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Satoru can’t decide what to watch.
Well, it’s more like nothing’s able to hold his attention at the moment. He’s slowly sinking further and further into the black polyester couch, legs outstretched and hidden underneath the low, cluttered living room table in front of him. The likelihood of him finding something worthwhile to watch after changing the channel 12 times is dwindling dangerously low.
He glances at the time on his phone and scowls when he realizes it’s only been an hour.
He doesn't mind visiting Megumi and his sister. He really doesn’t. They’re a good pair of kids, even if Megumi slams his door sometimes or outright ignores Satoru’s calls. But today? Today Satoru’s bored. Fidgety, even. He gets like this now sometimes. The impulse to move somewhere that’s not where he currently is, to stretch his limbs and jump and feel his muscles move until they’re sore, leaves him restless more often than not.
So there he is, changing the channel for the 14th time when Megumi steps out of the apartment kitchen and into the living room, frowning when he sees Satoru on the couch.
“I was going to sit there,” he points out.
Satoru snorts, “No, you weren’t. I was sitting here before you started making your lunch.”
“I want to sit there now,” he persists.
Satoru scoots to the right and pats the newly available, slightly indented spot on the couch.
“You can sit next to me,” he taunts, knowingly. Megumi’s scowl worsens, his eyebrows pinching the skin between them the way his sister teases him will be permanent if he doesn’t cheer up.
“No thanks,” Megumi responds and promptly walks past Satoru to sit on one of the floor cushions by the table, pushing aside a stack of books and a half-empty water bottle to make room for his bowl.
“Whatcha eating?” Satoru asks, scooting back to sit in the middle of the couch.
“An egg and rice.”
“You have groceries right?”
Megumi nods.
Satoru waves the television remote in his hand to give Megumi a semblance of a warning before he flings it upward in the air towards him. Megumi fumbles, but he catches it.
“Pick something to watch,” Satoru says, and Megumi rolls his eyes but then turns towards the television. He keeps some vintage-looking holiday movie playing, and apparently starts to pretend that Satoru isn’t there at all.
Satoru rests his head against his shoulder when he peers out into the small, second-floor patio to see Tsumiki smudged through the black bug screen, still watering the few plants she has lining the concrete edge. They’re easy kids to take care of. Not that Satoru would call himself a caregiver, he’s far from it honestly. He helps them handle financial situations and occasionally groceries and other shopping runs because, after all, they are children. But everything else? Tsumiki and Megumi seem to have a handle on things. Their apartment, though originally a mess and legally in Tsumiki’s mother’s name, is now theirs, under Satoru’s name until one of them is old enough.
At first, Tsumiki didn’t want to move out of the shared bedroom she had with Megumi to her mother’s, but Megumi didn’t hesitate at the opportunity. Satoru offered to help pack up his step-mother’s things still strewn about the house—empty shoe boxes and clothes turned inside out collecting dust on her mattress, an unkempt hairbrush and blow dryer in the stained bathroom sink, a stack of letters, some open some not, and a myriad of other junk that seems to only accumulate in a home covering the kitchen counter—but Megumi told him, not so gently, to go away and handled it himself.
Satoru can’t imagine living here. The rooms are small, with furniture far too large for the cramped spaces, and the water takes its time to warm up and the stove sometimes shuts off during use, but maybe the world just feels different for children.
Maybe it felt larger, above reproach.
Sometimes, he thinks about reaching out. He thinks about taking Tsumiki shopping, asking if there’s anything she really wants from the stores he sometimes catches her glimpsing at. He thinks about taking Megumi to some park or maybe an ice cream shop and sitting him down outside as the scoops of ice cream start to melt and telling him I killed your dad. Do you care? But most of the time, he doesn’t think about it. Megumi hasn’t asked or poked at the topic, and Satoru doesn’t necessarily feel inclined to breach it.
But still.
He’s a kid. And so’s his sister.
Satoru also sometimes forgets what that’s supposed to mean.
When the sliding door rattles against the metal frame holding it as Tsumiki walks in, a pastel blue elephant watering can in hand, he remembers, just enough. It dawns on him suddenly, as the holiday movie continues on with its stop motion animation of a reindeer, that there are no holiday decorations in sight in the apartment. He glances around, and spots only a string of stars cut from construction paper hung across the small window over the kitchen sink.
“You don’t have any decorations up,” he states. Megumi eyes him oddly, one eyebrow quirked. It must have been a bit since he last spoke, oh well.
“Yeah, and?” Megumi answers with an accusation himself.
