I gazed at Akira, my heart threatening to leap out of my chest and hide. All of a sudden, I felt like a little girl getting caught sipping sake. Only, Mayuki-san was amused rather than mad.
"Why don't you take a bath with us, Reiko?" Mayuki-san asked, batting her eyelashes.
Akira's jaw dropped, and his eyes widened. Darting my eyes between him and her, I slowly got up to my feet. I opened my mouth to deny something, but no words came out.
"Akira's been hogging you all day," Mayuki-san added. Her eyes glistened, and her smirk grew. "We haven't had the time to hang out and bond."
"Um…" I didn't know what to say. Should I pick? That seemed…unwise.
Before I could decide, Akira stepped towards me with his arms outstretched, but Mayuki-san and her husband were faster. Mayuki-san grabbed my wrist as Akahito-san put an arm on Akira's shoulders. I did not even see him stood.
Akira let out a protest, but his brother hushed him. "Let her join them. It's not as if you're not going to see her after. You…"
Akahito-san's voice got muffled as he dragged his younger brother outside. Sniggering other male cousins followed them, glancing at me as they did.
"Don't worry. We're not going to torture you," Mayuki-san said.
I looked at their faces and doubted that as the slurring cousin from last night added, "Oh, we will."
Gulping, I mustered a 'you're-kidding-look' and smirked.
"She's smart," she said, and they all laughed.
As we made our way to the open bath outside which at the moment was reserved for women, Mayuki-san introduced her cousins-in-law again. The private bath Akira allegedly reserved was incomparable to this. It was thrice larger. Fog enveloped the space, and it reeked of rotten eggs. It was magnificent.
With a towel wrapped around me, I followed them and dipped in the hot spring. I lingered in the back, listening to them exchanged stories as the attention shifted away from me, chirping from time to time.
I was enjoying it until I noticed Yumi-chan, the youngest among us, staring at me. I smiled at her.
"Are you used to public baths?" she asked, frowning at me.
Oh. She knew I was mixed. I nodded, my smile restrained.
The pregnant cousin, Yoshikawa Yuriki-san, reprimanded her for it, causing the others to look at us.
"It's fine. Really." I tucked away a strand of hair behind my ears and leveled my eyes with Yumi-chan. "I grew up in Tokyo, but when I was your age, I got to go to San Francisco in the States."
Yumi-chan's eyes widened and sparkled. "Really? What's it like?"
With a breath, I answered her. Others began asking more about the other side of my family. At first, I worried but eventually stopped fretting about the possibility that they might ask about my mother. My shoulders became light, and I began to enjoy the conversation.
Our topics gradually switched to hair and beauty products, and it carried on even as we got dressed in our yukatas. On our way back, we bumped into Akira's mother, and she joined us. Then they got the idea to show me photo albums of Akira when he was younger.
The guys were still gone when the albums were brought out. There was a lightness in my chest as we huddled around it.
The first picture was a baby Akira. I cooed at how cute he was. A roll of eyes and shake of heads got directed at me. Ignoring them, I flipped another page and another until Akira became ganglier during his middle school entrance ceremony. Until Akira filled out his body when he reached high school.
His cousins and Mayuki-san told bits of stories they heard as we went through the album. It was fun. I actually felt at ease, welcomed even and part of the family which I hadn't felt for a while. But my good mood shifted when we got to a group picture. It was taken during a school festival if I guessed it right.
High school Akira was at the side and beside him was a petite cute girl with full bangs and large breasts. Her hair was styled into a loose bun with curls sticking out—the kind I wouldn't be able to pull off.
Call it intuition or something like that but bitterness laced my mouth as I clenched my teeth.
"Who's this?" I pointed at the picture.
"I think that's Megumi, Akira-kun's ex-girlfriend," someone replied.
Jealousy was a monster—an ugly beast waking up from the pit of my stomach. I shook my head. No. I wasn't jealous. Why would I be? But as I took one last look at the photo, at his ex, my shoulders slumped.
She was on another whole level compared to me. I was nothing like her. What was I supposed to do now?