If You're Stressed Out And You Know It...
Sep. 26th, 2008 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunmoonandspoonTitle: If You're Stressed Out And You Know It...
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
speaky_bean
Characters: L, Watari, Sachiko, Light, Sayu, Ms. Mikami
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,371
Notes: This is a remix ofdiluted_thought's story, If You're Happy And You Know It..., and this time around it's from the perspective of the parents instead of the kids. Hope I did the thing justice. Enjoy!
“Mommy? Do I have to stay here?”
Atsuko stares down at her fidgeting son, and tries to wrest her hand from the vice grip of his tiny fingers. She can’t believe he’s asking this ridiculous question, yes, of course he has to stay here, they’ve been over this six hundred times, this is kindergarten, this is school. Besides, most days he’s here she has to work—today is a rare day off, and one of the few where she’ll actually have time for herself, but she’s not about to tell Teru that. She watches him taking in the walls, and wonders why the hell he seems so worried about them. They’re walls, what, does he think they’re going to fall on top of him?
“Teru, you have to stay,” she says, tapping her foot and eyeing the door. He’s going to cry, and he’s going to cling, and then she’ll never get out of here without that crushing guilt that comes from not caring. Not that she doesn’t care, she does, but look at all those proud smiling mothers shooing their precious babies into the playroom, and look at her. Look at Teru. She hasn’t even hugged him goodbye.
She tries to storm outside quickly, knowing he’s going to run after her sobbing, and not wanting to give him the chance. Once he gets started he doesn’t stop, and these kids will tear him apart if he’s crying for Mommy all day. Of course, the instant she turns her back on him he slithers to the floor and wraps his arms around her ankles, weeps into the fabric of her jeans.
“Teru…” she sighs, attempting to shake him off without kicking him. “I’ll be back for you in the afternoon. You’re going to be fine, okay? Just…get off my leg and go find somebody to play with, okay? How about that little boy over there?” She points to a meek, unassuming child with a crayon gripped tightly in his sweaty fist.
Teru stares at her, aghast. “NO!” he cries, as shocked as if she’s asked him to slaughter a kitten. “Mommy, he just sneezed, didn’t you see? And he didn’t even wash his hands after! I don’t wanna play with him, he’ll give me germs.”
Finally, she angles her foot into just the right position to extract it without causing him physical pain. Atsuko gives him a perfunctory hug, and strides purposefully out the door, fists balled and eyebrows knitted.
----
“Watari, does the teacher know I want cookies for snack time?”
Watari suppresses his laughter. Though he means no offense he knows that L will get indignant—the child takes himself far too seriously. He’s chewing his thumbnail, teeth scraping too close to the nail bed, and Watari wonders if he ought to stop him. It’s not really his place to do that, yet. He isn’t his father, and L is quite adamant about that fact. It might not yet be time to tell him what to do or start a fight with him. And so even though there’s no reason for the teacher to be aware of L’s personal snack preferences, Watari smiles and says, “I’m sure he does.”
L bites off a hunk of thumbnail and spits it onto the ground, and Watari wonders who taught him such hideous manners. His father certainly wasn’t one to bite his nails or sully the floor. But Watari will forgive this transgression too—the boy’s only just lost his parents.
L wipes his thumb on his jeans, leaving a temporary stain, and mumbles something hardly intelligible. “Good,” he says. “‘Cause o’erwise I have'ta eat my nails.”
----
It’s a lovely day despite weatherman precautions and Sachiko is starting to wish that she hadn’t loaded Sayu’s stroller with umbrellas and raincoats. But never mind that, she’s just happy that it isn’t pouring rain on Light’s first day of school. He’d never admit it, but he’s terrified of thunder, and Sachiko wouldn’t want him to have to spend the whole day wanting his mother and pretending he isn’t afraid.
Light attempts to tug her along while skipping, but she can’t go fast enough pulling the stroller, and so he winds up plodding along with crossed arms and an impatient pout. “We’re almost there, sweetheart,” she says, waving her free arm towards the approaching school building. “I’ll be here to pick you up in the afternoon, okay?”
“Bye, Mama!” he yelps, giving her a perfunctory hug and staring excitedly at the building. Sachiko gives him a quick peck on the cheek, tries not to be offended when he does the typical little-boy thing and wipes it away.
“Make me proud, Light!” she yells, hand cupped around her mouth as she watches him dash into the building. There are other things she wants to say to him—wisdom that’s probably outdated based on her own years in school—but he’s in a hurry and Sayu is starting to fuss, so she lets her son go and spins a red toy cat around her daughter’s head.
----
Parents mill out of the building, and you can tell who the stay-at-home moms are. Those are the ones who are hanging around the gate, peeking into the windows even though the only thing visible from outside is the cafeteria. Even then all you can really see is a few crates of chocolate milk. Atsuko thinks these people are idiots. Even if she had all the time in the world, she wouldn’t hang around staring at crates. It’s not like she’ll glean any information about her son’s education from the unreadable-from-here nutritional information on the milk cartons. It’s not like hanging around would do anything but waste her time.
Still, she’s reluctant to leave right away. She finds herself standing around with the other mothers, arms wrapped around herself because she should have brought a sweater and didn’t. She didn’t leave one for Teru, either. It’s too much work to get that kid to adjust from warm weather to cold anyway—it’d be a fight to get him to wear one.
