Chapter Text
The cicadas scream together in an intrusive chorus. The summer sunshine beats down onto the heads of its victims below. The laughter of children playing is heard in the distance, a mixture of high pitches evaporating into the hot air. The pavement sizzles underneath the shoes of those passing through, a waiting pan heated by the flames of the sun. Sweat gathers in the palm of your hand, your fingers wrapping around the slender index of the woman standing next to you, her hand unfurled and unresponsive to the gentle hold and occasional tugs coming from just below her.
In an unassuming neighborhood within the Hyogo prefecture, there is a house sitting right on the elbow of one its many corners. Its age is evident, seen through missing roof shingles, broken windows boarded up partially with spare cardboard, and foliage devouring portions of the walls outside. In front of the rickety wooden door is a sign which simply reads " Fukuda Family Cafeteria ". Also in front of the door stands a collection of three people, vastly differing in age: a child no older than eight, a young woman in her late twenties, and an elderly woman quickly approaching her seventies. The young woman wears a wide-brimmed sun hat upon her head, and she uses her free hand to slightly pull down its rim in an attempt to conceal her face from the curiosity of passersby.
"I can't do this anymore," the woman says. The much older lady, face covered in wrinkles deepened by a mosaic of emotions and the passage of time, stares at her in turn. Her eyes momentarily flicker towards you, whose attention lies elsewhere, your gaze fixated on the multi-colored windchime jingling gently above the doorway. Light passes through the glass of the windchime, and the soft colors are reflected upon your enchanted stare. Without the protection of a hat similar to the woman next to you, drops of sweat rain down past your cheeks. "He says that they're nothing more than a burden on our finances."
As if veiled by magic, your senses dull. Neither are you able to properly hear the words being said nor are you able to recognize the faces around you. A single word echoes through your mind.
Pretty…
"A financial burden," the older lady begins, her eyebrows digging deeper into the skin between them, "but you're not even feeding them properly?"
Slowly, she crouches down, minding the stiffness and age of her knees. With a slow raise of her raisined hand, she gently strokes her fingers through your hair. You are much, much skinnier than the children constantly running around in the neighborhood surrounding her. Much quieter, too. Drawn back into reality by the touch of someone unfamiliar, you tear your eyes away from the windchime and direct them instead to the ground. Your fist gently tightens around the younger woman's finger.
"I can't help it. I spend my entire week working, but all I can make is enough to afford instant noodles or convenience store food. I have to pay the rent, the utilities, the–"
"Gambling addiction your husband has." The elderly lady stands back up, massaging the surface of her knees with the hilt of her palms. A quiet sigh breaks free from her, and the woman pulls the rim of her hat down further. The young woman's face flowers into a vicious red, a fusion of shame and heated anger agitated further by the harsh stare from the sun. It burns into her back. "I've said it time and time again, that man is no good for you. Come home and start over."
"You don't understand." A breeze intrudes upon the conversation, ruffling your hair. The windchime flutters, pulled by the whims of the summertime wind, and you find yourself spellbound once more. The way the kaleidoscopic glass glitters when it perfectly takes hold of the light is brilliant, a kind of beauty not experienced before in your short years of life. "I love him."
The elderly lady thrusts a hand out to grab onto the woman's arm unoccupied by the hold of the child in their company. In one swift motion, she turns her forearm over, uncovering a collection of bruises against her skin, both healed and fresh. The woman jerks her arm away and holds it behind her back as she bites the inside of her bottom lip. "And the child?"
"He leaves them alone."
"That's not what I meant."
The woman's face flushes. "I can't love two things at once. Getting hit is nothing, because he looks at me when he does it. It's the least I can put up with. I don't want to have a marriage like yours; Dad barely even acknowledged your existence."
The elderly lady shakes her head, the words said to her pouring into one ear and spilling out the other. She begins to close the door. "Even if you beg, I'm not going to give you anymore money–"
"I'm going to kill them." The door stops. "I'm going to kill this child."
The old woman opens the door back up once more, a frown stamped upon her face. Mirrored in both her eyes and the glass face of the wind chime is the young woman, her mouth twisted into an uneasy smile. The corners of her red painted lips dig into her cheeks as if she had just been freshly slashed with a kitchen knife. The elderly lady's ears were certainly beginning to gradually fail more and more throughout the years, and so she uses the fact as an excuse to allow the woman in front of her to rewrite herself. "What?"
"He's seeing another woman," she clarifies. "He's been seeing another woman. A junior at his office. I caught them leaving a hotel together when I got suspicious of his late nights supposedly doing overtime. So I said that, if he didn't break up with her, then I would kill our child, because that would be such a hassle for him to deal with."
"You're ridiculous…!"
"I'm ridiculous, but it worked!" Her hand tightly grips onto yours, and she yanks you forward. You wince and nearly trip over yourself from the sudden force. "They broke up, he started coming home earlier, paid more attention to me, and I know it was just because he didn't want me to do anything, but he was finally there! But now, he sees me as a joke. Started seeing her again. Thinks I won't really do it. But I…"
The woman reels herself back. She releases you, who stumbles into the arms of the elderly lady. You look back at her, confused, and the woman's face contorts at your naivety in the face of her aggression. It's like looking in a mirror, and only now is she able to see how similarly the child she's been living alongside resembles her. She speaks again, this time softly. "I'm not here to ask for money. I'm asking you to take them from me."
