The Catgut Dilemma

The Catgut Dilemma 26 MINUTE READ

As far as Kimiya Shioji is concerned, the trouble starts when Haruka Ahane sees him at the night market in Saburo-cho and wastes no time in coming over. He’s fresh off teaching a long day of classes, five o’clock shadow over his collared button-down shirt. Maybe about to catch the subway back to the flat. If he feels fatigued, he doesn’t show it, waving animatedly as he cuts the crowd.

“Shioji-san!” he calls as he approaches. “Are you working a case?”

“I feel like I shouldn’t have to point that loudly asking if I’m working a case is not good for many parts of my job,” Kimiya replies, thumbing the button on the side of his pen to turn it off. He tucks it in his jacket’s inside pocket as the last wisps of vapor dissipate, just in time to have his hand caught up in Haruka’s and shaken vigorously, bow forgone entirely. The professor’s are soft but callused on thumb and forefinger from holding a pen and…

…the first awkward plucks ringing out in the class as he tunes, the wide itomaki pegs turning slowly as he feels out the notes with the bachi, the plectrum, then…

…shamisen, right, he plays shamisen.

Haruka smiles at him like he’s the best news the man has gotten all day, and Kimiya wonders whether he reached for the memory of the classroom or it was given to him. He clears his throat. “Ahane-sensei, it’s good to see you.”

“Haruka, please,” Haruka insists. His early forties sit well on him in a way they didn’t on Kimiya. Haruka’s hair is thick and silver, and his laugh lines suggest he was born smiling, crow’s feet accentuating the way his eyes scrunch in happiness. “You’re here for Junko’s birthday, yes? We’ll take the train over together.”

“I actually have a room in Jiraki-cho,” Kimiya says, gesturing to the south. “Well, I called ahead, they…”

Haruka loops his arm through Kimiya’s like they’re schoolgirls out for a stroll. “Nonsense. Ai will be thrilled to see you made it.”

“Hm,” is the most diplomatic response Kimiya can think of to that, but he allows himself to be towed by his ex-wife’s enthusiastic husband down to the turnstiles for the subway.

Ai Ahane is not thrilled to see him. She regards him, as Haruka tucks their shoes into the hall closet, like he’s a gull who got in the automatic doors of a convenience store, and she the cashier tasked with capturing him with a minimum of collateral damage. His metaphor is labored. She’s wearing a sleeveless shirt and chopping radish for salad.

“Look who I found!” Haruka announces. “He was holding up a stall at the night market, but I have all faith it will not lean too far over without him.”

“Welcome back, Kimiya,” she says, drawing her knife across the cutting board to deposit diced radish in a bowl.

“Thank you for having me,” he replies perfunctorily as he sheds his suit jacket. A cat comes to sniff the smells of the street he brings in with him. Shikibu, he thinks it’s called— Haruka’s cat originally. The smells of the old flat wash over him, pushing away the spearmint scent of his vapor with cooking oil, incense from the shrine in the hall, sweat from a recent workout…

…twenty one-armed pushups, then switch sides. She’s been recommended for a promotion, for the fourth time, to a position where she’s contained in an office as a “place of honor.” She can’t refuse this time. One of these days they’re going to assure her that physical fitness is no longer part of her job requirements…

“A little incompetence goes a long way, if you can stomach it,” he says, continuing a conversation that isn’t happening and he wasn’t a part of prior. Haruka blinks. Ai just shakes her head.

“They wouldn’t believe it from me,” she replies.

“Ah, the promotion,” Haruka concludes. “I still advocate a blackmail angle. Akihiro-san has that look about him, you know— like a man who has an embarrassing secret he is dying to lose.”

“He still worships Ryoko Zubame, the idol from twenty years back,” Kimiya says as he enters the house and joins Haruka in hovering on the opposite side of kitchen island from Ai. “Nothing untoward, but even he knows it’s strange to fight for her trading holos at this point.”

