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You ever hear the one about the ant and the grasshopper?
So there’s this little ant, right. And he has to work hard every day of his life to make ends meet. Winter’s coming. He’s slaving away at the ant mines; saving up seeds. That’s what he’s all about.
And the whole time this is going down, there’s this grasshopper, right? And he’s just slacking off and playing his stupid little fiddle, like a moron. Waiting for everything to just figure itself out.
So winter rolls around. Time for the ant to kick back and enjoy the fruits of his labor, like not starving to death. Snow’s falling, and the grasshopper’s SOL. He figured the whole “slack off, play fiddle” gig would be a permanent arrangement. He’s gonna die, get it? Straight up die, just like that. And he’d deserve it.
But in the end, the ant feels bad for the grasshopper. He lets the grasshopper in to stay for the winter. Nobody dies. They live happily ever after. That’s it. That’s the whole story.
Chibita hated that story.
None of it was fair. First, you got the grasshopper getting rewarded for no reason. He’s an asshole; he contributes nothing to society. But everything’s always gotta be soooo easy for the grasshopper. Some people get all the luck.
Then you got the ant. Up ‘til the end, you think he’s the sane one here, working hard and making a life for himself. But then he goes and does that. What’s in it for him, letting some bozo mooch for the winter?
Unless the ant was just getting off on feeling all high and mighty in comparison. But that’d be crazy.
Honestly. None of it made a lick of sense.
So whenever a grasshopper crossed his path, Chibita always had to fight the urge to step on it, just to see its yellow-green guts pop and smear across the asphalt. Just to teach their whole lazy kind a lesson.
He could never have done it, though. That's not what a good person would’ve done. You have to be kind to all things that have life.
But when a grasshopper jumped across his path along the riverside walk and sat there motionless on the sidewalk before him, Chibita was sorely tempted.
“C’mon, git,” Chibita said to it in a stage whisper. “Move it, dammit! I got places to be.”
The grasshopper said nothing, and stridulated in place.
“I said am-scray, ya stupid bug!”
Again, the grasshopper did not move.
Chibita lifted the rusty iron handlebar of the cart above his shoulders and placed it carefully on the ground. He walked over to the stupid bug, crouched down, and scowled at it.
“Look, buddy, we can do this the easy way,” explained Chibita. “Or we can do this the hard way. Easy way is, you live up to the moniker and hop into that grass over there. Hard way is, you get up close and personal with Chuck Taylor here.”
Chibita plucked a long strand of grass out from a tuft at the side of the road and poked the grasshopper with its blunt, bleeding edge.
“What’s it gonna be, li’l man?”
The grasshopper held up a set of its little legs, as if in prayer. Then it took two loping hops towards Chibita and onto the laces of his left shoe.
“Hey! Knock it off!” Chibita kicked at the air, but the grasshopper just wouldn’t budge. Pretty soon he lost balance, and fell back-asswards down onto the asphalt.
“Ouch…” Chibita sat up, rubbed at his bruised hip-bone. The curious little insect jumped up and landed on his knee, looking up at him with crisp grey eyes.
Chibita felt the grasshopper calm and settle comfortably on the exposed skin of his left thigh. With a sigh of wounded resignation, he laid down onto the dusty pavement and looked up at the soft blue sky. The hot gravel stung the back of his bald head.
“The hell’s your problem, anyway... You get a kick out of getting on my nerves or something?” Chibita asked the grasshopper. It did not reply.
“Look, I ain’t trying to hurt you,” Chibita continued. “I’m just worried about you is all, idjit...”
“Yo, Chibita! How come you’re talking to yourself?”
Chibita sat up and turned to face the voice.
“Osomatsu…? I wasn’t!” Chibita protested, red patches blossoming on his cheeks. “I was talkin’ to--”
With that, the grasshopper pranced off into a dandelion patch. Chibita cursed it, quietly. He stood up and dusted the sand from the seat his blue trousers.
“Talking to a bug?” Osomatsu deduced.
“No. Don't be stupid.”
“Talking to a bug...” Osomatsu shook his head and sighed. “Man, you really must be starved for company. Good thing I showed up.”
“No, for your in-for-mation, ” Chibita enunciated carefully as he walked back to the cart.
