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When Hakuri was a young boy, mealtimes were tense.
Not because of him. Not because of anyone. It was just the way they were. Years later, he wouldn’t even remember the taste of the food they ate back then, but he would remember the silence.
The room was too big. The table was too big. It was long, made for a massive family all eating together or for a dinner party. Kyora would sit at the head and Soya at the other end, like two opponents facing off from opposite ends of a foreboding hallway. Hakuri and Tenri sat across from each other, and the table was just narrow enough that if they both stretched their legs as far as they would go, then they could tap each other with the toes of their shoes.
Nobody spoke, during those meals.
Other sounds filled the empty air. The clink of a spoon against a porcelain bowl. The slurp of someone eating soup. Chewing and swallowing; crunch, crunch, gulp. Soya sighing. Tenri sniffing. Kyora clearing his throat.
Hakuri tried to make himself quiet and small. He was scared that if he made too much noise then his father would fix him with a steely glare, and something bad would happen. He was supposed to be special. He had to act special. He took delicate bites and he ate in silence.
He never knew what he was eating. He never cared. He’d heard what other kids ate – he’d seen it on television, or caught glimpses of children through restaurant and café windows as he was escorted down the street by a gaggle of bodyguards – and it seemed like something alien to him. Their meals were comprised of crispy, salty things. Breaded meat in the shapes of animals and noodles smothered in sauce. They ate snacks, brightly coloured, radioactive. Hakuri couldn’t imagine how they would taste. Some sugary thing, unwrapped from a package, a blue even brighter than the summer sky. How could that taste of blueberries or raspberries? He recoiled in disgust at the advertisements on the screen or the stained tongues of other children laughing, but a part of him sort of wanted his own tongue to turn blue. It seemed like fun.
Hakuri’s meals were made by a chef. They were special meals, he’d been told, because he and Tenri were special. They had to eat all sorts of vegetables because of the vitamins, and lean meat for the protein, and line-caught fish for the iron.
“What’s line-caught?” Hakuri asked the chef.
“It means it wasn’t trapped in a net,” the chef told him, before shooing him out of the kitchen.
It was supposed to be good, that it wasn’t trapped in a net. Hakuri didn’t see the difference. The fish died either way.
Silent meals for special children. Hakuri concentrated on sitting up straight and remembering his manners. It was important, to have manners.
He didn’t meet his father’s eyes, but he thought that he was watching him with approval.
*
Hakuri spied, once, from the doorway as they ate without him. Kyora still sat at the head of the table and Soya across from him, but nobody sat opposite Tenri now. He fled before they could see him.
He couldn’t leave the estate, but he was no longer a part of the family. He wasn’t even allowed to eat with Enji and Tamaki. Nobody gave a thought to his meals at all. It had taken a while to get used to, because Hakuri didn’t know how to go about getting his own food. He asked the chef, but the chef ignored him. He asked again, and again, until finally in a whisper the chef informed him that he wasn’t allowed to talk to him anymore, and he certainly wasn’t allowed to feed him.
“But—but I’ll starve?” Hakuri said. He hadn’t eaten in two days, and he felt sick with it.
“Not my problem,” said the chef. “Now get out of my way. I have to haul all of these scraps to the back room so the cleaners can put them out with the trash, and I only have a couple of hours before they’ll come.”
He shouldered past Hakuri and out of the kitchen. Because Hakuri was so hungry, it took a little while for his brain to process what the chef had said.
Hakuri was a survivor at heart. He put it together. He worked out the meaning behind the chef’s words.
I’m going to take this food to a room where nobody goes, and it will be unattended for hours.
Hakuri waited for the chef to leave the back room, then he made himself a feast of scraps. The ends of carrots and radishes, apple cores and squashed grapes, bits of cooked chicken still clinging to the bone. He was so hungry that he tasted none of it, but at least he went to bed with a full belly.
Sometimes, when Hakuri lay in the dirt outside, waiting for it to stop hurting enough that he would be able to stand up again, he noticed the crows watching him. Crows were smart birds, and they were opportunists. They’d probably smelled his blood or seen it seeping into the earth. They were waiting to see if he was dead, so that they could pick over his carcass and make a meal of him. While they waited, they busied themselves with other activities. They turned over leaves to look for bugs. They hopped into the freshly planted flowerbeds to steal seeds. They watched other birds find food, and they took it from them.
Hakuri didn’t let the birds make a meal of him, but he did learn from them.
He stole snacks from bags and pockets. He snatched crusts of bread from finished plates. He took note of what was kept in the kitchen cabinets and took a little of everything, enough to fill him up but not enough to be noticed.
Hakuri stole, he ate, and he survived.
