Summer Haikus – Chapter 13

Masa and I divide up the work at the ryokan, and after two weeks, we have a routine. The morning train to Kichijōji from Tokyo Station leaves every five minutes and takes thirty-three minutes to arrive. I meet him at the station between 09:00 and 09:15 with a coffee for each of us. During our morning coffee, Masa fills me in on the crazy Japanese TV show he watched the night before when he returned to his dad’s apartment in Akasaka or the video game he played while drinking Japanese beers. Then we start our daily errands through town.

First up is the bakery, where the ryokan gets its morning pastries. A traditional Japanese breakfast comes with the room (grilled fish, rice, and miso soup), but we keep pastries in the lounge downstairs for those who come and go on early morning walks. The bakery delivers them every morning at 06:30, but I need to speak with the baker almost every day about which ones are being eaten and which are going stale. Personal service is a big deal in Japan, and with the bakery’s menu changing daily, I often have to make choices on the fly based on the tastes of the people staying at the ryokan.

“Your mother always liked the croissants,” the bakery manager says to me, his finger poised over some ridiculous Japanese tablet I’ve never seen before. The technology here leaves my brain whirling on a daily basis.

“The croissants are delicious. I want to add the rolls with the cherries in them, the curry donuts, and those pistachio flaky-things over there.” I wave at Masa chowing down on said roll. He holds it up and smiles. “See? He likes them, and he’s my taste tester.”

“Are you sure about the curry donuts? Foreigners never like them.”

“I’m sure. I saw three people eat them with beer yesterday.”

The manager raises an eyebrow at me.

“Never underestimate the power of alcohol.”

He laughs and slaps me on the shoulder. “Give your mother my best.”

I amble around the bread and pastry shop, edging by other men and women selecting rolls, donuts, or full loaves of bread. Japanese bakeries are like no other bakery on Earth. The sheer array of offerings is staggering. Each bakery must have at least a hundred different kinds of baked goods on any day, and the menus often change. I take photos of things that look good, things I might want to try, and save them into a designated folder on my phone.

“Material for your next YouTube video?” Masa asks, wiping his fingers on a napkin.

I swipe through the photos I’ve taken. “Yeah. Why not? Take some video of me?” I hand him my phone, trying to play cool. I’ve never done any of my videos spontaneously.

“Seriously?” He smiles and grabs my phone, eagerly holding it up and putting me in frame. “Go.”

“You haven’t seen a bakery until you’ve been to Japan. Hot dogs in donuts? Check. Squid in a bun? Check. Pizza with potato and egg on top? Cheku!” Masa smiles as I slip into my Japanese voice, which is significantly cuter and higher-pitched than my English voice. “Pan-ya in Japan showcase a wide variety of bread and baked goods, and none of them are untouched by Japanese ingenuity.”

The manager laughs so I stand next to him.

“Think I can get udon in a bun tomorrow?” I ask him in Japanese. “Noodles in bread. I’ve seen it done.”

“It’s all yours,” he says, widening his arms and nodding at the camera.

Masa turns off my phone and hands it to me, a broad smile on his face.

The fishmonger is harder to deal with.

“I have a list of five things the kitchen staff wants for tomorrow. Almost the same five things as today. Why are there always seven items on the invoice?” I pull the invoice out of my planner and try to read the fish names: eel, salmon, sanma, uni, roe. My understanding of Japanese food kanji is getting better, but I still struggle with my dictionary every afternoon to make sense of the ryokan’s purchased items.

“Your mother always orders these things. Why don’t you know what you’re doing?”

I huff and throw my arms down at my sides. “I’m doing the best I can. I have a list. Why don’t you just give me what’s on the list?”

The old man’s eyes bore through me before he turns and heads to the back door, mumbling words under his breath I don’t catch. Masa’s eyes widen.

“Excuse me?” I yell after him, but he doesn’t return.

“What a crotchety old fart,” Masa says, sipping coffee and peering into the eyes of a dead fish lying on a bed of crushed ice. “What do you think your mom really does?”