He explained that he was on his way to the Gessou-ji temple complex, where an all-night summer festival was being held. And where there’s festivals, there’s customers. Paying ones.
“Oh, neat!” said Osomatsu. “Can I come?”
“Hell no.”
“Sure I can, it’s a free country,” Osomatsu decided. “I like summer festivals. And I’d keep you company, besides.”
“Company I can live without.” Chibita made a cheeky circle with his thumb and index finger. “This is about money.”
“Ah… I see.” Osomatsu stuck his hands in his empty pockets. “Can’t help you there.”
Chibita swiped a mosquito off the side of his face. Summer had arrived early that year, and they were well and truly into the dog days of it by now. A damp, unrefreshing breeze teased the dandelions growing out the cracks in the sidewalk. It shook loose some seeds, and they fluttered into the air. A few of the fluffy white burrs stuck to Osomatsu’s red sports coat like unseasonal flakes of snow. He folded his arms and made a sour face.
“Pffft, fine. Not like I wanted to go to some stupid kids’ thing, anyway,” said Osomatsu, tilting his head off to the side. “I got places to be, too. On my way now, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh yeah? Like where?”
“Oh, you know.” With that, Osomatsu turned on his heels and walked off into the long grass. Looking back over his shoulder, he twisted an empty palm in the air; the universal sign for a pachinko crank-wheel. “Let’s just say I got me a date with Lady Luck.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chibita sneered, and made another gesture in return. “Doncha mean Rosie Palms?”
“Aw, don’t be crude.”
“I don’t wanna hear that from you, idjit!”
“Well, go fuck yourself, then, I guess,” Osomatsu chuckled. He clambered up along the dry grassy hill, and back onto the high road on the other side of the low wire fence. Once he was up there, he leaned over the fence and called out.
“Anyhow, good luck!”
Chibita smiled drily, and took his leave. Osomatsu could keep his luck. This was about selling oden. Luck ain’t got nothing to do with that.
---
“Whaddya mean, the whole temple burned down?!”
“Should be pretty self-evident,” said the nun in attendance. The aluminium blanket provided by the local volunteer fire department rather clashed with her singed, mouse-brown robes. “It caught fire, then it was on fire for a little while, and then it burned down. Now it isn’t there any more.”
The aging head monk at her side pushed a pair of thin, wire-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Possessions are fleeting,” he added sagely.
“What the hell! It had 300 years to burn down!” Chibita cried. “Why’d it have to pick tonight, of all nights!?”
“It had a good run,” said the nun.
“Hell, that's a baby in temple years! It had a shitty run, dammit.”
“Please avoid coarse language on temple grounds,” admonished the monk.
“How’s it temple grounds if you don’t have a goddamn temple there?!”
“Know this,” said the monk, “and you will find inner peace.”
“But I don’t want inner peace, dammit!” Chibita cried. He threw the greasy tea-towel around his neck to the ground with such force it landed with a wet slap. “I wanna sell oden!”
Upon this display of frustration, a murmur of approval rose up from the small crowd of yatai-keeps now gathered in the main evacuation area. Chibita was far from the only snack vendor fretting over the canceled festival. Sure, it was a shame about the temple, and the gold statues, and the intangible cultural heritage. But they’d all been budgeting around this night for months.
One of the old battle-axes in the back piped up with a question: “Can’t we at least get the deposit for the rental spaces back?”
“Yeah, what she said,” Chibita joined in.
The nun gave a dignified little shrug. “It can’t be helped,” she said, using the old stock phrase.
But that’s a lot, coming from a nun. When a mild expression of annoyance crossed the woman’s round face, most of the small crowd shrank back in terror. But Chibita stood firm, arms crossed over his chest, like a proud letter A.
“That’s not fair!” he snapped.
The old monk swooped down like a bald, brown raven. He looked Chibita dead in the eyes. Even Chibita couldn’t help but flinch.
“Is anything?” asked the old man.
With that, the monk rose and turned sharply. He walked back towards the smoked-out remains of the temple, where a crew of reporters from the local Tokai-TV affiliate were unloading their cameras.
Chibita scowled at them both. But then he took a sharp breath in through his nose, coughed, and followed the small army of disgruntled yatai- keeps back to the sandy parking lot where they’d left their carts.
