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2007
The summer evening is stifling hot, and even the poor overworked AC can’t do much to hold it back, not with the heat of the boiling noodles from the kitchen at Michiko’s back.
She doesn’t mind it much. It feels like it’s properly summer now, with the worst of the rainy season finally over. She knows she will grow sick of it soon, but for now she’ll enjoy it while she can.
Even though it’s starting to cool down outside, the heat lingers in the shop, and maybe that’s what is keeping the place from getting too busy tonight. Michiko has been at this long enough to not expect too much of a crowd even on Tanabata, not when the main festival isn’t for another night and is halfway across the city, not when it’s past 9 pm and the biggest crowd this riverside restaurant usually gets is at lunch. Even with all that though, there are still normally more people, she thinks. Especially on a Saturday.
Maybe it really is just the failing AC driving everyone away. She needs to get that thing fixed. Normally she’d ask her younger brother, but he’s been stressed lately with his daughter having some issues at preschool, and she doesn’t want to add onto that.
The door opens with a chime, and Michiko looks up to see a young man walk in. He’s a little scruffy looking and stiff in a way that could either be natural awkwardness or anxiety.
“Welcome!” she calls out as he approaches. “Take any seat you like.”
He nods at her in return. Michiko expects him to take one of the stools at the counter, like most people who come by themselves or even in pairs do, but he just stands at the register.
“I’m waiting for someone,” he says abruptly, and Michiko thinks that it might be both awkwardness and nerves. “Can I take the table?” He gestures at the window table for two tucked in the back corner.
“Of course,” she says, surprised because people don’t normally bother asking when the place is this empty. “We close in less than an hour though.”
He nods once.
Michiko takes his order—one medium bowl with beef—and he takes his food to the table, staring forlornly out the window.
A few more customers trickle in and out, and she keeps an eye on the strange sad-looking man, but no one comes for him even as the minutes tick down and he finishes his soup. At half an hour to closing, she contemplates telling him that he can stay while she cleans up if he wants, but she isn’t sure she should keep his hopes up when he’s probably been stood up.
At a quarter ‘til, the bell on the door rings again, and Michiko opens her mouth to greet hopefully the last of her customers for the night, but the man in the entry isn’t looking at her. Instead, his eyes are fixed on the man at the table who is staring back with the same wide-eyed expression.
“Kenzaki,” the man at the table breathes, and in that moment Michiko learns that it is in fact possible to hear a person’s heart break and heal itself in the same moment.
“Hajime,” the newcomer says, like the name itself is a miracle, and his face splits into a grin as he runs to take the seat across from the man.
Normally, Michiko would come over to take his order, feeling a bit annoyed he hadn’t come to the counter himself, but it’s late enough that she doesn’t want to put together another bowl if she doesn’t have to, and there is something about the way that they are staring at each other that tells her she shouldn’t interrupt.
The two of them stare wordlessly at each other as if there is no one else in the restaurant, as if there is no one else in the world . They aren’t touching, but it’s clear they want to; hands resting a little further out across the table than would be entirely natural otherwise.
All at once, they both start talking, words spilling out over each other. Michiko isn’t trying to eavesdrop as she gets started on putting away the pots of broth and containers of toppings, but there are only two other people in the restaurant, and snippets of their conversation carries.
“—wasn’t sure if you would come—”
“Of course I would, after all this—”
“—thought I would never see you again.”
“—can’t believe I have to thank Kotaro for—”
“—still traveling around—”
Even when she can’t make out the exact words, she can still hear their giddy tones, clearly excited to see each other again after what appears to be a long separation.
Whoever these two are, she thinks, it’s fitting for them to reunite tonight of all nights, on the festival celebrating the annual reunion of two star crossed lovers. Hopefully these two at least will not be kept apart any longer.
2008
Michiko is good with faces, but not so good as to remember a customer who showed up once a full year ago. Not normally, anyway. It’s just that this situation is so similar to the previous time; her at the counter on Tanabata night, this time wishing she had worn a warmer shirt under the direct blast of the newly fixed AC.
A man walks in an hour before closing, scruffy and tense. “I’m waiting for a friend,” he tells her, and Michiko is hit with deja vu.
“Oh,” she says, briefly startled by how familiar this all seems. “Didn’t you come here last year too?”
The man nods. She knew his name at some point, she thinks. She remembers him and his friend calling out for each other across the restaurant, but she doesn’t remember what it is now.
“Take a table,” she says. It’s more crowded this year than the last—maybe the AC really is helping—and there is only one open table, but she figures that there won’t be many more people coming in this late, and somehow this man looks like he needs it.
