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Satomi realizes what an exhausting day he had to go through only on tumbling down, limbs going numb and limp all the way to their core, once he steps into the bathtub with hot water. The suspicious clatter makes his mom rush to the door on the other side instantly asking if he needs a hand as if he were some helpless five-day-old kid and forcing a heavy sigh and short grunt out of him—a pointed sign that he’s totally fine by himself.
At second thought, he almost feels bad about his ways throughout the whole day.
Though his mom presented him with a fait accompli rather than asked if she could come visit him in Tokyo on this weekend, her coming has never been much of a problem per se. It took Satomi just a day to procure a sleeping bag for the night: since he’s always deemed Morita-san the type of guy to keep the most arbitrary and redundant things possible at home, he was spot on with his request this time around, too. Besides, both his friends helped him out coming up with the places he could take his mom to, so apart from simply picking her up at the station and showing her to his apartment, there was a digital art museum on his agenda, and the whole street strewn with merry-making illuminations, and a family restaurant that serves rich curry along with affordable kanzake his parents will never miss out on a cold winter day.
If anything, Satomi put ever so little effort himself, and it’s another thing that they haven’t done a single thing from what had been planned. After all, it’s only par for the course that Mom was too tired after her journey to fully engage in peculiar things. She plumped for a stroll in a park instead, munching on sweet potatoes from the food stall, and, as if restoring all her life energy in one go, rushed to the mall for clothes, kitchenware, and souvenirs immediately afterwards, making him her personal hanger for the rest of their outing and stating that no such thing could be find in Osaka, although he could swear she would always be itching to buy the same stuff back home and, for some reason, hold back.
Even upon coming home, Mom started pottering around, working her way into the recesses of the rooms Satomi had no clue about existing whatsoever and ordering him around just like in the good old days. For not showing her much hospitality or concern, he gave her all the possible liberties, and she took them gladly and so turned his day in a hectic dismaying mess.
He can’t complain that his day-off was ruined simply because his life is far from being full of great events and possibilities in itself, yet he missed on one specifically for today, and just thinking about it over and over again made his heart—selfish at times—go incredibly heavy and stale.
Presently, a fierce sound of the doorbell reaches his ears, leaving Satomi startled due to the mere fact that he hears it once in a blue moon, with last time being from his neighbor, a strange young woman living downstairs. She would bring him a piece of the Uncle Rikuro cheesecake every now and again. In those four months he and Kyouji didn’t exchange a single word, it felt like a band-aid covering the wound inflicted by his longing and feeling of being a burden, being abandoned and forgotten yet again, and trenching upon the delusion he thought he wouldn’t for the life of him admit.
Just as he looks back on it, Mom’s voice gets mingled with another, not too loud and not too quiet, honeyed and velvety, the mere note of which makes Satomi spring up and his own heart give a wild leap.
Deprived of the mere chance to have a nice soak at the very least, he groans, hands pulling at the roots of his wet hair, and washes up quick, clothes sticking to his dump butt and back as he puts them on frantically. Any glimpses of hope dissipate as soon as Kyouji’s laughter echoes in the room and Satomi meets the shifty gaze with what’s plastered all over his own face—confusion, panic, thrill—once he walks out of the bathroom.
“Hey,” he croaks. “What’s going on?”
“Narita-san brought you some treats from work,” Mom explains, though induces even more confusion on him. A third plate is laid down on the table with an unbranded paper bag on top of what they’ve already prepared. “That’s so nice of him, so I thought we might as well invite him to share dinner with us.”
Kyouji nods, forcing his knees together in what normal people call a polite gesture. “Excuse me for the intrusion, Satomi-kun,” he mumbles. “It’s no big deal, but I appreciate your kindness, Oka-san.”
“You’re pretty close, aye?” his mother asks out of nowhere, so somewhat dizzy and unaware, Satomi can only let out a nervous laugh and grasp the towel in his hands. “When I got this job, I couldn’t let myself go out with my colleagues for drinks for a lo-o-ong while. I love me a good nice drink, you know, so I was sure everyone would think I’m some kind of a drunkard after seeing me that way. Turns out everyone is like that. Think about it: so much fun was missed because I was worried what others would think!”
