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The airport was quiet and dim; barely half the check-in desks were manned and the overhead lights were a checkerboard, alternating lit and unlit. There was an aimless, short string of people with suitcases, a janitor pushing a mop around in a corner, and them, and that was basically it.
Shinjiro’s jaw cracked as he muffled another yawn. The place was pretty much empty because it was the wrong side of three a.m. and only the desperate and broke boarded a plane before eight. Aki—who was neither, just didn’t know what shit was worth spending money on—was gripping his boarding pass and staring at Shinjiro like he was trying to burn his face into his retinas. He looked way too awake.
Neither of them had slept and Shinjiro was gonna be sore for another whole day from it. He’d chosen to make Aki a bento for his flight rather than shower—also he hadn’t been convinced Aki wouldn’t jump him in the shower, in which case they’d definitely miss his flight—and his boxers were unpleasantly sticky.
All this to say; he wasn’t in a particularly romantic mood. But Aki was staring at him and he felt the significance of the moment in a sorta detached way, like he was watching it on TV. Airports were the kinda place you made impassioned speeches or wept or something. He was so goddamn tired he wanted Aki to leave just so he could go home and sleep.
But he knew, beneath the exhaustion, that he was gonna miss him. He knew that even the things that annoyed him—dirty hand-wraps left out on the counter, bits of congealed protein powder stuck at the bottom of glasses, the rattle of Aki bouncing his knee when he was forced to sit still for more than ten minutes—would, soon enough, become things he thought of fondly.
Shinjiro looked at Aki. His hair had grown back in, long enough that Shinjiro could get a good grip on it when he wanted, which was often. The cut on his chin had healed to a small, dark scab. He was wearing one of Shinjiro’s sweaters, which he was being real magnanimous about and hadn’t mentioned. Shinjiro loved him so much his ribs ached from it basically all the time.
“Have a safe flight,” Shinjiro said. Aki nodded solemnly, like he had any say in it, then grabbed him by the back of the neck and pressed their foreheads together. It hurt a little—both the impact and his grip—but Shinjiro didn’t mind.
“I…I’ll call you,” Aki said. His breath smelled like toothpaste. His skin was warm.
Shinjiro knew what he meant, so he only said, “Good.”
—
Aki’s flight left at ass o’clock on Saturday, and on Sunday Shinjiro met Kimiko Ikeda at the Gekkoukan middle school boys dorm at the much more reasonable hour of eleven a.m.
It was hard to tell how old Ikeda was; her hair was chopped short and permed, she wore anti-wrinkle pants, a plain blouse, orthopaedic shoes, and basically no makeup. The biggest clue that she had to be south of forty-five was that she was enormously pregnant—“Twins,” she said, preemptively, right after introducing herself, patting her alarmingly large stomach. Allegedly she was eight months pregnant, but Shinjiro couldn’t believe her stomach could get any bigger. It seemed to assert its own gravity, making it hard to look away from.
The other clue that she was probably younger than she seemed was her laugh; she had a bright, loud laugh that deployed often and seemingly at random, a laugh that was girlish and cheerful and difficult to attribute to someone who’d been in the workforce when the bubble economy burst. The laugh made Shinjiro consider that they might actually be close in age.
Ikeda gave him a tour of the dorm, beginning with an in-depth run through of the communal lounge and kitchen on the first floor, then skimmed the other two floors. She’d made some notes on a little pad she kept referring to; trivia about the boys, tips about managing the summer heat, that sorta thing. They only saw one kid—a small boy wearing thick glasses, who ducked back into his room when he saw them coming.
“We all go our separate ways on Sundays,” Ikeda said, laughingly. “You’ll have the whole day off, and the boys do know how to feed themselves so don’t worry about cooking on your days off.”
The dorm wasn’t exactly like the old SEES dorm, but close enough; low-pile carpet patterned to hide dirt, off-white walls, art that was so boring you forgot what it was almost immediately. The close-but-not-quite quality, the snags of familiarity, made Shinjiro itch.
He trailed Ikeda up and down the stairs, incredibly nervous that she’d lose her balance, which seemed inevitable given the fact that her stomach was about the size of Jupiter, and tried to commit everything she said to memory.
“All the rules are posted on the cork board, and there’s a copy in your room too,” Ikeda said as she toddled ahead of him. It felt rude to describe a grown woman as ‘toddling’ but unfortunately that was exactly how she moved. “I always find it’s best to start out strict. You can always loosen up on the rules at your discretion later, but it’s hard to crack down once a precedent is set.”
Shinjiro’s room was on the main floor, at the end of a hall opposite the kitchen. He’d dumped his duffel bag outside the door at the beginning of the tour and now he dragged it inside. The room was small, clean, and impersonal; Ikeda had removed all her things the day before. There was a plain blue duvet on the bed that looked exactly like the one Shinjiro had slept under in high school, and a desk beneath the window.
“You have your own attached bathroom of course.” Ikeda toddled over to push the door open. “The washing machine is for rags and mops, but feel free to add your own things. You can run a load for the boys too, if you need to, but they’re expected to do their own laundry.”
Then she braced both hands on the small of her back. “Whew. Do you mind if I sit for a minute?”
“No, please—” Shinjiro gestured her to the bed and she perched on the edge with a sigh.
“Can I help you unpack?” She asked. Whatever look was on Shinjiro’s face made her laugh. “No? Okay. Let’s see…” She squinted at her notepad, flipping the page back and forth, then gave it up with another small laugh. “That’s everything, I guess. Do you have any questions for me?”
Shinjiro stared at the window as he considered it. Through the slitted blinds, he could see into the alley between their building and the larger high school dorm. There were crumpled, sun-bleached pop bottles swept up against the wall. Something had dripped onto the concrete and left a dark stain.
He wasn’t thinking about schedules or menus or curfew. He was remembering the three of them in the ten-person Iwatodai dorm. Rug burns on his knees, Mitsuru brewing tea to review battle plans, Aki jogging up and down the stairs on rainy days.
Shinjiro had left them behind. Had left them in that big building, all alone with Ikutsuki. He hadn’t known, but so what? One thing the three of them had in common was that they all preferred to shoulder the blame. They fought over responsibility the way stray dogs might fight over a rotten bone.
By the time Shinjiro had returned the dorm was transformed; there were informal book clubs, vegetables growing on the roof, movie nights in the lounge. All Shinjiro’s betrayals and broken promises swept clean, a blank slate, exactly what he’d never wanted.
He’d been quiet too long. Clearing his throat, he turned to Ikeda and asked, “Do the kids get along okay?”
“Oh, definitely! They all lived here this past school year so most of them are friends now.” She grinned up at him. “Do I seem nervous?” Before Shinjiro could answer, she continued; “It’s not that I don’t think you’ll do great, I’m just gonna miss the boys. Well, until my own arrive.” She cupped the bottom curve of her stomach, a gesture that seemed at once protective and proud.
She looked so incandescently happy that Shinjiro figured there must be something to that pregnancy ‘glow’, after all.
“Well—” Ikeda heaved up onto her feet, ripped the page from her notepad, and flapped it at Shinjiro. “My number’s there, please text me anytime if you have any questions, and I mean anytime, I haven’t slept properly in months.”