“You still remember that from the gift exchange in ‘68,” Ai notes as she chops with a vicious efficiency, muscles in her arms flexing.

Kimiya nods. “Back then, you wanted promotions.”

Haruka just watches them, elbow on the counter, chin on his palm. He tends to radiate amusement seeing them skirt around each other at holidays and birthdays. It would be irritating if it weren’t paired with equal parts fondness and heat.

Ai doesn’t miss the look and waves her knife at the cabinets behind her. “You look like a cat again, Haruka. Set the table. Junko will be home soon.”

“I look like a cat, Shioji-san looks like a crow, and you look like an ox, my dear,” Haruka says in a sing-song he affects sometimes. It’s another thing that should be annoying, but his voice deepens and he slips into a folk song as he picks out sets of chopsticks. “Go over a mountain… Go over another mountain, over that one too. I’m so in love with you…”

“My chief incompetence is being attracted to wishy-washy men,” Ai says as she finishes with the vegetables, “and that will not spare me from a desk job, unfortunately.”

Haruka laughs and Kimiya makes his move for the other side of the counter to help debone the fish.

Junko Shioji-Ahane is home late. Ai decided half an hour before that letting the soup cool and the pickled radish warm based on teenage whim was idiotic, so they ate, chatting about this and that. Tensions among the Narita peacekeepers Ai serves with. Thesis proposals from Haruka’s graduate folklore students. Details Kimiya wasn’t bound to keep confidential from his most recent case.

It’s a dance that’s become easier in the decade since the divorce and Ai’s remarriage. She, stubborn and terse, offering little detail and leaving Kimiya to read her to find the nuance. Kimiya, preoccupied with thoughts even as he utters them, prone to trailing off. Haruka, teasing Kimiya for leaning on his telepathy and Ai for her clipped sentences, weaving it all together with observations and jokes. It’s become as familiar as the scents of the house. It makes Kimiya think maybe it would be okay to come back to this place more often.

He feels Junko before her key turns in the lock.

Her fashion sense has changed since last year. Then it was eye-searing colors, textures, and patterns, countless charms dangling from her compad like a flail of plastic anime characters, cutesy makeup and false fangs. Now, it’s black. A plain black sheath dress, black tights, prim black kitten heels, her long, black hair straightened into a sheet down her back. Her eyeshadow is dark and glossy, an immortal relic of the ancient silver-screen era, and her lips are painted black too, drawn into a frown as she looks up from kicking her shoes into a corner by the door and spies Kimiya at the table.

She says nothing, just pulls her bag close and bustles by where the adults are seated.

“Say hello to your father,” Ai calls, not bothering to look up from a morsel of herring she’s plucked from her bowl with her chopsticks. She offers it Shikibu, perched at her elbow for just such occasions, who eats it eagerly.

“Hello to your father,” Junko snaps as she slams her door. A stereo roars to life shortly after.

“You see what I mean. Junko-kun’s voice is only lovelier as she grows,” Haruka says without missing a beat. “I do miss her at the cultural performances, but she sings in a band now with great passion! They’re doing a show tomorrow night, actually— Ai and I were planning to attend.”

“Ultra-pop was her thing, right?” Kimiya asks, guessing at the genre of what’s blaring through the whole flat.

Ai sips her sake. “It’s screamo now.”

“Ah.”

“Shall we have the momiji manju?” Haruka suggests with a soft clap of the hands. “I was so thrilled to find someone making it near the university. It really puts you in mind of changing seasons.”

“No,” Ai decides, setting her chopsticks down with a decisive clack and glancing over the two men flanking her at the table. “We’ll have it in the morning. We’re going to bed early.”

“We?” Haruka asks at the same time Kimiya asks, “Bath before or after?”

“After.”

Haruka blinks, but begins to look a little excited. “After?”