“Well, it’s the holidays. It’s almost Christmas.”
Tsumiki places the watering can in the kitchen sink, turns the sink’s knobs to start to fill it and looks over at him.
“We don’t have any,” she answers. “I can’t find our old ones.”
Satoru gives them a budget of ¥5,500 each when he takes them to a department store an hour later. He sets them loose in the home goods section that’s flooded with red, green, and gold, explaining that he’ll just cover the costs with his credit card.
“That’s pretty low,” Megumi contests, arms crossed. “Aren’t you from some big shot clan?”
Satoru peers down at him over his glasses, “You’re right! How about ¥6,800 for your sister and ¥4,000 for you?”
Megumi huffs and mumbles something under his breath suspiciously close to ending with “—same house anyway,” and walks away. Tsumiki sighs and then follows him, though she does split to go into a different aisle eventually. Satoru wanders the store, too, keeping track of the back of their heads. He doesn’t think someone would try something with Megumi, but he can never be too sure, especially with the way the Zen'in are. Tsumiki surprisingly elects to roam the kitchenware section, turning various mugs on the stands to face forward in order to read the cheesy holiday quotes printed onto them. Megumi, on the other hand, seems to forget what his allowance was originally intended for because he’s exploring the electronics section, lifting a pair of blocky black and red headphones to try on.
Satoru makes the executive decision that Megumi will, in fact, not shop for holiday decorations, and takes on the responsibility himself. He circles back to the front of the store, scoops up a shopping basket, and starts to scan the aisles for loot. He dumps some actual, useful things, like plain warm white string lights easy to suspend and some stockings he can imagine hanging from their kitchen counter, but then he starts to find the cheesy, tacky decorations, and snickers.
Would Megumi hate a pearlescent bedazzled Santa hat or a light-up, Christmas tree headband? Satoru can’t decide, so he dumps both into the basket just to be safe. There’s also a plastic, motion sensor snowman that starts to sing when he reaches for it, but before Satoru can add it to his haul, he spots something near it, besides a crowd of dancing trees.
There’s a Santa Claus desk decoration that hangs to make it appear like he’s falling off whatever you perch him on, one that Satoru bought two years ago with Suguru and Shoko, who bought the matching reindeer and Mrs.Claus variants.
He picks it up and turns it over in his hands.
Satoru actually thinks he’s lost the decoration, he can’t remember where he placed it last. And with a hushed type of surprise, as he places it back on the shelf, he actually thinks he hasn’t placed any holiday decorations yet in his own dorm.
“I’m getting this.”
He jerks his head to see Megumi standing by him, holding out a pair of headphones different from the ones he had tried on earlier with a hand.
“That’s not a decoration.”
Megumi dumps them into Satoru’s basket anyway and then holds out a miniature plastic, frowning melting snowman.
“But this is,” he says, and Satoru laughs.
The first time Shoko smoked near Satoru, he pinched his nose shut and retched, though the smell wasn’t really that bad. The second time, he scrunched his nose and fake gagged, waving the smoke she blew out towards him away, redirecting it towards Suguru. Now, while she smokes next to him, he follows the path the expelled smoke takes in the air with his eyes before it becomes indistinguishable against the sky. Her elbow is pressed against his shoulder as he rests on the railing of the walkway they’re on, arms dangling over its edge.
“I should give them a gift, right?”
Shoko taps the end of her cigarette, and ash plummets to the canal below before it's blown away.
“I mean,” she answers. “Who else will?”
He groans, “I bought some decorations for them. Does that count?”
“Don’t think so.”
He groans, again.
She presses the cigarette into its sanctioned place at the center of her pursed lips, breathes in, and then exhales a second later.
“Maybe the school will cover the cost.”
He barks out a laugh.
This spot has recently become a spot for them. Not that their campus didn’t contain other picturesque spots worthy of their aimless loitering, but both of them have seemingly decided nonverbally that they should branch out as of late, further and further into the city. Satoru knows it doesn’t matter how far he goes, how far a crepe shop he tells Shoko they should try is or how far a bar she suggests they attempt sneaking into is, he knows they’ll always come back to the school. A taut elastic band tethered to both their waists springing them back dutifully once they tire against its resistance.
But this rather short, unassuming concrete walkway too narrow for anything larger than bikes and scooters that passes over a canal in the more suburban part of the city—where courageous weeds dare to peek out from the cracks in the concrete with their fuzzy leaves and surprisingly delicate flowers and teenage boys gather in groups to sprawl on the grassy inclines and talk about what Satoru imagines are cute girls at their schools, upcoming exams, maybe even the latest chapter of a manga they read—has become the spot for them, for now.
