Breaking Ground

Breaking Ground (Excerpt Chapters 1-9)

A story by Paul Sevigny

Chapter 1: The Matsu

Deigoshima lies to the southeast of Kagoshima Prefecture. Its rocky coastline rises into forested coastal hills. Deigo City, on the south side of the island, has the only accessible port. From there, the road climbs toward Aki Town, home of the well-known castle ruins. Like the rest of Japan, the tectonic plates beneath the ocean floor continue to reshape the island. Mount Deigo rises north of Aki, with many terraced rice fields between. Typhoons bring relentless wind and rain. Rivers flow from the hills, loosening stones and flooding fields on their way to the Pacific.

The old ishigaki, walls built stone upon stone, have shifted and cracked over generations. Water drains through the cracks. Ferns, mosses, and lichens find space there. In March, the rice fields are still dry, waiting to be broken and flooded again, their margins dotted with nanohana flowers.

Sumire Kurokawa had been photographing those margins. At art school in Tokyo, Takamura-sensei had told her, “Let yourself learn the magic of the developing film.” Sumire had. She could spend hours in the darkroom, watching pictures emerge and forgetting the time.

Just several years later, the ground had changed. So had photography. Phones corrected light and color. AI could change a sky or create a place that had never existed. Meanwhile, Sumire still carried two cameras.

Nobuyuki Kiriyama, Nobu to everyone who knew him, made fun of her for it. They had known each other since high school, had been a couple for several years, and now lived together in Deigo City. Sumire worked two nights a week at Nobu's izakaya and picked up photography work when she could. Nobu owned the izakaya and had interests in other small businesses. He liked technology, people, and arranging both into useful systems.

Through his contacts, he also found photography jobs for Sumire. She knew she should be grateful. And she was grateful. One evening, while she was looking at photographs on her laptop, a man, an old acquaintance of Nobu’s, came into the izakaya carrying a small pine tree. Nobu stared at it. “What's that?”

“Bonsai.”

“I know it's bonsai.”

“Then why did you ask?”

The man put it on the counter. The tree grew from a pot made of small dark stones. One side looked partly broken, like an old castle wall.

Sumire closed her laptop.

“You made this?” Nobu asked.

“The pot. My grandfather does the bonsai.”

Nobu turned it around. “It looks broken.”

“It's supposed to look broken. Aki Castle ruins.”

Nobu poured him a beer. The man wanted Nobu to sell Aki Castle bonsai.

“I sell food,” Nobu said.

“You sell sake,” Ray said, lifting his beer.

“People drink sake.”

“People buy bonsai.”

“Not in an izakaya.”

Sumire laughed. The man looked at her for the first time.

“You think he's right?” Nobu asked.

“Yes. And I like the pot.” The way the fine seams between stones crumbled into cracks and crevices. There was a rhythm. That was how she met Ray Fujimori.

Ray worked for JA, helping rice farmers improve their methods. His father was Japanese, his mother was American, and he had spent part of his life in California. Now he lived with his grandfather, Shigeru Fujimori, in an old farmhouse above Aki.

Nobu already knew Ray. “You should take her around Aki,” Nobu said. “She has a Town Hall job next week.”

“I haven't said yes yet,” Sumire said.

“You need the money.”

“I know I need the money.”

Ray asked what she would photograph.

“Rural revitalization.”

Ray laughed. “What? Does anybody even know what that means?”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

Ray told her there were old stone walls, farms, castle ruins, and plenty of things that did not look finished. Sumire looked at the little pine growing above its broken wall.

Nobu took out his phone.

“What are you doing?” Sumire asked.

“Making a group.”

“Don't make a group.”

Her phone vibrated. So did Ray's. Another one of his useful connections.

Nobu had created a group called Sumire Aki.

“Seriously?” she said.

Ray immediately sent the group a link to a page of mediocre bonsai photos.

Nobu looked at Sumire. “You need work. He needs photographs.”

“I need photographs?” Ray asked.

“Those pictures of your bonsai are terrible,” Sumire said.

Ray looked at her. “I am restoring an old stone wall.”

Nobu picked up another glass. “Aki has a lot of cool rocks.”