“Junko won’t eat until we’re gone,” Kimiya relays, although he doesn’t have to skim Ai’s mind for her reasoning, “and you’re going to be insufferable about me trying to go get that room in Jiraki-cho.”

“I was planning to be very insufferable,” Haruka concedes. He consolidates his tableware to hide the look he gets when he thinks there’s been some telepathic seduction plot hatched against him: a thrilled shock, eyelashes cast down over dilated pupils. Kimiya doesn’t bother surfacing the fact in his mind this happens nearly every time. They have a certain chemistry, and Ai doesn’t waste opportunities.

“With the stereo we have a viable window before evening quiet hours begin,” Ai orders without bothering to check the wall clock. “I will not tolerate Junko complaining at breakfast again.”

Haruka goes a shade of pink that suits his hair but nods.

“I was shot six weeks ago,” Kimiya remembers to mention. Ai frowns the frown Junko inherited, and Haruka, ever dramatic, actually gasps. “Don’t. It was just laser fire. I only mention it because I’m still regaining extension in the leg.”

“Lazy,” is the judgment Ai passes as she stands. “Next time, get out of the way of such things. I’ll put the futons down. Haruka, get the dishes soaking. Kimiya, draw the bath for later.”

Orders given, the three rose to retire together for the evening.

Later, Kimiya checks his compad for updates and smokes his pen, seated on the narrow balcony outside Ai and Haruka’s master suite. The night air is cold on his bare chest and feet since he only bothered to put on sweatpants. He’s trying not to think about the quiet sounds of his daughter having dinner alone which drift to him from the open window further down the building. The angry clinks of her plating leftovers and the TV playing a reality show she watches with disinterest.

If he thinks too hard about it, he’ll experience it. She slammed the door earlier because she wanted privacy.

The sliding door at his back whispers open. He knows from the sound of fabric moving it’s Haruka, wrapped in one of the many comfortable cotton yukata he keeps in a trunk by the bed. Kimiya locks his comms. The screen going black lets the distant botoshiti lights reassert themselves in his eyeline.

“Working, Shioji-san?” Haruka asks, settling into one of the patio chairs Kimiya eschewed to sit on the ground, legs dangling between the posts of the railing as he vapes.

“This would be an inappropriate time,” Kimiya replies. He exhales a cloud of spearmint, mind still on the lonely dinner. “Thank you again for taking care of them, Ahane-sensei.”

There’s a hollow, wooden thump as Haruka settles something in his lap. Kimiya glances back to find he brought out his shamisen, and the picture he makes cradling the instrument, folding his hand around the plectrum, yukata tied only loosely, is somehow more indecent than Kimiya’s own stereotypical post-coital smoke.

“They look after themselves,” Haruka says, gazing up the neck of the instrument as he plucks out the first notes. It’s the song he sang earlier, the shamisen accompaniment to ‘Otemoyan.’ “Mm. You know that’s the trouble I’ve had. Finding a way to truly become part of their lives, when they’re such self-contained units.”

Kimiya takes another drag. “You’re good at it. You’re patient and receptive.”

Haruka winks at him. Kimiya snorts and shakes his head.

“I’m greedy,” Haruka counters. “I crave attention. The attention gleaned from the most focused of people is the rarest, and sweetest. And I meant it, before— I miss Junko-kun singing these songs with me. Being her father as well has been a gift. But Ai chose me, Junko-kun didn’t. I’m trying not to be hurt that her interest in sharing things with me waxes and wanes.”

The song on the shamisen floats out over the city, its ancient sound joining the distant rattle of subway trains, chatter around the bars, and the omnipresent hum of the desalination plants. Kimiya used to not care for the instrument. Something about the abrupt notes, how they twang and then hang in the air, irked him. Now he nods along absently.

“We all crave attention, Ahane-sensei. You’re just rare in being happy and unashamed to say so.” Kimiya clicks off his pen, thinking. “I… will go to her concert tomorrow, if my presence will not be too disruptive.”

