Days Without Nights - Chapter 02
May. 10th, 2015 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angevonYosuke woke up suddenly because something was in the space next to him. Michiko!? He rolled over excitedly—
It was a clump of sheets with a pillow twisted in it.
He rolled onto his back, sucking his teeth. She was gone. It was still... He was still coming to terms with it. If one could call it that.
It was early in the morning. He had plenty of time before work, but... maybe he would call out so that he'd be home when Michiko came back. She had to come back, right? Even... even if it was just to collect her things.
Lacking a handkerchief, he wiped his eyes and blew his nose on the bedsheets. No, no... He should try to live like normal, and, and maybe things would fall into place. Maybe call his own parents, he knew they'd send him their love and support. But he wasn't sure he wanted to rely on them yet. She might come back, she might realize what she was doing was extreme, there was still hope... And then he'd do whatever it took to patch things up between them.
He stared at the light seeping between the cracks in the horizontal blinds. It wasn't so early anymore. Hey, when was Kichirou supposed to get up for school? Michiko always took care of that. Without her, Yosuke would have to do it. Usually he left for work before the two of them were even awake. He'd have to let his supervisor know that he'd have to start coming into work a little later.
He began the morning 'get up' ritual, forcing himself out of bed and into the bathroom for a quick rinse with the faucet. He kept the water rather cold in an attempt to perk himself up. It had mixed results. He shaved, then changed, putting on a dress shirt, two-button business suit, and slacks. He adjusted his red striped tie in the mirror. He combed his dark brown hair back; he no longer dyed it, though sometimes he wished he still did. He noted that it was starting to grow out again. He'd need a haircut soon. Overall, despite the near-sleepless night, he was looking presentable enough. He smiled at himself. No, that smile was totally phony. Hopefully he wouldn't have to suck up to too many customers today...
He called up his supervisor's line at Junes to let him know he'd be a little late to work today. "Wife's sick, gotta take the kid to school." He received some sympathy. His boss was surprisingly cool for a hotshot at Junes, but Yosuke was a department head, which put him high enough up the corporate ladder to excuse little things like this.
He tried to remember when elementary school was supposed to start and gauge how long it should take to get to the school to determine when to wake up his son, but in the end he decided it was better to be early than late. He'd hate to have to apologize to his son's teachers. He went to Kichirou's room and lightly shook the sleeping boy's shoulders until he stirred.
"Dad...?" Kichirou blinked at him in the morning light streaming through his window. "Where's Mom?"
"She needs more rest," Yosuke lied. A knot grew in his stomach. He'd have to tell his son eventually, but...
Kichirou yawned and then hopped out of his futon. Then he looked at his dad expectantly.
"Wh-what, son?" Yosuke asked, bewildered.
"Mom gets my clothes ready, and then she wakes me up!"
Yosuke opened a drawer, rummaged through it, and pulled out a pair of school shorts. "I guess you need underwear, first," he muttered.
Kichirou laughed—it was more of a giggle than a laugh. Then he kindly pushed his father away and took out his clothes himself. "Mom puts the clothes I'm supposed to wear next on the very left. And then she slides the next set over... see?"
"Ah," said Yosuke. It was very much like Michiko to be so organized.
Now Kichirou was standing before him with his hands held high over his head. When Yosuke continued to stare, he did a little dance. "Help me get my PJs off, Dad!"
"Right!" Yosuke said quickly, and pulled the bear-patterned pajama top over the boy's head. Then he helped his son into his school clothes.
When he finished adjusting the boy's collar, he pulled him into an impulsive embrace. Kichirou looked up at him. "Dad...?"
'I love you,' he wanted to say. Instead, he remained silent for a moment. "Doesn't Mom hug you in the morning?"
Kichirou shook his head. "No, Dad. She doesn't."
Yosuke tried to keep the hurt from his face and hugged the boy tighter. He bit his lip. Then he shook his head. "All right, now... breakfast, right?" At least that was simple enough. He wouldn't be Japanese if he didn't know how to steam rice. And he knew they had instant miso soup and dashi stock somewhere in the kitchen. He just had to find them.