“Stones,” Ray said.

Outside, a train passed somewhere beyond the buildings. On the counter between them, the little matsu leaned over its broken stone wall.

Chapter 2: The Wall

Three days later, Sumire took the train from Deigo City to Aki. Rivers and irrigation channels moved beside the tracks, sometimes close, sometimes disappearing behind fields. Aki Town Hall had hired her to take photographs for a pamphlet about rural revitalization. The phrase still meant almost nothing to her.

Ray had sent one message with a pin: Come here first. She walked uphill from Aki Station. Near the farmhouse, deigo trees lined the road and the lower edge of the driveway. A narrow creek moved below the two neighboring houses. Ray was kneeling beside the wall in dirty jeans. Several stones lay on the ground.

“I thought you worked for JA,” Sumire said.

“I do. This is my day off.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to find where this stone goes.”

“You took it out?”

“No. A typhoon did. Maybe an earthquake. Maybe Grandpa. Nobody knows anymore.”

“Why don't you just replace it all with concrete?”

Ray stopped working and stared at her.

“What?” she said.

“It would look like shit.”

She laughed.

He trimmed one stone with a hammer and chisel until it fit the old opening. Sumire began photographing him. He did not pose. He kept working, and she photographed his hands, the stone dust, and the gaps between the old stones.

Then she lowered the camera. A single nanohana grew from a crack between two stones. Sumire could see no soil beneath it. She crouched to photograph it. “Don't knock that one out,” she said.

Ray looked over. “I wasn't going to.”

“It looks like it's growing straight out of the rock.”

“Probably dirt behind there.”

“I know.”

She took the shot without another thought.

When she finished, Ray showed her another section of wall where the view opened toward the mountains. “You could get a better picture from here,” he said.

“Don't tell the photographer what's better.”

“You told me my photographs were terrible.”

“They were.”

He smiled.

Later he took her through Aki's old district. She photographed white plaster walls, tiled roofs, bicycles, castle ruins, and repairs that did not quite match the older structures. Ray slowed down every time they came to stone.

At a café, Sumire discovered several of his stone bonsai pots for sale. She asked why he had taken one to Nobu if he already sold them there.

“He said Nobu could sell anything.”

“You were testing him?”

“Just trying to grow our market.”

They talked over coffee and cake. Ray told her about summers on his cousin's rice farm in California and the ideas he had brought back to Japan. Sumire told him she was worried about photography. AI could produce perfect images, and everybody had good phone cameras now.

“Do you still like film cameras?” Ray asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, then what's the problem?”

“That’s a stupid response.”

“Okay.”

“It might also be a good response.”

“Okay.”

“Stop saying okay.” Sumire laughed.

Sumire lifted her camera and photographed him.

At some point her phone vibrated.

Nobu: How's Aki?

Ray saw the name. “Nobu checking on you?”

“He's Nobu.”

She answered a few minutes later: Still working.

When they finally left the café, the sun was low.

“It's after six,” Sumire said. “I was supposed to leave at four.”

“Sorry.”

“You're not sorry.”

“No.”

At Aki Station, Ray asked, “You coming back?”

“I still need photographs.”

“That's not what I asked.”

Sumire looked at him.

“Yeah,” she said.

She had come to Aki to photograph rural revitalization. She still did not know what that meant. But she knew she was coming back.

Chapter 3: The Album

Nobu noticed before Sumire did.

One night after the izakaya closed, she was sorting more than three hundred photographs from Aki. They were in no particular order, and she was tired. Nobu noticed.

Nobu created an album and used an AI tool to group the photographs by subject: fields, buildings, people, trains, stonework. A second ago, she had known were every photo was. Sumire did not want a machine choosing her photographs.

“It isn't choosing,” Nobu said. “It found the walls. You decide which walls are good.”

That distinction interested her. The machine could sort. It could not know why a repaired wall mattered, why she kept returning to the photograph of a single nanohana that seemed to be growing out of solid rock, or why a photograph of Ray lifting a stone felt more alive than the others.

Nobu noticed that too. He scrolled through the album.

“Looks like Ray got his own section.”

“I barely know him.”

“That doesn't answer it.”