A muscular older woman lowered her pace until Chibita caught up with her. An unlit cigarette dangled from her lower lip like an unsightly growth. She offered a friendly, wordless grunt.
“Hell if you ain’t got stones, kiddo,” said the older woman. She spoke the same rustic Edokko dialect as Chibita. He smiled, and did not deflect the compliment.
“Well, ya gotta, in this line of work, right?” Chibita swiped at his cheek with the inside of his wrist. He noticed the woman had the forearms of a cartoon sailor.
“Yakisoba?” he guessed.
“Close,” she replied. “Okonomiyaki. Forty years, come Fall.”
“Holy crap, forty years, ” Chibita blurted out, then apologised, and hastily adding that the years didn’t show.
Forty years of yatai work. Chibita folded his arms behind his head and tried to place himself in that picture. Decade after decade of oden. All day. Every day. He tried copying the older woman’s swaggering gait, and imagined his own face as wrinkled and pitiable as that. He wondered if he’d ever be able to grow a moustache like her’s.
Forty years of oden. Somehow, something about the mental image disturbed him.
See, there was this thought that had been bothering Chibita lately. And in that moment, he could no longer push it out of his mind.
Let’s make one thing clear: Chibita still loved oden. Truly, he did. It was the reason he got up in the morning. Oden was delicious: the taste of nostalgia, and warmth, and home. He made it, and he sold it. His life revolved around that simple exchange.
And let’s make one other thing clear: it wasn’t like Chibita was drifting away from oden, or losing interest. No, he couldn’t, right? He’d be nothing without oden.
It wasn’t about the money. There was an emotional logic to it. Chibita = oden. His oden was good, and therefore people came to see him. People told him that they loved his oden. Therefore, he felt loved.
“Thanks for the meal,” people would tell him as they left.
You’re a good person, Chibita, is how he heard it.
Everything anyone needed to know about Chibita was there, right there, floating in the dashi.
But there was a vague anxiety that bubbled up in his mind recently. Like when the summer dawns crept in through the window of his cheap council flat, full of oden supplies and oden accessories, and woke him up like clockwork at 4:30 am. He’d pull the oden-pattern coverlet over his head, trying to block out the sun and sleep off the peculiar sensation of emptiness, not unlike hunger, that brewed in the pit of his chest. It rarely helped.
Chibita had trouble finding the words for it. But put simply, his dilemma was this: take away the oden, and would anyone think he was a good person?
Would there even be a person there at all?
Chibita sighed and dropped his arms to his sides. This wasn’t the time to be thinking like that. No... Why think like that at all.
The temple parking lot was full of worn-out firefighters and EMTs, all patting each other on the back after a hard day’s work. And that’s when Chibita saw it: a troupe of young men in helmets milling around Hybrid, helping themselves to the sun-warmed broth and tepid beer cans floating in the icebox.
“Oi!” Chibita yelled, waving his arms as he ran up to them. “The hell do ya think you’re doing?!”
One of the soot-faced young men turned and spoke with his mouth full. “Is this yours? Thanks for the meal!”
“You gotta pay for it first, idjits!”
“Oh, sorry,” another one said sheepishly. “We thought this was a makanai.”
“Hell, I got your makanai right here, pal!” Chibita rolled up his sleeves and balled up his hands into shaking fists. Just as he was about to strike, he felt a sharp tug at the back of his collar.
“Just let ‘em take it, kiddo,” scolded Madame Okonomiyaki, now puffing on her cigarette. “They’re having a tougher day than you.”
Chibita glared at the dry earth. He knew it would be rude to argue with a pai-sen of her level. But his eyes burned at their edges; his heart stung at the injustice of it all. It all made him feel so horribly small. The firemen shyly left their plates upon the counter and hurried back to the debriefing tents.
Chibita stood on his tip-toes and peered over the edge of the bain-marie. The cart was totally emptied out. He saw himself reflected, vague and warped, in the wet steel of the empty dish.
Well, there you have it, went the nasty little voice at the back of his mind. A Summer festival without a festival, a temple complex without a temple, and a Chibita without oden.
Just a whole lot of nothing.
---
The walk back home from the temple complex seemed longer than the way there. The setting red sun stretched Chibita’s shadow far out ahead of him.
