“Could you still make that spicy oil for me, Fuuka? And I’ll choose to give some of it to Tamuramaro. Think of it that way,” he coaxed.
“I guess I could try, if I just remember he’s beneath me…”
Fuuka was always cooperative when it came to his brother. He was still unhappy, but he gobbled up the rest of the somen and picked up a can of beer for himself.
“Fuuka, you shouldn’t drink yet.”
“You’re a grown man, at least physically. Drink all you want,” Tamuramaro interjected, apparently finding Sora overprotective. “Here’s to living together again after a long break. Cheers.”
When Tamuramaro lifted his can, Fuuka responded by reflex. “Cheers.”
But Sora couldn’t bring himself to say it. Instead, he said, “In honor of the dead.”
“Are you saying that because it’s Shimabara somen? That was a gruesome time.”
“I seriously considered getting baptized as a Christian around then.”
Shimabara somen called to mind the Shimabara Rebellion in the seventeenth century, when the now-famous Japanese Catholic Amakusa Shirou led an uprising against the local lords’ oppression of Christians and others in present-day Nagasaki. Naturally, their talk turned to the early years of the Edo period.
“Poor Shirou…,” Fuuka murmured sorrowfully and sipped his beer.
“How would you even get baptized, considering our roots?”
“Don’t lump us together. We’re completely different from you,” said Sora, not about to let Tamuramaro off the hook.
“Hear! Hear! Brother’s always right.” Fuuka laughed.
Tamuramaro heaved a big sigh, much like an older man shaking his head at the naive youths.
“What is it?” asked Sora, irked by his attitude.
“You wanted to be all grown-up, but you haven’t changed much, have you? Prove me wrong—I dare you.”
“What’s wrong with not changing?! Sora means everything to me, and if you even think about doing something to him again…”
“Don’t growl so much, Fuuka. You’re not actually a dog.”
Fuuka bit down on his can and glowered at Tamuramaro.
“Tell me, have I ever done anything to harm your precious brother?” Tamuramaro stretched, his true feelings hidden under his usual relaxed grin.
“…You did once. I remember.”
“Tamuramaro hasn’t harmed me, Fuuka.” Sora reached over to stroke his brother’s silver hair to calm him down. Fuuka’s glare was still fixed on Tamuramaro.
“Oh, are you sticking up for me, Sora? That’s good to hear,” said Tamuramaro, opening a second can.
“I’ll never forget what you did,” Sora answered. Unlike Fuuka, he didn’t show any anger on the surface, but his eyes were boring into Tamuramaro. “I can’t forget it, and I certainly can’t forgive you.”
Sora had voiced these words several times to Tamuramaro since they had first met.
“I know.”
A somewhat lonely smile crossed Tamuramaro’s face. At that, Sora felt his heart trying to catch up to his grown body, but he pushed it down and took a gulp from his beer.
Tamuramaro had moved into the house in front of the Shizukuishi bus stop on the second Friday of September, and in the late afternoon on Saturday the next day, Sora and Fuuka found themselves giving the new lodger a tour around the town.
“The town started with residential houses spreading here, some ways off from the train station, so it’s like a little island with a shopping district of its own. You can get pretty much anything here, and if there’s anything you can’t find, it’s usually stocked in the shops near the train station.”
They stood at the entrance to the cozy little shopping street. Since it was the weekend, Sora was in his casual outfit: a T-shirt and jeans. He held Fuuka’s red leash in his right hand, pointing to the other end of the street with his left as he explained.
“Is that it?” retorted Tamuramaro with a shrug, visibly dissatisfied. “So much for your new lodger who’s gonna bring in money for the rent and food.” He was in a T-shirt, loose cotton pants, and a pair of old-fashioned setta sandals, bamboo-lined and leather-soled.
“Grrrr.” Fuuka snarled, annoyed at the prospect of having to spend the weekend walking with Tamuramaro. This was one of the few days he would normally spend entirely with his brother.
“There’s nothing ‘new’ about you,” countered Sora. “Fine. I’ll go front to back, left to right, starting from the nearest shop. Japanese sweets, fruits and vegetables, deli, café, soba noodles, ramen, liquor, ramen, bar, drugstore, Italian, bicycles and motorcycles, real estate, dry cleaning, Western sweets, grocery store with meat and fish, bakery, café, sushi. If you step into a couple of backstreets, you’ll find a calligraphy classroom, a cram school, a certified administrative procedures legal specialist and a judicial scrivener’s office, a tax accountant’s office, a hole-in-the-wall French restaurant, and so on.”