“There is nothing to answer.”

Nobu moved on, but not very far. He asked about the farmhouse, the wall, and why Ray insisted on using the old stones.

“He likes doing it himself,” Sumire said.

“He should use a machine.”

“You can tell him next time.”

Nobu looked at her.

Sumire chose a photograph where new concrete blocks met an older wall.

“It's ugly,” Nobu said.

“That's why I like it.”

“You decide what's good,” Nobu said.

“But good doesn’t always mean beautiful.”

Nobu made a folder called AKI FINAL.

“Don't call it that.”

“AKI NOT FINAL?”

“Nobu.”

He changed it to SUMIRE DECIDES WHAT IS GOOD.

She hit his shoulder. He laughed.

A little later Sumire rubbed the side of her neck. Nobu noticed immediately. He came behind her and pressed his thumbs into the tight muscles at the base of her neck. It was familiar. He knew exactly where the pain gathered.

On the computer screen in front of her, Ray was looking toward Sumire's camera. Behind him, the farmhouse roof sagged under a blue sheet.

Nobu's hands became still.

“What?” Sumire asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

That was one of Nobu's strengths. He noticed things early.

It was also one of his problems.

Chapter 4: Saturday in Aki

The next Saturday, Nobu drove Sumire to Aki to visit his friend Toru Kazura. Toru's house stood just across a creek from the Fujimori farmhouse, reached by a small bridge. Toru had already started the charcoal in the backyard and had beer in a cooler before noon.

Ray came later with his cousin Evan, who was on the last day of a visit from California. Evan's family grew rice north of Sacramento, and Nobu soon had him talking about water, machinery, and farm labor. Ray sat across from Sumire. “You used the ugly one,” he said.

“What?”

“The photograph. Nobu showed me.”

Nobu looked over. “One picture.”

“You weren't supposed to share those,” Sumire said.

“But you shared the album with me,” said Nobu.

“Whatever, it’s fine.” Sumire flashed Nobu a vicious stare. Ray laughed.

The afternoon continued that way. Ray and Sumire argued about walls and photographs. Toru kept finding reasons to refill their glasses. Nobu talked with Evan about California rice farms.

Evan checked his phone. It was already almost 4:20. He asked Ray if he wanted to head back to the farmhouse before he left. “There’s beer there, right?”

“There’s beer here,” Ray said, pointing to the cooler.

Evan took two cans from the cooler. “Now there's beer there.”

Sumire laughed.

Ray asked if she wanted to join. She almost did, but she had arrived with Nobu and stayed to help Toru clean up.

Later, after several beers, Nobu went for a walk. He crossed the little bridge and followed the creek toward the terraced fields. The roads were narrow and quiet. He passed an old stone wall and, to his own annoyance, stopped to look at it. Then he smelled something sweet and sharp. Not tobacco. He had smelled it overseas. He followed the road and found Ray and Evan sitting behind the wall in front of the farmhouse. Evan held a joint. He passed it to Ray.

Ray saw Nobu. “Hey.”

Nobu looked at the joint. “Is that marijuana?”

“Yeah,” Ray said.

“You know that's illegal here,” Nobu said.

“I know.”

Evan tried to take responsibility, but Ray told him to stay out of it.

“You have a good job. You live with your grandfather. You're trying to fix that house.”

“I know.”

“And you're doing this.”

Ray looked at the joint. “Yeah.”

“You think nothing is going to happen?”

“It's one joint.”

“In Japan.”

“I know where I am.”

“It doesn't look like it.”

Ray stood. “You came all the way out here to tell me where I am?”

“I smelled it from the road.”

“So keep walking.”

For a few seconds they stared at each other. Then Nobu turned away.

“Nobu,” Ray said.

Nobu stopped.

“Don't tell Sumire.”

Nobu looked back. “You tell her.”

“I will.”

“When?”

Ray's smile disappeared. “It's none of your business.”

Nobu walked back toward Toru's house.

Sumire was stacking empty bottles beside the cooler.

“See anything cool?” she asked.

Nobu looked back across the little bridge.

“Not really.”

Chapter 4: Saturday in Aki

“What?”

“The photograph. Nobu showed me.”

