Chapter Three: “The Clod of Earth Dreams of Snow” — Part Seven
“Sensitive tongue?”
“I don’t really like coffee.”
Kai handed over her first small piece of information, just like that.
“Then why make yourself a cup at all?”
“I like the smell.”
“That, actually, I get.”
Walking into a room and having coffee’s scent greet you does have a way of settling something.
Kai was sitting by the window, so looking at her meant catching the reflection of the room, and myself, in the glass behind her. My own reflected face had softened without my permission, and I made a deliberate effort to flatten my expression back out. Kai gave nothing away about what she made of that, wearing her usual faint smile.
Still in that uniform, though. Surely not even on her days off.
“Don’t you ever want to wear something else?”
I understood why she didn’t want to expose more skin, and honestly the winter uniform suited her, but I couldn’t imagine a fourteen-year-old’s curiosity staying contained to just that. Kai glanced toward the closet before answering.
“I do change once I’m out of the bath, obviously.”
“Sleepwear, sure, but…”
“And on days off I wear a yukata.”
“A yukata?”
“The person who raised me dressed that way, so I picked it up naturally.”
An unexpected answer, but a yukata does have long sleeves, convenient for keeping her body covered. Picturing small Kai in one, something doll-like and composed came to mind. I’d have liked to actually see it.
Though given how our respective lives were arranged, that occasion probably wouldn’t come.
“What about you, Yuki-san, don’t you ever wear anything else?”
Fair point, since we really only ever crossed paths after I’d finished work, so I supposed my look didn’t change much either.
“I do switch suits occasionally, you know. Notice sometime.”
“I want something more dramatic. A Santa costume would suit you, for instance.”
“Ha.”
I laughed it off. Not too quickly, careful not to give anything away, but quick enough to move the conversation along.
“Following up on this morning, though… what kind of food do you actually like?”
“What I like is… shrimp tempura, I think.”
“Hm.”
“Chicken tempura too. Basically, I like tempura in general.”
“Tempura, huh… nice.”
Talking about food made me want something to go with the coffee. Maybe I’d pick something up from the gift shop.
“What do you like, Yuki-san?”
I noticed, absently, that I’d stopped correcting her for calling me Yuki. Partly laziness, but not only that. Maybe it was a misreading on my part, maybe overthinking it entirely, and it really ought to have been just that, but that particular name she used seemed to want to make me something separate, something specifically hers, and something in me softened at the thought. What was even funny about it.
“All sorts of things, but lately I like squid and taro, simmered together.”
Taro being in season made it a regular enough dish. Kai murmured “taro” to herself, unthinking, and something about it struck me as sweet.
“I like my husband’s seasoning on it. He’s a good cook… ah, my husband runs the onigiri shop.”
Since he himself proudly calls that his real job, I supposed that was the honest way to introduce him.
“The onigiri shop… ah, the one with the dog always tied up outside?”
“That’s the one. That’s the dog I mentioned this morning, Maron.”
“I see.”
Kai’s eyes drifted, seemingly picturing the dog, the building. Having gotten this far into the conversation, I paused over my coffee and felt something heavy settle in my chest. Talking so freely with Kai about my family’s makeup, was that careless of me. I might be letting my guard down further than I should. Regretting it after the fact wasn’t going to undo anything, though.
And yet I didn’t feel like I was sitting across from a girl I couldn’t trust, tending to her out of obligation. Not that.
Kai really was contrary, difficult. But whatever came out from underneath that guarded, dishonest surface, I couldn’t help but find beautiful and want to hold onto. Something like catching the tears spilling from those foreign, unfamiliar eyes.
“You don’t cook yourself, Yuki-san?”
“I can, but my husband’s cooking is so much more popular there’s not much reason to.”
“…Is your seasoning bad?”
She asked, faintly cautious, and I felt my mouth pull tight at the unflattering assumption.
“Apparently it’s too light. My daughter told me so.”
Indirectly, I supposed, telling me it lacked depth, richness. Cooking in the same kitchen as my husband, using the same ingredients, and still somehow the results differed, which struck me as strange. Perhaps cooking really was some kind of individual magic.
“If it’s just light, I’d actually like to try something you’ve cooked, Yuki-san.”
“Mine?”
Kai’s upward glance caught me like a needle that didn’t hurt going in. Following the light at the edge of her eyes, whatever lived there seemed to press directly against my heart, and I found myself at a loss for words. Kai’s eyes never hid their eloquence when directed at me.
Cook, for Kai?
…What was I to Kai again? How many times had I circled back to that same foundational question. The answer never landed anywhere solid. Something close to a mismatched friend, and yet a relationship with no name at all.
“If I feel like it, maybe.”
“Looking forward to the bland food.”
Not being able to let a moment pass without one last remark, that was very much Kai.
…Still, it had been a while since anyone had said they wanted to eat something I’d made. Kai had a way of putting cracks in ground I’d let go hard and settled, using nothing but those thin arms.
“What do you usually do for dinner? Hotel restaurant?”
“I stop by a convenience store on the way back from school and buy a bento.”
Kai picked up her cup, took the smallest possible sip, and winced.
“I’m probably about due for the staff to start calling me chicken-soboro girl.”
“Vary it up a little, at least.”
Chicken soboro girl’s back again today. Imagining the staff gossiping about her that way was faintly amusing. Though amusement only went so far. Rumours in a town like this had a way of travelling in directions you couldn’t predict. And whatever shape a rumour built around Kai eventually took, the possibility that it curved back to include me too wasn’t something I could afford to shrug off.
“Sitting alone eating a restaurant dinner would probably look suspicious anyway.”
“That’s… probably true.”
A girl alone in uniform would stand out, however photogenic the image might be.
“How long can you stay today?”
A natural rhythm had settled in of each of us asking one question in turn. The exchange had a pleasant, unhurried quality to it, like rolling some invisible ball back and forth across the table.
“Today… same as usual, until around eight, I think.”
Eight, in truth, sat right on the edge of what my family wouldn’t question. Getting home from here, having dinner, getting through the evening’s odds and ends to prepare for tomorrow, none of it left much room to call the life I was living relaxed. I’d been leaning on the excuse of the year-end rush and running this same routine, day after day.
Stretching things right up to the wire just to stay a little longer with Kai, that was a version of me I didn’t recognise.
And if my husband happened to run into someone from my office and the subject of my hours came up, that gap could easily plant suspicion. Seeds of doubt were already sown, as though I were doing something genuinely shameful.
I might be standing on far shakier ground than I let myself realise.
Simply looking after my daughter’s friend was keeping me remarkably busy.