Red String of Fate

On the drive back, she pointed him toward a pleasant off-road mom-and-pop restaurant she frequented. Over lunch, she delivered an animated story of how she had gotten interested in birding on a trip to Africa for an assignment. At that recounting, he recalled her life beyond being a foreign-exchange teacher. Ethan had time to assess that she definitely was on an entirely different plane than women in his previous life — not like the last woman in his life, ol' 'what-was-her-name?'

His mind played on as he watched her from across the table, trying not to stare. Minami had an engaging way about her — beyond beauty. It radiated from within, perhaps within that mysterious place called the heart. Ethan had come to enjoy her shyness, yet she balanced that with the forthrightness of a teacher's mind. She was a virtuous caretaker, respectful of the apartment's elderly, watching over them like her own. He had found a true 'omoiyari no aru josei,' a caring woman. Yet, his unstable life couldn't quite allow him to say so — his destiny, he felt, lay elsewhere.

Wasn't it better to ignore his growing feelings? Better to acknowledge that Indianapolis wasn't his destination, nor was cultivating a new relationship the right thing for both of them.

"Mr. Ethan Reynolds," Minami broke into the spell that seemed to be cast over him. "You seem far away in thought. Back in a San Francisco Bay fog, perhaps?"

His stare off into space had betrayed him. "Sorry," he apologized, realizing he had been caught.

"Sorry, is what 'makeh-gumi' utter, Ethan," she grinned. "That means 'losers' they say, sorry."

"Well, what do you call winners, Ms. Minami Sasaki?"

"Winners are few, Ethan; we call them 'kachi-gumi,'" she answered his question, watching for his reaction. She hoped it would prod him to stop hesitating and ask.

'Ask me, Ethan. I'm running out of time.' Her mind was as anxious as his, perhaps more so, as the end of the school year had arrived. Her foreign exchange-teacher commitment had ended. She also had an ultimatum hanging over her head--one imposed by her father.

Whether it was her words or how he had thought about her kindness, Ethan forgot the idea of his destiny lying elsewhere. He went with what floated up in his mind.

"I've been in the apartment for three weeks now. It seems like the only one I know there is the girl behind the Rising Sun Door across the hall," Ethan's mind stirred the idea of how to approach a subject that had been on his mind.

"I like the analogy, Ethan. Japan has always been known as the 'Land of the Rising Sun.' Perhaps I chose that color subconsciously. I hadn't given it much thought, to be truthful."

"We call America the 'Land of Opportunity' with quite different customs, like dating, I imagine. Minami, often in America, it's customary to follow the three-three-three dating rule," Ethan smiled as he picked at a slice of apple pie.

"Tell me about this three-three-three dating custom, Ethan. It's not another fib, right?" she grinned, beginning to feel he had, perhaps, turned a corner.

"Not a fib, I assure you. You can Google it and see that it is for real. It's about building relationships. The threes go like this: three hours exclusively focusing on someone you like. Perhaps a date or some time together like birding, for instance."

"So, am I someone you like, Ethan?"

"Ms. Sasaki, is that a topic to discuss being on a first date in Japan?" he parried.

"Ethan, in my father's world, we would be introduced through 'omiai (お見合い).' I think that is like dinosaur days in America. Your ancestors called it 'matchmaking — arranged marriage.' That could take up to six months of getting to know one another in my country."

"Well, that doesn't happen in modern America, I'm pretty sure," Ethan answered.

"Tell me more."

"The second three represents three days in a row. Couples often spend three days in a row, hanging out with each other — maybe a long weekend," Ethan added, hoping he wasn't pressing the issue too much. He could see spending time exploring — with Minami.

"Not in Japan. Not with Father's knowledge. Ethan, you — we would be in ... big trouble." Her answer came quickly as her eyes widened at his suggestion.

"The weekend doesn't have to be in the same room, but just close," Ethan fudged his reply.

"I guess the last three in the three-three-three rules — the three weeks of daily contacts to discuss goals in life, planning how to achieve them, and expectations of one another would be out of the question for your father then?" Ethan questioned Minami with a grin. "Good thing we are not in Japan, or we wouldn't have had this conversation."