“Thank you,” Shinjiro said, pocketing the paper. He walked her to the door, out into the mild spring day. Ikeda put on a light jacket that hung from her shoulders like a cape with no hope of closing over her enormous stomach, and laughed off his offer to walk her to the station.
Before saying goodbye, she told him, “You’re going to do great.”
The kitchen was good-sized, and had all the same appliances as the Iwatodai dorm. Ikeda had left him with a fully stocked fridge and Shinjiro was able to find everything he’d need to prep for breakfast. Technically, since it was Sunday, he wasn’t on duty, but Shinjiro had always been better off busy.
He started out by making a big batch of stock: Soak 3 pieces of kombu in 12 cups of room-temperature water for 30 minutes—skip if you don’t have the time—then very slowly bring to a boil. Right when the water starts to roll, about 10 minutes, remove the kombu and reserve. Remove from heat, add 3 cups of dried bonito flakes, and let sit for 10 minutes before straining.
Hang onto the kombu and some of the bonito flakes, since you can use ’em to make simmered kombu. Slice the used kombu into thin strips, then deseed and chop 3 dried chilli peppers. To a saucepan add the kombu and peppers, 3 cups water, ⅓ cup soy sauce, 3 tablespoons each mirin and cooking sake, 2 tablespoons sugar, 3 teaspoons rice vinegar, and 1 heaped teaspoon of the bonito flakes from the stock.
Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 20-25 minutes, or until most of the liquid has cooked off. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
While that simmered, Shinjiro got a pot of pickling vinegar going on another burner. In a small saucepan bring 3 cups rice vinegar, 1 ½ cups sugar and 3 teaspoons kosher salt to a boil over medium heat, whisking to combine. Once boiling, remove from heat, and let cool then transfer to a mason jar; keeps in the fridge for 3 months.
Peel 1 daikon and slice into thin slabs then sticks, and do the same for 3 medium carrots. Put the vegetables into a ziplock bag with 3 teaspoons kosher salt and massage the vegetables from outside the bag, making sure they’re coated with the salt, then let sit for 15 minutes.
By this point, the kitchen was warm and full of steam. It had been a long time since Shinjiro had cooked for more than three people, and it felt good, like stretching an underused muscle. As he calculated increases to the simple recipes and kept an eye on the multiple simmering pans, everything else fell away; the scratchy familiarity of the dorms, the sounds of the boys tip-toeing past the kitchen. He had tied his hair back and put on Ikeda’s apron and was too busy to feel self-conscious, perfectly satisfied in the work.
Once enough time has passed, drain the liquid from the bag of vegetables then add ¼ cup of the pickling vinegar, 3 minced and de-seeded dried chilli peppers, and the juice of 1 to 2 lemons, then rub the vegetables from outside the bag to coat. Let sit overnight.
Shinjiro cooked a head of broccoli next—nothing fancy, just chopped up and blanched in salted water with a bit of sesame oil. He let it cool before storing in the fridge. To finish, Shinjiro used up all the eggs in the fridge making tamagoyaki.
While he did the dishes, he thought of Aki—who always did the dishes at home and got weirdly offended when Shinjiro did them—and Makoto, who years ago had listened intently to Shinjiro’s instructions then solemnly accepted the sink full of dishes as his duty. Shinjiro felt a pang high in his chest and tried to swallow it away.
Shinjiro was used to ghosts. He couldn’t make hamburger without thinking of Miki, couldn’t pass a scrawny teenager wearing headphones without seeing Makoto. But the past felt a little too close here. The dorm even smelled the same.
He finished washing-up and went back to his room, laid on the scratchy blue duvet and tried not to think about anything. He ended up thinking about Aki. It was like trying not to tongue a missing tooth, something you didn’t notice you were doing until that little lick of pain pushed back.
He tried to remember the details of Aki’s layovers—had the first one been ten hours, or twelve? Was he in the air just then? Eventually, he fell asleep trying to count back the hours to where Aki was.
—
Shinjiro is fifteen, Castor nothing more than a crackle at the base of his skull, the taste of copper in his mouth. His eyes keep catching on the bob of Aki’s throat when he swallows, the scabs on his knuckles, the pale skin behind his ear; things he knows he shouldn’t focus on. But when he takes Aki in as a whole more often than not he sees him as he was seven years ago, still half of a set, a matching pair. With that same bad haircut all the orphanage boys had, too short around the ears, his eyes red and watery. He’s such a crybaby. He needs looking after. Doesn’t he?
When he sees Aki press the muzzle of the gun to his temple half of him wants to wrench it away, the other leaps forwards, Castor, pressing at the inside of his skin, pressure with no release valve.
Shinjiro is in the Iwatodai dorm, but it’s also the middle school dorm; he can hear the boys running around on the second floor. The front door slams shut behind him. The shitty low-pile, stain-resistant carpet unfurls before him. Aki stands out of reach; a kid, a teenager, an adult. He won’t meet Shinjiro’s eyes.
“Not without me,” Shinjiro says. He can feel Castor beneath his skin, taste blood in his mouth. Aki’s hand goes to the gun, still he won’t look at him.
“You can’t,” Shinjiro says, but he isn’t sure who he’s trying to convince.
—
School started at quarter after eight, so Shinjiro got up at six to have breakfast served around seven. When he’d mentioned this plan to Aki, he’d looked baffled. “You?” He asked. “You’re gonna wake up at six?”
Obviously, this had ticked Shinjiro off, and he shot back, “Yeah, what about it?”
“Oh, nothing,” Aki said, grinning so wide his eyes crinkled. “I just remember having to drag a certain someone out of their bed ten minutes before the first bell all of middle school.”
“I’m not a kid anymore,” Shinjiro had snapped, exasperated.
But the fact of it was, he very nearly slept right through his alarm that first morning. And even when he did get up, it took a few minutes before he could force his eyes open. He’d packed the moka pot Ken had given him, but it was a trial all its own trying to brew coffee in what felt to his body like the dead of night.
He downed the first cup of coffee in one go, then set a second up as he stumbled around the kitchen, trying to remember what he’d prepped the night before. First he plated the tamagoyaki, and half the simmered kombu and broccoli, so they’d have plenty of time to get to room temperature, then he set the rice cooker up, and started warming the stock in a saucepan over medium heat.
Afterwards, he stood a few minutes in front of the open fridge, squinting into the light. There were six mackerel fillets; he figured if he halved them crosswise they’d be enough for all the kids.
To cook, start by coating the fillets lightly with sake, about 1 tablespoon for each, then pat dry with paper towels. Sprinkle both sides of the fish with kosher salt, and let sit for 20 minutes. The timing here’s important—too long and the texture will go off. Shinjiro carefully set a timer and began preheating the oven, then drank his second cup of coffee over the sink.
Next, pat the excess moisture off the fillets using paper towels. Arrange skin-side down on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and bake at 425° for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.
Once the stock is hot, turn down the heat and add miso paste; mix a couple tablespoons at a time in a ladle dipped into the stock then stir the slurry in to avoid clumps. Add a couple blocks of silken tofu, cubed, and a handful of dried seaweed. To finish, add 3 scallions cut into thin rounds.
