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The sun hung over the horizon as Jun walked up the steps to the Araya Shrine festival. The cicadas cried and crooned their loud buzzing song, accompanied by a lively drum as he gazed over the stalls. Wild buttercups dotted the grass everywhere he went, so he plucked them as he walked on and put them in his pocket.
A wad of bills weighed heavily in his other pocket. It was the last day of the shrine festival, and he was there alone.
His parents promised him they’d take him. Over and over and over every time he asked them. In the days leading up to the festival, and finally on the actual days of the festival. And then on those days they were suddenly busy, or were too tired, or -the best excuse of all- too busy and tired from fighting. So they promised him: “Tomorrow”.
“I’ll take you tomorrow, I promise, Jun, not today.”
“It’ll be tomorrow, so don’t look so sad.”
“Would you stop asking? Of course I’ll take you tomorrow.”
When he asked them today, Papa said sorry. And he truly was terribly sorry. So very sad and sorry that Jun could hardly bear to look at him as he promised there’d always be next year. Mother didn’t offer any apologies, but still passed him a few ten thousand yen bills and told him to go and enjoy himself.
Liars.
He wanted to tear those dumb bills up into pieces, but the smell of festival food stayed his hand.
There was no one there to stop him from getting whatever he wanted. A sudden glee came over his morose face, and he ran off to the closest stall he could find.
“Hey, you better not be trying to slip something, boy! Where are your parents!?” A surly stall-owner accosted him as he browsed through sweets.
Jun narrowed his eyes and pointed in a direction nowhere in particular. “They’re over there.” He presented a bill to the man. “They gave me some money to buy things, so I’d like one of each, please.”
A bag of cotton candy tied to his belt loop, Jun strutted through the stalls, dango in one hand, taiyaki in the other. The banging taiko drums set a nervous sort of rhythm in him as he bit into a fried cake and took a few small mouthfuls of his red-stained shaved ice to cool down. There was coin change in his pockets now too, so with every step the cotton candy swung with an accompanying jingle. With his greasy, sticky hands, and a bellyful of illicit sweets, he truly felt like the king of the world.
He passed by the great wall of masks without so much as a glimpse- after all, last year they’d just had the same boring stuff as ever- till he actually did take a glance and realized they had every single Phoenix Ranger Featherman R mask currently on the show.
Jun walked off in his shiny new Black Condor mask a few coins lighter.
The goldfish scoop stall shone like a beacon to him, (especially since last year Mother hadn’t let him try his hand, she didn’t want him to waste money on a cheap stall game and even more so didn’t want him to bring a fish back home. But he’d been so sure he’d be quick and nimble enough.) so he flocked over and gave the unimpressed looking teenager running the stall enough for three scoops.
He had his eyes on this big, vibrant red one. It was so vigorous and fast, it must’ve been the best goldfish of the whole trough. Jun made a quick flip of the wrist, catching the red fish on the paper-
Only to groan as the paper broke before he could get it into the bowl.
Another try. Another broken scoop.
And another broken scoop.
“Y’know, it helps if you’re not trying to hit the poor thing.”
Jun silently stared at the stall operator through his mask for a good moment, then passed him another coin. Three more tries.
Each time that the goldfish was on his scoop, just for that split second, he could feel the thumping pulsing of its body, its rhythm. Even when he looked away he could find the one he wanted in one glance. He’d already gotten everything else he’d wanted at the festival; he could go home satisfied if he just caught this one red goldfish. Every past transgression this day had brought with it could be forgiven as long as he got it.
Jun angled the scoop under the fish’s body and came away with broken paper.
He gently snuck the scoop around the fish, then quickly swatted it in- but again, the paper broke before he could get it in the bowl.
“Aren’t you going to try for a smaller one? That big one thrashes around too much.” As he spoke, Jun lost his concentration and broke his last scoop.
With a glare, he forked another coin over. Three more.
He hunched over the trough and brought his bowl as close to his scooping hand as possible. The goldfish moved wildly as he tried to corner it, but he got it all the way in one corner, breaking one scoop in the process. Jun quickly changed hands and gripped a new scoop as fast as he could, flicked his wrist, and in one smooth movement got the big red fish into the bowl.
Pride rose warmly like a plume of gentle flame up his ribcage; he’d done it!
“Papa, did you see that-!” Jun grinned and turned his whole body, mask joggling away from his sweaty face as he whipped around as quickly as he could.
But there was no one there.
