Chapter Text
☽
None of the dresses in the local wedding shop were anything that Sawako would actually wear. One of them was too big—with great quantities of sparkling white fabric on wide hoops, and she felt awkward trying it out, knowing that she would be constantly aware of how much space she would be taking in it. The other was too revealing, with a very low collar made to highlight the breasts. The shop assistant, with a kind smile, suggested putting something into her bra to make the dress do its job; it was Chizuru who almost ripped the dress off Sawako after hearing this. The third one was too short, the fourth one was too sophisticated, the fifth one was too white, and in the end, she was too tired to keep looking even for Chizuru’s sake. She just wanted a wedding dress she would feel pretty in on what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life—why did it have to be so difficult?
Chizuru bought them both cold tea after they’d left the shop with nothing—she insisted on treating her, she said, because it had been she who’d brought Sawako to the shop in the first place—and now they are sitting on the bench next to the first wending machine they could find. The sun was almost scorching these days and Sawako regretted not wearing something on her head.
“Don’t be sad, Sawa,” Chizuru says. “I’ll find you the perfect dress.”
Sawako does feel sad, in fact, but not because of the dresses. “You still don’t have to do it, Chizu-chan,” she says.
Chizuru laughs and gives Sawako’s back such a big slap that she almost drops her tea bottle. “Chill out, Sawako! What else a maid of honor is there for?”
“But you’ve already taken up so much—”
“Yeah, because I don’t want you to worry. It’s my job to worry about your wedding. Your job is to be happy and enjoy your lovey-dovey paradise with Kazehaya. Where are your manners, by the way?” Chizuru adds, raising her voice in her specific Chizuru-style, when Sawako is about to object. “You used to thank everyone for every little thing they do. This is the situation where it’s finally relevant. Just say thank you and stop overthinking.”
“Thank you,” Sawako says, smiling.
“That’s a girl,” Chizuru says, her voice becoming kinder, and tousles her hair.
Sawako was surprised when Chizuru offered to help with the dress—this was the part of the preparation she had been dreading the most. The invitations, the negotiations about the venue, composing a playlist that must, inevitably, include everyone’s favorite songs, planning the sitting arrangement so that everyone would end up together with their friends—this she can handle and is actually enjoying, much to the amazement of Shota, who felt faint at the mere thought about everything that needed to be organized. But the dress turned out to be a task she genuinely feared, despite all her love for dresses. Buying a wedding dress was not the same as buying a sundress; it meant trying out massive amounts of expensive fabric, feeling too much responsibility because you needed to buy the one that suited you perfectly, and fighting off the shop assistants determined not to let you out unless they sell you something. It had never entered Sawako’s mind to ask someone to accompany her, because, she felt, this was supposed to be her problem—organization concerned everyone, but her dress concerned no one but her. So when Chizuru offered her help, Sawako was surprised—but relieved.
Ayane laughed when she heard about it—No way! Chizu is helping with the dress!—but Chizuru is doing well. She tries to choose dresses that Sawako might like, and though none of them has really suited her yet, Sawako still appreciates that. She appreciates the support itself—the fact that Chizuru willingly spends time helping her with this, even though she already has a lot of things to do. And surely, she appreciates Chizuru’s ability to efficiently fight off the shop assistants.
She wants to add something else to that—some better expression of gratitude, some apology for the trouble she’s been causing, but then turns and sees Chizuru sitting with her eyes closed, pressing the tea bottle to her forehead.
“Are you okay, Chizu-chan?”
Chizuru opens her eyes immediately and raises her head. “Oh—yeah, yeah. It’s just really hot today.”
“Do you want me to walk you home?”
“No, no, no,” Chizuru laughs. “You’ll only make a big circle. Kazehaya will eat me alive if he finds out I dragged you all the way down there in this heat.”
“But—”
“Sawako, I’m really fine. It was just a moment. I feel better now.” She gets up and takes a deep breath, then exhales. “See? I really feel better.”
And she visibly does, Sawako has to admit. Maybe she overreacted.
Chizuru wipes the sweat off her forehead and exhales again. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go find some ice cream.”
