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i.
Sawamura re-enters Kazuya’s life the way he should have predicted—unexpected, uninvited, with all the force and fury of a summer storm.
“This humble Sawamura Eijun has a request,” Sawamura says, apropos of nothing, at the entryway of Kazuya’s apartment unit.
“You’re not a humble anything,” Kazuya retorts, mind numbly going through iterations of Sawamura is at my door and Why is Sawamura at my door and How is Sawamura at my door. The answer to the last, Kazuya notes with a dim resignation, is probably Seidou alumni.
“This humble Sawamura Eijun sincerely requests that you teach him how to cook.”
Kazuya lets go of the door handle. That the door slams shut in Sawamura’s face is entirely the wind’s fault.
ii.
Sawamura turns up at his door a week later, striding into Kazuya’s house like he owns it—standing at the doorway, grocery bag dangling off his arm, outstretched towards Kazuya. Kazuya reaches out, tugs the plastic bag off Sawamura’s arms, and peers inside, at the carton of large, round eggs still covered in chicken-coop muck.
“Nabe-senpai said you had today off!” Sawamura says, without preamble. “But, I can leave if you’re busy. These are good eggs, though—you should use them. ”
“Where did you even get these?” Kazuya asks. He beckons, with a wave of his free hand, and Sawamura follows, trailing Kazuya out of the genkan and into his kitchenette.
“My neighbour,” Sawamura says. He leans against the kitchen counter, squinting down at the induction stove like he’d never seen one before. “Her cousin owns chickens.”
“Oh, so you seduced her for farm-fresh eggs? Never thought you had it in you.”
“Noo! She’s sixty! I told her I was learning how to cook and she gave me eggs.” In the narrow space of Kazuya’s kitchenette—barely wide enough for both of them to fit shoulder to shoulder, close enough that Kazuya can see the sunburn healing on Sawamura cheeks—Sawamura gesticulates, jostling their arms together. Kazuya jostles back, elbowing Sawamura off to the side as he places the carton down.
“Wash four of them.” He jerks his chin towards the sink. “Gently. Hold it like your elderly paramour.”
“I know how to wash eggs!” Sawamura yelps by his ear, laughing as he goes.
iii.
can you make croquettes?
Received 11:49am
You know that I’m a professional baseball player, right?
Sent 3:05PM
Yeah, I can.
Sent 3:07PM
4pm this sunday?
Received 5:10pm
Sawamura shows up eight minutes late, grocery bag slung over his elbow, laden with potatoes. He follows Kazuya into the kitchenette without prompting, dropping the bag down on the countertop.
“You know, there are simpler dishes to learn. I’m not sure deep-frying is beginner-friendly enough for someone who, just last week, had no idea what blanching meant,” Kazuya reaches for a vegetable peeler; gestures for Sawamura to take the other—says nothing about neither of them having been there the week before; of having gone out in the morning to buy a paired set. He knows his way around knives well enough that he hadn’t thought of buying a new peeler since moving in; but Sawamura, in all his indelicate glory, could very well take his own finger off.
Sawamura purses his lips as he peels. “I know what it is now,” he says, tugging at a dangling bit of potato skin, his face a scrunched-up rictus of concentration. “And, I wanted croquettes.”
It’s always been as simple as that for Sawamura. I want to pitch a cutter, I want to pitch to the inside, I want to be the ace. I want to learn how to deep-fry breaded mashed potatoes. Hitting the ground running as soon as he learnt how to walk, the tidal force of his straightforward, baseless ambition sweeping everyone up in his wake.
“Well, you are an idiot savant—” Sawamura kicks him in the back of his knees, an heirloom kickboxing move from Room 5.
“It’ll be fine if you teach me properly,” he says, waving a potato in his direction. He holds it, charmingly, like he’s holding a four-seamer, nestling it between his fingers. “So do a good job, Miyuki Kazuya!”
“So demanding,” Kazuya sighs. He can’t hide the upwards quirk of his lips.
iv.
“Midterms suck.” Head pillowed in his arms, Kuramochi speaks into his statistics worksheet, looking at none of the printouts he has scattered down the length of Kazuya’s table. Kazuya picks one up, glances at the sprawling mess of numbers over the sheet, and sets it down on top of Kuramochi’s head.