What a waste of a day it had been. He mentally ran the numbers on how much he’d need to make up for the loss: a week’s profit in Summer, maybe more. Lost in thought, he walked on.
Something crunched under Chibita’s foot. He looked down, and in that moment, Chibita felt like the absolute worst human being on the face of the planet.
“Aw, jeez…”
What was left of the grasshopper twitched and chirped. It had to be the same one from before: Chibita could see the confusion and betrayal in its grey eyes. He let the handle-bar of the cart crash to the ground, and crouched down by the insect.
“Shit, sorry! I didn’t mean that, honest,” Chibita cried with an edge of desperation. “Look, damnit, I was just having a really lousy day, and I wasn’t thinking--hey, come on, stay with me, idjit!”
His words weren’t doing any good. The grasshopper was gonna die. Straight-up die, just like that.
Chibita picked up a rock to put the thing out of its misery, but lost his nerve when the poor critter rose its forelegs to its face. Like it was asking for mercy.
Chibita wrung his hands in shame. He would’ve given anything to rip that fucker’s still-warm soul out of Hell and give it another chance. But for now, the only thing he could do was sit with it in its final moments, and give witness to the end of this small life. He owed it that much. No little creature should have to die all alone.
Chibita quickly dragged the cart off the main thoroughfare and locked it to a streetlight. He pulled out one of the empty Kirim cases from under the countertop, and set it down in the grass.
“Sorry about all that,” he said. He sat politely, cross-legged on the plastic box, and waited for the insect to die. “When you’re ready.”
“Yo, Chibita! Talking to yourself again?”
Chibita turned around to face the voice. No prizes for guessing it belonged to that motherfucker, Matsuno Osomatsu. He was standing on the opposite side of the white metal fence at the top of the escarpment. He eased himself over and made his way, carefully and uninvited, down the grassy hill.
“Aw, not you again...” Chibita rolled his eyes. “And look, I wasn’t! I was--”
Chibita stopped himself before the truth spilled out: I was sitting tsuya for the bug I just killed.
No, don’t you dare, Chibita reminded himself. That’s how you make yourself look crazy. Worse, that’s how you make yourself look soft. And that’s the one thing you never, ever wanna do in front of Osomatsu-kun.
“Just takin’ five,” Chibita lied.
“Weird spot for it,” said Osomatsu.
“I dunno about that,” Chibita countered, adding that it was pretty scenic. “Look! You can see the Skytree from here.”
“Eh? Really?”
“Y-Yeah! If you squint,” said Chibita. “Keep lookin’ -- you’ll see it.”
Osomatsu held a hand over his brow and looked off into the middle distance. The view from the grassy landing was unremarkable, apart from the wide green lick of wild dokudami on the opposite side of the canal. Its little white flowers shuddered in the breeze.
“How’d the festival go?” Osomatsu asked, quite suddenly. “Didn’t figure you’d be back so early.”
The change of subject took Chibita a little by surprise. But he forced a plucky smile and rubbed his chin. It was a total success, Chibita lied again. That’s why he was back early.
Had to be something like a thousand people there. And they all said how good his oden was. A few of them even tipped. That’s how it goes, he went on, when you find something you’re good at and stick to it. You make a good life for yourself.
“Sold right the hell out,” Chibita concluded. “Look, go see for yourself if ya don’t believe me!”
Osomatsu paced around the pushcart with a forlorn expression. “Aww, man. I was gonna buy something...”
“That’d be a first,” said Chibita.
“Any drinks left?”
“Not for you, kekeh! ”
“Balls,” Osomatsu cursed with an unaffected melancholy. He slumped himself down in the long grass a few feet away from Chibita, and folded his arms around his knees. “As if today couldn’t get any worse…”
Chibita’s psyche stuck on that turn of phrase like a stray thread on a doornail. He raised an eyebrow.
“Bad day?”
“Oh, just terrible,” replied Osomatsu, sounding genuinely upset.
Oh thank god, Chibita thought, with a hot mix of something like relief and schadenfreude filling his chest. If a jerk like Osomatsu was doing it tough, maybe there was some justice in the universe after all.
“Terrible like how, though?” Chibita pressed, trying to sound nonchalant. “What happened?”
