Chosen Path

By J. Whitney Williams

Yumiko Itsumoto wants it all. An accomplished artist and feared attorney, she gets what she wants, all else be damned. Now she wants love, even if it means charting a new course for her life, but changing course can be dangerous. In mere moments, she tumbles from the dizzying pinnacle of success into a bottomless abyss of murder and treachery. Yumiko will not live happily ever after—not this time—but can she at least find a way to stay alive?

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Author J. Whitney Williams follows CARRIED AWAY—his surprisingly intelligent and deftly written debut—with a story that is even sexier, more thrilling and more enthralling than the first.

Again taking the reader on a trip across the world, meeting strange people in strange places via a prodigious narrator, CHOSEN PATH follows Yumi, a powerful and apparently dispassionate supporting character introduced in book one. But appearances deceive. Here, the reader is immersed in Yumi—into the very depths of her complex mind, her conflicted yet determined soul, her insatiable sex drive.

When Yumi encounters the woman who she presumes to be the fiancée of the love of her life—perhaps her only true love—she has every reason to seize the opportunity that presents itself to erase the woman from both of their lives forever. It’s no wonder Yumi is the prime suspect for the unfortunate woman’s swift and seemingly heartless murder. Unable to recall herself, Yumi assumes the worst, too. It wouldn’t be the first tragic fate to befall someone who stood in her way—or the last—and cameras don’t lie.

In CHOSEN PATH, Williams explores the very essence of what makes us human. The protagonist, a uniquely flawed yet extraordinarily likable woman of many talents and trades, demonstrates the jealousy and manipulation we see in ourselves and despise in others. At the same time, we’re drawn to Yumi. Geisha. Samurai. Assassin. Pseudo-royalty. Nothing happens to her; she creates. If we all shaped our own circumstances, our destinies, as adroitly as she, what paths would we choose and where would they lead us?

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Whitney Williams
• Release date: Apr 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9780997106213

J. Whitney Williams

A mathematician by training and computer programmer by trade, J. Whitney Williams lives and works under the X in Texas, thinking too much and speaking too little.

Book preview

Prologue

- Two years ago -

I don’t normally shower after sex with Kosei. I like to keep the scent of him on my skin, to smear our salty residue all over me. Fucking him makes me feel clean.

Leaning into the spray rakes warm rivulets past my hairline, through my long hair. I can feel them slithering down my back where they cling to me and follow my body’s contours all the way down to the floor drain. The hot water feels good. It’s a pity I have no time to heat bathwater. I could use a good soak. The last few weeks have been busy. I suppose I could say the same of my entire life. Turning to let the water pound the back of my head, I hope it knocks loose and washes away some of the spare thoughts caked and dried on the inside of my skull.

I didn’t leave myself much time to get to Narita for my flight, but there are other departures to Hong Kong. I can sleep on the plane or maybe the grave. The only place I ever really sleep is under Kosei’s strong arm. He isn’t bulky, just strong enough for me to lay my head comfortably on his shoulder. He has a way of slowing me down, driving away my frenetic thoughts, letting me be still. I can’t find that kind of stillness anywhere else. Maybe I learned this tempestuous mind in America. A good Japanese girl ought to have spent enough time at the temple to find stillness in meditation.

Reading is my meditation: contracts, laws, judgments. I have to remember it all, to synthesize it and use it later. It doesn’t help me learn to let go.

Kosei does. Whenever I’m with him, I sleep soundly until he wakes me. He sleeps a good eight hours, though, and I can’t afford that more than once or twice a week. He likes it when he falls asleep alone and wakes up with me in his arms. At least he says he does. I can tell he does, if you must know. He is as simple as any man. I just don’t like to read him that way, to intrude upon the privacy of his thoughts. Working a man like a puzzle-box isn’t relaxing. Everything feels so natural, so easy, with him. I need that in my life.

He is also relaxed. I need that too. He sits sprawled out on the floor, unkempt, not quite wearing a yukata as only he can, watching me put my suit on.

Where to this time?

Hong Kong, I answer.

Again?

Yes. It’s so cute how he whines and complains whenever I go away.

Entertaining?

Yes. That isn’t cute. I enjoy performing. It’s a good break for me, exercise for a different part of my brain, also for a different part of my body. I could have told him it wasn’t sexual—a geisha’s performances never are—but I don’t like lying to him. That would make him like everyone else. I don’t love everyone else.

Personally, I only do the illicit sexual performances, and only when I can line up higher stakes than a couple of sticks of incense. Playing the shamisen all night doesn’t get my blood pumping. Besides, I know the art, but I like to follow through with it. I always run up the score. To me, sex is a weapon, and I give no quarter.