Ethan's wry grin lingered as he watched her looking down, deep in thought. She pursed her lips while seeming lost in time for a few minutes, until the waitress brought the check. Ethan placed his credit card with the bill and finished his iced tea while they waited. Small talk filled the time — about what to do with summer as her teaching job had ended. Ethan was surprised at that comment. He had lost the fact she was here on an exchange-teacher plan for one school year. After that, where would she go?

What happens when you reach the end of your string? Where do you turn? What does one do when you are a 'stranger in a strange land,' and your thread seems so tenuous?

When the waitress returned, Ethan opened the cardholder and shook a tiny red thread that clung to the inside of it onto the table without a thought. Minami saw it. Her eyes widened; she had seen the red thread, or one just like it, twice now: the day Ethan arrived outside her door and, at in moment, very impossibly upon the table in front of her.

On impulse, or as a part of destiny, Ethan and Minami reached out to pick up the thread simultaneously. Ethan chuckled, saying, "If this were a wishbone, we would pull to break it and see who gets the short end and declare the winner — the kachi-gumi.

Minami smiled, letting go, and replied, "I think there is something about a Japanese saying about red string that I've forgotten. I'll have to look that up, but I don't think we should break it."

Ethan smiled and rolled the red silk string up, "Then I'll hold onto it until you get an answer. I'll remind you later."

On the ride back to the apartments, Minami was reflective, Ethan quiet. He wasn't sure if his impulsiveness had lost him an opportunity to get to know the vibrant and attractive foreign exchange teacher from the 'Land of the Rising Sun.'

He lugged her camera bag upstairs to her bright canary-yellow door, wondering if he would be invited inside, or if it would be better to hand her the bag. It was questionable until she turned and looked up into those steel-blue Clark Kent eyes and said, "I enjoyed our first date, Ethan."

She smiled as she opened the door. "In Japan, kissing on first dates is not the norm, but for you, since we are not in my country, I'll make an exception." She rose on tiptoe and closed her eyes.

Ethan stooped down and gently kissed her lips. "Until the next date, then?" he asked, as the kiss broke.

"Tomorrow, Ethan, date number two. I'll introduce you to the Japanese Tea Ceremony."

With that, she slipped inside and smiled at Ethan, whom she left standing in the hallway, as she gently closed the bright-yellow door.

She leaned her head against the door and stood thinking, 'Ethan, today was better than I could have ever hoped for.'

Once inside, and her heartbeat had calmed down, she opened her backpack to retrieve her camera, intent on reviewing the shots and video she had taken in the bird sanctuary. Curled around the lens cover, she found a familiar crimson red thread.

"How did this get in there? I thought I had put this in the trash last week. It can't be the one from the restaurant ..." She spoke to no one in particular, but set it on the kitchen counter again.

Minami began downloading the content from her camera to her workstation. After logging into her Adobe Photoshop cloud account, she spent an hour editing a short video of Ethan's birding efforts. She focused on his genuine smiles as he enjoyed himself and even captured the look of wonder as the birds took flight. She sent an eleven-by-fourteen photo request to a nearby photo center and an expedited order for a larger sixteen-by-twenty frame to be ready within two hours. She used her father's unlimited card to pay for everything. As set in his ways, despite being domineering, he never limited her accounts as he did his sons', an acknowledgment that women were remarkable, despite his narrow perception of their roles.

She did a last-minute video edit, a gift she had mentally promised to make for her neighbor. One final pass-through and then copied it to a flash drive for Ethan Reynolds, a customary Japanese small gift for their second date.

Before logging off, her mind ticked with thoughts of — the red silk string. It stirred something — something she had forgotten. "'Google it,'" Ethan had said about the dating three-three-three rules, but she smiled at his prodding; she believed him; he lacked guile in her eyes. It was her thoughts of the red thread that she Googled.

The search led her to the Japanese storyThe Legend of the Red Silk Thread. It made her heart race as she read:

According to a timeless Japanese tale whispered throughout the ages, an invisible red string of fate binds all lovers. That tenuous thread connects them to their soulmates, although they may not yet know one another. While the string may stretch or tangle, it never breaks. Two people connected by this crimson string are destined to meet and fall in love even if they are oceans apart. Your string may cross the lines of others and sometimes become tangled for a while, but inevitably, you are destined to follow the red silk thread to that one person attached and waiting for you at its end.

