Archive of Our Own

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The cicadas scream together in an intrusive chorus. The summer sunshine beats down onto the heads of its victims below. The laughter of children playing is heard in the distance, a mixture of high pitches evaporating into the hot air. The pavement sizzles underneath the shoes of those passing through, a waiting pan heated by the flames of the sun. Sweat gathers in the palm of your hand, your fingers wrapping around the slender index of the woman standing next to you, her hand unfurled and unresponsive to the gentle hold and occasional tugs coming from just below her.
 
In an unassuming neighborhood within the Hyogo prefecture, there is a house sitting right on the elbow of one its many corners. Its age is evident, seen through missing roof shingles, broken windows boarded up partially with spare cardboard, and foliage devouring portions of the walls outside. In front of the rickety wooden door is a sign which simply reads "

Fukuda Family Cafeteria

". Also in front of the door stands a collection of three people, vastly differing in age: a child no older than eight, a young woman in her late twenties, and an elderly woman quickly approaching her seventies. The young woman wears a wide-brimmed sun hat upon her head, and she uses her free hand to slightly pull down its rim in an attempt to conceal her face from the curiosity of passersby.
 
"I can't do this anymore," the woman says. The much older lady, face covered in wrinkles deepened by a mosaic of emotions and the passage of time, stares at her in turn. Her eyes momentarily flicker towards you, whose attention lies elsewhere, your gaze fixated on the multi-colored windchime jingling gently above the doorway. Light passes through the glass of the windchime, and the soft colors are reflected upon your enchanted stare. Without the protection of a hat similar to the woman next to you, drops of sweat rain down past your cheeks. "He says that they're nothing more than a burden on our finances."
 
As if veiled by magic, your senses dull. Neither are you able to properly hear the words being said nor are you able to recognize the faces around you. A single word echoes through your mind.

Pretty…

"A financial burden," the older lady begins, her eyebrows digging deeper into the skin between them, "but you're not even feeding them properly?"
 
Slowly, she crouches down, minding the stiffness and age of her knees. With a slow raise of her raisined hand, she gently strokes her fingers through your hair. You are much, much skinnier than the children constantly running around in the neighborhood surrounding her. Much quieter, too. Drawn back into reality by the touch of someone unfamiliar, you tear your eyes away from the windchime and direct them instead to the ground. Your fist gently tightens around the younger woman's finger.
 
"I can't help it. I spend my entire week working, but all I can make is enough to afford instant noodles or convenience store food. I have to pay the rent, the utilities, the–"
 
"Gambling addiction your husband has." The elderly lady stands back up, massaging the surface of her knees with the hilt of her palms. A quiet sigh breaks free from her, and the woman pulls the rim of her hat down further. The young woman's face flowers into a vicious red, a fusion of shame and heated anger agitated further by the harsh stare from the sun. It burns into her back. "I've said it time and time again, that man is no good for you. Come home and start over."
 
"You don't understand." A breeze intrudes upon the conversation, ruffling your hair. The windchime flutters, pulled by the whims of the summertime wind, and you find yourself spellbound once more. The way the kaleidoscopic glass glitters when it perfectly takes hold of the light is brilliant, a kind of beauty not experienced before in your short years of life. "I love him."
 
The elderly lady thrusts a hand out to grab onto the woman's arm unoccupied by the hold of the child in their company. In one swift motion, she turns her forearm over, uncovering a collection of bruises against her skin, both healed and fresh. The woman jerks her arm away and holds it behind her back as she bites the inside of her bottom lip. "And the child?"
 
"He leaves them alone."
 
"That's not what I meant."
 
The woman's face flushes. "I can't love two things at once. Getting hit is nothing, because he looks at me when he does it. It's the least I can put up with. I don't want to have a marriage like yours; Dad barely even acknowledged your existence."
 
The elderly lady shakes her head, the words said to her pouring into one ear and spilling out the other. She begins to close the door. "Even if you beg, I'm not going to give you anymore money–"
 
"I'm going to kill them." The door stops. "I'm going to kill this child."
 
The old woman opens the door back up once more, a frown stamped upon her face. Mirrored in both her eyes and the glass face of the wind chime is the young woman, her mouth twisted into an uneasy smile. The corners of her red painted lips dig into her cheeks as if she had just been freshly slashed with a kitchen knife. The elderly lady's ears were certainly beginning to gradually fail more and more throughout the years, and so she uses the fact as an excuse to allow the woman in front of her to rewrite herself. "What?"
 
"He's seeing another woman," she clarifies. "He's

been

seeing another woman. A junior at his office. I caught them leaving a hotel together when I got suspicious of his late nights supposedly doing overtime. So I said that, if he didn't break up with her, then I would kill our child, because that would be such a hassle for him to deal with."
 
"You're ridiculous…!"
 
"I'm ridiculous, but it worked!" Her hand tightly grips onto yours, and she yanks you forward. You wince and nearly trip over yourself from the sudden force. "They broke up, he started coming home earlier, paid more attention to me, and I know it was just because he didn't want me to do anything, but he was finally there! But now, he sees me as a joke. Started seeing her again. Thinks I won't really do it. But I…"
 
The woman reels herself back. She releases you, who stumbles into the arms of the elderly lady. You look back at her, confused, and the woman's face contorts at your naivety in the face of her aggression. It's like looking in a mirror, and only now is she able to see how similarly the child she's been living alongside resembles her. She speaks again, this time softly. "I'm not here to ask for money. I'm asking you to take them from me."
 
"Okay," the older woman surrenders. She grabs onto your shoulders, holding you tightly against her. Your face presses into her floral embroidered apron, the soft fabric pillowing your head.
 
The woman stares at them, her child embraced in the arms of her own mother, and a strange feeling of loss overcomes her. It erupts through her throat, and her cheeks, and her eyes, her body bursting into a warm pink as tears begin to slowly crawl out of her. She is fully aware that, like a volcano, she is destructive – a vessel which patiently waits to inflict harm, because she doesn't know how else to live. She turns quickly and walks back to her car, and as the door slams, you wrestle your face away just enough to see her driving off without even so much as a glance into the rearview mirror.
 
The elderly lady pats your head, gently pulling you further into the building as she shuts the door to separate you both from the summertime. With a signal of her hand, she directs you to sit at the ledge in front of the entryway so that she can help you take your shoes off, the laces tangled rather than properly tied. But her fingers are surprisingly nimble despite her age, and so undoing them comes easy.
 
She waits for you to speak first, to ask a question, but nothing arrives. This indicates to her a need to be the one to speak or ask first, but little does anybody prepare someone for the duty of announcing to a child that their life is suddenly going to be much, much different, and despite the fact that the old woman has experienced much of the past and has little left of the future, she is someone who can only think of the present. And so, she asks: "Are you hungry, [Y/N]?"
 
You nod.
 
"It's a little early, but let's go ahead and have lunch now, then." She takes a short pause. "You can call me Granny, alright?"
 
You nod again.
 
Granny nestles your hand into her own and leads you further into the house, revealing to you its true nature. While the first floor of a house typically lies the expanse of the living room, dining room, and kitchen, this one displayed a set-up purely for the sake of cooking and dining. Upon entering, Granny and you are immediately greeted by two tables, both surrounded by a mismatched collection of folding and regular dining room chairs sitting around their perimeter. Against the wall is a longer, slimmer table, lined with stools for individual seating. Further in the back is a kitchen, its counters and stoves filled with a variety of pots, pans, and dishes, tins of seasonings speckled throughout the available surfaces in between.
 
Pulling a chair out from under one of the tables, Granny gestures for you to sit down, her hand patting a cushion lying on top of the seat. You walk over, though not without taking in the overload of visual stimuli available to you, a world separate from the dreary, half-furnished apartment you were more accustomed with. As you prop yourself onto the chair, she shuffles towards the kitchen area, and a cacophony of clinking pots and pans fills your ears, soon followed by a rush of water from the sink. Granny hums an unfamiliar tune as she rummages through the cookware, and you continue to let your sight explore the entirety of the space before you.
 
The area is certainly cluttered, though not lacking in charm. Hanging from the ceiling is an assemblage of random lanterns, each one a different shape and color, pouring a warm light into the rest of the room lying underneath. The windows are curtained with lace, an abundance of potted plants sitting atop the sills of them to soak in the sunlight trickling in through the glass. The ones unfortunate enough to take residence near the cardboard sealed windows are a little worse for the wear, though still rather green enough to give life to their surroundings. The walls surrounding you are a tad bit yellow with age, a collage of various prints and posters ranging from menus to torn pages from magazines with pictures of professional models concealing as much of the blank space as possible. An old television sits on the opposite side of the room, playing the news. The words that the reporter says are too big and get interrupted too often by the occasional static for you to understand, but you know the words "mother" and "child," and can recognize that someone has gotten hurt. Suddenly, the ruckus in the kitchen takes a pause, and the channel is switched to a different one covering a variety game show. The beats of exaggerated laughter spread throughout the building.
 