Except with Kosei. Sex with Kosei is peace.

I wish you wouldn’t.

Always wish for more wishes first. I know he isn’t comfortable with it, but he has never pressed me about it before. This is not the time. I’ve made arrangements. This time, the weapon is going to bleed its target for about 50 billion yen over ten years. It’s not every day you get a clean shot at big game. No, hunting is not the right metaphor. It’s more like culling the herd. These fools and their fortunes should have been parted a long time ago.

Henry will make a fortune on this deal if I have my way, and I always do. I like it that he should be the beneficiary of the financial calamity soon to befall the Honshu Steel and Mining Conglomerate, not because he is a client but because he is a gentleman. I rob from the rich and arrogant, give to the rich and polite.

I love you Yumi, and I want you all to myself.

No. Kosei, please don’t do this.

While I sink slowly into the gravity of his tone, an idle platitude rolls off my tongue. One must measure love’s depth at its shallowest point, I parry.

What must I do for you to promise me this will be the last?

Tell me to lie to you. I will, Kosei. For you, I will.

I will give you everything if you will give me just this one.

Please, please, my love, take me back! I’ve never met anyone like you. I’ve never felt so calm, so safe, as I do in your arms. Please don’t take that from me. Please, I beg you, don’t leave me!

I exhale then speak, voicing my final answer with the dregs of my breath. I have suffered for my art.

As I open the door to his flat, I look back at him, too afraid to hope for forgiveness.

I can see it on his face. I knew it. I’ve known it from way he held me, the way he inseminated me. I could hear it in his voice and smell it on his breath. He decided this a month ago, and I struggled desperately to ignore it, to deny it, to wish he would change his mind before he did it. He wants to marry me, but he is an old-fashioned romantic. He wants his wife to be his alone. He is so sweet! I would have married him. We would have been happy.

If you love me, promise me.

Kosei, my dear, sweet love, to whom I’ve always given my whole truth, Now you know.

The bullet train leaves in 17 minutes, plenty of time. I really should learn to let go.

- Two months ago -

Either I was mistaken to leave him, or I am mistaken to go back. I can no longer consider myself a woman who does not make mistakes. Neither am I self-conscious, nor do I dress for the benefit of others, and yet I feel silly walking up out of the subway wearing a kimono. That contradiction scares me in a way I do not understand. At least I am still a woman who faces her fears.

It must be Sunday. There are too many people on the street for a weekday. And I would be at work. My situational awareness is poor. I must take care not to walk past Kosei’s building. I know this insomnia impairs my judgment, so perhaps I am wrong about doing this. I don’t think I am. I think I love him, and I have learned that love matters. I was wrong—about a lot of things. I know that now. I’m not just desperate.

Which implies that I am, in fact, desperate. I am. I’m desperate to be able to sleep again. I know that, and I still believe I am making the right decision. Being aware of our biases helps us to mitigate their effects. But I remember missing him on quiet nights and in the rare mornings when I woke well rested. I wanted him with me at times when I wanted nothing else.

I’m not just desperate. I do love him, and I was wrong. Willow-sensei was right that I had been unwilling to make a decision between career and family. Lots of women juggle both, even with children, but fundamentally one or the other has to come first. My choice has always been career, without question, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. I think today is Sunday.

Between practicing law and entertaining, career easily devoured almost all of me. I suppose I had two careers. I suppose they did devour all of me.

This is his building. The door code is still the same.

My decision is not which will come first. I have to give up one of those careers. No, like many of my thoughts today, that’s not true. He wouldn’t mind me booking engagements as a geisha. Only the sex concerned him. But if you’re going to play by the rules, why bother? It wouldn’t be the same. My thrill has always been the con—to see how far I can push a man’s judgment beyond what he knows to be unreasonable. Approaching as a geisha is simply one of my opening gambits. Only sex can truly destroy a man.

I am ready to give that up for him, all those years of careful study and practice. I am ready to let go. I am ready to compromise. I am ready to love harder than I work.

I am not ready to knock on his door.

How long have I been standing here? It bothers me that I don’t know. Too often lately I realize where I am and cannot remember how I got there. Those must be the moments in which I sleep.

It was a heavy thud against the inside of his door that woke me. I’m preening like a schoolgirl. Put your hand down, Yumi. The door remains closed. Maybe there was no thud. Maybe I dreamt it.

No, it was real. Lightly pressing my ear to the door, I can hear a woman’s heartbeat. It’s racing, and either she is very tall or her feet aren’t touching the ground. A slight moan escapes her throat, and her body lurches against the door again. I recognize the pattern. It’s him.

