Before I let myself get dragged into a long conversation, I headed upstairs to set my things down. I stepped into my old bedroom to find that everything—my bed, my bookshelves, my desk—was almost exactly the way I left it two years ago. The only noticeable difference was that someone had been cleaning it regularly, as there wasn’t a speck of dust to be found. My bed had also been dressed in a thinner springtime comforter now that winter was over, which was presumably my grandmother’s doing.
I set my overnight bag down on the floor and then exited the room. Heading back down the stairs, I made a quick pit stop in the traditional Japanese-style sitting room to pay my respects at my late grandfather’s altar and let him know I’d come home before heading into the living room. I sat cross-legged on a floor cushion at the low dining table across from my grandmother and cut right to the chase.
“So, yeah. Like I told you over the phone this morning, I’m probably gonna be staying here for a little while,” I began.
“Because of that little kerfuffle with your dad, I take it?” she replied.
“Yeah… Wait. Did I already tell you about that?”
“No—he gave me a call not long after I got off the phone with you. Said you might be heading this way and to keep you out of trouble if you did.”
“Oh, he did, did he…?”
“Sounds like your old man’s got you all figured out,” she teased, cackling like a mischievous storybook witch. That my father had so easily predicted my every move filled me with an odd mixture of shame and indignation.
“…Knew I should’ve run away somewhere else.”
“Oh, please. As if you’d even have anywhere else to go! Besides, it’s not like you have anything better to do with your spring break, do you? Just take it easy here in Sodeshima for a while. The big festival’s coming up, you know!”
“I’m not going to that stupid thing, Grandma. You know I hate big crowds.”
“Yet you still wanted to live in Tokyo. I’ll never understand it.”
“That’s a totally different kind of crowded, Grandma,” I said dismissively, picking a mandarin up off the table and beginning to peel back the skin. Before I could pop the first slice of orange into my mouth, I heard the front door rattle open.
“I’m hooome—Uhhhh, what?”
Sure enough, it was my little sister Eri who now stood in the living room doorway with her mouth agape. She’d grown a bit since last I saw her two years ago—which would make her fourteen now, come to think of it. Her once-frizzy braids had developed into something more hip: a low-hanging side ponytail. What drew my eyes more than anything, though, was her sailor-style schoolgirl uniform. My little Eri had ditched her dorky red elementary school backpack and was now a full-blown teenager. As her older brother, it was definitely a strange feeling.
“Hey, Eri,” I said. “Been a while, huh? You back straight from a club meeting or something?”
“Why are you here?” she replied tersely, her eyes narrowing.
“Wow, okay. That’s one way to greet your loving brother you haven’t seen in years, I guess. Didn’t Grandma tell you I was coming?”
“She did. I’m asking why you’re here.”
Her words were sharp. It was clear that she wasn’t happy to see me—which I could understand. She’d resisted the idea of me moving to Tokyo to the very last. We left off on fairly negative terms two years ago, and I hadn’t tried to get in contact with her since.
“C’mon, don’t glare at me like that,” I said. “This is a reunion worth celebrating, right? Here, sit down and eat one of these mandarins with me.”
“Last time I checked, those aren’t yours to give away, Kanae.”
Now that one stung. Granted, it wasn’t the first time she’d called me by my actual name, but she only tended to use it when she was extremely pissed off at me. All the rest of the time, it was “Big Brother.”
“Anyway, you didn’t answer my question,” she demanded. “What brings you back here to Sodeshima? State your business.”
“I don’t have any business. I just ran away from home, so I’m gonna lay low and mooch off of you guys for a while.”
“How long is ‘a while’?”
“Maybe a week or so. It’s April 1st now, so…maybe until the 8th?”
“I see. And why did you run away from home, exactly? Did you get in a fight with that deadbeat?”
I turned back to look at my grandmother across the table, but she shook her head. Apparently, Eri had guessed that one all on her own—she was a sharp kid. I had no reason to lie, so I fessed up.
“Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” I replied. “You got it in one.”
“See, this is exactly why I tried to stop you from going with him. I told you that man isn’t right in the head.”
“Yeah, well… You may have been right about that. Definitely regretting it now.”
“See? You never should’ve gone to live with that deadbeat in the—”
“Eri,” my grandmother cut in. “Stop calling your own father a deadbeat.”
Eri puffed out her cheeks and scowled at this rebuke.
“Well, I’m not gonna call him my father, that’s for sure. Not when he hasn’t done anything to deserve it…” she grumbled.
I could definitely understand where Eri was coming from. Originally, the four of us—me, Eri, my dad, and my mom—all lived together in Tokyo. When I was six, and Eri was barely three, our parents got divorced because it came to light that my mother was having an affair. I never heard all the dirty details, but suffice it to say, my mother had completely lost any potential attachment she had to our family. She was more than happy to foist full custody off onto my father.
Mind you, I wasn’t sure whether my father actually wanted custody of the two of us or not. I preferred not to think too deeply about that. The fact of the matter was that he didn’t waste any time in sending us to live in Sodeshima with our grandmother while he stayed in Tokyo, where he proceeded to neglect us altogether for nearly a decade. I totally got why Eri felt he was a deadbeat, seeing how he hadn’t lived with us since she was practically too young to remember. To Eri, he was hardly any different from any old stranger off the street.