“Thank you,” the man says.
He orders, sits at his table, and waits, much the same as before.
His friend is faster this time, coming in before the man has finished his food.
“Kenzaki,” the man at the table greets as his friend sits down. It isn’t dramatically called out from across the room, but there is that same reverence in his tone as last year.
“Hajime.” Kenzaki smiles as he says it, though there is something almost watery in the way his eyes crinkle. It’s as if they haven’t seen each other in years, even though Michiko knows they were both here last year. Have they not met up since then?
Figuring that they have gotten their ritual greeting out of the way, Michiko goes to interrupt. “Hello, can I get you anything?”
Kenzaki blinks at her like she appeared out of nowhere. “What? Oh, I, uh, I’ll have whatever he has.”
“Alright,” Michiko says, heading back to the counter. She isn’t supposed to have to come up to the table and carry dishes and such, but she supposes that she can forgive these two, since they clearly have something going on.
2009
It’s Tanabata again, and as the evening passes, Michiko wonders if those two will show up again, if it’s an ongoing annual tradition or was merely happenstance.
Her udon shop is good enough to have a sizable cast of regulars, but as far as she knows, neither of those two have come back outside of those two nights. It was probably just a funny coincidence that these two people happened to reunite here twice on the same day that the celestial lovers are supposed to cross the Milky Way to spend their one night a year together.
“Could I have a medium bowl with beef?”
The voice startles Michiko out of her musings. She didn’t even realize she was zoning out so much that she missed the door opening.
A familiar man stands across from her, hands in his pockets.
“Sure thing,” she says, reaching for an empty bowl. “Waiting for someone again?”
2010
The fourth year, Kenzaki is the first to show up, this time at around 8:00. The place isn’t too busy on a Wednesday evening, and there are a couple tables open, but he takes a seat at the counter and orders some kitsune udon.
“This is incredible,” he tells her around a mouthful of noodles. “I’ve been abroad a lot the past few years, and there really is nothing like coming back for some proper Japanese food.”
“Abroad?” Michiko asks, leaning on the counter. The restaurant is far from empty, but she can still take a few minutes to hang around and chat. “Where? I’ve never been outside of Japan, but I have some cousins in Brazil.”
“Everywhere,” Kenzaki says, waving one hand. He’s wearing fingerless gloves, she notices, like what she sees motorcyclists wear sometimes. “Though not Brazil yet—maybe I’ll go there next.”
“You’re that person who shows up every Tanabata, right?” Michiko asks.
“I didn’t realize you noticed.” Kenzaki looks up from his bowl, and Michiko gets the sudden sense that she really was not supposed to. He doesn’t seem threatening exactly, but she finds herself unsettled all the same.
She shrugs, deliberately casual. “Well, you keep making me go to you at the table instead of coming here for food.”
“Oh.” Kenzaki smiles sheepishly, and the strange tension is broken. “Sorry about that.”
“Well, you do always seem preoccupied when you’re here,” Michiko says in acceptance of his apology.
Kenzaki pokes at the fried tofu floating in his soup with his chopsticks. “It’s... the person I come here to meet, we don’t get to see each other often.”
Michiko hasn’t been working customer service for nearly a decade now without picking up when someone wants to change the topic. “It’s nice that you’re back in Japan for Tanabata though. Have you made a wish yet?”
Kenzaki shakes his head, following her gaze to the bamboo sticks arranged into the shape of a tree in the corner. Each branch holds a dozen strips of colored paper tied to it from all the various customers over the past couple weeks. “Anything I could wish for is too big to come true like this.”
“Doesn’t hurt to try,” Michiko tells him.
“Fair enough,” Kenzaki says and doesn’t protest when she pushes him a blue piece of paper and a pen. “What about you? Did you wish for anything this year?”
Michiko knows the kind of answers people expect at her age, something about a husband to come along soon, or for the health of her children if they don’t know she’s unmarried, or for her parents’ prosperity if nothing else. She does have a brother and a young niece, but they’ve been doing well enough for themselves and she doesn’t worry about them. “Just for my business to keep doing well, but not so much so that I don’t have time for anything else.”
“Living the middle path,” Kenzaki says.
“Exactly.” She doesn’t ask him about what wish he is writing down, and a moment later, the couple sitting near the door come up to pay. By the time she is finished with them, Kenzaki has already hung his wish up on the tree.
“It’s funny what excuses people will find to make wishes,” Michiko muses once she is done. The door rings and the other one, Hajime, enters, though Kenzaki doesn’t seem to have noticed. “I never understood how we got wishes on trees from the story of Tanabata, but maybe they came about separately.”