“I think she would like that very much, Kimiya, even if she doesn’t say so,” Haruka says, softly. It probably means something that him using Kimiya’s given name feels more shocking and intimate than anything they did earlier. Haruka is startled into a laugh, plectrum tripping over the strings. Kimiya realizes he projected his surprise.

The sliding door opens again.

“What are you fools doing?” Ai asks. “Competing to be most aloof-looking? You’re going to get pneumonia.”

“You don’t like me to vape inside,” Kimiya points out at the same time Haruka asks, “But who do you think is winning?”

“Wishy-washy men,” Ai mutters.

Haruka corrects his grip to finish ‘Otemoyan.’ “It wasn’t your looks that charmed me, I saw the way you smoked your tobacco pipe. The rest is history…”

Kimiya has to be in Midori-cho anyway, so he walks the three blocks up to the columbarium. He checks in at the desk and is directed to the seventh floor, block one, niche twenty-five.

Karin Shioji is waiting for him.

The screen mounted on the outside of her niche switches from display of her name and dates to her pictures on approach. The slideshow is short: her in her tiny kimono at seven for Shichi-Go-San, the formal portrait taken on her graduation from high school, her with her acceptance letter to university, and the last selfie she took before her hair began to fall out. Then it slides back to the plaque display.

潮路花梨 Karin Shioji April 1st, 3170 – August 7th, 3189

He presses his thumb to the first kanji in her given name and watches the screen discolor from the pressure. It was…

…hard to write, then. His hands were trembling as he printed the characters over and over on the paperwork. The power was out. Seawater breach into a secondary reactor, resulting in temporary shutdown of most of Narita. Everything was done with pen on papers yellowed from long storage.

There was a lot of pain, but nothing she couldn’t push through, and there was a certain appeal to giving birth by candlelight. They had tried to bring in the crank lanterns but she’d barked them out like new recruits, arms flexing as she gripped the bed rails. After, when the endorphins and oxytocin had her in their grip, the newborn on her chest, it seemed magical.

Watching the pen on the paper. Remembering, after so many years, how to give the downstrokes a softer point, something more like calligraphy. 潮, tide. 路, road. 花, flower. 梨, pear. Shioji Karin. Six pounds, four ounces. Hands impossibly small. She reached…

Kimiya thumbs tears from the corners of his eyes. “You had the text alerts set up?”

“Yes,” Ai says as she walks forward to stand beside him, arms crossed over her chest. “But I didn’t need them. You’re predictable.”

“Ten years,” he says.

“Yes,” she agrees.

This is what attracted him to her to begin with, he remembers. They met during an evacuation. Part of the substructure of his office had failed, old construction on an ancient vessel. She’d been there wheeling her arm to direct the panicked office workers. Barking orders in her crisp uniform, hair still black and cropped short, then. He was awash in the anxiety of hundreds of accountants and secretaries and middle-managers, and there she was, thoughts a deep, still pool in the middle of it all.

That feeling remains, but the pool is… colder. Her lingering grief gives it winter temperature. He fears visiting and finding his lungs seized in his chest, limbs unable to move. Sinking into the unknown depths of her grim acceptance.

Ai snaps a design chit out of its retail sleeve and slides it into the receptacle by the screen. It displays a loading animation, then the covers over its holo-emitters slide open and branches of white flowers bloom tastefully around the plaque. Pear blossoms.

“Haruka said you were coming to Junko’s show tonight,” she says, “but you didn’t ask for the address or time.”

“I forgot,” Kimiya says. “When I remembered, I thought I could look it up, but I don’t know what the name of the band is.”

Ai pulls her compad out and types briefly. Kimiya’s buzzes in his pocket.

“You won’t like it,” she warns.

Kimiya watches the holographic flowers sway in a digital wind. “The name of the band, or the performance?”

“Either.”

“Ah.”

He can feel Ai staring at the side of his face. He can’t turn to look at her. All he can think about, feeling the chill coming from her, is the way they stood side by side in the basement of this very building, metal chopsticks in hand.