Next to the entry to the dining area is a small end table with a picture placed on top of it, a tiny cup with burnt out incense nearby. Trapped in the picture is the image of an old man, his hair receded far past his forehead. A cigarette pokes out from between his lips, and he holds onto a newspaper in his hands. The photograph was clearly taken without his prior knowledge, as he shoots the camera a stern look. Granny notices you studying it.
 
"That's your grandpa," she says, and she explains no further.
 
These observations are eventually interrupted by the

ding

of the microwave. A sound that's rather out of place, considering the chaos of the kitchenware that was occurring just a moment ago. When you sniff the air, you notice that there is no scent of fragrant oil or piquant spices. Granny approaches you with a plate in hand, steam rising from something still yet unknown to you. She walks with a slight hunch, and her unused arm cranes slightly forward.
 
"This was all that I could make on such little notice," she explains. The plate settles in front of your face, and its surface is cluttered by a mountain of small, perfectly rounded, bite-sized rice balls. Each one is speckled with dots of white and black sesame seeds, and your stomach rumbles at the sight. "It's leftover rice filled with pieces of karaage that I stored in the fridge last night. The

Fukuda Special

."
 
Granny wasn't present for their grandchild's birth and sprout into childhood, so for all she's concerned, these were your first set of words, posed as a question: "

Fukuda Special

?"
 
She pulls out the chair next to you and slowly settles into it, the legs creaking underneath her weight. "In other words, it's whatever I feel like making that day. Well, really, I couldn't think of what to put as the signature dish, so I decided it would just be easier to leave it up to a whim. But calling it a

special

or a

mystery

adds a little bit of magic."
 
Your fingers ghost over the food, careful of the temperature. After they flutter against the rice and you determine that it isn't too hot, you pop one into your mouth and begin to thoroughly chew. Certainly, you can tell that the karaage was simply microwaved as its outer coating has lost its original fried crunch – but coupled together with the thick coating of rice, the texture wasn't too jarring. The sesame seeds added a slightly bitter, slightly nutty flavor to the rice balls, which balanced perfectly well with the semi-sweet sauce of the karaage. Having survived on a lot of late night convenience store or discounted supermarket bentos, microwaved karaage was no stranger to you. But this one, melting in your mouth and falling apart with each bite, was something completely new.
 
Granny watches as you eat one, and then another, and then another, inhaling the entirety of the dish before you. On top of that, you're licking your fingers after each rice ball you consume, making sure to lap up every grain of rice, every crumb of chicken coating, every stray sesame seed. None of it is going to waste, and you convince yourself that you've done enough to where the plate doesn't even need to be washed.
 
"Get used to that," Granny says, like it's a threat, "because you're going to be living here from now on."
 
She waits for a sign of disapproval, something reminiscent of the cliche tantrums children throw when they're being dropped off at the daycare for the very first time. But nothing comes, and she finally gets up to put the emptied plate away in the sink. The taste of the karaage rice balls linger on your tongue as you recall the retreating figure of your mother, her skin battered and bruised, wrists made of nothing but bone.
 
The

Fukuda Family Cafeteria

isn't a stereotypical restaurant with a varied customer base. It's more like a meeting place for old friends, a comfort spot for those seeking to eat warm meals in the shared company of others. As a result, most of the

Fukuda Family Cafeteria

's visitation is made up of older women and gentlemen (their children or grandchildren in tow on occasion), a collection of souls touched by your grandma and grandpa. 
 
As a new member of the family and dweller of the home, it became expected of you to put in your share of the work. This included cleaning the toilet, taking out the trash, wiping down the tables, sweeping the floors, dusting the windows, and cooking. Cooking is a daunting task for you, considering your minimal experience outside of pressing the buttons on a microwave, but – perhaps due to the influence of your environment – you adapt fairly quickly. Granny makes sure to teach you even the very basic of basics.
 
There is one absolute rule to cooking:

Food always tastes better when made with love.
 
And by extension, there is one absolute rule to eating:

A meal is best enjoyed when accompanied by another.
 
"Even if a meal isn't cooked well," Granny begins as she ties the strings of your apron into a bow snug against the small of your back. You look down to observe the blue and white gingham pattern stretching across the fabric. "As long as it's made with love, it will never be a

bad

meal."
 
"What if I burn it?" you ask.
 
"A good meal can still be bad." You aren't sure you fully understand the juxtaposition of her reasoning. "But that's where eating with others comes in. Try eating something completely burnt into charcoal and see if either of you can go without cracking up over it. It's impossible. At least, it was for me and your grandpa."
 
Granny rarely ever brings up your grandpa, but when she does, her voice falls into a gentle whisper. It turns into a cradle for the things of the past that she continues to carry with her, blanketed in nostalgia. Her eyes are overcome with love, and sometimes – when she stares off into specific corners of the building – you swear you can see your grandpa staring back at her, cigarette in mouth, gaze floating just past the top of the newspaper to meet hers.

I think I can remember when Mom said that Grandpa ignored Granny regularly, or something along those lines. But I think I can tell that that wasn't really true. But maybe it stands that neither of them were wrong, and that there existed two versions of him. I wonder how many versions of me exist out in the world, and what are they to who?

"He doesn't seem like a laugher," you observe, turning attention towards the picture of him.
 
"He wasn't. Not much of a smiler either. It was a problem when we were young." She smiles. "I've learned that if you ever doubt how someone feels about you, just watch how they eat your cooking. It's a lot easier to notice someone's happiness while they're eating than any other time."
 
On occasion, she reminds you that you do not have to forgive your mother. However,

she

is always prepared to forgive your mother – her daughter – not because she thinks her actions are easily forgettable, but because she knows that your mother has nothing left. On the menu, right underneath the highlighted

Fukuda Special

is

Koharu's Katsu Curry

, a dish recreated from your mother's childhood. Sometimes you catch her looking at that spot in the menu for a moment which lingers for a little too long.
 
It's hard to tell if Granny is extremely understanding or a little bit naive. This is the easiest place to break into, is what often crosses your mind. Your entire lives are huddled inside of these walls, but she never locks the door. For years have people been coming and going, and she intends for that to be the case forever. Never is Granny apprehensive by the unannounced swing of the front door; she wishes for a familiar face, and that is always what she receives.

Surely, this neighborhood is protecting her. Maybe this place is the heart of it.

And then, before you know it, it's your first year of middle school. So many times have you been listening to the door scraping open and shut, that you nearly miss it this go around. The groan from the aged wood sings along with the ring of the familiar wind chime outside, and your eyes instinctively run towards the amalgamation of noise.
 
Fujita-san, a man with parted silver hair and a neat stache sitting on top of his lips, walks into the dining area to the sight of you hunched over a table while in the middle of doing your homework. He's the owner of a local bar tucked just a few streets down in between a couple of homes, and while you've never been inside due to your age, you pass it on occasion, recognizing it from his boisterous laughter exploding from the inside accompanied by the hoots and hollers of those often gathered to watch whatever sports game happened to be on.
 
"Wow! Summer uniform!" he exclaims while removing the hat on his head. He places the hat onto the accent table sitting at the room's entry way, just in front of the framed photograph of your grandfather. "It's good to have someone young around this place! Makes me feel a little younger myself!"
 
"It's been a while, Fujita," Granny greets from behind the counter separating the cooking and eating space. Plates hit against each other as she picks through them to lather in dish soap. "Still in good form?"
 
Fujita-san sits diagonally from you, and the two of you exchange quiet smiles, his significantly toothier than your own. "Not since my volleyball playing days with Akihito! Doctor says that I need to lay off the drinks for a while, but what does he know? Cassis milk is the secret to my long life! Lemon sour is the secret to eternal youth!"
 
"Your usual today?"
 
"Is it really my usual when you make something different each time?"
 
"There are other things on the menu."
 
Fujita-san places his arm on the table, perching the bottom of his chin onto the cushion of his palm. He stares wistfully as the photograph, half obscured by his hat, his rust-colored eyes refamiliarizing themselves with a face already carved into the back of his head. Akihito is likely the name of your grandfather. You recall the time you were helping Granny with some spring cleaning, opening up the closet to a male volleyball uniform perfectly preserved inside of a plastic hanger cover. "I'm not ready to let go yet, Mayu."

Akihito. Mayu. More names keep appearing.

Granny grins to herself in turn, and begins sorting through the ingredients in the fridge. Salted salmon. Shredded nori. Toasted sesame seeds. Green onions. Wasabi. Green tea leaves. Leftover rice – a staple.