Sometimes, when they’re far enough that Shoko knows the distracted teenagers won’t overhear them, she comes up with narratives for the boys. They tend to be demeaning, Shoko slotting them into idiotic and immature character roles and plotlines. But if they’re girls, it’s different. If they’re girls she’ll make them the top student at their school, or have them run for student government president, or even be the big-shot leader of their local school gang.
But there aren’t any teenagers underneath them today, just the evidence of them, a plastic bag weighed down by crushed cans left behind by the canal’s edge, feet away from a trash can.
“So,” he says. “What are you doing for the holidays?”
“Going to my parents for a few days.”
“Aw.”
“You?”
He shrugs.
Shoko crushes the lit end of her cigarette against the railing, and Satoru thinks he sees her hesitate, considering flicking it into the canal, but then chooses not to.
“There’s two kids who probably aren’t doing anything for the holidays.”
He sighs, leaning his weight back onto his heels while holding onto the railing.
“Since when were you so maternal?”
“If this cigarette was still lit I’d burn you.”
“As if you could.”
He decides to surprise them.
He knocks on their door Christmas morning, Santa hat secured onto his head, and grins when Tsumiki sleepily answers the door. Her eyes widen in a jovial way that gives away her age.
“Merry Christmas,” he cheers, and Tsumiki steps back to let him in.
“Merry Christmas,” she parrots, happy but albeit a bit confused.
Once Satoru crosses the threshold and Megumi catches sight of him from the couch, it’s outright comical how his expression drops, his boyish face overtaken by an almost impenetrable annoyed facade suited for a 29-year-old turning 30. But when his eyes notice the bows of their gifts peeking out from the brown bag Satoru brought them in, he catches a sliver of interest ooze through.
“I have one rule,” Satoru proclaims. “No opening gifts until later.”
And just like that, the annoyance surges back.
They order food, nothing expensive though Satoru told them they could, and sit around the halfway cleared living room table once it arrives. At some point, the gifts he brought are moved underneath the small tree they have, and Tsumiki sheepishly holds her hands in front of her.
“I actually bought you something,” she explains. “I wasn’t planning on you visiting today, but I have it.”
Satoru blinks, mouth full of the sweet chicken he just took a bite of.
“Oh. You didn’t have to,” he manages to say, half-shielding his mouth. Megumi can still see him chew because of the angle he’s sitting in and grimaces.
Tsumiki smiles, “And you didn’t have to get us presents.”
When she steps away to find the gift, Satoru leans back against the couch, one hand over his stomach. Megumi’s been quiet, and it’s only then that Satoru notices he’s eyeing his gift.
Satoru nudges him, “You can open it.”
Megumi shrugs him away, “Why are you even here? Don’t you have somewhere else to be on Christmas?”
Satoru blinks but then laughs.
“Not really,” he admits. “My friends are busy.”
Megumi huffs, shaking his head.
“Weirdo,” he mumbles, but gets off the couch anyway to kneel by the tree.
“Which one’s mine?”
Satoru hums, “The one with a blue ribbon.”
Megumi doesn’t say anything else, he just starts to peel off the layer of gift wrap. In all honesty, Satoru could have just placed his gifts in a gift bag, but the triumph of seeing him tear into the box to pull out a small tub of hair gel is beyond worth the extra few bills spent for a misleading gift box.
“Are you serious?” he spits, turning to glare, but still holding onto the gel.
Satoru’s delighted, “Maybe you can fix that porcupine hair of yours now.”
Megumi sets his arm back, ready to beam the tub at Satoru, but Satoru raises his hands in surrender in front of him.
“There’s more stuff in the box, kid.”
He squints, untrusting, and Satoru urges him on with a wave of his hand.
Slowly, he starts to pull out the rest of the gifts: the first three manga volumes to a series Satoru thought looked cool, some Western comics from different series, and finally, one, small wolf plushie keychain.
Megumi looks at him for that one, though his expression isn’t exactly annoyance for once, what Satoru swears is an ounce of endearment diluting it.
“Seriously?”
Satoru grins.
“I mean, yeah,” he says. “You know, because—” and slots his hands together the way that Megumi does when he’s practicing his summoning technique.
“Found it!” Tsumiki calls out, stepping back out into the living room, holding onto a small bag with a macaroon logo printed on it. The small plushie Megumi’s still holding onto catches her attention, and she smiles.
