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The sun is already way up high in the sky. It’s past noon and there’s nowhere to go, and as if to illustrate that fact, there’s not a cloud in sight; just vast blue and the sun Sae squints into. The breeze is nice on the balcony like this, prickles under her negligee, on her bare legs, the tile flooring cold under her bare feet. But her tea is warm where it’s cupped in both her hands, so that’s fine.
It’s nice. Objectively.
She watches a bird in its nest below in a tree. It’s not a seagull—they aren’t quite close enough to the ocean for that—and she can’t tell what species it is, but it’s plucking at dry twigs with its little beak, like it has all the time in the world. Sae supposes they both do, don’t they?
Eventually, it does get too cold, however, so she moves inside. Finishes folding the rest of the laundry from yesterday, then makes another tea (this time to actually drink), then fries eggs for late breakfast, eating them with two scoops of rice and some chopped scallop. The yolks are still nice and jammy. She pierces one with her chopstick and watches it ooze over the rice. Delicious.
She could get fries for lunch later, now that she’s thinking about it. Leaves the dishes in the sink to deal with later—well, someone will deal with them later—before padding over into the bathroom to brush her teeth and her hair, and to wash her face. She puts on makeup still in her pajamas, but it’s only a bit of lip-gloss and a bit of mascara, anyway; it’s not going to get smudged.
That much.
There’s something of a pang, very vaguely, in her chest when she’s back in the bedroom, twisting ever so slightly in front of the full-length mirror on the wardrobe, like part of her still hasn’t gotten used to it, and she supposes that’s true. She slips off the negligee and does it again, pinching at her hip and then at her nipples, just to watch then tighten that tiny bit by touch. Ridiculous. Lukewarm.
She dresses in shorts and a boy’s hoodie that is too large on her, making it fall over her hands when she’s trying to fit her phone in any of her pockets. In the end, she has to make do with the one at the front of the hoodie. It’s the price to pay.
Outside, it’s nice. Another price to pay here is the fact she has to use sunscreen—and ideally, with this sun, even though it’s still spring, she should have brought a parasol, but she likes to think she’s not that far gone—before going out, but it’s not too much of a hassle. Sae is used to rigid routines; she’s done way more annoying things with way more diligence. It’s important to do things right.
She’s expanded on which things are important to do right over the years. It’s a process. There’s new things to discover at every corner.
Like the pastry she gets at a small bakery that is entirely too sugary, with shitty coffee to boot. Or the small pond at the local park, where families hang out on days like these, which means the air is polluted by squealing and laughing and crying. Or the family restaurant she stops by eventually to get fries, after all. No sauce. They’re not that good; soggy and salty, and she keeps them in her mouth until they’re even more soggy, her tongue coated in salt instead. Two children rush past her when she steps outside, one with a football at its foot. Their knees are skinned.
Or the supermarket on her way home, which was a rather spontaneous decision, so she didn’t bring a bag, but she doesn’t buy much, anyway.
“Sae-chan!” says the old man at the register who’s never watched a football match in his whole entire life. She hums in vague acknowledgement. “Are you cooking tonight? How lovely! Your boyfriend will be very happy.”
She hums again. They still have rice at home, and they still have green tea, too, but it’s nearing the end of its life, so she bought more; together with fish and sea weed and two big bottles of kelp tea, which is very much a necessity. She’d pondered over the sweets isle for a bit, but she’s already done enough of that lukewarm bullshit today, so.
The sun is in the motions of setting when she arrives back home. Along the very edges, it tinges the sky a honey-orange, spuming seafoam-white where it meets the blue of the cloudless sky. She wants to go to the sea again soon. Just to soak her feet in it. It’s not that far, she can take a trip tomorrow; by train, or she can use the car. The train would be more scenic, she supposes, and it’s not warm enough to swim yet, but maybe she still will. She thinks she probably still has a bikini somewhere, though that one was bought for her, so perhaps it’s time to pick out one on her own.
She puts her shoes into a neat row by the entrance and puts the groceries away before taking a bottle of the kelp tea and a few volumes of manga they have flying around in the bedroom—they’re hers, probably—back to the balcony, sitting down on one of the two chairs there this time, placing her stuff on the small table.
There’s the buzzing of insects in the trees, everywhere, but it’s not too loud. It’s a nice enough backdrop, she supposes, and she doesn’t really listen to music much, so there’s that.
She doesn’t really end up reading much. Mostly flips through the pages and soaks up the last bit of the sun and drinks her tea, holds it in her mouth, feels it seep into her when she swallows. It tastes good, it always does.
It’s nice. There’s nothing to do, she can just do whatever. She did yoga in the morning—noon; or a little before it, that is—but she doesn’t have to tomorrow if she doesn’t feel like it.
Sae tilts her head back and stares up into the darkening sky. Lukewarm, she thinks to herself, privately, but she supposes it doesn’t matter much. Maybe it never has. She swallows another mouthful of tea and lets her eyes flutter shut.
