How to Reappear

Tomoe Shingun holds the power of invisibility. It isn’t from the use of a cloak or some practiced ability. It’s a gift that lives inside her. One day she woke up in the middle of the forest and it was just there.

That’s actually how the game starts. Her waking up and being pursued by a group of ronin. Not powerful people, but still she’s outnumbered. So what does she do? She hides behind a tree and closes her eyes. One of the pursuers circles the tree just as Tomoe opens her eyes. If you know what you’re doing, then the ronin won’t see her. If you’re clueless how to play the game, you have to fight the ronin which is nearly impossible to survive.

It’s a really exciting way to start a game. Someday when I’m at the limit of my current playthrough, I’ll begin again.

Tomoe is known for her gift, but don’t get me wrong, she can fight too. She wields one mean Wakizashi. I’m still working on the Tanto skills. Even after all this time, I haven’t got the close range stuff down. Some people dedicate their whole life to the game. I teeter on the edge, but I still participate in the real world. I don’t have much choice.

Samurai Stealth, that’s where my confidence lives. It’s not sad, I’m not sad to admit it. Everyone needs an outlet to feel powerful. There have been nights when I feel the line between where Tomoe ends and I begin to be almost translucent. At times that blur excites me and at other times it scares me.

One night in particular Mom was calling out to me upstairs and I didn’t even hear her. By the time I saved and shut down she had fallen asleep after having peed the bed. She’s since forgiven and forgotten, but I haven’t. Sometimes I wish she would complain instead of staying quiet and giving me that look, I’m sure you know the kind of look I’m talking about. I already feel the way her look makes me feel most of the time. It’s overkill to try and shame me, it’s always there. Except when I’m locked in as Tomoe. It’s the only time that stuff leaves me.

Because of Mom and my natural inclination to keep nocturnal hours, I couldn’t contain my excitement when Oscar Taylor announced he was moving to Lake Havasu. It's in Arizona. Why anyone would want to move there I don’t know, but I don’t care because that’s where Oscar went. And when he went I finally got scheduled on overnights.

It had been about six weeks of my new night life when I started to feel this super sharp pain in the center of my back. Not from lifting stuff, I’ve always done that. It was like a weird hole had started to form.

Washing my hands is when I noticed. My posture changed. I’ve been slumping more than ever. All the fat from the top of me compressing on the fat on the bottom of me. Coming together in the middle to form a pressurized sunken place in the middle of my back. I made the mistake of mentioning it to Scarlett, who I don’t see anymore since she’d never work overnights, and she told me I should do yoga. Sure.

Only people like me, and people like Ben want the overnights. The freaks.

“It’s the weirdest shit man, I swear I just put a full box of them on aisle 6. I don’t know what happened. I guess I’m just tired.”

Ben didn’t look tired. He looked clammy. There was a sweat stain around the collar of his easter egg purple colored polo. I felt insulted, not because he was lying to me about stealing, but because he was nervous about it. I wanted to tell him to take it easy, but I just shrugged and kind of ignored him. I might not be the most talkative guy on the crew, but anyone who meets me ought to know that I’m not a snitch. Though I did wonder what in the hell Ben would want with a full box of avocados. They were sure to all ripen at once. That would be like a gallon of guacamole.

One of the really nice things about the overnight shift is that they shut off the music. The store is totally silent. Aside from the sounds of the others working, and whatever music might be at full volume on their headphones. I always leave one earbud out. I’m not scared or anything, it’s just that I like to stay vigilant. Probably influenced by the game, but hey, have you ever walked down empty aisles in a dark store and hesitated before rounding a corner? I’m not embarrassed to say that I have, and I think you’d have to be some kind of superhuman to say that you never would. Hesitate I mean, again, not that I’m scared or anything.

It was Tuesday, which is surprisingly a difficult day. Mostly because believe it or not, Monday evenings are pretty heavy shopping days. People always think that it’s all about the weekends. A lot of people put off their shopping for after work right at the start. My weekends are never the real weekends so I do my own shopping usually on Thursdays. Never would shop at Ballard’s though. Even with my employee discount it’s expensive.

Anyway, I’m hauling my ass trying to get all these fancy Peruvian yams from the back to the front and Ben was no help obviously. I could hear him hacking up a lung in the bathroom. Dude smokes, and most of the time he moves at a sloth’s pace.

All of a sudden, there’s a collapse on aisle seventeen. One crash, then another, luckily no glass. Aisle seventeen is mostly just pills and bandaids and stuff like that. It’s where I usually assign Ben, so of course I’m annoyed but by no means surprised. Half the time I thankful if he manages to simply locate the aisle he’s supposed to be working on without asking for help. So the fact he’d already finished, even if it meant he made a mess was just fine with me.

Two people for the whole store, it’s a joke, especially given Ballard’s probable ridiculously high budget.

To my great disappointment, I rounded the corner to find a stray picking up the fallen bottles and stuffing them into a sack. She had her back to me and was trying to hurry, so I did my best not to spook her.

“Hey.”

I called out gently.

She turned around like a whip but didn’t drop anything she was holding. Older lady, maybe Mom’s age or a little younger. It’s hard to know these things.

It’s happened before. Guys manage to fall asleep in the toilets and then like revived zombies stumble out around midnight looking for a midnight snack. They are usually cool about me escorting them out. Mainly because I always let them keep whatever snacks they pick up and I look away if they swipe a few more on their way out. In the winter months especially, it feels extra cruel to put them outside the glass with nothing to keep them warm. Listen though, I’m not a complete sucker. I learned my lesson about letting them hang in the empty cafe area. That almost cost me my job once.

