Just as Mayumi Kisaki was enjoying her day off with her family at the freshly opened Yesodd’s Family Café, Emi Yusa was having a busy morning. She was in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, a city far to the west of Sasazuka, and she had just climbed from the back seat of a car parked at the Shin-Kobe Station roundabout, her long hair tied back. She was accompanied by Alas Ramus, sporting a small Relax-a-Bear purse around her shoulder.
“Stay there, okay, Alas Ramus? I gotta get our luggage from the trunk.”
“Mommy, let’s go in the station! It’s too hot out here!”
“Not yet. Just wait a little bit, all right? And did you say thank you to Rika yet?”
“Yeah, when we got out of the car!”
“No, say it for real, all right? No mumbling it out the door.”
“Aww, Emi, don’t be such a fuddy-duddy! She did say thank you to me. Didn’t ya, kid?”
“See? Rika says so, too!”
“Eesh…”
With a wry grin, Emi took a wheeled suitcase from the back of the car, checked for anything she might have missed, and closed the door.
“I was kinda worried when we hit that traffic jam on the highway, but it’s never anything serious around this time of day. But anyway! Have a nice trip back, okay, Emi?”
Rika Suzuki, stepping from the driver’s seat, lifted her driving sunglasses and gave Emi a wink.
“Sure thing. Thanks a lot for the ride, Rika.”
“Oh, don’t mention it! Anything for a friend, y’know? But don’t just make it two nights next time, okay? Stay as long as ya want! And I hope I see you later, too, okay, Alas Ramus? I’ll be waiting for ya!”
“Okay! I’ll see you tomorrow!”
The very childlike response made Rika smile. “Ooh, I dunno if Mommy can do tomorrow. But I’m glad you want to come back so soon!”
“Aww, Mommy, when can we come back?”
“We’ll have to plan it out, okay? Boy, you’ve sure grown to be a good talker, haven’t you?”
“Hey, it shows how far she’s gotten, right? I know it’s been a year and a half and everything, but I can’t believe how big she is! She’s a real cutie! This must be what it’s like to have a niece, huh? I’m sure it is…”
Rika squinted, as if the light was too much for her eyes, and looked down at Alas Ramus’s feet.
“By the time I see you again, you’ll probably have outgrown those shoes, huh?”
Alas Ramus had some summer kids’ sneakers on. Rika’s family ran a factory that manufactured parts for shoes, and although they were still small-scale, they had introduced their own brand of footwear over the past few years. That was what Alas Ramus was sporting.
“You really couldn’t have been kinder to her. I appreciate your family, so tell them I said hi. These soles are so comfortable.”
Emi wore her own choice of shoe brand, but the inner soles were a special order, contoured for her own feet by the Suzuki family.
“Aw, I’m happy to hear that! Grandpa will be glad to hear it, too. But, you know, I’ll be back in Tokyo soon for work, and I’ll probably do another sales run over to The Maou Company, so let’s hang out if you’re free.”
“Of course! Contact me when you do!”
Two years ago, Rika had moved out of her apartment in Tokyo’s Takadanobaba neighborhood and returned to her family’s house in the Suma district of Kobe. There, she was learning the family trade from her grandfather and parents, mastering the basics of shoe design.
She wasn’t going to college or looking for a career, but Rika had still spent a long time in Tokyo, away from her family—and Emi didn’t know why until she came to visit her in Kobe just now. When a large earthquake hit the city of Kobe in 1995, the family’s property and machinery were all safe, but a large number of their regular clients went out of business in the aftermath. Between that and the recession that hit in the mid-nineties, by the time Rika graduated from high school, the family firm was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
The whole family was anxious about this, but Rika’s grandmother—her dad’s mom—had a pretty anachronistic solution for it. Basically Rika, as the eldest daughter, would get herself married to the son and heir of a relatively powerful midsize firm, in an attempt to save their company. Having your grandma pick a husband for you right in one of the most sensitive times of your life would be traumatic enough, but even worse, the candidate she had in mind was a good twenty-five years older than Rika. It was nothing short of abuse, really—and while her grandmother had a firm grip on the reins in her family, Rika’s grandpa and parents were staunchly against it. So after graduation, they had her evacuate to Tokyo for safety’s sake. It was her grandfather who chose the Takadanobaba apartment for her; it was a neighborhood synonymous with cheap college student housing, and he figured that if Grandma tried tracking her down, she’d have a hard time over there.