Just like how the charm of the Fukuda Special comes from the name, people can really transform depending on what they're called, can't they?

She sets the salted salmon into the oven and stares at it through the glass, as if it'll come back to life and swim away from its heated chamber. When her doubts subside, she turns to the kettle to prepare the green tea leaves, filling it with water and bringing it to a boil. She throws the leaves inside as easily as she throws caution to the wind.

Granny is the woman who raised me, and Mayu is the wife of Fujita-san's best friend, Akihito. I wonder what mine means. I wonder if it means anything at all.

While the rice reheats in the microwave, she removes the salmon from the oven to break it up into tiny pieces. It crumbles at her fingertips. When the rice finishes its cycle of rotation in the microwave, she tops it off with the pieces of salted salmon, the crushed nori, the toasted sesame seeds, some spring onion, and a drop of wasabi. The kettle shouts at her a warning, and she strains the leaves from the green tea before pouring it into the bowl.

Oh, that smells wonderful.

"Today's

Fukuda Special

," Granny announces as she places the dish in front of Fujita-san, "is ochazuke."
 
"With wasabi?" Fujita-san picks up the bowl to hold it closer to his nose, inhaling the sting of the wasabi and the earthiness of the green tea. "Just how I usually like it."
 
He takes small bites in order to prolong his mealtime, but chugs down the remaining green tea in one fell swoop – likely a practice resulting from his drinking habits. When Granny comes around to take his empty bowl away, he nods at her, and the two chatter meaninglessly about the weather, politics, old friends, you, until Fujita-san decides that it's time to leave so he can open his bar. Digging into the pockets of his pants, he fishes out a few crumpled yen bills and tosses them onto the counter. He picks up his hat from the end table and returns it to its rightful spot on top of his head, revealing the whole of your grandpa's unimpressed stare to the world again.
 
"Take care, [Y/N]. Keep up the good work, Mayu."
 
He tips the brim of his hat towards you before gently stroking the side of the frame with the back of his bony hand.
 
"See you later, Akihito."
 
It is common sense that humans need sustenance in order to live. Food and water, both things that can be broken down to biological necessity and little more. But people are surprisingly ritualistic, and human beings have always been storytellers at heart, even with lack of writing talent. You know this, because you have the capability in finding dialogue through Granny's food. When she leaves a bowl of pork fried rice wrapped in plastic on the table for when you get home late, it means

I missed you

. When she invites you to roast yams outside in the fall, it means

I want to be by your side

. When she makes sushi after you finish your tests, it means

I'm proud of you

. When you wake up in the middle of the night left in tears from a dream of your father in which you can't recognize his face but can recognize the sounds of his fists on your mother's flesh, she wordlessly gets up to make rice balls with whatever was leftover from the night before. This means

I love you

.
 
More than a need to satisfy hunger or thirst, humans desire love. It's an uphill battle, searching for something so abstract in nature. But with the ritual of cooking and the storytelling present in every dish created, food must then be the closest we can ever get to giving love physical form.
 
About three weeks after his visit, Granny tells you that Fujita-san won't be returning anymore. 
 
Granny, you've learned, isn't the type to attend funerals. Not because she finds them inconvenient or boring, but because she prefers to believe that her friends have simply gone somewhere far, far away. After attending her husband's funeral, she was disturbed by the fact that he was trapped in the ground, fossilizing right beneath her and yet completely out of reach. And so, if those who passed were going to be out of reach anyways, she'd rather them be someplace more exciting than underneath the surface of the Hyogo prefecture.
 
Both you and Granny remain wordless in the dining area. You stand at the stove, watching the boiling kettle filled with water and green tea leaves. Granny sits at a table, watching as one of the lightbulbs in the lantern right above her flickers unpredictably.

Fujita-san, I think, is the type to go to France. I can imagine him dressed in a beret with his neck wrapped in a foulard, gorging himself on escargot and French wine. He'd be playing in a fancy volleyball club to get along with the frenchmen, and he would discuss plans of participating in the Tour de France, despite his inexperience with biking. Yes, certainly, right now he is in France, at the very top of the Eiffel Tower.

"I think I'd place Fujita in Paris," Granny states, her voice gentle. The end of her sentence dissolves into the air.
 
The kettle whistles, and you pour the green tea into two mismatched teacups. The smell of the liquid is grassy and slightly sweet, and the steam gently holds your face. "I agree," you reply.
 
Towards the end of your middle school career, you find yourself sitting in front of your teacher, a hand pressed firmly against his temple as he stares exasperatedly at the paper you had handed him earlier. He's leaning forward against the desk separating the two of you, and you're leaning back into your seat. The window in the room is cracked open to circulate air through the room, and you can faintly hear birds singing in the distance.
 
"You're not planning on going to high school?" This is the second time he asks the question.
 
"No, sir." And this is the second time you answer it.
 
"You perform well on your tests, [Y/N]. I think you could get into a really good school. Have you thought this over?"
 
"Sensei," you begin, and a rush of wind sneaks in through the crack of the window, causing the sheet held in your teacher's hand to almost dance out of his grip. He holds on tighter, and the paper crinkles. "I think that high school is for people who are passionately chasing their dreams. I already know what I want to do. Attending alongside my classmates who feel that they have to try their best while I've already got everything I want feels unfair to both me and them."
 
"I think that's the most I've heard you speak." He lowers the survey sheet, and his knuckles tap against the surface of the wooden desk in defeat. "Can you at least explain to me your plan after graduation, then?"
 
"I…plan to take over my grandmother's shop, sir."
 
"Her restaurant, right? The, uh, what was it called again…the

Fukuda Cafeteria

?"

I can't remember the last time I've heard anyone call it a restaurant. It feels so foreign.

"Yes." You pause. "The

Fukuda Family Cafeteria

, sir."
 
As time progresses, so does your cooking skill. For the better, not only because of your obligation after middle school, but also because Granny's age is beginning to rapidly catch up to her. Before you know it, your hands are her hands, your speed and reflex a substitution for hers which have long since deteriorated. Along the path back home, you recall a time when she asked you to assist her in making the side dish for the night, which was yamitsuki cabbage.
 
Holding the handle of the kitchen knife in both hands, you angle the blade awkwardly against the leaves of cabbage as you swing down sporadically. The scene of your crime consists of what looks more like blocks of cabbage, uneven and in pieces too large to eat, with some pieces not even being cut all the way through.
 
"You cook like a university boy," you remember her laughing, which meant little to you since you were well before university age. She hovers behind you, gently placing her dry hands on top of your own as she guides you through the motions. "Here, you curl this hand into the shape of a cat's paw. Yes, like that. And then you use that to help guide your other hand with the chopping. Right. Still needs a little work, but you've already got the form down. Oh, be careful! Goodness…"
 
You finished helping prepare dinner that night, but not without leaving with your fingers covered in a collage of band-aids. Nowadays, the only times you're in need of one is if you accidentally zone out and nick or burn yourself a little as a result, an occurrence which takes place few and far between. Between the time of your middle school graduation and now, you've only needed to patch yourself up once, and it was because you got distracted mid-cutting by a woman with a wide brimmed sun hat passing by the window.
 
"I'm home," you announce as you open the door. Without waiting for a response, you slip off your shoes and drop your bag in front of the walkway before tip-toeing quickly up the stairs. Peering inside of your grandma's room, you see her sleeping as peacefully as when you had left. You kneel beside her futon, placing a hand on her shoulder and softly shaking her awake. "Time to get up, Granny. We've gotta do your stretches for today."
 
She responds with a grunt, and once she finally blinks herself to life, you help pull her up to a sitting position. As you squat behind her, you gently press your hand against her back in order to help her stretch it out a little, and then move onto massaging and stretching out her arms. When you move onto her legs, you push her blanket aside in order to gain access to them, and then eye a dark spot spread out underneath her.
 
"Oh, Granny. We need to get you cleaned up in the bathroom." She doesn't say anything, and you aren't sure if it's due to shame or if it's because she can no longer hear your voice. You hook her over your shoulders and bring her to her feet, and then you guide her down the hall to the bathroom. As you begin to remove her clothing and wipe her down, you mutter a quiet "I'm sorry, Granny."
 
There's this feeling of dread and knowing that bubbles up in your chest from time to time as you become increasingly more aware of the lessening number of visitors and your grandmother gradually turning into a shell of herself. One day, it will be just you and this house. And one day, you'll be surrounded by names that refer not to a guardian nor to an old friend, but to the past. Granny seldom speaks anymore, but when you're sleeping next to her, you hear her calling your grandpa's name. It's so quiet, you can barely hear her through the chirps of the crickets outside, but it's there, and it's faint. You close your eyes and try to imagine him, but to no avail.