“I’ll buy you an ice cream!” Sawako blurts immediately, jumping to her feet.
Chiruzu laughs. “Now we’re talking!” she says. And the two of them walk deeper into the heat.
☽
Shota is finishing cooking dinner when Sawako comes home. First he hears the gentle click of the front door, then the I’m home! in her breathy voice. Smiling, he turns the stove off and hurries to meet her.
“Welcome home,” he says, watching her put her shoes down and raise with a heavy sigh. A hand is offered and taken, and now he’s holding her in his arms, feeling almost all her weight leaning onto him. “Tired?” he asks.
“Mm,” she murmurs.
I knew it was a bad idea for you two to walk around today, he thinks, putting his palm on the top of Sawako's head before pushing her away, softly. “Okay. Go change and take some rest now.”
“But the dinner—”
“It’s ready.”
It’s only now that the smell from the kitchen seems to have reached her. He can’t help laughing when he sees the realization on her face, and he reaches to wipe off some beads of sweat away from her forehead. She smiles, like she always does when she’s full of gratitude, nods, places a kiss on his lips, and walks over to the bedroom.
In the meantime, Shota prepares the space.
He puts the dinner on the little table that somehow marks the transition between the kitchen and the living room, arranging the plates on the surface the best he can. Then he goes over to the fan they keep in the living room next to the couch and turns it to face the table, switching on the rotation mode. All those little things that used to be boring, at best, when he did them for himself alone or for his messy—no matter how beloved—family, turn into a pleasant ritual when he does it for his and Sawako’s comfort. Sawako thinks she is the one who is making home for them both, and he knows she enjoys it, but he also wants to make home for her, even if this work remains unnoticed.
Then he sighs.
The closer their wedding is, the more he becomes conscious of the fact that this apartment, something that was supposed to be temporary, has remained with them for much too long. Having moved there shortly after Sawako had returned home for good, Shota treated it as a liminal space, something to host them until they have enough money to buy their real home. There are a lot of details that seemed romantic at first in their strict cheapness, which have now started to annoy him as the feeling of responsibility has started to build up. The fan, among other things, too little to really have some effect unless you sit close to it; the kitchen too small for Sawako to accommodate everything she needs, not enough space for her to move about, which he also started to feel when he started to cook more; the bedroom not big enough for everything they both want and need to keep in it, which results in its constant look of chaos no matter how they try to keep it tidy, with CDs here and books there that have piled over the years.
He was too naïve about this apartment.
But those are the thoughts that can be postponed, apparently, because when Sawako walks out of the bedroom thirty minutes later, in her home t-shirt and shorts, looking a bit refreshed and happier, his anxiety retreats.
“How was your day with Yoshida, anyway?” he asks, when they are finally sitting at the table. He still can’t stop calling her Yoshida.
“Good,” she says, smiling. “We were shopping. It was so exhausting, we didn’t find anything. But we ate ice cream after that, so it was worth it.”
“What were you looking for?” he asks innocently, but Sawako gets visibly awkward and blushes, and he understands that he’s walked in somewhere he hasn’t been supposed to be.
“Well—You know—” she murmurs. “Some clothes—”
“Right,” he says.
They eat in silence for a while, and he reaches to scratch the back of his neck, feeling the damp skin and hair under his fingers. The fan isn’t really helping, and now that he’s realized that Sawako has spent all day searching for something for the wedding, it worsened the situation.
That was the second thing about the wedding: after the first shock and euphoria have passed, he got a little timid. Everything that has got familiar and natural after years of their relationship was suddenly new: it felt as if he was that stupid high schooler again, not knowing how to react to the fact that the girl he’s been having a big crush on since the day they met was now his girlfriend, and he was happy and nervous and scared at the same time, so desperate to get closer and closer but trembling in every case of proximity. Now every time he looks at Sawako, he thinks, This girl will be my wife soon, and he can’t believe it: such a wonderful creature has somehow found her way into his life, into his arms, and, very soon, their names will be written one after the other in the same legal document. It’s crazy, and so intimate.
