They returned to the front room of Hikari’s house, Kenji and Wang-mu each bearing a small tea table. Kenji offered her table to Hikari, but he waved her over to Peter, and then bowed to him. It was Wang-mu who served Hikari. And when Kenji backed away from Peter, Wang-mu also backed away from Hikari.
For the first time, Hikari looked — angry? His eyes flashed, anyway. For by placing herself on exactly the same level as Kenji, she had just maneuvered him into a position where he either had to shame himself by being prouder than Wang-mu and dismissing his servant, or disrupt the good order of his own house by inviting Kenji to sit down with the three of them as equals.
“Kenji,” said Hikari. “Let me pour tea for you.”
Check, thought Wang-mu. And mate.
It was a delicious bonus when Peter, who had finally caught on to the game, also poured tea for her, and then managed to spill it on her, which prompted Hikari to spill a little on himself in order to put his guest at ease. The pain of the hot tea and then the discomfort as it cooled and dried were well worth the pleasure of knowing that while Wang-mu had proved herself a match for Hikari in outrageous courtesy, Peter had merely proved himself to be an oaf.
Or was Wang-mu truly a match for Hikari? He must have seen and understood her effort to place herself ostentatiously beneath him. It was possible, then, that he was — humbly — allowing her to win pride of place as the more humble of the two. As soon as she realized that he might have done this, then she knew that he certainly had done it, and the victory was his.
I’m not as clever as I thought.
She looked at Peter, hoping that he would now take over and do whatever clever thing he had in mind. But he seemed perfectly content to let her lead out. Certainly he didn’t jump into the breach. Did he, too, realize that she had just been bested at her own game, because she failed to take it deep enough? Was he giving her the rope to hang herself?
Well, let’s get the noose good and tight.
“Aimaina Hikari, you are called by some the keeper of the Yamato spirit. Peter and I grew up on a Japanese world, and yet the Japanese humbly allow Stark to be the language of the public school, so that we speak no Japanese. In my Chinese neighborhood, in Peter’s American city, we spent our childhoods on the edge of Japanese culture, looking in. So if there is any particular part of our vast ignorance that will be most obvious to you, it is in our knowledge of Yamato itself.”
“Oh, Wang-mu, you make a mystery out of the obvious. No one understands Yamato better than those who see it from the outside, just as the parent understands the child better than the child understands herself.”
“Then I will enlighten you,” said Wang-mu, discarding the game of humility. “For I see Japan as an Edge nation, and I cannot yet see whether your ideas will make Japan a new Center nation, or begin the decay that all edge nations experience when they take power.”
“I grasp a hundred possible meanings, most of them surely true of my people, for your term ‘Edge nation,'” said Hikari. “But what is a Center nation, and how can a people become one?”
“I am not well-versed in Earth history,” said Wang-mu, “but as I studied what little I know, it seemed to me that there were a handful of Center nations, which had a culture so strong that they swallowed up all conquerors. Egypt was one, and China. Each one became unified and then expanded no more than necessary to protect their borders and pacify their hinterland. Each one took in its conquerors and swallowed them up for thousands of years. Egyptian writing and Chinese writing persisted with only stylistic modifications, so that the past remained present for those who could read.”
Wang-mu could see from Peter’s stiffness that he was very worried. After all, she was saying things that were definitely not gnomic. But since he was completely out of his depth with an Asian, he was still making no effort to intrude.