“I have no idea. I need to ask her. This is getting out of control. I honestly think he’s trying to put us in debt.”

We both sigh, synchronized.

“What did he say before he left?” I ask Masa, but he just shakes his head. Whatever it was, I wasn’t supposed to hear it.

“Why don’t we call it a morning then? We can save the vegetable market for after lunch.” Masa tosses his coffee cup in a nearby garbage can.

“Fine. Twist my arm.” I hold out my arm to him and he gives it the barest of twists. “Okay, fine,” I dramatically relent. “Let’s go.”

After morning errands, I down a protein shake (it took me a few days to find them in the local convenience stores), leave Masa at my grandparents’ house, and go for a run. I run off everything. I run off the worry over my mom and her recovery. I run off the uncertainty of her new boyfriend, who I’m afraid to get too personal about. I run off the anxiety over Halley and the Olympics. I run off my sexual frustration with Masa. I run off my anger over all the stupid things that happen at the ryokan. I run until there’s nothing left. I don’t like to cry. Instead, I physically exhaust myself until my emotions are so tired, they hibernate. One more day until I can go run with Halley. I get Fridays and Mondays off from the ryokan, and the last two weeks were so hectic, learning the ropes and running errands with Masa every day, that I’m looking forward to my Friday morning run. On Monday, she’ll come to me.

June is rainy season in Japan, so my runs are often hot and or wet. I travel every day with an umbrella on standby and check the weather constantly. Today, I return from my run to my grandparents’ house soaked from head to toe, my shoes squishing in the front hallway. I shower in the downstairs bathroom and usually find Masa asleep on the couch in the living room. Today, he’s reading on his e-reader, his bottom lip between his teeth and his fingers drumming away on his knee.

“How was your run?” he asks, setting the book aside.

“Great. Exhausting. What should we eat for lunch?” I open the fridge and find it packed with vegetables, fish wrapped in waxed paper, and a million other things. I don’t want any of this. I have trouble convincing myself to eat after a run. Masa releases himself from the couch and comes to stand over my shoulder. He reaches past me brushing his arm against mine. I close my eyes and relish the contact.

“Isa,” he says, and I jump, pulling my arm back to me and covering up my chest, my guilty body showing off how much he affects me. “How about I make us eggs and toast?”

“You don’t have to. I’ll do it.” I reach out for the eggs, but he smacks my hand away.

“Nope. I’m going to cook. You already do enough.”

He sets the eggs on the kitchen island next to the cooktop, grabs the bread from the cabinet, and starts opening drawers. It’s impressive that he knows where some things are in my grandparents’ kitchen. With them gone and busy every day, we spend a lot of time here, mostly hanging out and eating. I feel bad eating all of my grandparents’ food, but Grandma comes home with groceries twice a week, kisses me on the cheek, and tells me how happy she is to have me here. Maybe they were lonely. I doubt my mom was much company if she was with her new boyfriend all the time.

“I’m glad we took some video this morning. You’ve been neglecting your YouTube channel.”

“I know,” I say, sitting on the other side of the kitchen island and sipping on water. “There hasn’t been time for anything but working.”

“You should make the time somehow.” He opens the egg carton, counts the eggs that are left, and sets them aside. “The channel is a little bit of normality, you know?”

“I do. You’re right. I’ll try to throw something together soon.” I stretch and yawn. “Do you like to cook?”

“Yeah. I cook in the summer when I’m home, and I used to cook for Toni too…” Toni’s name slices across my heart like a dull knife. Masa hasn’t mentioned her in a long time and hearing her name now reminds me that I’m the friend and she was his girlfriend. I’m put in my place by two little syllables.

Masa freezes, his eyes glazing over for a moment while a pan heats up on the stove.

“Masa, please don’t burn down my grandparents’ house. It’s the only place I have to live.”

“Right,” he says, lowering the heat and shaking his head. His hair flops all over the place. I’ve been tempted to buy him cutesy, girly clips for it. I’ve seen guys on the J-dramas wear them, but that sort of fashion is fiction. He scrambles up five eggs and dumps them in the hot pan, stepping back to miss the oil splatters that would have ended up on his baby blue t-shirt and dark wash jeans. He places four pieces of bread in the toaster.