Working in the kitchen made him think of Yu Narukami, the guy who had been his best friend back in high school. Heck, he was still his best friend now. Yosuke continued to call him 'partner,' the nickname he'd given the guy back when they'd investigated those murders so many years ago. Yosuke called him on the phone at least twice a week, though the man didn't always answer due to his job. Yosuke wasn't quite sure what he was doing, but it involved a lot of travel. Like father, like son, apparently—Yu's parents had moved around a lot when he was growing up.
Yu had been a budding chef, and he'd often cooked for Yosuke and their other friends at school. Ah, what he would do now for a Yu-cooked meal...
He sighed. He could really lose himself in the comfortable nostalgia.
He and Kichirou ate their breakfast together in a peaceful silence. Kichirou broke it by saying, "I hope Mom gets better soon."
Yosuke swallowed. "Yeah, me too."
"Hey, Dad..." Kichirou's piercing dark eyes were directed right at him.
"Yeah, Ki-kun?" Yosuke asked.
"Are you going to walk me to school?"
"That's the plan," Yosuke told him. He swirled his coffee and stared at the patterns the cream was making on the surface. "Unless you don't want me to," he muttered. Was Kichirou okay with him taking Mom's place...?
"I wanna go with you, Dad!" Kichirou had almost climbed onto the kitchen table in his excitement. "I wish I could go to work with you, too!"
Yosuke was taken aback by his son's eagerness. This must be how Yu's uncle, Dojima-san, had felt when he'd started taking more responsibility for his daughter, Nanako-chan... He smiled at Kichirou. "Maybe one day," he promised.
Yosuke came home from what felt like the longest day of work to an empty house. He searched it front to back, and there was no sign that Michiko had visited, but also no sign of his son, either. It was already past 6 pm; Kichirou should've come home from school a long time ago.
He rapidly went into a panic. What if Michiko had come home... and taken Kichirou? He didn't have any way to contact her. There was no note on the kitchen table. That was the first place he'd looked, since the kitchen was the first room next to the front door, and he usually entered it first out of habit. She could just sneak in while he was at work and steal their son and Yosuke would never see him again.
No, no...
But Kichirou had a cell phone! Yosuke immediately called it. No answer. No, no! Was Michiko forcing him not to answer? If he lost Kichirou too, what would be the point in anything?
Then his cell phone rang, and it was his son's number. "Ki-kun!" he shouted frantically upon answering. "Where are you!?"
"Umm, Dad! I'm at Hiroshi-kun's! Mom wouldn't answer the door, so I went over there..."
Yosuke heaved a massive sigh of relief. After he calmed himself, he asked, "You don't have a key to the house?"
"Mom always lets me in, Dad!"
"Oh." He frowned to himself. He didn't know that. He'd have to find the spare key they kept in one of the kitchen drawers and give it to him. Dammit, now their son was going to be a latchkey kid... "Umm, are you ready to come home? I'll come pick you up."
"Aww..." the boy said. "Please please please, can I stay? Hiroshi-kun's mom is making curry!"
Yosuke smiled into the phone. "All right. Call me when you're ready to come home, then."
"Thanks, Dad!"
'I love you,' he began to say, but the boy had already hung up.
Yosuke relaxed somewhat. He still had Kichirou. Damn, he was a wreck. He was still shaking. He breathed in and out until he calmed down, then vaguely wondered what to eat for his own dinner. If only he could invite himself over to Hiroshi-kun's house. Homemade curry sounded great.
He opened the fridge. The leftover shrimp pizza stared him in the face, and he decided he wasn't hungry.
Alone in the house, he was kind of lost as to what to do to kill time before his son called. Listen to music, he immediately thought, but then he might not hear the phone ring. Wait, today was supposed to be laundry day. But Michiko wasn't here to do the laundry. Well, he could do that. He collected all of the laundry from their hampers and brought it to the laundry room, where he sorted out the light wash from the dark wash. And then he stared at the washing machine because he didn't actually know how to do laundry. There were too many knobs and settings on the machine to guess at it, and he didn't know how much detergent and fabric softener to use anyway. The labels didn't help.