"Okay," the older woman surrenders. She grabs onto your shoulders, holding you tightly against her. Your face presses into her floral embroidered apron, the soft fabric pillowing your head.
The woman stares at them, her child embraced in the arms of her own mother, and a strange feeling of loss overcomes her. It erupts through her throat, and her cheeks, and her eyes, her body bursting into a warm pink as tears begin to slowly crawl out of her. She is fully aware that, like a volcano, she is destructive – a vessel which patiently waits to inflict harm, because she doesn't know how else to live. She turns quickly and walks back to her car, and as the door slams, you wrestle your face away just enough to see her driving off without even so much as a glance into the rearview mirror.
The elderly lady pats your head, gently pulling you further into the building as she shuts the door to separate you both from the summertime. With a signal of her hand, she directs you to sit at the ledge in front of the entryway so that she can help you take your shoes off, the laces tangled rather than properly tied. But her fingers are surprisingly nimble despite her age, and so undoing them comes easy.
She waits for you to speak first, to ask a question, but nothing arrives. This indicates to her a need to be the one to speak or ask first, but little does anybody prepare someone for the duty of announcing to a child that their life is suddenly going to be much, much different, and despite the fact that the old woman has experienced much of the past and has little left of the future, she is someone who can only think of the present. And so, she asks: "Are you hungry, [Y/N]?"
You nod.
"It's a little early, but let's go ahead and have lunch now, then." She takes a short pause. "You can call me Granny, alright?"
You nod again.
Granny nestles your hand into her own and leads you further into the house, revealing to you its true nature. While the first floor of a house typically lies the expanse of the living room, dining room, and kitchen, this one displayed a set-up purely for the sake of cooking and dining. Upon entering, Granny and you are immediately greeted by two tables, both surrounded by a mismatched collection of folding and regular dining room chairs sitting around their perimeter. Against the wall is a longer, slimmer table, lined with stools for individual seating. Further in the back is a kitchen, its counters and stoves filled with a variety of pots, pans, and dishes, tins of seasonings speckled throughout the available surfaces in between.
Pulling a chair out from under one of the tables, Granny gestures for you to sit down, her hand patting a cushion lying on top of the seat. You walk over, though not without taking in the overload of visual stimuli available to you, a world separate from the dreary, half-furnished apartment you were more accustomed with. As you prop yourself onto the chair, she shuffles towards the kitchen area, and a cacophony of clinking pots and pans fills your ears, soon followed by a rush of water from the sink. Granny hums an unfamiliar tune as she rummages through the cookware, and you continue to let your sight explore the entirety of the space before you.
The area is certainly cluttered, though not lacking in charm. Hanging from the ceiling is an assemblage of random lanterns, each one a different shape and color, pouring a warm light into the rest of the room lying underneath. The windows are curtained with lace, an abundance of potted plants sitting atop the sills of them to soak in the sunlight trickling in through the glass. The ones unfortunate enough to take residence near the cardboard sealed windows are a little worse for the wear, though still rather green enough to give life to their surroundings. The walls surrounding you are a tad bit yellow with age, a collage of various prints and posters ranging from menus to torn pages from magazines with pictures of professional models concealing as much of the blank space as possible. An old television sits on the opposite side of the room, playing the news. The words that the reporter says are too big and get interrupted too often by the occasional static for you to understand, but you know the words "mother" and "child," and can recognize that someone has gotten hurt. Suddenly, the ruckus in the kitchen takes a pause, and the channel is switched to a different one covering a variety game show. The beats of exaggerated laughter spread throughout the building.
Next to the entry to the dining area is a small end table with a picture placed on top of it, a tiny cup with burnt out incense nearby. Trapped in the picture is the image of an old man, his hair receded far past his forehead. A cigarette pokes out from between his lips, and he holds onto a newspaper in his hands. The photograph was clearly taken without his prior knowledge, as he shoots the camera a stern look. Granny notices you studying it.
"That's your grandpa," she says, and she explains no further.
These observations are eventually interrupted by the ding of the microwave. A sound that's rather out of place, considering the chaos of the kitchenware that was occurring just a moment ago. When you sniff the air, you notice that there is no scent of fragrant oil or piquant spices. Granny approaches you with a plate in hand, steam rising from something still yet unknown to you. She walks with a slight hunch, and her unused arm cranes slightly forward.
"This was all that I could make on such little notice," she explains. The plate settles in front of your face, and its surface is cluttered by a mountain of small, perfectly rounded, bite-sized rice balls. Each one is speckled with dots of white and black sesame seeds, and your stomach rumbles at the sight. "It's leftover rice filled with pieces of karaage that I stored in the fridge last night. The Fukuda Special ."
Granny wasn't present for their grandchild's birth and sprout into childhood, so for all she's concerned, these were your first set of words, posed as a question: " Fukuda Special ?"
She pulls out the chair next to you and slowly settles into it, the legs creaking underneath her weight. "In other words, it's whatever I feel like making that day. Well, really, I couldn't think of what to put as the signature dish, so I decided it would just be easier to leave it up to a whim. But calling it a special or a mystery adds a little bit of magic."
