I look at the clock. It’s getting close to noon. My work shift at Sunnyside begins at one today, but to be honest, I’m afraid to go. But I have to. I have to apologize to Mr. Fujiyama one more time.
So I report to Sunnyside, but Mr. Fujiyama isn’t there. A message is scribbled on the whiteboard reading, Fujiyama off today, which depresses me even further.
Nobody else at Sunnyside—neither Nami, her coworkers, nor the day’s group of clients—has heard about the record yet, it seems. They are all as cheerful as usual, saying hello to me like they always do, but they can tell right away that I’m depressed. “What’s wrong?” they all ask, worried about me, but I can’t tell them about the record. I guess they understand that because nobody pries too much…
…Cherry included. He doesn’t say anything, and I am too embarrassed to speak up. I don’t even thank him for taking me home yesterday. Even during our Daruma Ondo dance rehearsal, we seem distant from each other, somehow. Time seems to slow to a crawl.
“Okay, everyone, the show begins on the roof at seven PM tomorrow!”
“Don’t forget your yukata!”
It’s just before five in the afternoon when Nami and Akiko give us that final reminder. My shift for today is almost over, and so is Cherry’s.
“Cherry?”
I call out to him as he is cleaning up. He jerks up a bit, startled, and turns around. I turn my head, avoiding eye contact, but as I do, I see he is wearing his headphones around his neck.
“Um…” I have to work hard to squeeze my voice out. “Can you…join me after this? I want to…like, really apologize to Mr. Fujiyama one more time…”
“Oh… Sure. Of course…”
Cherry’s voice is as soft as mine.
“Thanks…”
I need to thank Cherry for yesterday. I have to apologize for breaking the record… I have to say all of that. But…I can’t find my voice. I’m afraid if I put my feelings into words, I’ll be admitting that the events of yesterday really did happen. It’s scary. And yeah, they did happen, but I’m scared to admit it. That is the feeling that fills my heart right now.
“Um…”
I hear Cherry’s mumbled voice through the invisible barrier of air between him and me. I look up a little, bringing my gaze up to around his midsection. Just like me, he is wearing a name tag written for him by Nami. The word Cherry wavers in the air. Cherry himself is silent, but Cherry on his tag keeps on wobbling around.
“Actually, I wanted to—”
“Hello!”
An unfamiliar, cheerful voice drowns out Cherry’s. It comes from the entrance.
From where I am in the staff space, I can see the woman from the other side of the partition. Cherry, his back to the entrance, turns around and looks at her.
“Oh! Maria! It’s been forever!”
Nami approaches the woman, a cheerful smile on her face.
“Hi,” the woman says, waving. Akiko and our senior clients gather around her, everyone chatting with a smile on their face.
“How’s your back? Feeling better now?” Ms. Tanaka gets up from her desk and walks right past me and Cherry to see the visitor.
The woman rubs her lower back. “Yes, thank you,” she says with a smile. Everyone at Sunnyside is in front of the entrance now, except for me and Cherry.
“Cherry did a great job subbing in for you, Maria.”
“Oh, yes! He was such a great help!”
Nami and Akiko are all smiles. “Was he?” Maria replies with a grin. “That’s good. I was a little worried…”
It seems like everyone knows her…but Cherry was subbing for her?
“…Who is she?”
I look at Cherry. He is slumped over, a pained look on his face. He blinks a few times, then he forces the words out.
“…My mom.”
What do you mean? Your mother? She’s replacing you? No, no. Cherry is subbing for her… Wait, what? Why?
“Thanks,” Maria says as she bows, “for treating my son so well.” Everyone around her bows politely in response.
“Not at all. And thanks for all of your hard work up to now, Mrs. Sakura.”
Ms. Tanaka looks back at Cherry and slowly bows.
“Yeah, great job!” chimes in Nami.
“I wish,” Akiko adds, “we could’ve done the Daruma Ondo dance together tomorrow…”
“Sorry about that! My husband’s job, you know… And sorry to you, too, Yui.”
Nami, Akiko, Maria… They are all talking to Cherry, even his own mother, and he keeps staring silently at the floor.
And all I can do is stare at him.
The frogs’ croaking in the rice paddies seems louder than ever before to me that evening… Or maybe not. It’s more because Cherry and I have remained totally silent this whole time.
The ruts slowly drift behind us. Mixed in with the frogs, I can hear our footsteps—trudge, trudge, trudge. A very slow tempo.