“Is that your gift?” she asks, and Megumi’s cheeks flush against his will. “It’s so cute, you can put it on your backpack.”
“No way,” he complains.
“You’re right,” Satoru adds. “You wouldn’t want to get it dirty, right?”
Megumi glares, “That’s not the reason.”
Satoru tilts his head, “Oh? Is Megumi embarrassed?”
“I think he is,” Tsumiki teases.
The flush worsens.
“I’m not,” he protests, throwing the keychain back into the box. “It’s just a dumb gift.”
Tsumiki frowns, “Megumi, don’t be rude—”
Satoru chuckles.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Megumi will come around.”
“No, I won’t—”
Satoru ends up staying past lunch and dinner. It wasn’t his original intention to, but once they started to marathon holiday movie after holiday movie, it just ended up happening as the time became later and later. Megumi and Tsumiki nest on the couch underneath a blanket, and Satoru sits with his back against the living room table, legs bent awkwardly to fit. They start off with pretty stereotypical holiday films, but slowly, find themselves watching rather untypical Christmas movies. Satoru reconsiders one of his choices, nearly jumping for the remote by Megumi’s knee when he realizes a rather graphic fight scene was about to take place.
“I’ve already seen this movie,” Megumi chastises, but Satoru wags a finger.
“Nope. Nuh-uh. Not showing you this.”
Another issue that arises is spoilers.
Megumi threatens Satoru twice not to spoil things, but Tsumiki casts the final stone when she accidentally spoils Gremlins. Megumi faces her, betrayed.
“I thought you knew he died!” she tries, though Satoru can tell she’s trying not to laugh.
Megumi’s frowning so intently it looks more like a pout, “I didn’t!”
“It’s fine,” Satoru contends. “He’s not an important character, anyway.”
“Not the point!”
It takes another movie for Megumi to fall asleep. Satoru had expected it earlier, but his head starts to droop and slowly rests against Tsumiki’s shoulder. Tsumiki, though still technically awake, is barely holding on. She keeps yawning and rubbing her eyes, readjusting the blanket thrown over her and Megumi after.
Satoru lowers the volume.
“You should head to bed. I can pick up before I go.”
Megumi makes a sleep-idled, disgruntled sound in the back of his throat but doesn’t move. Tsumiki peers over at Satoru, eyes sloped with pleading slumber.
“Are you sleeping over?” she asks, hushed.
He extends his arms out above his head, twisting his wrists to stretch them until they crack.
“Nah,” he answers, in a quiet volume mirroring her own. “Couch too small and all that.”
She nods and moves as if she were about to stand when he does, but he gestures for her to stay sitting, and leans his head in Megumi’s direction.
“If you wake him up he’ll blame me. I got it.”
The pick-up is easy, Megumi and Tsumiki barely made a mess. If anything, Satoru made more when he almost spilled a sticky red sauce over the table, a few escaped drops coagulated on the tabletop as he wipes them with a cheap paper napkin. He can feel Tsumiki’s sleepy eyes follow his movements all the while until he stepped into the kitchen to find a garbage bag to dump everything in.
She’s looking at the Christmas tree, and the opened gifts left by it.
“Thank you.”
He shrugs, “No need. Not a big deal.”
Tsumiki rubs at her eyes again, and Megumi shifts as her shoulder moves, grumbling nonsensically.
“Last Christmas,” she says, and Satoru gets the feeling that he should listen. “We lived here, too. But it was cold. Our heater broke, and my mom wasn’t home. Megumi never even opened his gift from her.”
The living room is picked up, the television is still on, the movie they were watching coming to an end at an almost muted volume, and Megumi is asleep against his sister, and Tsumiki is saying things that Satoru’s not quite sure he’s equipped to maneuver. He rubs the back of his neck after dumping the last take-out box into the open garbage bag.
“Well,” he says. “Hoping today was better at least.”
Tsumiki laughs—a gummy, unguarded sound— and rests her head against Megumi’s.
“It was,” she affirms. “It really was.”
It’s not freezing on December 25, 2017, but it isn’t warm either. The world is a tepid, unsure thing, winter evidently lacking enthusiasm this year. The weather forecasts have warned of possible cold fronts for the past few days that seem to question and reconsider their trajectory every couple of hours.
Satoru doesn’t wear extra layers to accommodate.
The cold tries to nip at his skin through the fabric of his shirt and jacket, and occasionally, with the boost of a gust of wind or a drifting cloud blotting out the swollen sun, it does. It bites at his exposed skin, the fat of his cheeks, and the modest ridges of his knuckles catching on the fringes of winter’s teeth.