I count to ten and gather courage. “I never hear you talk about Toni anymore.”

“Mmm-hmm because that’s over and done with.” He folds the eggs over and flips them. “I haven’t spoken to her since we broke up… Well, that’s not true. I had to deal with her again a few months after we broke up.”

“Did she want to get back together?” I try to keep my voice even and relaxed by sitting forward and propping my tired head on my hands. I want to consider Toni completely gone from his life. He was never happy when she was around, and the breakup was horrible. He was depressed for months.

He laughs. “No. My parents and I had to take her to small claims court because she stole my credit card and charged a shitload of things to me.”

“What? That’s crazy!”

“Yeah, you could say that. I should have known she would steal from me, though. She was a compulsive shopper.” He opens a cabinet, pulls out two plates, and starts buttering the toast. “She was always buying the hottest, newest thing and pumping me for more stuff, more money.”

He sets my plate in front of me and his next to mine, then comes around to sit beside me at the island.

“I’ll never forget when I brought that pen back for you from Tokyo last fall. It was seriously a two dollar pen, but your eyes lit up and you clutched it to your chest like it was a prized possession.”

He forks a bite of eggs and sticks it in his mouth. I can’t eat. My ears ring, my hands shake, and I’m trying to hide it. Like Halley said, he has never shown interest in me romantically before, not even to comment on how I act or the way I am unless we’re being goofballs or working.

Masa turns to me, his elbow on the table next to his plate. “I noticed all semester that you held onto that pen, that you kept it in your planner and used it to grade papers. I thought, ‘This is how a girlfriend is supposed to cherish the little things I do.’”

I smile down at my plate. A girlfriend? He actually thought I was girlfriend material? Then why did he push me away when I kissed him? I want to ask him why, and the question is on the tip of my tongue, ready to leap in between us and destroy the small amount of peace I’ve built in the last two weeks. For a moment, I believe it would be worth the possible heartache to confront him, but then I look at his happy face, smiling, and humming over the eggs, and I can’t do it. He’s at peace too and deserves the break from drama as much as I do.

“Eat, Isa,” he prods, catching me staring at him. “We need to be back at the ryokan this afternoon.”

—-

I arrive home later, exhausted after a long day of work at the ryokan. My feet hurt, my back aches, and I have a splitting headache from being around too much secondhand smoke, the only thing I hate about Japan. The smoking culture here is still outrageous. Is it really 2020? Because it feels like the eighties. Not that I was alive in the eighties, but I’ve heard stories and seen the movies. It’s enough to know.

“Hello, Isa-chan,” my grandma says, hugging me and kissing me on the cheek. As I set down my bag on the kitchen island, she takes a sip of white wine and gestures to a bowl of pasta. “Hungry?”

“No, thanks. I had a chirashi bowl at the ryokan with Masa. He just got the train back to the city.” I stifle a huge yawn and set my head down on the countertop. The assortment of raw fish over sushi rice was the perfect meal, and Masa and I ate our dinner together for the fifth night in a row. We joked about the German tourists while folding clean blankets and towels. Grandpa handled the guest dinners.

“Your grandfather and I really like Masa. He seems like a fantastic young man.”

I lift my head and narrow my eyes at her.

“And?”

“And nothing,” she says, smiling and sipping.

“Oh please. What?”

“Is he…” she starts, hesitating as she spins the cork from her wine on the island top, “more than just a friend?”

I sigh and lay my head back down. “I honestly don’t know. He’s the quiet type and has never said anything to me about liking me… in that way.”

“Isa-chan, I have news for you. He already did come out and say it. You haven’t been listening.”

This brings me up to sit straight. “Whaaaaat do you mean?”

I hesitate because this is my grandma, not Halley, and I’m not sure if I should be crossing this personal line with her. We’ve always had a good relationship, but I’ve never talked about boys with her. But she did score a really awesome man in my grandpa, and he is also a quiet and easy type of guy.