It’s not her intention to start a conversation. Her intention is to stomp home for a long, long nap. Maybe get up a few minutes before it’s time to pick up the brat—it won’t matter much if she’s a little bit late. She hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in weeks, and today she’s got a day off and a kid in school—it seems like fate is telling her to spend the day snoring. And so, when a slightly pudgy woman with a shit-eating grin and a stroller clutched in her sweaty hands walks up to her and says ‘hi’, it seems like an offense to fate itself. “What?”
“Oh, I was just wondering what your name was—I think I might have seen you before—do you work at the library? I swear I’ve seen you before.” Atsuko bristles, tries not to yell at her that no she doesn’t work at the library, just because she saw her there doesn’t mean that she works there. Not that her actual job (she’s a poorly-paid office assistant who spends her days shredding paper and stuffing envelopes) is any more glamorous. Actually, working at the library might be better. Perhaps she should file an application.
“My name is Mikami,” she says gruffly, extending a creaking hand to shake hers. “Yours?”
Before the sloppy-grinned mommy can say a word, she’s blindsided by an apparently rather careless old man. He hits her in the back, knocking her breast-first into her stroller. “Oh,” he says. “I’m terribly sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going, I suppose—are you alright?”
She nods, lifts herself up slowly because maybe she got the wind knocked out of her or something. Despite that, she hasn’t stopped smiling. Atsuko finds this obnoxious and fake, but she tries not to make this apparent. Instead, she grinds her fingers into her grimy, off-white shirtsleeves and asks the lady what her name is. “And your baby,” she adds hastily. “It probably has a name too, right?”
“Yes, her name is Sayu,” the lady says, rubbing the girl’s tiny stomach, trying to stop what looks like an oncoming tantrum. The baby just yawns, though, and for a moment Atsuko’s confused. She didn’t realize that babies opened their mouths that wide to do anything but scream. “And I’m Sachiko—it’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Mikami!” She turns to the old man, who hasn’t left yet, much to Atsuko’s chagrin. She hates people who hang around when nobody asked them to. “What’s your name?” she asks. “Is your grandchild starting kindergarten today?”
The old man laughs in an unexpectedly dignified manner. “Oh, no,” he says. “My grandchildren are much too old for kindergarten. I’ve been taking care of a friend’s little boy, and part of the job involves taking him to school. It’s actually quite convenient—my favorite cake shop is nearby.” He grins, glances idly at his ridiculously expensive watch. “Actually, I was going to head there now—would either of you ladies like to join me?”
Atsuko’s first inclination is to decline. She’s exhausted, her eyes feel like they’re being poked with bits of kitty litter, and she doesn’t relish the thought of hanging out with some rich guy. Her three months worth of unpaid rent and politely worded eviction notices make her more than a little resentful of people with designer watches. Sachiko seems to be taking him up on it, and Atsuko’s whiny, clingy little boy makes her feel much the same way about women with quiet, adorable children.
So, she’s about to say no, spin around and head home. But the old man says something about it being his treat. Atsuko’s grumbling stomach and her taste for pricey pastries make her feel like maybe she can wait just a little bit longer for her nap.
----
Sachiko is somewhat apprehensive about accepting the old man’s offer. She doesn’t know him, and she knows that it isn’t wise to accept an invitation from a stranger when she has a baby with her. It could be dangerous, and her husband would be incensed if he knew. She doesn’t really have a legitimate reason for taking this risk, and if Ms. Mikami (who she does know from somewhere, even if it wasn’t the library) hadn’t said yes, she would have changed her mind. But now she doesn’t think she can do it—it wouldn’t be right to leave the poor woman alone. Soichiro, focused on crime due to his job, made sure that Sachiko took lessons in self-defense and knew exactly how to escape a potentially dangerous situation. Somehow, she doubts that Ms. Mikami has this knowledge.
And so, Sachiko pushes her stroller, following a strange old man and a twitchy young woman into a warm, sweet-smelling cake shop.
----
Watari hands a few 1,000 yen bills to the friendlier of the two women, and tells her to buy what she likes while he finds them a table. His legs ache and his knees are locking up, so he really doesn’t feel like standing any longer. He isn’t hungry just now, anyway—he took L here for breakfast in the morning, and ended up stuffing himself with green tea flavored cake. He hadn’t planned on eating three pieces of the stuff, but it was heavenly, he couldn’t help it. He sits down, resists draping his legs across a nearby chair.
It’s not long before the ladies join him. Sachiko’s tray contains a slice of strawberry cake (L’s favorite), and a bowl of flan which is, presumably, for her gap-toothed daughter. The contents of Mikami’s tray (it still strikes him as bizarre not to have a first name to work with) are a bit less conservative. She has two slices of cake, both chocolate, a sugar-dusted cream puff, a bottle of milk tea, and a chocolate parfait. There is, unsurprisingly, not more than a few yen left over
Mikami slams her tray down, while Sachiko sets hers on the table quietly. Sachiko grins and takes a bite of her cake, thanks Watari for being so generous. “Oh,” he says. “No trouble at all. It’s a good idea for us to get to know each other, since our children are in the same class, don’t you think?” He fiddles with a sugar packet, smiles blandly at Mikami. “What’s your child’s name?” he asks.
