Murasaki Yuki was a sad sort of girl, with a round face, long lashes, and large, melancholy eyes. She was never sure why her parents had chosen to write her given name, Yuki, with the Japanese characters for happiness. Perhaps, they had been filled with happiness at the birth of their first child so late in life, after so many years of trying. Perhaps, they had thought Yuki would be a happy child. Or perhaps they had hoped that their precious baby would bring happiness to her parents in their old age. 

All of these reasons seemed to be bitterly ironic in view of the fact that Murasaki Yuki’s parents died in a car crash when she was only six. A strip of black ice on a cold winter night—a tree, a flash, then darkness, and waking to a honking horn, and two parents who wouldn’t respond to her cries. And so, when Yuki became old enough to write, she always wrote her name with the characters for snow. It was more fitting: snow came in winter, and winter was the season when no birds sang or flowers bloomed, and the lake near her house froze over.

After the empty misery of the funerals was over, Yuki was sent to live with her closest surviving relative. This turned out to be her aunt—a formidable and demanding woman, whom all her acquaintances privately called the Iron Tiger. Aunt Murasaki never married and never had children of her own, but she did have very strong ideas about how children ought to behave and what they ought to do. Thus, she took it upon herself to produce a child who would make up for her parents’ lost legacy. 

It was a very interesting coincidence that this lost legacy turned out to be all the things that Aunt Murasaki wished she had done but failed to do: playing violin in a conservatory, competing in chess tournaments, earning perfect grades, and eventually making it into Harvard. To that end, Yuki was subject to a non-stop barrage of tutoring, studying, and preparation for college. 

By the time high school came around, the daily route was familiar. Each day, she brought home her graded assignments to Auntie Tiger. They were always perfect marks. It had been a long time since she had made any mistakes. The last time Yuki had made a mistake… she did not like to dwell on that memory. After Auntie examined the scores and saw they were perfect, she merely grunted and handed her a bowl of miso soup, together with some rice and natto. Yuki suspected that her aunt tried to make the meal as flavorless as possible so as not to spoil her, but she never dared to ask that. Afterward, she did her violin and chess lessons, completed her homework, studied more, and finally fell asleep of exhaustion. 

At school, she tried to be as small as possible. She sat in the front of all six of her AP classes, took diligent notes, never spoke unless called upon by the teacher, and scurried out of the classroom as soon as the bell rang. In the hallways, she kept her head down, letting her bangs conceal her face and tried to make herself seem as small as possible. And she always ate lunch alone. That is, until one day, when two boys and a girl sat down at her table.  

ONE

Yuki stole a nervous glance at the three fellow high schoolers and pulled her bento box closer to her as if to protect herself. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, through her chipmunk cheeks, and then began to blush as realized how awkward she must’ve looked with her face stuffed with food—why hadn’t she swallowed? “I can move if there’s not enough room.”

“Oh, don’t apologize,” the lanky boy across from her said. “We noticed you always sit alone and thought that was kind of unfair.”

“That’s okay. I like being alone,” Yuki said, still staring at her hands. Her face was getting very hot, and her hair was beginning to stick to it. She brushed it over her ears. 

“What’s your name?” The boy asked undeterred.

“Heh… it’s Yuki.” She looked down again at her bento box.

“Yuki, do you not want friends?” The boy next to her asked. He had a deeper voice and sounded almost offended.

“I’m not a very… you know, social person.” 

“You don’t have to talk with us,” the girl said. “But we felt you shouldn’t sit alone at lunch. That’s no fun.”

“So, what do you say? Lunch mates?” the curly-haired boy said.

Yuki looked up at them shyly, first glancing briefly and then slowly letting herself really look at them and really notice them for the first time. The boy who had been speaking to her was tall and gangly with curly black hair, braces, and zits. His skin tone suggested that it saw the sun three or four times a year. Next to him was a plump girl with a streak of purple in her dark hair and a face that looked rather like Yuki’s—only, rounder. And next to Yuki was a boy with a bright orange, anime T-shirt, short black hair, chocolatey skin, and a pair of wire-rim, Harry Potter glasses. 

“I guess… we can be lunchmates,” Yuki said. 

The boy with the curly hair smiled triumphantly. “Lunch mates it is. I’m Mikey by the way.”

