10) When Your Kimono Wears You

Lucy adored Asian culture, especially films and literature. She had seen Old Boy more times than she could remember and Murakami was by far her favourite author. Sadly her friends didn’t get it. It was a niche interest that only she understood. She often daydreamed about being a Samurai, though she worried it was a male breed of warrior. Plus her small frame and pasty white skin meant she was far from the most intimidating individual.

For her eighteenth birthday, Lucy’s mother bought them tickets to go to Tokyo. They stayed for a week, the first half they spent in the city doing the tourist stuff, but Lucy wanted to leave the city and go to a Samurai shrine. They got a thin white train away from the cluttered grey buildings and whooshed out into the countryside which seemed brighter than what was back home. From the station they took a taxi to a hill filled with cherry blossom trees. They paid their driver in yen and wandered up a small gravel path towards a towering red and green pagoda.

At the entrance of the shrine they were greeted by a maiden wearing a long pink kimono. She bowed to them and Lucy and her mother bowed back. She then pointed to their shoes, indicating to take them off should they wish to enter the pagoda. They slipped of their converse shoes and stepped onto the wooden floorboards.

Square wooden beams kept structure together as the pagoda got thinner as it got higher. On the floor was a samurai vest and katana. Hung up on the wall was a purple kimono covered in white flowers. Between the pair was a tip box. Lucy’s mother didn’t find the shrine interesting and went for a wander outside.

Lucy picked up the Samurai vest with great difficulty and tried it on. She felt herself sink into the floor. She picked up the katana, enjoying how light it felt in the palm of her hand and swung it. The momentum toppled her over and the vest constricted her chest. As she coughed out for help, the maiden from outside pulled the vest off with little effort and returned it to its place on the floor.

‘A warrior doesn’t pick her armour because of the status it bears on her, but picks it for the status it will allow her to attain,’ she said.

Although Lucy loved phrases that could be likened to proverbs, she thought the maiden was talking rubbish. The maiden saw Lucy frown. She opened up her kimono and revealed a katana. Lucy was impressed she had managed to hide it.

‘When I first moved here, thugs would often come and desecrate the shrine. Now I am known as the Frightful Maiden,’ she said, hiding her sword away again, ‘They fear because of my kimono.’

She bowed before Lucy and took tiny steps outside. Lucy looked at the Samurai vest and the kimono, then at her own clothes; an All Time Low tour t-shirt and skinny jeans. She wielded the katana and sliced the air with ease.