Do you see him, Granny? Is he waiting for you? Or maybe you're chasing after him. Is it the version of him in the photo, all wrinkled and stern, or is it a younger version I have no knowledge of? Did he smile more back then? Granny, please don't go yet. There's so much I don't know, like the amount of time it takes to boil a perfect egg. There's so much I don't know.

A tear slides down towards your temple as you're turned in her direction, and more follow to flood the pillow beneath your head. She's stopped speaking his name, and you can't decide if you're relieved to know she's relaxed in her sleep or dismayed to know that you can no longer listen to her voice. You reminisce on the nights she would read cookbook recipes to you when you were a child, because she had no storybooks and claimed to be too old to come up with any fairytales of her own. But you didn't mind the recipes; so long as she was speaking, you could sleep well knowing that she was by your side.

Do you miss him looking at you? If it helps, you can kill me.

The next morning, you are a little disappointed to find yourself still alive. You cannot hear Granny breathing when you put an ear against her lips.
 
The funeral is small, made up mostly of her remaining living friends and their family members who were willing to show up. Everyone is crying, even if they didn't know her, because the loss is infectious. But you don't cry. Instead, you stare blankly, past the people, past the casket, past the photograph of her, past the walls of the funeral building. A few familiar faces come to shake your hand and offer words of condolence, but you can't find any of your own to say in return. It's understandable, everybody decides, because you were never much of a talker. They tell you that they'll be supporting you where they can.
 
When you return home with her photograph cradled in your arms, still clad from head to toe completely in black, your first thought is that the house is really dirty. You breathe out a muted "I should clean," and move to set her picture aside on one of the tables; it's too big to stand next to your grandpa's on the accent table. Without taking off your shoes, you head for the closet where all of the cleaning supplies are kept, and begin digging through them: rags, bleach, a broom, a dustpan, glass wipes, a bag of sponges, the vacuum, a cleaner spray bottle, extra dish soap, a lint roller, a duster – you scatter them all down the walkway towards the front door.
 
You begin with wiping down the windows with the wipes, and the chill of the winter weather clinging to the glass transfers through the thin cloth. Your breathing and your heartbeat are surprisingly calm.

What do people do to get over somebody? I hear people saying things like "Just go ahead and cry it out!" but do you really just cry them away? Is something like handling loss really as easy as that?

Next, you're dusting the corners of every room and rolling the lint off of the lace curtains. In the middle of it, you can feel tears beginning to swell, but you throw your head back and squeeze your eyes shut in order to barricade them from falling proper.

If that's the case, then I shouldn't be crying.

You quickly move on to wiping the tables down, but when you see the image of Granny sitting there, you get the sudden urge to get it far, far away from your sight. You carry it upstairs, your shoes clicking against the wooden steps. This isn't how you remember her, after all, dressed nicely and posed in front of a blank wall. In your memory, she is always surrounded by color and spectacle. You lower the ladder leading up to the attic, and cough at the amount of dust that practically avalanches down on top of you.

Maybe that's why Granny didn't go to any funerals, and why Grandpa's photograph is the only one she has. Because she knows that he's buried in the ground, so she can't bring herself to imagine him smiling from ear-to-ear while sunbathing in Hawaii or climbing to the top of Mount Fuji.

You prop Granny's funeral photo against a box that you soon open, pulling out a thin photo album gifted to her by one of her friends who decided to try out photography for a week. Flipping through it, you see versions of her you recognize and don't recognize, and stop at an image of her – just the smallest bit younger than when she met you – with her face covered in flour and her initials drawn on the apple of her cheek. A smile invades her features, and while you hadn't met her yet, this was the most recognizable she was to you.

I don't want to forget the smell of meat on her hands, or the smell of onions in her hair. I don't want to forget the way her lips split when she smiled too wide, or the way she hobbled on her right leg as she walked up and down the stairs. I don't want to forget the way she would randomly lose her voice because she would laugh too loud while telling a funny story, or the way she would point to a model on TV and say "I used to look like that, but better!"

Your hands fly around the rest of the attic as you search for an empty frame, and find one that's cracked just slightly in the corner of the glass face, though not enough to be too noticeable. You remove the photograph from the album's plastic sleeve and slip it into the frame, fastening the back of it tight to keep the photograph steadfast in place. When you return back down to the dining area, you take great care in positioning her picture next to your grandpa's, and you take a step back to admire the two of them immortalized forever.
 
Both of your hands tangle into your hair as you release a slow sigh.

I shouldn't have gone to the funeral.

After you stuff all of the cleaning supplies you had taken out back into the closet, you glance at the calendar, uncapping a marker to circle the day's date. You don't have the strength to write a description of why it's worth remembering yet.

Oh, right, tomorrow is trash collection day.

With a quick tug and tie, you seal the garbage bag closed before lugging it from out of the bin in the kitchen and across the property. The wooden door at the front rattles as it's attacked by the wind, and you remind yourself to double check the vitality of the lock the next time you're free while you shuffle into a pair of slippers at the doorway. You have difficulty recalling the last time it was being used. When you open the door, the cold immediately robs the heat from your face, and your breath hikes up into the air like a cloud of steam.
 
"Oh," a voice sounds from just outside, and your head follows it to see a boy with hair colored an unnatural shade of grey. He stands there with his naked hands cupped around his mouth, dressed in a sweatshirt, sweatpants, a light coat, and sneakers. You blink at him, and then turn away to place the garbage bag in its designated spot on the opposite side of where he was standing.

I've never seen him before. Maybe a grandson of one of the regulars? I didn't see him today.

"We're closed," you say pointedly, dropping the garbage bag onto the pavement.
 
"Ah, no, sorry. Didn't think anybody was in. Lights were off." He looks around as he breathes out warmth into the palms of his hands before stuffing them into the pockets of his sweats. When he looks you up and down, you're suddenly conscious of the fact that you're still in your funeral wear. "I wasn't meanin' to bother ya. I'll be on my way."

He looks like he's well off enough, but…wait, could he be a runaway? Huh? How old is he? He looks like he's around my age? I don't know what to do in this kind of situation!

"Wait." Your voice escapes you before you can even think. His dark eyes flicker towards you, his attention captive to your single command. "Are you looking for shelter?"

That might've come off as creepy. Or really rude.

"Oh, no, I'm not homeless or anythin' like that. Just got in a little fight with my brother, so I'm tryin' to stay out of the house and his hair for a little bit. Or, it's more that I'm tryin' to get him out of

my

hair, but…"

So he's just been wandering out for who knows how long.

You glance down towards his hands buried in his pockets, and you can tell that he's balled them up into fists in an attempt to maintain warmth in his fingertips. The wind suddenly howls, dragging itself across your nose and through his hair. A shiver travels through your spine.
 
"It's cold." You open the door a little wider in invitation. "Come inside."
 
"S'okay? Even though you're closed?"
 
"It's fine. You don't have anywhere else to go, right?" Before he can open his mouth to respond, you duck back into the house while leaving the door open. "Quick, before all of the heating escapes. This place is old, if you couldn't tell, so the heater makes a great effort to keep warm."
 
When the boy peeks inside of the building, you're kicking your shoes off to the side. He scurries in, his hands groping at the door for the handle, and shuts it behind him with a firm

thud

.
 
"Pardon the intrusion." His head whips around in order for him to process his surroundings, and he digs a finger into the back of his shoe to slip it off his foot. He does the same for the other one. "I already figured 'cause of the sign, but this is a restaurant?"
 
"This dingy place? Calling it a restaurant sounds more professional than it actually is. It's a place to eat, that's all."
 
He doesn't understand the difference between a

restaurant

and

a place to eat

, but he puts up no argument as he watches you turn a little further down the hall. He follows suit, but not that closely, making sure to lag slightly behind so that he can eat up all the details of this building.
 
"So, Fukuda. That yer name?"
 
Your voice is a little fainter, and he can hear sounds of you rummaging through your multitudes of cooking wares. "Oh, sorry, it was rude of me to tell you to come in without even introducing myself. No, that was the name of my mother's side of the family. This place was my grandma's. My name's [L/N] [F/N]. Yours?"
 
"Miya Osamu."
 
"Okay, Osamu...kun? Sorry, how old are you?"
 
He's a little impressed by the fact that you just completely skipped over the formality of referring to him by his last name. A habit picked up from working in such an intimate place, he thinks, where everyone who enters becomes bound to you the second they're past the door.
 
"Fifteen."
 
"Oh, okay. I'm older than you by two years. Osamu-chan."
 
"I'd rather ya just call me Osamu."
 
"Osamu it is, then. The menu's on the wall. Well, you don't really get a choice, though. The only thing available right now is the

Fukuda Special

."
 
"What's that?"
 
"Whatever I decide it is." With a firm heave, you unveil the insides of the refrigerator. In front of you lies a container of leftover rice from yesterday's lunch, canned tuna, a bottle of mayonnaise, a jar half-filled with pickled plums, and a plate of karaage covered in plastic wrap. "How do grilled rice balls sound?"
 
