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Today wasn’t one of those days that Zemu accompanied first the moon, then the sun in its solitude. The big, mighty sun was still alone even in all its glory, but Zemu, however, was no longer.
“Mama, mama! Wake up!” The voice started as a blur against sleep, a distant sound trying to pull her back into the world. Slowly, it began to take form as it was becoming little feet, bouncing weight, and a shrill insistence that refused to fade away. “Mama, it’s June 29! It’s today! It’s Mama and Papa’s day!”
After a deep breath, Zemu turned to her side, dragging a hand across her face as she let out a weak laugh, still half-drowned in sleep. Her eyes have not even adjusted yet. The 29th. Right. Right. For a while, she had to convince herself that this too, was not a dream. A proof of that is a blonde, thirteen apples tall little girl who won’t stop (this has been tested and proven before) until she gets what she wants.
Himeki. Their small storm wrapped in morning light.
Zemu let out a soft, exhausted sound, finally forcing one eye open. “…Mm,” she murmured weakly. “Too loud…” Even then, she spoke so gently that the amusement can be traced in her drowsy voice.
“It’s not too loud! It’s too important!” Himeki gasped dramatically, as if personally offended by the accusation. “I remembered what it is today!” she declared proudly. “I remembered!”
“…You’ve been counting?”
Himeki nodded very seriously. “With my fingers.” (her tiniest little ones, at that.)
“That’s impressive.”
“It’s hard.”
Finally, she had the strength to prop herself up in the bed to sit a little. Hair? Still messy. Drool? Caked up on the side of her lips. Eyes? Still heavy but softening as she started to see her daughter in a much clearer light. “…You’re too awake,” she said gently. “Too awake in the morning for a little moon.”
“It’s Mama and Papa day.”
“You’re right.” Opening her arms, Zemu welcomed her daughter into her arms while sleepily burying her sleepy face in her head. It was a while when she finally noticed that Kei had already vacated his side of the bed. “Where’s Papa?”
“Kitchen!” Like a little worm, she wriggled out of her mother’s hold, snaking down to the floor until she was able to jump with full energy again. “We made…” Himeki paused dramatically while inhaling the scent of the morning food making its way to Zemu’s nostrils all the way from the kitchen.
“Breakfast!.” Said Himeki with silly, little jazz hands.
Letting out something in between a laugh and a sigh, she finally swung her legs on the side of the bed for her feet to meet the cool floor and grabbed her glasses on the bedside, just underneath the moon-shaped lamp her Keki had bought for her, just because. Every morning, she passed by the same hook with a cardigan that rarely gets washed (it never smelled bad… or good either…) to warm herself up. There were still the traces of the cold dawn which she noticed less when she caught a whiff of the fabric conditioner on the cloth.
That was certainly not Himeki.
“Did Papa say you could help?” Said Zemu, looking down to her who walks with springs in her steps.
“He said I could watch.” Then, Himeki took time to carefully consider his father’s words, if she remembered them correctly. “But I also helped.” Proudly, she straightened up and looked at Zemu intently. “I handed him things!”
“What things?” Zemu says while smoothening her daughter’s hair down, a gesture she’s done so naturallyl that she couldn’t even catch herself with it. “I assume you did not make a mess in the kitchen?”
“I handed Papa very important things.” She stepped a few steps ahead of her mama and looked back at her with a scrunched nose and hands on her waist. “Like the spa..spat… thingy! And I also handed him my big girl plate and he made me arrange the strawberries and made me wake you up!” Himeki beamed like the sun with every part of her face participating from her lips to the twitching of her eyes and the already brushed teeth (Kei does not play about this.).
All of her was too cute to resist, so Zemu did not. Instead, she leaned down to kiss Himeki’s head, whispering. “Alright, little girl. Let’s see what this breakfast rave is all about.”
The more the kitchen is used, the more love there is in the household. Someone has gone through all the trouble of rummaging cupboards, emptying fridges, and using all the kitchen thingamajigs that they will be washing after as well. In the Tsukishima household, it was like the inside of a chest. Golden in the way the sun hits the table like a spotlight, in the way the stove hummed, the way the eggs were perfectly cooked that Zemu could taste it just by putting her tongue out in the air a little.