Osomatsu stuck out his lower lip. “Don't wanna talk about it.”
“Aw, c’mon. You’ll feel better,” Chibita said. I’ll feel better, he meant.
“Nope. Can’t. Too sad.”
Osomatsu plucked a dandelion at his side and cast its seeds off into the early night air with a long, miserable breath.
The silence was infuriating. But if there’s one thing to loosen a guy’s tongue, it’s alcohol. Chibita told Osomatsu to wait a sec, then went over to rifle through the icebox.
The firemen had left a couple of girly-flavored Strong Jiros and an Akatsuka Dry floating in the ice water. That’d have to do. He carried them over in his apron, let Osomatsu pick one out, and demanded a full explanation of whatever the hell the guy’s problem was.
Osomatsu chiseled the bottle open with the edge of a key. He took a great big swig, and grinned. In that moment, Chibita realized he had been played like a goddamn fiddle.
“Nothing! Today was awesome!” Osomatsu announced with delight. “Won 6 grand on the slots, even!”
“Aw, fuck off!”
“See, only problem is, whenever I take cash home, they always sniff it out and make me split it,” Osomatsu continued. “So it’s been burning a hole in my pocket all afternoon.”
Chibita scoffed and settled back down on the plastic beer case. Some people get all the luck.
“Tcheh,” Chibita hissed. “My heart bleeds for you.”
“Aw, you’re mean,” said Osomatsu. “Then again, guess it’s no great shakes compared to a temple burning down.”
Chibita’s heart dropped into his stomach. “How the hell’d you know about that?!”
“It was all over the news, duh,” said Osomatsu, flatly. “Plus you could see the smoke from the shotengai. So how come you're putting on airs all of a sudden? I don’t care about that stuff.”
“So you were just sittin’ there, makin’ me look like an idjit?” Chibita spat out his words like they tasted bad.
“Nah. You were doing a pretty good job of that by yourself,” Osomatsu said with a laugh. “You’re not as good at lying as you think!”
Chibita pulled his red face down into the collar of his shirt and covered his ears to block out Osomatsu’s obnoxious laughter.
Oh, how Chibita wanted to go home. But he couldn’t: not with the weight of that grasshopper’s lonely, pointless death on his conscience. He checked on it. It was still clinging to life -- wiggling its legs against the dying light, as if to spite him.
“As for me? I try not to lie too much. That’s how I got so good at it.” Osomatsu set the beer bottle down at his side and dug it into the grass. “Hey, speaking of lying, can I get some oden around here? You got any squid? I’m starved. I’ll pay, promise.”
“Hell, I’m not lying, dammit!” Chibita snapped. “Not about that part!”
That dragged most of the truth out of him: about the temple fire, and the theft of goods and services, and Madame Okonomiyaki. He stopped before he got to the grasshopper; that was nobody’s business. But facts were facts.
There really wasn’t anything left. Just the whole lot of nothing that was Chibita without oden.
As Chibita spoke, the young night deepened and the streetlights flickered on. Osomatsu lay with his arms folded behind his head while he listened. Every so often he leaned up for another sip of beer, then settled back into the grass.
“That sucks,” he summarised when the story wrapped up. “A Chibita without oden, huh...”
“Can’t wrap your head around it, right?” Chibita gave a dark little laugh. “I ain’t got jack shit minus that.”
“Aw, don’t trash yourself,” said Osomatsu. “You got other stuff going for you.”
Chibita scoffed. “Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Y’know. Stuff.”
“Hell, name one goddamn thing.”
“Quit fishing for compliments.”
“Yeah, but it’s too weird!” Chibita insisted. “Oden’s what I’m all about!”
“But it’s not all you’re about, that's the thing. It’s more of a mannerism.” Osomatsu rubbed his chin and hummed tunelessly around the fancy English word. “Nah, that’s not it. 'Stereotype? I know there’s a word for it, but I can’t remember…”
Osomatsu seemed to be thinking hard about this; harder than he thought about most things. He pulled out a handful of grass and began to mindlessly thread the strands together.
Oden, he decided after a while, was more like the first thing that sprung to mind about Chibita, but only if you didn’t know him all that well. The outline of a figure at a distance.
“I got it,” Osomatsu concluded. “It’d be more like Iyami without the teeth.”