…by taboo, even husband and wife lift nothing together with chopsticks, ever, except when sifting ashes. Each bone must be lifted out and set aside so she’ll sit right in the urn.

The memory’s too strong here. The smell is in his nose. Kimiya clears his throat, inclines his head towards the niche, and leaves his daughter’s final resting place alone.

The venue is in Jiraki-cho, and venue is a generous description. It’s a stage made of instapanels bolted to cement blocks in a bar that Kimiya can smell from down the street. Ai gets them a table by virtue of being Ai. Looming over men who have thirty centimeters on her is a honed skill in her line of work. Haruka handles drinks, depositing two icy bottles of beer at Kimiya and Ai’s elbows and putting a coaster down under his glass of plum wine.

“They’re opening for another band,” he explains over the clamor of the bar, “so it will be a short set. I thought after we could have udon? There’s a few carts down the road.”

“We’ll see,” Ai says, noncommittally, watching the band and one of the workers from the bar double-checking the equipment.

Kimiya’s compad buzzes in his pocket. He checks it and clears his throat. “I’m going to find the bathroom.”

“Hurry,” Haruka urges, checking the analog watch on the inside of his wrist. “Not long now!”

The look of the band is grim, to say the least. Everyone is dressed in black, a few with mismatched shades. The drummer is neo-punk, a safety pin through her ear and left eyebrow, hair glossy spikes of gel. The bassist has a carefully-cultivated goatee and an impeccable gothic lolita coord. Ai comments at least they must save on laundry detergent, which makes Haruka laugh. Junko herself is going for some sort of minimalist look, another plain black dress with a white collar and a horror-movie-pale makeup job.

“You look wonderful, Junko-kun!” Haruka calls as she approaches the mic. The makeup on her face is too thick to see her blush, but her ears turn red and she flips him off before turning to have a final word with the band. When she turns back, he can see her nod to her mother, then stare quizzically at their table. He looks over to see what’s wrong.

Kimiya’s beer sits untouched in front of the third seat at their table.

“Is Kimiya well?” Haruka ventures to ask.

Ai sips her beer. “No.”

Something in her tone makes his stomach sink. Haruka manages a smile up at the stage again, but Junko isn’t looking. She’s checking the set list.

“He said he wasn’t working,” he insists to Ai.

“Did he ever actually say he wasn’t, with those precise words— ‘no, I am not working’?” she asks. “Or did you just want to believe?”

Outside in the alley, Touru Zameki is up against a fence. He hasn’t been pushed, just run out of road to flee down, Kimiya pacing behind him.

“My client,” he calls, “asked me to find you. You were supposed to testify as a key witness in the trial against his business partner. You took a very lucrative deal before running off. Do you think that money is going to be enough for the young woman at the hourly hotel to join you on the run, indefinitely?”

Touru reaches into his stained suit jacket, pulling a pistol and leveling it at Kimiya’s head. It’s not laser, it’s a slug-thrower— as much incredibly illegal as it is a testament to his desperation. “Back off or I’ll shoot!”

Kimiya inhales deeply. He gets a noseful of street: rotting garbage, piss on a nearby wall, spilled alcohol. Somewhere nearby, though, incense is burning.

“You don’t want to do that,” he suggests.

It’s easier because Touru actually doesn’t. Kimiya doesn’t have to push hard. The suggestion meshes with Touru’s own panicked, internal thoughts, masquerading as an internal decision. No, he doesn’t want to do this. No, this isn’t worth taking a life over. No, it’s pointless to keep fighting.

He lowers the gun.

Haruka doesn’t know what to say. He just looks at Ai, bile in the back of his throat. She isn’t prone to soft looks in general, but especially not in public. Despite this, a corner of her mouth ticks up in a wry, sympathetic expression. She takes his hand under the table.

“It’s pathological, with him,” she says.