“Oh…” she mumbles past a forkful of cake. “Teru. I don’t know if you went in there, but he was the one who was having a nervous breakdown because he had to stay at school for a couple of hours. I’ve been leaving him with his grandmother and putting him in daycare for years now, I don’t get what the problem is. It’s not like I’m one of those stay-at-home mothers whose kids never get any exposure to the outside world.”
The baby squawks, and Sachiko looks uncomfortable. Watari hopes that this woman’s son hasn’t picked up any of her manners, because if he has then he certainly won’t be a very good influence on L. “I don’t know. He’s a bit crazy. Kid washes his hands ninety-five times a day if no one’s watching him. Throws the worst tantrums I’ve ever seen. I don’t really know what do to about it…I’m hoping school will straighten him out.”
“I’m sure it will!” Sachiko says brightly, pushing a small plastic spoon into her daughter’s gaping mouth. “My son Light did great in pre-school—he was a little shy at first, but interacting with other children on a daily basis worked wonders for him! He’s such an outgoing little boy now, you’d never know that he used to cling to my leg and cry at the playground.”
“Well, I hope you’re right.” Mikami takes a sip of her milk tea, swirls it around in her mouth and fiddles with the napkin dispenser. Sighs as if she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Watari wants to ask her to try having to take care of a genius who’s parents just died and see how difficult she finds her own son after that, but such a confrontation wouldn’t benefit anybody. “I don’t know. Teru’s not really shy, he’s just antisocial. He won’t play with other children because ‘they’re mean and they’ve got germs’. Which is fucking ridiculous if you ask me.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” Sachiko says. “Light went through a brief stage of germophobia after he caught a bad case of the flu—I think he was actually pretty bright to connect getting sick with playing with his friend who kept coughing. But anyway, he calmed down once he realized that he didn’t automatically get sick every time he played with his friends or touched anything. Has Teru been sick recently? That could explain things.”
Mikami shakes her head, long, dark hair getting caught in her teeth as she does so. “No, he’s always like this,” she says, obviously trying hard not to roll her eyes. It must be nice to know with such certainty what is or isn’t causing your child’s behavioral problems. Watari tells himself over and over again that L’s tantrums and violent behavior are a direct result of the mourning process, but there’s a limit to how far you can take that. Last time Watari took the kid out to the playground, he picked fights with three different children, for no reason that Watari can discern.
“I’m sure your children are lovely,” Watari says. He has absolutely no idea whether this is the case, but from the descriptions he’s received they sound easier to deal with than L Lawliet. He turns to the stroller, watches the baby chew on a pink-and-white striped blanket. “This one certainly is.”
“Why thank you!” Sachiko squeaks, beaming with obvious pride. Mikami crams the last spoonful of parfait into her mouth, and pushes what’s left of her cake around on the sheep-printed plate. She mumbles something about her son being a pain in the ass, and says that she’s got to be going. “Thanks for the food.”
Such a gruff, irritated young lady. Watari wonders what’s at fault for her behavior. Wonders how she’d react to a child like L, who spends his days strutting around acting superior and who spends his nights sobbing hysterically. Wonders, for no particular reason, how she’d react to being hit on. He can’t really test out the first thing, but he can certainly test out the second. And so he flashes a big smile, and says in the crudest voice he possibly can, “so baby, you wanna come back to my place after this? Maybe I could knock you up with a kid who’s not as crazy as your first one.”
As expected, she doesn’t react favorably to this. “You are a disgusting old man!” she yelps, grabbing her bag and what’s left of her confectionaries. She storms away, swearing as she goes
----
Sachiko grips the handlebars of Sayu’s stroller tightly, readies her legs to bolt if need be. “Why did you do that?” she asks, sure that there must be some reason. This man doesn’t seem like a slimeball, and while Sachiko knows better than to trust her instincts, she has a hard time believing that there wasn’t some greater purpose to his abrupt change of behavior.
“No reason in particular,” Watari says, and her heart sinks, she can’t help it, she had wanted him to be a good person so badly. “I get the feeling that men don’t generally pay much attention to her, and I wanted to see how she’d react. I mean, she seems incensed by the behavior of a five-year-old boy. Besides, maybe it’ll boost her self-confidence. She doesn’t seem to have much of that, really.”
Sachiko scans through the previous conversation, tries to think of what might indicate such things to this man. Try as she might, she can’t think of a thing. Watari seems quite intuitive, though she doesn’t know why he would think being hit on would increase a woman’s confidence. She wants to tell him that really, it does just the opposite, and that she can’t believe he’s gone so long in his life without knowing that.
“It was more to see what would happen than anything else,” he says, taking a sip of the milk tea that Mikami left behind. “Maybe a little bit of spite mixed in—her son does sound like a difficult case, but I hardly think it appropriate for her to badmouth him to strangers. The child in my care, L, is currently behaving like a little hellion, but I don’t speak as if I despise him.”
“She’s under a lot of stress—I think she’s a single mother, and she works at the library, where doesn’t get paid very much. And her son is difficult. I heard he was being evaluated for OCD. I’m sure that she loves Teru very much, she’s just…tired, that’s all.”
As the excuses fall from her mouth, Sachiko wonders if that’s really a good reason. She has no right to judge this woman’s behavior, the Yagamis do not want for money, and she’s married to a man who she loves. She has two beautiful, healthy children who wash their hands after using the toilet or before they have meals (well, in Sayu’s case it’s whenever her mother washes them for her, but that’s not the point). She doesn’t know what Watari has, but she gets the feeling that he has a wealth of resources with which to raise his child. It doesn’t even sound like the child is his, or with him permanently.
