Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [47]
“You haven’t seen your uncle in a while.” He handed his briefcase to Kuniko, who had approached him with a surprised look on her face, and continued, “It’ll be a good chance for you to talk with him about what kind of work you’ll be doing in Chiba this summer. Here, let me talk to him.”
Akira took the receiver from Wataru’s hand. “Hey, Satoru, how’ve you been? Mom doing okay? Yeah, everyone here is well. So, about getting together with Wataru…”
The cavalry had arrived in the nick of time. Wataru’s eyes shone. He could feel his body emitting a happy glow to a radius of at least a yard. Godzilla wasn’t coming, but he bounced about the room all the same.
“Hush, Wataru,” Kuniko scowled, still clutching Akira’s briefcase. “You’re father’s still on the phone.”
You’re upset because you just got KO’d, Wataru thought, but he took great pains not to let his unbridled joy show on his face.
Akira finished talking and handed the phone back to Wataru. “Why don’t you go ahead and have dinner with your uncle too. That way you won’t have to rush your shopping.”
“Thanks!” Wataru jumped up and quickly worked out the details with Uncle Lou, who promised to come pick him up at their apartment. Akira confirmed the schedule, then hung up the phone and went to change clothes. When he came back to the table, Kuniko was laying out dishes for supper. Wataru was so happy that he wanted to dance around the room, but one look at his mother’s scowl told him that restraint was the wise course of action.
“Thanks, Dad!”
“Don’t be a bother to your uncle, now,” Akira said, opening the evening paper.
“I won’t! I promise!”
“You’re home early tonight, aren’t you?” Kuniko inquired as she shuttled back and forth between the table and the refrigerator. She was angry and ignored Wataru. “If we’d known you’d be home so early, we’d have waited to have dinner with you.”
“My meeting was cancelled.”
“Beer?”
“No thanks.”
Just as Kuniko avoided looking at Wataru, so did Akira avoid Kuniko, keeping his eyes glued to his newspaper as he spoke. Wataru retreated to his room, mumbling something about having to do homework.
Wataru sat quietly at his desk with his homework spread out in front of him, but there was no way he could immediately shift into work mode. He was too busy imagining how his uncle would react when Wataru brought him up to speed on recent events. I met a wizard, Uncle Lou! He cast a spell on me to turn back time! It’s all true!
Finally reining in his enthusiasm, he began to tackle his arithmetic and writing homework. When he got up to go to the bathroom, he found his parents sitting on the living room sofa, drinking coffee. Kuniko told him to take his bath.
“Just two more pages.”
When he came back, Kuniko was talking about something. Wataru could sense at a glance that the room was still under martial law, so he pretended not to listen and headed back to his own room. He had caught a snippet of the conversation: apparently, someone had again called and hung up several times that day. Ah, so that’s why Mom looked so nervous when Uncle Lou called. It also explained her unusually foul mood today. Wataru sighed.
By the time he crawled into bed, though, Wataru’s mood had picked right back up.
“What’s it been, six months since I saw you at New Year’s?” Uncle Lou said, grinning as he placed a large hand on Wataru’s head. “You sure sprung up! In another six months you’ll be up to my shoulder!”
“I’m not growing that fast,” Wataru laughed. Right now he was only tall enough to come up to the tattooed scar left by a childhood immunization shot on Uncle Lou’s left arm. Wataru knew about his scar from the many days they had spent on the beach in Chiba.
His uncle was a big man, both horizontally and vertically. He had long hair and a beard, and both his arms and legs were covered with thick hair. Today, he was wearing a typically gaudy shirt that made