The amps hum as the band takes their final places on stage.

“We are Ikiryō!” screams the guitarist in Uchugo. He repeats in Mandate, “We! Are! Ikiryō!”

The drummer slams her sticks down on the edge of the snare. One, two, three, four. Haruka winces. He often tells his students you can’t become a specialist in folklore without welcoming some superstitions into your heart.

“Anything not to face harder problems to solve,” Ai finishes.

Junko squares herself in front of the microphone as the band begins the first song. She glares at the empty third chair at their table with a venomous hate.

Then she opens her mouth and wails.

Touru clambers over the fence while Kimiya doubles over, clutching his head. Within a matter of moments he clears the top, sprinting away into the Narita evening gloom, lost among the throngs of drunken office workers and might market patrons.

“Ah,” Kimiya gasps, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes to try to change the pressure, “ah, dammit, what’s…”

It’s a wave, or, rather, waves. Huge, black, icy cold, slamming into him over and over. He can’t pinpoint the source or force it back. He can only make himself small, draw his mental shields around him and try to endure it…

…a tug on his sleeve. He glances over, glasses pushed up his forehead so he can work at the terminal, and Junko is there, still in her uniform from a day of first grade classes.

“Papa, we’re going to see big sister,” she says, giving his sleeve another tug. “We’re going to have lunch together.”

He looks back at the screen, comparing the numbers on it to the printout next to him. The discrepancy has to be here somewhere. “I saw her on Monday, Jun-jun. Papa’s very busy right now, so you’ll have to split my bento, hmm?”

A stronger tug. The button at his wrist pops. He glances down again. Junko’s tiny face is scrunched up in anger and her small fingers dig firmly into the white linen she has hold of.

“We’re going to the hospital to see Karin!” she yells. “We’re going to have lunch together!”

“Junko,” Ai calls from the front door. “Just come.”

“No!” she screams. “We’re going to have lunch together!”

“Don’t throw a tantrum,” Kimiya pleads, gently trying to prize her hand off him. “Don’t, please, Papa is so busy, I have to work. I’ll go with you next time, okay?”

Except there wasn’t a next time. There wasn’t a next time. There wasn’t a next time, there wasn’t a next time, theRE WASN’T A NEXT TIME—

It takes Kimiya longer than it should to realize the source of the pounding waves is Junko.

Terror grips his heart. The idea that Junko could share his abilities but have no training, have them gone unnoticed for so long, is too much. This is too much. Is she torching? But logic reasserts itself. He forces his eyes open. He can’t see anything, and he should. He can’t push back, begin a contest of wills to negate the assault, as he would with another psychic.

She’s not psychic. She’s just furious.

“Junko…” he wheezes, leaning against the side of the bar for support.

Now that he understands what’s happening he can better distinguish internal and external sensation. The wall is vibrating, the massive speakers inside shaking everything with heavy bass. Junko’s voice is an unearthly, haunting shriek. He can hear the classical vocal training she did with Haruka in it. That epic, heart-rending quality which echoed off stages long before the first human stepped foot off of Earth.

The back door is on his left. The handle hums under his touch from the power of the sound within.

Kimiya leaves to find a hotel in Jiraki-cho.

Two days later he’s at the spaceport reviewing notes on a new job. A client on Zasoer suspects a virus of making microwithdrawals alongside all the legitimate financial transactions of his company. Old Yen to a cred, but it adds up, and it’s more about the hubris.

“These hackers in the Conglom,” he said on the comms last night, “they don’t think they can die, and CSS isn’t killing them fast enough to change their minds. I don’t need you to counterhack, that’s gotten my IT department nowhere, other than with their personal data all over the dark web. Find the person. I’ve heard that’s your specialty, the, er… human element?”

Kimiya is so absorbed in his notes he startles when a cloth-wrapped parcel drops into the seat connected to his.

