Plate 4:
Soba
Scene 1
THE MEMORY still haunted Toi’s dreams. The memory of a winter four years ago, before he left Asakusa. The hollow sound of a gun firing, a flash of light, then the cloying stench of gunpowder and the vibrant color red. The air was bone-chillingly frigid outside, and yet the thing in his hand felt even colder.
“In this world, it’s only the bad people who survive.”
The expression on his older brother’s face was seared into Toi’s mind, unforgettable.
Scene 2
“GOOD MORNING! ✩ Every day is happy! And with your lucky selfie, you’ll have even more happiness on your plate! It’s me, Azuma Sara, dish! ✩” Sara’s dreamy voice came drifting out of the living room TV.
“Good morning! ✩ It’s me, Harukappa, dish!” Haruka called back, waving to the TV.
“Tomorrow is finally the day, Haruka,” called his mother.
“Yeah!”
“Enta-kun is coming as well, isn’t he?” asked the boy’s father.
“That’s right! I can’t wait!” Haruka’s cheerful voice echoed throughout the Yasaka home.
After a deep breath, Kazuki slid the living room door open. He was immediately greeted by Haruka’s smile as the boy sat atop his wheelchair.
“Kazu-chan, morning!”
Their father, a designer, had renovated every corner of their house with keen attention to detail. All the steps that might impede a wheelchair were removed, and the toilet and bath areas were widened. He installed new doors that slid aside rather
than swung open. Handrails decorated the walls across the house, so that Haruka could eventually use them for balance once he was able to get back on his feet again.
Kazuki turned his eyes away from all of that as he stood there, waiting.
It was routine for Haruka’s father to accompany his younger son to the promenade and then back home again so Haruka could feed Nyantaro. And, like always, he took a seat on the terrace of a nearby coffee shop, sipping his drink while he waited for Haruka to finish. Kazuki knew that this was his father’s way of giving his sons some space to talk… but he never knew how to take advantage of it. He slumped back against the embankment wall, smartphone in hand as he checked on today’s lucky selfie horoscope.
“Now then, what will today’s lucky selfie item be?” On the screen, Sara stopped the spinning roulette wheel and said, “So-bang! It’s soba, dish! ✩”
“Soba, huh…” Kazuki mumbled to himself. Fortunately, there was no shortage of soba restaurants in Asakusa. Instant cup soba could just as easily work, too.
Just as Kazuki was making these plans, an incredible piece of news suddenly drifted to his ears.
“And finally, an important announcement! Tomorrow in Asakusa, I’ll be at a meet-and-greet event, dish! ✩ That’s right, you’ll be able to shake my hand, dish! ✩ I hope you’ll all come to see me~! ✩”
“What?!” Kazuki shrieked.
“Hey, Kazu-chan, this means tomorrow I’ll be able to meet Sara-chan!” said Haruka. “Isn’t that amazing?”
“Wait, don’t tell me…you mean the handshake event?”
“That’s right! I’m kind of nervous since it’ll be my first time meeting her in real life!”
Sara droned on from his phone, “Okay then, have a wonderful day, and may lots of luck be dished your way!”
If you took Asakusa’s Orange Street into the Tanuki Shopping District, one of the first places you’d see was a soba restaurant called Sobakyuu. The place had a solid reputation, with regulars constantly bustling in and out. Despite that, few people remembered the old store before its current ownership took over.
Toi currently lay in the apartment above the restaurant, on the phone with his brother. It was a tatami room, six straw mats in size. Cardboard boxes were stacked around the room and left sealed, the same way they’d been since Toi’s return.
Toi could hear both his brother’s voice and the slosh of water through the receiver. He didn’t need to ask to know what his brother was doing. Not after all these years.
“Yeah, nothing much to report on my end,” he said. “How about you?”
“Same old, same old,” answered Chikai. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Okay…”
“How’s your new school? Made some friends?”
“I don’t need friends. We’re going to blow this place eventually anyway,” said Toi.
“C’mon, don’t say that. How’s our aunt and uncle? They’re looking after you, right?”
Toi huffed. “Who cares about them?”
“Are they saying nasty things to you because of me? Sorry ’bout that.”
“I don’t care what they say to me! You’re the one who protected this store, so how can they—”
“It’s fine,” Chikai said, cutting him off. “That’s between you and me. A secret we’re gonna keep for life.”
“I know. You protected this place, so that’s why I decided I’d wait here for you.”
As he lay on his back, surrounded by the thick smell of tatami, Toi twirled the gun in his hand. The same gun that upended his older brother’s life just four years ago. To Toi, the gun felt like the embodiment of a curse. He kept it with him all the time. That way, even if the two of them were apart, he could still feel like they were connected, like he shared the weight of his brother’s sins. The weight of it kept him grounded, the mercilessly cold steel of it a reminder that he would never be forgiven for what he’d done.
“I’ve got good news. I should be able to drop by and see you soon,” said Chikai.
Toi launched himself up off the floor. “Seriously?! So, I can go with you next time, then?!”
“Hmm, I don’t know, can you?”
“We promised, right? That once everything was settled, the two of us would live together. I don’t want to be apart anymore.”
“I feel the same way, you know. I feel so bad that I couldn’t be with you more.”
A knock sounded, and Toi slipped his gun in behind his belt. He knew they would never open the door, but it never hurt to be careful. The frightened voice of his aunt drifted in through the thin paper of the sliding door. “Toi-chan? A boy is here to see you, says he’s your friend.”
A friend?
He had no clue who that could be… Okay, no, he did know who it could be, he just loathed trouble.
Toi walked down the steps in a foul mood. When he got to the bottom, he locked eyes with his uncle, who was busy prepping for the restaurant’s opening. He deliberately averted his gaze and headed out the front door.
His aunt’s worried voice chased after him. “You stay out so late every night, where are you going? You’re not doing anything dangerous, are you?”
“Not like he’s going to listen to you! He’s too stubborn to cut ties with that murdering bastard of a brother, after all!” For better or worse, Toi’s uncle was an honest man, and he didn’t mince words.
Toi didn’t want to listen to their jabbering any further, so he slammed the door shut behind him. The name of this place hadn’t changed, but everything else had, ever since the incident. The flavor of the soba, Chikai, and even Toi himself.
“So it’s you…” He suspected as much, but it irked him to be right.
“J-just so we’re clear, I only lied and said we were friends so I could call you out here, okay?!” Enta stood in front of him, still clad in his practice uniform.
“Yeah, whatever.”
Enta considerately led them away from his family’s restaurant and to an empty lot to talk, but he had no compunction about broaching the very topic Toi would have rather left untouched. “Oh, and I didn’t know your family ran a soba restaurant! My family eats Sobakyuu for New Year’s every year. The soba at your place is really good!” Enta made a big display of bouncing his soccer ball around, juggling it with his feet as he spoke.
It left Toi dumbfounded. “Glad to hear it,” he said dryly.