Miu
Ka-cha, kachan—!
Miu flinched at her writing desk, her warm afternoon solitude quite forgotten. The front door. Why? There weren’t any guests due for at least a month. Her sister was too busy at the rest home to take bookings. No one new had appeared around the village. It wasn’t likely that the hotel had sent any extra patrons down. She really wasn’t at all up for dealing with intrepid types right then. The chatter. The washing.
But someone was certainly there.
For a wild moment, she considered hiding. Arguably, she could be out of the house, or out of hearing.
A thud.
No, perhaps better not to. Miu nudged her toes into her house slippers and pulled her cardigan closed. She gave the floors a cursory once-over as she padded through the hall to the guest lounge and entrance way.
A single, distinctively asymmetrical silhouette wavered at the screen door. No tourist.
“I messaged Ba-chan.” Kyou. “I thought she would’ve told you?”
Even after her bag had slumped rudely to the floorboards, Miu Nakajima’s daughter remained askew, hanging back like a knocked street sign. That lazy left shoulder.
“Nnn.” Miu bowed repeatedly, waving for her daughter to follow through the doorway. So silly, she thought, her daughter acting like a stranger in her own home!
Kyou’s footsteps sounded sullen. Despite that dismal posture, she appeared even taller! Couldn’t be. The city had, unfortunately, poured its gaudy colours onto her: corn-coloured hair, a chaotic pattern on her shirt. Like an actor, Miu considered. It was almost like an actor, older and stranger, had arrived, standing in for her daughter, dressed for a trip to Okinawa.
Kyou wandered about the guest lounge like a cat sniffing out traces of invasion, She presented Miu with a wrapped box, then twisted to sit down in her favoured position, angled half to the television and half to the open door. “New Blu-ray player, Ma?”
Miu smiled, slowly bending her head. The box would be cookies purchased last minute from a train station.
Her sister had arranged for new things, new technology for the guests. It was tiresome dusting around the mess of cords, but such appliances met only the most basic expectations of today’s modern traveller. Apparently her daughter concurred. She was quickly drawn to fiddling with buttons and unleashing a hideous digitised orchestra.
Much too much noise. The little study would still have that spot of afternoon sun, warm enough to bring colour to her cheeks but enough to burn. It was there that Miu retreated, willing her daughter to guard the front door.
It happened just so.
Much later that evening, Miu was thankful to find that the television had settled more quietly on one station. A laughing, orange-faced man was pulling people towards a microphone. Her daughter, oblivious to her presence, was slung diagonally across the floor cushions. She was hammering with her thumb at a small phone. That explained the jingly sigh that had been sounding on and off for the past three hours.
Drr-shing—!
Kyou smirked.
Drr-shing—!
Kyou grimaced.
Not pretty faces to make, thought Miu. They couldn’t be pretty messages. Perhaps the manager at her job didn’t want her to take too long a holiday? That would be unfortunate. At least, perhaps, her daughter was a dutiful employee. Certainly she must be. And certainly her company would understand a daughter’s need to visit her mother once in a while.
“Yare, yare.” Kyou drawled, raising her still-black eyebrows when she realised she had company.
“Tsu,” said Miu.
“Yep. You were right to get off the—the ol’...communication bandwagon.” Her daughter stretched out further. “People, huh? Just talk and talk about nothing.”
She tapped away at the offending screen.
“I like your messages though. The photos. Of the garden. The neighbour's cat.”
Miu looked out to the encroaching dark. The ferry’s last moan had sounded some hours ago; cars had been tucked into their drives. Little crickets called to each other. The sea was shushing its sleep breath.
“You know who’s messaging me, Ma? If you ask, I’ll tell you. I’d tell you everything.” She flashed the screen briefly, like a magician checking with his audience: ‘Is this your card?’ Miu caught sight of a nonsensical line of text: ‘sexxyboi, y nt 2nyte?’
Miu considered her strangely-dressed daughter. Which friends must she shop with? What kind of a hairdresser? Then she noticed the bottle of sake, shunted to one side of the chair and well on its way to being empty.
“Tsu, tsu!” she admonished, retrieving the liquor. Not even the good sense to use a cup. Where were her manners, drinking like a surly old man?
Her daughter’s eyes rolled tiredly to the ceiling and closed. She laughed in a false, startling fashion, the deep uh, uh, uh of a bullfrog. Mrs. Nakajima hesitated at the sound, but took the bottle into the kitchen, retrieved the sake dishes, and heated a flask in the microwave.