It’s the same intermittent cadence, the same thrusts and pauses. He never held me up like that. I should be the one on the other side of that door. A reflexive twitch of lustful anticipation turns to resentment and anger and other feelings for which I cannot remember the names. I need to leave.

A subway station? That must be my train pulling away. How long have I been standing here? There will be another in 15 minutes. When you miss a train, another comes—not so with people. I feel in my gut the hard truth that there is more between me and Kosei now than a door.

I should have anticipated that he would be seeing someone. He is a handsome man. He is also lighthearted, relaxed, casual. I need that. I need him back. His bed was the only place I ever felt I could rest, the only place I could still get to anyway.

I will be able to take him back from her, whoever she is, but it will require preparation. I must first discover my adversary. Nothing can be left to chance. She could be anyone.

I want him back so badly that I can smell his scent as if he were nearby. I’ve started seeing things lately too, little defects in the corners of my vision. It must be my lack of sleep. My situation is untenable.

Oh, your kimono is so lovely! I should thank the woman next to me for her compliment, but I already don’t like her. It’s only because I envy her. She seems so free and natural, so casual and peaceful, with the demeanor of a woman who just left a trusted lover’s bed. There is more than that though, maybe the engagement ring. It’s a beautiful ring.

Thank you so much, she says. My boyfriend—my fiancé—just gave it to me today! I wonder how much I said out loud. It’s a dream come true, she continues. I’ve never met anyone like him. Is that our train? Another is coming, but it won’t stop here. The local just left.

No, I answer. The express. The slightest moan escapes her in her disappointment. It echoes in my mind with the sound of Kosei’s lover, matching perfectly. I must be delusional, thinking this girl could possibly be the one. She is far too young, too frivolous, too modern. Her tank top and cutoffs are generic enough, but she wears glittered nail polish and has a little tattoo of a turtle behind her ear. Kosei wouldn’t be attracted to a girl like that.

She is an idiot. She wears her purse far too casually for how expensive it is. It must have been a gift from another idiot, but she doesn’t hold it as if it came from her idiot boyfriend.

The purse doesn’t bother me. I’ve seen plenty of old money wasted on oblivious girls. I have always taken care not to be one of them, not to be oblivious. The turtle offends me. That particular design is a ka-mon, a family emblem, Yoshimitsu to be precise. I can only infer that she likes turtles, because this girl is no Yoshimitsu. Kids today have no respect.

She jumps a little when her phone chirps and the purse inevitably falls. Once she digs her phone out of it, she doesn’t even stand before checking the message. It must be from her idiot boyfriend. His phone number is the same as Kosei’s.

She screams as she tumbles forward, right in front of the express train. I’ve never seen it happen before, but suicide by train is not uncommon. I wish people wouldn’t do that. It always throws off the scheduled service. It must make quite a mess for the maintenance people, too. Deafening shrieks of emergency brakes crowd out the echoes of her scream. At least there is one less idiot in the world.

It doesn’t make sense, though. She was so happy to be engaged. Why would she kill herself? She didn’t plan to. Even delirious as I am, I would have noticed suicidal intent in her mannerisms.

I feel sorry for her fiancé, for Kosei. He deserves better; I would never hurt him like she has. The thought of it makes me angry at her, but anger never solves anything. I wish I could go to him, to console him, but first I have to get rid of his lover somehow.

Wait. What just happened?

I need to leave.

- Today -

I owe it to her, to Willow-sensei, to see her one last time. She knew it all along, but I never listened.

Cli-clack. Cli-clack.

The train seems so slow, lumbering through the hills. Of all times, why am I in a hurry now? I guess I’ve always been this way, rushing to live, rushing to die. My swords feel heavy on my lap. They, too, have always been this way. Too heavy.

Cli-clack. Cli-clack.

The swords, my now-sour inheritance, chose me, but I chose everything else. I have none but myself to blame. At the only task my father ever expected of me, I have failed. No matter. Theirs won’t be the only lifeless steel in Japan: so many katana—warriors’ souls—bereft of their bodies.

Cli-clack. Cli-clack.

But how? How has it come to this?

Chapter One — Free Will

I believe most people are victims of their fates. I have always chosen mine. Admittedly, circumstances bind the authority of human will—we choose only what we do and who we are. Our lives form along the interfaces between ourselves and our surroundings, by which I mean that we may architect our own destinies, but we cannot choose the ground on which they must stand. Please know that I speak with all due humility in light of my own upbringing’s privilege and luxury, but I have had my moments of choice.