She was dressed like a spy, all black, long sleeves. She had these boots on that were for winter but they looked expensive. And her hair was really well kept, maybe dyed to make her look younger. I’m not sure. Even the bag she was holding, it looked newer.

“You can see me?”

It’s the first thing she said and already I’m thinking to myself like, Jesus Christ, we got a real case on our hands.

“Yes, I can see you. Sorry.”

She put the rest of the bottles into her bag and then closed her eyes. She asked,

“How about now?”

“What?”

“Can you see me?”

“Yep, you’re still there.”

I tried not to laugh. It isn’t nice to mock. She let out a big sigh and looked around the aisle.

“I’m usually invisible. I can make myself invisible. But you see me?”

The thing is, she was so convincing. Like she was genuinely confused. She spoke so sanely and I felt really on the spot. I didn’t know what to say.

“Are you a samurai?”

Of all the stupid questions I could have asked this woman, my lizard brain had chosen the stupidest one possible. I was instantly horrified at myself, but she started laughing her ass off. She laughed so hard that she had those little wet spots at the corner of her eyes by the time she finished. Not tears, but close.

“I’m not Japanese, I’m from Laos. Do you know of it?”

“Of course I know about Laos. I can even point to it on a map.”

My lack of normal day to day conversation with strangers was in full flame. So were my cheeks at this point. Even though she was the one with the real mental problems.

She looked around the shelves and then down the aisle. All the laughter was gone, she looked serious. I kind of glanced down at her bag, trying to make out if she was carrying a weapon. It was hard to tell.

“I didn’t take that much tonight.”

She said when when she noticed I was looking. She put her thin arms over the bulging bag, like she actually thought I would snatch it away.

“Look, I don’t care about that. But you can’t stay in the store. You’ve gotta go, okay? My co worker’s in the bathroom and I don’t know what he’ll say. Can you follow me?”

I gestured towards the front entrance when I said that. She pursed her lips and started to look all emotional. Sometimes they act that way when they realize I’m not there to condemn them for thieving. I decided that to cheer her up I’d pull out my old stand by mood lightener.

“Seriously, I don’t care if this place burns to the ground. But why anyone would choose to hit a place that has such a terrible snack selection is beyond me. Who wants to eat natural cheetos and coconut crackers? Should maybe reconsider your choice of hunting grounds.”

She started crying. Not loud, but in a way that was unmistakable. Water running down the chin, super uncomfortable.

“I can’t believe you can see me.”

She said, looking at the floor. I handed her the bandana from my back pocket and she accepted it and blew her nose.

Just then, Ben came around the corner with an armful of bottles.

“Bro, are you talking to yourself back here or what?”

He asked with a smirk. He walked right past us and started trying to stack the bottles on the shelf, dropping a few in the process. I looked at her and then I looked at Ben and then I looked at her.

“This is Ben, he’s high as a kite right now which is all I can say to explain him.”

She didn’t respond and to my dismay, Ben looked up at us and said,

“Sometimes you freak me out man, talkin’ in third person and shit. Aren’t you supposed to be stocking produce?”

He went right back to it. I mean, I’ve never found him to be particularly sharp but this was a whole new level of burnout.

“Can you see why I was back here? Do you see a problem?”

I asked him in one last attempt to get him to wake up.

Ben, this guy, he stands up and puts his hand to his forehead like he’s surveying the vast open ocean. All dramatically, he spends a good twenty seconds turning in a circle. His line of vision goes right past her, several times. Then he has the nerve to say,

“No dude, I don’t see any problems. Now if you don’t mind, I got some work to do here.”

He started coughing again. And then got back to it.

I motioned for her to follow me and I was actually surprised that she did. In the stockroom she put the bag down which was obviously heavy and sat on one of the wooden crates. When it became clear to her I wasn’t going to ask her any questions, she perked up. Studied me up and down which made me very nervous.

“Can I wait here for you? Until you’re done?”

She picked up a rogue apple from the bottom of the crate and dusted it off. The bite she took told me she wasn’t a person with constant access to fresh food.

In the game, there comes a point when Tomoe comes to a crossroads. Literally, he stands in the middle of a dirt road somewhere in the fields of what is now the Shizuoka prefecture and is confronted by another samurai named Hikaru Ginchiyo. It is a crucial part of the game. Maybe the most crucial. You have to decide whether or not to team up and head to Tokyo with her, or continue solo. I landed in that spot about eight months ago and I chose the solo route. Reddit says that’s the true path, but after reaching beyond that point in the game, I had my regrets. That surprised me, me being such a loner in real life.

It was snowing outside by the time by four thirty rolled around. She wasn’t asleep, didn’t even look tired.

“You wanna walk downtown and get some coffee?”

I asked her. She didn’t hesitate, and she didn’t hesitate when I asked to carry her bag. Sometimes when surprises happen, we allow things we normally wouldn’t.

Walking next to her, I felt I could stand up straighter. She’s a good foot shorter than me, but she has perfect posture. It makes me want to stand tall too.

Past Griffin Street she pulled her hood up, and from the side I couldn’t make out her face. I tugged on my scarf to obscure my own face too. Our feet made those nice crunching sounds that only happen when the snow is fresh.

“You know, I’m sorry for being upset earlier. Actually, I should be happy that you could see me.”

She said and turned just enough so I could make out her slight smile.

“Why would you be happy about it?”

“For a while I was worried. That I was disappearing. I mean that’s what it feels like. I already felt like I was. And then this all happened. So it’s nice. To be seen.”

The two of us kept on, the only moving creatures in the still night. The snow dappening everything around us besides our breath. I closed my eyes and imagined that we were see through, that the only sign of our existence was our footprints in the snow. When I opened them again, no, we were both still there. I was okay with that.