When Miu conjured herself a husband, he loved this wine. Funny man. A typical fisherman. He would be so grateful for any and all of her cooking, yet so specific about his drinking. Every evening, his broad hands curled gently around the ceramic cup. It never hovered too far from his lips, and he never spoke as he drank. He just sat, sipped, and admired her. Not in a coarse way, though; his eyes were shy, even after so long together. He wasn’t harsh with her. Not ever. When his cup had at last settled to the table and his arms had dropped to rest, Miu folded herself into his lap. He smelt of blood and kelp, and he stroked her hair until she fell asleep. In the mornings, she woke up alone.
The microwave tweeted. Miu carried a properly-stacked sake set, her best one, on a steaming tray into an empty lounge. A scent of tobacco wove through from outside. She followed. Beneath the security light on the porch, her daughter was sitting like she did as a child, with arms wrapped about her pulled-up knees. She was staring at the glowing tip of her cigarette. Miu set down the tray, then herself a small distance away. Cast in the overhead light, Kyou looked much older, thinner: the hollows of her eyes, the protrusion of her cheekbones all the more dramatic. Well, her daughter always did have a flair for the dramatic.
The night exaggerated everything. The moon beamed theatrically. The stars shivered with anticipation.
“I get so scared, sometimes, you know?” Kyou said quietly to the cigarette.
Miu watched as the trail of smoke lingered, then scattered as it caught the breeze. Her offering of sake was being ignored.
“There’s this...person, Ma.” She finally looked over at her. “This person who’s real—really demanding,” she inhaled, “I think.” She flailed her hand, scattering sparks. “I’m not sure.”
The sparks dove headfirst into the wood panelling, knocking themselves unconscious.
“I just can’t lose this job, you know?” She blew out a thin line, nodding to herself. “Can’t. Won’t do that. I thought it was, but it’s not the right time.”
The light hum of a neighbouring television set cut the silence. Kyou flicked the cigarette away. It bounced out angry little embers. She looked after it a moment, then bent forward and pushed her hands through her corn-yellow hair, mumbling something self-pitying. Her head resurfaced.
“You’re such a good listener.” Another nasty smirk. “I’ve inherited that. Clients love it.” She adopted a high-pitched tone: “Oh Kai, you’re so good, Kai, I can tell you anything.”
The floorboards were cold, hard, uncomfortable. It wasn’t really right that they were sitting here. Not on this peculiar stage lit by a peculiar moon.
“Sometimes I wish you weren’t,” Kyou said.
The strange eyes in the hollow face watched her for a moment, then gave up. The body of Miu’s daughter unhinged itself into its full length and lumbered over the porch, fought briefly with the direction of the sliding doors, and dissolved into silence.
Peace. Miu clasped her hands in her lap, closed her eyes, and allowed the night air to settle companionably between herself, the neat line of slippers, and Mr. Tanuki. The dramatic moon relaxed. The stars forgot their shiver.
The next morning, as she stood behind a steaming kettle, Miu Nakajima’s headache reasserted itself. That clever lurker. That faithful friend. Years ago—in a dream, perhaps—it had slipped in through the tunnel of her nostril, maybe wheedled through the cavern of her ear, finding a home in the most delicate tissues of her brain. And was it ever a moody thing! Sometimes a pleasantly dull burn, sometimes a blinding thunder that sent her under covers. Today, it was a slow clamping feeling.
Her sister came down the lane unusually early, her grocery trundler making its self-important rattle behind her. Kyou wasn’t up. She might miss her. It would be a terrible pity. Moving out of the kitchen, Miu Nakajima felt an inexplicable tingle in the back of her knees.
“Morning, morning, Miu-chan,” Kiku said with a brightness that had been absent of late.
Her sister bustled straight through the door, not bothering to knock, and rattled to an abrupt stop in the centre of the lounge. Huffing victoriously, she bent to riffle through plastic bags.
“How are you, my little sister?” She used her singsong voice, which meant an unpleasant favour was on the horizon.
The plastic rustled louder. Whatever it was in the trundler, it was buried deep. The strange tingle behind Miu’s knees grew to a tremor. When she shifted her weight to one leg, the other fairly shook.
“Got some buns, sweet red bean buns.” Her sister held aloft the plastic package, which held crumbs with its static cling, which drooped at the edges and which undoubtedly would not account for whatever request would follow. No more guests, wished Miu. No more ashtrays, no more mad laughter, no more splayed maps and guides and old tickets…
“Your daughter, she’s good to you, eh?” Miu’s sister pierced the plastic package with her thumbnails and ambled into the kitchen. “Where is she now? Kyou-ah!”
Miu winced. There was a syncopated beat at her temples.
“I found us a special man. A specialist.” She dropped her voice, as if fearing she might be overheard, “Cheaper than that one you were talking to. Less nosey, too. A much better choice for us at the moment.”