She doesn’t know. If she thinks too hard about it, she feels guilty. She feeds her daughter the last spoonful of flan, and thanks Watari for the meal. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” she says. “I hope our little boys will become good friend.”
----
“L wasn’t a very good boy today, I’m afraid. He didn’t sit with us in the circle or join in with the other children when they began playing. He even took Teru’s graham cracker. Then he started yelling and screaming and threw a terrible tantrum. I’m sorry, but I had to put him on time out for the rest of the day.”
The teacher fingers a necklace that clashes with her blazer, and stares at Watari over rimless glasses. Her feet are planted so firmly on the ground that Watari knows she’s afraid of him. He flashes a huge grin, hoping that it’s so full of sunshine that her skin turns red. Knowing that he’s too old to really turn on the charm the way he used to. “No, no,” he says, glancing down into the L’s oily hair, and wondering how hard he’ll have to struggle to get him into the bathtub tonight. “L should be the one apologizing. I’m sorry for the trouble that he caused. I’m sure L is, too. Aren’t you, L?”
L shoots him a look of cold defiance. It’s obvious that he isn’t the least bit sorry for making a fuss or stealing food. Watari grabs his tiny arm and shakes it lightly, insists on an apology. As much as he would love to pretend it’s alright for a grieving child to behave this way, it isn’t, really. He still needs to learn to function in society, and part of doing that is not taking your pain out on others, and apologizing when you’ve done something wrong. “Say you’re sorry,” he demands.
“I’m sorry,” spits L, jamming a thumb in his mouth like it’s a threat. “It won’t happen again…can we go home now?”
----
“So that’s your son?” Ms. Mikami says, eyeing Light in a way that makes Sachiko feel a little uncomfortable. “I saw him this morning, he was shrieking about how he knew how to spell Mississippi. That’s some pretty specialized knowledge, there—I don’t even know how to do that. I mean, I can write it, but spelling is another matter all together. Does he know English?”
“A little bit,” Sachiko says, trying not to sound too proud, trying to put her son down just enough to avoid enraging this woman. “I’m not entirely convinced that he knows what Mississippi is, he just thought that the word looked hard to spell and memorized it. He can be a bit of a show-off.”
Atsuko sighs, says that Teru can hardly even write his own name. “He gets too hung up on which pencil he’s going to use, and whether it’s going to give him lead poisoning, and whether the paper is going to give him a paper cut. Lucky you, you’ve got a bright kid who isn’t insane.”
Sachiko stares at the two little boys, and thinks that maybe Teru wouldn’t be so difficult if his mother thought of him as something other than a burden. He’s such a cute child, not as cute as her Light, but still quite sweet. He can’t be nearly as bad as Ms. Mikami claims.
She certainly hopes not. Because five more minutes into the conversation, she finds herself agreeing to host a play date between the two boys the following Saturday.
----
“Excuse me, Ms. Mikami?”
Atsuko nearly snaps a tendon in her neck as she whirls around. She can feel her son tensing up next to her leg, and she knows he’s going to start crying any second now and she hates that, hopes to God she can get out of here without a big scene. “What do you want?” she asks, placing a hand on her hip. She wants to rip the flesh from Watari’s wrinkly, smiling face.
“L would like to apologize to your son, Teru,” he says, raising his eyebrows, perhaps trying to convey that he too is sorry. Not that Atsuko knows this geezer particularly well, but his outburst seemed completely out of place. She doesn’t expect him to say anything that disgusting again. Besides, L, his grandson or whatever he was, had apparently spent the day victimizing Teru. Violent little shit, he’d better apologize. Teru is clinging to her leg, getting her skirt wet with tears and streaming snot. She tries to convince herself that excessive mucus production is just because he’s crying, that he isn’t coming down with a cold. She will never ever hear the end of it if he gets sick on his first day of kindergarten.
“Go on, L,” the old man says, placing a too-gentle hand on the kid’s shoulder. He sticks his tongue out, glares at Atsuko’s cowering son and says that he doesn’t want to, he already apologized to the teacher and really, that should be enough. “L,” Watari says, “you were very mean to this boy. You need to say sorry.”
“Make me!” shrieks the kid hysterically, balling his hands into tiny, ineffective fists. Atsuko almost feels sorry for him. How awful it must be to have to apologize for something you really weren’t sorry at all for. Still, she can’t feel too bad for him. She hates it when Teru cries, and Teru hates it when he cries too, but here he is sobbing uncontrollably into the pits of his mother’s knees. She wonders what L actually did to him, if such a reaction is warranted at all.
The old man growls L’s name to him in such a threatening tone that the kid gives up right there. “Fine, I’m sorry cryba…Teru,” he snaps, threatening to erupt into a tantrum too.
As soon as he says it, Atsuko takes Teru by the hand and bids them an insincere goodbye, says that they have a bus to catch and they really can’t stay but it was nice to meet them, crap like that. Teru seems incredibly grateful to be heading for home, and Atsuko is, too. She can hear the little brat muttering something about wanting to beat Teru up, and she can see that this is the start of a delightful year for the both of them.