At least he doesn’t have a funeral to attend.
The thought stings, like he passed a finger over a forgotten splinter, and immediately, he wrings them out until he’s only feeling the penetrating cold once again.
He decides he should text Megumi to at least warn him.
He sends: visiting!!!
Within moments, a READ receipt pops up underneath the message, but no dotted bubble follows. It doesn’t really matter, Satoru’s planning on visiting anyway, and if Megumi complains or claims it's unexpected, he’ll have the evidence of an ignored message.
So, he goes.
Megumi’s not there when he arrives. He invites himself in any way, leaving his shoes by the rack beside the door and trailing into the kitchen, hovering over the island to peer at Megumi’s mail. There’s nothing that seems concerning so he diverts his attention to the fridge. Specifically, the caramel custards he has stored away, hidden behind a cluster of energy drinks and eggs. He scoops up two, because now that he thinks about it he’s only had a quick gas station sandwich and tea today, and moves over to the couch. With a mastery developed from repetition, Satoru swings his legs up onto the low table, lifts one of the custards to his mouth to peel off the lid with his teeth, and uses his free hand to turn on the television.
He forgot the spoon, but it’s fine. He tilts the plastic cup into his mouth, slurps a bit of the liquid to avoid a mess, and uses gravity to bite off a lump once it slumps towards his mouth.
The television doesn’t turn on to any channel, instead asking for Satoru’s annoyance with a NO SIGNAL FOUND message. He huffs. Megumi still has a few weeks before he’s due to move into the dorms on campus, Satoru truly doesn’t understand the need to start packing his few belongings already, or even the want to not terminate the lease on this place. Megumi had been outright furious when Satoru brought it up, though his voice was never raised. He just stared at Satoru as if he had spoken something exceptionally absurd, and then told him to leave.
In retrospect, as Satoru glances around the apartment, almost all remnants of his sister packed away into cardboard boxes lining the wall beside the television, he could guess why Megumi had acted that way. This apartment, despite its faulty laundry room downstairs that stole coins more often than not, despite the water that still took forever to warm up, despite the knowledge that he was left behind here, this apartment was still his home.
He figures it’s a pretty good guess.
He kind of gets it, too.
The television still doesn’t connect, so with a sigh, he puts the half-eaten custard down, rearranges his legs, and stands. The apartment is depressing. He’s half certain Megumi canceled the television service on purpose the way that he was, and there are absolutely no holiday decorations throughout the entire space. The spot where the Christmas tree typically was in Satoru’s recollection is vacant, instead replaced by a skateboard resting against the wall he swears he’s never seen Megumi use.
He makes the executive decision that no, a skateboard is not an effective Christmas decoration, and starts to search for the reusable Christmas tree he knows is somewhere in the apartment, shoved out of sight in a closet somewhere. He returns the unopened custard to the fridge begrudgingly, and just as he makes his way into Tsumiki’s room after, he hears the front door open.
“The door’s unlocked,” Megumi calls out, the thumping of what Satoru assumes are his shoes following. “Who’s here?”
“A robber. I’m stealing your TV.”
Satoru thinks he spots a box with the image of a tree at the bottom of the closet, wedged underneath a heavy plastic bag filled with something clunky, corners stretching the thin plastic to an almost breaking point.
He hears Megumi step into the room and pivots to face him.
“Are you aware this isn’t your house?”
“Are you aware you don’t have any decorations up? It’s depressing.”
Megumi sighs and leaves Satoru alone in the room. Compared to the rest of the apartment, Tsumiki’s room is the most organized. Though it doubles as storage, the ugly cardboard and plastic boxes are hidden underneath her bed or in her closet, keeping the rest of it almost pristine. But it’s not something that’s approachable with Megumi, this phantom of a person who isn’t dead, and Satoru doesn’t particularly know the words yet to tackle that on.
Especially not today, when he still expects a specter of his own making to ooze out of the wall or materialize behind him.
Once he has three boxes outside of the closet, one with the tree, one with ornaments, and one with lights, he drags them all to the living room. Megumi is sitting on the couch, eyes closed as he rests his head against the back. Satoru pays him no mind. He sets the boxes in front of the television and gets to work.
It’s not a long task, and though Satoru isn’t a professional interior designer or tree decorator, he thinks he’s pretty good at it. Once half the tree is dolled up, he scoots back and tilts his head to revise his work.