Giving the towel to his mom, Satomi takes from her hands the glass she brought all the way from Osaka and places it before their guest. His knees crack like rusty hinges upon his gawky attempt to take a seat, while his whole body indeed feels like a heavy door he’d gladly put behind Kyouji and Mom for now, until things aren’t decided in one way or another between them.
For any lack of assurance, alas, he does no more than listen to what they’ve got to say.
“Thank you for looking out for my son,” his mom says first things first joining them at the table. “For some reason, Osaka made him crawl out of his skin. It’s nice to know that there’re people who can help him feel like home in Tokyo. Especially when I’m not by his side anymore and when he’s always so obstinate whenever Dad and I are trying to offer him any kind of support.”
“When I asked Satomi-kun to work the night shift on Saturday the other day, he said he must’ve fallen sick. I had an inkling that’s not what it was. He’s such a kind soul, he’d come anyway, provided you ask him nicely and treat to something delish,” the story Kyouji makes up based on what’s happened in fact gets the rice go the wrong way Satomi’s throat. He gets this quirked up eyebrow in return—innit plausible enough?—and waves it off, giving him a firm go-ahead as long as it does work, yet compelling his mom to help him wipe the unrelenting tears under his glasses. “I’ve been thinking I should repay his kindness by bringing him some yummies, ask him how he’s feeling and if he needs something else. What a surprise, turns out his mother is visiting him.”
Hearing the whole thing, his mom puts on a powerful pout, “Why would you lie about it? Are you embarrassed of your own mother?”
“Geez, no, it’s not like it at all. It’s… it’s hard to explain,” he whispers and casts his eyes downwards not to meet eyes with their guest whatsoever. “My wage could also be worse. You don’t need to waste extra money and check on me in the middle of the night, Narita-san.”
“I’m sorry I came uninvited,” the manner in which Kyouji speaks conjures up a clear picture of him grinning innocently in Satomi’s head. “I’ll dig in and leave soon. There’re other things I need to see to today.”
“And I’m glad you came, Narita-san. If I weren’t here, he would keep living on junk and snacks,” even without her stating it explicitly, Satomi gets the reprimand. “I brought lots of new stuff and stuff from home. With what he’s got here, it doesn’t even feel like he’s settled in yet. Today is probably the first time the kitchen has been properly used. Condiments totally slipped my mind though, so the fish is only seasoned with salt. Do you prefer spicy food?”
Before answering, Kyouji briefly excuses himself and takes off his jacket. The room is steamy from all the cooking Mom had done planning out his meals for the next few—if Satomi is allowed to say so—weeks and is in no way new or, worse yet, menacing and unsafe to their guest, so he rolls the left sleeve of his shirt and almost does so with the right one, stopped in time by Satomi clearing his throat pointedly. Even if his mom somehow doesn’t get overly curious about the tattoo, the probability of her failing to recognize the letters as the one whom they owned their very existence is equal to nothing else but zero.
“Actually, I’m a huge fan of spicy foods. Sweets are, like, a huge turn-off, seriously. Imagine the meal seasoned perfectly for you,” Kyouji turns to some kind of interactive communication to conceal all the clues that hint at the falsehood of his truth, “then spice it up five more times. That’s the perfect combo for me, yep. Still, they say a good mom and wife knows how to make a wholesome meal by refining its natural taste.”
“His brother would always extra season whatever I served them!” Mom slaps the shabby table so hard that all the glasses clink and thus sets Kyouji off laughing yet again. “I was about to treat you to some wagashi we’ve bought today. What a wonderful shop it was, fancy and chick. I was surprised Satomi knows about it. Turns out his friend suggested it. A girl friend.”
Although the sudden emphasis sends shivers all over Satomi’s body in a clear premonition of disaster, it concerns Kyouji not a tad bit. “You shouldn’t worry about it. The fish turned out just fine,” he concludes after taking a good sip of hot tea. “I assume it’s not your first time in Tokyo?”
“We went on school trips to Tokyo, and I came to visit Masami a few times, too, when he studied at the university here. It’s funny, Satomi suggested going to Shibuya Sky today, but it turned out I’ve already been there while he has not. He’s spent months here unlike me! Geez, this kid,” Mom shakes her head, heaving a sigh of utter disbelief.
