26 April 2009 - The Moped Ronin (original) (raw)
©2009, Made in DNA
It was the year I turned seventeen; late summer, sometime at the end of August. The night air under a moonlit sky had that heavy, intoxicating smell of festivals, high spirits and the onset of fall. Officially the obon season was finished and school activities had begun once again, yet there was a pervasive recklessness in the season that would not be contained and regulated to next year; as if our ancestors were still drunk from all the sake offerings left at family alters and gravesides.
Being a weeknight, I was on my way home from cram school, still dressed in my summer school attire, one of the retro sailor uniforms in powder blue and white so popular until near the end of the century when blazers came into fashion. In a fit of youthful flirtatiousness and rebellion, I had rolled the waist of my skirt up into several folds so that the hem of my skirt teased my slender, fair thighs and more than a few of the boys practicing baseball on the school fields earlier that day.
I walked through the dead of the business district to a large park, where upon reaching the opposite side, I would catch a bus home. The city was quiet as I approached the park and the interior still quieter. I often enjoyed my silent walks through the park despite my mother’s worried warnings of perverts. It was true that there had been an incident or two every year, but volunteer patrols of older men in the neighborhood had reportedly brought those numbers down. I was hardly worried.