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Shoko goes back home for the summer. She doesn't know why she suddenly felt the urge to go visit her parents, but one merry July afternoon she finds herself leaving the big city and driving down a dusty road, alone with the exception of the chorus of women singing from her broken CD player.
There's not a whole lot to look at while she's traveling, so she keeps her eyes fixed on the broken white line that divides the black asphalt in two. She doesn't come across more than ten cars. Her hometown has always been small, and it never grew, no one ever expected it to, but it's still surprising to be reminded that it is indeed a tiny spot on the map at which people stop by only for gas if they have no other choice.
After six hours that seem to get lost in time, she arrives upon the town entrance. They had repainted it when she was fifteen, why is it so chipped and old? Oh right, she's twenty three now and apparently no one cared enough to fix it again during those eight years.
Her car is not old enough to be loud, but the faint hum of the engine still disrupts the deadly silence of the town. It's barely two p.m. Everyone must still be deep in their after-lunch slumber. The quiet is normal, and it takes her back to the early afternoons during which her mom would send her out to play in the street so she'd let them sleep.
Mr. Tanaka waves at her as she drives past his general store. His hair had grown grayer and it looks like his bottom had been glued to his old mahogany chair, because she swears he was in that exact same spot when she first left.
Her parents' house is on the second street to the left from the main road, and she takes the turn swiftly. Then, down five blocks. Nostalgia floods her as soon as she lays eyes on the low building with the white walls and the red tiling. Dad's roses are beautiful this year. Mom has changed the curtains of the living room, they're yellow now. What did she do with the old ones?
She parks in front of the gate and rolls down the windows to stare at the house for a moment. Is she welcome? She hadn't called to ask if she could stay, and the suitcase in her trunk has enough clothes to last two weeks. Can she stay that long?
"Shoko?"
Oh.
Oh.
On the other side of the street, a boy (man?) her age blinks at her. His shirt is clean, his hair long, his face familiar and her mouth dry.
"Suguru?"
Her hands clamp on the steering wheel when she realizes that it is him. He's grown some. Quite a bit. He's broader at the very least, that's for sure. There's something about his features too, something that's sharper than it used to be, too many angles and shadows.
He opens his mouth like he wants to say something, then closes it again and smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "It is you, Ieiri Shoko. Unbelievable."
"Yeah, it's me." The words don't feel fully hers, more like someone is speaking through her. "I'm back."
"To stay?"
His answer comes out a little too quick, a little too eager despite his apparent indifference. Has he forgotten she could read him better than anyone? Maybe he did. She left for the city too long ago.
Clearing her throat because it feels stuffed with cotton balls, she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "For a little while."
"Ah."
Silence is common here, but this time it weighs down on the distance between them and cracks the old pavement. It's been a long time.
"I have some errands to run," he explains to no one. "I'll see you later."
"Maybe."
"Maybe," he agrees. "Good to see you."
He doesn't mean it.
"Yeah, good. Um, to see you. Too."
With a small wave, he leaves. She watches him until he turns the corner and disappears in the direction to where his mom's garage used to be. Still is? God, she's been gone for such a long time.
She gets out of the car before the confinement pushes the thoughts deeper into her head. The door doesn't shut well at first, so she slams it and immediately cringes at the accidental excessive force. Cars are expensive after all. She gets her things: the luggage, the bottle of water for travel, the half-eaten donut, the phone with the cracked case.
The wheels of her suitcase squeak as she drags it over the stone path leading to the main entrance. Very few houses have bells here, and this one is not the exception, so she claps.
Her mom opens the door. "Sho?"
"Hi, mom ," her voice is tiny. "Sorry I didn't tell you, but I came to visit—"
She pulls her into a hug and kisses her cheek. "Oh, Shoko, baby, you can come visit anytime. Hiroto, come here, your daughter came to visit!"
Her dad appears in the doorway too and joins the hug without even asking anything. They're not that small, but he is huge and swallows them in his arms.
"Dad," Shoko laughs. "You are squashing us."
"I haven't seen you in a very long time, shut up."