“I haven’t been there either,” Kyouji admits in what feels like his defense.
“You’ve lived in Tokyo all your life, right? That’s hard to believe, but there’re also tons of tourists every day, I can only imagine. Have you been to Osaka though?”
Her question catches them both off their guard. It takes Kyouji a minute to rally his thoughts, and clearly, he spends all of it looking for an answer in the other eyes. Having lost the plot since the very beginning, however, Satomi never meddles and proceeds to chew on his veggies, noticing that every other piece somehow gets more and more challenging to swallow. This might be the reason why he can’t say for sure what leaves such a bitter aftertaste in his mouth: the discounted daikon that he couldn’t help buying the other day or Kyouji’s never that carries a certain note of fatality in it.
His mother’s smile doesn’t seem to falter in contrast to his own inner turmoil. Satomi catches it with his peripheral vision—all the mischievous twinkles in her eyes, coming and going with the twitching of the corners of her lips, reason for it kept secret for so many agonizing seconds that he has to ask her post-blank what it is that she finds so amusing about all this.
“Why don’t you take that friend to Shibuya Sky?”
“Well, now that you’ve refused to go and I’ve heard about such a place, I might as well invite her.”
Without being asked, Kyouji chimes in, “I should, too, probably,” and given his cunning nature Satomi has learned about the hard way years ago, it almost feels as if he were asking for more curiosity than he’s already had to deal with.
“That’s right, Narita-san,” Mom slaps her forehead, apparently, only just now realizing that she’s skipped the chit-chat on the juiciest of all bits. “Are you married by any chance?”
“I certainly am,” Kyouji agrees with such pride, such an invincible air of assurance that Satomi follows his mom’s example and, just to be sure, takes a peek at his hands. Except for a few old calluses and scars, those appear vacant and quite clear. He laughs and wiggles his fingers so the two would come to at long last and explains, “Don’t mind the missing ring. We’ve had it rough all these years: got separated, then got together, then broke up, then got back together again. I’d say to her all kinds of foul things, and she’d do the same thing. We’re still pretty happy with it. Besides,” he halts to rub his forearm through the cloth of his starched shirt and chuckle, eyes locked with Satomi’s at that very moment, “I’ve got a tattoo with her name on me. Don’t ask to show though. I won’t. It’s very special.”
Paired with Mom for whom Satomi, for obvious reasons, will always be a kid, Kyouji gets carried too far away in a sense. He must have expected to bring a smile or a flush to Satomi’s face going back for a show to the dynamic they moved past long ago, unable to see that every word he utters carelessly instead cuts a yawning hole inside him. The whole conversation has been set in stone all along due to the mere circumstances all of them found themselves in, that much Satomi knows himself, so it’s not the air of superiority, or power imbalance, or whatever it is that Kyouji is building up specifically for Mom to see, that dulls his senses and makes his heart irrevocably sink.
The hot hand lying on his forehead helps Satomi snap out of it. No food is left on the table by then; the room seems darker and colder while the cup he’s been holding onto the whole time turns all warm and slippery in his hand. Before Mom can spit what makes her musing all of a sudden, he springs to his feet and stumbles into the hallway, seeing Kyouji put on his clothes and shoes like a polite guest he’s been.
Between this and a creak of the front door is the time span he gives both of them—Kyouji, to change anything about tonight, and himself, to think it over again—yet it’s so short that none of it happens, so he follows their guest outside on a pretext of posing a few work-related questions and seeing him off as it should be done properly in general.
“Don’t hang around in the cold while your hair is still wet,” is what Kyouji hits him with as soon as he hears the door open and shut again and stops in his tracks.
“You enjoyed yourself much?”
“Why, your mom is a great cook indeed,” he pats himself on the stomach with a contented smile. “I wasn’t lying about that one.”
Real bummer, if you ask Satomi—of all things, this one would be the most trivial to lie about. This one wouldn’t send his head spinning from all the unfairness and resentment all the other lies of Kyouji’s brought upon him today.
Shivering, Satomi sits down on one of the lower steps and whispers, “Why… Why would you lie about everything else?”