Nobu looked over. “One picture.”

“You weren't supposed to share those,” Sumire said.

“But you shared the album with me,” said Nobu.

“Whatever, it’s fine.” Sumire flashed Nobu a vicious stare. Ray laughed.

The afternoon continued that way. Ray and Sumire argued about walls and photographs. Toru kept finding reasons to refill their glasses. Nobu talked with Evan about California rice farms.

Evan checked his phone. It was already almost 4:20. He asked Ray if he wanted to head back to the farmhouse before he left. “There’s beer there, right?”

“There’s beer here,” Ray said, pointing to the cooler.

Evan took two cans from the cooler. “Now there's beer there.”

Sumire laughed.

Ray asked if she wanted to join. She almost did, but she had arrived with Nobu and stayed to help Toru clean up.

Ray saw Nobu. “Hey.”

Nobu looked at the joint. “Is that marijuana?”

“Yeah,” Ray said.

“You know that's illegal here,” Nobu said.

“I know.”

Evan tried to take responsibility, but Ray told him to stay out of it.

“You have a good job. You live with your grandfather. You're trying to fix that house.”

“I know.”

“And you're doing this.”

Ray looked at the joint. “Yeah.”

“You think nothing is going to happen?”

“It's one joint.”

“In Japan.”

“I know where I am.”

“It doesn't look like it.”

Ray stood. “You came all the way out here to tell me where I am?”

“I smelled it from the road.”

“So keep walking.”

For a few seconds they stared at each other. Then Nobu turned away.

“Nobu,” Ray said.

Nobu stopped.

“Don't tell Sumire.”

Nobu looked back. “You tell her.”

“I will.”

“When?”

Ray's smile disappeared. “It's none of your business.”

Nobu walked back toward Toru's house.

Sumire was stacking empty bottles beside the cooler.

“See anything cool?” she asked.

Nobu looked back across the little bridge.

“Not really.”

Chapter 5: Before Opening

A few days later Sumire came to the izakaya before opening. Nobu was testing a new dish with nagaimo and kimchi. He handed her a knife and told her to help.

“I'm not working today.”

“Good. You can help for free.”

Their old rhythm was still easy. They argued about how small to cut the nagaimo, whether a dish needed a better name, and whether Nobu was allowed to arrange meetings with printers for Sumire without asking her first.

Nobu liked arranging things. Business deals. Menus. Software. Other people's problems.

He looked through the Aki pamphlet draft and stopped at one of her photographs of Ray.

“You kept that one.”

Here he goes again. “It's a good photograph.”

“I told you to keep it.”

“You say lots of things,” she said.

“You listen eventually.”

Whatever. “I reach my own conclusions.”

“Eventually.”

Later, Nobu kissed her.

For a moment Sumire kissed him back. His hand at her waist was familiar. Nothing about it felt new.

That was the problem.

She put one hand against his chest.

“Nobu. Don't.”

He stopped.

“Since when?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

“Is it Ray?”

“No.”

Nobu waited.

“I don't know,” Sumire said.

“Those are different answers.”

“I know.”

“I don't want to be your girlfriend anymore.”

Nobu looked at her.

“What do you want?”

“I want us to be friends.”

“Because of Ray?”

“No. This isn’t about Ray. This is about us.”

Nobu nodded once. “Okay.”

That answer surprised her. Sumire left before the izakaya opened.

That night, Nobu drank with the last customers. He closed after midnight.

Three days later, Sumire came in for her shift. She had just tied her apron when Nobu's phone rang. It was Toru.

Nobu listened, put one hand on the counter, and asked where the police had taken him.

Sumire stopped filling shoyu containers.

“Who?”

Nobu ended the call.

“Ray's been taken by the police.”

“He’s been arrested?”

“Marijuana.”

Sumire picked up her bag immediately.

“I'll take you,” Nobu said.

“You have to open.”

“Jun can open.”

“I can get my own taxi.”

“I know.”

“Then let me.”

Nobu lowered his phone. Sumire turned back.

“Call me if you need anything,” Nobu said.

She nodded and left.

He watched until her taxi disappeared. At five, he turned the sign to OPEN.