*
In many ways, living out alone in the big, wide world – in the unknown – was far less scary than living on the Sazanami estate had been. At least Hakuri could breathe out here.
He had some money. Not very much, but some.
He made it stretch as far as he could.
Sometimes, he would go into convenience stores, and he would just look at the snacks. He would gaze at the bright packages and pick them up, listening to the rustle they made. He would remember how strange it had seemed that children would eat the things in these packages, but when he thought back to his silent meals in that cavernous room he knew that he’d been the strange one. He wanted to buy these snacks – candies, chips, cookies, nuts, absolutely everything – and make a feast of them. He wanted his tongue to turn blue and his lips to turn red. He wanted to taste sour and spicy and sweet. He wanted all of the things he hadn’t had, but he was old enough and sensible enough then to put back the packages and tell himself, One day.
Those kinds of snacks were just too expensive, and he didn’t know how long he would have to survive for on the money he had. He needed to get a job, but who would hire a seventeen-year-old runaway?
After he looked at all of the snacks he wanted but couldn’t buy, Hakuri gathered up whatever food had been reduced in price because it was about to expire and he would buy that instead. He fed himself on sandwiches with stale bread and wilted lettuce, on onigiri with gluey rice and pastries as hard as rocks. Food was food, though, and it kept him going as he tried to make a plan.
His money was low when he decided that he wanted a treat. It was a warm day and he was thirsty, and he wanted a place to sit down, so for that he thought that he was willing to pay for a glass of soda. Besides, he’d never had soda, and he thought it looked interesting.
He chose a booth by the window to sit in. He was planning on sitting here for a while, to do some thinking. He’d been trying his best, but Hakuri was tired. He still had no job and nowhere to go. He slept in parks, curled up behind bushes and napping in short stretches because he was terrified of someone finding him. He was growing sick of stale bread. He couldn’t go back, but he needed to go somewhere.
Hakuri was tired and hungry.
The waitress brought his soda. He took a big gulp of it. It was nice, and the fizziness was weird but not in a bad way. He tried to think.
I need to go to—
I need to—
He couldn’t. He was so tired.
He was done.
But then there was a flash of lightning, and Hakuri saw a samurai.
*
Hakuri didn’t know that mealtimes could be so loud.
Char screeched with laughter and dropped a knife on the floor. Shiba groaned with annoyance and his phone started ringing, and he groaned even louder when he saw that it was Azami. Hinao hopped off her chair, the legs scraping the wooden floor, and bent down to grab the knife. Chihiro nudged Hakuri with an elbow and smiled at him.
“Okay?” he asked.
Hakuri nodded. He took a bite of his sandwich – they were all eating these enormous sandwiches that Char had requested – and he couldn’t even hear himself chewing because everyone was talking so much.
This is right, he thought. This is what it’s supposed to be like, to eat with your family.
Char tore open a bag of chips and thrust the package at Hakuri. “Want one?”
Hakuri nodded and took one. It was dusted with so much flavour that it was bright orange, and when he put it in his mouth he raised he eyebrows at the overpowering flavour. Cheese, apparently. It was crunchy and weird and utterly delicious. It was one of those snacks he’d wanted to purchase for himself before, one of the ones he’d stared at in the convenience store. Chihiro’s smile widened as he watched him, and Hakuri’s cheeks grew hot when he noticed.
Shiba was chatting away, his phone balanced between his shoulder and his ear so he could keep eating. He was telling Azami that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t joined them for dinner, and he absolutely had to next time so that he could meet everyone. He said this with his mouth full. Hinao rolled her eyes at him.
“You’re all doing it wrong!” she declared. She lifted the top piece of bread from her sandwich and stuffed it full of chips. Char gasped and demanded she help her with hers. Hinao dutifully stuffed her sandwich with chips as well, and the pair of them bit down and crunched, scattering crumbs all over the tabletop. They both laughed, and Hakuri laughed too. It was different, so different, to the meals he’d eaten before.
It was all chaos.
It was wonderful.
Afterwards, Char was too full for dessert. She complained and warned everyone that they had to leave her some ice cream for tomorrow, or she’d get revenge. They all promised solemnly that they would.
Chihiro and Hakuri ate their ice cream on the balcony. Hakuri ate his with his eyes closed, because he felt that he could better appreciate it that way. The coldness of it, the sweetness, the softness, and the subtle, delicate flavour of the vanilla. He thought that it was the best thing in the world.
When he opened his eyes, Chihiro was staring at him.
“What is it?” Hakuri asked, nervous.
“Nothing,” said Chihiro, smiling softly. “You look happy.”
Hakuri smiled back. “I am happy,” he said, and when Chihiro took his hand and squeezed it, he knew that this was what he’d been missing all along.