I learned about Tooru’s knack for housework and cooking a couple of days after he and Maori started dating.
After they got together, they would meet in his classroom after school to talk. I joined them that day to get a sense of who he was. Maori suggested that since we were all here, we should get to know one another better, and we ended up going to his house. He lived with his father in a housing complex. Normally, you’d expect a household of two guys to be a mess, but their apartment was shockingly clean.
Tooru was very particular about keeping things not just tidy, but sanitary. You can fake being clean, but you can’t fake being sanitary. That’s what he told us. I found it amusing that a high school student was so particular about housework but was also strangely moved by it.
“I didn’t realize till we talked, but you’re a strange one, Kamiya,” I told him.
“Like you’re not?” he answered.
Oddly enough, we were able to joke around without being sarcastic or mean. Maybe we felt at ease around each other because we shared the same interests. While chatting in the classroom before going to his house, I’d discovered that he read the same literary magazine as me. That wasn’t all. He was a fan of Keiko Nishikawa, who wasn’t very well known back then.
He wasn’t just good at keeping house. Everything he cooked was delicious.
“Please accept this humble brew.”
“We’re not having green tea, are we?”
He made us a pot of tea that day that was out of this world. It was something called Lady Grey that he’d gotten at the supermarket, and I was addicted ever since.
We sat around drinking tea and talking about all kinds of stuff. Around evening, he walked us to the station near his house. He brought along a reusable bag, saying he was going to pick up some groceries on the way back home. There was a mysterious dignity to him, like he was some veteran homemaker, and the reusable bag suited him oddly well. Maori and I couldn’t help laughing at him for it. Maori took a picture, too.
Here was a guy who excelled at all things domestic and who looked perfect with an eco bag in hand. None of it was an act; on the contrary, it was part of who he was.
The next day after school, I invited the two of them to the condo where my mom and I lived. My dad didn’t live with us, as my parents separated when I was in junior high school. While I took a cue from Tooru and made a pot of black tea in the kitchen, he and Maori talked in the living room. They were sitting close together, speaking too low for me to hear.
At the time, I was slightly jealous that Tooru had stolen my best friend. As that sentiment suggests, I saw him as her boyfriend, no more, no less. I held no romantic feelings for him. He was an oddball, somewhat cold like me, good at cooking and housework, and an avid reader of literature.
It was much later on that I developed romantic feelings toward him and when I began to feel a very slight amount of something like envy toward Maori.
Also…that I kissed Tooru.