Chapter 6: Water

Ray came home in May, almost a month after the police took him away. The nanohana had gone to seed while he was gone. Along the roads, the yellow was disappearing into green. The paddies below the farmhouse were pale brown earth, broken into hard ridges and shallow cracks, waiting for water.

Ojiichan was waiting at the farmhouse.

He did not ask about the police or the court.

He handed Ray a pair of rubber boots.

They walked up to the uppermost of their terraced fields. Together they opened the first wooden gate that let water into the uppermost paddy. At first it came quickly through the channels, brown with mud and pieces of grass. Ray cleared leaves and stones with his hands and guided the flow with a hoe.

The water found the low ground first. It gathered in footprints and hollows, disappeared into cracks, and then rose above them. Slowly it spread across the broken earth.

Ray had done the same work when he was seven. Back then, Ojiichan had walked behind him with one hand gripping the back of his shirt so he would not fall into the channel.

Ray remembered being angry about it.

“I’m not going to fall,” he had said.

Ojiichan had not answered. He had kept holding his shirt. Ray smiled at the memory, then stopped smiling. They worked mostly in silence.

His lawyer thought he had been lucky—if you can count being held in detention during a three-week investigation lucky. The court had given him twelve months for the marijuana offense, but he would not go to prison as long as he stayed out of trouble for five years.

JA was less forgiving.

“They fired me,” Ray said.

Ojiichan nodded.

Ray pushed mud away from the mouth of one channel. “I liked that job.”

“I know.”

“I was good at it.”

Another nod.

Ray drove the hoe into the softening earth. “I was really good at it.”

“I know.”

The water kept moving.

It slipped past Ray’s boots and spread across the field. Mud rose beneath the surface, clouding the water. Small waves ran toward the far bank, the reflections breaking into pieces as the ripples passed.

Ray wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “I fucked everything up,” he said.

Ojiichan stood. For a moment they looked across the field, shoulder to shoulder.

“Rice doesn’t know.”

Ojiichan went back to work.

Ray stayed where he was. He still felt bad, but the words comforted him somehow.

After a while, he followed Ojiichan to the next terrace. They worked until the water reached the far corners of the paddy.

Ray began to notice that his grandfather moved more slowly than he remembered. He stopped before stepping over one narrow channel and looked down at the water.

Ray held out a hand. Ojiichan looked at it. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Ojiichan stepped across without taking it.

Ray laughed.

Slowly, they worked their way down the terraces. A little later, his grandfather handed him the heavier hoe. By late afternoon, the four paddies were full. Ojiichan closed the last gate. For a while the water kept moving. Small waves crossed the fields and broke against the banks. Mud turned beneath them. Grass and bits of straw drifted slowly toward the edges. Then the ripples grew smaller. The water became still. One by one, the paddies began to reflect the sky, the forested slopes of Mount Deigo. Ray and his grandfather watched clouds appear where the broken earth had been.

“Tomorrow,” Ojiichan said.

“What?”

“We plant.”

Ray looked at him. “I don’t work for JA anymore.”

“I know.”

“Then what am I doing?”

Ojiichan looked across the flooded fields. “Whose fields do you think these are?”

Ray said nothing. Ojiichan started down the path toward the farmhouse. Ray remained beside the water for another moment. The fields were quiet now. Sky lay across them from bank to bank. Then he followed his grandfather.

Chapter 7: Moving Out

While Ray was trying to understand what remained of his old life, Sumire was packing hers into boxes.

She and Nobu had lived together for several years. It was difficult to tell what belonged to whom.

Nobu had bought the shelves in the living room. He had chosen the internet plan and knew who to call when the washing machine stopped working. He paid more of the rent. When Sumire was short of money, he covered it and kept a record because that was what Nobu did.

Her cameras were hers: the old film camera she had used since art school and the DSLR Nobu had encouraged her to start using. So were her clothes, although Nobu had bought some of those too.

One night he came home and found three boxes in the living room.

“What are you doing?”

“Packing.”

“For what?”

“I’m moving.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Nobu put down his bag.

“I know an agent. I can call him tomorrow.”

Of course he did. “No, that’s okay.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I’m still living in an apartment you found.”