Kyouji looks around as if the reason were so obvious that it would certainly be asked of someone else. “I mean, you looked pretty anxious there,” he says after a short while, and Satomi appreciates all the care he can discern in his voice as much as he hates it. “I thought I’d say all that to get as far away from the truth as possible. We don’t want your momma worried about stuff like that, do we? I promise she’ll never see me again.”
“No, that’s not what I wanted,” Satomi shakes his head and drops his face in his hands as he feels stupid, ludicrous, embarrassing tears coming to his eyes. “Geez, no. It’s the complete opposite of what I wanted, in fact. But I don’t think you’ll ever get it anyway.”
After all, Satomi is perfectly aware he’d never have a single chance to introduce Kyouji to his family in an orthodox fashion, if any fashion whatsoever. Truth be told, it feels even worse being self-aware to the core and still nurturing all the delusions miserably, going as far as to say that someone is indifferent or insensitive unless they let those push themself around. He’s pondered enough on it to say that Kyouji is far from that.
It’s either Kyouji is good at lying or Mom is too kind and easy to fool, yet at the end of the day, it’s still no one else’s fault that of all the three of them, Satomi ends up the only one hurting from it.
He never wanted Kyouji to lie to Mom and never wanted Mom to see Kyouji as someone else, for the Kyouji she’s got to know today is a stranger next to the one he holds dear. On top of that relentless pursuit Satomi was about to devote himself to, nothing about them seems nearly as feasible now due to the unknown monstrous gap Kyouji forced even more open with his bare hands, so effortlessly and nonchalantly at that. And even if the fact that Kyouji finds it easier to lie than tell the truth is disheartening, to say the least, Satomi knows it’s not his place to complain, for he himself can tell neither.
Kyouji’s voice comes out close and soothing since he humbly takes a seat two steps below, “I get it, but I don’t think I could’ve done it any other way. If I could, then I’m sorry I haven’t.”
“No, forget it,” Satomi scowls at himself, rubbing his eyes with the sleeves. “I am sorry.”
“Come now, don’t be frowning like that, you’ll be all wrinkly before you even turn thirty,” he asks in dead earnest and reaches out his hand to smooth his furrowed brow. “Oh, that reminds me.”
“Mm?”
“Okay, I guess it’s a bit too early to say I’m sorry. This may sound crazy, but, you know, plastic surgeries are a thing.” Based on what he said earlier, the mere mention of such a thing makes Satomi shrink away warily. “No, wait, we could have some magic done real quick. I’ll be a brand-new person, and we’ll start anew with your mom. She won’t know it’s me from today, and I’ll be whatever you want me to be. No lying, no nothing. Would be nice if you told me what it is that you want this time. Though I’m the one who came uninvited, hm…”
His formerly tense eyebrows go up with surprise, and with being at a loss for words, the only thing Satomi is able to articulate after hearing a nonsense like that is, “If I knocked on your head, would I hear anything apart from the hollow sound?”
Kyouji chuckles and, without giving it much thought, places his own head onto his knees. “Go ahead, Satomi-kun. You can try knocking on it.”
“I don’t even have to,” Satomi breathes out noisily, hands awkwardly stuck in the air. With Kyouji giving not a single startle the moment they lie down on his hair and neck makes it obvious that he indeed has been waiting for a touch of sorts. “Who in their right mind would have the plastic surgery done for the sake of someone else?”
“The guy who messed up big time and always wants to keep that someone happy?”
Though hoping to know if he arrived at the right conclusion, Kyouji has to sit back up after almost falling flat on his face—Satomi stretches out his legs and turns away suddenly, too close to blushing all the way to the tips of his ears.
“Now that I think about it, if my face wasn’t the same, there would be less trouble in our lives with Old Man too. We can say I fled or died. The others will probably make fun of me for a while, but it’s fine. It’s totally worth it. You give it a thought, too, will you? I can ask for a younger look, so it’d be less awkward to hang around me.”
If anything, changing his face surgically and showing up to Mom that way would be lying just the same, but out of simple curiosity, Satomi does give it a thought.