His son was probably going to be a while longer, and the boy could use the house line if needed, so Yosuke called up his best friend to bail him out. It took a few rings for the guy to pick up. "Hey, Yu!" Yosuke said with forced cheer. "Got a minute? I could use some help."
"Mmm, Yosuke?" His best friend's calming voice came loud and clear despite the distance, although a bit tinny. "One sec, please." Yosuke heard his friend speak to someone near him for a moment, but he couldn't make out any words. Probably Yu had covered the receiver with his hand. "All right, what's up?"
"Partner, I have no idea how to do laundry. Do you?"
Yu really was a great friend. He didn't even laugh at him! "Well, first, you should separate out the stuff that can be cleaned with bleach and the stuff that can't..."
"Well, yeah, partner, I got that much!" Yosuke chuckled. "But, uh, what the heck is fabric softener, anyway?"
Yu spent some time coaching Yosuke through the clothes-washing process, and then proceeded to explain how a dryer worked, too. "And then you're supposed to iron the good shirts and pants and hang them up in the closet."
"I think that's an advanced technique," Yosuke admitted. "And dude, I bet you don't have any 'bad' shirts and pants. You iron everything, don't you?"
"Maybe," Yu admitted. "But I know you probably don't, so... that's why I said 'supposed to.' As for the proper way to fold clothes, I suppose that's something that can't be taught over the phone."
Yosuke watched the washer's timer count down. "Yeah, I'll manage. Thanks, partner. I knew I could count on you."
"Always, Yosuke. Let me know if you need anything else."
Need anything else...? For a moment, he was tempted to unload his problems onto his friend, but no. He didn't need Yu worrying about him. It wasn't like his friend knew where his wife was. He thanked Yu one more time and then hung up.
Kichirou called before the washer was finished, so Yosuke left it on while he picked up his son. The boy'd had a good time at his friend's house. "We read the new Featherman manga! It ended on a cliffhanger! Black Condor fell off a cliff and everyone thinks he's dead!"
"Maybe his belt has a parachute," Yosuke suggested.
"I think Red Hawk's gonna catch him with a jet plane!"
"That works, too, yeah," Yosuke agreed.
Back home, Kichirou went to his room to do some homework while Yosuke finished the laundry. After everything was dry, he had to separate everything and fold it. Well, he worked at Junes, so he knew how to fold clothes. He didn't really need Yu to teach him that! Let's see, this was Ki-kun's shorts, this was his own underwear, and this was Michiko's skirt...
He held out the skirt. His wife had left some of her own clothes in the laundry bin. Should he fold it and put it away for her, too? Well, what else would he do with it?
"Dad...?"
Yosuke blinked and turned around, still clutching the skirt. His son was looking at him, his hands hesitantly on the doorframe like he wasn't sure he wanted to come into the room.
"Uh, yeah, Ki-kun?" Yosuke asked.
"Where's Mom? She's not in her room..."
Yosuke's eyes widened and his nostrils flared. "Uh, umm..."
"Dad?"
"K-Ki-kun... She's... Mom's... She..." He groped for a suitable explanation. "She's staying with Grandma and Grandpa Furusawa for a bit!" he finished.
The boy frowned. "But it's not a holiday, Dad."
"Yeah. I know. She'll stay there until she's feeling better."
Kichirou contemplated that for a moment, then asked if they could visit.
"Sure, this weekend," Yosuke lied. It would be the third weekend of the month, which was routinely reserved for visiting the in-laws, anyway. They only lived across town.
Kichirou accepted that with a nod. Then Yosuke asked him to help put away the laundry. After that, Yosuke took a bath with the boy and put him to bed. Kichirou asked him to read the next chapter in the book they were reading together—Brave Story. Yosuke wished they hadn't been reading that particular book. Wataru's problems at home were maybe a little too relevant.