And of course, the wedding dress: he’s sure Sawako and Yoshida were trying to look for one today. No matter how many times he has been imagining Sawako in a wedding dress—the dress itself an abstract thing in his mind, more a white cloud than something detailed or even physical—he still gets nervous when he realizes that he really is going to see her wearing it, and that he will be the reason she’ll wear it.
“Chizu-chan wasn’t feeling well,” Sawako breaks the silence, out of the blue.
“You two have spent the whole day in the heat,” he says. “You also didn’t look alright when you came.”
She shakes her head. “She’s always been tougher than Ayane-chan or me. I’ve never seen her like that.”
Probably has something to do with staying inside all day, making ramen, he thinks, but seeing Sawako’s genuinely worried face, decided not to put it like that. Instead, he reaches out over the table and touches her hand.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Yoshida. She works too much, I think. Maybe she just needs a vacation.”
“Maybe,” Sawako says, not comforted. She smiles, however, and her eyes warm up when she looks at him. He doesn’t know how, but somehow he always manages to push the right buttons to make her feel a little better, and he’s grateful for whatever higher power that granted him this ability.
After dinner, she wants to wash the dishes, of course; he declines, sending her to the couch to rest, and she gives up after a few attempts to resist. From where he’s standing in front of the sink, he’s still able to watch the TV with her, and suddenly he imagines the exact same scene many decades later, when they’re both grey-haired and wrinkled and a little wider and shorter than now, and he’s washing the dishes while she’s resting on the couch, tired after spending hours in her garden. The scene is so clear and so real in his head, and at this moment he is sure that it’s bound to happen someday.
A garden, he thinks. He must give her a house with a real garden.
Their sides don’t touch when he sits down next to her—not before turning the fan around to face them. The movie they’re watching is not something great or interesting; it’s the act of watching something together that makes it worthwhile. No matter what this cheap little box shows, he could sit and stare into it for ages as long as Sawako is by his side, calm and amused.
Then he accidentally brushes his fingers against her bare thigh, and it’s done: he can’t concentrate on the movie anymore.
There hasn’t been any intimacy for a couple of weeks—the heatwave rides out any desire to come into physical contact with anything warmer than fifteen degrees. They have been finding elaborate ways to still caress each other when sleeping: head to head, head touching shoulder, fingers crossed, feet brushing; if they ever came closer than that, they might set the building on fire, not in a good way. But right now, he suddenly doesn’t care. Let everything burn—he needs to touch her.
He removes the fingers, replacing them with his hand on her thigh, hot and firm.
She tenses, but he knows it’s not out of reluctance. His face is already turned to hers when she looks up, eyes questioning and cheeks flushed.
“But,” she starts as he leans closer, “it’s hot.”
“I don’t care,” he says. “Do you?”
She shakes her head. And then—as if stamping a seal under a signature: “No.”
☽
The school is quieter in summer. Even though the children are still around for summer classes, there are less of them—only those who are doing poorly, or those who, like her in the past, like studying, or those who, also like her, have volunteered to help the teachers. The hallways are still, like they get sometimes in the evening during the semester when all the classes are over, and the outside is filled less with the shouts and laughter and more with the creaking of cicadas and the songs of birds. Even during heatwaves, Sawako likes summer: the heat, somehow, brings out the best smells of it: the grass, the leaves, the flowers.
It suddenly strikes Sawako that this year is the first time she’s able to enjoy this since ages ago. When she was lonely, she always noted such things around her; each season was filled with little joys of its own. This ability wasn’t lost, but went dormant, sort of, when high school started and her life became more interesting, more populated. But with new people came the rollercoaster of emotions previously unknown. The challenges her relationship with Shota faced were the main thing on her mind, and when she wasn’t thinking about him, she was constantly occupied with her friends’ troubles, their struggling with their own romances, their future and the way they were feeling about themselves. She always had to be somewhere, worrying about something—and it was good, it was filled with meaning, but the world around her became dimmer, a mere background against which all the drama unveiled.