It’s not like he’s got the particular type to carve Kyouji into. Besides, there’s nothing about his face specifically that he either likes or likes not, and it’s never been something he would look into with much heed in the first place. Rather than adjusting Kyouji—be it his ways or his looks—Satomi would go for what surrounds them every time they meet up on the whole. If only they could defy society’s standards of normal, all the redundant rules and superstitions, it would have all come to the same simple truth…
“I’m fine with you the way you are.”
Kyouji glances at him, blinking slowly as if he were drifting off all the while, and blurts out, “Come again?”
“See? Your hearing is already failing you!” Satomi babbles, fortunately or not unable to say it out loud even one more time when he’s fully conscious of it. “No surgery will save you from turning into an old man. Never mention this atrocity around me again. Seriously, Kyouji-san. I mean it.”
Kyouji pulls a long face, yet doesn’t seem to lose a bit of his determination. He won’t stop and will come up with something else eventually is written all over his somber face which is admirable in itself, but certainly needs to be kept for another time, when they’re not outside in the midnight cold risking to be caught red-handed by Satomi’s mom and don’t feel like frantically compensating for all the wrongs they’ve done throughout their lives.
Taking a look at the time on his phone, Kyouji gets up and nods at the road. “I’ll get going, Satomi-kun.”
“Why have you come in the first place?”
“Oh,” he stops in his tracks before taking a single step and scratches his head, face breaking into a wry smile. “Nothing special. There was a mess at the snack bar today: some guy started a fight, threw and broke lots of stuff, and one of our girls even got injured a little. Don’t know why, but it seriously made me feel like crap. Why does it feel like stuff like that only ever happens to me of all people? And so I came to see you. Silly, I know.”
Satomi gets to his feet, too, at long last, for he swells with the urge to comfort him in any way. He knows for sure that neither a hug nor a sorry will be of any effect and, sizing him up in deep reflection—his lax drooping shoulders, gleaming eyes peering until forced otherwise, and soft wistful smile, almost non-existent and yet one of his most genuine ones—realizes that Kyouji has already got whatever he wished to get.
“The last train is gone long ago. Are you going back?”
“That’s right. I’ll take a nap there and hop on the first one to get back home.”
Satomi looks up at the front door in caution and, feeling like Kyouji has already bared his whole soul with that mere gaze, lets it out before changing his mind for good, “If Mom wasn’t here… would you stay?”
“That’s not why I came,” Kyouji shrugs his shoulders. “Why? Do you want me to?”
“No? I never said that.”
He cocks his head to the left, smiling just the same. “What do you want me to do, then?”
“I want you to listen to what I actually say, now, will you? If I say we can’t meet, then don’t come.”
“Woah, Satomi-kun. Excuse my language, but you’ve turned into a real control freak as you grew older,” the good-natured remark gets an audible gasp out of Satomi—if he’s turned into one, then it’s only for the reason that he’s had to handle someone like Kyouji since his early teenage years. “It’s cute, but I’m getting mixed signals. Text me when you wanna see my face again, uh-huh? I promise I won’t change anything about it. For now.”
“Idiot,” Satomi grumbles and heaves a deep sigh as he makes his way up the stairs. “Don’t come if you don’t mean it.”
The front door softly clicks under his weight. He catches the last few seconds of Kyouji’s departing figure when closing the window, and it conjures up the most abysmal image Satomi could get in his whole life: his dear friend obediently lying on an operating table, asking for different lips and different nose, perhaps planning to pluck his eyebrows or dye his hair another color once his body heals up—all that for Satomi not to lie to his mom. The whole situation feels as ridiculous as heart-warming: be it a joke or not, it still helps Satomi’s formerly hopeless belief that Kyouji cares about him no less—if not more, dare he say, given the fact that he himself would never even consider suggesting such an idea—strikes deeper and sturdier roots. The feeling swells inside him so warm and tickling that he can’t help laughing a genuine hearty laugh when still at the door.
With his soul somewhat healed by Kyouji’s mere presence, he finds it bearable to face his mom again after all the lies. Half-lying on the tatami, she restores the line of sight by putting her phone aside and smiles at him like she always does, unaware of anything between them and seemingly undisturbed, for if you give it a better thought, there’s nothing really to disturb her.
“Sorry,” Satomi mumbles, sitting beside her. “He really talks a lot. About stupid stuff. All the time.”