Your fingers ghost over the food, careful of the temperature. After they flutter against the rice and you determine that it isn't too hot, you pop one into your mouth and begin to thoroughly chew. Certainly, you can tell that the karaage was simply microwaved as its outer coating has lost its original fried crunch – but coupled together with the thick coating of rice, the texture wasn't too jarring. The sesame seeds added a slightly bitter, slightly nutty flavor to the rice balls, which balanced perfectly well with the semi-sweet sauce of the karaage. Having survived on a lot of late night convenience store or discounted supermarket bentos, microwaved karaage was no stranger to you. But this one, melting in your mouth and falling apart with each bite, was something completely new.
Granny watches as you eat one, and then another, and then another, inhaling the entirety of the dish before you. On top of that, you're licking your fingers after each rice ball you consume, making sure to lap up every grain of rice, every crumb of chicken coating, every stray sesame seed. None of it is going to waste, and you convince yourself that you've done enough to where the plate doesn't even need to be washed.
"Get used to that," Granny says, like it's a threat, "because you're going to be living here from now on."
She waits for a sign of disapproval, something reminiscent of the cliche tantrums children throw when they're being dropped off at the daycare for the very first time. But nothing comes, and she finally gets up to put the emptied plate away in the sink. The taste of the karaage rice balls linger on your tongue as you recall the retreating figure of your mother, her skin battered and bruised, wrists made of nothing but bone.
The Fukuda Family Cafeteria isn't a stereotypical restaurant with a varied customer base. It's more like a meeting place for old friends, a comfort spot for those seeking to eat warm meals in the shared company of others. As a result, most of the Fukuda Family Cafeteria 's visitation is made up of older women and gentlemen (their children or grandchildren in tow on occasion), a collection of souls touched by your grandma and grandpa.
As a new member of the family and dweller of the home, it became expected of you to put in your share of the work. This included cleaning the toilet, taking out the trash, wiping down the tables, sweeping the floors, dusting the windows, and cooking. Cooking is a daunting task for you, considering your minimal experience outside of pressing the buttons on a microwave, but – perhaps due to the influence of your environment – you adapt fairly quickly. Granny makes sure to teach you even the very basic of basics.
There is one absolute rule to cooking:
- Food always tastes better when made with love.
And by extension, there is one absolute rule to eating:
- A meal is best enjoyed when accompanied by another.
"Even if a meal isn't cooked well," Granny begins as she ties the strings of your apron into a bow snug against the small of your back. You look down to observe the blue and white gingham pattern stretching across the fabric. "As long as it's made with love, it will never be a bad meal."
"What if I burn it?" you ask.
"A good meal can still be bad." You aren't sure you fully understand the juxtaposition of her reasoning. "But that's where eating with others comes in. Try eating something completely burnt into charcoal and see if either of you can go without cracking up over it. It's impossible. At least, it was for me and your grandpa."
Granny rarely ever brings up your grandpa, but when she does, her voice falls into a gentle whisper. It turns into a cradle for the things of the past that she continues to carry with her, blanketed in nostalgia. Her eyes are overcome with love, and sometimes – when she stares off into specific corners of the building – you swear you can see your grandpa staring back at her, cigarette in mouth, gaze floating just past the top of the newspaper to meet hers.
I think I can remember when Mom said that Grandpa ignored Granny regularly, or something along those lines. But I think I can tell that that wasn't really true. But maybe it stands that neither of them were wrong, and that there existed two versions of him. I wonder how many versions of me exist out in the world, and what are they to who?
"He doesn't seem like a laugher," you observe, turning attention towards the picture of him.
"He wasn't. Not much of a smiler either. It was a problem when we were young." She smiles. "I've learned that if you ever doubt how someone feels about you, just watch how they eat your cooking. It's a lot easier to notice someone's happiness while they're eating than any other time."
On occasion, she reminds you that you do not have to forgive your mother. However, she is always prepared to forgive your mother – her daughter – not because she thinks her actions are easily forgettable, but because she knows that your mother has nothing left. On the menu, right underneath the highlighted Fukuda Special is Koharu's Katsu Curry , a dish recreated from your mother's childhood. Sometimes you catch her looking at that spot in the menu for a moment which lingers for a little too long.
It's hard to tell if Granny is extremely understanding or a little bit naive. This is the easiest place to break into, is what often crosses your mind. Your entire lives are huddled inside of these walls, but she never locks the door. For years have people been coming and going, and she intends for that to be the case forever. Never is Granny apprehensive by the unannounced swing of the front door; she wishes for a familiar face, and that is always what she receives.
Surely, this neighborhood is protecting her. Maybe this place is the heart of it.
And then, before you know it, it's your first year of middle school. So many times have you been listening to the door scraping open and shut, that you nearly miss it this go around. The groan from the aged wood sings along with the ring of the familiar wind chime outside, and your eyes instinctively run towards the amalgamation of noise.