It's so warm with them. She should have visited sooner. Granted, they'd gone to see her at least twice a year during the five years she's lived in the city, but there's a very big difference between being hugged by her tired parents in her cramped apartment and being hugged by her parents in her childhood home, her being the one to rest in their embrace.
With kisses and hugs and caresses, they take her things from her hands and lead her to her old room. It's still intact, we kept it like that because we missed you, they coo, like the saps they are. But it's okay, she's sappy too, even if she's learned to hide it.
Her room is wallpapered in purple. The pigment has grown as old as her, but it still holds the same charm it always did.
Wow, she's forgotten how much she used to like purple. And based on how literally everything else is purple… yeah, she liked it a lot.
(She still does.)
They leave her to settle in peacefully. They're so loud in such a quiet town, a stark contrast to the quiet people in the loud city she lives in. She knows she made the right call to leave, but damn it if she doesn't regret it a bit sometimes.
She opens the window. Her house is near the outskirts, so she faces a large grassy plain that culminates in a small lake. A north breeze floods her room with the sticky heat of the summer. Closing her eyes, she leans on the ledge, listening to the faint hum of the cicadas. Later they'll be so noisy she won't be able to sleep, but right now, their song takes her way back.
When she opens her eyes again, she finds a white dot down by the water. It moves further away, and disappears behind the grass.
After checking if her parents are in the kitchen, she finds the encyclopedia she never read and props it up between the dresser and the foot of the door, effectively locking it the same way she used to do when she needed to sneak out at sixteen. She drops her shoes and socks by the bed, cuffs her jeans as far up as they can go and heaves herself out of the window.
The grass is warm and dry under the late noon sun. It retains some of the softness of the mid-July showers, but it's not slippery. Running over it is a delight. The lake is less than a quarter of a mile away, and she enjoys every centimeter of it.
The soil gets muddier the closer she gets to the lake, so she slows down. And on the big, flat rock beside the water, a calm Suguru pillows his head with his hands.
"I knew you'd find me here," he says without opening his eyes.
He can't see her, but she still unconsciously fixes her tousled hair. "You always know everything, don't you?"
He opens his eyes. "You never called. In five years."
"You didn't either." Bitterness curls up in her stomach, and she mocks cruelly, "in five years."
"Since you never called, I assumed you didn't want to hear from me."
"Why would you assume that?"
"Why wouldn't you call?" He sits up and wraps his arms around his knees, like a little kid. "Did you even think about me once in all that time?"
"Did you?" She strikes back.
He doesn't even hesitate. "Yes. Did you?"
She did think of him, at least at the beginning. A lot. Every day, even if she never called. But the saying out of sight, out of mind exists for a reason, and soon, thoughts of him subsided to a mere memory that shone its face once every blue moon. However, when she looks into his eyes, right on top of the warm rock they used to share when they were kids and didn't know better, she finds an indentation in the shape of him in her chest.
"I missed you," she breathes out.
He gapes at her for a moment. Then, slowly, he stands up, extends an arm and brings her closer. She closes her eyes, knowing what comes next.
He kisses her more timidly than he used to. God, he used to be so greedy with his kisses that it's impossible to believe it's the same guy. But she lets him because she's not sure she could take his hunger after not seeing him for so long. Her hands find their way to the spot below his jaw and it's scary how they still fit there.
"Let's call it even," he mutters, his fingers digging into her wrists.
Summer is pretty freaking hot here, but his breath feels frozen in her mouth. It's the kind of cold that fogs up windshield glass and creates spirals of ice on rearview mirrors.
She nods. "Okay."
And kisses him again.
Shoko is helping her mom chop up the carrots for the stew when she drops the bomb. "We are having the Getos over for dinner."
Shoko drops the knife. "We are what now?"
They hadn't fixed anything back at the rock. They'd just reset the clock back to when they were eighteen, flashing their new driving licenses at each other. But at the bottom of his gut, he resents her some, and so does she. Who's right in their indignation is irrelevant. They are so not ready for a full on family dinner.
"Suguru and Chinami are coming for dinner," her mom repeats with that infinite patience of hers.