Now, everything is fine. Her friends have found the niches they belonged to and are now more certain about life. Her relationship was not a source of worries anymore; it became the pillar she can lean onto when life gets temporarily unstable. Right now, even if she and Shota have disagreements, she knows they are mere inconveniences: they now know each other like they know themselves and know how to talk things over so that, in the end, they never go to bed with words unsaid between them. Her certainty in him and in her friends is growing stronger and stronger as time passes, and she is calm and content. Life is beautiful, and no troubles can throw a shadow on its beauty. She is happy, and no tears can diminish or undermine that.
And in response, the world has appeared to her again in its whole grace, just like back then, when the world, in her loneliness, was one of her few consolations. The difference is that right now, the world seems an even more wonderful place to live in.
When she was lonely—oh, this time now seems so far away, as if it belonged to someone else’s life.
Thinking about all this, she doesn’t notice how her feet bring her to the flower beds that used to be hers back in time. They have been taken care of properly since she graduated, and she was thankful for all the people who have tended to them. Right now, it’s a girl from her own class, Hirai Kiyomi, who is responsible for them. Kiyomi is here now, watering the plants, and seems to be deep in her thoughts. Sawako tries to make her voice as gentle as possible when she calls her, but Kiyomi still starts.
“I’m sorry, Hirai-san,” Sawako says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
But Kiyomi warms up quickly, and in a couple of seconds, a smile is shining on her face as warm as the air around them.
“It’s alright, Kuronuma-sensei! I shouldn’t be so absent-minded.”
It’s actually the plants that have brought them close. After Kiyomi volunteered to take care of them, she came up to her after classes and asked if she was the one who had been responsible for the beds in her own time. Everyone knows this, Kiyomi said. Everyone talks about Kuronuma-sensei’s healing herbs. This is how Sawako learned that the plants—her plants—were still around, thriving thanks to the caring hands of many students who looked after them after she had been taken away from them. Kiyomi led her there and showed her, and when Sawako saw that they had even kept her signs and made new ones for the new plants that had been added, she burst into tears. Very unprofessional, Kuronuma, Pin said later because she couldn’t help telling him about the incident—but she had a feeling that he wasn’t really scolding her.
After this, Kiyomi became sort of special to her. She felt guilty, of course—she wasn’t intending to have any pets, but then again, weren’t she and the others special to Pin as well? Pin shouldn’t have treated them differently from other students, whatever the history between him and Shota and Ryu and Chizuru was—but he did, and she was grateful. This was another connection that made her high school years so significant, a connection, too, that still remains meaningful and valuable.
Kiyomi talks about the plants, and Sawako listens, but she can’t help noticing that there is something behind the girl’s speech that she doesn’t like. Usually, Kiyomi talks to her with excitement, but now her voice is dull, as if her words conceal some discomfort.
“Hirai-san,” Sawako interrupts, and Kiyomi falls silent at once. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have cut you off like that. But I just can’t help thinking—Don’t get me wrong, please, but you do seem absent-minded. Besides—Your grades have dropped.”
Here, Kiyomi looks away, her expression getting darker.
“I’m not scolding you!” Sawako adds quickly. “It’s just— Do you have any problem I might be able to help with? Or perhaps—Perhaps I know someone who could help?”
A tricky field to enter as a teacher, but Sawako decides to risk it, because, in fact, Kiyomi reminds her too much of herself at that age. Not anywhere close in appearances—Kiyomi’s short hair and short skirts are something that Sawako has never thought to wear even in a hypothetical parallel universe, as well as the two distinct markings above and below her right brow, indicating the piercing that is most likely worn anywhere but at school; but as far as the personality goes, Sawako feels a kindred spirit. A little timid, a little uncertain, but, thankfully, surrounded by loyal friends who genuinely love her; and, most of all, a tender soul that craves the presence of another. Such things couldn’t have been lost on Sawako.
Kiyomi blushes, still looking away. “I do have a problem,” she says quietly. “But I can deal with it myself. Thank you, Kuronuma-sensei. It’s nice when someone you respect offers you help.”
Now it’s Sawako’s turn to get embarrassed. “Hirai-san—”
“No, really, Kuronuma-sensei. Thank you a lot, but I’ll manage. I promise.”
Sawako opens her mouth again, but at that second, her cell phone rings. She pulls it out of her purse to see Chizuru’s name on the screen.