"Sounds good."
 
One of the lanterns overhead, which you were sure had a dead bulb, suddenly flickers back to life.
 
"Good to hear."
 
Piling all of the ingredients into the basket of your arms, you shove them all onto the nearest counter, freshly cleaned and cleared of clutter as if you had received vision earlier of having a guest. After slightly warming up the leftover rice in the microwave and rinsing your hands in the sink, you follow the familiar procedure of creating little pockets of rice in your palm. With a small spoon, you scoop filling into each one and mold them firmly into shape, placing each bite-sized ball of rice down randomly onto a nearby plate.
 
Placing a pan on top of the heat of the stove, you pour in a healthy amount of oil and wait for it to begin to bubble. When it begins to crack and pop, you begin placing the rice balls into the golden bath, turning them occasionally until all sides are an almost caramel color. Once they look done, you transfer them onto a plate with a napkin lying on its surface to soak up the excess oil and then switch the stove off.
 
Osamu looks at you with neither joy nor annoyance reflected on his face. If anything, you think he might seem a little bored, but you can't necessarily blame him. After placing the plate in front of him, you pull out the seat across from him and nod towards the dish between the two of you. Taking the sign to dig in, he plucks one of the rice balls and chucks it into his mouth, making sure to chew carefully. Tuna mayo.
 
"How is it?"
 
He tries another one for good measure. Pickled plum.
 
"...s'okay."
 
Without further interrogation, you pick out the rice ball closest to you and take a bite. Plain with no filling. Your brows knit together as you have a few indecisive chews before swallowing.
 
"You're right. I forgot the salt and toppings." You pick out another one. "It's missing…a little something. Definitely." When you bite into the next one, your body tenses at the taste. Karaage.

Ahh, crap.

Like a desert mirage, you see an illusion of her out of the corner of your eye. Granny stands just barely out of sight, looking the same as when you first met her, standing tall despite the slight hump in her back and her smile outshining the summer sunlight. Every part of your brain is telling you to look, trying to trick you into believing that she's actually there, but you don't. You know that this dream will go away the moment you try to chase after her.
 
You don't think you can imagine her in Rome or Bali, but you can convince yourself that the traces of her in this house continue to keep her alive.
 
Your chews are a little slower, more thorough as you break down the soft chicken with your teeth. The incoming tears feel like they're heating up the back of your eyes.

I'm about to cry in front of a guy I just met today. I'm gonna look like a total weirdo, if I didn't already.

"I'm not lookin'." His voice suddenly pierces through the awkward atmosphere. When you look at him, he's turned completely around, almost exaggeratingly so. You realize that, without notice, he's already eaten more than half of the rice balls on the plate despite saying they only tasted okay.
 
A few seconds go past, and he doesn't turn around. He's waiting for your signal. You bury your face into your elbow and weep out the entire day's worth.
 
By the time the plate is clean of traces of food, the sun is already half-set. He stands at the entryway and starts searching around in his jacket pockets while you watch from about a foot or two away.
 
"How much do I owe ya?"
 
You think about it for a second, but shake your head.
 
"Don't worry about it. I'm the one who invited you in. And I messed up the food anyways." You can tell that that's not a good enough answer for him, and continue your sentence before he can begin to start a civil argument with you. "Well, if you're really worried about it, then we can strike a deal."
 
"Uh, well, I'll have ya know that my allowance isn't really that big–"
 
An extended hand raises itself from you in front of his face, cutting his sentence short.
 
"Don't worry about the money. I want to make up for today. If you visit me, then I'll make you something to eat. As many times as you want."
 
"Doesn't seem like much of a deal is bein' made. Ya don't want anythin' in return?"
 
"Just the company." You cross your arms, and your fingers dig into the flesh through the sleeves of your black clothing. "You see, this place is mostly visited by the same few people, and sometimes it gets a little lonely here."
 
"Okay." He nods. "I can do that."
 
You observe in silence as he sits down to put his shoes on, twisting the laces between his fingers and looping them into messy knots. He yanks them tightly for good measure before pulling up the hem of his socks. The bottom of his sweatpants tumble back down against his ankles as he stands up. 
 
"You've got everything? Need to borrow a pair of gloves? I can probably find some upstairs."
 
"Ya sound like my mom." This makes you bite your tongue. "S'all good. I'm just headed straight home. It's not that far from here."
 
He exits through the door, and you follow right behind him. His eyes squeeze shut when a frigid wind passes through, and his hands immediately shoot into the warmth and comfort of his pockets.
 
"Alright, I trust you to make that call." A smile spreads across your face as your cheeks, your nose, and the tips of your ears begin to redden from the relentless cold. "Come back again soon!"
 
"Thanks for the meal." Osamu's smile is smaller, softer, much more unnoticeable to someone not paying attention. But you catch it. "It was good."
 
For some reason, the words make you giggle, and your laughter bubbles towards the sky like a cloud of steam. Marking his departure, Osamu bows to you, and you watch him meander away. The streetlamps and house lights frame his figure, making him sparkle against the darkness of the wintertime. You lean against the frame of the door, looking his way, until he disappears completely from sight.

Maybe you don't move on the more you cry. Maybe you move on the more you talk to other people.

With a faint click, you shut the door. You leave it unlocked.

Maybe this is the solution to all heartbreak.

When he turns a corner, he takes his cell phone out of his pocket and flips it open, revealing a string of missed calls and texts from his twin brother, Atsumu.
 
[16:28:01] Tsumu:
did u really leave?
 
[16:40:41] Tsumu:
samu
 
[17:03:17] Missed call.
 
[17:11:27] Tsumu:
moms worried
 
[17:12:03] Tsumu:
we're gnna call the police
 
[17:12:42] Missed call.
 
[17:13:53] Tsumu:
i'm alrdy working on ur missing poster
 
[17:14:01] Tsumu:
made u rlly fat
 
[17:14:14] Tsumu:
serious
 
[17:14:58]: Missed call.
 
[17:47:39] Tsumu:
we didn't actually call the police
 
[17:48:00] Tsumu:
but u should come home now
 
The phone is barely even given a second to ring before Osamu's call gets picked up. Neither party speaks first, and both struggle trying to think of how to apologize without the apology itself. He looks up to the sky, blemished with stars. It kind of looks like a blanket of black nori sprinkled with white sesame seeds. Osamu is the one to speak first.
 
"Wanna get some rice balls before practice tomorrow, Tsumu?"
 
Bursting through the receiver is an exclamation that can barely be put into words, a jumble of syllables drawn out with excitement.
 
"Ya bein' for real?!" As Atsumu speaks, Osamu has to distance the device away from his ear. "Hell yeah!"
 
With a grin, he breaks out into a jog towards home as he thinks about what kind of rice ball he's going to buy the next day – and what the next

Fukuda Special

is going to be.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Outside of the microwaved dinners and muffled cries that made up your childhood, your memory is spotty, coming and going like car headlights that rush past the vessel known as your body. Seldom could you remember the clothes you had worn, the ways you kept yourself entertained, the faces of your neighbors who chose to turn the other way. But there is one thing you silently swear to yourself, and it is that you saw God once, standing right outside of your apartment window during an especially hot summer night.
 
The apartment that you and your parents were living in was nothing more than a single room, split in half by a tattered curtain. Through it you could see the hazy silhouette of your mother, collapsed into a pile of herself, her crying strangled against the wooden flooring. Your father had left while dressed especially well, more so than usual, and your mother's interrogation of the occasion he was attending was quickly cut short by the back of his hand against her cheek.
 
For some reason, you enjoyed watching your father leave the apartment, and you would always make a point to follow the image of his back until it receded far into the distance, easily slipping through the fingers of your gaze. While a sad sight upon anybody's first consideration, it was a relief to you – a ray of hope – not because you were thankful for his absence, but because your father, out of all that you knew, was the epitome of adulthood. This was not represented through his maturity, which was obviously lacking, but his ability to just walk far, far away without mercy, until you could not see him anymore. He did it with such ease that you hoped you, too, could walk away just as easily when you became an adult.
 
On this especially dreary summer night, a collection of fireflies danced on the other side of the window. Surely, this was the correct explanation for what you saw, but perhaps it was through some fog of sleepiness that made you see the yellow-gold silhouette of a man, his entirety blinking as if he were granted temporary form on Earth and threatening to fade away at any given moment. His whole body was a halo, and so you decided that this apparition before you must have been God.
 