“…I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about…the move.”
“…When did you know?”
“…When…summer break started.”
“…What about the fireworks?”
Our footsteps stop at the same time.
The frogs. The rice plants swaying around, scraping against one another. The irrigation canal. The cars on the main road. The wind.
Then my voice, lost in the mask. “I asked…if we could watch them together…”
“…I’m sorry.”
Cherry’s voice is the quietest I have ever heard it, but it reaches me. For some reason, I remember the sound of the record shattering, the feel of the shards peeling off my hand.
“…Oh.”
My cheeks hurt from the mask rubbing against them as I speak. My ears hurt, too. The braces are clamped down on my front teeth, making them ache.
It hurts. Everything hurts. It hurts to be without him. I want to be with him. I just want to be with him. That’s all.
“Well…good luck.”
Trudge, trudge, trudge. My pace increases. His, I can’t even hear. There is the sound of croaking… No, of crying. He’s crying, and the sound is growing softer and softer.
It hurts. It hurts to be without him. I want that to stop.
I’m not sure how I make it there. The next thing I know, I am walking down the street where Mr. Fujiyama’s record store is. The streetlights come and go, my shadow swinging back and forth with them. It is so painful to say good-bye to Cherry, I almost can’t think about anything else—but I know I have to apologize to Mr. Fujiyama.
There is a small figure in front of the store. It is too dark to tell who it is at first, but as I slowly approach, I recognize the cotton-ball hair of Mr. Fujiyama. He is a little ways in front of the store, looking upward. I follow his gaze and see that he is looking at the roof. That’s where I looked, too, the first time I came here. There used to be that sign, the mountain with FUJIYAMA RECORDS written on it, but now there’s nothing. It makes me stop in my tracks. Of course, it’d be gone. They shut down the store.
I look at Mr. Fujiyama again. The way he is quietly staring where the sign used to be… He must be in a lot of pain. I really did something terrible to him. My chest hurts. The record, saying good-bye to Cherry… It all hurts. Sakura’s smiling face, all broken and scattered across the tatami mat, flashes in my mind. The record is broken. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t have tried to bend it back in place, but I can’t. I can’t unbreak it. When things fall apart, all you can do is leave. Parting is the only way…even if you want to be with them. You’ve got to separate.
But I want to stay. I want to be with him. I want to—wait. Suddenly, I recall something. I don’t know if it’ll work out. But I want to give it a shot.
“Mr. Fujiyama?”
He slowly turns his head toward me.
“Can I borrow that record, please?”
I apologize to Mr. Fujiyama, then tell him about the idea I had. He smiles and lends me the broken record, along with the jacket. I take it home with me, taking great care not to lose a single fragment.
Now all the pieces are lined up on the desk in our common space. Next to them is superglue I borrowed from Dad. I will put all the pieces back together, reconstructing Sakura’s smiling face, and then we can listen to it. That was my idea.
I want Mr. Fujiyama to hear Sakura’s voice. That desire is still as strong as ever. But I also have this impossible hope that if I can restore this record, maybe that’ll also mend my relationship with Cherry, somehow. I know it’s an impossible hope. I know Cherry is moving away. But…
…For now, fixing the record comes first. It’s the only thing I can do.
The pieces are scattered like broken glass, but the smallest one is only about the size of my pinkie. If I follow the shape like a puzzle, it is bound to become a perfect circle again—and in an added stroke of luck, the warping on the pieces makes it easier to identify which one goes where. Thanks to that, every piece is aligned correctly in just about an hour’s time.
From there, I use superglue to reattach the pieces. Back when I was a kid, we did this stream once where we glued one of Dad’s model kits back together after Marie broke it. Julie bawled her eyes out after getting the glue in her hair.
I pick up one of the pieces. I figured a record would be really thick because of how solid it is, but it’s actually pretty thin—about as thin as a ruler. I have to be careful about how much glue I put on because otherwise some glue will ooze out and go all over the place. After applying the glue, I place the pieces next to one another, aligning their sides. Then I wait patiently. Even with superglue, you have to hold them in place for about twenty seconds—which shouldn’t feel nearly as long as it does to me right now.
After a little while, I slowly remove one of my hands… Okay. They’re attached! Now to put the rest of the record together! I have a lot of pieces, so I knew it’d be a challenge, but I am gonna have it done by tomorrow so Mr. Fujiyama can listen to it.
Now to apply glue to the next piece. Not too much…