The Question

“So, will you invite me up?” 

The question hung like a pensive red house brick floating in the silence between them.

*

Up to the age of twelve her life had been ordinary. Just one girl amongst many. High school changed all that. Her girlfriends all began the inevitable transformation that her body somehow refused. They grew taller and curvier. Their very skin announcing to the world their departure from childhood. Her one time peers now even smelt different. Not that she was spared the inconvenience of maturity. No, her body gave her nubility and a new appetite, it just forgot the compensatory advertising.

Momoko went through here late teens a frustrated virgin. High school boys saw her as too young. Forget sex or just a clumsy kiss, she wasn't even granted the ignoble pleasure of being evaluated and cast aside like the ugly girls and the fat girls were. They were at least considered, no matter how fleetingly.

By university, the only males who found her attractive were school boys, seeing her as one of them with a drivers license and money, or adult men too much her senior, who’s attraction was downright creepy. To them she was a legally available little girl. Something both sexually abhorrent and emotionally stifling.

She would be neither an enabler for boys nor a plaything for perverts.

Starved of affection or even sexual acknowledgement, she poured herself into study. Aquatinted with the unfairness of the world, she chose law. The only avenue for her pent up attention, she consequentially excelled.

Finishing top of her year did not change matters. Prospective employers either failed to take her seriously, or tried to take advantage of her. Judging her too young to know better. Her heart was set on criminal law, but her childish appearance worked against her and she finally accepted a job in contract law.

Resigned to a lifelong spinsterhood within a girls body and with a woman’s mind, Momoco determined to discover what else life had to offer her. She was good at her job and her employer was smart enough to realise it. Client contact being exclusively textual, she soon became sought after for her insight and effectiveness. This brought profits to her employer and promotion to her. She suddenly had the wealth and security to enjoy a cosmopolitan if somewhat reclusive life. She could afford good things. As long as she was content to enjoy them alone.

*

Still the question hung there. 

“What will people think of you?” Another brick appeared, albeit unspoken.

*

It was through work that Ryan met her. She was a lawyer at the Japanese law firm he employed. For several months she worked on a project for him and he was impressed with her efficiency. As the volume of their communication grew personalities inevitably began to leak through, in both directions.

If honest with himself, Ryan had carried an unrequited facination with Japanese femininity since primary school. All through grade six, as he commenced his losing battle with genes and hormones, he has sat opposite a shyly quiet Japanese girl named Susan. The only Japanese person he had seen in the flesh during those first dozen years of his life. Although they had not spoken two words together, she had left an aesthetic stamp deep in his brain.

Momoko struck him as clever and inventive. He had ambition to expand his business into Asia and her insight enabled him to do it. What is more she had a dry wit that bit deliciously across the internet. She could not help betraying she was well read, politically savvy and somewhat mischievous. Or perhaps that had been intentional?

Business success demanded his temporary relocation to Osaka, and this proximity emboldened his growing fantasies about her. Their online flirting had been just a bit of fun. Harmless, with no hope, or risk, of consequence. Now the possibility of actual meeting tickled incessantly at a rice grain sized spot in his brain, just above and behind his left eye.

He frequently caught himself wondering what she looked like. He had searched her out on line and in the company’s literature but no image was to be found. This only fed his imagination. One day she would be an ogre in his mind, the next a goddess. Was she involved? Worse, married? Finally, he just bluntly asked her to sms him her photo, breaking so many rules of etiquette. Social, business and, for all he knew, even the Japanese legal code.

*

The silence grew yet another brick.

*

That this man wanted to know what she looked like both mortified and delighted her. She had already seen his photo amongst his company’s promotional material. He looked handsome to her eyes, in an occidental way. That emboldened her. He formed no association in her mind with her uniformly negative experience of Japanese men.

The oxygen starved kernel of sexual desire that she though she had extinguished, started to emit wisps of smoke.

After a week of uncharacteristic hesitation she sent him her most recent head and shoulders CV photo. One in which she had paid a make up stylist to enhance the maturity of her features. It was hardly a personal or sexually enticing image, but at least she looked like a woman and not a girl.