Sora looked up at Tamuramaro with a deadpan expression, as if to say, “Now are you satisfied?”
“Why are there two ramen joints in a row? Ichirou and Tarou.”
“They’re run by twin brothers. Ever since they were little, they could never agree on which kind of soup base is the best for ramen, soy sauce or miso. A serious feud. Two years ago, their father retired from the stress, and the younger brother, Mr. Tarou, went independent in the shop next door. Ichirou serves ramen with soy-sauce-flavored soup, and Tarou serves miso.”
Even the storefront curtains emblazoned with their names quarreled with each other: One was bright red, the other black.
“Do they have to compete side by side?”
“People say it’s convenient; they can choose depending on what they feel like that day. And they both learned from their father, so their noodles are pretty much the same. Actually, I agree—”
Sora also ate ramen at both shops once in a while, but he stopped mid-sentence out of consideration for Fuuka, who had snuggled up to Sora’s legs despite the hot weather. It wasn’t just because he’d been keeping his ramen trips a secret.
“Coo?”
Since Fuuka transformed into a big white dog whenever someone else was around—anyone except Tamuramaro—he couldn’t go into restaurants to eat. Out of all the cuisines offered in the food service industry, Sora secretly believed the most difficult dish to re-create at home in its full glory was ramen.
“I’m sorry, Fuuka.”
A long, long time ago, Sora had discovered what ramen at a ramen shop was like, and ever since, he had been sneaking out every now and then to have some by himself. Truth be told, the presence of these two ramen shops was one of the reasons he’d wanted to live in this town. Ichirou’s soy sauce style was his favorite.
“Let’s go eat there sometime. I’m crazy about ramen,” said Tamuramaro, eyeing the shops with interest.
Sora glanced over at him, but he didn’t mention his own affinity for the stuff.
At any given moment, Sora had to look up at Tamuramaro. Normally, Sora never let anything trivial ruffle him, but when it came to Tamuramaro, he found the position humiliating.
“Oh, there they are. I wouldn’t have guessed they’re twins. They look nothing alike.”
Just then, both Ichirou and Tarou stepped out of their shops and scowled at each other. Ichirou wore a bandanna wrapped around his shaved head, and Tarou wore a knit cap over his neatly tied bun.
“Mr. Ichirou and Mr. Tarou are brothers, but they’re two totally disparate people. They’re soy sauce and miso, after all.”
Sora stared at the twins and sighed, thinking how different he and Fuuka’s fraternal relationship was.
“Hey, are you all right, Sora? It’s my first weekend here. Can’t you be a little friendlier and give me a detailed tour? There are lots of new cafés here. Makes sense for a new town made up of an expanding residential neighborhood.”
“No, all the new restaurants and cafés opened really recently.”
Sora himself had witnessed the old shops closing and new ones opening up in the last two years.
“Ah, right. Pandemic,” Tamuramaro said, quick to grasp the situation.
“Precisely. Some of the elderly shop owners thought it was high time they closed down, and new cafés popped up to take their place. Mr. Tarou, too—the shop that used to be there went out of business, so he stepped in.”
Sora explained how the shopping street, which one would guess had been there for decades, came to be lined with newer storefronts. There were probably similar views wherever you were in the world: unnaturally new shops jostling against shops that were permanently shuttered.
“I hardly ever eat out. Fuuka is an amazing cook, and I like eating at home with him.”
“How ’bout we go for a drink sometime? You can drink now, so we might as well… Ow!”
Since he wasn’t allowed to bite humans, Fuuka head-butted Tamuramaro instead.
“Why not?” asked Tamuramaro. “Might do you both good to spend some time apart once in a while.”
“Coo.”
Fuuka looked up at Sora with a sad whimper, and Sora met his gaze, feeling puzzled. Apparently, Fuuka was livid at Tamuramaro’s suggestion—but Sora himself was not angry at all.
“…We have been spending time apart ever since I started university. Even if that was necessary, I don’t see why I should take the trouble to go out for a drink with you of all people.” Sora sighed, kneeling down and ruffling Fuuka’s neck with both hands.
Instinctively, he pressed his ear against Fuuka’s body and listened to his heartbeat. Every time Sora noticed that he and his brother were beginning to harbor different emotions, he made sure Fuuka was still there.
“Come on—grow up. How long are you gonna stay there like that?” Tamuramaro cut in.
“The convenience store is on the way to the train station, along the road where the bus runs. That’s all.” With that, Sora wrapped up his tour of the town with as much warmth as a GPS.