I have felt those times at which one decides to become a new person, to live in a new world. I remember them with unusual specificity. I have seen and heard and done things that threw the features of the world into stark relief, and in those fragile, fleeting moments of clarity, I made choices.

I remember the moment I made my first choice vividly. He laughed. Mother was angry, but Father laughed. I cannot blame him. Even as a small child, I had come to them dozens of times to announce what I would be when I grew up, but that time, that one time, I meant it. It was not the sound of my own proclamation that cemented my certainty but the sound of Father’s laughter.

That was my moment of truth. By all objective measures, he was very successful. He was an honorable man, provided well for us and multiplied the family fortune. In that moment, I resented him not for all the advantages he had, advantages he would pass on to me, but for what he did with them, with all that opportunity: the same thing as everyone else. I would do something he never could, something astounding, something beautiful, something that would burn an indelible scar into the memories of everyone who met me. I chose to become a living, breathing work of art.

It may seem odd that I should consider the mastery of traditional arts to be an act of rebelliousness. In a family like mine, the measures of success are all clearly defined, and a geisha registers low on most of them. The profession is appropriately respected, but it is considered something other people do. There is a separation. They dress it up as courtesy, but in the end, there will always be a separation between those who burn incense to mark the time they sell and those who buy it. I first saw that separation made physically manifest in the form of a heating vent.

The au pair thought I was asleep. In fact, I had removed the vent cover from the duct in my room and crawled in. My parents were hosting a party that night, and I wanted to see what it was like. I moved easily through the ducts, but doing so silently took some care. When I finally reached a vent from which I could see into the parlor, dinner had ended. There were two geisha and a maiko at the far end of the room. The apprentice was dancing.

All of them were beautiful. They wore the traditional makeup, though the geisha would not have been required to do so. In hindsight, it must have been a very prestigious event. The two geisha played shamisen and drums while the maiko danced. She wore her obi in the dangling style and only wrapped her sleeves once around her arms so they still hung nearly to the floor. She moved with such care and precision I could hear, by comparison, the racket I had made bungling through the ducts to get there. Her every action, every motion, every shift of her embroidered silks interlocked with the music in a visceral exposition of the legend she performed. One of the geisha sang. I wish I remembered what dance it was, but I have thought of it so often I have worn the memory completely away.

At that time, I did not know what they were. I told my parents I wanted to be a dancer like the painted lady at the party. Mother first excoriated me for sneaking out of my room, but she eventually got around to her disapproval of my decision. When she said I would not be permitted to learn any such dances, Father cut her off, adding, Unless you earn absolutely perfect marks in school. Her eyes could have burned a hole through his morning paper.

Perfect marks were simple as a child. As I grew older, I came to think of school as a game, and I always run up the score. That was the price of my freedom to choose, and it seemed a small price. Not until many years later did I begin to appreciate the gravity and courage of Father’s decision. It was the only time I saw him directly contradict Mother. She never forgave him for it, but she complied.

I went to the hanamachi—the arts district—every weekend, then every day once I was old enough to ride the train alone. I was by far the youngest woman, the only child, there. Father must have pulled strings to get me in the door. I studied for more than a year before Lady Willow Wind—Willow-sensei, as the students called her—accepted me as an apprentice. Her peers disapproved, but they didn’t dare say so. She was, and still is, the best. She believed in me.

My decision to attend university in America disappointed her, but she did not disown me. She even allowed me to earn my debut before leaving. I was, truthfully, far better than all the other maiko, but Willow-sensei required perfection. I was perfect.

I thought the decision to study abroad was my own, but I can see now it was Mother’s. For years, she dropped subtle hints suggesting that only the most brilliant women could learn to be successful in more than one culture. She must have hoped I would not debut and would never return to the hanamachi. She played me like a shamisen.

That was the first time I managed to avoid a major decision by choosing both paths.

I never used my trade name or rank in America, but I needed to practice. I started by performing at festivals and giving exhibitions on campus. Soon I began receiving requests to perform at private events. Collecting the honoraria was a way of keeping score, and it was nice to have plenty of spending money without relying on my parents. By the time I started law school, I was able to pay my own tuition.

I chose law school mostly out of disappointment with my peers—perhaps I should call them my contemporaries—in business school. It was simply too easy. I prefer a challenge, and admission to the bar in two countries certainly is that. I did a lot of extracurricular reading on Japanese law.

I even read the minutes of the Diet. Politics fascinated me. I could infer some political intricacies from the legislative machinations recounted in the Diet minutes. I viewed it as an extraordinarily complex game. I enjoyed studying it.

I liked the man who was prime