Closing my hand, I pushed the habaki out of its saya, and let the tip of my thumb brush against the cold steel of my blade along its clouded hamon edge.  My fingers lightly gripped the tightly wrapped silk, and I felt my blade float free.



My eyes closed, I listened to the waves sliding through the small rocks at our feet that lined the shore of the bay where we stood.  I felt the wind, cold and moist from the breath of the ocean against my face.  As I breathed in, the salty, pungent scent of the sea filled my nostrils.  I held the breath in my lungs for a moment, and then exhaled deeply.  The taste of the adrenaline in my mouth faded, and was replaced by calm.

"I'm ready."  I heard Toshiro exhale.

I opened my eyes.

The night had fallen long ago, but the dark violet tinge to the black sky reminded me of the last of the fading light after sunset.  Stars filled the sky from the mountains to the east to the city skyline in the west and the entire bowl of vast ocean that lay to the south in front of us.  It was a calm night, quiet and still now that the rain had passed.  The moon floated three hands high above the horizon where ocean met sky, casting a silver light on the slowly approaching waves and on the thin clouds in the distance.

I nodded to Toshiro.

My thumb brushed against the Matsudaira clan mon engraved into the habaki of the shinken katana I held in my hand.  Tonight, as warriors of my family have done for a hundred generations, I would have the honor of aiding my best friend in seppuku -- here at the edge of the bay that we came to together for the years we knew each other.  Here, where as children we practiced our kenjutsu with our bamboo boken.  Here, where as young men we came to retreat from the pains of our lives.  Here, where now as warriors, we would now execute Toshiro's final solution.

I heard his wakizashi slide free from its saya, as he took a deep breath.









Seven years later, I stood at the podium at Toshiro's wedding, and I remembered that night as we stood along the edge of the bay.

The woman he thought was the love of his life told him, just hours before, that she no longer loved him and instead was leaving the state to be with another man -- a man who Toshiro already dispised for his dishonest, dishonorable, rodent-like personality.  To lose the love of his life to a man like this was a dishonor he could not bear.  After slicing his wrists with an X-acto knife unsuccessfully, he called me near three o'clock in the morning and told me to pick him up.  He asked me to help him die in the way our ancestors did -- by seppuku... by ritual suicide.

At his wedding reception, seven years later, I gave the best man speech based on one of our favorite songs -- a song that first brought us together over sake and sushi and laid the foundation of our lifelong friendship.  This song is called "The Last Song" by X-Japan, and my best man speech was based on this song.  This is part of that speech:

...In the depths of suffering, Toshiro called me up in the middle of the night, one night; and we took our swords, and went to the edge of the sea.  There, at the edge of sanity, so close to the end, under the cloudless sky, there was this song.   It starts like this:     Watching the stars till they're gone Like an actor all alone Who never knew the story he was in Who never knew the story ends Like the sky reflecting my heart All the colors become visible When the morning begins I'll read the last line     The next line in the song is my favorite.  It goes:     Owarana-i ame daki-shi-meta yoru ga asa wo muka-eru kokoro wa ma-da nu-re-ta mama   (Endless rain embraced me as night approaches morning My heart is not yet soaked)   I told him that night that fate, that destiny, had a reason for everything; and that while he and I were suffering at the hands of fate -- that one day the night would pass into morning and the seemingly endless rain in our lives would cease.   In the endless rain I've been walking Like a poet feeling pain Trying to find the answers Trying to hide the tears But it was just a circle That never ends When the rain stops, I'll turn the page The page of the first chapter     I swore to him many things that night, one of them being that I would be there beside him when the endless rain ceased, when we could finally turn that first page of the next chapter...

That night seven years earlier, Toshiro didn't plunge his wakizashi into his gut and disembowel himself.  I didn't aid him by decapitating him with a single, clean tameshigiri cut to the back of his neck.  Toshiro wasn't dead.  And seven years later, I wasn't in prison for murder.  Instead, that night we found renewed hope, and seven years later I found myself at his wedding, marrying the woman that ceased his endless rain.