Fujita-san, a man with parted silver hair and a neat stache sitting on top of his lips, walks into the dining area to the sight of you hunched over a table while in the middle of doing your homework. He's the owner of a local bar tucked just a few streets down in between a couple of homes, and while you've never been inside due to your age, you pass it on occasion, recognizing it from his boisterous laughter exploding from the inside accompanied by the hoots and hollers of those often gathered to watch whatever sports game happened to be on.
"Wow! Summer uniform!" he exclaims while removing the hat on his head. He places the hat onto the accent table sitting at the room's entry way, just in front of the framed photograph of your grandfather. "It's good to have someone young around this place! Makes me feel a little younger myself!"
"It's been a while, Fujita," Granny greets from behind the counter separating the cooking and eating space. Plates hit against each other as she picks through them to lather in dish soap. "Still in good form?"
Fujita-san sits diagonally from you, and the two of you exchange quiet smiles, his significantly toothier than your own. "Not since my volleyball playing days with Akihito! Doctor says that I need to lay off the drinks for a while, but what does he know? Cassis milk is the secret to my long life! Lemon sour is the secret to eternal youth!"
"Your usual today?"
"Is it really my usual when you make something different each time?"
"There are other things on the menu."
Fujita-san places his arm on the table, perching the bottom of his chin onto the cushion of his palm. He stares wistfully as the photograph, half obscured by his hat, his rust-colored eyes refamiliarizing themselves with a face already carved into the back of his head. Akihito is likely the name of your grandfather. You recall the time you were helping Granny with some spring cleaning, opening up the closet to a male volleyball uniform perfectly preserved inside of a plastic hanger cover. "I'm not ready to let go yet, Mayu."
Akihito. Mayu. More names keep appearing.
Granny grins to herself in turn, and begins sorting through the ingredients in the fridge. Salted salmon. Shredded nori. Toasted sesame seeds. Green onions. Wasabi. Green tea leaves. Leftover rice – a staple.
Just like how the charm of the Fukuda Special comes from the name, people can really transform depending on what they're called, can't they?
She sets the salted salmon into the oven and stares at it through the glass, as if it'll come back to life and swim away from its heated chamber. When her doubts subside, she turns to the kettle to prepare the green tea leaves, filling it with water and bringing it to a boil. She throws the leaves inside as easily as she throws caution to the wind.
Granny is the woman who raised me, and Mayu is the wife of Fujita-san's best friend, Akihito. I wonder what mine means. I wonder if it means anything at all.
While the rice reheats in the microwave, she removes the salmon from the oven to break it up into tiny pieces. It crumbles at her fingertips. When the rice finishes its cycle of rotation in the microwave, she tops it off with the pieces of salted salmon, the crushed nori, the toasted sesame seeds, some spring onion, and a drop of wasabi. The kettle shouts at her a warning, and she strains the leaves from the green tea before pouring it into the bowl.
Oh, that smells wonderful.
"Today's Fukuda Special ," Granny announces as she places the dish in front of Fujita-san, "is ochazuke."
"With wasabi?" Fujita-san picks up the bowl to hold it closer to his nose, inhaling the sting of the wasabi and the earthiness of the green tea. "Just how I usually like it."
He takes small bites in order to prolong his mealtime, but chugs down the remaining green tea in one fell swoop – likely a practice resulting from his drinking habits. When Granny comes around to take his empty bowl away, he nods at her, and the two chatter meaninglessly about the weather, politics, old friends, you, until Fujita-san decides that it's time to leave so he can open his bar. Digging into the pockets of his pants, he fishes out a few crumpled yen bills and tosses them onto the counter. He picks up his hat from the end table and returns it to its rightful spot on top of his head, revealing the whole of your grandpa's unimpressed stare to the world again.
"Take care, [Y/N]. Keep up the good work, Mayu."
He tips the brim of his hat towards you before gently stroking the side of the frame with the back of his bony hand.
"See you later, Akihito."
It is common sense that humans need sustenance in order to live. Food and water, both things that can be broken down to biological necessity and little more. But people are surprisingly ritualistic, and human beings have always been storytellers at heart, even with lack of writing talent. You know this, because you have the capability in finding dialogue through Granny's food. When she leaves a bowl of pork fried rice wrapped in plastic on the table for when you get home late, it means I missed you . When she invites you to roast yams outside in the fall, it means I want to be by your side . When she makes sushi after you finish your tests, it means I'm proud of you . When you wake up in the middle of the night left in tears from a dream of your father in which you can't recognize his face but can recognize the sounds of his fists on your mother's flesh, she wordlessly gets up to make rice balls with whatever was leftover from the night before. This means I love you .
More than a need to satisfy hunger or thirst, humans desire love. It's an uphill battle, searching for something so abstract in nature. But with the ritual of cooking and the storytelling present in every dish created, food must then be the closest we can ever get to giving love physical form.
About three weeks after his visit, Granny tells you that Fujita-san won't be returning anymore.
Granny, you've learned, isn't the type to attend funerals. Not because she finds them inconvenient or boring, but because she prefers to believe that her friends have simply gone somewhere far, far away. After attending her husband's funeral, she was disturbed by the fact that he was trapped in the ground, fossilizing right beneath her and yet completely out of reach. And so, if those who passed were going to be out of reach anyways, she'd rather them be someplace more exciting than underneath the surface of the Hyogo prefecture.