“I’m Mei,” the girl said. 

“And I’m Kenny, but you can call me Kenny,” the boy with the deeper voice said.

“Um, you just said the same name twice,” Mei said. She made a what-gives? face and raised her hands questioningly, and then the three of them all burst out laughing. Yuki’s lips lifted ever so gently; it wasn’t exactly a smile, but it was on its way to being one. And it was the first time something like a smile had been on her lips in a long, long time. 

TWO

One day, Mikey set his tray down, stacked with two whole hamburgers, plus French fries and a hot dog, and folded his hands together as if about to reveal a master plan. “So, Yuki,” he said. “We’re the three amigos, but we could become the four amigos.”

Yuki regarded him cautiously. Why did he want to be her friend so badly? What could he see in a girl who could hardly talk or make eye contact and who spent all her time hiding behind her textbooks and notebook? “Four is an unlucky number in Japanese. It sounds like death.” 

“Woah, no way, that rocks!” Kenny said, but Yuki hardly heard him. She was thinking of her parents and how they looked the last time she saw them: her mom slumped against the wheel, blood streaming down her face; her father’s neck twisted at an odd angle, looking out the window almost wistfully.

“Uh, Kenny,” Mikey said, elbowing him. “I think Yuki’s upset.”

“Oh, shoot,” Kenny said, as he saw the tears welling in Yuki’s eyes. “I didn’t know… did I say something wrong?”

Yuki took a deep breath, brushed away the tears, and shook her head. “No, it’s not you. I’m just… weird… or, I don’t know… a sad person.”

“What are you sad about?” Mikey asked; his eyebrows were drawn together compassionately.

“It doesn’t matter.” She pulled her hood over her head, gulped down the rest of her bento box, and left for the bathrooms—the one place she could find some peace. In one of the stalls, she got a good cry in, and by the end of it, she’d had a change of heart. 

“Okay,” she said, approaching the Three Amigos. “I can join. But it really just means that I’ll talk with you during lunch.”

Mikey smiled. “And walk with us to the busses?”

“I guess,” Yuki said. 

“Great!” Kenny exclaimed. “Four it is!” Then he looked at her apologetically. “Or, three and a half. Not that you’re half a person, just… it’s close to four but not four?”

Yuki couldn’t help but smile at this, which led to far more attention from everyone in the three, no, four amigos.

THREE

“What do you like?” Mei asked one day at lunch as Autumn was beginning. 

“I like… art, I guess,” Yuki said. 

“Why don’t you ever do it?” Mikey asked.

“Well, I have lots of homework, and I also have to study.”

“You’ve got to have some free time,” Kenny said.

“Heh…” Yuki said adjusting her glasses and looking away. “Not if I want to get perfect grades.”

“Woah, woah, woah, hold up,” Kenny said, raising both his hands. “Perfect grades? Nobody’s perfect.”

Yuki just stared into her hands and silently willed the hair along the side of her head to cover her face.

“You don’t mean you got literally a perfect score on every quiz, test, and assignment?” Mei said.

Yuki nodded.

Kenny‘s mouth hung open. “Well, I’ll be darned.”

“It must be really difficult living with all that pressure,” Mikey said.

Yuki shrugged. “I guess.” 

Just then the bell rang, and she scurried off as quickly as she could. 

FOUR

“Hey Yuki, do you wanna come to the park with us after school?” Mikey asked as the four amigos waded through the crowd of students to the busses.

She’d already begun shaking her head before he finished his sentence. “I have to study.”

“C’mon,” Kenny said. “It’s one night. And you don’t even know what it is.”

“It’s painting,” Mei said. 

“Don’t make it sound so boring,” Mikey said. “It’s free painting lessons! In the park! And you said you loved painting, Yuki. So, you’ve got to do it. Have we got a deal?”

He held his hand out, waiting for her to shake it. 

She hesitated. On the one hand, it was very thoughtful of him and the other Four Amigos to find a free painting lesson for them to do. And she had always wanted to take a painting lesson and see if she could swirl the colors together to make the images that sometimes formed in her mind. But… 

“I can’t,” she said, dropping her hand at the last moment. “My Aunt… if I miss a day of studying, I might make a mistake, and if I make a mistake….” A shudder ran down her spine. The memory of what happened to her last time tried to force its way up from the dark corner in which she’d stuffed it, but she resolutely shut the door on it. “I’m sorry, maybe another time.”