“Or like Hatabou without the flag,” Chibita suggested in reply.
“Or like Totoko without the fish!”
Osomatsu and Chibita went back and forth a bit, listing off all their friends minus the main thing worth mentioning about each of them. Then when they ran out of friends, they moved onto enemies, and then celebrities.
They laughed nastily at some of the mental images, like a couple of naughty schoolboys bringing out the worst in each other. It turned into a pointless little game, trying to outdo each other and making up the rules as they went along. With each round, the comparisons got a bit cruder and a bit meaner.
Chibita felt his heart growing lighter from the competition. This was exactly the good, dirty fun he needed after a tough day. That’s when he realized: he actually knew how to win this.
“It’d be like you without the other five of you,” Chibita said. He folded his arms in triumph. “A whole lot of nothing!”
Osomatsu snapped upright. “Say that again?”
“What, hit a nerve?” Chibita snickered. “You heard me, nothing! Same as me without oden. Ain’t got nothin’ at all.”
Osomatsu made a sour face. “That’s what you think of me, huh?”
Chibita doubled down: yeah, sweet nothing. The only time you take five from six and end up with zero. He pressed the soles of his shoes together and swayed playfully on the overturned beer crate. Osomatsu seethed. Oh, this was fun. This was beautiful. Just like old times.
“You better take that back,” said Osomatsu.
“Make me, ya shitty NEET.”
“I mean it.”
“Yeah?” Chibita laughed. “So did I, idjit.”
Osomatsu sat in silence for a moment. Then he stood up quite suddenly, brushed the dirt and grass from his jacket, and the ants crawling around the cuffs of his jeans.
“Well, go fuck yourself, then, I guess,” Osomatsu said without laughing.
Osomatsu kicked over his half-empty beer into the grass and began to walk up the hill towards the main road in a huff. The glass bottle rolled down onto the asphalt, and came to a rest right near the motionless body of the grasshopper.
And in that moment, Chibita felt like the absolute worst human being on the face of the planet.
Oh, shit, Chibita thought. That was below the belt.
That's not what a good person would’ve said. You have to be kind to all things that have life.
Chibita raced up the hill as fast as his legs could carry him.
“Wait, wait!” he cried out. “Osomatsuuu!!”
At the top of the hill, Osomatsu heaved himself over the fence and landed on the other side. Chibita caught up. He wasn’t tall enough to climb over, so he stuck his arm through the space between the wires. Just barely, he grabbed onto Osomatsu’s sleeve and held on tight as he could.
“Shit, sorry! I didn’t mean it, honest,” Chibita cried with an edge of desperation. “Look, damnit, I was just having a really lousy day, and I wasn’t thinking--hey, come on, stay with me, idjit!”
Osomatsu pulled his hand away like he’d touched a hot stove.
“Why are you so mean to me, Chibita!?”
“God- damn, Osomatsu, the size of the balls on you to say that to me!”
Chibita could have laughed. But Osomatsu looked like he was about to burst into tears. Even though that’s how you make yourself look crazy and soft. Chibita was taken aback. This wasn’t like old times at all.
“Look, I was just messing with ya, dammit,” Chibita pleaded, swallowing his pride. “C’mon, clean slate! I’ll forget you said anything, and you forget--”
“What do you mean, ‘forget I said anything,’” Osomatsu snapped back, like a petulant child. “You started it!”
“Nuh-uh!” said Chibita. “This all started ‘cause you said I was nothing without oden! I was just sayin’ it back!”
“I did not! Did not, did not, times a million. You said that!” Osomatsu’s voice was high and whiny and angry. “I don’t think you’re nothing without oden. That'd be so boring!”
“Yeah, but it’s true, though!” Chibita gave a dry, self-deprecating chuckle and scratched the back of his neck. “Ain’t such a bad thing! Least oden’s better than---”
“Oh my god, will you shut up about oden for once, fuck! ” Osomatsu dragged his fingernails down the sides of his cheeks in frustration. “Look, I’m gonna tell you something, Chibita. And you’re not gonna like it. And if you never speak to me again, hell with it, I don’t care -- at least I got the stones to say it!”
At this, Chibita fell silent.