Toshiro and I live our lives by an old Japanese proverb.  Translated, it means:






We met in seventh grade, in that group of eight whose fates became inexplicably intertwined as we formed that first circle of desks in Ms. Tsoulos' class.  He and Christy became an item soon afterwards, like me and Katie.  They left our school to go back to their home districts. but not before Toshiro convinced me to join his Kendo dojo where I stayed for many years afterwards -- where he and I became best friends.

We came to that very same bay as teenagers, as kendoka, looking for others to practice our kendo with out of class.  We formed a small group who would meet at the edge of that bay, and we would hold informal practice sessions there on the hard-packed sand.  We thought that place, those times, made us into men.

What we didn't realize was that it was that night we went there to commit seppuku that we became men. 

It was when we faced death, and looked it in the eye, and without fear of death or any punishment neither human nor divine, made a choice.

A choice to live.

Yamato Damashii does not require one to die.  Yamato Damashii requires one to live as if he is already dead -- to fear nothing, to never surrender, and to never give up.  To live as if one is already dead, and has been given a second chance to live the life he lived over again.

Becoming men that night on the edge of the bay, with our shinken katana ready to commit seppuku, wasn't about going through with the act.  It was being able to face death, and then choose to live...

...because while fear of death is dishonorable and cowardly, fear to live is even more dishonorable and cowardly. 

That night, after standing at the edge of the moonlit bay for hours, I finally returned my shinken katana to its saya and let its habaki click back into place.  We walked out to the farthest point in the bay we could, stepping along rocks until we were completely surrounded by water, and stopped when the ocean would lap at our feet.  There, we talked -- about Christy, about the past, and about the future.  We talked about life ahead, and we talked about the essence of Yamato Damashii.


That night, my romantic notions of ending one's life through suicide ended.  I realized that night that suicide was not about dying honorably -- it was about running from life. 

It was about giving up the fight.  It was about succumbing to the struggle. 










As I sat in the chair beside Reiko's bed in the ICU, I remembered that night; and I remembered the things Reiko told me when she slipped back into consciousness.


She told me that everything was a struggle, that ever since she was young, she always struggled.  People expected her to do this, and that -- and at every step of the way, she struggled.  She told me she didn't expect me to understand, because everything came easily to me -- but she didn't want to struggle anymore.  She wanted the struggle to end, because the struggle had overwhelmed her and she felt as if the value of living wasn't worth the struggle to live.

The thing that worries me the most about Reiko right now is that she didn't go to the brink like Toshiro and I did.  Yes, she faced death -- but she succumbed to it; and the only reason she's still alive is because we brought her back... not because she chose to live.  She didn't make that choice to live.

Toshiro's story had a happy ending.  Seven years after that night by the bay, I was his best man in a wedding where he married the true love of his life.  Reiko's story though, I was not sure of.  But the lesson here is that choosing death is final.  Things may be bad now, and the struggle may be difficult -- but we never know what the future holds for us; and for us to give up the chance for a better life ahead is foolish.  If we end our lives, we will never know.  For Toshiro, it was finding Mariya.  For Reiko, who knew what it would be.

I finished my seven-minute best man speech at Toshiro's wedding that night:

Tonight, I give away my best friend to the only woman who is worthy of him. The song ends in a fitting way: I see red I see blue but the silver lining gradually takes over when the morning begins I'll be in the next chapter     The silver lining on the clouds does gradually take over.  The rain eventually stops.  And the morning always follows the night.  This song, called "The Last Song" was the first song for me and Toshiro.  It was something else for us back then, a song that talked about the end -- about suicide.  Tonight, this "Last Song" is indeed the last song for the last falling of rain before this night ends and the morning comes.      The cycle we began so many years ago, in the depth of night, in the baptism of rain, ends now.   Tomorrow, Toshiro and Mariya will wake up for the first time as husband and wife, as the light of the rising sun finally extinguishes the darkness of night and owaranai ame, the endless rain, is finally no more.