This is what you knew about the mysterious figure named "God": when he created man, with his own breath did he exhale life inside of man's body, and it was through this that man was given the senses to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. All to perceive him, was the reasoning, and there you were, using the power of his breath to witness his rebirth occurring in the weeds surrounding your apartment. You wanted to ask if he would save you, take you away, pull aside the curtain, and let you walk over the boundary known as your mother and into the distance. You wanted to ask why he gave you all of these senses, if all he did was appear before you on the other side of a glass barrier, rendering four of them completely useless in their purpose. But then the fireflies dispersed, and he died as quickly as he was brought back to life.
 
What you really wanted to know was why he granted man the ability to remember, yet stole it away at his own leisure.
 
When Osamu enters the

Fukuda Family Cafeteria

, he's glad for how much more alive you look compared to when the two of you first met. He expects it, actually, because his first impression of you was that you were somebody resilient, always trying to face forward even when the world was trying to get you to give up on all hope. He expects it, actually, because the world surrounding you seems so bright and welcoming, the branching arms of trees waving you hello and goodbye, the clouds overhead driving past for a glimpse of you, the birds gathering together in a chorus to sing you a melody. And the people – well, he can't forget about the people who clearly love you. Not that he's met them yet, but because you're an obvious byproduct of being raised with care. What he doesn't expect, however, is the neon green helmet being fastened to your head, and he quirks an eyebrow at the accessory.
 
"Oh, Osamu. You actually showed up," you say while clicking the two straps of the helmet together underneath your chin. Both of your palms slap against the top of the helmet in an effort to test its sturdiness. Osamu clears his throat to keep himself from laughing at the display.
 
"I said I would," he recalls. He almost wants to say that he should have let you know in advance, but first of all, you're running a business, and nobody ever calls in advance to let a store know that they're going to be there during the open hours, and this was no place to be making reservations. Second of all, he has no way of contacting you, and he honestly wonders if you even have a cellphone. 
 
"It took a few days." The sentence itself is worded snarkily, but one look at your relieved expression and he knows that that isn't even near the case at all.
 
"I was busy with stuff." He looks around the entryway and spots your calendar, reminders scribbled all over the grid of days. He decides that you either don't have a cellphone or that you're very prone to being forgetful. "Goin' out somewhere?"
 
"Yeah, just for a little bit." You shuffle past him to grab a pair of shoes, taking a seat on the floor so that you can put them on your feet. "I'm trying to use my energy to be a little more innovative instead of moping around. Delivery apps are all the rage now, so I figured it was time to start offering the service.

Fukuda Family Cafeteria

bento boxes, straight to your door! Well, it's not an app, though. You still have to call the landline."
 
"That so…"
 
When you finish tying your shoes, you look up at him apologetically. "Sorry, you caught me at a bad time. You're here to eat, right?"
 
He shrugs. "That was the plan, but I don't mind just droppin' by and nothin' else if yer busy."
 
"Well, I'm about to finish up, so if you don't mind waiting a little bit…"
 
Next to you is a tote bag, filled with what he presumes to be a bento box covered in patterned cloth. The top of it is finished with a neat little bow, stripes covering the entirety of the semi-protective layer between the bento and the rest of the world.
 
"Ya need a hand? Maybe I can help things go by faster somehow?"
 
"Oh, no, you don't have to do that."
 
"I want to." He takes a moment to think; usually, that reason is never enough for people, because they assume it's an obligation costuming as intentional desire. "If I didn't enjoy yer company, then I wouldn't be around – even for the free food."

…He kind of said something a little embarrassing just now, didn't he? Huh? Being able to be honest like that even though he's a whole two years younger than me is pretty impressive. Maybe there's something in the food they're feeding to people in high school canteens…

But he's avoiding your eyes, though ever so slightly. You can tell that he's making a great effort to look at the space just between your eyebrows in an attempt to feign eye contact, and that's because it's a technique you've taken advantage of so many times up until this point. There's a part of him that's mature and doesn't want to come off as rude or dismissive, but the other part of him is still a high school boy who gets flustered over exposing his heart a little more than usual.

No, that's not it.

"Okay, then." You stand straight, pick the tote bag up, and then hold it out towards him. "Hold onto this."

Maybe it feels like I'm trying to keep him at an arm's length by denying his help. Everyone is always helping me. He must feel a little bit out of place.

Holding his hands out to accept the bag, you notice that he's wearing gloves this time around. They're plain black wool: comfortable, practical, and the true mark of a no-nonsense man. It warms your heart, and how such a trivial piece of clothing can do such a thing, you aren't sure – but maybe it's due to the fact that they symbolize his choice to be here, a stark difference from when you accidentally just caught him red-handed (almost literally) loitering around the house to stay away from his own. The gloves are taken along, because he knows that he's going to you.
 
Pushing the front door open, the two of you are greeted by the flailing of the harsh winds. Osamu instinctively holds the covered bento box a little closer to him, both in an attempt to conserve its heat while simultaneously stealing it for himself. Breaking out into a half-jog, you head towards a bicycle that's neon green to match your blinding helmet, along with a few bright pink accents here and there. Osamu is humored by how much the aesthetics of this bicycle clash harshly with the rundown building you're both standing next to.
 
"This yer new ride?" he asks.
 
"Yeah." You push the bike a little closer to him and then swing a leg over it, settling your weight on top of the seat. "One of my regulars recently stopped by and told me about how his son moved to Tokyo for university, and I asked if his kid's bike was still around, 'cause he used to give it a spin in the mornings a lot. He said yes, so I offered free lunch for the weekend in exchange for the bike."
 
He looks at you. You look at him. When a few seconds of this staring contest pass by, you pat the spot right behind you on the bicycle. Osamu blinks, and quiet disbelief ripples through his features.
 
"...I'm sittin' on the back?"
 
"Yes?" Your hands grip onto the handles and give them a few absentminded squeezes. He opens his mouth, but no solid argument is able to escape him. You

are

the delivery person, after all. It only makes sense that you're the one driving the bike. A grumble sounds from the back of his throat, but he still moves to perch himself on top of the bicycle behind you, making sure not to be too close. Leaving a distance of a few centimeters in between your bodies, he swings the tote bag onto his shoulder. You continue to stare at him after he's situated himself, and he grumbles again after reaching a realization – he haphazardly places an arm around your waist. "Good. Safety is important."
 
He says nothing in response, as he's mentally cursing himself out for volunteering to help you when he could have been waiting around in the warmth of the

Fukuda Family Cafeteria

and watching television instead. As you begin to kick things off, you speak once more.
 
"I'm really glad you offered to help me out, actually. It was getting hard to steer a bike with one hand while holding bento boxes in the other."
 
Osamu has been here before. Not

here

, exactly, but the way you worded that sentence set off alarm bells in his head. It's a sixth sense he's developed while being around Atsumu, being able to tell when someone says something impressive at first glance but extremely dangerous upon reflection. He thinks about when Atsumu asked him to help practice a new spike that will "definitely obliterate his opponents where they stand." Needless to say, Osamu ended up spending the entire day with a volleyball imprinted onto the skin of his face.
 
"Hey, actually–"
 
But before he can finish changing his mind, you're already pedaling away, his arm instinctively tightening around you as he holds the bento box closer to him. The cold barrages your faces, pricks at your skin, and he watches your back slightly arch forward to push half of your weight onto the handlebars. The bicycle wobbles slightly to the left and right as you readjust yourself to the added weight of another human being, and he feels like he's teetering on the boundary between life and death.
 
Winter, surely, is that: a line that just barely separates the Earth from the afterlife, a time in which both the living and the dead overlap with one another. This bike ride is the closest Osamu can come to proving such a thing, as he passes by the drooping branches of naked trees, as the freeze outside steals the color from his cheeks, as the absolute silence surrounding him is just barely masked by the rushing of air concealing his ears – and yet, warmth continues to emanate from your back, breath continues to trail from your mouth, clouding his vision and filtering the world in a soft, soft white.
 
The windows which the two of you pass by allow him glimpses into the lives of other people: couples huddling in front of their fireplace, sharing blankets and laughing as their cold palms press into each other's faces; children stacking on top of one another in an attempt to read colorfully illustrated stories in unison, and families gathering in the kitchen to sample their next meal out of the biggest pots they own. They're warm, but Osamu believes that the warmth lies outside, blankets of white snow surrounding him and clouds of steam rising from between his chapped lips.
 
"Y'know, ya drive this thing pretty well," he finally says. His muscles relax, and he slightly throws his head back to look at the clouds crawling across the blue sky. "Gave me a scare earlier with what ya said."
 
"Oh, you think so?" As you speak, the air from within you comes out in bursts, joining the softness Osamu observes above him. "That's good to hear. It's my first time riding one today."
 
"Yer first time?!" There they are again: the alarm bells. They're ringing a lot louder than before. His attention comes back down to the chilled Earth. "Like, ever?!"
 
"I don't know how to stop, though. We're pretty much there, by the way."
 
