Next came a watercolor of a neighborhood from the view of someone emerging from a station. Tonight was the closest he’d ever come to traveling to Adachi-ku, but he assumed this was a rendering of the ward where she lived. It was painted with the warm colors of someone coming home. He was no expert, and maybe he was biased, but as he flipped through the portfolio, it struck him as quite good. There were even a few comics—little slice-of-life stories about being a Black American in Japan.
“I'm not done with the full portfolio yet,” she said when he made it to a sepia portrait of the Shibuya Crossing.
Shibuya was one of the most famously busy intersections in Japan. But she’d drawn each person scrambling to cross with the four-way light with care as if each of them mattered.
“Rhode Island School of Design—that’s the art school I’m secretly applying to—but the kids that go there call it RhIDS.” She leaned forward as she told him this as if this was the biggest secret she’d ever spilled. “They’ve got this new animation program, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I mean, how cool would it be to tell moving stories through art? Anyway, they want personal work, but they have these assignments you have to do, too. So I’ve got a whole bunch of things I still need to get done over the holiday break. But the one after Shibuya Cross, that’s for you.”
She dipped her head and pushed the errant curl behind her ear again. “I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for me—even if you didn’t know ‘til now that you’d done it.”
As fascinating as her interpretation of the Shibuya Crossing picture was, Victor immediately flipped to the last piece in the portfolio to see what she had made for him.
It was a picture of him and Han fighting with axes rendered with markers. There were mirrors in his suite's gym area so that he and Han could mind their technique. But he'd never seen himself reflected as he was in this painting. Han was on the defensive, which made him look particularly dashing. Heroic even. Like a kung fu movie come to life. Was that…?
Was that how she saw him?
He gripped the sides of the portfolio. The words he’d wanted to say to her since September stuck in his fingers.
He was so strong. All the other Red Diamond praised him for this. Before Dawn, he’d thought these accolades were his rightful due. After all, he’d been working for over a decade to achieve his level of strength and martial arts prowess. All because he’d wanted to be a future dragonhead his triad could be proud of despite his defects.
But at that moment, he felt weak. Weak for all the things he hadn't said to her. Weak for all the things he still couldn't say.
He took out the picture of him and Han and handed the rest of the portfolio back to her.
Then he set his new, precious gift down on the table so that he could sign, “I like it very much. I am sorry I did not get a present for you.”
She waved a dismissive hand at his apology. “It's just a picture. And you're easy to draw. I mean, look at you.”
He crooked his head to the side, not understanding. “What do you mean?”
Somehow. she managed to tuck her head even further into her chest. “Oh, you know. It’s like I blabbed the first time we met. You’re so stupid hot. It was easy to draw you. Art loves beautiful things…and people.”
Everything screeched to a halt inside of Victor’s head. What she’d said to him that first day…had she been trying to say she thought he was too attractive? Not too repulsive as he’d assumed?
A moment passed between them, electric and bright.
But then a knock sounded on the door.
“Neih hou!” Han called out, even though Dawn didn't speak Cantonese.
“Gei hou!” Dawn answered, nonetheless. Someone, possibly Donny, must have taught her how to say “I’m good” in Cantonese.
Victor watched them exchange pleasantries in Japanese after that small bit of Cantonese. Han told her he was happy to be returning to Hong Kong the next day for the winter break and asked her about her plans. She answered with a cute little pout that she was trying to convince her family to go to Hello Kitty Land for the fourth time in three years but doubted it would work out.
Victor couldn't help but notice how much more comfortably she talked with Han than him. It was not merely that no sign language was required for them to communicate.
She smiled up at him in a friendly manner and easily met Han’s eyes. She never did that with Victor. They both laughed and seemed to understand each other well, even though they were speaking in a language that wasn't native to either of them.