“Teru,” she says, digging around in her totebag for her sack full of leftovers. “Would you like this piece of cake?”
Author:
speaky_beanCharacters: L, Watari, Sachiko, Light, Sayu, Ms. Mikami
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,371
Notes: This is a remix of
diluted_thought's story, If You're Happy And You Know It..., and this time around it's from the perspective of the parents instead of the kids. Hope I did the thing justice. Enjoy!“Mommy? Do I have to stay here?”
Atsuko stares down at her fidgeting son, and tries to wrest her hand from the vice grip of his tiny fingers. She can’t believe he’s asking this ridiculous question, yes, of course he has to stay here, they’ve been over this six hundred times, this is kindergarten, this is school. Besides, most days he’s here she has to work—today is a rare day off, and one of the few where she’ll actually have time for herself, but she’s not about to tell Teru that. She watches him taking in the walls, and wonders why the hell he seems so worried about them. They’re walls, what, does he think they’re going to fall on top of him?
“Teru, you have to stay,” she says, tapping her foot and eyeing the door. He’s going to cry, and he’s going to cling, and then she’ll never get out of here without that crushing guilt that comes from not caring. Not that she doesn’t care, she does, but look at all those proud smiling mothers shooing their precious babies into the playroom, and look at her. Look at Teru. She hasn’t even hugged him goodbye.
She tries to storm outside quickly, knowing he’s going to run after her sobbing, and not wanting to give him the chance. Once he gets started he doesn’t stop, and these kids will tear him apart if he’s crying for Mommy all day. Of course, the instant she turns her back on him he slithers to the floor and wraps his arms around her ankles, weeps into the fabric of her jeans.
“Teru…” she sighs, attempting to shake him off without kicking him. “I’ll be back for you in the afternoon. You’re going to be fine, okay? Just…get off my leg and go find somebody to play with, okay? How about that little boy over there?” She points to a meek, unassuming child with a crayon gripped tightly in his sweaty fist.
Teru stares at her, aghast. “NO!” he cries, as shocked as if she’s asked him to slaughter a kitten. “Mommy, he just sneezed, didn’t you see? And he didn’t even wash his hands after! I don’t wanna play with him, he’ll give me germs.”
Finally, she angles her foot into just the right position to extract it without causing him physical pain. Atsuko gives him a perfunctory hug, and strides purposefully out the door, fists balled and eyebrows knitted.
----
“Watari, does the teacher know I want cookies for snack time?”
Watari suppresses his laughter. Though he means no offense he knows that L will get indignant—the child takes himself far too seriously. He’s chewing his thumbnail, teeth scraping too close to the nail bed, and Watari wonders if he ought to stop him. It’s not really his place to do that, yet. He isn’t his father, and L is quite adamant about that fact. It might not yet be time to tell him what to do or start a fight with him. And so even though there’s no reason for the teacher to be aware of L’s personal snack preferences, Watari smiles and says, “I’m sure he does.”
L bites off a hunk of thumbnail and spits it onto the ground, and Watari wonders who taught him such hideous manners. His father certainly wasn’t one to bite his nails or sully the floor. But Watari will forgive this transgression too—the boy’s only just lost his parents.
L wipes his thumb on his jeans, leaving a temporary stain, and mumbles something hardly intelligible. “Good,” he says. “‘Cause o’erwise I have'ta eat my nails.”
----
It’s a lovely day despite weatherman precautions and Sachiko is starting to wish that she hadn’t loaded Sayu’s stroller with umbrellas and raincoats. But never mind that, she’s just happy that it isn’t pouring rain on Light’s first day of school. He’d never admit it, but he’s terrified of thunder, and Sachiko wouldn’t want him to have to spend the whole day wanting his mother and pretending he isn’t afraid.
Light attempts to tug her along while skipping, but she can’t go fast enough pulling the stroller, and so he winds up plodding along with crossed arms and an impatient pout. “We’re almost there, sweetheart,” she says, waving her free arm towards the approaching school building. “I’ll be here to pick you up in the afternoon, okay?”
“Bye, Mama!” he yelps, giving her a perfunctory hug and staring excitedly at the building. Sachiko gives him a quick peck on the cheek, tries not to be offended when he does the typical little-boy thing and wipes it away.
“Make me proud, Light!” she yells, hand cupped around her mouth as she watches him dash into the building. There are other things she wants to say to him—wisdom that’s probably outdated based on her own years in school—but he’s in a hurry and Sayu is starting to fuss, so she lets her son go and spins a red toy cat around her daughter’s head.
----
Parents mill out of the building, and you can tell who the stay-at-home moms are. Those are the ones who are hanging around the gate, peeking into the windows even though the only thing visible from outside is the cafeteria. Even then all you can really see is a few crates of chocolate milk. Atsuko thinks these people are idiots. Even if she had all the time in the world, she wouldn’t hang around staring at crates. It’s not like she’ll glean any information about her son’s education from the unreadable-from-here nutritional information on the milk cartons. It’s not like hanging around would do anything but waste her time.
Still, she’s reluctant to leave right away. She finds herself standing around with the other mothers, arms wrapped around herself because she should have brought a sweater and didn’t. She didn’t leave one for Teru, either. It’s too much work to get that kid to adjust from warm weather to cold anyway—it’d be a fight to get him to wear one.