The bottom of his jaw nearly falls to meet his heart.
 
"The brakes! The brakes! Squeeze 'em!

Gently

!"
 
Your fingers move to tuck the brakes underneath them, obeying his command and hanging tight onto the final enunciated word. As you flatten the brakes against the handles, Osamu unhooks a leg from his side, thrusting it against the ground as he uses his weight to tip the bicycle slowly to the side. The bottom of his shoe scrapes against the pavement, and pebbles rumble underneath his sole as the two of you finally come to a full stop. He's the first one to get off the bicycle; in fact, he launches himself off of it.
 
"Thanks, Osamu." As you dismount the bike, your hands begin to unclasp the helmet from your head. "I crashed earlier, so that was a lot of help."
 
"Maybe ya…should've practiced a bit before doin' this delivery stuff." He doesn't have any wind left in him to shout. "Or…asked for some trainin' wheels. Did the bento ya were deliverin' make it out alive, at least?"
 
You slip the helmet underneath your arm and hold out a hand to him. He slips the tote bag off of his shoulders and inserts your fingers through the bag's handles, passing it back to its rightful owner. "...We serve scrambled bentos now, is what I said."
 
The moment your sentence wraps itself up, the door to the house you're both standing in front of opens, revealing a small old man in the entryway, most likely drawn out by the chatter. His eyes squint and crinkle in the corners as he processes the image of the two of you, his hands tucked behind his back without caution.
 
"Oh, hello, Atoda-san. I apologize for the disturbance," you say as you offer a polite bow.
 
Osamu takes a step behind you, watching as you slowly dig into the bag in an effort to fish the bento box from the bottom. With the helmet trapped underneath your arm, your movements become limited, and he slips a hand below it to steal the hindrance away from you. You look back at him, at first in slight surprise, but then smile softly as he settles the helmet between both of his palms. Turning back to the old man, you hold out the bento box towards him, the bottom of it still toasty.
 
"Ah, is this the lunch that I ordered?" His arms fall from behind him, and his hands tremble faintly as they reach out towards your offering.
 
A pause lingers for a moment too long, but you quickly pick yourself back up again. "That's right." You retreat the bento away from his grasp. "Would you like for me to carry it in for you, sir?"
 
"My, that would be mighty helpful."
 
"Of course."
 
Atoba-san waddles into his home, and you kick the snow and dirt off of your shoes before you enter after him. Osamu awkwardly rocks back and forth on his heels, and you shoot him a confused look. He raises a hand in attempted assurance.
 
"I can wait out here," he promises.
 
"No," you oppose, "it's cold outside. You're helping me right now, so come in."
 
"But–"
 
"They won't mind. These people are nice."
 
"[Y/N]?" A female voice calls you from within, and you turn around to see a neatly dressed young woman holding a tray filled with piping hot cups of tea. "Are you coming inside?"
 
"Oh, hi, yes," you answer, fervently waving the still-loitering Osamu in, "I was just talking to, um, my employee."
 
The woman's shoulders quake as she chuckles, her smile crooked and stretched out instead of up. "You hired?" 
 
Before Osamu can interject, you're already taking your shoes off at the door and turning away from him. He looks past your shoulder to the woman holding the tea, and she momentarily locks eyes with him. Osamu smiles, because he doesn't know what to say – maybe "hello," for starters, but right now he feels like a ghost possessing your back.
 
Maybe, actually, the border between life and death is the door home. He thinks about how many people will never be able to pass through it again, and how fortunate he is to have been able to make the choice to both run away from it and return. There's a light engulfing the hall with a soft golden glow, and he finds himself attracted to it, his feet moving to follow you before he can think any further. Yes, perhaps there is no greater proof to being alive than chasing the signs of where other people are, and maybe that's why so many are afraid of the dark. He's glad that he's not a moth whose fate is to burn after getting his hands on something so lovely. The woman smiles back at him as he shuts the door and taps his feet against the surface, shaking off the snow still clinging to his shoes.
 
Osamu watches as you turn a corner alongside the young woman, and he hastens to remove and set his shoes next to yours. When he catches up, he's welcomed by the sight of a small dining room, the old man already sitting at the table. Connected right to the dining room is the living room, the space being taken up by a kotatsu, a television set, and an altar with freshly lit incense and a photo of a young woman perched on top of it. The tray of tea thumps against the surface of the table as the young lady sets it down in front of him, and Osamu notices that there are only three.
 
"Sorry," she apologizes as if she can read his mind, though it might be true that his thoughts are reflected somewhere in his expression, "I was only expecting one visitor today. But you can have it."

"No, that's okay," Osamu insists, "I showed up completely unprompted."
 
"Unprompted? I thought you were hired?" As she pulls out a seat near the spot you've already claimed at the table, she shoots you a smug grin. "What are you paying the boy?"
 
A sheepish look flashes across your face. "A meal?"
 
Laughter booms from the woman's chest, and Osamu swears that her voice rocks the house. "That isn't even the minimum wage in Japan! Don't tell me you're making a runaway do half of your work for cheap?"
 
She's obviously joking, but Osamu still feels the need to come to your defense. "S'not like that," he answers for you. "I'm the one bein' spoiled."
 
The young woman and you exchange glances, and it seems that she agrees with you on the fact that he is strangely upfront about things. Not a bad trait to have at all, but not something you would expect from a boy his age. Taking a sip from your cup of tea, the liquid thaws your lips cracked from the cold, and you wonder if he's had experience babysitting a child (this is, in a way, true; just probably not in the way you're currently imagining). His voice, the way he speaks when he feels like he must, almost feels adult-ish, like he's somehow taking a position of pride while remaining humble all the same. 
 
"Oh, I see. What a good boy you are, then." She pushes a cup of tea towards him while her laughter settles back down. "Here, a tip for your hard work."
 
"...Thank you."
 
As his fingers wrap themselves around the cup, he feels the heat of it immediately slipping into his skin. Today, it seems, has been a day of taking for Osamu, and it feels as if no matter how much he tries to give, he's paid back twice as much. This has been true since birth, when he was born alongside a twin, and he realizes that he doesn't understand what it's like to really be lonely. Then, he realizes that he may not be as mature as he tries to come off as being due to that. For a moment, he thinks what life would be like if he was just a little lonelier, if Atsumu was never in the picture. Things would have been more peaceful, probably, but there is a strange feeling of loss that washes over him just from the thought alone. If he was just a little lonelier, he wouldn't know a lot of the friends that he gets along with now, and he wouldn't be sitting at this stranger's table alongside you. He hopes that he will never have to feel loneliness for the rest of his life, and if that means never growing up, then he's okay with that too. Osamu can't wait to walk through the door to his home later.
 
"Here you go, Atoda-san." He's brought back to reality by the sound of your voice, and he sees you untying the fabric wrapped around the bento in front of the old man. When you lift the lid of the box, you reveal to everyone a meal that seems to lack color: croquettes, slices of fried pork cutlet, rice, and curry – without any carrots. It's almost like a meal for a picky toddler. "No carrots in the curry or croquettes, just like you asked."
 
"You hear that, Manaka?" the old man asks as he turns to the young woman. She smiles again, this time smaller, more fragile, less presumptuously. "It's just the way you like. So we can share. You know, she really hates eating them. Carrots. Used to always ask me to pick them out for her when she was a kid!"
 
"You're right," she replies, and she opens her mouth as he shakily lifts a spoonful up of the rice drenched in monotonous brown curry for her to enjoy.
 
It's a little awkward, sitting and watching people eat when you don't have a meal yourself. It's not something that Osamu is used to, and he can't help but glance over at you in order to gauge your reaction. When he sees you watching them share their meal with a tender calmness, he thinks about that house you live in, and how empty it must be when you're the only one inside of it. Turning his attention back to Atoda-san and Manaka, he decides to visit you a little more often.
 
When they finish the meal, you don't bother to rewrap the box, simply closing it and tossing it back into the tote bag as is. Manaka is helping to wipe off some curry from the corner of Atoda-san's mouth as you and Osamu stand in preparation for your leave.
 
"Wait right there a second," she softly commands, and she runs to the kitchen to shuffle through the containers present within the cramped fridge. She pulls out a plastic container filled with soft-boiled eggs soaking in soy sauce marinade, and hands it to you along with a few bills. When you look at it questionably, she answers your silent question. "Ajitama. She used to make it all the time, apparently, so I tried my hand at it but made too much. I'd appreciate it if you could lessen the burden for me."
 
The container is passed into your hands, and you immediately hold it up to the dining room light. The luminosity coming from the bulb above passes through the clear material and paints your face in a muted soy sauce color. Inside, the eggs slightly swim and bump into each other, a few of them having slightly broken white flesh – which was probably due to Manaka's roughness while breaking and peeling the shells off. You put the tote bag on your shoulder and wrap your arms around the bin of eggs.
 
