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“Juza! Will you put the drinks up on the counter for the lovely cashier?” If it was anybody but Citron, the huge smile he wore at the grocery store might seem a little too much for the occasion.
“Uh, sure. Here.” Juza lifted the case of water bottles from their cart onto the conveyor.
“You know, my daughter is almost finished with university, Citron. She might have time for a nice dinner with a handsome young man…” The woman behind the register winked.
Citron gasped. “My, I thought the mothers in Japan would like a nice salaryman to marry their daughters, not an actor or artist! I am afraid I am not worthy!”
As the woman brushed off Citron’s concerns, Juza chuckled to himself. Then his mind wandered a bit. In all the time he’d been coming here for snacks, which was a considerable length of time, Juza had never known this cashier had a daughter, let alone one in college.
He probably wasn’t the type the shopping district ladies would stop for conversation though. He wasn’t… whatever it is you’d call Citron.
As Citron paid for the groceries, Juza gathered up the bags he could carry, leaving only a few lighter bags for Citron to grab. Juza had tuned out most of the banter as he packed up the groceries, but he managed to catch the tail end of Citron’s closing argument.
“...and if I take her out for a nice dinner, I would not come here and buy food from you! You do not want to lose a customer, yes?” The woman laughed and nodded, before wishing the men a good evening.
Out on the street, bags in hand, a silence fell between the two actors as they began their walk to the dorms. After turning the words over in his head, Juza spoke.
“How do you…. How do you do that?”
Citron’s pace slowed as he looked over at Juza. “What do you mean?”
“Be so… friendly. Approachable. The whole time I’ve known you, you’ve been like this. And then I see you on stage and you turn into this – this super strict king, or wise and noble, or whatever else, everything you aren’t when you’re offstage.”
With a light laugh and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, Citron only said one thing. “Well, we are actors.”
“Yeah, but… how do I put it? I don’t…. I don’t change that much on stage. Acting’s important to me too, but I… Forget I said anything.” Juza dropped his eyes toward the pavement.
“Perhaps–” Citron took a deep breath. “Perhaps I should add to that. We are both actors, yes, but one of us may have more practice being someone else.”
Lifting his eyes from the ground, Juza turned to him. “You mean – back home?”
Citron only nodded.
Juza bit his lip, remembering Citron’s expression when he had told everyone he would be returning home to become king. Of course he would practice wearing the mask of someone who didn’t share that destiny.
“It’s weird… all that time I wanted to be someone else, I guess I didn’t do a good job practicin’ for the role,” Juza said as he tried to smile back at Citron.
“I quite like this Juza though! As do many of us!” Citron replied with a much bigger smile than Juza’s.
“Still, wish people could look at me without gettin’ scared.”
Another silence fell between them.
“I owe you an apology, Juza.” Citron’s tone was unusually somber.
“Huh?” Juza couldn’t figure out what Citron meant by that.
“For seeing you as the “famous Japanese gangster” when I met you. I know you are much more – no, not just more, you are something else. You are a kind brother and cousin, and a hard worker, and I know better now.”
“You don’t gotta apologize for that.”
“I do, because I too have been mistaken for something I am not and never wanted to be.”
If his hands weren’t full of grocery bags, Citron might have reached out for Juza’s shoulder reassuringly. Instead he settled for, “Let us go home, yes?”
Juza nodded. “Yeah, home it is.”