Chapter 13:

Soy Sauce, Sugar and Mirin

***

But the miraculous intervention of chibi-divinity would not be necessary just yet. It would be a little while before certain calamities would pop their looming noses over the horizon. In the meanwhile, Kaorin and Sakaki had ample time to savor the journey to their unknown destination. And heck. Why not stop for a meal along the way?

~~~

   "Ue wo muite arukou~
   Namida ga koborenai you ni~"

  --Famous song

~~~

Next to the dormitory house, the dairy girls had a little dining hall set up. Of course, a fully equipped communal kitchen was attached, and there were a few portable stoves you could grab from back there and bring to one of the rustic wooden tables. 

Oh, it's a freezing-rain muddy grass-stain kind of latewinter earlyspring day and you haven't seen each other in twenty plus years?

Then it's sukiyaki time, baby.

A shallow iron pot. A broth of soy sauce, sugar and mirin. The sense of sharing a table and building something together, filling the pot with what-you-like until it resembles a creation that speaks to the contributions of both of you. Tofu and enokitake mushrooms, bean sprouts and hakusai. Green onions and shirataki and shungiku, oh my. Perhaps our dear protagonists can be forgiven for omitting the typical main ingredient of egg-washed sliced beef--circumstances being what they were and all.

The pot they made together looked immaculate with carefully arranged ingredients and simmering broth which enwreathed Kaorin and Sakaki in a plume of delicious scent. Mouths were watering, patiently awaiting the optimal temperature where 'pleasantly warm' doesn't cross over to 'burn your mouth'...

Reunion is such a pleasant giddiness, isn't it? Those glancing eye-contact giggles and smiles, those wordless 'sooo... here we are...!' poses and gestures...

Sooo... Here they are...

And those little icebreaking conversation-loops, things you gently embarrass yourself asking over and over because you don't quite know how to go deeper yet. The broth's boil was now at its peak. Emotionally fucky circumstances or no, Kaorin was no longer the high school wallflower and had developed at least a modicum of social charisma--of game--during her Shinjuku Nichoume bar-hopping days, which must explain the fact that she was the one putting out conversation openers while Sakaki was too elated to be around someone familiar to even speak.

What does it mean when a girl bites her lip before she talks? Kaorin bit her lip: "So... Hahaha... I mean, really, talk to me. What do you *do*, Sakaki? Not your job. What do you *do*? What's fun to you, what makes you happy when you're stuck inside at home all day? What gets you out of the house on a beautiful day... unlike this one?"

What does it mean when a girl's eyes look up at the ceiling like there's something she's trying to artfully tiptoe around when she's formulating an answer? What's that little gesture a girl makes when she curls her lips slightly inward so her mouth, for a brief second, looks like a line, like how you do when youre trying to make sure your lipstick application is even? What does all that mean? "W, well, I'm not that interesting..."

Kaorin grinned and pounced right on it. "Wrong! You're definitely interesting, no evading the question."

Sakaki smiled sheepishly. Wow, here was a feeling she couldn't remember the last time she'd had. "O-Okay! I... you know... I don't really have any friends these days, so..."

"Hah! Me neither!" 

"I suppose that's how it is with lots of people, isn't it? Well, anyway... I like, movies, television, games... I like listening to. Music...?"

Kaorin nodded in amiable interest. "Movies, television, games and music... Haha, wow, that's most of everything that exists! Help me narrow it down, give me a favorite of each."

"Umm... hmm... let's see... well, maybe Wolf Children... maybe, Midnight Diner... maybe Kirby--no, wait, maybe Mother. And umm... hmm... the last one is really tough... Maybe Akiko Yano?" Sakaki looked thoughtful, as if the very act of asking her preferences had required enormous feats of self-reflection and memory digging.

Kaorin's eyes lit up with recognition. "Akiko Yano, huh? 'Furimukeba, kaeru...'"

"'Sono koe wa... kaeru! Kaeru ni iwarechau, shou ga nai...' Yes!! Exactly!! I mean of course, you know, I like a lot of different things, but I guess those are the ones that come to mind when you ask me..." Sakaki broke eye contact and started to push some of the greens into the broth to cover them. She pulled them out at length and let the steam escape them, and took a bite. The broth made the fresh greens delicious. Pure elation. "Oh, and I, I really like photography..." 