"Um," she grabs the knife again, hoping she didn't look too surprised. "That's nice. I haven't seen Chinami in a long time."
"I figured you'd be a little happier to see Suguru again."
"Actually, I saw him yesterday."
"Oh right, you went to the lake."
"You knew that?"
"Shoko, I am your mother," she looks up with a smile. "Do you really think I never noticed you sneaking out to go play with Suguru since you were old enough to walk? And you've grown careless with age, so of course I knew that."
Shoko groans to herself. "And here I thought I was stealthy and shit."
"Language. And never become a spy, you'd be terrible at it."
"Thanks a lot."
Her mom laughs goodnaturedly. "And how did things go with Suguru?"
She freezes for a moment and then the knife falls a little too harshly through the carrot. A miracle she didn't cut off her finger. "Everything went normal, why?"
If her mom sees through her bullshit, she doesn't say anything, choosing to turn on the radio and hum along instead. She'd always liked that one American station that played music in English. According to her, it helped her focus without distracting her with lyrics. Now, Shoko's English is… basic at best, but what little she knows tells her that the woman with the sweet voice is singing about a love lost to time.
Or something like that.
How fitting, right? Almost like the universe was playing some sort of joke on her.
Suguru had never quite been a love, she feels compelled to clarify (to whom? Herself? She's going nuts), but he'd been pretty damn close.
Close enough for the song to make her feel antsy about the dinner.
Shit.
The Getos are known for their punctuality and they arrive precisely at six. Shoko and her dad open the door for them. Chinami has gone grayer, she notices, but not any less kinder. The wrinkles seem to accentuate her smile as she puts the almond cake she brought in her hands and greets her with a warm welcome home, Shoko-chan.
Suguru, the asshole, has the nerve to laugh at the honorific and then pretend he was just coughing. She glares daggers into his skull the moment their parents take their eyes off them for a moment.
He cleaned up well for the evening. New shirt, the nicer jeans, hair pulled back from his face. Sleeves rolled up too, which is just unfair. And when he leans in to kiss her cheek (it's really just bumping the sides of their faces together), she realizes he's wearing cologne and almost head butts him out of pure frustration.
They lead their guests to the dining room, where the table is set up with the absolute best stew ever—don't fight her, she doesn't make the rules—awaits them. Her mom hugs Chinami and they sit down. Suguru by her side. Of course.
Despite this, dinner passes by rather peacefully. He occasionally bumps his knee against hers, but nothing else. He's polite and funny like he's always been, especially in front of parents. He doesn't bring up their moment at the rock, nor reference it. He saves up all the bitterness for later, when they undoubtedly get a moment alone and can finally talk, this time wearing their hearts in the hem of their shirts and not in their sleeves.
And once they finish the stew (so good), and the almond cake (also so good), her own father offers her the chance she'd been waiting for.
"Why don't you kids—" and they both snort at the word kids, "—go out and play a bit and let us adults talk some?"
"What are we, nine?" Shoko teases, but grabs Suguru by the arm and drags him outside.
It is already dark outside. He slides his hand down her wrist to interlock his fingers with her, and his skin is clammy.
Whatever fake crystal pretense they built up during dinner shatters, and Shoko almost cuts herself with the shards. They'd managed to be back to themselves during the dinner, they'd managed to feign youth and innocence in front of their parents, but when they're alone in the dimly lit backyard and their hands are sweaty and sticking to each other, they feel like strangers without a word to say to each other.
But they're not strangers and there's so much to talk about.
He starts walking towards the lake, still clutching her hand. She follows him mindlessly. The grass grazes her calves, bare in the heat of the summer that sticks around even hours after sundown.
Above, the stars shine. She stares, but can't think of anything graceful to say about them. Poetry has never been her forte, but she can try. They're sparkling dots in the pitch black, diamonds hidden inside coal. They bring back memories of camping and treading the dangerous world of the outside at night, the hope of finding an owl or a fox. There are no owls or foxes here, the first real heartbreak of both their lives.
She is wearing shoes this time, so she doesn't notice when they get to the lakeside; Suguru has to nudge her. They sit on their rock, together for the first time in five years.