He set all the food out on the table along with a stack of dishes and a cup of chopsticks—he figured the kids were better off serving themselves—then went back into the kitchen to make a third cup of coffee. When he returned a few minutes later, there was a boy hovering nervously beside the table.
It was the kid he’d seen the day before; barely 150 centimetres tall, eyes magnified by coke bottle glasses. “Good morning, sir,” he said, which made Shinjiro feel approximately one thousand years old.
“Call me Aragaki,” Shinjiro said. “What’s your name?”
“Hiroto Yamaguchi,” he said, bowing politely. “Um. Ikeda-san would just put out cereal and bread for us…”
“Toaster’s in the same place,” Shinjiro said, sitting at the bar and dedicating himself to his coffee. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Hiroto slowly pile a plate with food and take a seat.
A minute later, there was a thundering on the stairs and two boys appeared in the doorway, tangled together into a four-legged beast.
“Woah!” One of them exclaimed.
The second said, “Morning, Yamaguchi.”
Hiroto bobbed his head hello without looking up from his food.
The first boy, whose hair was bleached yellowish, looked at Shinjiro. “Did you make all of this, uh—” Hiroto muttered something to him. “—Aragaki-san?” Which Shinjiro thought was a stupid question, but he was awake enough at that point to play nice.
“Yes.”
The boys untangled to serve themselves food, but stayed close, jostling each other almost absently as they found seats. The blonde boy introduced himself as Shota, the other, whose hair was long and straight and kept escaping from behind his ears, was Rin.
They had terrible table manners; they propped their elbows on the table, chewed with their mouths open, and stole food from each others’ plates with their fingers. But they also ate with wide-eyed enthusiasm, making low noises of approval and shooting Shinjiro impressed looks.
Shinjiro retreated with his coffee into the kitchen. He had to get started on the dishes anyway.
By eight o’clock all the dishes were washed and dried, and he’d started simmering an extra large pot of stock for later. He went back out to clear the table. The boys had left their dishes in a tidy-ish stack at one end, and Shinjiro looked over the remains of breakfast critically. There were more leftovers than he’d expected, and the broccoli looked untouched.
He was considering whether to adjust serving sizes or wait out the week, when something came tumbling noisily down the stairs.
A beanpole of a kid, dark and tall—almost Shinjiro’s height, with big hands and feet he hadn’t finished growing into—ran into the dining room, still haphazardly tucking in his shirt. He was halfway to the loaf of bread on the sideboard before he clocked Shinjiro. Then he did a dramatic double-take at the table, his jaw dropping.
“What’s that?” The kid said, hand still outstretched towards the bread.
Shinjiro looked at the table, then back at the kid. “Breakfast.”
To his horror, the kid’s wide eyes immediately welled with tears. “It smells so good,” he said, sniffling hopefully just for effect. Shinjiro didn’t say anything, and watched him rip open the bread bag, peel out three slices, then run back out the door.
Shinjiro checked his watch as he listened to the front door slam. There was no way that kid was making it to school on time.
—
The job was a split shift, which meant Shinjiro was on the clock first thing before the boys left for school, and from four-thirty to lights out. The hours in between were his own, and he filled them that first week mostly by napping, visiting the local shops (all way more expensive than his local market), and planning meals.
He figured out pretty quick that what the boys didn’t eat at breakfast, they more than made up for at dinner, which they ate family-style. Almost half of them were in sports clubs, and none of them were packing themselves lunch—the school store must’ve been making a killing selling them bread—so they dedicated themselves to dinner with a barely restrained zeal Shinjiro told himself wasn’t flattering.
In the evenings, after he finished cleaning up and prepping for breakfast, Shinjiro hung around the dining area, usually flipping through a magazine or back-reading the ex-SEES group chat. He gave the kids space, only supervising them in the loosest sense of the word. A good chunk of them disappeared up into their rooms, but another handful were zealously devoted to watching Featherman reruns and clustered in the lounge.
The only kid who talked to him outside of mealtimes was Daisuke, the one who’d missed breakfast that first day and gone on to miss it every day afterwards, and was as dramatically upset about it every time.
“What’cha readin’, Aragaki-san?” He might ask. Or, “What’s for dinner tomorrow?” Once, “How’d you get this job anyway?” Shinjiro, pretty sure he was being poked at like a slug to see how he’d react, just answered plainly (Magazine, curry, and I applied for it, respectively).
At night he dreamed he was trying to reach Mitsuru in the command room, but all the hallways and stairs of the dorm expand, double back on themselves, like the labyrinth of Tartarus. In his dreams he’s gardening in planters full of maggots, desperately trying to bury them before Makoto can see.
Awake, he knew that there was no fourth floor to the dorms, no garden beds on the roof, but asleep his mind got confused. It was like something inside him was convinced of unseen danger, sure that he was breathing in poison.
The dreams were sticky, unsettling, and oozed into his waking hours. He had to wade through them to make it to the kitchen every morning, and they clung until the sun was high in the sky.
He started reading the book Fuuka had lent him, a fat paperback with a broken spine and soft corners, each night in bed. The first couple chapters were mostly exposition, so reading it felt a bit like studying for a test. Which is to say, it could put him to sleep in minutes.
—
On Sunday, Shinjiro had a short shift at the bar doing inventory, so he hauled himself up and out the door before the boys had apparently even woken. Funny that they made even him look like an early riser.
It was drizzling so Shinjiro walked to and from the train station listening to rain spatter and pop off his umbrella like hot oil. He let himself in through the bar’s back door, and propped his umbrella against the wall. It was almost eerily quiet inside, spotlessly clean and gloomy with all the lights shut off.
Dry storage was a small, cool room in the basement packed with floor to ceiling shelves stocked with all the miscellany a bar needed to run. The connected walk-in was piled full of cases of beer and happoshu, while the liquor was kept in a locked cabinet that only Hina and the manager had keys to.
Hina herself was waiting for him, sitting on an overturned milk crate in front of said liquor cabinet, a giant iced coffee in hand. She was wearing jeans, a bright orange tube top that might’ve just been a bandana, and wedge heels, her hair a glossy wave down her back.
“Shinji-kun!” She hopped up, smiling warmly, and pulled him into a hug. “Oh, how I’ve missed that sour face.”
Shinjiro grunted. Hina was the only person he knew who was so casual about physical contact and it was always a little overwhelming.
She was older than him by ten years, at least, and took her role as senior at the bar seriously; she was thoughtful, generous with her time, but also had a mischievous streak a mile wide and liked to needle him for fun. Shinjiro had always found her easy to be around, and in a way she reminded him of Miki, a version of her anyway, one that he’d never get to meet.
Awkward as Shinjiro was in Hina’s embrace, she fit nicely against him and he realized with a jolt that it was because of her height; in her heels she was about as tall as Aki.
Hina pulled away to hold him at arm’s length, staring at him critically. “How are the kids treating you?”
“They’re fine.” Shinjiro shrugged her off.
“That bad, huh,” she said. The condensation on her coffee cup left a wet patch on his shirt, which he examined critically. “How old are they again?”
“Middle school, most of ’em second years.”