“Good morning, Shioji-san,” Haruka says. He’s fresh-faced and his shirt is sharply pressed. There’s a black instrument case slung over his shoulder. On the way to teach, at a guess. He sets a tied-off bundle of cable on top of the wrapped package. “Ai said I would find you here. You forgot your compad charger.”

Kimiya cleared his throat. “I bought another at a convenience store. But… thank you, Ahane-sensei.”

“It was no trouble, the spaceport is on my way,” Haruka says. Both of them know it isn’t true and he looks a little embarrassed to have tried the excuse. “Well. Anyhow, we thought if you forgot something as important as that, you probably also forgot a few meals. So, here’s a bento and some snacks for your trip.”

Kimiya doesn’t know what to say. He’s forty-eight, hasn’t shaved, and at a loss staring at the floral pattern of the furoshiki. White flowers. Pear blossoms. Haruka’s warm hand closes over his shoulder.

“It’s the catgut dilemma,” he says.

“The what?” Kimiya asks, glancing back at the wrapped food. Haruka laughs softly.

“No, this whole…” He sits on Kimiya’s other side, stowing his briefcase and instrument between his feet for the moment. “It’s a dilemma among historical preservationists in music. It affects a lot of instruments, but the shamisen in particular.” He taps on the case. “The body of the instrument is a wooden drum, but the front and back were traditionally covered in cat skin. Due to concerns about animal cruelty, the switch was made long ago to a synthetic material. But there have been arguments that this change lost the traditional sound of instruments made with cat skin or even catgut, like the violin. That the shamisen we have today don’t create the music we’re trying so hard to preserve.”

“Does this lecture have a point, professor?” Kimiya asks. He regrets his tone as soon as he speaks, but Haruka’s appearance of infinite patience wears on him.

“We have a choice,” Haruka answers, propping his elbows on his knees and leaning forward, looking out at the scattering of other space travelers. “Remain firm that synthetics are the best course—cats are animals, yes, but, more importantly pets. Or… recall that all things die. If something beautiful can be made from a creature’s remains with a finite lifespan anyhow, what’s the harm in using them, to keep ancient tradition alive?”

“All this to say I have a choice.” Kimiya rubs the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “I’ve already made it. Thank you again for bringing these items, Ahane-sensei. I will be fine from here.”

“No,” Haruka insists. “All this to say, in some of the most important things, the choice point is never lost. At any moment, the decision to only make shamisen out of synthetic materials can be reversed.”

“It’s foolish to think you never have to stand by a decision,” Kimiya argues. “There are costs.”

“I know that, Kimiya,” Haruka says, ignoring the way the intimate usage makes the detective flinch. He stands and collects his bags. “I am not a fool, and although you may be six years my senior, I’m also not a child. My students even say I’m old.” He laughs again. “There are consequences for making choices as well as consequences for changing your mind. But if you can face them, you don’t have to accept your reality the way it is now.” He takes a breath and exhales it as a sigh. Then adds, “Here’s the only other thing I will say: Junko-kun smiled after her set.”

Kimiya stares at the flower-patterned furoshiki.

“She smiled,” Haruka continues in spite of his silence, “from the high of performing well, and the exercise she put her body through in the way she sings now, but also because she released something in her screams. I don’t need your abilities to know that. She’s healing. You can be part of it, when you’re ready to try.”

Kimiya pulls his pen out of his coat pocket and flicks it on. He takes a long drag.

“What’s your shamisen made out of?” he finally asks.

“What do you think?” Haruka replies, stepping away in the direction of the exit to the subway.

“I think when you moved in with Ai you had two cats.”

Haruka smiles over his shoulder. “They say the most beautiful-sounding shamisen are made from the bellies of cats who led full, happy lives. Their beloved spirits enhance the sound.”

“Maybe you are greedy, Haruka,” Kimiya says. Haruka laughs.

“Just bring the empty bento back for Obon, Kimiya.”

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 10/8/2019 | REHOSTED 2/27/2024