Kaorin snipped off a bit of tofu and put it in her bowl with a few mushrooms and greens before wrapping them all together and savoring. "Mmf... Whf--(gulp) What kinds of things do you like to take pictures of most?"

Her appetite whetted thoroughly, Sakaki was now really starting to dig in. "Well... You did ask me earlier, you know, 'what gets me out of the house on a beautiful day.' And this is pretty much it. Trees... landscapes... people... buildings... train station platforms. Um, and most importantly, cats. You see, a lot of stray cats are very... shy... and they prefer... not to be pet... So it can be nice to simply take pictures of them instead. This way you can appreciate them without, you know... startling them."

"They sound amazing!! You've got to show me sometime!!," a bright eyed Kaorin managed to enthusiastically suggest before stuffing her mouth with a big heap of konnyaku noodles.

Sakaki was holding up a little morsel of cabbage-rolled mushroom. She let it drip while waiting to devour it at the end of this next sentence. "I'm sure I have some on my phone... Maybe I'll show you. Later."

Kaorin's giggle ended in an embarrassing snort, but sometimes embarrassing things can be charming. "Oh, for sure! Later." Rather than pelt Sakaki with further small talk, Kaorin elected, with some sense of mischief, to let silence reign for a little bit, and try and goad Sakaki into speaking unprompted.

Such trickery, however, would not work on an unwittingly formidable Sakaki, who seemed completely comfortable to just eat alongside Kaorin in silence. Kaorin was starting to think maybe she was making things a little awkward, but then Sakaki spoke up.

"You have... a whole story after high school, don't you? I haven't seen you, and I didn't know where you ended up, so... Could you tell me that story? I realize that there might be a lot to catch me up on, but please..." Sakaki tilted up a glass and closed her eyes, taking a long series of dainty gulps of the barley tea contained within.

Her eyes darted away for a second, but Kaorin didn't balk at being so prompted. "No, I mean... There's a lot that I could tell. And it's just, I'm not sure what stuff would be okay to tell you and what stuff would, I don't know, sound stupid or weird you out."

Sakaki, who was now starting to pick at her food more idly and with reduced vehemence, propped her face on her hand upon table-balanced elbow and gave Kaorin a slightly askew look. "Tell it however you want to. Embellish it. Make it sound like a magical adventure and make yourself the heroine. If there's anything else about the story that's, important or different, or something you forgot to mention, well... you can just tell it to me later."

Kaorin returned this with a look of gentle, wordless awe. And of gratitude. "Hahaha, ok, if you're sure...! Um," Kaorin cleared her throat and briefly pressed two lightly fisted-coiled hands to her lips, as if obeying some knee-jerk reflex to keep the words inside for a little longer while she refined them. And then, after she seemed to have come to some internal resolution inside her, she began to tell her story. 

"So... We graduated. High school was kind of a rough time. There were... happenings, events in my life that had cast long shadows over me. The way things were with my mom. The way things were at... at school. The way things were inside my head. I was excited to graduate, you know? I was hoping... I don't know. I felt like a very plain and unremarkable girl throughout school, like maybe I was a bit character in everyone's lives, never meant to speak in the first place. I was hoping maybe graduation would do good things for me. Like I could start living a real life. But the shadows kept getting longer. Kept stretching over me."

Kaorin wasn't done eating yet, but she lay her chopsticks across her bowl as if the thought of food had temporarily fled her. She folded her arms and propped them up on the table for support as she leaned forward, firmly refusing to meet Sakaki's gaze. "It doesn't matter what the shadows really were. The point was I needed to escape them. And I had to run pretty far. From the outskirts into the center of the city. Sometimes it felt like the shadows could reach me even there, no matter how much I threw myself into my first couple of semesters, no matter how many turns I took into those neon-lavender streets."