Nobu stopped.

“I don’t hate you,” Sumire said.

“I know.”

“You’ve done a lot for me.”

“I know.”

She wrapped a camera lens in an old T-shirt and put it into a box.

“Maybe too much.”

Nobu looked at her.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.”

“And Ray?”

“This isn’t about Ray.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because you keep asking.”

Nobu looked at the boxes.

“Are you going to him?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

Sumire hesitated. Maybe she liked Ray because he was an artist—with stone. That didn't mean they would be good together.

“I don’t know.”

Nobu gave a short laugh without humor. “You know, it would be okay if you changed your mind later.”

She folded the top of the box closed and reached for another.

Nobu did not stop her.

That mattered.

Chapter 8: The Old House

Sumire's Town Hall project led to occasional work with the Aki Folklore Museum. The work was temporary: photographs, display panels, interviews, anything the museum needed and could afford.

One afternoon she went to the Fujimori farmhouse to ask Ray's grandfather about the history of old houses in the area. Ray was out working. His grandfather greeted her at the door.

He did not talk much, but he showed her the house.

The farmhouse had stood for generations. Parts had been rebuilt after earthquakes and storms, and other parts had been repaired after wood rotted, plaster cracked, and roofs leaked. The house seemed to carry all of its ages at once.

Dark curved beams crossed the main room above the tatami. Afternoon light came through the shoji and from the engawa beyond them. Some of the shikkui, a breathable plaster, was new. Elsewhere it had yellowed with age. Hairline cracks ran from the corners of old wooden frames.

Sumire photographed the beams.

In one part of the room, an unfinished support post stood beneath a heavy beam. It looked newer than everything around it.

She pointed at it.

“What’s this?”

Grandfather shook his head.

“Temporary.”

“How temporary?”

He thought about it.

“Too long.”

A carpenter was supposed to replace it properly. Sumire crouched and photographed the base of the post, then stood and photographed where it met the beam. A thin wooden shim had been driven into the space above it.

Grandfather pointed toward the ceiling.

Sumire followed his finger, but a lightbulb was out.

He brought a ladder.

Sumire looked at the ladder, then at him.

“I have to change light bulbs?”

He handed her the bulb.

Sumire climbed.

From the ladder she could see the house from a different perspective. Dust lay along the upper edges of the beams. A crack she had missed from the floor disappeared behind one of them. She changed the bulb and handed the old one down.

Grandfather pointed toward the hallway.

“Another?” Sumire asked.

He nodded, moving the ladder.

By the time they finished, Sumire had changed three bulbs, held a wooden frame while he tightened a screw, and moved a box he probably should not have been carrying himself.

She took more photographs.

At lunch they sat near the open engawa. Grandfather brought rice, pickles, miso soup, and something left from the night before. Sumire had intended to interview him about the house, but his answers were usually not long enough to write down.

She noticed an old photograph on a shelf. A younger version of Grandfather stood beside a woman. Sumire was curious.

“Your wife?”

He looked at the photograph.

“Mm.”

“Is she here?”

He shook his head. “Long time ago.”

Sumire waited, but he had finished answering.

“And Ray's parents?”

“California.”

“They still live there?”

“Mm.”

“But Ray came back.”

“He came.”

“And stayed,” she said, her voice falling in confirmation.

Grandfather ate another bite of rice.

“Still here.”

Sumire smiled.

Grandfather pointed at the camera beside her.

“Work?”

“Sometimes. Photography, design, pamphlets. Whatever people pay me for.”

“Izakaya?”

“Still two nights.”

He nodded.

Sumire looked out toward the fields.

“I'm moving out.”

Grandfather kept eating.

“Not from the izakaya. From Nobu's apartment.”

“Where you go?”

“I don't know. That's the problem.” She laughed a little.

He said nothing.

Sumire wondered why she had told him.

After lunch, Grandfather picked up the ladder and carried it outside. Sumire followed him around the back of the farmhouse toward a smaller building.

Near the old onsen, Sumire stopped. A tree beside the wall was covered with deep red deigo flowers. Sumire took a photograph.

Grandfather kept walking.