Kei, in that old grey shirt with a slight tear on the shoulder seam he refused to let go, was still at the stove with his back to them. There was so much focus in his face, one would assume he was working as if no audience watched (quite the opposite actually. The aura had to be maximized.) For a while, his family stood in the doorway, hand in hand. As she leaned on the frame, half-awake, there was a contemplation that had stuck this memory on the insides of her skull, like how a gum sticks to a wall. Though her mornings took the same shapes as this, nothing beats seeing your husband messing the kitchen and making sure it was used.
“It was supposed to be a surprise.”
"I wasn't supposed to know," she said, the curve of her smile visible in her voice.
"Obviously." He said, carefully playing the part. “Himeki heard ‘wake Mama up’ but did not catch the ‘after I prepare the table’ part of the sentence.” He turned then, holding a plate, expression calibrated to reveal very little but also said so much. His glasses had slid down. He looked at Himeki, who had released Zemu's hand and climbed into her chair with the efficiency of long practice, rabbit already installed in her lap, expression perfectly similar to his.
"You told her," he said while Himeki looked at the table to avoid his gaze. “You’re lucky that you are very, very cute.” Without further ado, he smiled to break the feigned tension between them to set the plates down for her girls. Then, he made sure to shoot Zemu a look, that she interpreted perfectly down to its very last detail. Years of dating from high school hallways to marriage in their normal (affectionate) home has that effect.
The look said: you see what I'm dealing with.
"Papa," Himeki said, with complete seriousness, "the eggs are getting cold."
Kei looked at his daughter. His daughter looked back at him while he sat down in front of them. Silently, he opened his mouth while his eyes stayed locked on her. Zemu mindlessly fed him with the eggs then smiled cockily at her. His little rival did not take this well.
“Mama, I want eggs too!”
“Alright. Alright.” She laughed a little, slicing her eggs into little bits and pieces then turned to eat her own breakfast. Yet, it was cut quickly.
“But Mama…” A whine. A dangerous one.
“Hmm? I thought you liked eating on your own because you’re a big girl.”
“Yes, Himeki. You’re a big girl already.” Kei pushes her plate towards her as he repeats Zemu’s words playfully. “You kept telling me how you can make eggs for Mama better than Papa for breakfast right?”
“Himeki knows how to make eggs?”
“Yeah!” She picks up her fork and tilts her head, trying to keep up with her father’s banter. “I can put them in very, very hot water. Then I can peel them. And Mama will like it!”
“I’m sure I will like it.” Zemu inserts herself in the conversation, trying not to laugh. “Himeki is on egg duty for next time.” As she was preparing to feed her daughter with eggs, Kei snatched the fork gently from Himeki to do it himself, in which she did not even try to fight, but still had her eyebrows meet in the middle of her face while she chewed silently but very slowly.
Slowly, the neighborhood was starting to wake too. The birds that were probably one house away tweets over one another, just loud enough that they can hear. A cat was on the fence across them, fat enough to make little Himeki giggle while biting on the corner of her toast. Cars, which probably had a father heading to work, passed by outside. For a while, there was silence as the family ate, until it was Himeki who put an end to it.
"Does anniversary mean you're still boyfriend and girlfriend?"
Kei set down his coffee. The question did not surprise him, but they always came as Himeki’s questions often did: no preamble or warning, simply with earnest curiosity that made it impossible to deflect.
Zemu folded her hands around her mug. "What makes you ask that?"
"Remy’s mama said…" Himeki paused, clearly reconstructing. "She said anniversaries are for people who are still in love." She looked between them. "Are you still?"
This time, Kei set his breakfast aside to erase any barrier that was in front of him and his daughter. “What a silly question to ask, Himeki.” Yet, it did not sound demeaning or amused, but rather just a-matter-of-fact with a trace of fondness just around the edges. “What do you think people that are in love do?”
“Hmm…” She placed her index just right below her lip to think, very deeply as it seems with the way she tried to close her eyes as if she visualized something. “They kiss and they hug and buy flowers and stuff…” But as soon as Himeki’s eyes shot up with a slightly disturbed face. “I think… the more icky they are.. The more they are in love.”
Soft giggles echoed in the kitchen from Zemu. Kei does not look fazed by the way she has put into words what she thinks being in love with, but little Himeki has to learn early. Teach them young, they said. “Do you see that vase on your way to the door where Mama and Papa leave the keys?” All their eyes drifted towards the lilies that were in full bloom, which was usually white but now pink. “Do you think flowers die, Himeki?”
“Ours don’t. They look different today, Papa.”
Their flowers don’t die, not because they are fake or immortal ones, but because Kei makes sure they are always fresh.