Sakaki had been fairly taciturn during this part of the conversation, and was listening avidly. Kaorin did not fail to notice her blinking a little bit fast when she talked about neon-lavender streets. Was she just weirded out by the florid prose or did she--I mean--there's no way she'd ever been anywhere near, no way she'd ever heard of--Kaorin refused to think any further about this topic and continued: 

"I made a lot of decisions. Most of them were mistakes. A few of them turned out to be good ones. Most of the mistakes involved drinking. A few of the good ones involved other w--other people... But eventually I got tired of it. The shadows had apparently given up pursuit. My mom decided that she would rather accept me than not have a daughter at all. I stopped thinking about high school and all the shit that happened there as much. And I'd gotten burned enough times in my years running from the shadows, such that I decided I was sick of it all and just wanted to withdraw. I spent a lot of time inside. Reading manga. Watching movies. Listening to music. Playing games. Daydreaming. And I decided that was pretty much all I ever wanted to do for fun anymore. There was no point in trying to bond with other people, because... because it wouldn't *feel* right, it couldn't ever feel how I dreamed it to, and the city was just so stifling, so cramped and stuffy and repressed, so unforgiving to the Shinjuku Nichoume hangover zombie that I once was."

No reaction to the 'Shinjuku Nichoume' place-namedrop. Huh, okay, so she's not *that* well versed.

"Anyway, I found these girls online who were trying to start a little organic dairy co-op out in Hokkaido. I had no idea what an absurd proposition it was or what kind of effort it would take. Hokkaido felt farthest away. Might as well be on the moon. And... that's what I do now. This is where my story all ends up. The shadows of the past chased me so far, and the place I hid from the shadows burned me so much, that I needed to be in the furthest, unlikeliest place in the world, doing the most ridiculous things imaginable. I was here since they broke ground. I sweated and worked myself to exhaustion in those first couple of years, when everything was still tentative and nothing had been done so there was everything to do. We really built this place up from nothing. And even still... No matter how 'real' I let things get... I can't stop reading comics, playing games, watching anime, and just thinking. Thinking about how badly I wish there really were some magnificent dream-destiny out there for me somewhere. Like I might fucking, hahaha, blossom, like a girl in some story. Blossom on the cusp of 40.

Now is that the stupidest thing you've heard, or what?"

Sakaki's eyes were wide open, and her mouth was parted a little. She shook her head decisively. So it wasn't the ABSOLUTE stupidest thing Sakaki's heard, noted Kaorin. That's good. Maybe we're getting somewhere.

The wide-eyed Sakaki, having taken all this in, did the only thing that made sense to her at the moment and went on a deep, deep hypermagnified tangent.

"What comics...?"

Kaorin laughed ruefully. "Oh, you don't wanna know. You probably wouldn't recognize the titles and if you did you'd think I was some kind of total maniac weirdo. I'm trying to be tiptoe-y and vague here, see? Let's just pretend I'm nice and boring and there's noooo reason I omitted stuff during my soliloquy and there's nothing I'm trying to hide from you. Better that way, right? I mean, we're just catching up, right...?" she teased at length, hoping to defuse the request.

She was met with Sakaki's completely serious eyes once more. "I want to know. What kind of comics. Give me a genre, or, or a series name."

They looked at each other for a long time. Kaorin's eyes were searching her. What could she say that would test the water? Obviously there's no WAY she would actually recognize something, but she didn't wanna say anything weird because what if she somehow knew about it and recognized it and judged her for it, but there's no WAY she would know about THAT kind of stuff unless she... unless she also...

"Uhhh, like, I don't know... 'Slowly, the Melody...?' Yeah, haha, everyone knows about THAT one..."

There was a sunrise, a glow, now appearing in Sakaki's dark eyes. The earliest dawning of recognition. "'Slowly, the Melody'..."

"Wait, you...?"
"I know it. I do."
"Wait, don't you think it's, like... I don't know... weird?"
A month ago, Sakaki might have felt cornered by such a question. But something about the way the day had proceeded was making her feel, well... sincere. Earnest. Candid. Free.

Maybe it was the sukiyaki.

"I don't think it's weird at all. I think it's one of the most precious and sacred things I've ever read. They... you know... the fact that they were always standing alongside each other, you know? Even when they were so little, when they were just silly kids running around together. Even when they were young adults and had no idea what anything in life really was, even when they were midway through their working years and stressed and aimlessly placed on the crossroads of life. Even when they were all grey and laugh-lined around the eyes, alongside each other up to the very end... How could that ever be weird?"

