“I’m going to be late tonight,” he told her before briefly pausing. “Takeshi hasn’t come home yet, and nobody’s seen him since this morning. He didn’t go to school, either. And he knew I was coming tonight…”
“You don’t know where he went?”
“Not a clue. It’s hard to believe he would run away from home…”
“Do you really think he would ever do such a thing?”
“I doubt it, but he can be a real doofus sometimes, so who knows?” Hideo seemed to be on edge. “I’m going to wait here until he comes home tonight.”
Eriko didn’t know how to respond. She didn’t care whether Takeshi ran away from home or even vanished into thin air, so she couldn’t work up enough energy to even attempt comforting him, no matter how unenthusiastic it would sound.
“Okay,” she simply replied.
A young cameraman who she was planning on going out to eat with called her while he was still in the field and told her he was just going to go straight home. The building, which was located on the south side of Yodoyabashi Bridge, was old and run-down, but the view from the window was wonderful. The lights from the north buildings lit up the dark night, and the sky was a clear purple-blue. There wasn’t much better than going for a walk toward the north side in the river breeze, taking in the view from Yodoyabashi Bridge to Oebashi Bridge, during cold winter nights such as this. Hideo’s office was in Honmachi, so he would sometimes come all the way down to this building to invite her for a walk.
“Shall we?” he would say.
“Okay.”
And just like that, they would walk all the way to Umeda. This didn’t only happen when they first got married. They still went on long walks like this now as well. Kitashinchi in the north was expensive, so they would usually eat somewhere like Sonezaki before going home. It was basically a tradition for them to go out for cheap puffer fish hot pot on cold nights like this. Right as Eriko was about to leave the office, she got another phone call. It was Hideo again.
“Still at the office?”
“I was about to leave.”
“Oh. Well, Takeshi came home.”
“…”
“The teacher he hit is here, too, but Takeshi won’t apologize.”
“…”
“The principal’s also here. Can you believe it? Anyway…I’m just glad he came back. I know worrying wasn’t going to help anything, but I couldn’t help it.”
“…Okay.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the puffer fish restaurant,” she promptly replied without a second thought.
“Do they even serve single customers?”
“Yes. Puffer fish.”
This seemed to strike Hideo as very sudden.
“Well, look at you. And here I am, about to go to war.”
“Why don’t you come with me, then? Let the teachers handle the mess.”
“I can’t,” he replied, annoyed. “Bye.”
He hung up. The spite in Hideo’s voice when he said “Well, look at you” annoyed Eriko a little.
It’s not my fault.
In reality, Eriko would never let a bratty teenager even get close to her, so she couldn’t even imagine the situation. She couldn’t understand why this high school kid was being so stubborn and not apologizing, and she couldn’t understand why the teachers were making such a big deal out of this, either. And she was repelled by Hideo’s aggravation at the emergency. Eriko took the subway to the puffer fish restaurant. She said someone would be coming to meet up with her later, then took her gloves and hat off at the table in the corner of the restaurant. After taking off her shoes, sitting down, and closing the screen door, her face immediately looked like the face of a relieved forty-two-year-old, without a dimple in sight.
The puffer fish sashimi always came on a celadon plate like petals on a cherry blossom. Eriko and Hideo always enjoyed the work of art on the plate to the point that they didn’t want to eat any of it. “Be my guest,” they would usually say to each other with a smile before eventually surrendering and digging in. Hideo couldn’t hold his liquor, so he would only drink his single glass of hot sake, and that would be it for him. Eriko, however, would always have two glasses.
She ordered enough for two, half expecting Hideo to come, and when the food arrived, it was just like it always was. The blood comfortably rushed through her body as the hot sake made her do an emotional one-eighty. Eriko looked at her pocketbook while calling the house in Tennoji. She had never called even once before in the ten years she had been married.
“Hello?” It was a middle-aged woman’s voice.
“Is Hideo there?”
“Huh? Hideo? He just got into a fight with his son, and things got physical until his oldest stepped in. They ended up breaking the glass door to the garden. Anyway, he’s busy right now, so he can’t come to the phone.”
It was without a doubt his ex-wife, Kyoko, and for some reason, she knew it was Eriko on the other end of the line.
“Please try calling back again later,” she quickly added before hanging up.
She seemed to be on edge. Eriko’s first impression of her was that she seemed to be a woman who talked a lot. She didn’t seem to be a lazy, slow cow at all. If anything, she seemed to be very energetic. Her first impression was shocking, but it was a world Eriko couldn’t even imagine, so she felt daunted. Hideo’s spiteful “Well, look at you” made a lot more sense now, since it was a world unimaginable by someone who walked across cold bridges at night with their arms around their partner before being captivated by the beauty of a plate of puffer fish.
Eriko was hurt. She felt like she was stuck in a “Well, look at you” and “He’s busy right now” sandwich of parting shots. It didn’t help that she felt like a mistress calling the man she was sleeping with’s wife. She felt that perhaps life over there, as chaotic as it was right now, was how life was supposed to be. She was depressed that perhaps her sweet little life was nothing more than the surface of Hideo’s full, rich life.
Maybe it was a woman’s greed. Maybe it was jealousy. Whichever the case, Eriko wanted every single part of Hideo to herself. All of a sudden, she realized that Hideo hadn’t sounded like he was in a bad mood when they last talked. Perhaps he was in a world that didn’t allow him the luxury of being in a bad mood. And when Eriko thought of it like that, she felt bad for him. Nevertheless, she still didn’t want to carry that baggage he had back in Tennoji together with him. After all, she did tell him that she couldn’t take care of any children when they first got married. She was the one who decided to take the sweet, comfortable life in the second home. Hideo said he wanted to “boogie” and have fun, but he was slowly having to spend his life with both Eriko and his family in Tennoji.
Eriko wanted to answer the phone out of breath and panicking like Kyoko. Of course, she wanted to share the happy, sweet moments with Hideo, but she also wanted to share the hardships with him as well—moments where she could shout He’s busy now at other women on the phone. She was starting to not know what exactly she wanted anymore. On one hand, the way Kyoko spoke made it sound like she envied how calm and uncaring Eriko could be, but on the other hand, she was probably sharing a moment and bonding with Hideo over that disastrous event. Eriko was going back and forth. She had already finished packing, but she didn’t know where to go… Perhaps Kyoko, on the phone, was feeling the same way, and Eriko felt that what she packed was divided into two halves.
The water in the hot pot was boiling. Eriko picked up her chopsticks.