The blank, but jolly faces of the crowd blended into each other, the festival lights blurring at the corners of his mask-reduced vision. Jun was suddenly all too aware of himself, his dirty knees as he knelt over the trough of goldfish, his off-center mask- just a kid among the crowds, and no one was there to look after him.
He turned his head to look numbly at the stall runner, who was giving him this weird look that Jun really didn’t like. He scowled.
“...Can you put this in a bag.” He said, lifting the bowl up.
“What about your last scoop?”
“Give it to the next person that plays.” Jun readjusted his mask so it sat right on his face again. When the stall owner passed his prize back to him, he tied it at the waist of his shorts, and walked away from the stall, feeling like a rug had been pulled out from under him.
The crowds were too loud now, the drums and shouts and laughter provoked an itching irritation in Jun, a pounding in his ears that he could feel and hate. Too loud, too hot, too much. His skin crawled as he stumbled and bumped against strangers as he tried to get away from it all. His pockets and goodies felt like iron weights at his sides, holding him down, and each point of contact with the crowds made him want to scream. The lantern lights seemed to blur.
Jun was getting dizzy, his head light even with the heavy pounding assaulting his senses.
The goldfish baggie and the cotton candy both swung at his belt as he ran up the stone steps and under the stone torii. The cicadas cried louder as he approached Araya Shrine, and the drums continued their constant march, but he could feel that it was much quieter here than anywhere else near the heavy, lively bustle of the festival.
It was exactly what he needed.
He ran behind a tree covered in paper charms and slumped against it. His breath came in huge gulps and it felt like he couldn’t get enough air in his chest to slow its pulsing.
When he looked back in the direction of the festival, everything was marred by heat waves, like it was all melting away.
Jun’s face felt too damp under the mask, but he didn’t ever want to have to take it off again.
As he slid down the tree trunk onto the grassy ground, he reached into his pocket. It was so full of cash and coins and snacks and candy and bruised and beaten remains of buttercups and other little trinkets that he couldn’t find his treasure, so he emptied it all onto the grass.
And there it was.
That thin silver lighter, so little, yet so big in his young hands. Somehow it was still cool, even though it’d been in his pocket. The cool, soothing metal... His covered eyes scanned over the inscription, then rose to meet the sky.
His pulse calmed, his mood falling from frantic to somber.
What did it mean to be important? How could he become more important, more essential? Essential enough to listen to, and to keep promises to?
What did he have to do to become someone important to his parents?
It already felt like they didn’t really see him, like he was already invisible to their eyes. Did he even matter to them, beyond their arguments and fights? Beyond Mother’s talk shows, beyond Papa’s students?
Mother would teach him piano, and Papa would read him stories, and teach him about the stars, and lend him books… But where were they when he needed them the most?
He was so caught up in his own thoughts that he almost didn’t hear the sounds of two sets of footsteps entering the shrine clearing.
Jun froze as he heard a sigh. "I can't enjoy the festival at my own pace with you around. My allowance is draining fast, too... I'm going to go take a quick look around. Stay right here, Tatsuya."
He startled at that- Tatsuya? Like Papa’s student?
For a second he imagined the voice to be his Papa’s. He imagined that when he’d look over from behind the tree, he’d see his father and that Sudou boy, hand in hand, smiling and enjoying the festival together. And it made him so angry to imagine that his hands were already balling up, the ends of his bitten fingernails biting into the flesh of his palm.
But the voice was all wrong- too young, and with too much of a confident timbre. There was no way it was Papa.
Still, his chest burned like there was acid wearing through him.
He gripped the bark of the tree and took a nervous peek back at the shrine, nearly expecting to see that uncomfortable and shaggy looking high school boy.
But when he looked out into the clearing, he saw an orderly looking high school boy and a younger boy around his own age- a boy wearing the Red Hawk Phoenix Ranger Featherman R mask, a boy with soft reddish-brown hair. Jun watched as the older teen who came with this ‘Tatsuya’ walked back off to the festival.
He stepped out from behind the tree and hesitantly walked over, but the boy was so engrossed in his balloon toy that he must not’ve noticed. So Jun spoke up.
“Um... Whatcha doing?"
It was dark out when Jun finally walked back home, but he didn’t mind. Under his Black Condor mask was a wide grin that wouldn’t go away. His stomach hurt from laughing so hard, and probably also from eating so many sweets, but that was okay. He swung his arms as he balanced on the thin part of the sidewalk.
He’d forgotten his goldfish and his cotton candy and other snacks and even the rest of the money his Mother’d given him back under that tree at the shrine.
He didn’t care.
He’d gained something much more valuable.
Much more important.
Essential.