“That’s Mama and Papa’s in-love meter.” He pointed to it with a proud smile. “Whenever Remy’s mama asks if we are still in love, remember that the flowers over there will die when Mama and Papa are no longer in love.”
Himeki received this information with the gravity it deserved. She nodded once, slowly, the way she nodded when something confirmed what she had already known. With a soft groan, she hid in her mama’s arm murmuring something along the lines of… “...that’s unfair… I want forever flowers too..”
Oh, little Himeki does not need to worry about that.
Kei and Zemu were still deciding what to bring and not to in their picnic basket (also arguing if perhaps there is a need for another one) while Himeki was already in the doorway of the living room: yellow dress with embroidered rabbits at the hem, her little Usagi tucked underneath her arm, a matching yellow bucket hat with bunny ears and an excited, yet very professional and administrative face underneath her thick glasses.
That is their very serious Picnic Advisor.
Though this title was granted to Himeki by Kei through a very thorough process (“Papa! It’s your day! I plan!”) with a unanimous decision from the family (“It’s okay, little Himeki. We can do that!”) was met with a few bumps in the road (“Please, Papa! Pretty please! Himeki is a big girl!”), they can all agree that she deserved it very much.
“Mama, Papa.” She breathes deeply, looking at her cute analog watch on her left wrist. “It’s already 1PM!” Then puts a hand on her waist, trying to exert authority but not in a bratty way. “We are going to have little time and there are so many many things to do!” Soon enough, the goods are on the couch which she made sure to personally inspect.
“So, we’ve covered most of it, Picnic Advisor?” Kei asked her, holding his wife by the waist.
Nodding in approval, she tapped on the basket that was filled with her ‘authorized’ and favorite food. “This is for Papa’s to bring, with the picnic umbrella too.” Next, she peeked in the bag and the little backpack her Mama has already prepared for her as well that includes the necessities for the Picnic Advisor: mochi snacks, a whistle, her crayons and little notebook where she draws like her Mama. “And then you, Mama, will bring all your drawing stuff (sketchbooks, colored pencils, charcoals in their paper wrapping and more that little Himeki could not name yet). And I will bring the blanket because I want to help too! (Even though it was folded, it was still too big for her arms).”
“Aye, aye, captain.!” Zemu responded, now putting the bag on her back to her little girl. “So, are we ready now?”
“Picnic time!” She said, raising her fists and excitedly opened the door. “Papa, don’t drop the basket.”
“I am not dropping the basket.”
“But Papa, you might.”
Afternoons in late June are calmer and warm enough but also just the right kind of cold. Ms. Picnic Advisor made sure (by telling her Papa to search ‘weather June 29’ almost every 4 hours since last week) the rain did not come nor the sun thought that he was invited. The walk to the park was surely not boring, not with someone like Himeki making sure everything was not only visually taken into account but verbally as well as she walked between them.
She always walked between them. Had, from the moment she was old enough to walk at a pace that didn't require being carried, inserted herself into the space between their two bodies like a heart between their names, just a differently shaped one this time (and with very fast legs).
"That cloud looks like a radish." Himeki points upward.
"You think so?" Kei said.
"It does a little,"
Kei looked at the cloud. Back at Zemu. "It's a cumulonimbus formation."
"A radish-shaped cumulonimbus formation," Zemu said. Insisted.
"That house has a red door," Himeki continued, pointing otherwise and totally abandoning the radish cloud conversation. She turned around briefly to examine it as they passed. "I think people with red doors are brave."
"That's a very specific theory," Her mother, quick to shift interests according to her daughter’s.
"I've been thinking about it." Himeki turned back forward. "What color is our door?"
"Blue," Kei said.
Himeki considered this. "What does blue mean?"
"That we liked the blue."
"Keki," Himeki said, in the tone of someone who has been dealing with this particular variety of literalness for her entire life. “That is such a basic answer.” (She picked this up, sitting next to her parents when they watched tiktoks together.)
There it was: the name. By mistake, hearing Zemu say it the way Zemu said it, Keki, soft and fond, took it for herself with a child's perfect instinct, only discovering later that her mother's Keki and her Keki were the same word arriving from different directions. She had kept it. For her, it was hers too. They just laughed a little, while Kei's hand came down and just naturally found hers, without looking, the way you reach for something you know exactly where it is.
Himeki took it.
