Leaving the Takikawa nurseries, I walk briskly to the market, and buy what I need. Low on coffee. Makoto has been drinking more milk lately and we’re almost out. I’ve still not seen to making my own pickles and have to buy them. I stay focused… if people stare at me and whisper behind my back, I don’t notice. The town is at times a blessing and a curse. The the sea air that heals me can be suffocating.
But there is peace here… True. Like the ocean, the waves rolling to the shore in endless succession… there’s a rhythm to life. Work. School for Makoto. Home.
It’s a small world, but it’s -my- world. The one I’ve built, for myself and my daughter.
There’s nothing saying that the weekends with Hajime can’t be part of that rhythm, is there?
But what a new start in Tokyo promised was just that… a new start. Together. Still that dream I have of us together, Hajime coming home in the late afternoon, as I’m getting dinner together and Makoto plays in the garden. We talk of our day, Hajime and I help Makoto-chan with her studies, and we get her to bed and then it’s time for us… and I wake up next to him. Sometimes I know that work will keep him from me, but this is something I can accept. Why he thinks that I cannot…
I am not Tokio.
“Yes, Nagashima, I heard,” a voice behind me says, I don’t know why the name of that ryoken comes to mind, should sound so familiar. It’s certainly not one of the better ones here in Ito. “Apparantly there was a disturbance there last night…”
Nagashima… wasn’t that where Hajime said he was? I move to inspect some fine Shizuoka oranges and try to listen. “Oh, yes! A man from Yokohama, I heard. Apparantly quite a regular here – Ogawa or something? I saw him – he was rather worse for wear.”
“Oh yes, -that- one, Fuu-san,” agrees the first woman. “I hear that he’s trouble anyway…”
“Went right out on the first train this morning… such a fuss! That kind of element is best out of Ito anyway. Not that I’m normally out at such early hours, of course, Chii-san, but I was going to the train – my daughter was leaving as well this morning. She had a lovely time, and wait until I tell you about what she told me about her in-laws…” she continues to prattle on but I’ve already heard what I needed to.
Ogawa… Nagashima… Hajime…
Leaving my house in the middle of the night, armed. In his room this morning, bruised and weary.
It all falls into place. He… I had wondered… but to -know-…
“I’ll take these,” I hand the stall-keeper a stack of oranges. Are they on my list? And aren’t they rather green? “Thank you.”
I finish my business and walk back up the hill.
(OOC – to be continued)
Saturday, May 2nd, 1885 – Late Morning-Midday
One thought on “Saturday, May 2nd, 1885 – Late Morning-Midday”
Comments are closed.
From the tree I see Okaasan go to our house, stay for a minute, leave again with a bag and then -finally- she comes back for me.
Scrambling down, I let Mochizuki-san know I’m leaving. I’m glad -she- made lunch… the breakfast that Isuzu-chan’s father made this morning was strange… I catch up to Okaasan at the gate. “Is Yamaguchi-san sick? When is he coming?” I ask.
“Climbing trees again?” she smiles at me, brushing a leaf from my hair. “I wish you two wouldn’t do that, you might fall.” Her smile goes away as she looks down to me.
“I won’t fall!” I tell her. “Isuzu-chan doesn’t have a base where we can play. And I don’t like to be inside in her room when it’s warm.”
She opens our gate for me, “I still need to trim that hair of yours… before your bangs get so long you can’t see. Before then, however, laundry,” she sighs.
“But what about Yamaguchi-san?” I ask. He did say he would bring me something if I had been good and I mostly have.
She walks me inside. “Help me get laundry together. We’re getting a late start but we should get started soon. And Mochizuki-san gave us some nice fish for dinner.”
I stop her on the stairs as we go up to our rooms. “But what about Yamaguchi-san?” She doesn’t answer my questions and I don’t like it when she does that.
Okaasan smiles but doesn’t look at me. “Ah, perhaps later, ne? Now, let’s get started.”
She still didn’t answer, I think, as I try to find that tabi that I threw beind the tansu the other night when I saw a weird shadow.
(OOC – Hide delivered the bag to Saitou’s and found the note. She also left the items he requested in the bag but did not take out the marbles for Makoto. They will be outside in the back until dinnertime.)