Hina hummed knowingly. “A tough age.”
“I guess so,” Shinjiro hedged. He wasn’t exactly confident his own middle school years made him an expert on the average experience.
When he’d been their age, his childhood had gone up in flames and some nebulous future had started to form that filled him with a sickly dread, and he’d grasped at his Persona like a drowning man, desperate enough to see anything as a life preserver. When he’d been their age he’d been split open like an overripe peach, and found inside a stone.
It was a time of change—swapped uniforms, botched haircuts—and resistance; he’d dug his heels in, held on to Aki so hard he almost killed them both.
He’d thought that stone was all he was. He hadn’t figured out yet that it was a seed.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to worry you.” Hina touched his arm, drawing him back to the present. “Just being there for them, that’s enough. Besides, I bet they think you’re so cool.”
Shinjiro shot her an incredulous look. Half the time he was around the kids he was wearing Ikeda’s apron and fussing over either the food or the dishes, and he told her so.
Hina snickered. “But you look so cute in an apron!”
Shinjiro shot her a look. “I don’t think middle schoolers consider aprons cute.”
She was grinning evilly, undeterred. “Come on, it snatches in that little waist of yours, doesn’t cover your best asset—”
“If you mean my—”
“Your ass, exactly.”
Shinjiro cleared his throat. “Whatever, let’s get to work.”
Hina laughed out loud and smacked Shinjiro’s arm with the butt of her coffee cup, leaving another wet splotch behind. “Oh come off it, you know Manager just let you pick up this shift to stay on payroll. She doesn’t care if inventory gets done.”
The words warmed him from the inside out; he hadn’t known that at all. He tried to bite back a smile and could feel his face compressing into a glare, overcompensating. He could also feel the fond amusement radiating off Hina, which only made him more embarrassed, and he turned away to hide his expression.
Months ago, Aki had visited the bar to walk Shinjiro home. It had been winter then, the air sharp and chilly, and Shinjiro had been on the verge of a cold, but now all he could remember was Aki’s body, so solid next to his on the train home.
What he hadn’t known at the time was that Hina and Naomi, one of their coworkers, had snapped covert pictures of Aki on their phones and printed off blown-up, pixelated copies of his blurry face to stick to Shinjiro’s locker, and his station in the kitchen, to mess with him.
When Shinjiro turned away from Hina he discovered that, at some point, a few pictures had ended up pasted to the inside of the storage room door. Suddenly there was the smudge of Aki’s hair, turned pink under the bar lights, the hard line of his jaw, recognizable even blown into clumsy blobs of colour.
Startled, he blurted out, “What the hell.”
Hina laughed so hard she had to clutch at Shinjiro’s arm to steady herself, her acrylic nails pinching his skin. “You have—” She had to squeeze out words between laughs. “—no idea—how long those—have—been there!”
Shinjiro tried to arrange his face into a disapproving look, but he could feel the corners of his mouth betraying him, reaching for a smile.
—
On Monday, in addition to the usual breakfast, Shinjiro boiled a few eggs then chopped them up. He spread mustard and mayo onto two slices of bread and piled the eggs between along with some carrot salad and sliced tomato. He wrapped the sandwich in parchment paper and cut it neatly in half.
When he handed it to Daisuke, late as ever and running to make the first bell, he was scared for a minute that the kid was gonna burst into tears or hug him or something equally horrifying.
But Daisuke only bowed, clutching the sandwich to his chest. “Thank you, Aragaki-san!”
Shinjiro said, “You’d better hurry,” stiffly.
—
The temperature began to rise, the cherry trees settled into subdued greens, the air started to thicken below grey skies, and the kids slowly warmed to him. More of them needled him in the evenings, the way Daisuke did, and Shinjiro realized, eventually, that what they wanted from him was only to listen to their tall tales of terrible teachers and raise a brow at their borderline inappropriate jokes. They even came up with a score system; a twitch was worth one point, a furrow two, a brow disappeared behind his hat a full three.
New memories started to paper over the itchy feeling of the dorm; the impromptu rock-paper-scissors tournament held to determine who got the last macaron, the season finale of Featherman V that brought the whole dorm together crammed on and around the small couch, the time Shota accidentally put his foot through the wall and Rin deliberately put a second hole beside it out of solidarity, and the slow, goofy grins that grew on their faces as Shinjiro’s lecture spun out into dumbstruck laughter. Shinjiro dreamed less and less.
Midweek, early in May, Hiroto didn’t come down for breakfast. He was usually the first one at the table, eating solemnly like he thought Shinjiro might take his food away if his manners lapsed, but everyone else had filtered through, even Daisuke running late as usual, with no sign of him. Shinjiro hung up his apron and climbed the stairs to the third floor.
Hiroto was still in bed, duvet pulled up to his chin, nose red, round cheeks mottled, looking miserable. When he spotted Shinjiro in the doorway he lurched upright. “Aragaki-san, I’m—”
“You’re sick.” Shinjiro folded his arms. It was a little late in the season for a typical spring cold, could it be the flu? Maybe he hadn’t been getting enough sleep. “Stay in bed.”
“Uh. Okay,” Hiroto said, meekly.
Shinjiro went back down to fetch the first aid kit and a big glass of water. He was used to dealing with colds and stuff; back at the orphanage every spring and autumn a wave of sickness would ripple through the kids, sparing some while hitting others hard. Unfortunately, Shinjiro had honed his bedside manner dealing with Aki, an objectively terrible patient, so his nurturing instinct had basically withered on the vine.
Shinjiro knocked before reentering Hiroto’s room, unsurprised to find him exactly as he’d left. He handed him the thermometer from the first aid kit and said, “Here.”
Hiroto stared at it like he’d never seen one before, but managed to stick it under his tongue before Shinjiro felt moved to intervene. Shinjiro sat at his desk and dug through the kit. He found a half-empty bottle of cough syrup, some painkillers, a cold compress, even some cough drops. He checked his watch, then stood and held out his hand for the thermometer. Hiroto handed it to him, looking nervous, like he was afraid he’d get a bad grade or something.
“You don’t have a fever,” Shinjiro said, examining then setting aside the thermometer to wash. “What’s bothering you most; your head, your throat?”
Hiroto considered the question seriously. “Umm... I feel pretty congested, I guess.”
Shinjiro dug a bottle of cold medicine out of the bag and shook two pills onto his palm, handed them to Hiroto along with the glass of water. “Take these. You hungry? No? Okay, try to sleep. I’ll bring you something around lunch.”
Hiroto blinked up at him. His dark hair was shaggy, quickly outgrowing whatever shape it’d been cut into, and the fringe stuck to his sweaty forehead. Eventually, he nodded.
The room was a little stuffy but Shinjiro didn’t want to risk an open window; instead he propped open the door to get some air flowing in from the hall. He took the first aid kit back downstairs and washed the thermometer, then texted Junpei to cancel their lunch plans.
Everything ok? Junpei replied.
Mitsuru had gotten a cold once, back in their first year, and he’d had a hell of time trying to get her to rest. It had been a long time since Shinjiro’d had to take care of someone else, but one measly fourteen year old was nothing compared to convincing Mitsuru ‘I’ve got it under control’ Kirijo to take a nap.