It doesn’t take long until the front door clicks inside, either. The balcony door is wide open, so she can hear it from out here, and—
“I’m home.”
.
She’d been right; the water is still quite icy. It splashes when she kicks her foot into it, glitters so brightly in the sun that she needs to squint, that it smarts in her skull. So much for that.
The scent is still nice. Salty and foamy and prickly everywhere, all over. She likes scents. There’s a box filled with perfume bottles she doesn’t exactly use but doesn’t exactly not use in the bedroom back at home. Today, she’s bare.
Sae hadn’t felt like going shopping, so she’s not in a swim suit. Her sandals are discarded by the shore, her toenails painted teal from yesterday—she did her own hands, though—the sand wet when she digs into it with her foot. The give is nice. She digs and she digs until she doesn’t get any deeper, no matter how much she pushes.
It’s nice. She should have brought a hat for the sun, she thinks. And sunscreen; she forgot about that, so she had to buy some after her train ride, at an expensive, almost-touristy kind of spot. Oh well.
Right here, this stretch of beach is deserted. It’s not quite swimming season yet and there’s a lot of seagulls here in particular, so all of that works out in Sae’s favor. Isn’t she lucky?
Lukewarm. Though the water is much colder than that.
In her pocket, her phone buzzes. She should have probably either left it at the shore together with her shoes or back at home entirely, but she’s not that cruel. Probably. Maybe. Still, it worries her just a little, the buzzing phone in her back pocket—no hoodie today—and the water underneath her, even when she’s only ankle-deep. Plenty deep enough for a phone to fall into and die. She doesn’t know enough about technology to say if it’d be salvageable.
She ignores it, anyway. Continues splashing a little, then turns for the open ocean to watch how the sun glistens in it, trying to see if she can make out the difference between reflections and seafoam in the distance. Probably not. Her eyes are pretty good, though. It looks endless like this, until it disappears at the horizon. She feels it inside of her chest, reaches out her hand for it, and her arm still isn’t long enough, but these days, that doesn’t matter much anymore.
Her phone buzzes again when she gets out of the water and into her sandals, flooding them with water after a moment of consideration at all the sand sticking to her feet, but then it sticks to her wet sandals, too, of course, so everything ends up rather crunchy, anyway. And again when she’s buying a packaged sandwich from the same store she got the sunscreen from earlier, crouching in front of the isle. It does fall out of her pocket, clattering and vibrating on the floor, this time, and Sae checks it it still works, then stuffs it back in. She already knows who’s calling her, after all, and she doesn’t want to see how many LINE messages she has right now, either. It doesn’t matter.
The sandwich is nice. Eggy and sweet, and she shares half of it with a seagull who flutters down next to her on the bench overlooking the shoreline she settled on. She doesn’t know exactly how much time it’s been; she should probably reapply her sunscreen.
So she does that. It feels like a peeling on her feet and ankles, makes her frown. Does it still work like this? It should, right? Well, whatever.
There’s a lone little boy in the grass field behind the train station once she’s there, juggling a football on his knees, even though it rolls away ever so often. Sae wonders faintly if it has ever rolled onto the train tracks, or if it will for the first time today. Wonders what would happen if a train ran over it. When she checks the screen, the next train—her train—is only coming in about half an hour, though, so she supposes for now it’s fine.
“Nee-san!” the boy calls out, eventually. “Nee-san, do you know how to play football?”
When Sae looks around the station, there’s nobody else in sight, nobody at all.
So she turns, tilts her head at the kid, who’s looking at her with bright, sparkling eyes, one hand around the railing separating the station and the field. Twenty-five more minutes.
“A little bit,” she says.
They play. Sae isn’t sure why—he’s quite bad, and she’s in sandals, and she thinks she’s developing a slight sunburn on her shoulders even with the sunscreen, which all in all, is pretty tepid—but it’s a way to pass the time, she supposes. The ball doesn’t really fly off her shoes right, but it does make dried sand fall from them, so.
“Whoaaa, Nee-san, you’re so good!”
Sae doesn’t say anything, just passes the ball back to the boy’s feet. There’s grass stuck to his shoes and his shorts, fresh and bright and green, bleeding into everything.
“Do you watch football?” she asks, finally.
“I love football!”
Which isn’t really a response. Children…
“Who’s your favorite player?”
The ball arcs high through the air. The boy misses it, but bounds after it with a delighted squeal. Five more minutes. That went by quick, didn’t it? Her phone buzzes again just as the boy returns, this time clutching the ball in his grass-stained hands. He’s missing a front tooth.
“Itoshi Rin!”
Ah, Sae thinks.
.
“I’m back home,” she says once the door is shut behind her, swiping her feet off with her hands one after the other, extricating herself from her shoes. They’ll probably need to be washed off, but that’s later-Sae’s problem. Or, well, someone’s problem.
He doesn’t bound over to greet her immediately, which is unusual—well, most of the time, she’s home before he is, but still—so he’s probably actually pissed with her. Oh, well.