“Oh— I’m sorry, Hirai-san, I need to take it. But if you ever—”
“Sorry I bothered you, Kuronuma-sensei!” Kiyomi says hurriedly, bows, and runs past her toward the school entrance, leaving Sawako no chance but to answer the phone.
“Chizu-chan,” she says. “Is everything okay?”
“Sawako!” Chizuru shouts from the dynamic so loudly that it hurts. “This is urgent. Are your classes over?”
“Yes, but—”
“I need you to come quickly. Meet me by our café in thirty minutes, okay?”
“Chizu-chan, are you alright?”
“Just come, okay? This is a life-or-death situation.”
In the back of her mind, as she hurries toward the school gates, she decides that she will definitely try to talk to Kiyomi again later.
She almost sprints to the meeting spot, and somewhere in the middle of the way, her breath is completely knocked out. She’s a good runner when it comes to exercising, when it’s even, methodic, with her breathing controlled; but now, she can’t concentrate on any part of her body, or her body in general. She knows how fast she can be, knows how her speed has helped everyone during countless sports competitions, but right now, even at her maximum speed, she feels very slow.
Chizuru is waiting next to the café with her arms crossed, looking somewhere in the distance—too calm for a person in trouble. Still, Sawako makes the last effort to reach her as quickly as possible.
“Chizu-chan,” she exhales, stopping in front of her. At the same moment, she drops her purse and bends down, her hands on her knees.
“Hey, Sawa!” Chizuru greets happily, then laughs, hitting her shoulder. “Why were you running?”
“You said—” Sawako starts, but the uncontrollable breathing cuts her off. She tries again. “You said it was—a life or death situation.”
“Yeah—Wait, you thought there was something wrong?”
“Yes,” Sawako breathes, looking up. Chizuru’s face changes, her smile disappears, and her eyes turn wet in no time.
“Oh god, Sawako,” she moans, squatting down next to her. “I’m so sorry—I should’ve explained better. You’re so sweet—”
“It’s alright, Chizu-chan,” Sawako jabbers. “It’ alright. I’m glad you’re okay. I’m really glad.”
Chizuru takes a moment to wipe the tears. By this time, Sawako’s breathing has started to even out, and she stands up, giving Chizuru her hand to help her get up, too.
“If there isn’t any trouble, what did you need me to come so urgently for?” she asks, trying to make her voice softer.
Chizuru brightens up immediately. “I found gold. A treasure.”
The treasure turns out to be placed two buildings away from the café, in the depth of a regular clothing shop, among rows and piles of everyday clothes—a dress. Dusty pink, long, no hoops, modest cleavage. It looks breezy, almost weightless. She reaches out to touch it, as if to make sure that it’s really made of fabric and not some sort of gas. The fabric is soft and cool. She fingers the back of the dress for the price tag—it’s more expensive than other clothes in the shop, but not as expensive as all those dresses in wedding shops that make her feel like an alien.
“Chizu-chan—”
“Okay, I know it’s not really fancy,” Chizuru interrupts, scratching her neck. “But—I was just walking around the shop looking for some clothes, and accidentally saw it, and—it’s just you, Sawako, you know? I can see you in it. It looks like it was made just for you. Well, at least that’s what I thought, so I decided to call you because this seems to be the last one and it’s—um—isn’t it your size?”
Sawako takes another look at the tag. This is, in fact, precisely her size.
“Chizu-chan,” she murmurs again, not really sure what exactly she wants to say.
“You don’t like it, right?” Chizuru smiles, not really managing to hide the disappointment. “I knew that. I’m not really good at this. Well, at least I tri—”
“No!” Sawako blurts, grabbing the pink fabric. “I mean—I do! I like it very much! It’s just—I didn’t know what to say. It’s really me. You’re right. You know me so well, Chizu-chan. You all—you all know me so well.”
Chizuru sighs, relieved, then laughs. “Well then, I’m glad! Come on, try it on. I wanna see what a genius I am. I did well, right? Right?”
“Right!” Sawako laughs, hanging the dress over her arm, and thinks she has never felt such big relief in her life.
☽
In the middle of helping his father put on new goods on the counters, Shota realizes he has never asked his parents about how they got the house.