Toshiro's endless rain was finally no more.

I wish Reiko had done the same thing.  I wish she had told me... I wish she'd come to me and told me that she wanted to end her life. 

Although my romantic notions of suicide are long gone, I would have wanted to be there with her -- to approach the brink with her, to let her hold the liquor and the pills in her hand, and stand there at the edge between life and death with her and let her stare death in the eye.

...to stare death in the eye, and be able to feel no fear and instead choose to live.

But this didn't happen.

And now my duty to her became more difficult, although it is not one that I would flee from.  I would do whatever it took for her.

Suicide and death are not pretty, romantic things.  I spent almost twelve hours in the emergency room with Reiko that first day, and the memories of what she had degenerated into, I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life.  It's not a thing of flowers and eloquent speaking for the dead.  There is no beauty in death, and there is certainly no beauty in being alive but dying. 

What I needed Reiko to know is that the rain does eventually stop.  The silver lining on the clouds does gradually take over.  And one day she would wake up, and find herself in the next chapter.  And I would be right there beside her, doing whatever it takes, to bring her into this new life.

I watched the bride and groom making their way around the courtyard, hand-in-hand, stopping to laugh and toast with their guests at the end of the night.


Sixteen years ago, I would have never thought that it would have been Paul and Jasmine out of the eight of us in our little group in our 7th grade class getting married.  I brushed the sweaty mass of hair back off of my forehead, exhausted from the long day of wedding events.  Only the closest of friends remained now, talking and dancing in small groups; most of whom were my old friends too, some going back as far as we did.

I removed my suit jacket and lay it on the back of the chair beside me, pushed the cuffs of my sleeves up to my elbows, and put my cufflinks into my pocket; before taking a long swig out of the bottle of Perrier-Jouet and letting the bubbly champagne run over my parched lips.  Their wedding was the most beautiful wedding I had ever been to, followed by a gorgeous reception in this beautiful private club overlooking the city skyline.  I sat in the shadows, taking a long-needed break from the socializing, near the edge of the plaza where the cliffside dropped off; surrounded by glowing white christmas lights on the vines falling from the trellises above and on the trees around me.

At the end of the night, I sat there listening to Vicky, our sultry French-expat friend who had also been with us since the 7th grade, singing Blue Moon, sounding like Billie Holiday, accompanied by the jazz band that we'd grown up with together.  It was a timeless moment -- it could have been 1950.  It could have been 1986.  It could have been today.

I sighed, and put my bottle of champagne down on the white tablecloth in front of me.

Paul and Jasmine worked out, in the end.  After the eight of us first met in that first class in the summer before 7th grade, they were the success story.  And as much as I was happy for them, I wished it was me and another one of our group of eight whose wedding it was that day.

I turned away from the party, and looked out at the city lights.








"Katie."  The cute honey blond girl sitting to my right in our circle of eight said, introducing herself, smiling brightly.

We were eleven years old.  The eight of us sat in a circle, one of four circles that Ms. Tsoulos formed out of her class.  I kept looking over Katie's shoulder, at the gorgeous girl with the light blond hair and dark blue eyes in the next group beside us.  I'd never seen anybody so drop-dead gorgeous in my life, and every time I looked at her in the last half hour since that first class started, she made me feel like a puppy in love.

"Jodi."  Katie leaned over to me and whispered.  "Her name is Jodi."  She grinned at me.

I blushed.  It was bad enough that somebody noticed me staring at Jodi.  It was even worse that it was so obvious that this girl Katie who I hadn't even noticed until five seconds ago noticed that I was gawking.

"Thanks."  I shrank back in my seat, feeling the ache of cold sweat on me.