Both you and Granny remain wordless in the dining area. You stand at the stove, watching the boiling kettle filled with water and green tea leaves. Granny sits at a table, watching as one of the lightbulbs in the lantern right above her flickers unpredictably.
Fujita-san, I think, is the type to go to France. I can imagine him dressed in a beret with his neck wrapped in a foulard, gorging himself on escargot and French wine. He'd be playing in a fancy volleyball club to get along with the frenchmen, and he would discuss plans of participating in the Tour de France, despite his inexperience with biking. Yes, certainly, right now he is in France, at the very top of the Eiffel Tower.
"I think I'd place Fujita in Paris," Granny states, her voice gentle. The end of her sentence dissolves into the air.
The kettle whistles, and you pour the green tea into two mismatched teacups. The smell of the liquid is grassy and slightly sweet, and the steam gently holds your face. "I agree," you reply.
Towards the end of your middle school career, you find yourself sitting in front of your teacher, a hand pressed firmly against his temple as he stares exasperatedly at the paper you had handed him earlier. He's leaning forward against the desk separating the two of you, and you're leaning back into your seat. The window in the room is cracked open to circulate air through the room, and you can faintly hear birds singing in the distance.
"You're not planning on going to high school?" This is the second time he asks the question.
"No, sir." And this is the second time you answer it.
"You perform well on your tests, [Y/N]. I think you could get into a really good school. Have you thought this over?"
"Sensei," you begin, and a rush of wind sneaks in through the crack of the window, causing the sheet held in your teacher's hand to almost dance out of his grip. He holds on tighter, and the paper crinkles. "I think that high school is for people who are passionately chasing their dreams. I already know what I want to do. Attending alongside my classmates who feel that they have to try their best while I've already got everything I want feels unfair to both me and them."
"I think that's the most I've heard you speak." He lowers the survey sheet, and his knuckles tap against the surface of the wooden desk in defeat. "Can you at least explain to me your plan after graduation, then?"
"I…plan to take over my grandmother's shop, sir."
"Her restaurant, right? The, uh, what was it called again…the Fukuda Cafeteria ?"
I can't remember the last time I've heard anyone call it a restaurant. It feels so foreign.
"Yes." You pause. "The Fukuda Family Cafeteria , sir."
As time progresses, so does your cooking skill. For the better, not only because of your obligation after middle school, but also because Granny's age is beginning to rapidly catch up to her. Before you know it, your hands are her hands, your speed and reflex a substitution for hers which have long since deteriorated. Along the path back home, you recall a time when she asked you to assist her in making the side dish for the night, which was yamitsuki cabbage.
Holding the handle of the kitchen knife in both hands, you angle the blade awkwardly against the leaves of cabbage as you swing down sporadically. The scene of your crime consists of what looks more like blocks of cabbage, uneven and in pieces too large to eat, with some pieces not even being cut all the way through.
"You cook like a university boy," you remember her laughing, which meant little to you since you were well before university age. She hovers behind you, gently placing her dry hands on top of your own as she guides you through the motions. "Here, you curl this hand into the shape of a cat's paw. Yes, like that. And then you use that to help guide your other hand with the chopping. Right. Still needs a little work, but you've already got the form down. Oh, be careful! Goodness…"
You finished helping prepare dinner that night, but not without leaving with your fingers covered in a collage of band-aids. Nowadays, the only times you're in need of one is if you accidentally zone out and nick or burn yourself a little as a result, an occurrence which takes place few and far between. Between the time of your middle school graduation and now, you've only needed to patch yourself up once, and it was because you got distracted mid-cutting by a woman with a wide brimmed sun hat passing by the window.
"I'm home," you announce as you open the door. Without waiting for a response, you slip off your shoes and drop your bag in front of the walkway before tip-toeing quickly up the stairs. Peering inside of your grandma's room, you see her sleeping as peacefully as when you had left. You kneel beside her futon, placing a hand on her shoulder and softly shaking her awake. "Time to get up, Granny. We've gotta do your stretches for today."
She responds with a grunt, and once she finally blinks herself to life, you help pull her up to a sitting position. As you squat behind her, you gently press your hand against her back in order to help her stretch it out a little, and then move onto massaging and stretching out her arms. When you move onto her legs, you push her blanket aside in order to gain access to them, and then eye a dark spot spread out underneath her.
"Oh, Granny. We need to get you cleaned up in the bathroom." She doesn't say anything, and you aren't sure if it's due to shame or if it's because she can no longer hear your voice. You hook her over your shoulders and bring her to her feet, and then you guide her down the hall to the bathroom. As you begin to remove her clothing and wipe her down, you mutter a quiet "I'm sorry, Granny."
There's this feeling of dread and knowing that bubbles up in your chest from time to time as you become increasingly more aware of the lessening number of visitors and your grandmother gradually turning into a shell of herself. One day, it will be just you and this house. And one day, you'll be surrounded by names that refer not to a guardian nor to an old friend, but to the past. Granny seldom speaks anymore, but when you're sleeping next to her, you hear her calling your grandpa's name. It's so quiet, you can barely hear her through the chirps of the crickets outside, but it's there, and it's faint. You close your eyes and try to imagine him, but to no avail.
