Chapter Text
Ritsuko
Ritsuko leans her cheek against the train window, watching the scenery blur past her. Night has fallen, and it is so dark that she can barely see the trees and grass outside. She smiles. They’re far from Kyushu now, and only getting farther. Above the windows, bars of neon emit a hard white light, casting a dull green haze over the carpet. The window reflects the train’s interior back at itself, filling the narrow hallway with blue on blue.
Ritsuko hears footsteps thunder down the hall. She looks up in time to see a little boy, his yukata flapping open around him. He comes to a halt when he sees her, stumbling over his own momentum.
“Can’t sleep?” She asks, smiling.
His mouth twists to the side, and he squints at her, suspicious. He looks about six years old.
“Me neither,” she says. “I don’t sleep well in cars and trains. I’m always afraid I’ll miss something.”
The boy’s expression smooths out. He regards her silently, then turns and stomps away.
Ritsuko can’t help but laugh. He reminds her of Sentaro. She can’t tell if someone else would see the resemblance, or if she still hasn’t broken the habit of searching strangers’ faces for him. What she does know is that she can imagine being a child again and trailing Sentaro through this train. Sentaro would try to climb on things and stick his damp palms to as many shiny surfaces as possible. And she would hiss at him to get down, or complain that she was hungry. Or maybe not. Maybe she’s being too fanciful. At six, Sentaro had the stillness of a dog afraid of being hit.
Ritsuko turns back to the window and rests her chin on her palm. She forces herself to yawn, to see if the feeling will stick. It doesn’t. Ritsuko watches a smile spread over her reflection’s face. Sentaro is back in her life. Sentaro is back in her life! Sometimes, when she’s walking to school in the morning, this fact will drift across her mind and she’ll skip the rest of the way like a girl. She had so many fantasies about the ways they would make up for lost time, their friendship as adults, but the reality is better than she could have imagined. Whenever they can, she and Kaoru take the train to Sentaro's church and stay with him for a weekend. Kaoru sleeps on a mat in Sentaro’s room, and they clear out a storage room in the basement for her. The head priest had been against it at first, grumbling about how Sentaro didn’t need more distractions, but then he realized that he could put them to work. He does not like Kaoru. He is happy to wring a few check ups for the kids out of Kaoru, but speaks to him in clipped, three word commands. But as it has always been, the head priest loves her. Sometimes, as they are passing each other in the halls, he glances up from what he is doing and smiles at her. “Sentaro is lucky to have you around, Mukae-san,” he says, and Ritsuko is reminded of how middle school teachers viewed her as Sentaro’s dogged goodwill ambassador.
She has spent so much of her life pining for Sentaro. As a child she had chosen to be in love with him. In those days, his hair was curly and the color of straw, and his large, downward turning eyes were as luminous and gentle as a cow’s. He had been pretty, and she had told him so, much to his annoyance. Don’t you know? You say pretty to a girl! I’m not a girl! I’m a boy, so I’m handsome! Ritsuko could never understand the force of his emotion. She would be quite pleased if someone called her handsome, she thought. But most importantly, she could tell that the adults liked it when she “played wife” to him, cleaning off his scratches and reprimanding him for getting in trouble.
Perhaps why Ritusko has never been afraid of being called handsome is because she knows it will never happen. She smooths down her reflection’s cap of hair. The first time she had come home after cutting it short, her aunt had asked, scandalized, “You’re not afraid of looking like a boy?” No, she said back. Not defensive. She has known for a long time that she can do all sorts of things and never be mistaken for a boy. Her father had cut in. “Don’t say that to her. Ri’ko, you look like that American actress. Tiffany? No. Audrey Hepburn!” “Thank you,” she had replied. Not particularly grateful, either.
Ritsuko hears footsteps again. The boy has returned. He stands in front of her, refusing to meet her eyes, and rubs at his nose with the back of his hand.
“Excuse me. I am lost.” The boy stares at the carpet.
She smiles at him. “Do you need help finding your way back?”
The boy glances up at her, and then jerks his gaze away. He nods.
“Do you remember where the rest of your family is staying?”
The boy scowls, and then shakes his head.
Ritsuko stands up. “That’s not a problem. We’ll go one by one and find your family eventually.”