"Can this be true?" Minami asked aloud, while watching the video replay of Ethan's Clark Kent smile. She watched it play on as he busily took pictures of the waterfowl at the sanctuary. "This needs more editing ... " she declared, gazing at the crimson-red silk thread.

Minami dashed out of her apartment to the PhotoMart to retrieve her framed image of Ethan at the water sanctuary, his smiling face so at peace with the still waters behind him and the solitary adult Cooper's hawk with its salmon-colored chest and a long, striped tail that had swooped over his head in the background. Ethan had missed that; he would be in for a surprise when it showed up in the video.

Ethan awoke Sunday morning to the unique ringtone he had set for Minami's messages. Groggily, he pulled his iPhone off the lamp table and read the attachment.

The attachment's image was an old-fashioned tea ceremony invitation that caught Ethan's attention. It had red-tone imagery and featured an elegant tea leaf branch with blossoms. In the background was an opacity image of a woman dressed in a patterned kimono, with her hair done in the kanzashi hairstyle and spiked with elaborate hairpins. She looked striking and familiar. The invitation had Minami's name arranged vertically, inviting him for lunch and a tea ceremony at twelve. 'Date Two' was centered at the top.

A second look at the transparent image and Minami popped out: drop-dead gorgeous in a kimono. Ethan smiled. Three hours, he noted. He eagerly anticipated lunch, sensing that she might be interested in him, too. 'Maybe, just maybe,' he thought, 'she felt the same way about me as I do about her.'

'See you at noon,' he texted in reply to the invitation.

'Hell, this looks like serious stuff, not just a casual lunch.' By nine-thirty, Ethan was at his kitchenette table with a coffee cup in one hand and a warm Danish before him. His other fingers were on his laptop's keyboard, searching for 'Japanese Tea Ceremony.'

He quickly realized that making tea in Japan was more than just boiling water and adding tea leaves. It was a beautiful art form involving predefined and coordinated movements and actions from the host's heart. The article noted that every movement and gesture is made with the guest's comfort in mind. In nearly a ballet of motion and art form, considerations are given to factors like the placement of utensils and the guest's point of view, or 'shoyaku (正客).'

Time rushed as Ethan absorbed the nuances in the video he watched of a woman performing the tea ceremony.

"This calls for a suit," he announced, as he cleaned the table. By twelve, he was ready and nervous, knowing the expectations of the video presentation of the host and the guest's responses. "There is a first time for everything," he announced, and opened his door, stopping in wonder.

His attention was drawn to a long, intricate red silk thread running from a sign by his door across the hallway to a table with a ceramic bowl. The sign read, 'Follow the Invisible Red Silk String." Ethan smiled, "How can you follow something invisible or even know it is red?"

Instantly, he remembered that he was supposed to remind Minami to look up something she couldn't recall about that red thread he found with the bill at the restaurant. "Guess you beat me to the punch," he said with a grin, and followed the string to the bowl. It held another note: 'Guests in my country prepare for the tea ceremony by washing their hands before entering.'

Ethan did and used the hand towel provided to dry his hands. Then, hesitantly attempted to refold it, knowing some things in the video took great care about such procedures. However, the video didn't have anything about washing hands.

Ethan knocked. His smile gave way to awed admiration as Minami opened the door. The invitation's shadowy figure had come to life. Minami bowed. Ethan returned her bow.

"Yoroshiku onegaishimasu," Ethan attempted to repeat the Internet video greeting for 'good morning' he had rehearsed. But, the sight of Minami in her simple orange iromuji kimono had blanked his mind momentarily. The pronunciation came out like a man under the influence.

"Konnichiwa," Minami replied with a wince, a smile, and a second bow, "Please come in, Ethan."

"You are very ... beautiful in that kimono, Minami. Guess we aren't going birding today?" he joked.

"Not in that suit, handsome. The ladybirds would all be flocking to land on you and fight one another out of jealousy."

Ethan was relieved that she was just ... her usual enchanting self and not in some rigid ceremonial mode. Bright and smiling, she motioned for him to enter.