Do you see him, Granny? Is he waiting for you? Or maybe you're chasing after him. Is it the version of him in the photo, all wrinkled and stern, or is it a younger version I have no knowledge of? Did he smile more back then? Granny, please don't go yet. There's so much I don't know, like the amount of time it takes to boil a perfect egg. There's so much I don't know.
A tear slides down towards your temple as you're turned in her direction, and more follow to flood the pillow beneath your head. She's stopped speaking his name, and you can't decide if you're relieved to know she's relaxed in her sleep or dismayed to know that you can no longer listen to her voice. You reminisce on the nights she would read cookbook recipes to you when you were a child, because she had no storybooks and claimed to be too old to come up with any fairytales of her own. But you didn't mind the recipes; so long as she was speaking, you could sleep well knowing that she was by your side.
Do you miss him looking at you? If it helps, you can kill me.
The next morning, you are a little disappointed to find yourself still alive. You cannot hear Granny breathing when you put an ear against her lips.
The funeral is small, made up mostly of her remaining living friends and their family members who were willing to show up. Everyone is crying, even if they didn't know her, because the loss is infectious. But you don't cry. Instead, you stare blankly, past the people, past the casket, past the photograph of her, past the walls of the funeral building. A few familiar faces come to shake your hand and offer words of condolence, but you can't find any of your own to say in return. It's understandable, everybody decides, because you were never much of a talker. They tell you that they'll be supporting you where they can.
When you return home with her photograph cradled in your arms, still clad from head to toe completely in black, your first thought is that the house is really dirty. You breathe out a muted "I should clean," and move to set her picture aside on one of the tables; it's too big to stand next to your grandpa's on the accent table. Without taking off your shoes, you head for the closet where all of the cleaning supplies are kept, and begin digging through them: rags, bleach, a broom, a dustpan, glass wipes, a bag of sponges, the vacuum, a cleaner spray bottle, extra dish soap, a lint roller, a duster – you scatter them all down the walkway towards the front door.
You begin with wiping down the windows with the wipes, and the chill of the winter weather clinging to the glass transfers through the thin cloth. Your breathing and your heartbeat are surprisingly calm.
What do people do to get over somebody? I hear people saying things like "Just go ahead and cry it out!" but do you really just cry them away? Is something like handling loss really as easy as that?
Next, you're dusting the corners of every room and rolling the lint off of the lace curtains. In the middle of it, you can feel tears beginning to swell, but you throw your head back and squeeze your eyes shut in order to barricade them from falling proper.
If that's the case, then I shouldn't be crying.
You quickly move on to wiping the tables down, but when you see the image of Granny sitting there, you get the sudden urge to get it far, far away from your sight. You carry it upstairs, your shoes clicking against the wooden steps. This isn't how you remember her, after all, dressed nicely and posed in front of a blank wall. In your memory, she is always surrounded by color and spectacle. You lower the ladder leading up to the attic, and cough at the amount of dust that practically avalanches down on top of you.
Maybe that's why Granny didn't go to any funerals, and why Grandpa's photograph is the only one she has. Because she knows that he's buried in the ground, so she can't bring herself to imagine him smiling from ear-to-ear while sunbathing in Hawaii or climbing to the top of Mount Fuji.
You prop Granny's funeral photo against a box that you soon open, pulling out a thin photo album gifted to her by one of her friends who decided to try out photography for a week. Flipping through it, you see versions of her you recognize and don't recognize, and stop at an image of her – just the smallest bit younger than when she met you – with her face covered in flour and her initials drawn on the apple of her cheek. A smile invades her features, and while you hadn't met her yet, this was the most recognizable she was to you.
I don't want to forget the smell of meat on her hands, or the smell of onions in her hair. I don't want to forget the way her lips split when she smiled too wide, or the way she hobbled on her right leg as she walked up and down the stairs. I don't want to forget the way she would randomly lose her voice because she would laugh too loud while telling a funny story, or the way she would point to a model on TV and say "I used to look like that, but better!"
Your hands fly around the rest of the attic as you search for an empty frame, and find one that's cracked just slightly in the corner of the glass face, though not enough to be too noticeable. You remove the photograph from the album's plastic sleeve and slip it into the frame, fastening the back of it tight to keep the photograph steadfast in place. When you return back down to the dining area, you take great care in positioning her picture next to your grandpa's, and you take a step back to admire the two of them immortalized forever.
Both of your hands tangle into your hair as you release a slow sigh.
I shouldn't have gone to the funeral.
After you stuff all of the cleaning supplies you had taken out back into the closet, you glance at the calendar, uncapping a marker to circle the day's date. You don't have the strength to write a description of why it's worth remembering yet.
Oh, right, tomorrow is trash collection day.
With a quick tug and tie, you seal the garbage bag closed before lugging it from out of the bin in the kitchen and across the property. The wooden door at the front rattles as it's attacked by the wind, and you remind yourself to double check the vitality of the lock the next time you're free while you shuffle into a pair of slippers at the doorway. You have difficulty recalling the last time it was being used. When you open the door, the cold immediately robs the heat from your face, and your breath hikes up into the air like a cloud of steam.
