This is the fifth part of Akira Satou's arc from my post-Lilly-neutral-end mosaic, 'After the Dream'.
In that continuity, it takes place on 8 Aug 2024. It parallels Mutou's story here.
Caveat: Mutou's account of events and Akira's are parallel but have discrepancies. Neither is telling the whole story, I'm sure.
Akira 5: Wanting (T +0)
“Lils?”
There’s only a faint animal sound from behind her locked door. Hnng. Hnk. Something like that, irregular, ragged, wrong. It’s the sound of someone all cried out, no more tears left, just the dry sobbing. She’ll be all right in the morning, I suppose. But it’ll be terrible till then. Been there before.
It makes me feel bad that I’m determined to enjoy my night out, y’know what I mean? We’ve just put Nakai into the ground, and my kid sister has wept her heart out, is starting on her guts and maybe her liver, and… I’m about to go out for dinner with someone whose company I really enjoy.
I leave a note on the table. [Out for dinner. Don’t stay up. Drink lots of water. Love, AK.]
I’ve a few minutes left, not really much time for a change of clothing, but it’ll do. Off with the dark mourning suit, and into something else that’s black. I don’t want to be Akira the sister or Akira the lawyer now. Just for tonight, I want to be plain ol’ Akira who likes imagining she can be simple, pretty, innocent. Yeah. Really.
I freshen up a bit so that I’m not at dinner with funeral makeup on. Then I strip down and look at myself critically. Light muscle from working out. Not curvy like Lils, but good enough. Legs fine, maybe starting to develop a couple of barely-visible varicose veins from too much standing around. Let’s be honest, I’m not a Lils-style pretty manga girl, never will be, and for tonight especially, wouldn’t want to be.
The black satin still fits. It sits well on my hips and doesn’t ride the wrong way. It’s been more than fifteen years since I last took it out of its tissue paper. I won’t cry the way I did then: Akira Katharine Anderson Satou, aged 42, too old for tears, and too much time past to remember such things anyway.
I have to pick him up in ten minutes. I hope I remember the way.
*****
This isn’t a date, I remind myself. It’s just what family does. My cousins are off doing their own thing, Lils is in her room and won’t come out, he’s all the family I have left. We’d have to see each other tomorrow anyway, but we should catch up with each other first.
I slip into a vacant lot just outside his apartment and text him @rum3: [os now].
He’s only a couple of minutes, and he’s not slouching. Rather, his spare frame is still dark and thin in his funeral suit. At least he’s changed his tie to a sort of dark brown. I wonder why he’s using a stick. He doesn’t need it for support, as far as I can tell.
“Hello again, Aki-chan,” he says half-cheerfully in his gravelly baritone. “Still driving these fast little cars, are we?”
I note his battered old Civic parked sloppily down the road and allow myself a snarky smile. “Get in, respected uncle sir. Your driver wants to bring you to dinner post-haste, not tour the city.”
He laughs briefly, and then looks a little guilty. He gives me a half-bow, pulls the door open carefully, and folds his length mostly into the other bucket seat before closing the door just as carefully. Somewhat apologetically, he adjusts the seat so that it moves further back, then buckles himself in.
“One can’t be too careful, my dear niece. These days, times are hard. Innocent people have to keep weapons close at hand.”
So that’s what the stick is for. He’s been keeping up with his hanbojutsu training, I guess. Uncle has always been a fan of strange weapons—also, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who and other western fiction. I like that, because talking to him doesn’t need me to ‘think Japanese’ so much. But he tries to find traditional parallels with this borrowed culture, and that’s always fun to watch.
“Can you actually use that thing?” I wave at his blackwood (ebony? rosewood?) cane. The menacing silver hawk’s-head handle stares at me blindly with two red eyes. I stare back, taking my eyes off the road for a moment.
Silence. Uncle stares pointedly at the steering wheel while I try to outstare his walking stick, and I take the hint. He only speaks when both my hands are back on the wheel. Older folks are like that. The defensive-space sensors in my car will keep us safer than Akira’s ageing reflexes.