It’s not her intention to start a conversation. Her intention is to stomp home for a long, long nap. Maybe get up a few minutes before it’s time to pick up the brat—it won’t matter much if she’s a little bit late. She hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in weeks, and today she’s got a day off and a kid in school—it seems like fate is telling her to spend the day snoring. And so, when a slightly pudgy woman with a shit-eating grin and a stroller clutched in her sweaty hands walks up to her and says ‘hi’, it seems like an offense to fate itself. “What?”
“Oh, I was just wondering what your name was—I think I might have seen you before—do you work at the library? I swear I’ve seen you before.” Atsuko bristles, tries not to yell at her that no she doesn’t work at the library, just because she saw her there doesn’t mean that she works there. Not that her actual job (she’s a poorly-paid office assistant who spends her days shredding paper and stuffing envelopes) is any more glamorous. Actually, working at the library might be better. Perhaps she should file an application.
“My name is Mikami,” she says gruffly, extending a creaking hand to shake hers. “Yours?”
Before the sloppy-grinned mommy can say a word, she’s blindsided by an apparently rather careless old man. He hits her in the back, knocking her breast-first into her stroller. “Oh,” he says. “I’m terribly sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going, I suppose—are you alright?”
She nods, lifts herself up slowly because maybe she got the wind knocked out of her or something. Despite that, she hasn’t stopped smiling. Atsuko finds this obnoxious and fake, but she tries not to make this apparent. Instead, she grinds her fingers into her grimy, off-white shirtsleeves and asks the lady what her name is. “And your baby,” she adds hastily. “It probably has a name too, right?”
“Yes, her name is Sayu,” the lady says, rubbing the girl’s tiny stomach, trying to stop what looks like an oncoming tantrum. The baby just yawns, though, and for a moment Atsuko’s confused. She didn’t realize that babies opened their mouths that wide to do anything but scream. “And I’m Sachiko—it’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Mikami!” She turns to the old man, who hasn’t left yet, much to Atsuko’s chagrin. She hates people who hang around when nobody asked them to. “What’s your name?” she asks. “Is your grandchild starting kindergarten today?”
The old man laughs in an unexpectedly dignified manner. “Oh, no,” he says. “My grandchildren are much too old for kindergarten. I’ve been taking care of a friend’s little boy, and part of the job involves taking him to school. It’s actually quite convenient—my favorite cake shop is nearby.” He grins, glances idly at his ridiculously expensive watch. “Actually, I was going to head there now—would either of you ladies like to join me?”
Atsuko’s first inclination is to decline. She’s exhausted, her eyes feel like they’re being poked with bits of kitty litter, and she doesn’t relish the thought of hanging out with some rich guy. Her three months worth of unpaid rent and politely worded eviction notices make her more than a little resentful of people with designer watches. Sachiko seems to be taking him up on it, and Atsuko’s whiny, clingy little boy makes her feel much the same way about women with quiet, adorable children.
So, she’s about to say no, spin around and head home. But the old man says something about it being his treat. Atsuko’s grumbling stomach and her taste for pricey pastries make her feel like maybe she can wait just a little bit longer for her nap.
----
Sachiko is somewhat apprehensive about accepting the old man’s offer. She doesn’t know him, and she knows that it isn’t wise to accept an invitation from a stranger when she has a baby with her. It could be dangerous, and her husband would be incensed if he knew. She doesn’t really have a legitimate reason for taking this risk, and if Ms. Mikami (who she does know from somewhere, even if it wasn’t the library) hadn’t said yes, she would have changed her mind. But now she doesn’t think she can do it—it wouldn’t be right to leave the poor woman alone. Soichiro, focused on crime due to his job, made sure that Sachiko took lessons in self-defense and knew exactly how to escape a potentially dangerous situation. Somehow, she doubts that Ms. Mikami has this knowledge.
And so, Sachiko pushes her stroller, following a strange old man and a twitchy young woman into a warm, sweet-smelling cake shop.
----
Watari hands a few 1,000 yen bills to the friendlier of the two women, and tells her to buy what she likes while he finds them a table. His legs ache and his knees are locking up, so he really doesn’t feel like standing any longer. He isn’t hungry just now, anyway—he took L here for breakfast in the morning, and ended up stuffing himself with green tea flavored cake. He hadn’t planned on eating three pieces of the stuff, but it was heavenly, he couldn’t help it. He sits down, resists draping his legs across a nearby chair.
It’s not long before the ladies join him. Sachiko’s tray contains a slice of strawberry cake (L’s favorite), and a bowl of flan which is, presumably, for her gap-toothed daughter. The contents of Mikami’s tray (it still strikes him as bizarre not to have a first name to work with) are a bit less conservative. She has two slices of cake, both chocolate, a sugar-dusted cream puff, a bottle of milk tea, and a chocolate parfait. There is, unsurprisingly, not more than a few yen left over
Mikami slams her tray down, while Sachiko sets hers on the table quietly. Sachiko grins and takes a bite of her cake, thanks Watari for being so generous. “Oh,” he says. “No trouble at all. It’s a good idea for us to get to know each other, since our children are in the same class, don’t you think?” He fiddles with a sugar packet, smiles blandly at Mikami. “What’s your child’s name?” he asks.