“Your oden is…” Osomatsu held his breath for a second, gathering his words. “Look. It’s not all that great.”
“... The hell’d you say to me, Osomatsu?!”
“Let me finish -- it’s good. Way better than the conbini stuff. But there’s an upper limit on how good oden ever gets, and you’re pretty much there. It’s just oden. Nobody cares.”
“You take that back, you son of a bitch!’
Osomatsu stepped back from the fence and continued. “Even if it was the best oden in the world, nobody would give a shit, except you.”
Chibita felt pure rage in the pit of his soul. That was below the belt. Twenty years’ of vengeance focused into a single rush of anger. It powered him halfways up over the fence, zero to sixty, ready to kill.
“Point is, if oden was the only reason people stuck around you, they would’ve quit ages ago.” Osomatsu sniffed into his sleeve. “Least, I would’ve.”
“... Eh?”
“You're actually a pretty good person, y'know?” Osomatsu said simply. “You’re not nothing. And I don't hate you.”
Chibita froze at the top of the fence. It was the first time he’d ever been told that in as many words, by anybody. The shock toppled him back down onto the grassy side. It damn near sucked the air right out of his lungs.
Osomatsu stood on the other side, red-faced and serious beneath the halo of a streetlight. Night was falling all around them. The peculiar scent of dokudami flowers hung low in the air.
All Chibita could do was look down at the grass. His cheeks felt warm. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He felt like one of those soldiers on deserted islands. Right at the moment they learned the war they were fighting had ended, years and years ago.
Chibita eased himself back up to his feet, and looped his fingers in between the bars of the fence. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Osomatsu in the eye, but after a whole he spoke, clearly and quietly.
“Well, I don’t think you’re nothing, either, idjit. You’re not much, but you sure as hell ain’t nothing. And I don’t hate you, either.”
“So we’re cool?” asked Osomatsu hesitantly.
Chibita looked up. “Y-Yeah, I think we’re cool.”
“Cool!” Osomatsu concluded. Little by little, the warmth returned to him. “All right, we’re cool! That’s cool. Cool, cool, cool!”
Osomatsu had a real spring in his step as he walked back up to the fence. Must’ve been the dancer in him. He balanced his elbows on the white-painted metal, and looked down at Chibita with a bright smile. Then his stomach growled. It was distractingly loud.
“You hungry?” asked Chibita.
“Fuckin’ starved.” Osomatsu snickered. He had a knack for ruining moments like this, he said, and rubbed under his nose out of nervous habit.
“Seriously though, Chibita -- got anything left? Any squid? I’m really jonesing for squid, for some reason.”
“For cryin’ out loud, I already toldja! No!”
“Wanna swing by Himatsuya, then? The sushi’s pretty good. Betcha they have squid.”
Chibita shook his head and sighed. “Gotta take the cart home.”
“I’d wait for you.”
“You’d be waitin’ a long-ass while.”
Osomatsu stuck his hands in his pockets. “Not like I got anyplace else to be.”
Chibita said he’d think about it. He really needed to take the cart back, at any rate. Oden is a harsh mistress. Osomatsu told Chibita to suit himself, and off he went. He’d wait for Chibita as long as it took.
Chibita walked back down to the little vigil spot. The Akatsuka Dry bottle had rolled back down into the gutter at the edge of the grass. He poured the rest of the beer out into the dirt, and packed the bottle away in the yellow plastic crate.
Alongside it was an empty Osomatsu-shaped indentation in the long grass, and a trail of spilled beer muddying the dirt. Osomatsu without Osomatsu, he thought fondly. Chibita ran his hands over the soft grass to smooth it out all nice. That’s when he saw it.
The injured grasshopper had settled itself in there, right between a couple of half-naked dandelions. It was still bleeding and missing its back legs, but hanging in there. It wiggled its glassy wings a few times. Then in a sudden buzz, it lifted itself, and flew off into the night.
“Oh, thank God,” Chibita said out loud, closing his eyes and hugging the empty beer crate tight against his chest. He felt something warm inside him, like a flower blooming from out of his guts.
That’s when he realized it.
Oh, so that’s what it meant.
That’s how it was with the ant and the grasshopper. That’s how come nobody died. That’s how come they got to live happily ever after. That’s it. That’s the whole story.
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