

I notice a guy giving Hiro a look and watch his back as he gets farther from me. “What was that?”

“Just some guy who heard me talking in the bathroom. He thought there was someone else inside and he was about to walk in on our steamy session.”

A woman heads out and Hiro watches her for a second before smiling at something I can’t see. He clearly had a very different inflight experience than I had. The woman takes note of him and hesitates before coming over. “Sorry to bother you; my seatmates weren’t interested in questions. But do you know what happened? I was like… playing on my phone then fell asleep and then bam, chaos… but I think I slept through it.”

“Just the lights went out. I don’t think anything caused it. Probably some switch or something got hit but they seemed to fix it quickly.”

“Huh. Okay. I mean, we landed, right? Guess it wasn’t anything too bad,” she says. “Thanks!”

“Of course,” Hiro responds.

“How many people did you make friends with?” I ask.

“I really don’t even know her. She was just this lady whose dead boyfriend was following her around. I guess she slept the whole trip. I think she even slept through the lights-out ruckus, which explains why she had no idea what’s going on. Maddox, hold on a second. There’s a ghost I wanted to speak with.”

“Of course.”

“Hudson, it’s going to be okay. These three are going to walk you out… I know it’s going to be difficult to face your daughter but… come find me if you don’t move on, okay? I can’t do anything here right now. But I’ll be around.”

I watch the empty space, wondering what it’d be like to see and hear them… and then remember all the shit Hiro’s gone through and decide that maybe doing so isn’t for me.

Then Hiro turns to me and gives me a big smile. “I’m ready to go.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“You okay?”

“Perfectly fine, I promise. It was just a bit creepy there for a second but now everything’s fine. We’re definitely taking a boat home instead, though.”

“You think being locked out on the ocean with ghosts is better?”

Hiro hesitates. “That is definitely the premise of a horror movie. Fucking hell, we’re not doing that.”

“Right?”

“Plane it is. What if you drug me? Is that legal?”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t need a degree in criminal justice to be positive that it’s not.”

“Not hardcore drug me. Just like… a little bit.”

“I’m certain no part of that is fine.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll drug myself and leave you to carry my limp body.”

I let him pretend they’ll let me on board a plane carrying him. “So your cousin is picking us up here, right?”

“Sure is,” he whispers. “I guess their place is about an hour from here in Kyoto.”

“Why’d your voice get so squeaky?”

“Because I’ve made a horrible mistake agreeing to this. I kind of forgot all about how horrible of an idea this was while on the creepy plane.”

“She’s so excited to meet you.”

“Yeaaaah…”

I smile and pull him along to the signs that point toward the exit. “They’re fine with us, right? Our relationship? Or do you want me to be more discreet? We can pretend I’m your next-door neighbor who is a bit too attached and not at all in a creepy way.”

Hiro’s grinning now. The tension from the plane is slowly leaving him. “Yeah, when she reached out to me, I told her that we were together, and if there was going to be any issue, I didn’t feel comfortable coming. She assured me the family wouldn’t care. I guess her best friend is gay and they’re perfectly fine with it. She said just to avoid PDA in front of the older generation, but I definitely wasn’t planning on sucking face in front of my grandma.”

“What the hell did I even come for, then?” I ask, as though I’m disappointed. “You know how much I love sucking face in front of the geriatrics.”

Hiro laughs at that. “I’m already confident they’re going to regret having us. I know you might not realize this, but we’re prone to running into trouble or chaos. Looks like the exit is this way.”

Once we’ve made it through all of the stops within the airport, we’re finally let out into the chaos of it. We need ground transport, so after we have our luggage, we hurry that way.

I take Hiro’s phone from him to peruse his texts for the make and model of the vehicle we’re supposed to be looking for.

Following the signs for the transport, I notice the car toward the back of the line. “I see her.”

“You sure it’s her? Imagine getting in the wrong vehicle. I would just… get back on the plane and go home,” Hiro teases.

“Even with the ghosts?”

He laughs. “Probably.”

“Well, she’s staring at us. She’s either a con man who has found her mark or your cousin.”

“Or she could be both,” he says. “This whole thing could be a scam. What if they’re secretly evil and they’ve brought us over here to play some life-or-death game?”

“It’s not,” I assure him.

Hiro looks over at me and quirks an eyebrow. “Did you look them up?”

“Sure did. I probably know more about them than they know about themselves,” I joke as we head over to the car.

The car door opens and a pretty woman a little younger than Hiro steps out. She’s all smiles as she rushes over. “Hiro? I’m Yumi!”

“It’s really nice to meet you,” he says.

“It’s wonderful to finally meet you! The moment I found out I had a cousin, I knew we needed to meet. And you must be Maddox.”

“I am. It’s a pleasure,” I tell her, relieved that her English is very good. It should dispel one of Hiro’s worries about messing something up or not being able to understand each other.

“Please, let me help,” she says as she opens the back for us to put the luggage in.

Hiro glances at me, like he’s unsure of where to sit, but I head to the back seat so he gets into the passenger seat.

He turns to Yumi. “I’m going to be honest and tell you that I’m a little nervous. My mom never really taught me anything customs-wise, so I’m afraid I’m going to mess something up. Should I try to stick with honorifics?”

She shakes her head, her long straight black hair flicking into her face which she pushes back with a hand. “No, please don’t worry about that. We’re family and we’re not very traditional. No one’s going to care if you do something differently. Feel at ease. How was your flight?” Yumi asks.

“Uhh…” Hiro thinks about that for a bit. “Long?”

“Oh, I bet. I want to go to America sometime. It sounds really neat and has always been one of my dreams. Ooh! London too!”

“If you ever do, you’re more than welcome to stay with us,” Hiro says, although I wonder how he’d handle being home and unable to talk to his ghosts for an extended period of time. At least here, we only plan to stay with them a few days before heading to see Mount Fuji and then from there we’ll go to Tokyo.

“My mother is making dinner for you guys, so I hope you’re hungry. She said that she didn’t know what kind of dishes you would like so she’s making them all… I guess? Who knows. Our grandma will be over as well; she’s very excited to meet you. Our grandma’s not very confident with her English. She can listen and understand pretty well, but she probably won’t speak it a whole lot. We’ll see. I tried to assure her it’s better than she thinks it is, but I think she gets flustered easily and just assumes she’s doing a poor job. But I have her decked out in tech. Her phone is all set up with a translator so she can read what you’re saying when we talk.”

The drive goes smoothly, and between watching the world around us out the window and listening to Yumi and Hiro talk, it’s a pretty enjoyable ride. And I’m happy to see that Hiro seems more at ease when we arrive at a nice two-story home in the suburbs than he did when we’d headed off on this adventure.