“There’s a story behind Tanabata?” asks Hajime.
“Hajime!” Kenzaki whirls around, his eyes lighting up as they always do when he sees him.
“Kenzaki,” Hajime returns, smiling softly. “You came early this time.”
“I didn’t want to keep you waiting,” Kenzaki says. “Anyway, how have you not heard of the Tanabata story? We’ve been doing this for four years, and nobody said anything?”
Michiko quietly resigns herself to being ignored and unable to ask for Hajime’s order, even though they are sitting right in front of her this time. Do they really see each other so infrequently that they have no time for anyone else when they are together? Surely they meet up with each other at other times besides this night.
Hajime frowns. “Is there a reason someone would tell me about it now that we have been meeting up?”
Is he a foreigner? Michiko wonders. His Japanese is accentless, but she can’t imagine living here her whole life and not at least vaguely knowing the tale. Perhaps he’s one of those people whose parents moved to a different country for their work while he was growing up or something.
“Uh, not really,” Kenzaki says, and Michiko could swear his ears go dark. “It’s not that important.”
Michiko makes a decision on the spot. Someone clearly needs to save these two from themselves.
“It’s an old Chinese story,” she says. Both of them jerk their heads up like they had already forgotten about her, Kenzaki wide-eyed and Hajime puzzled. She doesn’t want to make assumptions about these two, but also this is the exact reason she hates interacting with new couples.
“I don’t remember the exact details,” Michiko continues, now that she has their attention. “But it was something like this. Once upon a time, there was a weaver and a cowherd who lived in the sky. They fell deeply in love, but when they were together, she neglected her weaving and he let his cows run loose across the heavens. Her father separated them on opposite sides of the Milky Way so that the world would not be in disarray from their union. However, the weaver was so heart-broken that she eventually convinced her father to let them meet one night a year on the seventh day of the seventh month.”
“A girl who fought her fate,” Hajime murmurs, which isn’t the reaction Michiko expects, but he shares a glance with Kenzaki like that means something.
“I’ve heard other versions too,” Kenzaki adds, and at least this time he’s speaking to Michiko too, not just staring at Hajime like they are the only people in the entire world. “Where the cowherd was a human who trapped the weaver by taking the coat that let her travel to the heavens.”
As he talks, Kenzaki looks at Michiko and his bowl of udon and the far wall and everywhere except Hajime. His words would be casual if not for that obvious exclusion. It's the opposite for Hajime, who does not seem to take his eyes off of Kenzaki the whole time, even to blink.
"I think I've heard that too," Michiko says. "Is that the Chinese version? I think he has to complete some trials to see her again, but he fails."
"Yeah, something like that," Kenzaki says.
The door chimes, and Michiko is pulled away to greet the new customers. She's not entirely sure the other two notice when she leaves. As she takes the group’s orders, she could swear she hears Hajime murmur, "You didn't trap me anywhere."
2011
"I was wondering if you would show up this year," Michiko teases when it’s Kenzaki’s turn in line to order.
Between his confused expression and drenched clothes, he looks just pathetic enough that she feels the urge to give him a blanket and a hot drink or something. She supposes the soup he will order will have to be good enough.
“What?” Kenzaki asks.
“The rain,” she says. “Aren’t the weaver and the cowherd not able to meet when it rains? You only seem to meet when they do.”
Kenzaki snorts. “Sure, but as far as I know, neither of us rely on magpies to carry us anywhere.”
Which pretty much confirms that they only see each other once a year at her restaurant. There has to be a story behind that, why they meet so rarely even though they obviously care about each other, even though Kenzaki’s travels seem to be aimless wanderings rather than work or anything of substance that would keep them apart.
Hajime does indeed show up a little later, but it’s busy enough that night that Michiko doesn’t get much of a chance to say anything else to them.
2012
The next year, Michiko almost forgets about her restaurant's annual visitors. Her eight year old niece is hanging out in the kitchen since it’s a Saturday and she doesn’t have school or anywhere better to be. Michiko is busy going back and forth between keeping an eye on her and training a new employee, some kid named Asaki a few months out of high school.
It isn't until Hajime walks through the door that it fully registers that tonight is Tanabata.
Hajime orders what Michiko is beginning to suspect is his usual—a medium hot bowl with beef—and takes a seat by the window.
"Oh, it’s him again," Michiko says, leaning conspiratorially towards her new hire. "He shows up here every year on Tanabata with some other guy. I'm pretty sure that they only ever see each other on this one night."