“Oh…” she mumbles past a forkful of cake. “Teru. I don’t know if you went in there, but he was the one who was having a nervous breakdown because he had to stay at school for a couple of hours. I’ve been leaving him with his grandmother and putting him in daycare for years now, I don’t get what the problem is. It’s not like I’m one of those stay-at-home mothers whose kids never get any exposure to the outside world.”
The baby squawks, and Sachiko looks uncomfortable. Watari hopes that this woman’s son hasn’t picked up any of her manners, because if he has then he certainly won’t be a very good influence on L. “I don’t know. He’s a bit crazy. Kid washes his hands ninety-five times a day if no one’s watching him. Throws the worst tantrums I’ve ever seen. I don’t really know what do to about it…I’m hoping school will straighten him out.”
“I’m sure it will!” Sachiko says brightly, pushing a small plastic spoon into her daughter’s gaping mouth. “My son Light did great in pre-school—he was a little shy at first, but interacting with other children on a daily basis worked wonders for him! He’s such an outgoing little boy now, you’d never know that he used to cling to my leg and cry at the playground.”
“Well, I hope you’re right.” Mikami takes a sip of her milk tea, swirls it around in her mouth and fiddles with the napkin dispenser. Sighs as if she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Watari wants to ask her to try having to take care of a genius who’s parents just died and see how difficult she finds her own son after that, but such a confrontation wouldn’t benefit anybody. “I don’t know. Teru’s not really shy, he’s just antisocial. He won’t play with other children because ‘they’re mean and they’ve got germs’. Which is fucking ridiculous if you ask me.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” Sachiko says. “Light went through a brief stage of germophobia after he caught a bad case of the flu—I think he was actually pretty bright to connect getting sick with playing with his friend who kept coughing. But anyway, he calmed down once he realized that he didn’t automatically get sick every time he played with his friends or touched anything. Has Teru been sick recently? That could explain things.”
Mikami shakes her head, long, dark hair getting caught in her teeth as she does so. “No, he’s always like this,” she says, obviously trying hard not to roll her eyes. It must be nice to know with such certainty what is or isn’t causing your child’s behavioral problems. Watari tells himself over and over again that L’s tantrums and violent behavior are a direct result of the mourning process, but there’s a limit to how far you can take that. Last time Watari took the kid out to the playground, he picked fights with three different children, for no reason that Watari can discern.
“I’m sure your children are lovely,” Watari says. He has absolutely no idea whether this is the case, but from the descriptions he’s received they sound easier to deal with than L Lawliet. He turns to the stroller, watches the baby chew on a pink-and-white striped blanket. “This one certainly is.”
“Why thank you!” Sachiko squeaks, beaming with obvious pride. Mikami crams the last spoonful of parfait into her mouth, and pushes what’s left of her cake around on the sheep-printed plate. She mumbles something about her son being a pain in the ass, and says that she’s got to be going. “Thanks for the food.”
Such a gruff, irritated young lady. Watari wonders what’s at fault for her behavior. Wonders how she’d react to a child like L, who spends his days strutting around acting superior and who spends his nights sobbing hysterically. Wonders, for no particular reason, how she’d react to being hit on. He can’t really test out the first thing, but he can certainly test out the second. And so he flashes a big smile, and says in the crudest voice he possibly can, “so baby, you wanna come back to my place after this? Maybe I could knock you up with a kid who’s not as crazy as your first one.”
As expected, she doesn’t react favorably to this. “You are a disgusting old man!” she yelps, grabbing her bag and what’s left of her confectionaries. She storms away, swearing as she goes
----
Sachiko grips the handlebars of Sayu’s stroller tightly, readies her legs to bolt if need be. “Why did you do that?” she asks, sure that there must be some reason. This man doesn’t seem like a slimeball, and while Sachiko knows better than to trust her instincts, she has a hard time believing that there wasn’t some greater purpose to his abrupt change of behavior.
“No reason in particular,” Watari says, and her heart sinks, she can’t help it, she had wanted him to be a good person so badly. “I get the feeling that men don’t generally pay much attention to her, and I wanted to see how she’d react. I mean, she seems incensed by the behavior of a five-year-old boy. Besides, maybe it’ll boost her self-confidence. She doesn’t seem to have much of that, really.”
Sachiko scans through the previous conversation, tries to think of what might indicate such things to this man. Try as she might, she can’t think of a thing. Watari seems quite intuitive, though she doesn’t know why he would think being hit on would increase a woman’s confidence. She wants to tell him that really, it does just the opposite, and that she can’t believe he’s gone so long in his life without knowing that.
“It was more to see what would happen than anything else,” he says, taking a sip of the milk tea that Mikami left behind. “Maybe a little bit of spite mixed in—her son does sound like a difficult case, but I hardly think it appropriate for her to badmouth him to strangers. The child in my care, L, is currently behaving like a little hellion, but I don’t speak as if I despise him.”
“She’s under a lot of stress—I think she’s a single mother, and she works at the library, where doesn’t get paid very much. And her son is difficult. I heard he was being evaluated for OCD. I’m sure that she loves Teru very much, she’s just…tired, that’s all.”
As the excuses fall from her mouth, Sachiko wonders if that’s really a good reason. She has no right to judge this woman’s behavior, the Yagamis do not want for money, and she’s married to a man who she loves. She has two beautiful, healthy children who wash their hands after using the toilet or before they have meals (well, in Sayu’s case it’s whenever her mother washes them for her, but that’s not the point). She doesn’t know what Watari has, but she gets the feeling that he has a wealth of resources with which to raise his child. It doesn’t even sound like the child is his, or with him permanently.