“It’s a nicely balanced African hardwood short-staff. Yes, I can defend your honour with it, if necessary. The eyes are Ceylonese garnets, native calcium aluminium silicate with iron impurities, and the head is that of a local mountain hawk-eagle, cast in palladium-ruthenium alloy. Thanks for catering to my unreasonable fear of your usual driving technique, by the way.”
He grins, having had his fun and the opportunity to lecture. I smile back, but try to drive smoothly so that he knows I’m paying attention. We’ve always had a comfortable relationship, and that’s important to me.
*****
I catch him watching me strangely as I exit the car. I’ve caught people watching my ass before when I’m in a dress, but… hey, this is my uncle. Then I realize he’s not watching me, but the way I move. He’s frowning slightly, as if trying to recall something.
“Uncle?”
“Hmmm?”
“What’s on your mind?”
“That’s a nice dress,” he says very neutrally. He’s obviously thinking about something else. It’s hard to tell with him. He’s ALWAYS thinking about something else.
“You like it? It’s my idea of the right thing to wear for a meal with my dear and very serious uncle.”
“I think it’s beautiful, Aki-chan. I’m seldom so blessed as to see you in such finery.”
I laugh, slightly embarrassed. I even catch myself covering my mouth like some traditional Japanese young lady. He’s being very kind. He’s not always this stiff except when he’s being nice to someone. Means well, good guy, that’s him.
“Thanks for not mocking me, respected uncle. It’s just a comfortable old dress, kept a long time for a special occasion.”
“The last person to have seen you in it must have been a very special person.”
I feel hot all over. The last time I wore this, I was about to break up with someone, just before I thought I was leaving Japan for good. Then I was ditched instead and the dress went into storage. I’m about to say that the person now seeing me in it is indeed a very special person, but he gives me an awkward look and changes the subject.
“Hmm, the wine list tonight seems especially fine.”
That’s a good topic if you ever need to change subjects when talking to me. It also gives me time to think about what I’m doing here. Uncle Akio has always been a friend to me, someone with whom to have quiet conversations about life whenever I came down Sendai way. Sensible always, but so very lonely. I think I need his experience with loneliness. I’m going to end up like him one day.
But most of all, I need some answers. My aunt, my father’s youngest sister, left him eighteen years ago, and the story’s never been complete. Father once said I looked a bit like her, and for years when I was younger, I wanted to grow up to be like her. I don’t know what I’m saying when I open my mouth.
“Uncle, do you ever speak to Aunt Michiko?”
It’s like I’ve hit him or something. His head rolls slightly and he suddenly looks cautiously dazed.
“No, not for maybe twelve years?”
“Dad once said that if I dressed and acted more like a lady, I’d resemble her quite a bit. But blonde, of course. What do you think?”
Yeah, I’ve this sad tendency to babble when nervous. Not many people make me nervous, unless they’re people I love and whom I don’t want to hurt.
He winces, and for the first time this evening, he looks at me. Really looks at me, as if I’m a woman in her forties whom he’s just seen for the first time. I see Mutou-san the scientist, weighing, evaluating, thinking hard about what he sees. Then he speaks, and it’s Mutou-san the man.
“Your eyes are a lot like hers; you have the smouldering dark Satou eyes. All of you have those eyes except Lilly. If your hair were chestnut-brown, and if your face were a little rounder, you’d look very much like your Aunt Michiko.”
The person he’s describing is not really me, is it? A bit rounder, dark eyes, that’s more like Shizune Hakamichi, my cousin. I feel strangely disappointed. Is that all he sees in me?
“Very much like your boss, you mean.”
Again, impulsive words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. I desperately hope these aren’t bitter enough to hurt. But surprisingly, he releases a soft chuckle.
“No, no. Shizune doesn’t move like Michiko did, and her hair is like Hideaki’s—very Hakamichi-black, the kind that can easily turn blue.”
I can’t help but grin. So that’s what Uncle was looking at! He was looking at me move, and liking what he saw. Because I move like Aunt Michiko… This time, I bite back what I might otherwise say. Fortunately, the food arrives just then.
*****
I really can’t remember what we had for dinner. Steak, I think. It was good, nice and rare, the way I like it, with mushrooms. But I was looking at Uncle Akio too, watching his precise actions, his well-concealed grace of movement. He doesn’t shave closely, he’s a bit sloppy about some things. But he has hidden depths. And he’s only eleven years my senior, and if things had been different…
“Aki-chan, you’re not eating. What’s up?”