All good, Shinjiro wrote back.
Around noon, Shinjiro made okayu and brought it up to Hiroto’s room. Hiroto watched him set the tray on his desk, blinking groggily.
“We’re not allowed to have food in our rooms,” he said.
Shinjiro shot him a look. “Says who?”
He stripped Hiroto’s bed and put on fresh sheets, then washed the dirty ones in the afternoon. When he checked on him after school let out, Hiroto was snoring peacefully. Shinjiro risked touching the back of his hand to his forehead; still no fever.
After dinner, Shinjiro brought another tray of food up to Hiroto; small servings of miso soup, rice, grilled eel, and carrot salad.
“How’re you feeling?” He asked as he watched Hiroto begin to pick at the food.
“Better,” Hiroto said, cautiously. “I’m, um. I’m sorry for all the trouble.”
“What trouble?” Shinjiro said. “I’m just doing my job.”
Hiroto stared up at him, blinking from behind his thick glasses, then, after a moment, broke into a wobbly smile. He had barely any chin at all and his face was so round it was almost circular, so when he smiled his whole face bent to the task.
“Okay,” he said. “Then thank you.”
—
Midterms rolled around in late May, and Shinjiro made snacks for the kids who camped out at the dining table in the evenings, notes and textbooks splayed out before them in messy fans.
“What kind of student were you, Aragaki-san?” Daisuke asked one day, looking up from the origami frogs he’d made out of his science notes.
“I did alright,” Shinjiro hedged. He’d never been much good at studying, but he’d coasted okay through middle school. He couldn’t remember taking exams in high school, though he must’ve, at some point. That wasn’t the kinda thing he was probably meant to tell the kids, but they were looking at him with naked curiosity. “What?”
“It’s hard to imagine…” Rin trailed off pensively, tucking his hair behind his ears.
“Were you in any clubs?” Hiroto asked. He was in the middle of meticulously rewriting his notes in colour-coded blocks, and placed his finger on the page to mark his place before looking up.
“Yeah.” Shinjiro adjusted his hat and tried to remember how they’d billed SEES. “The Specialized Extracurricular…uh, Squad I think it was. We did patrols, that kinda thing. What?” All the kids were staring at him.
Daisuke looked baffled. “You were on the disciplinary committee?”
“Sure.” That sounded close enough, but the kids started exchanging looks. “Now what?”
“It’s…hard to picture,” Rin said. Beside him, Shota had tipped his head to one side and was squinting at Shinjiro like he was a Magic Eye illusion.
“Did you have to wear your hair short?”
“Does that mean you were on student council?”
“Huh? No.” Shinjiro scratched the back of his neck. Maybe he should’ve lied to them. “It was only a couple’a us. We stayed in the Iwatodai dorm—”
That sent another ripple of interest across the table.
“Wasn’t that—” Daisuke lowered his voice, eyes round in awe. “—the co-ed dorm?”
Shinjiro looked at him flatly, then made a show of checking his watch. “Curfew’s in half an hour. You’d better make the most of that time to study.”
Hiroto snorted. “You know what? I think I actually can picture it.”
—
The summer was picking up speed, and before he knew it, June was shouldering May aside. The air thickened with humidity, rain sizzled on hot concrete, and the days drew out long and bright.
Shinjiro went over to Fuuka’s apartment one Sunday to help out with her garden; another legacy of Makoto’s. He’d heard that Mitsuru had set Aigis up with an apartment of her own, that she was growing vegetables too.
In the muggy, midday heat he made trellises for Fuuka’s tomatoes, amateurish tripods of 2x2’s nailed together and looped with string. Last summer she’d managed a modest harvest and it had given her the confidence to expand; now the garden took up most of her balcony. She joked that she’d have to hang her laundry off the trellises.
The raised garden beds were full of rich, dark soil, spinach coming through in bright bushels of green, potatoes pushing up what looked like miniature trees, stiff blades of scallions marching in a neat row. Only the tomatoes were a mess, tangled and drooping in the heat. Shinjiro wrestled the trellises into place and tied the stalks upright, refusing Fuuka’s many offers to help.
Yukari showed up for dinner with a straining plastic bag filled with loose cans of beer; she claimed to have picked only the coldest from the fridge at the convenience store. Both the girls were dressed for summer—Yukari in a spaghetti-strap shirt and cut-offs, Fuuka a floaty sundress—which made Shinjiro, who to be fair rarely had a problem with heat, feel like an idiot in his jeans and plaid shirt.
After an afternoon of work it was too hot to think of cooking, but Fuuka had made soba in advance and Shinjiro quickly put together some cold tofu to go with it. It’s so easy it doesn’t qualify as a recipe in his mind, but Fuuka wrote down every step anyway. Drain then quarter a block of silken tofu, top with thinly-sliced scallions, a bit of grated ginger (around ½ to 1 tsp in total), and a generous pinch of bonito flakes each. Drizzle with ponzu right before serving.
They ate at the low table with a standing fan aimed at them point-blank. Yukari and Fuuka both wanted to hear about his job, so Shinjiro told them about the weekend before, when he’d come back to the dorm to find a small crowd jammed in the doorway of the communal bathroom on the second floor, spectating as Rin smeared bleach over Shota’s hair. Shota had sat on a stool, shirtless, globs of pale blue bleach spattered all over his shoulders, mugging for the crowd. Rin had been using his bare hands to work the paste into his hair.
Shinjiro had called them both idiots, and made Rin hold his hands under running water until the little chemical blisters on his skin shrank down. After Shota showered his hair looked even worse than before; patchy and mostly orange. Shinjiro texted Yukari for advice (“That’s why you asked!”) and passed along the brand of the toner she recommended. It only helped so much, but Shota had been impressed by Shinjiro—either because he knew about things like toner or because he texted girls, he wasn’t sure which.
“I almost thought you were gonna be blonde today,” Yukari said, absently filing her nails. They’d long since cleared the table and she’d upended a small bag of nail stuff on its surface, colourful little bottles and scissors and things.
“Oh, imagine that!” Fuuka giggled. She was holding a cold can of beer to her cheek, using it as an ice pack rather than drinking it.
Yukari smiled at her. “Your hair looks great by the way, Fuuka. It’s so long now!”
Fuuka touched a hand to the clip pinning her hair up, off her neck. “On hot days like this I almost regret it,” she said. They both turned to Shinjiro, who had yanked his sweat-matted hair into a tangled ponytail.
He said, “What.”
“I think I can see your split ends from here,” Yukari said, eyeing him critically. Her hand crept towards the nail scissors on the table.
“Keep away from me.”
“Oh! I almost forgot, I was going to help you set up my old computer,” Fuuka said, jumping to her feet. She climbed the ladder to her loft and returned, carefully balancing a clunky grey laptop. She set it on the table, delicately rolling a few stray bottles of nail polish out of the way.
“What’s this for?” Yukari asked.
Brightly, Fuuka replied, “So Shinjiro-san can video call Akihiko-san.”
“Aw.” Yukari sat forward as Fuuka pried open the laptop. “That’s sweet.”