The cicadas and crickets sing to cover the quiet of the night. Man, they are loud. She'd forgotten how much so.
There are a lot of mosquitoes too, goddammit.
"I never called," he suddenly says, "because a little after you left, I started seeing someone and after that, I was embarrassed."
She hums in understanding. It's okay, really. It wasn't like that with them, it'd never been.
"It was, um," he keeps going, "Riko, do you remember her?"
"If I wanted to know who you were hanging with while I was gone, I would have asked you," she shrugs.
There's no real bite in her words, just a whole lot of honesty. She's been told several times that she can be inconsiderate of how what she says can affect others. But this is Suguru, the boy (man) she's known since diapers, he knows she's not trying to make him feel guilty or bad about it. He does know, right?
He offers her a sad smile. "We broke up a few months afterwards."
She squashes down the ugly feeling of content that grows in her chest. What is she, an asshole? "I'm sorry about that."
"Eh, it was a long time ago, it wasn't bad."
"Hmm."
"I think she knew…" He clears his throat before continuing. "I think she noticed me thinking about you too much."
"Oh."
"Unwillingly, of course."
"Of course," she echoes. "I never called because I was busy."
"And?"
"And I forgot," she admits. "I kept saying I'd do it tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. You can guess what happened next."
"We didn't talk for five years."
"Yeah."
"What a mess."
"Yeah."
"Is that all you know how to say?"
"Yeah."
They laugh together. Their stupidity knows no bounds, doesn’t it? They're just two idiots. Two idiots who happened to have been lucky enough to be born so close to each other.
"So what now?" She asks once their laughter dies down. "What do we do now?"
"Well, how long are you staying?" He scoots ever so slightly closer to her. Does he really think she doesn't notice? Dork.
"Two weeks." She picks up a pebble and throws it at the lake. It skips thrice before sinking. "Then I have to go back to work."
"I never asked what you do for a living."
"I'm an assistant at a morgue."
"How cute."
"Thanks. You?"
He spins his own pebble in between his thumb and his middle finger before flinging it at the water as well. It skips four times. Screw him for always being better than her at this. "I help mom at the garage. I do most of the repairs and she handles the finances."
"Ah, so you're the hot mechanic now," she elbows him in the ribs, mirth at the tip of her tongue. "You must have even more suitors after your tail now, huh?"
"Too bad the only one I want lives six hundred and fifty kilometers away from here."
Her hand freezes mid air. The rock she was going to hurl slips out of her fist anyways, plopping into the shallow part of the lake without skipping once. They'd never talked about them and what they were before. She certainly doesn't want to start now, when her stay is so short.
She moves thoughtlessly, taking off her shoes and socks, tossing them carelessly to the side and almost running into the lake. He calls out to her, but his words get lost somewhere in the sticky heat of summer.
She only stops when her foot drops down and she almost sinks into the muddy water. Right, there was a slope a little ways into the lake. How had she forgotten? First memory she has of swimming includes her advancing too confidently, missing the unevenness, trying to latch onto Suguru only for him to shake her off in a panic and falling on her butt.
This time, however, he splashes in after her and holds her so she doesn't slip. When his hands wrap around her shoulders, she suddenly feels everything too much. The water is too cold, the ground is too viscous, her clothes are too damp and cling too close to her body and his grasp is too warm.
"Hey," he shakes her slightly. "Are you okay?"
"Don't say that sort of shit." She rubs her eyes a little too hard, and her vision becomes blurry. "Don't— We are not— No."
He seems to understand and releases his hold on her. "You mean…?"
"Yes. Don't say that. It doesn't work like that. We don't work like that."
"I kinda want us to work like that."
He doesn't speak up, he whispers like a child confessing to eating the last cookie. Shyly, he reaches for her hands, that lay submerged right below the surface, and he takes them in his long fingers, rubbing circles over her knuckles.
She gazes up at him, and oh, how does the look in his face kill her. They'd always felt something for each other, that was undeniable even if they couldn't quite put it in words.
But he had gone and fallen in love with her.