An awkward clunk of plates sounded. The just-heated kettle was turned on once more.
“I had to find this man—I found him myself.” she continued. “Mari at the home, she tried him for her husband. Good guy.” That singing voice again. “Good guy, good, good guy...”
The trundler remained in the centre of the room. Miu moved around it cautiously and sat on the cleanest guest couch, leaving her feet to shake about if ever she stopped concentrating on them.
The kettle whistled sharply, painfully. Kiku dropped something, switched something on and off, and barged back through the room and into the guest rooms.
“Where now, huh? Kyo-chan! Hora!”
The rattle of a door. She’d been located. A quieter voice followed. “Heh, heh, sleepyhead. Won’t you say hello to your favourite Auntie?”
“…Only Auntie,” A hoarse voice responded.
“Yes! Better not forget about—che! What’s with this?” A scuffling sound. “Running a bar in here?”
“Nah…Oi, get off.” More scuffling. Lighter footsteps.
Kyou appeared, a glass of water in her hand, her head tipped back to swallow. Her bright hair was dishevelled. She tripped into the lounge, plonked down beside Miu, and wordlessly offered two white pills in her palm. Kiku blustered in pursuit.
“Morning, Ma,” Kyou murmured.
Miu picked up the little white pills with her fingertips. She accepted the glass of water. She felt badly for her jiggling legs. As it happened, the little white pills did not want to be swallowed. They caught and etched a line of chemicals down her throat.
“What’s it you’re giving her?” Kiku hovered testily. “Your city drugs?”
“Relax. ‘s just headache pills. Painkillers, see? Nothing.”
“Why headache pills? How could you know she had a headache?”
“How couldn’t I?” Kyou uttered too low for Kiku to hear. “You’re here.”
“Hah?”
“It’s too early, Ba-chan,” Kyou rubbed at her face roughly. A little flushed, a little plumped with just-woken warmth, she looked younger again. “The appointment’s not ‘till nine, you know?”
“I know, I know.” Kiku shifted from one foot to another as she lowered herself in the second-best guest chair.
An appointment.
Miu watched her knees jiggling, jiggling as though possessed. She reached out a hand to still them and dropped the glass. It spilt beads of water over the carpet. Terrible! The quaver swam up to her chest now, batting at her heart.
Miu tried to rise to her feet, but found them quite unreliable.
“Oops, my sis,” Kiku sang. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Kyou-ah?”
“I’ll get it, ‘s okay, Ma.”
While things were mopped, heated, burnt, eaten, Miu remained on the best guest couch. She sat. She drank too-hot tea. She tried to swallow hunks of sweet bean bun and hoped they would dislodge, or at least cushion, the little white pills. In time, the quiver stopped.
They were going out. They were visiting with Kiku’s husband.
The bus dropped them outside the rest home. Instead of heading straight to the daytime visiting room, they entered through reception. They were told that the doctor was down the corridor and third on the right. The whole time, Kyou rested a hand at the small of Miu’s back. It kept her moving forwards and forwards. The linoleum floor was sticky.
At the door they had been directed to, Miu’s sister employed her standard tact and knocked whilst she bowled into the room. The embarrassment of it!
“Hello, Mr. Specialist?”
Mr. Specialist half choked on his Styrofoam cup. It left a slick arc over his upper lip. The palm at her back guided Miu further in. When they sat down in three white plastic chairs, she felt the sickening shake in her knee reawaken. It wasn’t like Megumi’s office. Not like her office at all. It was big and sterile and all the surfaces—floor to ceiling—looked designed to wipe off blood. How many people? How many litres?
Miu was distantly aware of her sister, daughter, and the man talking about some patients. Patients who liked talking—good patients. Talking about how lovely it must be to be based on Bijushima. Mr. Specialist was not from the island. He was stocky, his brows had a nervous aspect, and his skin appeared rarely to have encountered the sun. Everything about him seemed fraudulent. Why did they want her seeing such a man? Where was Megumi?
In the small room was a table holding a chrome, many-corded machine, a bed, and no window. There was only the door they had arrived through. Kyou and Kiku were making sounds of departure. Once again, Miu tried to rise, and once again, she was impeded by her shaking legs.
“Easy, Ms. Nakajima.” Mr. Specialist said, “We’ll be alone for this next little part.”
The flutter, the quaking was returning. She tried to quiet it.
“We’ll just be out seeing Jii-chan,” Kyou said.
The door clicked behind them.
Kiku’s voice was muffled. “Your poor uncle, eh? He won’t recognise you.”
And then they were out of earshot. And Mr. Specialist with his wet lip and his falsely earnest expression lurched closer.