Work Text:
Hei was sleeping. Sleeping off liquor and guilt and physical pain. Yin could see it in the way he threw himself onto the hotel bed. He didn’t check for wire taps, cameras, or any of the other tells that could get him killed. So, Yin did it instead. Silent footsteps took her around the room in a mimicry of what she had seen Hei do two dozen times. She pressed her fingers under the rims of the lampshades, feeling the threads of the fabric without interruption.
She moved to the drawers. Open. Feel. Shut. One at a time. She looked under the beds. She rifled through Hei’s bag and put tape over the hole in the door. Still, he slept. Yin plugged up the sink and filled it, the ghostly shape of her own extended perception lifting from the water. She didn’t need to act like Hei to know this place was safe. But maybe if she did, he wouldn’t have to. Yin looked at this hotel room. It was big. It felt like an apartment rather than a hotel room. This one had a kitchen. It had cookware. It had a fridge. Her gaze shifted back to Hei. He hadn’t eaten.
His bag was still open on the floor. Yin went back to it and found Hei’s wallet. They had more than this. Hei kept it rolled up in his socks. This was enough for food. Yin took the crumpled bills and folded them stuffing them in the top of her dress as she took the hotel key card and left.
Down the hall she passed doors. Running water, a man taking a shower. Water sometimes showed her thing she’d rather not see. She walked further. The front desk on the right. There was a man behind the counter. He didn’t speak Japanese well. She tried English. That seemed to make the man smile.
“Where is there a store?” She asked.
“Ah downtown is a short walk away. Looking to do some shopping?”
She nodded. “For food. I need to cook for him.”
“What a wonderful wife you are!” He said with the sort of dreamy sigh that she mostly attributed to people talking about a cute animal. “I wish my wife would cook for me,” he laughed and the took a pamphlet that had a map and drew a circle and line with his pen. “Here,” he said. “It’s a small corner store but should have enough for you to cook him a decent meal.”
Yin took the pamphlet and studied the map. Not far. It was just around the corner. She turned from the counter and walked out the doors, looking right then left before going right and walking down the sidewalk.
It was hot. She didn’t know where they were now. Hei hadn’t said. He rarely did. But no one spoke Japanese. Bits of English and some southeast Asian language floated past her ears as she walked and came to the corner store.
A woman greeted her behind a counter. Yin kept her head down. She just needed to get enough food to cook for Hei. She pulled the crumpled bills from her dress and counted them in the first isle. 17. 17 sounded like a lot, but the numbers on the bills were different. The numbers on the food packaging were different. She didn’t know what she had. She took one of the bills and held it up to the package of cup noodles. The number on the bill was much bigger. She could buy a few of these with just one. Good. Hei could eat.
Yin slowly made her way around the store, picking up things that were in the limits of the number printed on money she had. Eggs, noodles, rice, some prepared foods and snacks. The milk was heavy. She could only carry one. But that was fine. Yin left the store with two full plastic bags and some money still tucked in her dress. She could cook now.
She brought the food back to the hotel room. Hei was snoring on the bed, twisted up in his own arms and the sheets. Yin kept the lights off and unpacked things in the bathroom. The cup noodles first. She read the packaging, tracing every word with her pointer finger. Pour water to the fill line and heat for 3 minutes . There was a picture of a microwave. They had one of those. She packed all the cup noodles back into one bag and brought them to the kitchen where she pulled back the tab and started filling them with water up to the line in the Styrofoam cup. One by one she placed them in the microwave and typed 3:00 into the keypad. She watched the noodles spin and listened to the hum of the microwave, stopping it just short of 3 minutes, so it didn’t wake him. She placed them on the table with a wooden pair of chopsticks. The prepared foods next. Rice, and little cakes. She unwrapped each of them and placed them on the table. The last thing. The only real thing she had to cook, the eggs. They had something that looked like meat too. She placed both of those by the stove and found the single pan the room had. The meat was pork belly. A bit thicker than the memories of her other life told her were meant for breakfast. Still, she laid each slice in the pan and turned on the stove. It sparked and ignited in a burst that caught her hand. She pulled it away. Red hot pain and a red mark on her palm. She needed to be more careful.
Yin turned down the stove and watched over the pork as it started to cook. It smelled good and started to brown on each side that she turned it to. But it was as she finished the first batch that she heard Hei stir. Finally, she looked away from the stove and saw him sit up.
“What are you doing?”
“Cooking.”
Hei stood up and walked over to her. “And where did you get all this?”
“The store. You need to eat,” she said. She went to turn the pork again with her fingers. It burned and Hei grabbed her wrist, holding it up. “You went to the store by yourself?”
She paused. He was angry. He was always angry. He yanked her away from the stove and pulled her to the sink where he turned on the water and held her hand under it. “Yin, you never go out alone.”
“Yes,” she answered. His other hand went and pulled the remaining money from the strap of her dress.
“And you will never take this again, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He shoved the money in his pocket. “Go sit down. I’ll finish,” he said and took over the stove, rifling through drawers for cooking utensils with one hand as a more skilled wrist tossed the meat and cracked eggs into the pan. Then he came back and put it all into a bowl. “You did all this?” He asked.
“Hei hasn’t eaten. I don’t know how to cook,” she said.
Hei lifted up one of the rice balls and placed it in front of Yin. “I’ll teach you. So you don’t burn yourself.”
Yin lifted her head, looking at him now. “I want to make you breakfast,” she said. “If Hei teaches me how to cook, I can make him something I remember from before.” The subtlest of smiles came to her lips. “Would you try it?”
It was a smile that he returned but wider. “Yes, anything you cook I’ll try.”