“If you want an answer, it was the fact that the day we went shopping for paint, the specific color we were looking for ran out and we had to get that shade of blue.”
“So the theory is you were lazy.”
“Lazy?!”
“There could have been in the other stores.”
“I checked!”
“In the other city?”
Silence, except for the snicker from Zemu who walked behind them, just a few steps back, to watch them together. They looked at each other with the same intensity, the only thing different was Kei held a certain softness that Zemu could see from here.
“See, Papa? Lazy.”
At the bottom of the hill was the picnic park that waited for them. Wide field, lots of trees, and ducks on the little man-made lake that was at the center and a few strides away from anywhere in the park. By any reasonable measure, anywhere was a good picnic spot. Unless, of course, you were the very strict Ms. Picnic Advisor.
The first spot, flat, well-shaded, near the path, was too close to the path.
"People will walk past," she explained, "and look."
"Looking is fine," Kei said.
"Not on Mama and Papa Day," Himeki said. As if this were obvious.
The second spot, nearer the water, was too near the ducks. "They'll want the mochi," she said, in a tone that made clear this was not generosity she was prepared to extend.
By this point, Kei had been carrying the basket, the blanket, both bags, and his own considerable patience for twelve minutes of walking and four rejected locations (It’s too bright for mama’s drawing and ‘I just don’t like it.), and he was doing it with the specific silence of someone who has made a choice about which battles to have.
Zemu was watching the light change on the water and thinking about whether she had the right blue for the sky right now. She did not. She had a close blue. She would make it work.
"Here," Himeki said. She had stopped at a slight slope of ground near the water, near enough for the ducks, not near enough for them to be an issue, under a tree that was not leaning at all, in a pocket of afternoon light that was, in fact, perfect. She turned once, surveying, like something calibrating. Then she nodded. "Here," she said again.
Kei set everything down. He set it down with the particular care of someone returning from a great journey. He straightened as he allowed himself a very long, dragged out sigh.
"Glad you approve," he said. “Miss Picnic Advisor.”
"You're welcome," Himeki said. “Papa Butler.”
As soon as the blanket went down. Zemu pinned her corner with her sketchbook and sat with her knees up, charcoal already in hand. Kei and Himeki have gone a bit further, but still close enough that she could hear them. The ducks were not cooperative, which did not concern Himeki at all.
Not when Kei is beside her.
She stood at the water's edge with full authority, apportioning bread, and offered her running commentary to anyone within range. Mostly, to her father. He crouched so he could be just the same height as Himeki, whom he softly observed very closely.
"That one is the leader," she said, of a large duck that had claimed most of the bread through geographic advantage. "You can tell because it doesn't look worried."
Kei tilted his head, observing the duck as well. “He is the leader because he can convince you that he is not worried.” The duck in question took bread. The duck in question dragged it closer to his little flock. “Good leaders worry about a lot of things.”
“Why?” Himeki scoffed. “Leaders let other people do the worrying and work.”
“Nuh-uh.” He even waved his finger in front of her to get to his point. “Not the good ones.” Kei fully turned to her now, to explain further. “Remember when you wanted to check the weather for today?” Himeki nodded once. “And you also wanted me to take you to the groceries so I don’t forget anything for the picnic?” She nodded twice. “You were worrying, because you are Miss Picnic Advisor. Then you let me help you. You were worried because you wanted to have a good picnic date.”
“Of course It has to be the best Mama and Papa day ever!” She responded with a smile.
“Then you are that good leader duck.”
As Kei and Himeki watched the ducks share the bread (“Papa, do you think they’re also having a picnic?” “Uh-huh. That was their Picnic Advisor” Zemu ‘s smile plastered to her face while sketching two figures on her sketchbook, side by side, leaning to each other and almost formed a perfect heart.
That was short lived.
The moment Himeki’s head turned, her eyes widened as she stiffened. “Papa. Rabbits.” It was probably a split second, but she managed to catch sight of them right toward the tree line, where the park gave way to a low hedge. Beyond it, a stretch of unmowed grass going wild at the margin. "There," she said. "Maybe."
And that was how it happened, the way things always happened with Himeki, one thing leading directly into the next with the momentum of total certainty, Kei standing up, brushing grass from his trousers, and the two of them walking toward the tree line together. He matched his pace to hers, slowed to match hers, which was the same thing in the end: they moved through the dappled edge-light together, looking under roots, peering into the longer grass, neither of them saying much.