And she hadn't. She'd never looked at him in pure disbelief and amazement like he looked at her right now. She'd never wanted to hold him so bad her arms ached right where he wasn't right now. She'd never wanted to kiss him senseless until neither could remember what their bodies felt like apart—
Until now.
No.
Not her, too.
She rests her forehead against his sternum and closes her eyes. "I can't stay."
"And I can't leave." His laugh reverberates through his chest. "So what now?"
"What do you want?" She asks, focusing on the contrast between his body heat and the chill of the water. "What do you want, Suguru?"
He leaves her hands to drift alone in the lake and gently cups her face. He runs a thumb over the small mole on the top of her cheekbone. "I want to kiss you. A lot."
When did their noses get close together to bump into each other? "That wouldn't be fair," she says weakly. "It wouldn't be fair to you."
Her lips itch, so near yet so far from his. She's not used to this, she's not used to feeling guilty about this. If she does this, she will be breaking his heart, and even worse, her own. It's not how she deals with things. She shuts herself off and waits for the tempest to pass. But right now, summer's worst storm rages in the atoms in between his mouth and hers and there's nowhere she can run.
"I don't care." His breath is still too cold, why?
"You should care."
"But I don't."
"I can't," she tries to insist one last time. "I don't have what you want—"
"Then let's pretend." His voice breaks a little, but he keeps it steady. "Let's pretend that you don't have to leave and I don't have to stay. Let's pretend that two weeks are eternity and that this is our home. Give me just those fifteen days, I beg you. Pretend for fifteen days and forget about me again when you leave."
"Suguru, that's not right. I can't do that to you—"
"If it's okay with you, it's okay with me," he declares.
She gulps down her last regret. "If it's all the same to you, it's the same to me."
He closes the gap between them.
(If their parents think anything of their drenched clothes adorned with duckweed, they say nothing.)
So she indulges him. She lets him hold her hand, hug her from behind and call her babe. She lets him take her fishing in their old, half-rotten rowboat, even though there are no fish in their lake and they both know it. She lets him talk her into sleeping in half the day and then staying up until unholy hours to stargaze in their rock.
She ignores the ticking clock, like he asked her to. She ignores the way the clothes she brought with her start running out, and she ignores the calls from work that remind her she must report to the morgue come Monday morning.
But time is cruel, truly, and soon enough she has to pack. Her mom fills whatever little space she has in her car with homemade candles, desserts that she'll have to share so they don't go bad and trinkets that no one knows what she will use for but she keeps anyways because they're cute. Her dad gives her a pack of seeds and very seriously tells her that they grow well in pots and are perfect for interior decorating.
They're the best.
She bids them goodbye and promises to return sooner this time. She drives down their street, but instead of turning towards the main road, she swerves left. She parks right between the Methodist and thе school that used to be hers. Theirs. The Geto workshop is across the street.
Inside, she finds Suguru laying on his back on the thing with wheelies mechanics use to work under cars. His head is completely hidden by the dark bodywork of who-knows-whose vehicle. He feels the ground around him, blindly searching for the wrench that's way too far away from him.
She picks it up and drops it on his extended hand. He pushes himself out of his work and stares up at her without getting up.
"Leaving?"
"You knew it was today."
He runs a dirty hand over his face, smearing grease all over his cheeks. "Today is too close."
"It always is."
She kneels by his side and leans down to plant a last peck on his lips. He corresponds, keeping himself from touching her and staining her as well. He tastes like oil. Unsurprising.
"I want to ask you to stay," he mumbles.
She just chuckles bitterly and shakes her head. "I won't ask you to wait if you don't ask me to stay."
He just gifts her a glance that means so many things it makes her wish she could go back to the indifference from last month. But she can't. Some attachments just last. This is one of them.
When she returns, he'll be waiting. He'll kiss her again and will wait for her again when she leaves. And she'll fall right back in again, and again, and again. She's never been one to believe in fate, but there does seem to be an unbreakable golden thread always leading her back to him and her quiet little hometown.
She stands up, brushes the dirt off her clothes, gets in the car and drives away as fast as she can.