“I asked before, and I’ll ask again: When did my house become your personal study spot?”
“Since you started feeding me,” he says, as he swings his leg out, aiming a kick at Kazuya’s shin from under the table. Kazuya sets a bottle of barley tea in between them, a makeshift shield.
“Is this what our relationship is, Kuramochi? I feed you, and you kick me? That’s hardly equivalent.”
“Shut up, four-eyes,” Kuramochi bites—but there’s no bite to it. He tips his head, dislodging the sheet of paper balanced on it, and looks up at Kazuya, ungelled bangs plastered over his temple. “You feed me, I kick you and make sure you haven’t keeled over alone in your apartment. You always make too much for one, anyway.”
“I save leftovers for the rest of the week,” Kazuya says, but he tugs a tupperware out of the minifridge anyway.
Kuramochi descends on it as soon as he sets it on the table, tugging the lid off and pausing to study its contents. “Huh — ” he pokes at one of the daigakuimo with his finger “ — some of them are burnt.”
“It’s all part of my dastardly plan to finally have my house to myself,” Kazuya says. “Have Sawamura poison my guests.”
He snags a piece from the tupperware; it’s misshapen and oblong, and charred nearly-black at the edges. Homey and rustic, Sawamura had said, perched beside the stove, trying to scrape burnt sweet potato off Kazuya’s pan with his spatula. Edible, Kazuya had said, which is an achievement in and of itself.
“Sawamura made this?” Kuramochi fishes a piece out, holds it to the light like studying a scientific specimen.
“It’s edible,” Kazuya says. “Surprisingly.”
“Huh.” Kuramochi pops it into his mouth. He sounds a little proud, a little fond, the way he doesn’t allow himself to be where Sawamura can see him. “He’s always been a fast learner.”
Kazuya doesn’t ask how Kuramochi knew about their cooking lessons. The answer would probably just be Seidou alumni, with a side helping of Sawamura’s big mouth.
He takes a bite out of the daigakuimo in his hand, chews through the sweetness bursting over his tongue, the acridity of the char. It’s all at once too sweet, and too bitter—and he reaches out for another as Kuramochi does, as well.
v.
Do you like oyaki?
Sent 02:30PM
THA’ST NAGANO FODO!!!!!!
Received 02:32PM
Sawamura nibbles at his oyaki, small mouse-like bites, looking both rapturous and on the verge of tears. Kazuya pushes the plate a little closer to him, feeling incrementally warmer for every noise of enthusiastic affirmation Sawamura makes. It’s different than on the field, with the eighteen meters between the pitcher’s mound and the home plate. Different where he knows he's good; has had years and an audience to prove it. There have only been two other people to eat his cooking, before—three, now. In the too-small space of Kazuya’s kitchenette, Kazuya feels over-exposed, sunburnt in the light of Sawamura’s megawatt, beatific grin.
“You can take bigger bites.” Kazuya rubs at the back of his neck, hoping against hope that his flush hasn’t worked its way up to his skull. “This is a test batch.”
“Good food should be savored,” Sawamura answers; Kazuya gives up on not blushing, and counts on the dim lighting to maintain whatever is left of his dignity. “I haven’t had oyaki this good since I left Nagano.” His mouth twists downwards, wistful. “The shop my friends and I used to go to closed two years back.”
“Ah,” Kazuya says. I’m glad you’re still in Tokyo, he doesn’t say. He knows a bit of it; heard through the grapevine about how their two star pitchers had chased his silhouette down from the countryside—but they’ve grown far out of his shadow, by now.
“Wash your hands when you’re done,” he says. “Then, help me strain the flour.”
vi.
r u home?
Received 18:39PM
Sawamura knocks on his door at 7PM, just after Kazuya’s shoved his leftovers into the microwave. Kazuya’s bone-tired, thighs straining from prolonged squatting at game that dragged on longer than it should have—but he drags himself to the door anyway.
“Nope,” he says, when he sees Sawamura at his doorway, cradling a grocery bag with a tupperware in his arm. “Shop’s closed, see you tomorrow.”