“Quiet men like this don’t declare love. They don’t take charge and sweep girls off their feet. Those things are for fantasy.” She poofs her hand in front of her face, conjuring up a magical smile. “Quiet men say things with gestures instead, and you have to divine whether or not to take them seriously.”

“Grandma, I…” I sigh, ready to shut her down.

“What is it? Did he turn you down?”

“Sort of. I… I kissed him, and he pushed me away.”

She sets her glass down and leans forward over the island. “Tell me what happened. Maybe we can see what went wrong.”

This is weird. I barely even talk to Halley about my romantic ambitions because, deep down inside, I think I’m pathetic for falling for unattainable men. I have done it again and again, and I never learn my lesson. I thought I was done after Ethan and yet I still fell for Masa. It’s a good thing I was never in love with Alex, my “kind-of relationship” last year, because I’m sure I would have screwed that up too.

“I was at a party, cruising in Halley’s wake, like I always am. I got a little drunk.” I close my eyes and wait for the parental-style backlash but it doesn’t come. Oh yeah. I’m in Japan, land of the nomihodai, all you can drink evenings out with your boss, your friends, your family. “And Masa showed up…” — I want to say “out of the blue” but that doesn’t translate — “unexpectedly. I was afraid I would flirt with him if I stayed, so I left, but he offered to walk me home. I got down on myself… I think.” I close my eyes and try to remember everything I said. “And he told me I was a smart and wonderful person. Then I just kissed him.”

“And?”

“And I thought the kiss was going well, until he pushed me away.” I frown and drum my fingers on the counter as she hums and puts away the leftover pasta.

“Did he say anything?”

I nod. “He said, ‘You didn’t mean that,’ and ‘I didn’t mean that.’”

“Well,” she says, throwing up her hands, “that’s the answer right there.”

“What do you mean?”

“He thought you were drunk and that was the only reason you would kiss him.” She crosses her arms and nods her head once, definitive.

“It’s not.” I rub my chilly arms. The air conditioning is on, and I’m only wearing a tank top.

“I know that, sweetie. But he obviously cares for you, and he was probably frightened you didn’t really mean it since you had been drinking.”

Could that really be it? I’ve always thought of alcohol as liquid courage, but it could never make me flirt with or love a boy I had no real interest in. Alcohol just gave me the balls to actually do something about the feelings I already had.

Masa didn’t know that, though.

“Maybe?” My voice rises, hope bouncing around in my belly like agitated butterflies.

“Think about it,” she says, grabbing her book from her purse. “I’m heading to bed. You smell strongly of cigarette smoke, Isa-chan. You should wash those clothes before you wear them again.”

“And shower.” I sniff my tank top and gag.

Ascending the stairs to my darkened loft room, I wonder if Grandma is right. She’s got forty years on me and has only been married once. They’re still smitten with each other, always laughing at each other’s jokes, talking, cooking together, attending functions together — the kind of happy relationship I dream of.

I head straight for the neatly folded piles of clothes against the wall. The loft space is not a bedroom so I don’t have a dresser to put my clothes in. I didn’t want to live out of a backpack, though, so I leave my clothes out in the open next to my computer and under the wall space I’ve turned into my information hub. Calendars I printed out of the next three months are tacked up, marked with all the important dates I need to keep track of. Post-it notes pepper the space around them reminding me to do things like pick up my guest badges for the Olympics and buy gifts for Jackson.

I grab pajamas and turn to go down the stairs when something catches my eye. A small red and white paper bag with “Ito-ya” printed on it in black is on my bed. I freeze, knowing this came from Masa. I imagine him sneaking up here while I was showering after my run and wondering when I would see it.

I pick up the bag, and inside are five pens like the one he gave me last fall in red, pink, purple, turquoise, and baby blue, along with a note.

—-

“Five pens for Isa

To round out your collection — 

For plans yet unmade.”

—-

I rub the pens between my hands and extract each from their plastic coverings. For the first time in years, hope grows roots in my soul and pushes up towards the sunlight.