Ritsuko and the boy set off in the direction that he came from. She is surprised when the boy sticks one hand into his mouth and the other into hers. And they do as Ritsuko says. They go room by room through the sleeper cars, peering into each one. Then, upon reaching one particular door, the boy sprints away from her, flings open the door, and bolts inside.
“Tadashi?” someone gasps from inside. “Where did you go?”
After Ritsuko is thanked, she meanders back to her own room. She yawns again, and this time it sticks. She settles into her cot and dreams of nothing.
In the morning, she awakens about twenty minutes before her train is due in the station. This gives her enough time to splash water on her face and brush her teeth. Then she steps off the train and onto the platform, blinking against the vibrant blue of the sky. She always braces herself for the bustle of a train station, but she never needs to, not in Sentaro’s town. Here, the train station spills immediately into greenery. A vending machine sits in a corner as a platitude, dusty with disuse. It does not look broken, but more like it never worked in the first place. Just outside, a group of old men wear unseasonably thick jackets, play cards, and spit sunflower seed husks into the grass.
She begins her stroll down to the church. In the summer, the rice paddies are vividly green. The people in the fields halt their work to watch her pass by. She moves in and out of the shade of old, tall trees. She crosses a bridge and the shallow, fast running stream under it. And then she is at the church by the oceanside. They see her before she sees them.
“Ri’ko! Ri-chan! Over here!” Kaoru and Sentaro are hip deep in the water. Today, the ocean is so sweetly blue that it almost hurts her eyes to look at. The children play around them. A few girls splash each other in front of Kaoru, chanting a rhyme. Sentaro has a little boy on his shoulders, tugging on his ears.
“Come on!” Kaoru calls.
Ritsuko smiles, and runs down to meet them.
--
Kaoru
At night, after they put the kids to bed, the three of them go to the stream. Kaoru carries a gas powered lamp, Ritsuko carries onigiri she had bought earlier at the train station, and Sentaro carries a bottle of sake. Right under the bridge, a flat brown rock juts away from the shore and into the stream. Ritsuko and Sentaro sit down first. Kaoru rolls up the hem of his pants before joining them. They sit in a row, Ritsuko in the middle, staring out into the water.
“It’s such a beautiful night,” Ritsuko, passing an onigiri to Kaoru. Just as she is about to hand Sentaro’s to him, she yanks it back. “Is all you eat onigiri? Do you eat any vegetables at all, Sentaro?”
Sentaro clicks his tongue, but not in a way that indicates true irritation. “I eat vegetables all the time. I had natto for breakfast three days ago.”
Kaoru stares at him. “Three days ago? You’re an old man now, you can’t live like this.”
Sentaro reaches behind Ritsuko, gesturing loosely at Kaoru’s onigiri. “Richie. Give me yours.”
Kaoru yanks his onigiri back. “No way. I eat my vegetables every day.” Sentaro wrinkles his nose at him, distinctly playful. When Sentaro wrestles the onigiri away from Kaoru, their hands brushing briefly, perfunctorily, Kaoru lets him.
“If you think about it, the nori in an onigiri is a vegetable,” Sentaro says.
Ritsuko giggles, hands Sentaro’s original onigiri to Kaoru, and then takes one for herself.
“Oh-mine’s plum. What’s yours, Richie?” Sentaro asks.
Kaoru laughs. “Oh, is it? Mine’s salmon.”
Ritsuko turns to Sentaro. “Mine’s tuna,” she says, triumphant. Even in the weak moonlight, Kaoru can see the dark shine of her eyes.
Sentaro rolls her eyes at her, and leans behind her again. “Trade?” he says to Kaoru.
Kaoru narrows his eyes at him. “Absolutely not. You stole it, you keep it.”
Sentaro sighs, and twists back into his original position. They settle into comfortable silence for a moment, the only sound around them the lush churning of the water. Ritsuko kicks her feet in the stream, and Kaoru stares at her face in profile, limned by the moonlight. Her long, straight eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks.
She breaks the silence. “Summer and straw hats and being with friends, these are a few of my favorite things,” she sings, her voice steady and clear.