Kaorin looked at Sakaki. She studied her very hard. Sakaki looked back at Kaorin. The words hung heavy on the air. Sakaki was clearly bracing herself, breathless. But she met Kaorin's gaze. There was no flinch in her.

Then Kaorin seemed to hastily remember her appetite and stuck a bunch of food in her mouth.

"Ymmrrr rmmmhhtt. Hamf coumf fmmt EMMFFHR bhh whhrrdd?"

Which Sakaki correctly interpreted as, 

"You're right. How could that ever be weird?"

And Sakaki nodded in true understanding. It was not weird. How could it ever be weird? Well, it wasn't *weird*, but--but Sakaki glanced away and--

"It's not weird but, Kaorin, can we please talk about something else? I'm very glad we talked about that but I really think I need some time to, like just enough to take a breath and--"

Kaorin was quick to wave her hands and allay any concerns that Sakaki might have about her fucking up whatever thing there was that was *definitely* not happening now. "Nonono hahaha you're right I mean sometimes talking about stuff is--yeah, you know, sometimes you just talk about something so much and it's so much that you just need a break!" Kaorin took a deep breath, which was a sort of deadline she gave herself for changing the subject. "Umm, so, hm, pursuant to that, uhhh... Could you maybe tell me about your, you know, history too? I didn't... I didn't want to bother you after highschool or anything, ahaha, but, I have wondered a little bit, you know, like 'how's she doing', 'is she doing ok'... You can omit or edit as much as you want, make yourself the heroine, whatever, I just, I really want to know... I'm sure that sounds completely crazy!!"

Sakaki shook her head. It was another thing that was not crazy. And anyway, she had resigned herself to the necessity of telling her story when she had asked Kaorin to do it. It might be tough to tell the truth with the proper slant, but, it was only fair. "My history... Well...

It's not like... it's not like I liked everything about high school. Things were a little weird at home. Between the happy times, there was always the feeling that, as good as life could feel sometimes, sometimes it would, you know, just bite you hard as it could if you so much as tried to tentatively reach out to it. But even still. The things that I loved about high school meant everything to me. Leaving them behind was so hard. Losing that felt like something I would never recover from."

Kaorin rolled the taste of this last sentence in her mouth. While not an exact circumstantial match, it had the strong note of the familiar. 

Sakaki continued. "But obviously I had to keep living after graduation happened and that walled garden of friendship and belonging rapidly collapsed. I thought, fine, I just won't care about anything. I'll pick the hardest job I could ever do so I never have to think about how much I miss what I've lost, and how much I, I *mourn* for the things I'll probably never have been brave enough to do. And so I went to veterinary college and learned how to take care of animals, which I don't regret, but I was very... very *lonely*, even when..." Here was one of the only parts where Sakaki began to falter. Kaorin made no assumptions. "I don't know. I guess, even when I wasn't alone, I was so *lonely.* And so instead of doing anything to remedy that I worked myself to the bone with only a few thousand animal lives and an underdeveloped career to show for it. My parents barely talk to me now, and for decades now I've always run away from any kind of real friendship."

The warm glow of the familiar became searingly bright, blazed in Kaorin.

Sakaki continued. "But hey, it's fine... I had 'Slowly the Melody', right? Or... haha, I don't know... 'Kirei Ni Saite! Saitei Women's Transportation Bureau'. Or 'Pink Crystal of Endor." Even if my life was unpleasant at times, art made it so that I didn't have to feel anchored to that unpleasantness, that I could rise above my circumstances, or at least I could always take solace in the fact that Ayacchi and Micchan had found each other and would always have each other. There was always some vicarious relief like that, you know?" (Fuck, Kaorin thought, she's into *Pink Crystal of Endor*? That's... that's advanced!! Kaorin decided that pursuing the mention of such a work must be kind of a trap and went for the more roundabout pathway in the course of furthering the discussion. Rather than attempt interrogation into the obvious fact-trap, Kaorin decided to prod from another route altogether. Obviously the strategy was to mention the other, tamer work she mentioned, instead.)

"Kirei ni Saite! That one was cute! I never thought that there were so many dramatic and comedic moments, rife with passion and intrigue, that went on in a transportation bureau. Honestly, I didn't know that they had transportation bureaus that were for women only!"