From that transaction the nature of their communications changed. The ongoing work relationship became more succinct and professional, but they now began a separate, private, text based conversation.

For two months she negotiated the knife’s edge of feeding an adult love affair while deflecting his ever increasing requests for a face to face. He was ridiculously perfect for her. Sensitive, witty, experienced, wickedly sexual, and, he was interested in her.

At twenty seven, for the very first time, she fell in love. She desperately wanted to meet him, to feel him, to… But reality was cruel and ironic as she bitterly knew. It was a sign of the depth of her fall that she finally capitulated to his entreaties.

She agreed to meet him for dinner in Tokyo. Ryan would take the ninety minute Bullet Train ride up from Osaka, he could easily stay overnight. His company had connections with several hotels in the capital.

As she had planned, she was already seated when Ryan arrived at the restaurant, Le Petite. This was her favorite in all Tokyo. On just her second visit they had discretely, and without request, provided her a chair that, while of ordinary appearance, contrived to give, once she was seated, a good three inches of height. 

It was a very good restaurant.

*

That first brick was fast becoming a wall.

*

Momoco smiled up at him as the waiter pulled out his chair. She was slight, her youthful face enticing in their table’s soft candle light. It tickled at a memory deep in his mind. He smiled a greeting to her as he sat, the attraction that had germinated through their weeks of texting was already seated comfortably at the table between them. It only grew as the evening progressed.

He was smitten. He knew it. And why not? She was intelligent, witty, and she obviously returned his affection. Now that he had seen her he found her physically attractive as well. Slight, it was true, but possessing an asian elegance. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer slapped him in the face when the time came for them to take their leave. Away from the table neither her clothing nor the lighting could disguise that she had the body of a mere girl, a young teenager at best. Although he had the manners and self control not to show it, she had struck him a body blow.

He had wanted her, tonight. Her face and her words had reciprocated his desire. She was a charming, sophisticated, enticing woman. And she was a little girl. Inside his head he was deeply attracted to her, and disgusted with himself for being so. Yet he knew she was one year his senior.

This was Japan, not Australia. Compartmentalising his mind and trying not to look guilty, he escorted her to his hire car to drive her home to her apartment building. Once again seated, and committed to focus part of his attention on driving, the wine and her conversation and her perfume and her hand on his shoulder slowly soothed the squirming guilt in his mind.

As he parked the car Momoco slinked up close to kiss him. He allowed himself to return the kiss. No. In truth he could not stop himself from returning her kiss, but his anticipation for and enjoyment of it proved to be a bridge too far.

She invited him to come up to her apartment but he clumsily blurted his excuses, saw her to the building door then escaped with much haste and little to no grace.

As he drove away she seemed to shrink bodily in the rear view mirror. Was she crying? He had wanted so much to go up with her. He still wanted to and it sent a chill through his stomach. He was no pedophile. He had ordinary sexual appetites. She was in her mid twenties. How could he possibly have sex with that girl’s body? How could he not have sex with a woman with that heart and mind?

*

The wall of bricks was now high and broad. 

Though it had been made without mortar.

*

She did not cry. She showed no emotion at all. She felt none to show. Inside she felt only soothing numbness. Over the following fortnight that numbness faded to a nothingness. Ryan had not contacted her, not professionally, not personally. She had not contacted him.

She did not feel anything. Shouldn’t there be something? Rage, anger, self pity, embarrassment? What was wrong with her?

What was wrong with him? He had kissed back. She had felt it. She had enjoyed it, but so too had he.

She knew what was wrong. No decent man could desire this child’s body. He was ashamed of himself, or disgusted with her.

She had other clients to deal with as he had other duties to occupy him, but this silence could not last. Too much money was at stake at the very least. She was a professional. She will have to contact him soon, with a project update. But not tonight. Tomorrow. She left work for the suddenly lonely trip home.

As she approached her apartment building she saw Ryan standing where he had left her this fortnight past, on the pavement directly in front of her lobby door. He had come back up from Yokohama. He was dressed exactly as he had been at dinner two weeks ago. She walked towards Ryan and stopped in front of him, both their faces silent.

As if the intervening two weeks had never happened, he asked The Question. After the briefest of pauses, or so it felt to her, she answered.