Asaki looks a little skeptical but doesn't say anything. He's not much of a talker, but he seems to be entertained by whatever bits of gossip Michiko has on their regulars.
"No, really," she says. "They've been at this for... six years now, I think."
"So they just come here, meet up and eat udon, and then go their separate ways for a year?" Asaki asks.
"I don't know," Michiko says. "They always leave together and I don't know what they do after that. But every time they meet, it's like they haven't seen each other in ages."
As if to prove her point, Kenzaki appears, and the two proceed to do their annual ritual of saying each other's names as if those handful of syllables contain a novel's worth of emotions.
"They're always like that," Michiko informs him. "I don't even bother trying to serve whoever shows up second at this point."
"Six years is a long time," Asaki says quietly.
She supposes it is to someone like him, when six years is a whole third of his life. It's less so for her, but still, that's a long time to spend apart from someone so important. Six years is probably more for them than her, too. If she had to guess, she would put their age somewhere in their early twenties which is strange now that she thinks about it because she thought they were in their early twenties the first time as well. Some people just don't age until they hit like fifty, she thinks ruefully.
"Well, you only have to stick around for one year to see I'm not making this up," she says.
Asaki smiles politely, like he doesn't expect to stay that long but doesn't want to say anything to her about it. Michiko is almost certain he'll be gone before then. There's something restless about him, and this isn't the kind of job most people plan on sticking to their whole lives anyway.
"Or you can just take my word for it," she teases, and his smile turns a little more genuine.
2013
Despite the late hour, the restaurant is actually decently busy, the sound of pleasant chatter and clacking dishes filling the air. Michiko has definitely worked worse shifts, ones where nobody shows up and she is bored to death, or it’s so busy she doesn’t even have a moment to breath, or the general atmosphere is just tired and irritated.
This isn’t that, so even though she didn’t really get enough sleep the night before and just wants to go home and lie in bed, she definitely could be having a worse time.
“Absolutely not!” The yell cuts through the whole shop, everyone falling silent in its wake.
Startled out of her half-zoned out doze, Michiko looks up to see Kenzaki standing up from his table in the corner, furious.
The thing is, after having owned this restaurant for nearly a decade and worked various customer service jobs for several years before that, Michiko has a good sense of measuring how upset someone actually is and how much of her problem it needs to be.
In this moment, she is terrified. Despite usually being all friendly smiles and light hearted jokes, Kenzaki now quivers with barely contained rage, like it might explode out of him at any moment, as if he is one second away from simply flipping the table over. His face is flushed, and it might just be the lighting, but she could swear that his darkening cheeks bear a greenish tinge to them.
She isn’t the only one who senses the danger; the rest of the restaurant is dead still, and even Hajime looks worried, wide eyes staring up at Kenzaki.
Heart pounding, Michiko takes a step out from behind the counter. Whether she likes it or not, she is the owner of this place, and it’s her responsibility to step in if customers start getting troublesome.
“Kenzaki,” Hajime whispers, and in the silence it seems like a shout.
It breaks the tension with a snap, the fury disappearing from Kenzaki’s face only to be replace by horror.
With an almost audible sigh of relief, the other customers turn back to their food and conversations, the water from Rie in the back washing dishes starting up again. Michiko, however, is still focused on the pair in the corner.
“I’m sorry!” Kenzaki blurts out, stumbling back away from the table, nearly crashing into the chair behind him. “I can’t—I should—”
Without another word, he turns around and runs out the door.
“Wait!” Hajime calls out, scrambling out of his chair, but he is already too late.
What on earth was that? Michiko wonders.
2014
It’s Tanabata again, and Michiko is ready for her annual update on whatever the fuck is going on with Kenzaki and Hajime, but it’s clear she is not the only one on edge for this meeting.
For the past three hours, Hajime has been sitting at the end of the counter, mechanically sipping at his glass of water once every five minutes or so. He isn’t a fidgeter—his nervousness seems to have made him still instead—but nobody has dared to take the stool next to his for the entire evening.
Michiko refills his cup whenever it starts getting low and doesn’t even think about kicking him out, even though there’s only so much room in her shop and she doesn’t normally allow stragglers to stick around through the entirety of the dinner rush. Whatever the fight last year was about, it’s really none of her business, and she doesn’t think Hajime would appreciate her talking to him about it, so it’s all she can do for him.
It’s almost ten though, and Kenzaki still hasn’t come, and at some point she really is going to have to close up.
Half an hour, she decides, as she starts to putting lids on the containers of toppings. She’ll give him an extra half hour past closing because he looks so sad sitting there all by himself, waiting for someone who may never show.