"Haha, yes... We all learned so much from that series, didn't we, Kaorin...?"

"I guess so, Sakaki...!"

Normal reaction, Kaorin thought. Kind of a cute back-and-forth, but not much to build off of. Okay, fuck it. Let's see what happens when I choose the riskier conversational path. 

"Oh!" Like it had just popped into her head spontaneously. "Yeah, Pink Crystal of Endor was great too. I have, you know, sort of a *weak spot* for fantasy, and I've never seen something that does high fantasy properly while also... aha!..." Kaorin trailed off deliberately. This is because something was being implied yet deliberately unstated for rhetorical delicacy purposes.

"Oh, yes, it's fantastic. I like the, um, the costumes. They were all extremely cute."

"Cute!! Yes. Cute is what they are. Very... cute, hahahaha." Sometimes, at a moment like this, when you and your conversational partner both fake-laugh at the same time, it feels like a covenant--'we both know what this means, we are sharing the secret meaning of this but neither of us will say it.' The incongruity can be quite pleasing. There were minutes of silence as Kaorin and Sakaki quietly savored the incongruity.

The sukiyaki was now quite cold, but the flavor of the broth had absolutely permeated the embedded ingredients, making the denouement of their shared meal a pleasant one indeed. 

"Hey, Sakaki."

"Yes, Kaorin?"

"Have you seen any of the 'Slowly, the Melody' author's recent works?"

Sakaki slowly broke eye contact and turned away, covering her entire glowing-blush face with both hands and smiling controllably. This indicated to Kaorin that there may have been some passing familiarity with a work of subject matter that would put even the rather frisky 'Pink Crystal of Endor' to shame. Everyone knew that the author of SuroMero (isn't it about time you learned its popular name?) had taken a recent turn for the charmingly brazen, opened up a Fanbox and everything. While still undeniably sweet, the yet-unnamed subsequent works after SuroMero, featuring a new key set of innamorati and more complex romantic situations and intimacy scenarios, feel almost like a flood, an artist's long-repressed desires coming back to her as a surging rush of magnificent fantastical nonsense, of pure self-indulgent fun.

After a few moments of silence, of Kaorin stewing in quiet, neurotic anxiety, Sakaki had gathered herself up enough to reply. 

"Maybe." 

One beat of silence. Kaorin arched her eyebrows a little bit and looked askance of Sakaki, having realize their mutual impasse. "Yeah, um, I probably did too, I don't remember. Maybe I'll. Remember later. Or something." 

Sakaki nodded affirmatively at this. Her eyes glimmered in a kind of smug self-satisfaction of the sort that Kaorin had seen before. The feeling this glimmer evinced was unmistakable. 'Getting away with it.' Perhaps it was worth taking a risk once in a while... "Sure. There's always time to remember stuff later..."

The lights overhead shifted slightly. Maybe there were passing remnant clouds interfering briefly with the window-light; maybe it was one of the not-uncommon electricity flickers that happened out here. All Kaorin knew for sure is that one moment, Sakaki looked calm and certain, and the next moment, after the flicker, she saw a Sakaki again filled with doubt and knotted up on the inside with anxiety. Like no progress had been made in any of their conversations.

What would have helped more? For Kaorin to sit there and panic, or for Kaorin to stay calm and see what can be done? A small and great miracle that Kaorin chose the latter. "Hey... It's okay. Talk to me?" Who was this person speaking? Kaorin supposed that she must somehow not have wasted even the lost decades of her life. She must have been growing in some way. This is not what she would have done in high school.

Sakaki, thus prompted, elected to share her concerns rather than keep quiet. "I don't know... Am I really any better than I was in high school? Have I really learned anything at all? I used to be... I used to be so *dumb*. I didn't know anything about myself. I had an interior life, but I never knew how to give voice to it. I'm a fully-grown adult, but I still have the same problem. I can... I can tiptoe around things, prance silently and deliberately around topics, but never look at them head on. Will such a roundabout path lead me to nowhere? Am I just doomed to keep repeating the same cycles over and over again?"

