Chapter 120

SUMMERTIME RECORD SIDE -NO. 2- I turned on the TV for the first time in a while. After a few seconds, it came to life, showing a string of colorful cars zooming down the street, from one end to the other. Behind it, a woman droned on about how “further traffic headaches are expected across the greater Tokyo area as summer break comes to a close” and so on, sounding deadly serious about it as she read her script. The scene switched to a man in the prime of his life, steering wheel in hand as he drove a blue minivan. There was someone else in the passenger seat, two smaller figures in the back. I couldn’t see their faces, but it was the classic image of a loving nuclear family. I thought about watching it for a little while, but my finger wound up tapping the power button of the remote instead. A few boring moments went by like that, and the sound of a crying cicada wafted into the otherwise empty room. I never liked that sound very much. It was nice enough if you thought of it as one of the classic natural signs of summer and stuff, but when the crying just went on forever and ever, it got painful after a while. They were hella loud day and night, and yet they wouldn’t even survive past the summer. Some people treated that like, “Ooh, look at ’em, making the most of the one summer they’re given.” I knew that well enough. But seeing their dried-up bodies lining the sidewalks, like they undoubtedly would before long, seemed unbearable to me. Lying on their backs like that, desiccated, as they waited for the earth to claim them again—I wondered what they thought about it. I wondered if they were even interested in what the world looks like after summer. If they did have thoughts like that, I couldn’t imagine how cruel it was for them. Once summer wraps up, winter soon follows, freezing your body and your soul. Their bodies weren’t made to survive that. God never gave these guys anything past the summer at all. I remembered how Kano used to whine about how God must be this totally awful thing. Everybody around us seemed so happy, but it was not so with us. We had to face all this misfortune alone. The way he saw it, it was all God pushing this torrent of unhappiness upon us. I just laughed it off and told him “You said it” at the time. But maybe that offhand remark made it to the well-honed ears of God after all. We looked for “happiness” without knowing what it really meant, and I’m sure God must have scorned us for it. I feel depressed. This sucks. Letting out a sigh, I turned my eyes to the frog-shaped clock looming large next to the TV. It had been almost an hour since she had gone out shopping. Considering the distance she was traveling, she’d likely be back home in a few minutes. But this was her we were talking about, of course. If she ran into a puppy dog or something on the way home, you know she’d spend the next couple hours chasing it around town before getting back. Assuming she ever did. If she didn’t, it’d be up to me to spend the entire night combing the streets. “Ughh…” A second sigh crossed my dry lips. Maybe I should have gone with her. But if the suggestion brushed her the wrong way, she’d likely just slip out while I was distracted by something else. It’s not like she was asking me to play the gallant, brave leader role or anything; if she told me to lay off, I would. But I can’t fully quell my worries about her. My mind can be such a pain that way sometimes. She deserves my respect, yes, but she’s still the most important person in my life. I want her to live whatever life she wants for herself, but I don’t want her getting caught up in anything too hazardous. We still haven’t figured out the right balance to strike. “What’re you staring into space for?” Yeah, I guess I might be doing that, a little. A little conversation should help snap me out of it. “Oh, just thinking about things a bit. Like, about how hard it can be to find the right distance to take in relationships…” She was here. “Aghh! When—when did you get back?!” I fell off the sofa, landing hard on the floor on my right elbow. My face twisted in pain as I turned around to look up at her. Marie was there behind the chair, giving me an honestly perplexed expression. Checking the clock, I saw she had come home exactly one hour after she left. “W-wow, Marie, that’s great!” I said, voice filled with joy. “You actually got back home on time…” “All I did was go home like normal,” she said. I guess she did. She had her eyes averted, a bit put off by this. “You were worried about me, weren’t you? I told you I’d be fine.” “Ahh… Well, just a little bit. Really. Just a bit.” “Oh? Just a bit?” Marie’s piercing gaze poured itself over me. It was incredibly unfair, like a vast minefield spread out before me. But I knew dwelling over it was pointless, so I got up, spilling some of my tea along the way, and faced Marie with the sofa between us. Now she had to look up at me. She hefted the shopping bag in her hand. “This needs to go in the fridge.” Considering how she’d boldly declared that she could go shopping by herself, she sure didn’t seem too interested in any of the other chores around the house. I picked up the bag from her trembling, furtive hands, then lifted an eyebrow at how heavy it was. All I’d asked for was a few ingredients so we could make curry for dinner. That included a bag of flour, but not this much. “Huh? Did you buy some extra stuff, Marie?” Her eyes sparkled, as if she had been expecting this. “Yeah! There was something really good I found! Umm…” She stood up, anchoring her body against the back of the sofa, and thrust a hand into the bag I was carrying. I knew I’d asked her for a six-pack of eggs as well. Seeing her rifle through the bag struck fear in my heart, but even Marie must have been looking out for them. If she hadn’t been, those eggs would’ve been history before she even came back home. Her hand found something inside that it scooped out, immediately lightening the load in the bag. I looked at it, then let out a surprised gasp. In Marie’s arms was a large, round, thick, and no doubt very expensive fish. It was the dead of summer, and the store hadn’t offered anything like an ice pack to keep it cool. Encountering this whole, raw fish, as if she’d hooked it from a stream and just plopped it in the bag, made me yelp in shock. “Aaaahh! Wh-what are you doing with this?!” “Oh? Flour. They ran a pole through the spine to keep it fresh.” Ah. I’d asked for flour; she’d picked up a flounder. A large one, from the Matsumae Peninsula of southern Hokkaido, and it had been processed with the shinkei-jime method to keep its umami intact. Pretty impressive stuff, I supposed to myself, as she hefted the flounder onto the sofa, then crossed her arms in a show of pride. Some kind of juice was already oozing out of the thing and into the upholstery. “You said you needed flour, Seto, but I guess they sell flour really fresh these days.” Yeah, it doesn’t get much fresher than this. It was like seeing a pun from a children’s joke book laid out in the living room for me. “Marie… You really like this stuff, don’t you?” “Yeah!” She nodded. “I don’t like my curry too spicy, though.” “Can you explain how we’ll make curry from this?” “Umm, well, you know, you pour it over rice.” She used both hands to trace a circle in the air. I wasn’t sure what that had to do with curry. Maybe she was referring to the plate. I pressed on. “Okay, but how are we going to take this and turn it into curry?” “I dunno, um… Boil it in a stew?” …A stew? Maybe there was some miracle appliance deep inside the pantry I wasn’t aware of, but I couldn’t think of a stew pot that you could toss a huge, boned flounder inside and have it turn alchemy-like into curry. Marie turned her sweet, innocent eyes up at me as I lost the ability to speak. Seeing them, I lost most of my interest in scolding her about it anymore. “…Well, I guess it’s flounder curry for dinner tonight,” I sighed. Marie leaped into the air in excitement. “Wow! So there’s two flours in it? Boy, it’s gonna be really good now!” I picked up the lifeless flounder baring its all for us on the sofa and ferried it over to the refrigerator. We still had some extra leftover vegetables. It shouldn’t be too hard to accommodate this sudden change in the menu. Then I took another peek at the bottom of the shopping bag. Spotting the crushed pack of eggs lying there, I thought about what kind of egg-based side dish I could whip up alongside this.