At 9:55, the cook has already left, so it’s just her and Hajime in the place. Michiko is giving the tables one last wipe down when the bell of the door tinkles. She looks up, half hopeful, half ready to refuse whatever person thinks they can walk into a restaurant five minutes before they close.
“Kenzaki!” Hajime says just as she registers his face. He stands up from his stool, but does not go towards him.
Kenzaki gives him a tired smile. Michiko eyes him a little warily, but whatever fury she had seen in him last year seems entirely gone, like it was never there at all.
“I didn’t think you would come,” Hajime says, and Michiko takes that as her cue to head back into the kitchen to give them a bit of space.
She grabs a broom and begins sweeping because politeness or no, she’s curious about the two of them and wants to stay quiet enough to overhear what they’re saying.
“I almost didn’t,” Kenzaki says, soft enough that she can barely hear him even in this empty restaurant. “But I couldn’t stay away.”
“I’m glad.” Hajime’s tone is level, but Michiko has seen him worrying all evening, and she knows how relieved he is.
“I shouldn’t have,” Kenzaki says. “Maybe we should stop. Even this much contact is too dangerous. I almost—”
“You didn’t.”
“But I could have.”
There is a beat of silence, and Michiko wonders if this is it for her most mysterious annual regulars.
Then, “I couldn’t bear it, to not see you ever again. To not ever know if you’re alright.”
“Hajime...” There is a sudden ruffle of clothes, and Michiko wonders if she looked up whether she would see them hugging or kissing or what.
All at once, it feels unbearably intimate, like she is intruding on something not meant to be viewed by mortal eyes. If this was a show or movie, she wouldn’t dare look away from the screen, but these are real people, and the pain and longing she can hear just from their voices is more than anyone should ever have to reveal to a stranger. Never mind that they are choosing to do this in her restaurant of all places, she knows that she needs to give them privacy.
Muttering to herself about her stupid sense of decency, Michiko turns on the sink to start washing the last of the dishes.
Ten more minutes, she decides. Because she’s feeling nice today. Then she’ll kick them out.
2015
As much as she enjoys the occasional gossip, Michiko isn’t actually one to get invested in other people’s lives unless they are already friends or family she cares about.
At work, she’ll chat with her regulars, celebrate their joys with them and listen sympathetically to their sorrows. She’s relieved when Emi’s son gets into his preferred high school, angry when Hirosawa’s father starts another fight with him, excited when Anju gets an unexpected promotion. But none of these are things that she takes home with her, that she gives much thought to outside of her interactions with them.
She doesn’t really want to be the kind of nosy person who has to know everything about everyone, with an opinion to match. It’s just that Hajime and Kenzaki are too bizarre to not think about.
It’s the ninth time that they have met on Tanabata night at her restaurant, the ninth time they have greeted each other with more longing and relief than she ever thought could fit into a single name, the ninth time they have lost themselves in conversation as if no one else existed.
Stranger still, eight years have passed since that first night, and what started out as a joking observation is slowly coalescing itself into certainty; they do not age.
Estranged friends who do not get the chance to meet up often? Lovers who cannot be together for one reason or another but have decided to meet on this most fitting night? Those would make sense, even if Michiko would be impressed at their dedication to coming here every year. But the aging thing is weird. She has never knowingly served a god or immortal at her little riverside restaurant before, let alone two.
They are just puzzling enough for her to actually remember all their strange interactions and cryptic comments, despite how infrequently she sees them.
Michiko is wiping down some of the tables, and Kenzaki is talking just loudly enough for her to overhear him say, “I don’t regret it. I meant it, when I said I’d fight fate. I’d fight the Overseer or the gods or anyone else, and keep fighting them, as long as I didn’t have to fight you.”
Hajime’s reply is too soft for her to hear, but she still remembers Hajime’s reaction to the story of the cowherd and weaver, how he described the weaver as “fighting her fate”.
Was that comment because of Kenzaki? she wonders. What fate could these two possibly be fighting that lead them to her restaurant on this night of all nights, for nine years in a row?
2016
“There’s another version of the story,” Kenzaki tells her from his stool at the counter.
At the sound of his voice, Michiko automatically looks to the door before she realizes he’s talking to her. It’s past nine, and Hajime should be here, and she is trying not to be too invested, but it’s hard not to worry when Hajime is usually the earlier one.
“The story?” Michiko repeats, before she remembers their conversation years ago, about the different versions of the Tanabata story. “Oh, right, what’s this new version?”