"Oh," a voice sounds from just outside, and your head follows it to see a boy with hair colored an unnatural shade of grey. He stands there with his naked hands cupped around his mouth, dressed in a sweatshirt, sweatpants, a light coat, and sneakers. You blink at him, and then turn away to place the garbage bag in its designated spot on the opposite side of where he was standing.
I've never seen him before. Maybe a grandson of one of the regulars? I didn't see him today.
"We're closed," you say pointedly, dropping the garbage bag onto the pavement.
"Ah, no, sorry. Didn't think anybody was in. Lights were off." He looks around as he breathes out warmth into the palms of his hands before stuffing them into the pockets of his sweats. When he looks you up and down, you're suddenly conscious of the fact that you're still in your funeral wear. "I wasn't meanin' to bother ya. I'll be on my way."
He looks like he's well off enough, but…wait, could he be a runaway? Huh? How old is he? He looks like he's around my age? I don't know what to do in this kind of situation!
"Wait." Your voice escapes you before you can even think. His dark eyes flicker towards you, his attention captive to your single command. "Are you looking for shelter?"
That might've come off as creepy. Or really rude.
"Oh, no, I'm not homeless or anythin' like that. Just got in a little fight with my brother, so I'm tryin' to stay out of the house and his hair for a little bit. Or, it's more that I'm tryin' to get him out of my hair, but…"
So he's just been wandering out for who knows how long.
You glance down towards his hands buried in his pockets, and you can tell that he's balled them up into fists in an attempt to maintain warmth in his fingertips. The wind suddenly howls, dragging itself across your nose and through his hair. A shiver travels through your spine.
"It's cold." You open the door a little wider in invitation. "Come inside."
"S'okay? Even though you're closed?"
"It's fine. You don't have anywhere else to go, right?" Before he can open his mouth to respond, you duck back into the house while leaving the door open. "Quick, before all of the heating escapes. This place is old, if you couldn't tell, so the heater makes a great effort to keep warm."
When the boy peeks inside of the building, you're kicking your shoes off to the side. He scurries in, his hands groping at the door for the handle, and shuts it behind him with a firm thud .
"Pardon the intrusion." His head whips around in order for him to process his surroundings, and he digs a finger into the back of his shoe to slip it off his foot. He does the same for the other one. "I already figured 'cause of the sign, but this is a restaurant?"
"This dingy place? Calling it a restaurant sounds more professional than it actually is. It's a place to eat, that's all."
He doesn't understand the difference between a restaurant and a place to eat , but he puts up no argument as he watches you turn a little further down the hall. He follows suit, but not that closely, making sure to lag slightly behind so that he can eat up all the details of this building.
"So, Fukuda. That yer name?"
Your voice is a little fainter, and he can hear sounds of you rummaging through your multitudes of cooking wares. "Oh, sorry, it was rude of me to tell you to come in without even introducing myself. No, that was the name of my mother's side of the family. This place was my grandma's. My name's [L/N] [F/N]. Yours?"
"Miya Osamu."
"Okay, Osamu...kun? Sorry, how old are you?"
He's a little impressed by the fact that you just completely skipped over the formality of referring to him by his last name. A habit picked up from working in such an intimate place, he thinks, where everyone who enters becomes bound to you the second they're past the door.
"Fifteen."
"Oh, okay. I'm older than you by two years. Osamu-chan."
"I'd rather ya just call me Osamu."
"Osamu it is, then. The menu's on the wall. Well, you don't really get a choice, though. The only thing available right now is the Fukuda Special ."
"What's that?"
"Whatever I decide it is." With a firm heave, you unveil the insides of the refrigerator. In front of you lies a container of leftover rice from yesterday's lunch, canned tuna, a bottle of mayonnaise, a jar half-filled with pickled plums, and a plate of karaage covered in plastic wrap. "How do grilled rice balls sound?"
"Sounds good."
One of the lanterns overhead, which you were sure had a dead bulb, suddenly flickers back to life.
"Good to hear."
Piling all of the ingredients into the basket of your arms, you shove them all onto the nearest counter, freshly cleaned and cleared of clutter as if you had received vision earlier of having a guest. After slightly warming up the leftover rice in the microwave and rinsing your hands in the sink, you follow the familiar procedure of creating little pockets of rice in your palm. With a small spoon, you scoop filling into each one and mold them firmly into shape, placing each bite-sized ball of rice down randomly onto a nearby plate.
Placing a pan on top of the heat of the stove, you pour in a healthy amount of oil and wait for it to begin to bubble. When it begins to crack and pop, you begin placing the rice balls into the golden bath, turning them occasionally until all sides are an almost caramel color. Once they look done, you transfer them onto a plate with a napkin lying on its surface to soak up the excess oil and then switch the stove off.
Osamu looks at you with neither joy nor annoyance reflected on his face. If anything, you think he might seem a little bored, but you can't necessarily blame him. After placing the plate in front of him, you pull out the seat across from him and nod towards the dish between the two of you. Taking the sign to dig in, he plucks one of the rice balls and chucks it into his mouth, making sure to chew carefully. Tuna mayo.
"How is it?"
He tries another one for good measure. Pickled plum.
"...s'okay."