There were stories, of course—about how their house used to be like when they had just moved in, about how the idea of the shop had been born, and about how the shop, having started from a small initiative, had grown into one of the best sportswear shops in the area, and how the living part of the house had been changing as he and his brother came to the world and grew older; but never the practical stuff. It was also when we bought the house, but never how much it cost, never how much money they had at the time, never whether they bought it themselves or with someone’s help. Practical stuff is something his father has always preferred to keep to himself—this was for the adults, not something Shota and his brother needed to think about instead of studying and training.
“What?” his father suddenly asks. “What’s with those sneakers?”
This is when he notices he has been staring at a pair of sneakers in his hands for a while. “Nothing,” he says, quickly placing them where they’re supposed to be. “Just got lost in thought.”
“What about?”
“Nothing.”
The What about sounded unfriendly, even aggressive, but Shota has got used to it. It’s impossible to teach an old dog new tricks, it seems, and his father has lost the ability to be gentle with decades—except, maybe, with his wife. Between his parents, Shota knew, there still remains some kind of tenderness—at least it seems like tenderness, with his father speaking quietly and his face looking untroubled and even younger than usual; but to everyone else, including his kids, and even especially to his kids, his father shows the same face: stern, and always disapproving. Even when their relationship got better, Shota didn’t hope that his father would somehow turn back into the guy he saw in the pictures from the old family albums—still serious, but much kinder, much livelier.
But Shota has learned to know the difference between many kinds of his father’s sternness, and this What about, he knows, was not intended to be unfriendly. It was just that, even when his father is genuinely interested in what’s happening inside his adult, working, soon-to-be-married son’s head, he still can’t make himself sound softer. It’s even funny, in an odd way.
“If you have any questions about the wedding, it’s better to ask me now,” his father says, not looking at him. “Mine was a hundred years ago, but I have a perfect memory, you know.”
Shota knows—those infamous massage coupons were a solid proof.
“It’s not really about the wedding, but— How did you buy the house?”
He blurts it, and his father is visibly surprised—Shota feels, rather than sees, a barely noticeable pause in his movements. He braces himself for a curt reply.
“For money,” his father simply says.
“Your own?”
“Yes.” He pauses, drawing a boxcutter through sealing tape with one quick movement. “Your grandparents helped, from both sides. I paid them back in the next couple of years, when the shop started to bring profit.”
“I see.”
Another pause. This time, Shota feels that his father is side-eyeing him. “What’s that? Why are you interested in it all of a sudden?”
“Because I’m getting married,” he says. “I want my own house.”
“Why? Is Sawako pregnant?”
He almost chokes on his own saliva. “No,” he mutters. “Nothing like that.”
“Are you planning children in the near future?”
“No! Why can’t I just want my own house?”
Why do such questions always come from fathers? He remembers those words Sawako’s father casually slipped while they were talking shortly before the proposal. You will understand, when you have your own kids. Will he also drop comments like this, twenty years later, to his children and his children’s future spouses?
You will understand, when you have your own kids. Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“I’m glad,” his father finally says. “You don’t need an obligation to want to make your wife comfortable.” Your wife. “That’s good,” he continues. “Even though you were an idiot as a teenager, we have raised you well, apparently. Well, at least your mother did.”
“You both did,” Shota says, taking the boxcutter from him.
“We were lucky, of course,” his father says, changing the topic back. “Your grandparents got some inheritance money not long before our wedding—not much, but it was a decent amount. Your mother and I don’t have such luxury. Not that I regret it, of course—inheritance is always sad money. You will have to do your best to make a home for Sawako in your rented apartment.”
“I can take a loan.”
“As a twenty-three years old high school coach?” his father says, his old unfriendliness returning. “Don’t be naïve.”
As he rides home, to that same rented apartment, small and sad, where he will be supposed to make a home for his wife for the next few years, Shota realizes he doesn’t feel too much disappointed. His father made it clear that, despite the difficulties, he won’t help them. But it doesn’t deny the fact that his father loves Sawako, and in this brisk, short conversation, this love was shining like a July sun.
And this is, as always, enough.