When Kichirou had fallen asleep, Yosuke returned to the laundry room to finish putting away his own clothes. He hung up his (un-ironed) work pants in the closet and noticed something.
That dress. It was missing.
Yosuke frantically searched through the closet, tearing things off of hangers in his furor and letting them fall unceremoniously to the floor. Then he went to their dresser and dug through all of their clothes. It wasn't there, it wasn't there... Had she taken it with her? She couldn't have been wearing it when she'd left. She only wore it for important occasions due to how important it was to him... to them. Besides that, her other favorite dress was missing, so he assumed she'd probably been wearing that...
He eventually found the dress at the bottom of the small trash bin in the bathroom.
He stared at it forlornly in his hands. Maybe it would have been better if she had taken it with her.
Because... if it was in the trash can... then... she was throwing their memories away...
Yosuke swept scraps of food—mostly rice—from the tables at Junes into a small dustpan. He used to be lazy and just sweep it all onto the floor, but he'd stopped because leaving food lying around like that attracted birds. They'd had a war between seagulls and crows some weeks ago and the food court cleaning policy had been changed because of it—at his own suggestion. Besides, birds brought bird poop which was rather caustic to the paint on the tables, not to mention unappetizing for customers to eat around.
Of course, he couldn't stop customers from feeding the birds on their own. He'd created a couple of signs advising people not to feed them, but he had low hopes that people would actually read them. Just like the 'please don't throw away the trays' signs... They'd had to get trash cans with lid openings smaller than the width of a tray to stop people from doing that.
With the tabletop swept, it was time for the disinfectant spray. He held his breath while he used it because it always made his nose sting. It was potent stuff. Say what you wanted about Junes, they didn't skimp out on cleaner. You could eat right off the table when he was done cleaning!
The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up while he wiped the table down. He paused in scrubbing a soy sauce stain. His Persona was stirring in his mind. It did that sometimes... He bit his lower lip and turned his head to the right.
Standing some feet away from him was the girl he'd spilled soda on the week before, wearing that very same coffee-cream dress he'd given her then. She was watching him. The food court was practically empty this afternoon, so it was quite conspicuous.
Yosuke straightened his posture. "Uhh... Michiko-san, right?" He worried about using her name, since she'd never given it to him. "Is there something I can do for you?"
She clutched one of the white ribbons on the front of her dress, but didn't reply. He glanced around the food court. There was still no one else around. It was after the Junes lunch specials rush.
Well, he had to finish cleaning the table before the volatile disinfectant dried up and he had to reapply it, so he turned back to the table and scrubbed. He kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye, though. She was totally watching him. Why...?
He knew he looked like a dork. He was wearing a hair net, after all, since he'd been working the food counter, and he still sported the silly Junes apron. Chie once told him he looked like a wife in this getup, and then Yukiko had started to laugh so he didn't have a chance to retort...
Tabletop cleaned! Now the seats. None of the other part-timers bothered cleaning the seats, the lazy bums. Couldn't have a customer sitting in old food now, could we? Ah, he needed the disinfectant again, where'd he put the bottle—
Whoa! He turned around and Michiko-san had moved and now she was right in front of him...!?
"A-ah?" he said, smartly. She was so close that he could see the flecks of amber in her dark brown eyes. She had a nice little nose, and she was wearing some peach-colored lipstick. In fact, her lips were parted and—
She was kissing him.
He stiffened in surprise, and when she pulled away, it was obvious she was surprised, too. She took a step back... and then bolted out of the food court. He called after her, but she was far too fast... Especially since he'd tripped over the damned disinfectant bottle.
He put the dress away at the very bottom of one of his own drawers for safekeeping. Then he decided to sleep on the living room couch. He couldn't stand being in their bed right now, not without her. On the couch, he could pretend that she was still there, that he'd just been temporarily banished from their bedroom.
He could pretend that things would be better in the morning.
[End Notes: 'Brave Story' is a children's fantasy book written by Miyuki Miyabe. There's also an anime, manga, and a video game based on it. A large theme in the book is coming to terms with the family unit breaking apart.]
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