“Don’t worry about it. I liked him,” Mom giggles, and a pang of conscience conveniently swooshes past his hot and joyous heart. “You know, I thought I’d talk about it some other time, but I’ll probably do it right now.”
“No way,” he repels before even hearing her out. “Is it about Mana-chan again?”
“Wow, you don’t like her being your potential girlfriend that much! And no, it’s not about her,” she sits up for their eyes to be on the same level and strokes his knee in a strangely comforting way. “You met me at the station today, and it helped me a lot. I mean, I had so many heavy bags on me, I thought my arms would fall of by the time I’d made it to the train back in Osaka. Dad goes to work early, and there’s no one else to help me really, so that’s how it was,” Mom speaks in a roundabout manner, rubbing her forehead lost deep in thought. “But there was this kind man! He just came up to me seeing me suffer and suggested giving a hand. He was also on the phone at that moment and looked so cool carrying my bags all the way to the carriage, woah… Now that I’m recollecting it, I’m sure it was him. I mean, it was certainly Narita-san.”
Feeling his insides tie into knots as all the things Kyouji told them at this very table just an hour ago flash before his eyes, Satomi casts them downwards. A lump in his throat doesn’t let him utter anything else but the weak, “O-oh, is that so…”
“Hey, hey, hey. I’m not mentioning it to scold you, cheer up right now,” she forces out a nervous laugh, shaking him just enough to make him attend to what she says. “I have not the slightest idea of what it is that you two are hiding, but I feel like I’ll ruin everything if I try to find out more… You’re living your own life right now, and I’m not in the place to say that it’s wrong and pick on other little things. You’ve always been a gloomy and, uh, what’s the word… Pensive? Yes, this, pensive kid. That’s just the way you are, it’s not bad. I thought I’d help you liven up a little by coming here, but we haven’t even talked that much today, and that’s where I fully realized you must be having it rough here. I’m sorry, Satomi.”
Hearing an apology from his mom of all people, especially after she gave his feelings so much thought and consideration while herself hurting no less, leaves him speechless, and rueful, and thankful—more and more, all at once.
“I was confused at first, and then, I don’t know what it was exactly, but I at least know Narita-san did what I couldn’t do for a while now,” she scoffs and shakes her head. “He made you laugh just now, and I feel like a stupid mom backing down so easily just because of it. Maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s not. Only Gods know. Still, it made me feel like everything’s right despite all the lies.”
“I’m sorry,” Satomi intones, lips curled with guilt. “For lying and treating you like that the whole day. It’s complicated, but there’s nothing to worry about it, I swear.”
“Yeah, I’m sure of it. If there is, you’ll come to your mom, right?” she looks at him compelling, leaving no other choice but to look her up in the eye and give a firm nod. “And about lying… I used to lie to my parents a lot, too, back in the day. Your dad used to be quite the character, you know. Well, to some extent, he still is. No one liked this good-for-nothing, but I did. I could never explain why, I just did, and honestly, I didn’t have to. I would always say I’m fine with him the way he is, and if you’ve got a friend that’s much older than you, or if you’re having tea parties together, or if you’re meeting up once a month to do something shady, just keep doing it. Do not care, really. And do not get yourself in danger and trouble. That’s all I ask.”
“Fine with him, huh…”
“I’m fine with you the way you are too!” she exclaims and jumps at him, giving a short, if tight hug from behind. Thinking about it now, he can hardly recall the last time they’ve been so close—either physically or emotionally—to each other. Then his mother springs to her feet and rushes to the kitchen to churn around her shopping bags. “Sorry, Daddy, I’m craving the sweets I was gonna bring you from Tokyo. You’ll get to try them next time.”
“Will you come next time?”
“Do you want me to?”
Without thinking about it too much, Satomi says he does with his shoulders squared and voice resolute and strong. The way Mom’s whole face glows with sheer happiness upon it, the way she dances with joy makes him wonder what he would see should he be as honest with Kyouji who asked him the same thing outside. It only lasts a split second—a nice food for thought once he’s alone and hungry again—for there’s Mom by his side, a pack of sweets and hot tea incoming, and all those words of wisdom she whispered to him, soothing his small aching heart.
It's such a relief, in all honesty.