"Lunch first, Ethan, and then we will have the tea ceremony, the 'chanoyu,' I have to admit it has been a very long time since I have participated in that, so I might not have everything exactly right ... but the thought counts in developing relationships, right?"

"Yes, it does; thoughts count ... I've also learned that honesty and truthfulness are important in improving relationships, Minami," Ethan spoke cautiously. While keeping a secret about something as trivial as how to serve tea properly may not be a big deal, he wondered about his California-centered world and the lies and deceit that had ruined his career in the close-knit tech environment. He didn't want that to happen again with someone new in his life. Someone kind and caring had entered it for the first time, which meant a lot to Ethan. And he was concerned about how Minami might perceive him knowing that.

"On that truthfulness note, Ethan," Minami spoke quietly as she ate, "I have something to add about that."

"Me, too," he answered, "but ladies first."

"Okay," she breathed deeply and started to unload a burden she had held back.

"The story of how I came to America is not exactly what I told you earlier. True, I was a freelance photojournalist in Africa for a Japanese wildlife documentary. But when war broke out, amidst the chaos, I saw an opportunity to capture the conflict between the warring armies and record the destruction caused by their battles. The video footage went viral on CNN's Japanese television feeds, and my father saw it. My whole family saw it. All of Japan saw it, too.

Two days later, I was surrounded by six bodyguards, who whisked me away on my father's jet, out of harm's way. This incident splashed my face and my father's name all over the news. That does not sit well in my father's line of work. He gave me an ultimatum."

"How did that situation land you in America?" Ethan asked, a bit stunned by her revelation and the fact that her father had bodyguards and a jet. 'Who the hell is he?' he thought.

Minami shrugged. "It was an embarrassment for my father. He gave me a choice to get off the world stage, somewhere quiet — un-newsworthy — or marry someone who would ensure I behaved as a good Japanese woman should."

"Christ, so you landed in America's heartland — so un-newsworthy?" Ethan asked, surprised by the revelation. "How could he do that in today's world? You said he was an entrepreneur in business." As an afterthought, Ethan added, "He's not a gangster, right?"

Minami hesitated and carefully chose her words, watching Ethan's face for clues as to how he would take her response. "My father is a business entrepreneur — at home. He also owns this building ... and others in America. Ethan, ... my father is worse than a gangster — my father is a diplomat." She looked down, avoiding his eyes as she saw them widen.

Ethan's look was of a man stunned into silence by her words, yet those seemed to hold a sense of humor — worse that a gangster — he was a diplomat. It now clicked with him when he had asked Minami about having a key to the office, and her answer came back as the manager knew on which side his bread was buttered. Ethan wasn't sure whether that was Japanese humor or Minami's natural propensity to attempt to lighten the mood.

"That's not a fib, right?" he asked, thinking perhaps this was one more attempt at humor.

"It's real, Ethan, the truth without hidden meaning. My teaching job was his way of letting things cool down so my recognition at home might dissipate. I have my freedom until the end of the month. Then, some lucky man makes me his wife back home. Such is my fate."

"You have something you want to unburden yourself of?" she asked, in the lull of their conversation.

"After what you just said, maybe I should just ... let it go," Ethan murmured.

"Something about California?" she coaxed. "You told me you've learned that honesty and truthfulness are important in improving relationships. Is that not important now?"

Minami's words hesitantly spilled out as she watched his face react to her question. Would he be open and honest, or ... was this the breaking of the red silk string that seemed to flow through their lives?

Ethan looked up, struck by her look of dismay, and resolved to follow through on his original intent to be open and truthful, even if it cost him in the end.

"I'm not exactly the 'walrus riding' kid I told you about," he began.

"I know," Minami acknowledged, "I ... was a journalist, Ethan. You can't hide everything from the Internet; you should know from your work on that from your Artificial Intelligence creations. I've read the journals, the court battles, the struggles over ownership ... the loss of your fortune. So, tell me about something I don't already know, Ethan Reynolds."

Her words cut like a sharp knife, but he struggled through them.

"It's true; I lived a high-roller lifestyle. The women in my life were — shallow; interested in partying or spending money. The one you probably read the most about ripped my heart out — not for love but for my mind and what I had developed."