“Naya,” he said.

The old storehouse was full of tools, boards, boxes, broken furniture, and a bicycle without a front wheel. It smelled of dust, old wood, and damp earth. At the back was a raised floor where workers or family members had once slept.

Light came through a dirty western window.

Sumire walked over and wiped one part of the glass with her sleeve.

The room changed.

Not much.

Enough.

She wiped the glass again.

Afternoon light reached farther across the floor. She could imagine prints on the wall. A desk beneath the window. Her cameras on a shelf. And most of all, a dark room in the back.

“Roof leaks?” she asked.

“When rain.”

“That means yes.”

“Mm.”

Sumire looked around again.

Then she picked up a broom.

Grandfather carried the ladder away.

Over the next few days, Sumire came back to work on the naya. Grandfather helped her clear out the broken furniture and old boxes. They cleaned the window, patched the worst part of the roof, and made one end of the raised floor usable.

By the time Ray returned from detention, the room was still rough, but Sumire had begun moving her things in. A pile of things she and Grandfather had decided were probably rubbish sat outside the door.

Ray stopped when he saw the open naya and Sumire standing inside it with a broom.

“Sumire?”

“Hello.”

Ray looked toward his grandfather.

His grandfather pointed at the building.

“New tenant.”

Ray looked back at Sumire.

“What?”

“I'm renting the naya.”

“You're living here?”

“Apparently.”

Ray stepped inside and looked around.

“Does the roof leak?”

Sumire leaned on the broom.

“When rain.”

Ray looked at his grandfather.

Sumire laughed.

Chapter 9: The Incident

By the time Sumire moved into the naya, the roof no longer leaked. The electricity mostly worked. The bathroom had a curtain but no door. Her boxes were still everywhere.

One evening, Sumire heard Ray and Nobu outside. They had been drinking at Toru's house and were carrying the last two boxes Nobu had brought from Deigo City.

For a while, everything was surprisingly normal.

Nobu looked around the naya and said, “You really did it.”

“Mostly,” Sumire said. She loved the naya. She hated that moving there had hurt Nobu. She wasn't sorry she had done it.

He checked the lock because he was Nobu. It stuck. He told her to replace it. She told him it was on the list.

Ray put a box in the wrong place. Sumire made him move it. Nobu smiled and said, “You're learning.”

“Slowly.” Maybe this could be the new normal.

Grandfather had gone to bed. The three of them went into the farmhouse for coffee before Nobu and Ray returned to Toru's. Sumire put water on.

Nobu noticed the old sword mounted high on the wall. “Is that real?”

“Yes,” Ray said.

“I would sell it if I were your grandpa.”

“He'd sell me first.”

When the coffee was ready, she poured three cups.

Nobu asked Ray how he was doing after losing his JA job.

Ray said he was fine. Then he said there was one thing he did not understand. “How’d the police know?”

Sumire’s cup was halfway to her mouth. So much for normal.

Ray looked at Nobu. “Somebody knew who I was with. What we were smoking. Where we were.”

Nobu put down his cup. “You want to ask me something?”

“Yes.”

“Then ask.”

Sumire put her cup down. Here we go.

Ray stared at him. “Were you the narc?”

Nobu almost smiled at the word. “Narc?”

“You know what it means.”

“I called,” Nobu said.

The room went silent.

Sumire looked at him. “You reported him?”

“He had marijuana.”

“That wasn't my question.”

“Yes. I reported him.”

Sumire stared at him. “When?”

Nobu didn’t answer.

Don't tell me you did this after we broke up. You jerk. “After I said I wanted us to be friends?”

“Yes.”

Sumire made a fist. You control freak.

Ray asked why. Nobu said the marijuana was illegal, stupid, and dangerous to everything Ray was trying to build.

Ray reminded him that he had lost his job. “You knew what that job meant to me.”

“Yes.”

“And you called anyway.”

“Yes.”

Ray nodded and walked toward the door.

Sumire exhaled.

Then Nobu said, “You should thank me.”

Ray stopped.

“You were going to get caught eventually.”

Ray turned back.

The argument changed. Ray accused Nobu of reporting him because of Sumire. Nobu denied it, then looked at Sumire, who glared back at him. You thought I was sleeping with Ray?