By the time Rika came to know Emi, old age and infirmity kept her grandmother from being involved with the business, but she still had major clout over the family behind the scenes, and she apparently still hadn’t given up on marrying her granddaughter into a richer industrial family. They never did come to terms with each other, in the end, before she passed away two years ago—and after the funeral service, Rika went straight back home to Kobe. Not long afterward, Rika began working with The Maou Company, providing accessories and industrial shoes for restaurant workers. It really was a small world.
Emi, who saw Rika as a friend and confidant without ever asking why she was staying in Tokyo, was warmly welcomed by the Suzuki family, now that the old matriarch was no longer in the picture. Rika’s younger sister, Rina, in particular, loved Alas Ramus as much as her own kin, endlessly spoiling her.
“You gave me so much stuff, too. I’ll have to repay you sometime.”
“It’s fine! If you really insist, you should show my sister around Tokyo when she visits. She said she wants to find a job there when she’s done with school.”
“Oh, right. She’s still a freshman in college, right? But she’s already thinking about her career?”
“Well, given our family, we know what it’s like to live in tough times. If I hadn’t come back, she might’ve really wound up inheriting the company, after all.”
Rika, for her part, felt guilty about running off to Tokyo and leaving her sister to face up to her grandmother. But as Rina put it: “If you weren’t around, I figured, ‘Oh well, I guess I’ll inherit it,’ but I have bigger dreams than that. If you weren’t gonna take it over, I wanted to get our firm out into the world more, so we could make lots more money! Like, if we keep it small-scale like Grandma did, it would’ve gone bankrupt sooner or later, you know?”
“I tell you, she’s got even more vitality than I do. She’s gonna hit it big, mark my words.”
“I’ll make sure not to tell Rina about Ente Isla, then.”
“Yeah, you better not. With her personality, she really would wanna use it for her business.”
Rika laughed hard at that for a bit then picked up Alas Ramus. “Ahh, but enough grown-up chitchat! It’s super-hot out here, so time to say bye-bye, okay? Come back soon, Alas Ramus! And listen to what your mommy tells you.”
“Okay! See you later, Rika-sis!”
She handed the child over to Emi.
“Have a good one.”
“Yep! Have a safe trip back.”
Emi waved, took up the handle of her suitcase, and held Alas Ramus with the other as she went into Shin-Kobe Station. As she did, she heard that familiar, chirpy voice booming behind her.
“Oh, right! Say hello to that henpecked ‘husband’ of yours, too, for me!”
“Shut up!!”
They might’ve been all smiles a moment ago, but that remark made Emi scowl back at her. Rika, in the sun, smiled broadly and waved, as if that was the face she wanted to see all day, before hopping in the car and driving off.
“Ugh… You’re the one who missed your chance to marry after doing that ‘will-she, won’t-she’ thing for ages.”
“Mommy, I’m hot! I want juice!”
“Oh, right, I should buy something for myself, too. We have some time until the bullet train… Let’s go up to that kiosk.”
“Ice cream! I want ice cream!”
“You just said juice, didn’t you? No ice cream. It’s gonna melt all over you.”
“Awww! I want ice cream! Juice and ice cream!”
“This order’s getting bigger by the minute… Oh?”
Emi felt the smartphone in her shoulder bag vibrate a little. Reading the screen, she recalled her previous conversation with Rika and frowned a bit.
“What is it, Mommy?”
She showed the screen to Alas Ramus. “I got a note from Chiho. I’ll answer it once I buy some juice, so wait a minute, okay?”
Successfully shooting down the ice cream demand, Emi purchased a bottle of pulp-in orange juice (a favorite of Alas Ramus’s as of late), leaned against the wall by the turnstile, and fired off a reply.
“What’s Chi up to?”
As she grew, Alas Ramus had naturally come to call Chiho “Chi.” Emi took a moment to figure out her reply but couldn’t find a simple explanation that her child would understand, so she winged it instead.
“Well, Chiho’s coming back to Tokyo today, too.”
“She was out?”
“That’s right. We saw her off in that building with all the planes, remember? Before it got hot out.”
“Mmm, I dunno.”
Whether she really didn’t know or was just being silly, Emi couldn’t tell. The child had a way of vividly recalling things Emi had completely forgotten about—but events that left a deep impression on grown-ups passed in one ear and out the other with her. Emi had trouble figuring out how her tiny memory worked.
“Yeah, well, thanks to that…”
Past the turnstile, Emi looked at the electronic train schedule and smiled to herself.
“…Daddy might start feeling a little ashamed of himself.”