"Paul."  My cousin said, as we went around the circle introducing ourselves.  Paul was the archetype of the Asian nerd.  Thick glasses, bowl-cut hair, short and chubby, with FOB clothes (and not the cool kind either).  He looked like the fat happy kid on the yellow can of fish oil pills that our parents would make us take; complete with corduroy shorts and knee-high athletic socks and Shen-Yang sneakers.

The introductions continued around our circle of desks.  A young Brett Farve looking kid introduced himself as Gabe.  And the biggest Japanese guy I'd ever seen, his hair pulled back and up in a ponytail, introduced himself as Toshiro.  Then there was a small, skinny Korean girl in black-and-white striped pants named Christy.  Then a freckled, bespectacled girl in a green sweater with way too much frizzy brown hair named Serena.  And finally, beside me, a girl that Paul and I both knew of already.

"Jasmine."  The girl next to me introduced herself to us. 

She looked like Paul, except female.  And with a simple ponytail instead of the bowl cut, and without the FOB clothes.  Instead, she wore the black shorts and white shirt that she seemed to wear every single time I ever saw her.  The reason we knew who she was; was because she had been student body president among many other things at the school that she had come from, including being some kind of cello prodigy, and national scholar, and did things like file away every piece of schoolwork she ever did into a series of file cabinets.

She looked a little uncomfortable sitting next to a thuggish street urchin from the projects.

That would be me.








Paul and Jasmine became best friends that summer.

Katie and I hung out together, mostly because we didn't really fit in with anyone else.  Katie, me, Toshiro and Christy for the summer at least; Toshiro and Christy leaving our school at the end of the summer to go back to their home school in the next district.  I started going to Toshiro's Kendo dojo after he invited me to check it out one day, and I ended up staying.  Toshiro and I started playing on Gabe's paintball team that summer too, going on to take 3rd in a State championship.  And Gabe and Serena started dating each other just two weeks into the summer.  If there was anyone I would have thought to be getting married in the future, it would have been Gabe and Serena, not Paul and Jasmine.

But there was something about Paul and Jasmine.  It's funny, but Katie could see it.  She told me one night, two years later as we hung out on our hill, that she knew Paul and Jasmine would get married one day.

I thought she was insane.

"Paul and Jasmine?"  I gave her the face.  "no way."

"Mm-hmm"  Katie replied.  "look at them, they're so meant to be."

"How come?"  I asked.  I had no clue.

"Because they love each other, they just don't know it yet."  Katie looked up into my eyes.

It would be Paul and Jasmine who would go on to be the perfect couple that never was a couple.

They were always together.  Inseparable.  There was never any drama like there was between me and Katie, Toshiro and Christy, and Gabe and Serena.  They were always on good terms, never fought, and were always there for each other.  They played in the orchestra together, with him becoming principal violin and her becoming principal cello.  They even ended up in the state Youth Symphony together.  They were in student government together.  They were in science club and whatever-nerd-club together. 

For six years their friendship grew, until one night -- the night before our high school graduation.

Paul told me, years later, that it was that night when it all changed.  They were on the graduation committee together, and they were working late into the night in their small group getting the last details ironed out.  They were together at her house, and Paul told me that it was seeing how dedicated she was and how hardworking she was, combined with the bittersweet feeling that got to all of us as our high school graduation came, that pushed him to realize how he felt.

Even Katie and I, who were already on the social fringe, felt the tug.  We would be parting ways with people we had known for four, six or even twelve years; never to see them again after the coming night.  Paul and Jasmine were going to the same school though, so it didn't matter so much to them -- but there was something in the air that night.

That night, he decided he was going to ask his best friend Jasmine to be his girlfriend.

But he also decided to wait until graduation had settled down.  After all, he thought, they were both going to the same school.  He wasn't in a rush.  Jasmine never dated, just as Paul never dated.  He didn't want to spring this on her while all this stress was around, and while graduation and the associated emotion was breaking loose everywhere.  He wanted his "proposal" to be stand-alone.