Ray took note. “You thought I was sleeping with your girlfriend?”

“She was my girlfriend till I introduced her to you,” Nobu said, clenching his jaw.

“I'm right here,” Sumire said.

Ray turned away again. Nobu caught his shoulder. Ray knocked his hand off.

“Don't touch me.”

Nobu grabbed him again.

Ray shoved him into the low table. Cups jumped. Nobu fell, caught himself, and stood again.

Ray was breathing hard. “I'm done.” He walked toward the door.

This time he had almost left when Nobu called after him. “Yeah. Walk away.”

Ray stopped.

Sumire stepped between them. “Enough.”

Ray should have kept walking. Instead, he turned. “You didn't save her from me,” he said.

Nobu's face changed.

“You lost her yourself,” Ray said.

Nobu looked at him. “When are you going back to California?”

Ray came back across the room. “Fuck you.”

Sumire tried to stop him, but he passed her and hit Nobu once in the mouth.

Nobu stumbled. Blood appeared on his lip.

Everything stopped.

Ray lowered his hands. He looked almost surprised by what he had done.

Nobu touched his mouth and looked at the blood on his fingers. Then he looked at the sword.

“No,” Sumire said.

Nobu crossed the room and pulled it from the mount.

For one second Sumire thought he was joking.

Ray did not. “Put it down,” he said.

Nobu pulled the blade free. He held it badly, with both hands. He was drunk, angry, and now holding something that should never have been part of the argument.

Ray backed away.

Nobu stepped toward him.

Ray moved behind the support post.

“Nobu. Enough,” Sumire said.

Nobu swung.

Ray moved.

The blade struck the post.

Metal entered wood with a hard, ugly sound.

The sword stuck.

“Leave it,” Sumire said.

Nobu pulled.

Nothing.

“Nobu. Leave it.”

He yanked the blade sideways.

The post shifted. The shim fell free. Sumire saw the post begin to slide off the beam. Something inside the ceiling cracked.

No. “Ray!”

He looked up.

The post kicked out.

The great dark beam came crashing down. Ceiling plaster fell with it. The beam caught Ray across the lower back and drove him down. His head struck the floor. For several seconds there was only dust.

Sumire found Ray beneath the fallen timber. The beam crossed his hips and one leg. Blood ran from his hair.

“Ray. Look at me. Ray.”

His eyes opened. He tried to move and groaned in pain.

“Don't. Don't move.”

Nobu came closer, still holding the sword.

“Put that down.” Sumire glared at him.

He looked at his hands as if he had forgotten what they held. Then he dropped it.

“Let’s get this off of him,” Nobu said.

“No.”

“I can lift it off.”

“No. Don't touch him.”

Sumire called emergency services. Old farmhouse. Structural collapse. One person trapped. Conscious. Breathing. Head injury. Possible spinal injury.

Ray opened his eyes again. “Sumire.”

“I'm here.”

“My leg.”

“I know.”

“I can't—”

“Don't try.”

His eyes closed.

Behind her, Nobu sat in Ray’s grandfather’s chair with blood on his shirt. He stared at Ray. “I didn't—”

“Don't,” Sumire said.

From the back of the house came the sound of a sliding door.

Grandfather appeared in the hallway.

His eyes went to the beam, the fallen post, Ray, the sword, and finally Nobu.

He crossed the room and knelt beside Ray.

Outside, far down the road, a siren sounded.

Nobody looked at Nobu.

About the author

Paul Sevigny lives and writes in Beppu, Japan. Breaking Ground is the second story in a series written as case narratives for L2 mock trial language practice. These are the first 9 chapters of a 13 chapter novella. The story will be available soon in its entirety.

About the publisher

This story is a product of StudioCLA Press 2026:

StudioCLA.org, an international organization of academics authoring, translating, and simplifying narratives for language learning.

Attribution – This story was developed in Paul Sevigny's Discussion and Debate course and is meant for helping CEFR B1 learners move from literature circle discussion at the beginning of the course into mock trial practice before moving to an academic debate format where discussions with a capital "C" are researched by students and then debated.