Unlike Hajime, Kenzaki is a bit of a nervous fidgeter, and he twists the ring on his finger and glances at the clock before speaking. Looking at him now, she can’t see any trace of that furious person that scared her a few years back, which is honestly even more disconcerting than if she could.
“Once upon a time, a celestial weaver left the heavens to visit the mortal realm,” he begins. He isn’t looking at her, but at the black spade symbol spinning around and around his middle finger. “It was just supposed to be a quick trip, but before she knew it, she found herself a family there. So when it came time to return, she couldn’t leave them behind.”
“A family with the cowherd?” Michiko asks.
Kenzaki looks up at her for a moment. “No, a—girl. That she adopted. The cowherd met the two of them and fell in love with the weaver, even though he wasn’t sure his feelings were returned. They lived in harmony for a little while alongside all their friends in the cowherd’s village. Only, the weaver had a very important job up in the heavens, and with her gone, it was starting to get bad.”
“Gods can’t go without their clothes,” Michiko says.
“Yeah, they were unhappy,” Kenzaki says. “And it started to affect the humans too. There were droughts and floods. Crops died, and plagues spread, and there was talk of war.”
Despite the warmth of the July evening, Michiko can’t help but shiver at the tone of his voice.
“The weaver’s father himself descended from the heavens to demand her return. She was ready to go back because as much as she loved her life among the mortals, staying would only make it worse for everyone. But the cowherd protested, saying that there had to be another solution. Why couldn’t she do her weaving work on earth?
“But the gods... the gods’ weaving equipment isn’t the same as mortal ones, and it would take her twice as long to do the same amount of work. So the cowherd offered to share her work and do half of it himself so the weaver could stay.”
“That should be a happy ending, right?” Michiko asks. They would both be swamped with work, but what human couple isn’t? They, like everyone else, would still be able to find time together, no longer the tragic couple of myth, but just the normal pains of living in this world.
“You would think,” Kenzaki says bitterly, and his eyes dart up to the clock behind her. “But the weaver’s father was angry at having his daughter taken away from him. ‘If the two of you like this world so much, if you like this work so much, then stay in it and do it forever,’ he said. So the weaver was banished to the earth, and the cowherd was cursed to live and weave forever so the gods would always be clothed.”
Michiko frowns. It isn’t the best fate, but they did both get what they wanted, more or less.
“And they would have been fine with that,” Kenzaki continues as if reading her mind. “The weaver had no wish to go back to the heavens ever again, and the cowherd would have happily spent an eternity weaving if he could spend it with the weaver. So the weaver’s father gave them one last condition to make it truly a punishment.”
“They could never see each other again,” Michiko finishes.
Kenzaki looks down, still spinning his ring. “But what can you do when it’s the love of your life? The cowherd could not bear the idea of eternity without the weaver and miserably spent his days weaving, hoping that at least she could enjoy her time with her mortal family. But their friends got tired of seeing the cowherd and weaver so sad, so after a couple years, they passed some messages between the two. Eventually, they agreed to meet for one night every year on the seventh day of the seventh month, hoping that luck would be on their side, and the weaver’s father wouldn’t happen to look down and catch them on that night.”
It’s an oddly unsatisfying version of the tale, with too many things up in the air to fully feel complete. “Do they ever get caught?”
“Not yet,” Kenzaki says. “There was... a close call once though. Maybe it is safer for both of them to not risk it.”
Michiko remembers that night a couple years ago, after Kenzaki and Hajime had fought and she had almost thought Kenzaki wouldn’t show up again. He said something about it being too dangerous for them to meet.
“Does the weaver end up loving the cowherd back?” she asks.
Kenzaki shrugs.
“I think she does,” Michiko says decisively. “Why else would she keep taking the risk to see him again?”
“Maybe,” Kenzaki says, finally looking up, something nameless in his expression.
The bell on the door rings, and Michiko looks up to see Hajime hurrying across the room, a young woman right behind him.
“I’m so sorry for being late,” Hajime says, not quite out of breath.
“You came.” The relief in Kenzaki’s eyes almost hurts.
“Amane insisted on coming with me,” Hajime says, stepping back so the young woman behind him can be seen more clearly.
Kenzaki almost falls off of his stool. “Amane? You—you’re all grown up now!”
“Yeah, it’s been ages!” Amane scolds him. “Where have you been? Hajime hasn’t told me anything!”
Having been delegated to the background once again, Michiko wordlessly fills up two extra glasses of water and sets them on the counter. Hajime gives her a brief nod, but Amane seems to have all her attention fixed on Kenzaki.