“Wait!” Sawamura shoves his foot in the space between the door and the frame before Kazuya can shut it. “It’s not what you think!” He stuffs the grocery bag through the slit between the door and the wall, the tupperware just thin enough to fit through the gap. Kazuya takes it; feels the heat of the box’s contents radiating through the plastic.
“It’s food! For you!” Sawamura yells before Kazuya can voice any suspicions, leaning against the doorframe and trying to catch Kazuya’s eyes from behind the door. “My mother’s secret recipe tamago toji.”
“Let me guess, the secret ingredient is love,” Kazuya says. He eyes the contents of the box, at the misshapen mass of eggs, dotted with snow peas and swimming in sauce. It’s homey and rustic, and nothing looks burnt—the kind of food Kazuya had made when he was younger, reaching the stove while on a step-stool, old notebooks with his mother’s recipes splayed open on the dining table. It’s still hot; like Sawamura had dumped it into the tupperware and run over the moment he finished cooking. He probably did.
“Love helps,” Sawamura answers, disarmingly honest, and Kazuya feels the familiar warmth bubbling through him, from his arms to stomach. “But, I think it’s probably chicken stock powder?”
Kazuya laughs. He walks back to the kitchenette, Sawamura close at his heels, and pulls out enough utensils for two.
0.
Sawamura is still sulking, staring at the tea in his cup and trying to boil it with the force of his glare—even long after Kazuya has let him in, seated him down on a floor cushion, and poured him a cup of the barley tea he keeps chilled in the fridge. He nudges Sawamura’s thigh with his toe, the sides of his lips twitching upwards as Sawamura turns his baleful glare upwards at him, face still red.
“I can’t believe you shut the door in my face,” he mutters around the rim of his cup, teeth clacking against the porcelain.
“I can’t believe you showed up unannounced,” Kazuya says. “Don’t you have university?” He sets a cushion on the floor, and settles himself down on it, jostling his knee against Sawamura’s as he folds his legs. “You’re not playing truant, are you? Naughty, naughty.”
“The term hasn’t started yet!”
“Oh, is that so? My bad, then.”
Sawamura harrumphs. The tea in his cup swirls as he spins it, rolling the circumference around the palms of his hands. Kazuya watches it turn; feels Sawamura’s knee pressing against his, and yearns for a cup between his own hands, to keep his fingers occupied. He settles for lacing them together, steepling them under his chin.
“You do realise I’m a professional baseball player, right?”
There’s no bite to it, but Sawamura still looks contrite, mouth a little moue as he curls his fingers around his cup.
“Of course I do!” he protests, vehemently, all bluster. “It’s just- I just- didn’t know who else to ask, is all.”
Kazuya digs his knuckle into the base of his chin; a distraction, as something warm stirs in his gut.
“Wakana?”
“She’s going to university in Kyoto.”
“And, you thought I’d teach you?”
Sawamura pivots in place, knee sliding against Kazuya as he turns. His gaze, when it catches Kazuya’s, is as he remembers: earnest and steadfast. Unwavering, even in the most inconvenient of times and places. Kazuya tenses on instinct, nerves singing with a familiar thrill.
“Well, yeah. Haven’t you always?” Sawamura says. Guileless; straight-on and dead center.
Kazuya had been fighting a losing battle from the moment Sawamura showed up, he knows.
“Fine,” he says. “Give me your number.”
vii.
“I don’t think you need that much sugar,” Kazuya says. “It says half a teaspoon in the recipe.”
“I like it sweeter!” Eijun protests. He leans up against Kazuya anyway, looking down at Kazuya’s phone from over his shoulder. “Maybe just a little less,” he adds, tipping a few grains back into the cup.
“A master of compromise.” Kazuya sets his phone back on the stand, nudges at Eijun with his elbow until he shifts, and grabs the knife. “I’ll cut the onions, can you—”
“Keep an eye on the stock? Yeah, yeah.” Eijun reaches over his head, fishes the ladle off from where it’s hanging, familiar with the nooks and crannies of Kazuya’s kitchenette as if he owns it. Kazuya watches Eijun, standing too-close, just inches away from him at the stove, lit by Kazuya’s terrible lighting, stirring the stew with an expression of constipated concentration. It's too small for the two of them, he thinks.
“Next weekend, let’s try katsudon,” he says. “Come by whenever.”