Sentaro laughs. “That was so good, Ri’ko. Hm. Salmon and moonlight and the laughter of children, these are a few of my favorite things. Richie! Continue it, don’t be shy.”
Kaoru looks at him. For some reason, he feels a jolt of surprise when Sentaro glances up and their gazes connect. “I need time to think,” Kaoru says.
“Don’t think, just sing,” Sentaro says.
Kaoru’s mind is empty. What is there to say? When they’re all together like this, when the moonlight sparkles on the dark water, everything is his favorite. It feels like there isn’t a single thing he could possibly dislike. “Ritsuko and Sentaro and water, these are a few of my favorite things.”
“Good job, Kaoru,” Ritsuko says. She’s laughing so hard that she spits out a grain of rice.
“Did you just list the things in front of you?” Sentaro asks.
“You told me not to think,” Kaoru replies.
Kaoru lays down. The stars look like pinpricks of light in the velvety dark of the sky. Ritsuko lays down next, and then Sentaro thumps down after her.
“Both of you have always been so good with kids,” Kaoru says.
“It’s because of church. All my siblings, and church,” Sentaro says.
Ritsuko laughs. “In church we had to take care of the kids all the time. We were the only older ones, right, Sentaro?”
“I guess there was Kazuko, but she was way older. She got married and then it was just us," Sentaro says.
“You’re pretty good yourself, Kaoru,” Ritsuko says.
Kaoru swivels his head to look at her, and is surprised by how earnest her expression is. “I guess it’s because of my pediatric rotations,” Kaoru says. He had never thought of himself as good with kids, but he has accumulated a lot of experience with them over the years, almost without noticing. “I feel like once I have to give a kid a shot I can pretty much do anything.”
“I can’t believe how big Saori and Emiko are now,” Ritsuko says. “And to think that Yurika is only one year older than us. So many people from our high school have kids. Isn’t it strange? I feel like I’m still a kid myself.”
Kaoru chuckles. “Right? I heard Maruo just had a son.”
“Maruo? Really? Wow,” Sentaro says.
“You feel that way too, Kaoru? You seem so settled in life,” Ritsuko says, her eyes closed.
Kaoru sits up briefly to flick away a pebble that was lodged under his back. “Do I? I don’t feel settled.”
“Why? You’re a doctor. You have that big Tokyo apartment,” Sentaro says.
“Well, being a doctor is part of it. Everyday I go to work and fuck up in some new way. Sometimes I’m too tired to make it to the cots, and I take a nap in the storage closet. I’m definitely not settled.”
“I see,” Ritsuko says. After a beat, she suddenly sits up. “Say, why don’t we drink the sake?”
Kaoru sits up more slowly. He brushes his hair out of his eyes. “Ri-chan, you like to drink?”
Ritsuko rummages around in her bag, and fishes out some cups. “Don’t you know? My dad is a sake snob. And whiskey. Jazz, sake, and whiskey.” She gives Kaoru his cup first, then Sentaro. “We never drank together in high school. This is our first time. Are you a lightweight, Kaoru?”
Kaoru laughs. “How did you know, Ri-chan? Yeah, I totally am. What about you?”
Kaoru thinks there will never be some part of him that doesn't melt when she smiles. “I could just tell. I'm not bad, but I’m not good, either. I think I’m better than I look. Still not good, though.”
She nudges Sentaro with her elbow. “You seem like a heavyweight, though.”
Sentaro finally sits up. “I don’t think I am, actually. I think I’m okay, but not great.”
They clink their cups together. "Cheers!" Ritsuko says. The buzzing of the cicadas seems to swell, as if in response.
“Kaoru, do you want to get married?” Ritsuko asks.
“Me?” Kaoru glances up at her, a little surprised by the suddenness of her question. “No. Like I said. I’m not settled.” Kaoru is aware of Sentaro’s eyes on him.
“That’s good,” Ritsuko says matter-of-factly.
Kaoru smiles, amused. “Is it? Why?”
Ritsuko pauses for a moment, then starts laughing. “Oh, that sounded so strange for me to say. But I was worried about you. Because you broke up with your girlfriend. I was worried about whether you wanted to get married soon, or if your family expected you to.”