Without further interrogation, you pick out the rice ball closest to you and take a bite. Plain with no filling. Your brows knit together as you have a few indecisive chews before swallowing.
"You're right. I forgot the salt and toppings." You pick out another one. "It's missing…a little something. Definitely." When you bite into the next one, your body tenses at the taste. Karaage.
Ahh, crap.
Like a desert mirage, you see an illusion of her out of the corner of your eye. Granny stands just barely out of sight, looking the same as when you first met her, standing tall despite the slight hump in her back and her smile outshining the summer sunlight. Every part of your brain is telling you to look, trying to trick you into believing that she's actually there, but you don't. You know that this dream will go away the moment you try to chase after her.
You don't think you can imagine her in Rome or Bali, but you can convince yourself that the traces of her in this house continue to keep her alive.
Your chews are a little slower, more thorough as you break down the soft chicken with your teeth. The incoming tears feel like they're heating up the back of your eyes.
I'm about to cry in front of a guy I just met today. I'm gonna look like a total weirdo, if I didn't already.
"I'm not lookin'." His voice suddenly pierces through the awkward atmosphere. When you look at him, he's turned completely around, almost exaggeratingly so. You realize that, without notice, he's already eaten more than half of the rice balls on the plate despite saying they only tasted okay.
A few seconds go past, and he doesn't turn around. He's waiting for your signal. You bury your face into your elbow and weep out the entire day's worth.
By the time the plate is clean of traces of food, the sun is already half-set. He stands at the entryway and starts searching around in his jacket pockets while you watch from about a foot or two away.
"How much do I owe ya?"
You think about it for a second, but shake your head.
"Don't worry about it. I'm the one who invited you in. And I messed up the food anyways." You can tell that that's not a good enough answer for him, and continue your sentence before he can begin to start a civil argument with you. "Well, if you're really worried about it, then we can strike a deal."
"Uh, well, I'll have ya know that my allowance isn't really that big–"
An extended hand raises itself from you in front of his face, cutting his sentence short.
"Don't worry about the money. I want to make up for today. If you visit me, then I'll make you something to eat. As many times as you want."
"Doesn't seem like much of a deal is bein' made. Ya don't want anythin' in return?"
"Just the company." You cross your arms, and your fingers dig into the flesh through the sleeves of your black clothing. "You see, this place is mostly visited by the same few people, and sometimes it gets a little lonely here."
"Okay." He nods. "I can do that."
You observe in silence as he sits down to put his shoes on, twisting the laces between his fingers and looping them into messy knots. He yanks them tightly for good measure before pulling up the hem of his socks. The bottom of his sweatpants tumble back down against his ankles as he stands up.
"You've got everything? Need to borrow a pair of gloves? I can probably find some upstairs."
"Ya sound like my mom." This makes you bite your tongue. "S'all good. I'm just headed straight home. It's not that far from here."
He exits through the door, and you follow right behind him. His eyes squeeze shut when a frigid wind passes through, and his hands immediately shoot into the warmth and comfort of his pockets.
"Alright, I trust you to make that call." A smile spreads across your face as your cheeks, your nose, and the tips of your ears begin to redden from the relentless cold. "Come back again soon!"
"Thanks for the meal." Osamu's smile is smaller, softer, much more unnoticeable to someone not paying attention. But you catch it. "It was good."
For some reason, the words make you giggle, and your laughter bubbles towards the sky like a cloud of steam. Marking his departure, Osamu bows to you, and you watch him meander away. The streetlamps and house lights frame his figure, making him sparkle against the darkness of the wintertime. You lean against the frame of the door, looking his way, until he disappears completely from sight.
Maybe you don't move on the more you cry. Maybe you move on the more you talk to other people.
With a faint click, you shut the door. You leave it unlocked.
Maybe this is the solution to all heartbreak.
When he turns a corner, he takes his cell phone out of his pocket and flips it open, revealing a string of missed calls and texts from his twin brother, Atsumu.
[16:28:01] Tsumu: did u really leave?
[16:40:41] Tsumu: samu
[17:03:17] Missed call.
[17:11:27] Tsumu: moms worried
[17:12:03] Tsumu: we're gnna call the police
[17:12:42] Missed call.
[17:13:53] Tsumu: i'm alrdy working on ur missing poster
[17:14:01] Tsumu: made u rlly fat
[17:14:14] Tsumu: serious
[17:14:58]: Missed call.
[17:47:39] Tsumu: we didn't actually call the police
[17:48:00] Tsumu: but u should come home now
The phone is barely even given a second to ring before Osamu's call gets picked up. Neither party speaks first, and both struggle trying to think of how to apologize without the apology itself. He looks up to the sky, blemished with stars. It kind of looks like a blanket of black nori sprinkled with white sesame seeds. Osamu is the one to speak first.
"Wanna get some rice balls before practice tomorrow, Tsumu?"
Bursting through the receiver is an exclamation that can barely be put into words, a jumble of syllables drawn out with excitement.
"Ya bein' for real?!" As Atsumu speaks, Osamu has to distance the device away from his ear. "Hell yeah!"
With a grin, he breaks out into a jog towards home as he thinks about what kind of rice ball he's going to buy the next day – and what the next Fukuda Special is going to be.