He crouched at one point where the hedge thinned. She crouched beside him, Usagi's ear brushing the ground. "They're deciding," Himeki said quietly, after a while.
"Is that what they're doing?”
"They watch first. To see if you're safe." She looked at the hedge. Then at him. "I think we are." She patiently waited before whispering. “Papa, if they don’t trust you, you have to go. Okay?”
Hunger came first before the rabbits did. Good thing there was bread and cold cuts and the fruit Zemu had packed at the bottom of the basket where Himeki wouldn't notice them ahead of time and renegotiate. The mochi came out after, with Himeki handling the container with both hands like something sacred, and distributing them with great deliberation.
"One for you," she told Kei. "One for Mama." She placed it in Zemu's palm. "And one for me." She sat back with hers, satisfied with the allocation. Then looked at Kei. "You can have another if you want. If not, I can have your extra.”
They lay on the blanket, the three of them in a row, and found things in the clouds that were moving in slow procession from west to east like something was expecting them elsewhere.
"That one looks like a radish," Himeki said.
"You already said that this afternoon," Kei said.
“Maybe they followed me.”
Zemu was already smiling at the sky and leaned her head towards Himeki, which Kei could not see from where he was, which was fine. "Oh, that one," She pointed, "looks like Papa."
Both turned their heads.
"A tall thin one," Himeki confirmed, "that appears to be judging the other clouds." Then giggled.
“Both of you. I’m judging.” He replied with feigned, playful annoyance as he tickled Himeki and bit her cheeks. “You are too powerful. I have to eliminate you before you eat all the mochis in the world!”
Laughing through the betrayal as Zemu also held her down to bite her cheeks, Himeki laughed louder… one that almost sounded like a series of excited screams. “Mama! Papa!”
“That’s my judgement!” Kei continued. “Mochi-devourer!”
“Mama! Help!”
Himeki collected flowers in the late afternoon, going out through the field edge where the yellow ones grew in loose clusters and low to the ground. She brought them in handfuls with the determination of someone who had determined this was a necessary task.
"For the anniversary," she said, depositing them onto the blanket. "Anniversaries should have flowers."
Zemu took the small yellow bundle and looked at them, their ordinary, temporary brightness. "Thank you," she said while bringing the flowers to her chest, as if she would store it in her heart literally if she could.
"Keki." Himeki turned and presented another handful.
“Papa.”
“Papa Keki.” He held out his hand for her to fill as she demanded it. "Now we match," she announced, sitting back between them, already reaching for the mochi container she had definitely already emptied and was checking again out of optimism. "Families should always match." Kei stared at the flowers in his hand. Then at his daughter, who had found one remaining mochi tucked against the container's edge and was extracting it carefully. Then at the field, going gold now. It stopped being bright and started being warm.
And as he did that, Zemu was watching him. This was her great secret and her great skill: the capacity to really see him, to see the thing he wouldn't say, assembled in the careful architecture of what he did instead. The hand that had found Himeki's without looking. The morning eggs runny the way she liked them, never once acknowledged. The flowers that he was now holding without complaint, turning slightly in his palm like he was deciding something about them.
In the all the years they’ve shared, there was one thing that was sure in the sea of endless doubts. That she loved him. She had loved him since before she fully understood what that meant, through all the years of figuring out what it meant, through everything that had happened in the middle that she hadn't known to expect and hadn't been prepared for and had needed him for in ways she was still, sometimes, surprised by.
Zemu leaned her shoulder against his, and Kei knew her in depths where she met him. So, he didn't move away. His hand turned slightly, and found hers. Outside the field of their blanket, the field stretched out in all that late June gold, and the ducks were doing whatever ducks did at this hour and the people had slowly left the park but they remain.
Thank God, Kei thought, Zemu is here. What a relief.
“And now, for the main event!”
Under the guise of further rabbit hunting, the love of Zemu’s life has not returned with silly grass-eating hoppers, but a box. And she knew where it was from: the bakery three blocks from their house. Miss Picnic Advisor was all proud of herself now (she did hand the card to the lady at the counter.).
“To be fair,” Kei smiled as he descended to the blanket, opening the box with careful fingers. “I already placed in the order and she made sure that there will be cake.” He lifted the cover, beaming at Zemu’s reaction. “And it had to be Mama’s favorite.”
Zemu looked at him as he carefully extracted the cake from the box. “Keki…” Tears threatened to fall. Kei knew in the way her lips pout and voice cracked and shot her a look to assure her, indeed it was okay to cry. So she did, hiding it with her sleeves. “I hate you, Keki.”
