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“It’s a shame that I won’t meet you in my next life.”
The smell of the volleyball court an hour after their practice was a stench almost unbearable, but so familiar it was ridiculous how it made them feel at ease. A day was seized once again, and the sore in their legs became the proof of their hard work during the day, sending them immediately to sleep when they finally laid on their beds later that night.
Shinsuke didn’t look up, eyes on the floor as he patiently walked backwards with a mop in his hands. The boys are going to step on this floor again tomorrow, they better not slip on their own sweat. “Why not?”
“You’re probably not going to be reborn.”
He finally stopped to look at Aran. The boy was standing still with chin resting on the top of his mop stick, staring at him. “What do you mean?”
“You live this life too earnestly. There’s no point in sending you to a next life.” Then there was silence. Aran sighed. “What I mean is … they’re not going to slip on their own sweat tomorrow. No need to make your hands work too hard.”
Shinsuke stared back at the floor, hands back to working. “It’s our duty today. It’s better to just do the best and get it over with.” He walked backwards while Aran stayed in his place. “I’m almost done, let’s go home in fifteen minutes.”
“I’m done with my area. I’m just waiting for you.”
Aran put his mop back in the storeroom and sat on the floor. He used the time to rest his back against the wall as he listened to the only sound filling the court: Shinsuke’s mop moving over and over in a rhythmic motion. It reminded him of waves crashing to the shore, and of how nights tended to feel quieter in Shinsuke’s presence.
“We’re going to meet again in the next life, if it does really exist.” Shinsuke said after a while. “Exactly like this. You’re going to complain that I work too long again, and I will not change my pace even if it happens a million times more. You’re going to sit there and watch me mop. A million times more.”
Aran looked at him in disbelief. “That sounds depressing.”
Shinsuke’s lips broke into a little smile. It’s an amusing thought that he didn’t really believe in, but had stayed in his mind since the first time he heard it. “But we’re going to get it done, walk home and sleep and wake up the next day to a volleyball practice together. Atsumu will set the ball to you again in the next life. How does that sound?”
“Well,” Aran paused and stared at the worn net in the middle of the court. The ceilings. The view of the court from that side. Then back at his dear captain. “I guess it’s nice that we’re playing in the same team again in the next life.”
In the silence that followed, Aran thought about how great it was to be glad of the friends he had to live an eternal recurrence of life with. Shinsuke mopped the floor with the thought of his team playing on a freshly cleaned court the next morning. He could almost hear the sound of their shoes squeaking against the floor. He had done this a million times in his previous lives, and he’d do it again a million times more.
He still found it hard to believe in anything unseen. Whatever laid in front of him was a result of an action taken in the past, a period of time he had knowledge of, therefore unsurprising. It was the visible output of a seed planted upon soil. Anything more metaphysical than that was never really in his interest. But if there should be an abstract idea that he must believe in, about a life that wasn’t this, he had long decided it to be eternal return. He heard about it once in passing: a demon would come to tell you that the life you lived now would occur once more and innumerable times more, along with every pain and every joy; everything small and everything great—would you curse the said demon or had you experienced a moment in your life that made the news sound so divine?
Shinsuke woke up at five in the morning. Crack of dawn had seeped into his room, echoing blue onto the walls. He raised to his feet and opened the windows. Immediately, a breath of morning air sharpened his senses; his eyes widened as he leaned to a window. How that morning began was not much different from the day before and the days before that—he had experienced this kind of morning countless times, yet the trees outside and dew on the leaves still brought him the same peace of the first morning. He lingered by the window for a few minutes before finally deciding it was time to start the kettle.
He picked a few slices of honey lemon from a jar, sat it on the bottom of a mug and poured hot water over it. He began to prepare breakfast as he waited for the drink to cool down. The menu that morning was simple: rolled egg with thinly cut carrot and green onion, accompanied by a small bowl of warm rice. When he had sat down to eat, he raised the chopstick closer to his face to take a good look at the rice. Good harvest, he thought to himself, and couldn’t help but wonder about the rest of the batch. A man or a woman in another town might be sitting down for breakfast as well, gulping down the rice they bought from the market, the one harvested from his very field. The guy from around the block might be lowering the heat of a stove, turning his rice into porridge, ready to be sold at six. Osamu should also be up by then, turning on the lights of his onigiri shop and bringing out a bag of rice from a cabinet, one delivered by the farmer himself.
Food exists to sustain life. Eating is an action repeated over and over again, a knowledge passed down from the generations before. You must eat to live, you should grow plants with water and soil. When it’s time to reap, fill your heart with gratitude and utter it to the world.
Thank you, I had a good meal. He got up to wash the dirty dishes.
He fastened the towel around his neck as soon as he arrived at the field. That day’s work was a rather light one: creating small ditches around the rice field to drain the water down and doing his daily routine of maintenance. When he finished, the sun had almost reached its highest point.
“Finished up early today, eh?” An elderly woman shouted from her field, eyes squinting from the strong sunlight as she waved at him. Shinsuke waved back and smiled, “I’m making fish stew and sweetened chestnuts for lunch. Please come by if you have time.”
He came home to his grandmother sitting on the porch, looking at the swaying trees that created moving shadows on the ground. He held her hand to greet her, to which she smiled and looked up. “Shin-chan. Welcome home.”
“I’ll make lunch after showering. Please wait a moment.”
Fish stew with thick broth was boiling up in a pot. In the meantime, he stirred the chestnuts drowned in water and sugar before closing back the lid to let it simmer. They rarely eat breakfast together because he always had to wake up earlier, and most of the time he couldn’t be home for lunch either because of work. So when he could come home before lunchtime was over, he would try to make her favorite foods.
He had realized something since he turned twenty one. His heart had gotten softer as he got older.
Shinsuke moved the pot to the table and went to get rice for two.
“Lunch is ready!” He shouted hard enough for his grandmother to hear from the porch.
When they both had settled down at the dinner table, they muttered together, “Thank you for the food.” Across the table, he caught a glimpse of her ever so grateful smile.
“Isn’t it nice that fish stew is always so delicious?”
He took a sip of the broth. It did taste good. “It’s nice.”
“We have to thank the fishermen. What a noble job they have.”
He chuckled. “It is indeed.”
“How about the field? Is everything okay?”
He nodded, “Everything is growing as expected. All is pretty well.”
“That’s good.” She said. “But isn’t the work hard?”
“The farming?”
She nodded.
Shinsuke stopped to think for a second. “There are harder days and easier days. I think all work is that way.”
“But do you find it tiring?”
“It is. But I think I like it that way.” He smiled. “Feels fulfilling. And it helps me sleep at night.”
They saved the rest of the fish stew for dinner. When he had finished washing the dishes, he went back to his room to spend the day as he liked to do on his day off: picking up a book from his bookshelf and reading on the floor by the window. Sometimes he would stop to gaze at the trees outside.
The day after was to be a long one. He decided to sleep early so he could wake up earlier to a dawn-lit room once again.