Shinjiro didn’t say anything, but he could feel his face heating up.
Fuuka opened the video call program and showed him how to use it, then talked him through some of the other programs. Yukari perked up when she mentioned the game she’d left installed.
“Makoto used to play an MMO,” Yukari said, leaning in close to Shinjiro’s side. “Remember those Sundays when he’d stay up in his room all day?”
Fuuka looked shocked. “I thought he was studying!”
Somehow, Shinjiro ended up playing the game by committee while they drank the rest of the beer; Yukari impatiently jabbed at the screen while Fuuka tried to explain the mechanics between hiccuping giggles. Shinjiro almost missed the days when they’d been scared of him.
It was late and he was tipsy when he made it back to the dorm, but at least none of the boys were hanging around the lounge when he got in. He went straight to his room and stripped down, laid naked on top of his bed, feeling the weight of the air on his skin. He thought about Aki, about Makoto, about Aki again, then slept.
—
Thinking about Aki ached in a way that was sweet until it wasn’t, like pressing on a bruise. His body longed for what his mind knew was out of reach, and the disconnect chafed. He was glad to be busy, but when his phone lit up with a text from Aki, something traitorous lurched inside his rib cage.
It was a picture, blurry and weirdly-lit, that Aki had taken of a mirror, phone held in front of his face, a bank of grey lockers behind him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the tops of his shoulders were red, sunburned. The bottom edge of the photo cut across the dip of his hip bones, dangerously low.
His hair was dark, damp, but the quality wasn’t good enough to tell if that was because he was fresh out of the shower or on his way in, sweat caught in the dips of his collarbones, trickling down the valley between his pecs, collecting at the base of his spine, in those twin dimples that fit Shinjiro’s thumbs so perfectly…
Shinjiro very nearly slapped himself, but settled for snapping his phone shut and shoving it into his pocket, where it threatened to burn a hole the rest of the afternoon.
Aki called in the evening, long after Shinjiro had cleared dinner and prepped breakfast, washed all the dishes, broke up an argument over what show to play on the TV in the lounge, and helped find Kento’s missing science textbook. Shinjiro was sitting on the edge of his single mattress, heart thundering so hard he could feel it in his fingertips.
“Did you…get my picture?” Aki asked. It was hard to judge the inflection in his voice without seeing his face, but Shinjiro thought he was nervous.
“Yeah.” Shinjiro rubbed his thumb over his knee, feeling the texture of his jeans. “Was that…” Shinjiro couldn’t find the word, or, well, a word he’d be willing to say out loud. “Were you tryin’ to…start somethin’?”
Aki laughed awkwardly, a familiar sound made strange by the fuzzy connection. “I mean…yeah, I guess.”
Shinjiro flushed hot. Aki had taken that picture in public, in what looked like a changeroom, maybe naked, maybe he just tugged his pants down a bit for the picture. He’d been thinking of Shinjiro, thinking of…
“I’m livin’ in the dorm,” Shinjiro hissed.
“So? It’s not like you’ve never…”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing!” Aki definitely sounded nervous. “I just meant…You must’ve, before, right?”
“That was obviously different.”
Shinjiro had stared at the picture a long time, in furtive bursts away from the kids. He liked it, he liked that Aki was thinking of him, all the way on the opposite side of the world.
“Don’t you have someplace to be?” He asked, remembering the time difference.
“No, it’s a rest day.”
For some reason that made Shinjiro flush again. Was Aki in his own dorm room, stretched out on his bed, maybe shirtless in the heat? He wanted to ask where he was, but it felt embarrassing now that Aki had floated the idea of sex.
Fuck, and suddenly he was aching for it.
It was hard being apart, harder at the start—going from living more or less on top of each other to nothing but a voice on the other side of a crackly connection. Maybe a postcard or two. God, he missed Aki.
“I ain’t gonna…do whatever. On the phone,” Shinjiro said, stilted and awkward.
“Okay, okay,” Aki said. He didn’t even sound disappointed, which kinda pissed Shinjiro off.
“But if you…” Shinjiro took a breath. “I won’t stop you.”
Silence buzzed in his ear.
“Oh,” Aki said, at last, his breath blowing over his phone, transformed to static in Shinjiro’s ear. “You mean…?”
Fuck, he was gonna make Shinjiro say it. “If you wanna,” Shinjiro said, slow and hot in the face. “I wouldn’t…mind.”
“Are you sure?” Aki asked, faster now, almost eager.
When Shinjiro said, “Yeah,” his voice cracked.
“Fuck,” Aki said, so softly he almost didn’t catch it. “Okay.”
There was a bunch of rustling over the phone, the sound of Aki taking off his clothes or settling back on the bed, or something. When Shinjiro closed his eyes he could picture it so easily; Aki with his phone crammed between his ear and shoulder, his hand flat on his stomach, inching down slowly.
“Well…here I go,” Aki said and Shinjiro was so taken aback he laughed out loud, startling even himself. “Don’t laugh,” Aki protested, but Shinjiro could hear his smile.
“You’re a fuckin’ dope,” Shinjiro said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Shinjiro’s voice was embarrassingly fond, but it was only Aki anyway.
He listened closely to Aki, the rustle of him moving on his bed, his breath as it deepened, began to hitch.
Usually when they hooked up Shinjiro tried to avoid saying stupid shit, though something always escaped him eventually, but now he had nothing to do but listen or speak. He felt pinned in place, pleasure pooling heavily in his navel, anchoring him.
“Aki,” he said, eventually. His voice came out rough, caught in his throat. Aki moaned sharply, like he’d been startled into it.
“I want you,” Aki said. When he said it, the words sounded specific and all-encompassing at the same time. The specifics were obvious: I want your mouth on me, your fingers in me, your body against me. The rest, almost frightening in how much ground could be covered.
Aki wasn’t the kinda guy who was free and easy with desire, he tended to focus on need and action. He didn’t waste time on wanting. So to hear those three words from him—they undid Shinjiro every time.
“Jesus,” he said, and it sounded like the word was ripped out of him.
“Shinji.” His name broke in half on Aki’s laugh and that, of all things, made him throb so hard he couldn’t help the noise he made. “God, Shinji,” Aki said, still tripping over laughter, but his breath caught in a way that was familiar, even with the phone line between them.
With his eyes closed, Shinjiro could trace Aki’s body on the backs of his eyelids; the cut of muscle in his thigh, the faint dusting of hair on the long flat lines of his shins, the way his little toes turned inwards, almost onto their sides, the scar on the outside of his left bicep, the crowded line of his bottom front teeth.
He wanted Aki, wanted Aki on top of him, wanted Aki inside of him. He would’ve given anything in that moment to be able to knock Aki’s hand aside, replace it with his own.
Aki was breathing hard now, little aborted moans escaping him. Shinjiro could hear, on Aki’s inhales, the slick sound of his hand moving on his cock and he made another unintentional noise.
“Ah, oh,” Aki gasped, then caught his breath, and made a low, strained sound. Shinjiro knew exactly the face he was making as he came and it burned through him. His lips tingled, he wanted to kiss him so—so bad.
After an agonizing silence, Shinjiro said, “We’re never doing that again.” He was so hard his vision had begun to spot.