“Oh, I love you too, Zemu.”
Himeki was there, on her knees at the edge of the blanket, hands pressed to her thighs, staring at her parents with love. She was careful not to ruin the moment, probably actually figuring out for the first time on how actually being in love looks like. This was past the kissing and the hugging and the flowers, but sometimes love is just getting cake. As if she has finally been welcomed in their little inside language, she smiled and pointed to Kei.
“I hate you too, Papa Keki.” She walked over to them, closer than before and watched her father get the knife carefully from their picnic basket. “Can I help cut it Papa?”
“But you…”
“Please?” Himeki sweetly grinned, leaning towards her mother arms for more convincing power. “Pretty please, Papa?” He looked at her. She looked back. “You did say I’m Miss Picnic Advisor.” The late afternoon light fell across her face, her very serious face, her father's eyes in her mother's expression, a combination that Zemu had never entirely recovered from the first time she saw it clearly.
Defeated, Kei picked up the knife. "Come here," he said. As Himeki waddled over to him, he adjusted her grip. His hand over her hand over the handle, the two of them together pressing down through the cream and the sponge, the knife going clean and careful through the first slice. The strawberries were very red against the white. Himeki watched the cut like it was surgery.
"Perfect," she announced, when it was done. "We did it right."
There was only one plate. That afternoon, both girls had their hands rendered completely useless. Kei made sure to feed them with as much cake as they wanted to.
All good things come to good ends. That’s not how the quote goes, but for this little family, that was how the day went. The sun was near the horizon and ready to say goodbye, and Himeki was talking about the moon for the last ten minutes. Gradually, she was already losing the battle with sleep that she waged every night with absolute conviction she would win. Her eyes were heavy. Her sentences were getting longer and then shorter and then longer again in the pattern of someone trying to outrun unconsciousness.
"The moon knows we're here," she said. "I think it checks. When it comes up." She was leaning against Kei's arm, Usagi pressed to her chest. "It checks who's outside waiting."
"Is that so," he said.
"We should stay until it comes. So it sees us." A pause. Her voice was thickening, going soft at the edges. "It would be rude not to stay. For the moon."
"We'll try," Zemu said.
"It's almost time. The sky's getting the purple." Himeki tilted her head, heavy, settling further into Kei's side. "The purple means the moon is…" And she was asleep. Between one word and the next, like a light going out, gently, completely, the way she had always done it, as if sleep were not something that happened to her but something she decided, at the last possible moment, to allow.
Kei's arm adjusted without thought, taking the new weight of her, making room. He looked down at her for a moment, Usagi tucked under her chin, her small hand still loosely holding the last of the afternoon. There were no words for her, for she encompasses them all.
Perhaps, that’s why we give people names. For when no word, in any language, can suffice, there will always be one that could capture it all. What a privilege, Kei and Zemu thought as they studied her sleeping face, that they get to decide that for their Himeki.
Sweet Himeki. Mama and Papa’s Himeki. Tsukkishima Himeki.
Perfect.
The sky was doing the thing. The purple she had meant, coming in at the edges of the gold, the first suggestion of what the evening would be. The ducks had moved to the far side of the pond. The field had gone very still.
"She almost made it," she said. “The duck feeding and rabbit hunting and picnic supervision drained her battery.”
"She always thinks she will."
"Someday she will."
He made a sound that was not quite agreement and not quite disagreement, which meant he was thinking about it. Thinking about someday, about Himeki at an age when she would stay awake for the moon, about all the incremental distance between here and there. The years between the counting on fingers and not needing to count. The sunset did not wait for anyone. It was not sentimental about this. But it was very beautiful, and they stayed in it for a while.
Kei carried Himeki home.
She had her cheek against his shoulder and her rabbit against her chest, and she was somewhere entirely else, somewhere that had nothing to do with the walk home or the evening or the particular quality of her father's footsteps, which she had apparently decided long ago were a safe thing to sleep to.
Zemu walked beside them, towards the blue door ahead.
“Happy Anniversary.” She whispered, hooking her arm around Kei’s. “Have I said that today?”
He offered her a soft smile. “I do not remember.” Then, he kissed her cheek. “All I know is it’s happy and it’s an anniversary.” And when they arrived at the porch, he pressed his lips on hers. “And I love that tthe years could be 10 or 50 but it's never going to be enough with you.” Whispering finally, in the most vulnerable voice he could muster.
