Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [15]
He walked home in a daze, and then it occurred to him to go past the haunted building. Since cram school was in the opposite direction from regular school, it was more than a long-cut. He would actually have to walk past his house to get there. Still, he wanted to see it again. He had made it back to the apartment building entranceway and would’ve kept on going if someone hadn’t called out to him.
“Welcome home, Wataru. Back from cram school?”
He looked up to see his father standing a mere ten feet away. He carried his bag in his right hand, in his left, a folded umbrella. Wataru remembered that the weather report said there would be rain showers downtown.
“Hi, Dad,” Wataru replied, walking toward his father. Akira turned and made for the entranceway without waiting for him.
“You’re home early today, huh?” Wataru looked down at the digital watch on his left wrist, which read 8:43. Beside the big numbers, smaller digits raced on the right side of the watch face, counting out hundredths of a second. The watch was a gift picked up on Akira’s business trip to Los Angeles the year before. It bore the logo of a popular U.S. basketball team. Wataru hated basketball, and as a result, he hardly ever wore the thing.
“School going well?”
“Yeah,” Wataru said, as usual. This particular exchange had formed the bulk of their conversation over the past year. Even if Wataru said something else, his father would probably just listen in silence. And even if Akira asked something more, Wataru would probably just say “Yeah” to that too. Probably. He didn’t know, because it had never happened. Akira Mitani was not a talkative man by nature. In contrast, Kuniko talked up a storm. According to Wataru’s observations, the ratio was about ten to one in his mother’s favor. If success in daily life and authority within the family were proportional to the amount one spoke, then the one who talked the most would win. In other words, Kuniko wore the pants in the family.
But when the conversation passed from the topics of daily life to more serious matters, things were different. Then, the usually taciturn Akira would become “argumentative,” as his grandmother in Chiba called it. The decision to buy their current apartment had been one of those times when he spoke up. So had he done when Kuniko thought to send Wataru to a private school. And again, when they had to decide if Wataru would go to a cram school. And he always had the last say when it came time to buying a new car. At these times, Akira would thoroughly research the problem at hand, think it through, and pick the most logical solution. There were no vague, touchy-feely factors involved, no “I think maybe we should,” or “Everyone else is,” or “That’s what’s expected of us.” If the subject in question were a new car, fuel economy and safety standards would be carefully scrutinized. If it were an apartment, the contractors, the living environment, all data would be analyzed, and there would be no questioning of Akira Mitani’s final decision.
Akira’s peculiar way of doing things had received quite a bit of attention ten years ago when his father passed away. The topic remained to this day a matter of discussion among their relatives. Even though Wataru was only a baby at the time, he had heard the story so many times at family reunions that he remembered the incident as though he had seen it himself.
Akira had shocked many of his relatives by refusing to conform to the “way things are done.” At his father’s funeral, he questioned the order of names on the invitation list. He questioned the gifts some people brought. He questioned everything. Apparently,