“Yeah, yeah.” Aki yawned. “I’ll call you next week.”
After they hung up, Shinjiro rolled onto his front, stuck a hand down his pants, and jerked off, biting down hard on the back of his other hand to muffle himself. Within minutes he was coming, long pulses of pleasure that made his legs tremble, spots dance behind his eyelids.
It was embarrassing how fast Aki could make him come, and he wasn’t even there to do it properly. Shinjiro considered texting him something to that effect, realized he’d rather throw himself off the roof, and instead hauled himself into the bathroom to wash up.
He thought about their first night together, how after he’d fallen asleep and woken an hour later, disoriented and grouchy, after they’d eaten takeout at the dining table in their underwear, Shinjiro had laid Aki out in their bedroom, what he was letting himself think of as their bedroom for the first time, and found the scar on his right knee in the dark, by touch alone, first his fingers, then his mouth.
Aki had gotten it on an early Tartarus mission; he’d dodged a Shadow only to bash his knee open on the base of a column. A doctor had put two neat stitches in and within days Aki had torn them open. It healed, eventually, into a lump of scar tissue on the outside edge of his patella. If the Shinjiro of almost ten years ago could’ve seen him then, with his mouth on Aki, tangled together on a futon that smelled like them, what would he have thought?
Truthfully, Shinjiro didn’t have to wonder. He knew he’d gotten what he’d always wanted.
—
August brought with it a heatwave; temperatures in the high 30s, humidity in the 80s, and a slightly hysterical gloom fell over the unairconditioned dorm.
A little more than half the kids stuck around for summer break; cram school and club meetings were the big reasons, and a bunch of sports teams held summer training camps. Shota had remedial summer classes, so Rin stayed to hang out with him.
The two of them were always together, hanging off one another’s shoulders, pinching and grabbing and collapsing onto the couch in a tangle. It was like looking in a mirror that showed him and Aki fifteen years ago. That constant tracking of Aki, that ability to measure the distance between them without looking, when had he figured out what that was all about?
He was pretty sure Shota and Rin hadn’t figured it out about themselves yet, they were too unselfconscious. Shinjiro found it disorienting to be the only one in the room who knew what love looked like from the outside in.
Everyone slept with their doors open, splayed out in front of fans pushing hot air around. Shinjiro encouraged them to go to the library, the mall, anywhere that had air conditioning. They drank so much barley tea he couldn’t keep up with the demand.
Shinjiro braved the heat one afternoon to visit Fuuka again, this time to help harvest her garden. There were so many vegetables they had to blanch and freeze bags of them, cramming her little freezer full. All the steam made the apartment unbearably hot until Shinjiro felt like he was inhaling liquid. Fuuka walked him to the station just for a few minutes of chilly air-conditioning.
By the time he was dragging himself up the sidewalk outside the dorm, Shinjiro was unpleasantly damp and boggy. He’d managed to entertain himself on the walk considering recipes for the big bag of produce Fuuka had gratefully unloaded on him, but what really got him through the last hundred metres was imagining, in detail, the icy shower he fully intended to take within minutes of arrival.
But then Shinjiro opened the front door onto chaos.
There were boys scattered around the lounge, army crawling on their bellies, while two of them were trying to climb the bookshelf, feet skidding over toppled books. Hiroto was hopping madly around the dining table, and Shota was on Rin’s shoulders, the both of them laughing so hard they had to brace against the wall. When the door clicked shut behind Shinjiro, every head swivelled towards him.
Shinjiro stood there, a river of sweat meandering down his spine, bag of vegetables hooked in his fingers, and blinked.
“Uh oh,” Shota said, in a stage whisper, and Rin had to cram his fist in his mouth to muffle his laughter.
Shinjiro said, “What the hell.”
One of the kids on the floor, torso wedged under the coffee table—it sounded like Tatsuki but he wasn’t sure—said, “Yamaguchi brought back some beetles but they all got loose!”
There was an empty terrarium on the table, which Shinjiro eyed warily. “How many we talkin’?”
“Only four.” Hiroto held up a bug net, throttled closed in one fist. “And I already caught one!”
A large brown splotch dropped onto Shota’s blonde head and his hands shot up to cover it. “Make that two!”
Rin’s knees buckled and Shota swayed unsteadily, bouncing off the wall. Shinjiro dropped the vegetables and moved to help him down off Rin’s shoulders.
Hiroto had been away on a short holiday with his family, where, he explained, he’d gone beetle hunting with his little brother. “He insisted I keep them,” Hiroto said, apologetically. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” Shinjiro said. “Can you help Shota put that thing away?”
One summer when they were kids, Aki and Miki had launched a beetle hunt. They’d smeared sugar-water on the trees at the back of the scraggly yard behind the orphanage, and only succeeded in attracting ants. Miki had pretended it was a success, already at four years old determined to make the best of things. Aki had been disappointed at first, but let Miki talk him into digging a maze into the packed earth and tipping the ants inside. They spent the whole day crouched in the dirt, watching bugs crawl blindly through obstacle courses in search of tiny scraps of food.
The memory made Shinjiro huff fondly. Fuckin’ weirdos, the pair of ’em.
Technically, students weren’t allowed to keep pets in the dorm, but Shinjiro thought the word hardly applied to a handful of bugs, so he helped catch the last two beetles, then gave Hiroto a half-hearted lecture on taking proper care of his things.
By then, he’d missed the window to shower and had to start on dinner, so he hauled the vegetables into the kitchen. As he unpacked the bag, Daisuke slinked around the doorway.
Daisuke was nearly head and shoulders taller than the rest of the boys, and moved in quick, sudden bursts with no real sense of his own size, constantly bumping into things and knocking his elbows against people. He leaned against the doorframe, hands stuck deep in his pockets.
Shinjiro nodded to him before returning his attention to his work. The fresh potatoes and tomatoes would make for a nice curry, which was most of the boys’ favourite. He put all the vegetables in a bowl in the sink and began washing them. “You alright?” He asked, glancing over his shoulder at Daisuke.
Daisuke bobbed his head in an ambiguous kinda way. He usually talked a mile a minute and was only ever still when he was reading. The way he was pressing himself into the doorframe, like he was trying to merge with it, was new.
“I wanted to… Uh. Well, when you started working here I was like, why the hell’s a guy doing all this cooking and shit, y’know? But I shouldn’t’ve judged. Sorry.”
Shinjiro wondered, briefly and not for the first time, whether as the kids’ de-facto guardian he was supposed to discourage them from swearing. He said, “It’s fine.”
“Anyway I was wondering… Well you’re like, crazy good at cooking and I was hoping maybe you could…teach…me?”
“You wanna learn to cook?”
“Yeah.” Daisuke started shifting his weight between his feet, swaying a little in place. “I mean, just the basics would be fine. There’s this— uh, I wanted to uh. Maybe make a bento? Or two?”
Shinjiro could feel a smile pulling at his mouth. “Uh huh.”
“It’s not what you think!” Daisuke said, then smiled sheepishly. “Unless you think it’s to impress a girl. ’Cause you’d be right.”
Shinjiro laughed; he was getting deja-vu. “I guess we all have our reasons.”
