Sachiko’s cup had a vertical crack that Shigeru had never repaired.
It began at the rim, just below the handle, and ran two centimeters down the ivory glaze. As long as nothing too hot was poured into it, the crack stayed put. Sachiko said objects still standing did not necessarily ask to be saved.
Shigeru placed it to the right of his rice bowl.
Mai stopped in the middle of a sentence.
“Dad.”
He followed her gaze. On the small square table, four bowls formed an almost-square: his, Mai’s, Ren’s, and, before the empty chair, the place he had just set without thinking. A little steam still rose from the miso soup. In the room above the café, the refrigerator vibrated with the tired motor sound he had been promising to have repaired since June.
“Oh.”
Shigeru picked up the cup.
“Leave it,” Ren said.
Mai looked at her son.
“Don’t encourage him.”
“I’m not encouraging anything. I’m just saying if Grandma comes back for coffee, she might as well have her cup.”
“Your grandmother didn’t like coffee in the evening.”
“That’s exactly why she’ll come back. She’ll have regrets.”
Ren was sixteen, with hair long enough to irritate his school’s regulations and a very serious way of saying absurd things. Shigeru set the cup on the sideboard beside a jar containing three mismatched chopsticks, then sat down again.
“Go on,” he told Mai.
She did not continue immediately. She was removing bones from the sanma with the concentration she had already possessed at eight, when she convinced herself that swallowing a bone would make her grow a second tongue. Sachiko had let her believe it for an entire week, from exhaustion or amusement. In the other memory, Yui had teased her until Mai threw a salted plum at her face.
Shigeru looked up at the empty chair.
In this life, no one had been hit by the plum.
“Monday,” Mai repeated. “The landlord wants an answer Monday.”
“I know.”
“No. You’ve known for three weeks. That isn’t the same.”
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.