What Paul didn't know, was that a guy named Terrence was thinking the same thing.  Except Terrence moved in first.  Terrence asked Jasmine out on a date the day after graduation.  Paul figured that it was okay -- that Terrence and Jasmine would date for a little bit, and when they were through, he would tell Jasmine how he felt, and he'd get his shot...

...Ten years later.








In ten years, Paul never dated a single woman as he waited for Jasmine.

He thought, the entire time, that if Jasmine and Terrence ever broke up, he wanted to be there, available for her.  They remained the best of friends for that entire ten years.  He was there for her every time she fought with Terrence.  He was there for her when Terrence wasn't.  He listened to her, cared for her, and loved her in the way that a best friend does, all the while never telling her how he felt.

And besides, Paul couldn't be with someone else when it was Jasmine in his heart.  It would not be faithful.

In those ten years, I blew through more relationships than I have fingers and toes, searching for the Right Girl.  Paul however, had the Right Girl from that very first day in 7th grade.  He was just waiting.  One day, Jasmine told Paul that Terrence had proposed to her, and that she had accepted.  Paul's heart broke that day, after holding on for eight years to the hope of Jasmine and Terrence ending their relationship.  Now they would be married, and Paul felt he had no longer had a chance.

But Paul decided that if it wasn't Jasmine, he didn't want to be with anybody else.  He told himself that he was going to be alone for the rest of his life.  And he was okay with that, because nobody would ever be more perfect for him than Jasmine.

One night, two years later, Jasmine called him in the middle of the night.

She had broken her engagement with Terrence.

And while Paul was sorry for her heartbreak and loss, he could not believe how his life went from the blackest pit of night to the glorious light of day in one moment.  After ten years of holding on to hope, keeping his feelings locked up, loving Jasmine from a distance as best friends, after giving up thinking that she would be married and gone... he finally had his second chance.

A week later, Paul told Jasmine how he felt.








Jasmine was gorgeous, I thought, as Paul and my new cousin-in-law walked up to me, sitting in the shadows with my bottle of champagne.

Sixteen years had changed us all.  Paul had grown tall and thin and somehow became the most metro guy I knew, and was actually good looking now.  Jasmine had grown out of her nerdy cocoon and had become a stunning young woman.  Paul was a Federal special agent now, and Jasmine was working on her second doctorate.

I stood up from my chair as they approached, and gave them a hug and a kiss. 

I knew they were concerned.  Even on their most special day, they had enough of a heart to be concerned about me -- knowing that I had just ended my six-year Relationship with The Ex, and that this day they had chosen for their wedding was my (now-ex) anniversary date as well.  They knew better than to ask if I was okay though.  I wasn't, and that's what the answer would always be.

Instead, they pulled up two chairs and sat down with me.  They looked relieved to be able to sit down after all the walking around and busy-ness of their wedding day.  Jasmine took off her shoes, and stretched back in her chair.  For a moment, she reminded me of the Jasmine that sat next to me in that first class in 7th grade, who took off her shoes and stretched just like that at the end of the day.  Paul handed me a cigar, an aged Fuente Fuente Opus X, and we cut his and mine, lighting them with the ST Dupont that Min Yi had given me years ago.

"It makes me sad that we're not all here."  I said to them, letting the thin smoke rise into the still air.

Jasmine sighed, and placed her hand on my arm.

"You know, we talked about a day like this, Katie and I, twelve years ago,"  I told them.  I'd told them before, when they first got engaged.  "we imagined what it would be like -- what all of us would be like today, here."

In the distance, Vicky was singing Moon River now.  We talked, the three of us, about old times.  Times that we thought we'd forgotten in the haze of times long gone.  About the eight of us, who just so happened to sit near each other on that first day in 7th grade and got pulled together into our circle by Ms. Tsoulos; who would end up being in each others lives -- falling in love with each other, facing good times and tragedy together... and about how only some of us made it.