“Uh...” Kenzaki says, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. “I’ve been traveling for work. I can’t stop by in Japan often anymore.”
“What work?” Amane demands. “For BOARD?”
Kenzaki frowns at her. “How do you know about that?”
“Kotaro wrote a whole book about it,” Amane scoffs. “He might not have mentioned you by name, but I’m not stupid.”
Kotaro? BOARD? Michiko carefully stores those words for later.
“Amane,” Hajime says, gently putting his hand on her shoulder, and she falls silent. “I told you not to ask him too many questions.”
The weaver in Kenzaki’s story had a daughter, Michiko thinks. A strange addition, but maybe now seeing the three of them together, it makes sense. Amane doesn’t look much younger than the other two, but if she had come with Hajime that first time, ten years younger, she might have assumed she was his niece or much younger sister.
“I’ll tell you all about it,” Kenzaki promises, sliding off his stool. “But this place is going to close soon, so why don’t we go outside?”
“Fine,” Amane says, crossing her arms. “But you better tell me everything .”
Kenzaki glances at Hajime. “I’ll tell you whatever he lets me tell you.”
“I think it’s time you knew everything,” Hajime says quietly. “Let’s go.”
The three of the leave, which is really quite a shame. Closing time or not, Michiko would very much like to listen in on that conversation.
2017
Out of curiosity, Michiko looks up those words the young woman with Hajime mentioned and finds a book written by an investigative journalist called Shirai Kotaro about the strange attacks in the Kanto area around 2004.
It’s an interesting read, even if some of the stuff about the evolutionary Battle Fight from ten thousand years ago strains against her suspension of disbelief.
Most of it seems well researched though. The first half of the book is a thorough description of the conspiracies surrounding the research organization BOARD, how some of the members unleashed ancient beings called Undead into the world that proceeded to attack humans, how BOARD tried to cover it up but were destroyed by the Undead, how the remaining members came together to stop that threat for once and for all. It’s a story of conspiracies within conspiracies, manipulation and secrets from a select few at the top who wanted the power of the Undead for themselves.
Michiko remembers hearing about the Kamen Riders at the time. Apparently, two of them were BOARD members, called T and K in the book, while two others, M and H, were regular people who got pulled into the mess through unspecified means.
K and H, she thinks. Perhaps that is Kenzaki and Hajime, though there really is no way to tell. Shirai doesn’t go in depth on the Kamen Riders as people, mostly detailing how they took out each Undead.
The writing is very compelling, but it’s also a relatively straightforward story of taking out the Undead one by one until only one was left, leading to the nation-wide attack of the cockroach monsters that Michiko still remembers vividly all these years later. And even that last Undead was defeated by K, humanity saved and the monsters sealed up and locked away.
A simple and happy ending, it seems, but Michiko knows that things are rarely so straightforward in real life.
All the Undead are gone, Shirai claims in his book, but Michiko thinks of Kenzaki’s story of the celestial being who joined the mortal realm and the human who became immortal for her, about how neither Kenzaki nor Hajime have seemed to age in all these years, about how there are several things Hajime did not know that she would have expected from anyone growing up in Japan.
Maybe the connections are nothing. But maybe she is onto something here.
Not that she is entirely sure what picture this forms, precisely how it relates to the two customers who show up once a year to meet each other and then separate for another year.
Hajime shows up first this time. Normally, he sits at one of the tables, but the place is busy today so he takes a seat at the counter. He orders his usual and sits in the corner to wait.
“Have you written a wish down here before?” Michiko asks when she takes his empty bowl and Kenzaki still has not come. She remembers asking Kenzaki this once, though not what his wish was, if she even saw it.
Hajime shakes his head.
“Here.” Michiko hands him a pen and a strip of paper with a string attached to it, wondering if she should give an explanation. He didn’t know the story of Tanabata all those years ago, but surely by now he at least knows this process?
There is no hesitation with which Hajime writes down his wish. From the upside down glimpse she catches, she is pretty sure he writes, “To continue seeing Kenzaki and for the world to be at peace.”
It’s a very direct wish, and it seems strangely sweet to put seeing his friend on the same level as world peace like that. Most people would choose one or the other.
Still, they only see each other once a year, Michiko thinks. Wouldn’t he want to see Kenzaki more often than that, rather than just continue what they have? Each time they greet each other, it’s like they are being remade into a whole person. She’s only seen them separate once, and it looked like Hajime had his heart torn out, like all the breath in his lungs was punched out of him.