I’m staring. At my uncle. Like some love-sick girl! Akira Satou, quick, get your brain in gear! I blink demurely, or I hope I do.
“Heh. Was thinking of something that happened long ago.”
“Do carry on.”
“It’s about the last time Lils and I really, really fought.”
Yeah, we fought over Uncle Akio, believe it or not. This part’s really cringe-inducing, now that I’m in my forties. Especially since I know that he’s going to want to hear all of it, now that he’s got his I-would-really-like-to-know face on. Okay, fine, let’s get it over with.
“When was that? And why?”
I try to pout at him, but fail. Wasn’t ever very good at doing the Emi Ibarazaki kind of thing. So I go headlong into the story.
“Well, it was quite a long time before Lils went to Yamaku. Always serious, our Lils. Maybe she wanted to be happy, but didn’t quite know how to manage it. So there we were, serious Lils and flighty Akira, chatting in the garden. I said that when I grew up, I’d want to be a lawyer like Aunt Michiko.”
I take a deep breath.
“She replied that she wasn’t interested in being a lawyer, because she was more interested in being married to you like Aunt Michiko. Quite stupidly, I provoked her by telling her I’d get there first. We were fighting, and everyone in the neighbourhood heard us. Mother had to calm us down, and she was unhappy too. Dad was away of course, so I don’t think he ever heard about it.”
My dear uncle looks terribly uncomfortable. But heck, y’know—sometimes you’re in so far that you’ve gotta go all the way to the end. Akira might be dumb, but also very brave. So, here goes.
“I’d just turned twenty-three, when I found out that you and Aunt Michiko were getting divorced. I felt so guilty for thinking that if I’d been married to you, this wouldn’t have happened. Y’know, Lils cried and cried? It was only her second year at Yamaku when you weren’t really her uncle anymore. You broke her fairy-tale.”
“Ah. That’s very sad.”
He looks like I’ve made him eat a bad egg. But I can’t help it. I’ve got to let it out after twenty years have gone by. Nakai’s death after all that pain and sadness and suffering? It made me think. This is something you have to do. You have to say it before you never get to say it ever again.
“Then she found out that you’d be Shizune’s form teacher, not hers. She called me and was so angry about it. I reminded her that Shizune didn’t know about you. But I was sad about it all. I was sad that Aunt Mayoi and Aunt Michiko just didn’t want you and Uncle Jigoro in our family anymore.”
“All water under the bridge, Aki-chan. Forget it.”
He looks resigned, and determined, and willing to be kind, all at once. It gets to me. What happens inside when you’ve decided to give up on happiness? Do you have to give everything away?
From deep within me, a voice says,
you could just tell him that you love him. Dammit, I’m not so stupid as to say that. But clearly, I'm fool enough to think it.
“Uncle, are you happy? Do you have anyone to care about, to care for you?”
He looks as if something is inside him too, struggling to get out.
Maybe, says that damn voice inside my heart,
it’s the same for him. Or maybe not. He takes a deep breath, as if to make up his mind. I’m holding mine.
“Aki-chan, I’m not that sad. I care about my students. I have a few friends. If you drop by with one of your usual gifts, I will cheerfully accept. You have a special place in my heart, eldest niece. Always.”
A special place. Shit, I’ve been friendzoned. A single tear runs down my cheek, just one that gets away before I tell the rest to shut up. But my uncle is still my friend, my confidant, that’s something not to lose. I breathe again.
“And you in mine, old man. Let’s get some dessert. Then we can talk about tomorrow, when Shortie and I have to read that damned peculiar will of Hisao’s and you have to be its executor.”
*****
That night, just as I drop him off at his apartment, his phone rings. He seems pleasantly surprised, says he’ll call back in a while. I sneak a peek at his display just before he shuts it off. And with a sense of final loss, I wonder, who the hell is that goddamn beautiful woman named Rika Katayama?
Before I drive off home to check on Lils, he waves. I smile at him and wave back even though my heart’s so heavy. He’ll always be my very dear uncle. And that’s all he’ll ever be.
=====
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