Kaoru feels warmth from the sake spread across his cheeks. “Who told you we broke up?”
Ritsuko’s eyes turn to crescents as she smiles. “Sachiko.”
“Damn it, Sachiko. What did she say?” Kaoru asks.
Ritsuko brushes some rice off the front of her dress. “Well, she doesn't know that much, either. Your friend Mayumi told her."
Kaoru groans. "I should've known. Sachiko was curious about what going to med school as a woman is like, so I introduced her to Mayumi. Mayumi's a huge gossip."
Sentaro looks up. "Sachiko is curious about med school?"
"Sachiko is good at math and science," Ritsuko says quietly.
After a beat, Sentaro nods. "I see," he says, equally quiet.
"Do you want to talk about the breakup, Kaoru?" Ritsuko asks
Kaoru rests his cheek on his shoulder. “Not really.”
“Then we don’t have to talk about it,” Sentaro says.
Kaoru looks over at him. “I can. It’s fine,” he says, surprising himself. “It was a month ago. I cried like a baby. I called in sick to work for two days. I listened to Ella Fitzgerald and lay on my floor.” It’s strange to have to summarize his life for them. Sometimes it surprises him that his world is larger now, that it is no longer just the two of them.
“Why did you guys break up then?” Ritsuko asks.
Kaoru shrugs. “We both got busier. She got a promotion at her law firm. And she said that if she was going to be in a relationship on top of work, she needed it to be serious. She felt I wasn’t serious about her. I get it. I really do. We’re twenty six years old. We’re not getting any younger. But she was my first real girlfriend since undergrad.” He sighs. “And I think she was right. I don’t know if I was serious about her. Like you said, Ri-chan. I feel like I’m still a kid. But what about you?”
Ritsuko smiles. “I’m unlucky in love,” she says wryly. Kaoru registers this dry, confident humor as something that high school Ritsuko hadn’t often used.
“No way,” Kaoru says.
She presses the back of her hands to her flushed face. “I think my timing is just bad. Every time I start to think, hey, maybe I like that guy, he gets another girlfriend, or he moves away. Things like that. My dating life just ends before it can begin, I guess.”
“I see.” Kaoru hesitates for a moment before turning to Sentaro. “You’ve been good without dating, Sen?”
Sentaro’s face is blank. “Yeah. Completely.”
Kaoru feels a hint of inexplicable embarrassment creep over him. “Enough about dating. Let’s eat watermelon.”
“Kaoru, you brought us watermelon?” Ritsuko asks, delighted.
He grins at her. “Not just any watermelon.” He rolls the watermelon out of his bag. It reminds him of a fruit from a video game, which is to say that it reminds him of a featureless dark orb.
Sentaro picks it up, cradling it like a baby. “What is this? What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s a Hokkaido black watermelon, Sen. It’s supposed to be extra sweet.”
Sentaro frowns. “Really? How much did it cost you? This seems like a waste of money. The old lady down the street practically gives watermelon away for free.”
“Exactly, you’re eating free watermelon. I had to bring you some of the nice stuff,” Kaoru responds.
“This is the nice stuff to you? I think you were scammed.”
Kaoru surprises himself by laughing. He is not sixteen anymore, no matter how much Sentaro still makes him feel that way. He does not have to shovel around what he wants to say. What is he afraid of? That Sentaro will know how much Kaoru cares about him? He lost that when he tracked him down to the edge of Japan. “You’re probably right. But I know you like watermelon, and it’s not like Ri-chan and I get to see you everyday. That’s all.”
Sentaro’s expression softens. “Okay. Well. Thank you. I appreciate it, Richie.”
“Did you bring a knife, Kaoru?” Ritsuko asks.
“Oh. Shit. I didn’t," Kaoru says.
Ritsuko frowns. “What should we do without a knife?”
Sentaro smiles at her. “Don’t need a knife. Watch out, Ri’ko.” Sentaro lifts the watermelon overhead and smashes it onto the ground.
“Sen, you brute! I can’t believe you did that to Kaoru’s fancy watermelon,” Ritsuko exclaims, wiping watermelon chunks out of her hair. Kaoru is laughing. He licks watermelon juice from his cheek, and finds that it is extra sweet.