"Okay," you return, "I can take it off your hands."
 
"Have a safe trip back."
 
"Thanks, I will." Osamu doesn't bother to express his doubt on the matter of returning in one piece. "I'll be off then, Atoda-san."
 
The old man smiles at you kindly, and the wrinkles on his face deepen with the movement. "Thank you very much for the meal. What was your name again?"
 
Manaka places a hand on his shoulder and rubs it firmly, and Osamu notices you slightly parting your lips to inhale deeply. A breath – half a small laugh and half a gentle sigh – follows shortly after. "[L/N] [F/N], sir. But I would appreciate it if you just went ahead and called me by my first name."
 
"Is that alright?"
 
"I run a very intimate business, sir."
 
"And how do you know my name?"
 
You mindlessly readjust the bag on your shoulder. "You left it for me upon placing your order, sir. I have to know who it is I'm delivering to, after all."
 
"Oh, of course." He looks up whilst holding his own chin, musing this reasoning as if it were anything but common sense. "Well, thank you again, [Y/N]."
 
"My pleasure." Finally, you pay some attention to the pseudo-employee that accompanied you today as you begin to shimmy back into your shoes. "Let's head out, Osamu!"
 
"Comin'," he replies. He waits for you to finish gathering yourself, and when you finish up by grabbing the cycling helmet where you left it coming in, it's his turn to put his shoes back on. As you're opening the front door to exit, he hastily speaks again. "I'll ride us back."
 
Before you can answer, he practically pushes you out of the door. You get in one final wave to Atoda-san and Manaka as he shuts it behind him, and then look at him while holding the marinated eggs closer to you. "You don't have to–"
 
"I

want

to." He's already making a break for the bicycle. "I really,

really

want to."
 
By the time you find time to finish a sentence, he's already sitting in the seat of the bike, his hands wrapped firmly around the handlebars. "Okay, fine," you finally relent. "Let me put this away, then. And you have to wear the helmet."
 
After you set the container of eggs into the bag and on top of the empty bento box, you climb onto the back of the bicycle, attaching the helmet onto his head and wrapping your arms tight around Osamu's waist. He stiffens up for a second before saying "Safety is important," and it's uncertain who he's saying it for, because you already knew that.
 
When he starts pedaling back towards your house, you notice that the ride feels a lot smoother than when the driving is in your hands. You also notice that, as a passenger, it's much easier to take in the world around you – and you find joy in not feeling the need to always be looking forward. Looking behind you, you watch as pieces of the world begin to fall into the distance. The trees, the houses, the road; you slowly leave them all behind. At some point, you pass by two children playing outside in front of their house in the snow, and as they wave at you, you wave back. They watch your back as you slowly leave their sight.
 
"So even a prehistoric place like yer own still gets new customers every now and then," Osamu makes an attempt at conversation.
 
"Actually," you respond without missing a beat, "that's one of my regulars."
 
He mulls over your reply. "Didn't sound like it."
 
"Well, he's reaching that age." You press your forehead against his back in an effort to shield your face from the nips of the cold air. "Doesn't really remember much anymore. It's like his memory is on a twenty-four hour timer."
 
"I see…"
 
"That man," you continue, "has been a regular even before I started living here. His memory started going downhill a few years ago, but it's started getting to be a danger to him. He tends to get lost if he wanders too far from home. He's gotten lost a couple of times trying to get to

Fukuda

, and I've had to escort him back home the few instances he has found his way. I don't know why he keeps trying to show up, frankly."
 
"I guess his daughter has to leave sometimes for work?"
 
"That woman is his caretaker. But she's not around every waking hour. Her real name is Aiko. It's true that Manaka is his daughter, though. Doing things the way we did today is for the sake of keeping him happy."
 
Osamu thinks back to the home, thinks back to the woman he met, thinks back to the little altar tucked away in the corner of the living room and the way that the young woman in the photograph looked similar to the young woman he spoke to, and how it was impossible for them to be the same person at all. As if you can see the images of his mind, you speak again.
 
"Car accident," you explain. His feet continue to pedal forward. "I didn't know her. It was a long time ago."

Though, I think it's less that I don't know her and more that she doesn't know me. Because I know her favorite food, her favorite color, the way she snorted when she laughed, the way she always stood with her weight on her right leg, the way she picked the carrots out of her curry, the way she rubbed the back of her neck when she lied – but only while her hair was up. Atoba-san has introduced her to me, but it's impossible for me to ever be really introduced to her. So it's not like I can really say she's my friend.

People can only continue on through the memory of others: this is a fact. This is usually something that is discussed when someone dies, but you know that it can apply to living too. After all, when you were locked up in that cramped little apartment without being spared a thought from your mother or father, you did not exist in the slightest. Even if your mother went through with her threats of killing you, the world would have continued to turn, and not a soul would have felt the weight of your loss.
 
Knowing someone is heavy. Atoda-san, deep down, probably wants to distribute Manaka's memory to the rest of the world.

I wonder how often he worries about how lonely she is.

"Is this why ya started doin' delivery?" Osamu asks. You're thankful that he doesn't seem to feel too uncomfortable by the whole thing. 
 
"One of them." You smile against the back of his jacket. "I wasn't lying when I said that I just wanted to do something new too."

I want to do a lot of new things. It feels like, recently, I've lost a lot. A lot more than usual. So I want to make up for it by gaining as much as possible. Things like knowledge, experience, friends.

Glancing up at Osamu, his head is still set straight, his attention mostly set on the path in front of him.

Lots and lots of new friends, who I don't want to forget.

Without notice, you turn your hands into claws and attack the sides of his torso. He yelps in surprise, and the bicycle unsteadily swerves to the left and to the right. When you return to holding onto him, a laugh escapes you, and he turns for a second to glare in your direction.
 
"What the hell are ya doin', ticklin' me like that?!" he shouts. His breaths stutter from him, forming exclamation points of steam into the air. "Ya tryin' ta get us both killed or what?!"
 
"Sorry!" you say, but neither your voice nor your expression are apologetic at all. "I saw an opportunity, so I did it."
 
"Ya should just leave havin' new ideas for yer little joint."
 
"Hmm, you might be right."
 
"I think I know why he still comes around. Despite everything."
 
"You mean Atoda-san? Where's this coming from?"
 
"I was just thinkin' about it."
 
"I think it's just a force of habit. The mind can forget, but the body doesn't – that sort of thing."
 
"I agree, but it's probably because he can't forget the taste of the food." Osamu begins to slow the bicycle down as you can begin to see the familiar rooftop of your home only a short distance. "Just a hunch."
 
When the two of you reach your destination, you're the first one off the vehicle this time. Osamu pushes the bike in order to prop it against the building, quickly removing the helmet from his head while he's at it. Neon colors stand out too much on him.
 
"Today's

Fukuda Special

," you begin to announce as you head inside, "is a bento box with ajitama!"
 
He chuckles as he follows you inside. "Just ajitama?"
 
"And other things."
 
When he walks through the door, he's thankful to have feeling returning to his face. The warmth invades his skin once more as he follows you into the eating area, where he immediately goes to sit in the exact same spot he did the first time he came here. Immediately, the cookware clangs together, the water runs from the sink faucet, the open refrigerator lets out a low hum, the container of ajitama clicks open, your feet shuffle across the floor; there are only two people here, but there's so much life still.
 
When you finish preparing Osamu's meal, you place a closed bento box in front of him.
 
"Ya didn't have to add a lid if I'm just gonna take it off right away," he remarks.
 
"It's part of the surprise," you quickly retort, and he can't find a way to win against you.
 
His hands move to remove the lid, and he reveals a steaming pad of rice, two marinated soft boiled eggs, a small side of pickled vegetables, and a tiny helping of curry.
 
"...Do people usually have ajitama with curry?"
 
"It comes in curry ramen sometimes, right? Is it really that big of a difference with rice?"
 
He chooses to humor you, cutting off some of an egg with the side of his spoon and then burying it in rice and curry. When he takes the bite, he pauses for a second, his chew slow and full of concentration. At first, you're a little nervous about the idea that you've let him down a second time (at which he may not be willing to return a third time), but you feel yourself relax as you see a smile spread across his face after he swallows.
 
"That's pretty good," he declares, and he's already going in for his second bite. "I don't think I'd ever think to pair ajitama with curry rice."
 
"So I proved myself this time?"
 
"Yeah." He sets his spoon down momentarily to look you in the eye. The lanterns above reflect off of the glassy surface of his iris, forming a gold ring around the pitch black circle. It's a little bit like a halo, and you can't help but think about the time you saw God. Here he returns, and you think you understand why you were given all of your senses. "I don't think I'll forget this taste for the rest of my life."