“Does that— is that a yes?” Daisuke looked at him hopefully.
Shinjiro had only been a little older than Daisuke when he’d been taught how to cook. He still remembered the growl of his manager, the constant repositioning of his hand on the knife, the endless hours spent peeling potatoes or monitoring the temperature of broth. The old man had been gruff with him, but the truth was he’d seen something in him that Shinjiro hadn’t been able to; someone who deserved to eat well, someone worth investing time into.
And how old had he been, really? Shinjiro realized he’d probably only been in his fifties, not outside the range that he could’ve been a parent to someone Shinjiro’s age. Memories were supposed to be static, but they kept shifting beneath him like so much loose sand.
Even how he remembered himself was changing. It was easier to forgive Daisuke his lack of patience, his flashpaper temper, than it was to forgive himself at that age for his desperation, his loneliness. But spending time with all the kids gave him perspective, helped him see what should’ve been obvious, what was still hard to accept: that he’d only been a kid too.
A seed, he reminded himself, not a stone.
Daisuke was still waiting for his answer. As if Shinjiro was gonna say no.
“How about you help me with the curry tonight. If you can handle that, we’ll see about putting together a lunch.”
“Yes!” Daisuke popped off the doorframe, punching the air in excitement. “Thank you so much, Aragaki-san. I won’t let you down.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Shinjiro’s voice caught in his throat and came out rough. He adjusted his hat and turned back to the sink. “We’ll start with peelin’ and choppin’ the vegetables.”
—
Mid-August there was a festival at Naganaki Shrine, and some of the boys started talking about maybe going, lobbing tentative plans back and forth in the lounge. Shinjiro thought it was a good idea, and to encourage them he offered to cook whatever they wanted for dinner the day of, “If,” he stressed, “you can all agree on the meal.”
The next day, Shinjiro brought out dinner to find Hiroto tallying votes while the rest of the boys waited anxiously for the results. Hiroto looked up from his notebook and announced gravely, “With a final vote of five to two the decision is: hot pot.”
It struck Shinjiro as a weird request—even though the heat wave had ended, it was still the middle of summer—but it was easy enough to do. He swung by his apartment to pick up his donabe and portable stove, which he set out on the dining table with strict instructions not to touch.
He’d made ponzu and sesame sauce ahead of time, which he had a couple of the boys pour into individual servings as they set the table. Since he still had fresh tomatoes from Fuuka, he decided to use ’em for the broth.
For the stock, peel and dice 4 tomatoes, then use a fine grater to grate 1 thumb of ginger and 1 onion, which should give you a slushy texture. To a donabe over medium-high heat add 1 tablespoon of oil and the grated ginger and onion, the tomatoes, a 6 ounce can of tomato paste, and 1 teaspoon each kosher salt and sugar. Stir frequently, until the tomatoes have released their juice, then add 10 cups of chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cover for 10 minutes.
While the stock simmers, prepare the rest of the ingredients. Take 1 package each of enoki and shimeji mushrooms, chop off the roots, and break into smaller chunks. Cut the stems off 8 shiitake mushrooms, peel then chop 1 sweet potato into thin slices, and chop up the white parts of 2 long green onions. Chop 16 leaves of napa cabbages into 2 inch pieces, then cut each piece into thirds. Plate all the vegetables and set out on the table.
Cube a block of tofu, and peel the shells off of about 1 pound of shrimp. Finally, thinly slice around 400 grams of ribeye steak, cutting against the grain. To make this easier, you can freeze the meat for 30-60 minutes, just long enough for it to firm up, and be sure to use a good, sharp knife.
Check the stock and adjust the seasoning to taste. If you’d like, you can use an immersion blender at this point to get a smoother texture. Transfer the donabe to the portable gas burner.
When Shinjiro carried the donabe out to the dining table, Daisuke started up a chant of “Hot! Pot! Hot! Pot!” that all the boys—even stone-faced Hiroto—joined, banging their fists against the table in time.
Shinjiro said, “Quit it,” but they could see his embarrassed smile and cheerfully ignored him.
It was an even livelier meal than usual; the boys took turns dunking vegetables into the soup then graciously doling them out to their peers, grinning like idiots all the while. Shinjiro controlled the meat—he didn’t trust them to cook it properly—which meant he spent most of the meal batting away impatient hands and rolling rosettes of beef around his chopsticks to overenthusiastic applause. It was fun.
Afterwards, the boys all rushed to the front door to swap their slippers for sneakers, groaning about being too full and pretending to punch each other in the stomach, while Shinjiro cleared the table.
“You’re not coming, Aragaki-san?” Someone—Rin? Shota?—called out to him. All the boys snapped to attention, even Daisuke who already had a hand on the doorknob.
Shinjiro waved them off. “You don’t need a chaperone.”
There was a short pause, then a flurry of goodbyes, and suddenly Shinjiro had the whole dorm to himself.
He washed the dishes, tucked the donabe and stove into the closet in his room then made himself a cup of tea. It wasn’t like he’d never been in the building on his own, but it was the first evening without the Featherman theme song in the background, or the trample of feet on the stairs, or Daisuke asking him shit like How come you’re always wearing a hat, anyway?
The stark contrast was off-putting.
He listened to the soft summer breeze fuss with the curtain through the open window, the distant bark of a dog, and let his mind wander. He knew already that these were months he was going to look back on fondly, that he’d remember the energy and spirit of the boys, if not their names and faces. It was a strange feeling, to notice a memory forming, to already feel the sweet bite of nostalgia while he was still in it.
It was strange too, the way his memories of the Iwatodai dorm were changing, clearing like scum skimmed off a broth. He’d had fun there, even if at the time he’d been trying to starve himself of joy. Small moments stood out, like cooking and gardening with Makoto, but there were also things that had mostly faded to a feeling; catching a bit of whatever someone was watching on TV in the lounge, hearing the girls giggling together on the second floor, laying in bed listening to Aki hammer at the punching bag in his room.
For a long time, Shinjiro had dragged only the bad memories around; the panic and the fear and all the ways he’d fucked up. He’d avoided looking to the future, especially once it yawned open, more years than he could count on his fingers.
But that habit was slowly washing away, and there was so much he looked forward to; Hina had invited him out that weekend, his local grocer had promised to hold a bushel of pears for him, he’d made plans to go to the cinema with Ken at the end of the month.
And further ahead still, the change of seasons, the crisp fall air that would bring roasted sweet potatoes and Aki home. Then winter—Ken would stay with them over the holiday, and Shinjiro would make all his favourites—then spring, and summer again.
Soon they might be able to afford moving to a bigger place, or maybe to a new neighbourhood. Or Shinjiro might get a passport with the right marker, join Aki on his international martial arts tour before they got old and slow.
Shinjiro might land a restaurant job, or enroll in night classes. Aki would graduate from university, or he wouldn’t; settle down in one place or keep skimming the globe.
Any of it felt possible, and none of it really mattered. He’d already gotten more than he’d hoped for out of life. Everything else was gravy.
But right then the boys were returning; he could hear their laughing voices, the scuff of their shoes as they tripped up the front steps.
And Shinjiro stood to welcome them home.