“I’ll eat the popsicles by myself,” she announces to the empty hall, then slips into the kitchen, plastic bag rustling. It’s a bit of an empty threat, since she didn’t stop by the supermarket right around the corner of their home for just two popsicles, she obviously got a carton, but it’s not like he knows that.
It is, however, also a cheap threat. Underhanded and lukewarm, but those tend to work the best. She’s done putting the popsicles—save two—into the freezer when she looks up to Rin in the doorway, frowning at her.
“You didn’t answer your phone,” he says, accusing. Ignores her, too, when she holds out a popsicle to him, so she shrugs, puts it on the table and plops down at it, ripping the plastic packaging of her own popsicle open. It’s icy in her mouth, makes her shiver; sickly sweet in taste, and still she feels the sea salt is still in her sinuses.
“I had something to do.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Touché. She arches a brow, slurps at her popsicle, watching how his gaze flickers there for a moment, brows knitting together tightly. It’s stupid, how obstinately he’s holding on to being upset.
“Well, as you can see, I’m fine. Sit down.”
For a few moments more, he glares at her with that seething, foaming hatred he so excels at. Sae rolls her eyes.
Then he does sit down, tears into his popsicle wrapping angrily, like a petulant child. It’s almost cute, but mostly, it’s pathetic. Which can also be cute, she supposes. She’s discovering new things every day, isn’t that nice?
Slowly but surely, much like the popsicles in both their mouths, Rin melts. Doesn’t soften, because he’s still Rin, but something like that.
“Where did you go?” he asks, all sulky. There’s popsicle juice dripping down his chin, because he’s horrifyingly juvenile in so many aspects. Sae frowns at this, but they’re sitting across from each other, so she can’t reach him to wipe at his face like this. And he’s already getting his shirt dirty, so that’s a lost cause.
“Beach.”
“We could have gone together.”
Sae rolls her eyes again. Rin bites a chunk out of his popsicle. He’s going to hurt his teeth.
“It’s not like we’ll never go again just because I went alone today.”
It seems he doesn’t have a reply for that except stewing. He keeps biting, so he finishes his popsicle much faster than she does, tosses the stick across the kitchen into the trashcan. Ridiculous behavior.
“There was a boy,” Sae says; and then, when his face snaps up so he can look at her with that tepid intensity, “A child. He said you’re his favorite football player.”
Rin wrinkles his nose. “What do I care about some random child?”
True. She finishes her popsicle, then she tilts her head at him. “Rin,” she says. “C’mere.”
For a moment, she thinks he won’t. For a moment, she thinks he’s actually upset enough that he might just ignore her for the rest of the day—only to come crawling back tomorrow; it is what it is—that he might build a pillow barrier between them on the bed tonight—he does that sometimes since he’s realized he can’t bring himself to ask her to sleep on the couch and doesn’t want to sleep on the couch himself, either—which she really doesn’t care about. He’s only punishing himself with puerile behavior like that.
For a moment, she thinks he won’t, but then he gets up, anyway, loops around the table. Avoids her eyes even as he’s right in front of her.
She crosses her legs. She can hear how he grits his teeth.
“Rin,” she repeats. This time, his teeth actually flash as he snarls or something like that, but he goes on his knees on the kitchen floor, anyway. Hesitates for just a moment before leaning in to bury his face at her stomach.
She sighs and places her hand on his head, which is apparently invitation enough for him to wrap his arms around her middle and squeeze her so tight that she wheezes; so tight that she smacks him upside the head. He doesn’t even flinch, and doesn’t complain, either, the masochist.
“Nee-chan,” he says, nearly whiny. Sae sighs again. “I hate you.”
“Sure.”
He’s probably glaring into her stomach, but she can’t see that, so it doesn’t really matter. Wouldn’t matter even if he glared at her outright, to be honest, but she has enough tact to not say something like that out loud, and to not scold him, either. Barely.
Instead, she tugs at her shirt. Instead, she pats his head again and says, “Rin, c’mere,” again, and obediently—see, he can fucking do it after all—he lifts his head. Like this, from above, his eyes go all round and bright and shiny. He’s so cute. He’s really way too cute. It’s tepid, the way it makes her heart jump, the way it makes her body flush.
His face flushes, too, when she tugs her shirt higher, until her chest is bare. His mouth falls open, tongue twitching and pink.
“You’re not wearing a bra,” he says, in a tone that suggests he’s probably calling her a slut, but she doesn’t care about this, either. Tugs at his head as if to tell him Last chance, idiot, and he seems to understand this, because he surges up immediately to suck her nipple into his mouth. Sae winces a little at the teeth, and at how her tits are still a bit sensitive, anyway.
It’s a bit awkward, him folded on the ground and her on the chair; she leans towards him a little, cups the back of his head, and he makes a greedy noise against her, nipping at her again until she tugs at his hair.
“It’s okay,” she says, voice flat. Rin still shudders against her. “It’s okay, Rin, Nee-chan is here.”
And she is. And tomorrow, she will be, too.
Who knows, perhaps she’ll actually go shopping for clothes tomorrow.