Kaorin sipped her drink. She looked at Sakaki in silence for a while. No tension. No intensity. No nervousness or looking away. Just looking at Sakaki--at the flesh, blood, and spirit before her, at the entire person, so much more complex than the fantasies about her that she'd woven. Just looking at Sakaki as she really is, and thinking, without so much as a single flutter of her eyes. 

"We wouldn't be having this conversation if it was back in high school. I don't blame you for that. Or me. But we didn't really have words to talk about anything back then. Not even the silent-prancing, issue-dodging roundabout words that we do have now. Not even the comic book titles that we can speak in hushed tones of, not even such a codex that only we would get and could never state out loud to each other. We just didn't have anything back then. It was all forbidden from even existing as a conceptualization, let alone being expressed in words or practice. And that--that's how you know you've grown up. That you've learned something, grown, gotten even just a little bit better than you were before. Because you can put some kind of words to that nameless feeling inside you now. You're still growing, Sakaki. So am I. There is nothing about our stunted development paths that impede us from the hope of flourishing as long as we are alive. Nothing to keep us from breaking the cycles. Yknow?" Kaorin had placed her glass down in front of her, and was staring at the surface of the tea in its all its swirling and eddying and reflective glaring.

Then Sakaki did something very strange. Or more precisely, it was something that was very unusual for her, but that also was a sign that, in her own little ways, she had been growing too: 

Sakaki *went for something.* She actively went towards something she was curious about and wanted. She pushed apart the briars encircling her heart in search of honesty and self-fulfillment.

She picked up the broth and remnants from off the dormant burner. She put her lips over the rim of the vessel, and tipped it up in one slow, smooth motion. All of that salt, sugar, all those clouds of starch, all down in a single series of smooth, steady, coughless gulps. Then she placed the pot back down and looked at Kaorin.

"I know what it is. I can give words to the nameless feeling." Sakaki's eyes were clear and sparkling. Moonlight on the water at midnight.

Kaorin nodded... She was quiet and nodded. She was forcing herself not to tremble. Even speaking a single word could upset some delicate balance of fate. She didn't even care if anything "happened". Just hearing it. Just hearing her say that one word, that properly completed "I'm a ___" sentence, that would make everything okay again. Kaorin looked at Sakaki with a sincerity and acceptance that Sakaki had almost never really seen before, from anyone. It's okay, the look said. You can do it. Tell me, your friend. This moment has been waiting for a long, long time. As I watch over you, as I listen and behold you, give words to the nameless feeling.

"I'm... I'm a..."

Kaorin leaned in. Her eyes were full of acceptance and unconditional love. Let me hear you say it. I won't ever ask for another thing, so please tell me.

"I'm..."

The loud knock cuts through the moment like a cake knife through an optimally designed cake. The moment collapses like a balloon in a vacuum chamber. Our two heroines are shaken--shaken, but recoverable. A head pops in through the door. Why, it's Naomi.

Naomi tells everyone, through her perhaps overly affected presentational voice, that the courier has arrived with the requisite biopsy kits. And the ailing pregnant heifer, Momoko, has seen no improvement in her symptoms since Sakaki's last inspection of her, so could she please come right away so she can continue her testing and diagnostic process. Sakaki looked at Kaorin. Her face was resignation and certainty. Kaorin nodded. Of course, Momoko was the priority right now. "We'll talk", said Kaorin, in a way that meant nothing to Naomi and everything to Sakaki. Of course. They would talk.

Thank you Naomi. We appreciate everything you've done. Not your fault they gave you the unintentionally shittily timed news. You're just doing your best out there. Kaorin sees you, and we see you, and we are praying for you with all our hearts.

Kaorin sat alone for a minute after Naomi ushered Sakaki away. She turned her face upward towards the ceiling; the fluorescent lights were like a pale, flickering moon. And not a single shiny tear spilled from her cheek as she looked up. And she didn't think anything like, "Oh, of course! Of course this would happen to me!" And so despite everything, the calm inside her prevailed. Relief trampled over anxiety. She was sure things were going to be okay. Sakaki would have the biopsies sent off to the lab and they'd go back to talking soon. She folded her arms and permitted herself to laugh just a little. 

"We... we *almost* seriously talked about it!! We almost... haha... we seriously almost..."

They seriously almost.