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Espresso had the tendency to numb his circadian rhythm, so it was with some reservation that Komaba crushed down a cup of americano after landing at the airport. The drink was bitter, and the scalding temperature left a mark on the roof of his mouth. He hadn’t had any coffee in at least five or seven years. He hadn’t flown in a plane in at least five or seven years either. He figured that two peculiarities to the quotidian probably canceled each other out.
He set off at a brisk trot for the baggage terminal, where some travelers with looser schedules paused to gawk at him, this 188cm-tall musclehead of a country farmer hoisting 150kg worth of boxed-up soybeans over his shoulders. He’d neglected to grab one of those push-cart contraptions from the terminal entrance, mostly because he’d forgotten. He really hadn’t been at an airport in so long.
He checked into his room at the hotel in the morning. His mother didn’t know that he was in Sapporo. Neither did his sisters, though Misora might have a slight clue in the coming hours, being an acute study of social media forensics, or the bane of her brother's impromptu trip to Hokkaido, however you wanted to look at it. He hadn’t wanted to tell them immediately. Better to surprise them later, when he made the trek out to the family farm.
His cell phone was a cheap one that he bought a few years back, and it didn’t have LTE in Japan. The wi-fi in the hotel room nevertheless managed to push a few mails through to his inbox, and he flipped through those absently. A couple adverts for drone-enabled farming equipment—like he could afford any of it. Some weather reports. An update from the gardening newsletter he followed that published studies on zone 1 perennials. The last mail, at the top of his inbox, was one that he’d previously opened several times. He read it over again anyway.
You are cordially invited to: the 20-Year Reunion Celebration of Ezono Agricultural High School’s Class of 20xxWelcoming all former students, friends and family of Ezono Agricultural HS! Join us for an evening celebrating 20 years of memories and nostalgia and help us plant seeds for the future generations of Ezono students.
Location: xxx-xxxx Hokkaidō, Sapporo, Chuo-ku Minami 10-jo Nishi 6-chome
Time: 17:00 - xx:xx (afterparty to follow!)[…]
Event proudly sponsored by GINSAJI Corporation, in collaboration with the Ōezo Alumni Association.
The mail had been forwarded to him about a week ago, coupled with a heartfelt, if not slightly guilt-trippy message from Mikage. He hadn’t known how to reply to it, so he called her later, and they had a long chat on the phone. There'd been a noncommittal tone to the way she spoke, like their conversation could’ve been picked up and dropped off with little calibration. Really it was rather reminiscent of their decades-long friendship.
“I’m sure we’d all want to see you, Icchan,” she finally said, toward the end of the call. “Yuugo’s been helping the planning committee along. He didn’t want me to tell you, but he absolutely insisted that they plan the date at the conclusion of the soybean season. ‘So there’s no excuse for him not to come’, those were his words. Not mine!”
“I hadn’t noticed,” said Komaba, although that was a lie. It was the first thing he’d noticed. “And if he wanted me there he could have told me so himself, that bastard.”
“Oh, you know how he can be. He’s still worried that you’re upset at him. Over the Sakhalin potato project.”
“What the hell? That happened almost 10 years ago.”
At those words, he could just about hear Mikage smiling through the phone. “Exactly. That happened almost 10 years ago.”
The reunion party was booked for one of the ballrooms in the same hotel and it was due to start at five p.m. that day, which meant that Komaba had roughly seven hours to kill. He spent one hour of his time swimming laps in the pool and the rest of it strolling around the park attached to the grounds. It was a very nice hotel. Komaba hadn’t stayed at so many nice hotels in his life, but he was also at a point now that it no longer hurt to be insensible once in a while; he could forgo stuffing his money into mortgage payments on a new commercial plough in favor of spending a night in a four-star establishment. He had the semi-lucrative soybean export industry in Amur Oblast to thank for that.
It was early into winter in Sapporo and a thin sheet of snow had tucked itself onto most of the foliage in the park. The footpaths were all shoveled, which was an honest luxury that Komaba enjoyed thoroughly. He was coming around another loop of the perimeter when he saw someone juggling a box piled high with flowers and ribbons near a side entrance to the hotel lobby. The door handle was slippery from ice, and two bouquets of dehydrated flowers fell from the box as he struggled with it. A frilly ribbon joined the pile on the ground. The man swore loudly. In a voice that Komaba instantly recognized.
It was Hachiken.
Komaba jogged up to the entrance, stooping down to grab the fallen bouquets from the ground.
“Need a hand?”
“Ah, thank you so much, I—” Hachiken clearly hadn’t recognized him at first, but he certainly did now. Komaba watched with some bemusement as Hachiken tried to stifle his double-take, and cleared his throat nervously. “Wow. You’re here! How unexpected. I m-mean, I knew you were coming, you’re on the guest list and all. But I didn’t think you’d be… well, it’s good to see you, Komaba.”
Komaba handed him the flowers. Out of context, it probably looked like he was trying to serenade Hachiken with a bundle of dried hydrangeas. “Good to see you too, Hachiken.”