“I love you, wife.” He added, in a broken accent. “Mahal na mahal kita, asawa ko.”
They have done this a lot of times already. Kei lowered her with a care he applied to nothing else quite this way, Zemu pulling back the sheets, both of them moving silently in precision. Usagi was placed beside her. The sheet was smoothed down.
For a while, both stood in the dim room for a moment, looking at her, at the small entirely still shape of her, all that energy settled into something peaceful, her face soft the way it wasn't quite when she was awake and managing things. Then Himeki made a sound. Not fully awake. The eyes barely opened, heavy with sleep, her voice thick and slow from very far down.
"…Happy Mama Papa day…" she murmured. They looked at each other over her. There was a small pause before her mouth moved again, the thought not quite finished but working its way out from wherever she was. "…Don't have fun," she said, very slowly, "without me."
The eyes closed and she was gone again, completely, immediately, the way she had fallen asleep in the field.
The house, finally, was quiet.
Himeki's shoes by the door, still with field grass caught in the soles. The picnic basket on the kitchen counter, half-unpacked. The white cake box beside it, half of the cake missing now. Zemu's sketchbook on the table, open to the drawing she hadn't finished.
Kei was on the sofa next to Zemu. Phone in hand, scrolling through the day: Himeki at the pond, bread-arm extended, expression grave. The blurry sky photo she had taken herself, off-center, mostly cloud, the edge of someone's ear in the corner, filed under: radish, evidence of. The strawberry shortcake before the cut, white and very red. Him and Himeki crouched at the hedge, which Zemu had taken from the blanket without announcing it, from far enough away that neither of them had noticed.
He stopped on one for a while.
Then he looked up, and his eyes went to Himeki's bag, still on the floor by the door where she'd dropped it, small and slightly deflated now without all the things she'd been certain were critical. He set the phone down. Crossed to it without quite deciding to.
"What are you doing," Zemu said, from the sofa.
"Looking for something."
"That's her bag."
"Oh, I know whose bag it is, Zemu." He crouched and unzipped it, carefully, the way you open things that belong to someone sleeping, and found what he was looking for near the top, tucked under the corner of the mochi container she had apparently been carrying around empty the entire walk home.
Her notebook.
Small. Yellow. The cover had a rabbit sticker on it that was peeling at one corner, which Himeki had been meaning to fix and hadn't. He had bought her this notebook four months ago because she had said, very seriously, that she needed somewhere for her drawings that wasn't just the backs of things.
He brought it back to the sofa where Zemu leaned in without asking.
Most of it was what he expected, her version of the world rendered in crayon and the colored pencils she borrowed without asking, returned without comment. The ducks from a previous park visit, rendered in enthusiastic brown. Something that might have been a rabbit or might have been a cloud, she had labeled it RABIT in large careful letters. However, there is a bigger B that's floating above and an arrow to insert it in the word to correct her spelling. Several portraits of Usagi. A page that was just the moon, large and yellow, taking up everything, the sky around it pressed dark blue.
Then he turned the page, and stopped.
It was them.
Three figures on a blanket, crayon-small and unmistakable. The tall one on the left, rendered in yellow because she didn't have the right color and yellow was apparently close enough. The one in the middle, seated, with something in her lap that might have been the sketchbook. The small one between them, rounder, with a rabbit pressed to her chest, which required no label.
The sun was in the corner, a full circle with rays extending in all directions, the way children draw it. The grass had green horizontal lines. There were flowers, small and scattered, the kind she had collected and put in their hands.
Himeki had drawn all three of their faces. His was… accurate, actually, in its way. A flat line for a mouth. Eyes behind what were clearly intended to be glasses. Zemu's was easier, apparently, a small smile, hair framing the face and a set of glasses too. Her own was a full grin, to match, with glasses too.
Below, in her large careful letters, unevenly spaced: FAMLY PICNIC. JUNE 29.
(The L in family was backwards.)
Kei’s gaze lingered. His wife’s shoulder against his, looking at the same page. He could feel her breathing slow, the way it did when she was paying attention to something she intended to keep.
Outside the window, the moon had found its position for the night and stayed there.
"Happy anniversary," Zemu said, his hand already holding hers. “My Keki.”
Kei replied in a different language, one that she was fluent too: he kissed her again. And all that strawberry left in his mouth were very important semantics in that exchange they had.
end