But hadn’t Kenzaki said something like that all those years ago? Something about wishes that were too big to be granted this way. Maybe seeing each other more is too much to hope, and all he can do is ask to continue what they have.
Hajime stands up to tie his wish to the tree in the corner and then returns to his seat.
By this point, Michiko has lost all chance of pretending to herself that she isn’t invested in these two, so she is free to hope with all her heart that his wish comes true.
2018
Michiko isn’t even trying to eavesdrop. It’s just that the AC has broken down again, and she’s taking any excuse she can get to be further away from the hot kitchen, including wiping down the tables for the millionth time in the row. It’s not her fault that the restaurant is fairly empty at 9:30 in the evening, and neither Hajime nor Kenzaki are making a particular effort to keep quiet.
She isn’t even really paying attention to them, tuning them out with all the other background noise, when Kenzaki’s voice catches her attention with, “We should probably find another place to meet from now on.”
The words register a moment later, and her heart drops. As infrequently as these two customers may come, after over a full decade of hinting at some tragic mystery between them, she has grown rather attached to them. Still, she supposes, she has long since started to question their lack of aging, and sooner or later other people might as well.
“I’ve already had to move out of the Jacaranda,” Hajime says in agreement.
Michiko heads back to the register, trying to shove away her disappointment. They really are none of her business, and whatever is going on between them was never something she would learn the full story behind anyway. It’s just a little sad, when she’s always had this annual thing to look forward to, one more thing to spice up the monotonies of restaurant work.
This late in the evening, nothing is even cooking in the kitchen anymore, but it’s still the furthest place away from the open windows that bring in the occasional stray breeze. Her niece Kayo, having just recently started high school, is working the kitchen tonight and is no doubt suffering immensely. It’s hardly the best first job anyone has worked, Michiko thinks, but at least Kayo knew what she was getting into. She used to hang out here all the time on the weekends and during school breaks when she was little and her parents were busy.
Sometimes time seems to pass by so fast.
Michiko looks back up to where the two are sitting at their table in the corner and thinks that at least at the end of all of this she will have a strange story to tell, of how the cowherd and weaver themselves, or at least two people very much like them, met at her restaurant of all places. No one will believe her, not entirely, but it will be funny nonetheless.
Something appears to be going on with Hajime and Kenzaki, though she can’t quite hear what they are saying at this distance.
Kenzaki seems nervous, grinning too widely as he alternates between fidgeting and gesturing broadly. In contrast, Hajime could be made of stone, his face perfectly blank. He gives a terse reply, one or two words at most, but in response, Kenzaki practically sags with relief, his laughter bright and loud.
The rest of the evening passes by quickly. Michiko sends Kayo home early, since it doesn’t seem like anyone is coming that night, and sets around cleaning up. Soon, Kenzaki and Hajime go as well, and when she tells them goodbye after they pay, she knows that this will be the last time. At least it was fun knowing them, she thinks.
By ten, everyone has already left, so she closes up immediately.
Her restaurant isn’t open tomorrow, so maybe she’ll get her brother in to come in fix the AC. The summer is only getting hotter from here, and she doesn’t want to put it off for as long as she did last time this happened. Maybe she’ll make a day of it and catch up on all the various chores and such that she needs to get around to doing sooner rather than later.
Michiko locks the restaurant door behind her and heads out to the small parking lot behind the shop, the breeze from the river cool against her neck. Normally, she takes the subway to work, but that route still includes a good fifteen minutes of walking and it was far too hot this afternoon to deal with that, so she drove.
To her surprise, her car isn’t the only thing in the lot that evening. In the shadows from the streetlight are two motorcycles parked in the far end, and it takes her a moment to see that there are people there too, one sitting sideways on a motorcycle, the other leaning in close. As her eyes adjust, she sees what she had suspected; Hajime and Kenzaki entangled up in each other, kissing.
Good for them, she thinks, smiling to herself as she looks away. So the weaver loved the cowherd back after all. Was that what they were talking about earlier inside?
Hoping not to disturb them, Michiko quietly makes her way to her car. Above her, the skies are clear, and even with the light pollution, she thinks she can make out two bright stars, Altair and Vega, cowherd and weaver. For her, there is no Milky Way visible to separate the two.
She unlocks her car, which beeps as she does, and is unable to help the slam of the door when she opens it and shuts it behind her.
When she looks at her mirror to back out, she catches sight of Kenzaki and Hajime, no longer kissing but still standing close to each other. If this is her last time seeing them, Michiko thinks, at least in this moment they are happy, so she can always remember them like this and hope that whatever keeps them apart, they will still be able to find their way back to each other and to moments like this.