“Other time?” Mikey said. “When? With you, it’s always tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way—”

“Uh, Mikey, what are you doing?” Mei said. “Is that Macbeth?”

Mikey dropped his hand, which had apparently risen all on its own in a dramatic gesture as he’d started reciting Shakespeare. “Sorry, I got a little carried away. But the point is, if not now, then when, Yuki? Will you ever decide to stop living in the shadow of tomorrow?”

Yuki regarded him thoughtfully. She wanted so badly to join him and the others at the park that it made her heart hurt. But she couldn’t. “It’s not the shadow of tomorrow,” she said. “It’s the shadow of yesterday. I want the future to be nice. It’s just not.”

She gave him and the others a sad, apologetic smile, pulled her hood over her head, and scurried off to catch her bus. 

On the ride back, she told didn’t have a choice. How could she go? If she missed studying, her aunt would find out and probably reprimand her. And if she messed up on a homework assignment or quiz or test because of that… 

Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Mei. “Have you heard about kintsugi?”

No, she hadn’t. But it was a Japanese word, and the person who spoke Japanese to her was her aunt, and so she looked at it suspiciously. Was it yet another criticism? 

The afternoon wore on, and Yuki didn’t have the focus to study that usually had. Her mind kept coming back to fantasies of her friends sitting at easels in a park, splashing bright colors together on an open canvas. And there was Mei’s text.

At last, she relented. She opened her laptop and searched for kintsugi. Her eyes were drawn to a blog post a few results down written by someone named Felix (probably a pen name): 

Kintsugi proceeds from the idea of the broken beauty of imperfection. When pottery chips or cracks, kintsugi advocates that the artist heal it with gold. Thus, an old vessel that has cracked many times shows its history in lines of gold. To the practitioner of kintsugi, these cracks are happy faults. They reveal our humanity, full of errors and mistakes but also capable of being redeemed. 

What a strange idea, Yuki thought. And yet… how wonderful. A bright patch had appeared in her melancholy world when the three amigos had sat down beside her at lunch. And now… now they had found a chance for her to do something she had always wanted to do but never had the chance, if only… if only she could have the courage. 

She waffled between the two choices before her, the conventional and the courageous. And then, all at once, she decided: she grabbed her bag and slipped out of the house before her aunt could say otherwise.

FOUR

Yuki found her friends in the center of the park. They had set up a few makeshift easels and laid our picket blankets. 

“You came!” Mikey exclaimed.

Yuki bobbed her head up and down; her heart was so aflutter with nervous excitement, it nearly made her sick.

“Your Aunt allowed it?”

“No, and it will probably be very bad, but that’s okay. I can handle it.”

Kenny clapped his hands. “Wow, I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be condescending,” Mei said. “Be happy for her.”

“I am happy for her. Why do you always—"

Mikey held up his hands. “Give it a rest, you two. Yuki, why did you decide to come?”

She shrugged and then blushed. “Well, it probably had something to do with a text from Mei… about kintsugi. Um, embracing my imperfections.”

“Wow, that was super condescending, Mei, implying that Yuki is imperfect,” Kenny said.

“Oh, shut up.” Mei rolled her eyes.

The instructor, who looked vaguely like Bob Ross, clinked a metal chime, which the students eventually worked out meant it was time to begin.

“Let’s embrace our imperfections,” Yuki whispered, barely audibly. She was surprised she said it aloud, and even more surprised that all her friends nodded their heads vigorously in support. 

She looked at the white canvas, her heart full of feelings she wasn’t sure how to name. It had been so long since she had let herself feel freely. 

The instructor went over the basics of painting, and Yuki absorbed it eagerly. Then when the time came to paint on her own, the world around her vanished, so thoroughly was she absorbed in the painting: she tapped colors onto the canvas carefully at first and then eagerly.  

Beneath the broken jar, healed with golden lines, she signed her name, Murasaki Yuki. And this time, she used the characters her parents chose: the one for happiness. 

And Murasaki Yuki, along with her friends, smiled.