“I’m sorry, we’re still preparing a couple of the table arrangements. I can take a break after this though, want to grab a drink at the bar?”
Komaba nodded. “Sure. Let me help.”
They made short work of the rest of the arrangements together. The tables and chairs had all been set up already by the hotel staff, and Hachiken had staked out the banners on the ceiling earlier that day. Ookawa and one of the girls from the alumni association were due to help out in the afternoon, but as was typical of The Philanderer Formerly Known As Ookawa, they’d wandered off somewhere else in the name of “exploring” the venue.
“And I’ve been business partners with him for long enough to know what that means,” Hachiken snorted into his beer. “So don’t think of what we’re doing as any dereliction of duty. Not on my part, at least.”
“I don’t,” said Komaba, taking a sip of his own glass of Suntory blended whiskey.
Hachiken eyed his drink. “Got a taste for the strong stuff now, eh, Komaba?”
Komaba shrugged. “It’s just rare to get this kind of drink where I live. I’m still out in the boonies all the time. Can’t compare at all to the lifestyle of you city boys.”
“I’ll never be a true city boy again, I swear.” Hachiken shook his head resolutely. “I don’t know if I ever was. My father never thought so either. Speaking of, I met with him last week to discuss GINSAJI’s Q1 project plans, and he brought up this crazy idea about sourcing drone-enabled farm equipment. Proceeded to call me uneducated about modern technology. The other day he even tried to sell me some stupid cryptocurrency. Can you believe him? I’ll never not be surprised by the old man’s appetite for capitalism.”
Komaba had to chuckle. “Seeing that you’re the only person I know who has Q1 project plan meetings with his own father, I’m not surprised.”
“Well enough about me. How are you? And your family. How’s your beautiful Russian bride, Komaba?”
“Mariya? She’s good. Doing better now, probably. We divorced last spring.”
“Oh,” said Hachiken. Komaba could nearly see the cogs turning in his brain, possibly at a rate fast enough to overheat him. True enough to that effect, Hachiken started to blush. “I-I didn’t know. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. It was for the best.”
“Well, I’m sorry anyway.”
They nursed their alcohol in silence for a few minutes. Until Hachiken couldn’t stand to do it for any longer, of course.
“Listen, Komaba,” he said, and he was still blushing. He was onto his second beer. “I’m here for you, man.”
“Thanks,” said Komaba.
“And I’ve always been here,” continued Hachiken. “In fact, I suppose I might as well tell you, I’ve always—”
Komaba grabbed his bicep gently, which had the intended effect of shutting Hachiken up. “I get it, Hachiken. It’s fine.”
Their conversation was cut short by Tokiwa, who had started to wave and shout at the both of them enthusiastically the moment he stepped into the hotel lobby.
The evening crept up on them and Komaba’s former classmates began to pile into the hotel ballroom one after another. Tokiwa's eldest son had chauffeured him to the hotel. The boy looked like a disgruntled, if not slightly more dignified younger version of Tokiwa, who had also definitely not signed up to be his dad's designated driver that night. Tamako and her husband arrived next, a huge basket of baked goods in tow, all made with milk fresh from the giga farm. Mikage showed up after that, and was hauled up to the stage almost immediately by Tamako to prepare a welcome speech. Yoshino made a dramatic appearance with a new beau, a young man who looked to be about the same age as Tokiwa’s son, which soon proved to be fact when the two boys sized each other up and subsequently realized that they were in the same animal husbandry lecture at Obihiro U. Sometime before the end of the official reunion celebration and the first afterparty destination, Ookawa managed to reattach himself to the attendance list.
“I’m going to retire early,” Komaba excused himself. He wasn’t interested in bar hopping too far into the night, and the caffeine had finally started to wear off. He took the lift from the lobby up to his room and started the water for a bath. It was ten p.m. Not that late, but late enough.
It was nice to see everyone, in particular Mikage and Hachiken. Neither of them had changed all that much, which was in a way reassuring.
Vaguely he remembered why he hadn't bothered to attend the previous Ōezo reunion, 10 years ago. He'd been worried about money, to be fair. At the time there'd been only so much gold dust to rub out of a soybean plant. Bottled up further down were doubts about whether or not he'd ever belonged in Hokkaido. On top of having never graduated from school, he’d dropped out so early on, and what did he have to show for all of that, honestly.
Really what he'd never expected was for some of those memories of his first year at Ōezo to continuously surface to his mind over the next several years, colors crispened by arctic air, like it had been all captured on videotape. He’d expected that his time there would fade, or at least become grainy over a few Russian winters. But things never quite played out like that. He wondered if it had anything to do with the permafrost. If with the ground, his sentiments had become similarly frozen over time, to replay in his head like that for seasons to come.
He fell asleep that night and dreamed about the dried hydrangeas he’d held earlier that day in his hands. What had they smelled like? Maybe something fresh, a zone 1 perennial barely broken from Siberian soil. Or maybe something with a little more grit to it, to accompany the tremors in his heart after a cup of airport americano. Did it matter? Probably not.