“You put all the red balls in one section,” Megumi critiques, and Satoru frowns at the tree.
“So?”
“So,” Megumi repeats as he shuffles closer before lowering himself down to the floor beside Satoru. “Spread them out. You have gold and white, too.”
He plucks a red ornament off and places it on a more vacant section of the tree, towards the peak. They begin to decorate the rest together quietly, with brief intermissions of Megumi asking for a different ornament. When they’re close to finishing, however, Satoru’s startled with a realization.
“We forgot to string the lights around it.”
Megumi’s coiling a piece of wire through the hoop of an ornament.
“I hate doing that,” he complains. “You’re on your own once I’m done.”
Satoru’s mouth moves to answer when a voice suddenly starts speaking from the television. Megumi jerks and Satoru turns to look.
“I guess the maintenance is done,” Megumi says.
Satoru’s staring at the screen.
The channel is set to a random news station, the reporter discussing some of the physical damages made to an apartment complex yesterday in a mysterious attack.
“I heard about what happened at the school,” Megumi adds.
Satoru stands up and starts to search through the box with the lights. The wires are tangled, one massive lump of bulbs and green cable emerging from the box when Satoru pulls out his hand.
“Oh?” he replies. “From who?”
Megumi shrugs, “Did anyone get hurt?”
Satoru dumps the cluster of lights onto the floor next to Megumi and starts to untangle.
“They’re all fine,” he says. “And it’ll be rebuilt by the time you join.”
Megumi blinks, “Rebuilt?”
Satoru nods, frowning when a loose, fairly unscrewed bulb falls out.
“Yeah, Suguru did some heavy damage.”
Oh.
Oh.
Oops.
He hopes Megumi doesn’t ask. He knows he’s not giving anything away, Satoru’s trained for this, to internalize emotions and reactions to an almost molecular level to avoid any enemies spotting weaknesses and ways in close—
“Who’s Suguru?”
He can’t find the stupid bulb that fell. He sighs and moves on from the mound he’s working on to another with a white cable.
“Not really important,” he answers. “He’s handled.”
“Handled?”
“Yep. All handled for when Megumi, ” he sneers, “joins the school.”
Megumi rolls his eyes and starts to prepare another ornament.
“Don’t be annoying.”
“I’m never annoying.”
Upon closer inspection once he does find the bulb, which apparently rolled into the new bunch he’s working on, the inside is fizzled out.
“You’ve met most of the second years, right?”
Megumi nods.
“Good, good, maybe they won’t haze you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Satoru shrugs, “I’m just saying. I would think those are normal concerns for high school—”
“It’s not normal high school,” Megumi snaps. More lowly, after consideration, he adds, “Don’t be dumb.”
Satoru drops the conversation.
He stops tinkering with the lights and lays his hands flat behind him, leaning back to continue watching the news report. The reporter has moved onto a segment about a new dining hall opening up, the images of a destroyed building and police tape replaced by a gathering of grinning business owners in front of the building.
Satoru hums, “Where were you earlier?”
“Visiting my sister.”
Satoru nods, but it's at nothing really.
“How is she?”
“The same.”
The slideshow of cooked dishes the TV segment starts to display doesn’t particularly look appetizing. Satoru can't imagine them in business for long.
“That’s better than worse,” he says.
Megumi sighs the impatient way that he does, “You’re bad at conversations like this.”
Satoru whips his head around to stare at him, raising a finger.
“I’m not bad at any conversations.”
“Yeah, sure.”
The last thing missing from the tree now, besides the conglomerate of lights Satoru’s starting to think the tree doesn’t need, is the tree topper. He’s going to point it out, but to his surprise, Megumi reaches into the box that held the tree and pulls out a star enshrouded by bubble wrap. Once it’s unwrapped, Satoru picks up the bubble wrap and fidgets with it, teasing the bubbles with his nail but stopping before they popped. He watches as Megumi scoots closer to the tree, placing the star topper down once, adjusting it, and then removing it again. He seems to get it on his second try because he sits back down to look at his efforts.
From the television, Satoru can hear the audio of an electronics store announcing its sale over a holiday jingle.
“Hey, Megumi,” he says.
Megumi looks over at him, cautious.
“Merry Christmas.”
He looks back at the tree, holds one of its plastic branches, and rubs the artificial pine needles between two of his fingertips. Satoru realizes they didn’t bother to dust it when he took it out of the box, they just went straight into decorating it, uncaring for the layer of grime that collects on the artifacts left behind in a vacant bedroom closet.
“Merry Christmas.”