She doesn’t know. If she thinks too hard about it, she feels guilty. She feeds her daughter the last spoonful of flan, and thanks Watari for the meal. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” she says. “I hope our little boys will become good friend.”
----
“L wasn’t a very good boy today, I’m afraid. He didn’t sit with us in the circle or join in with the other children when they began playing. He even took Teru’s graham cracker. Then he started yelling and screaming and threw a terrible tantrum. I’m sorry, but I had to put him on time out for the rest of the day.”
The teacher fingers a necklace that clashes with her blazer, and stares at Watari over rimless glasses. Her feet are planted so firmly on the ground that Watari knows she’s afraid of him. He flashes a huge grin, hoping that it’s so full of sunshine that her skin turns red. Knowing that he’s too old to really turn on the charm the way he used to. “No, no,” he says, glancing down into the L’s oily hair, and wondering how hard he’ll have to struggle to get him into the bathtub tonight. “L should be the one apologizing. I’m sorry for the trouble that he caused. I’m sure L is, too. Aren’t you, L?”
L shoots him a look of cold defiance. It’s obvious that he isn’t the least bit sorry for making a fuss or stealing food. Watari grabs his tiny arm and shakes it lightly, insists on an apology. As much as he would love to pretend it’s alright for a grieving child to behave this way, it isn’t, really. He still needs to learn to function in society, and part of doing that is not taking your pain out on others, and apologizing when you’ve done something wrong. “Say you’re sorry,” he demands.
“I’m sorry,” spits L, jamming a thumb in his mouth like it’s a threat. “It won’t happen again…can we go home now?”
----
“So that’s your son?” Ms. Mikami says, eyeing Light in a way that makes Sachiko feel a little uncomfortable. “I saw him this morning, he was shrieking about how he knew how to spell Mississippi. That’s some pretty specialized knowledge, there—I don’t even know how to do that. I mean, I can write it, but spelling is another matter all together. Does he know English?”
“A little bit,” Sachiko says, trying not to sound too proud, trying to put her son down just enough to avoid enraging this woman. “I’m not entirely convinced that he knows what Mississippi is, he just thought that the word looked hard to spell and memorized it. He can be a bit of a show-off.”
Atsuko sighs, says that Teru can hardly even write his own name. “He gets too hung up on which pencil he’s going to use, and whether it’s going to give him lead poisoning, and whether the paper is going to give him a paper cut. Lucky you, you’ve got a bright kid who isn’t insane.”
Sachiko stares at the two little boys, and thinks that maybe Teru wouldn’t be so difficult if his mother thought of him as something other than a burden. He’s such a cute child, not as cute as her Light, but still quite sweet. He can’t be nearly as bad as Ms. Mikami claims.
She certainly hopes not. Because five more minutes into the conversation, she finds herself agreeing to host a play date between the two boys the following Saturday.
----
“Excuse me, Ms. Mikami?”
Atsuko nearly snaps a tendon in her neck as she whirls around. She can feel her son tensing up next to her leg, and she knows he’s going to start crying any second now and she hates that, hopes to God she can get out of here without a big scene. “What do you want?” she asks, placing a hand on her hip. She wants to rip the flesh from Watari’s wrinkly, smiling face.
“L would like to apologize to your son, Teru,” he says, raising his eyebrows, perhaps trying to convey that he too is sorry. Not that Atsuko knows this geezer particularly well, but his outburst seemed completely out of place. She doesn’t expect him to say anything that disgusting again. Besides, L, his grandson or whatever he was, had apparently spent the day victimizing Teru. Violent little shit, he’d better apologize. Teru is clinging to her leg, getting her skirt wet with tears and streaming snot. She tries to convince herself that excessive mucus production is just because he’s crying, that he isn’t coming down with a cold. She will never ever hear the end of it if he gets sick on his first day of kindergarten.
“Go on, L,” the old man says, placing a too-gentle hand on the kid’s shoulder. He sticks his tongue out, glares at Atsuko’s cowering son and says that he doesn’t want to, he already apologized to the teacher and really, that should be enough. “L,” Watari says, “you were very mean to this boy. You need to say sorry.”
“Make me!” shrieks the kid hysterically, balling his hands into tiny, ineffective fists. Atsuko almost feels sorry for him. How awful it must be to have to apologize for something you really weren’t sorry at all for. Still, she can’t feel too bad for him. She hates it when Teru cries, and Teru hates it when he cries too, but here he is sobbing uncontrollably into the pits of his mother’s knees. She wonders what L actually did to him, if such a reaction is warranted at all.
The old man growls L’s name to him in such a threatening tone that the kid gives up right there. “Fine, I’m sorry cryba…Teru,” he snaps, threatening to erupt into a tantrum too.
As soon as he says it, Atsuko takes Teru by the hand and bids them an insincere goodbye, says that they have a bus to catch and they really can’t stay but it was nice to meet them, crap like that. Teru seems incredibly grateful to be heading for home, and Atsuko is, too. She can hear the little brat muttering something about wanting to beat Teru up, and she can see that this is the start of a delightful year for the both of them.
“Teru,” she says, digging around in her totebag for her sack full of leftovers. “Would you like this piece of cake?”
