Chapter 18: Things We Only Say Without Words (V)

By the time afternoon drenched my apartment orange, I paused reviewing and packed up my dango ingredients basket with books and went with the golden porcupine in the park.

A quick cleanup and setup of the stall and business was good to go.

I flipped skewers and glazed them while holding up a history notebook right in front of my face as if it were the recipes of perfection.

Sunday afternoons meant the amount of people at the park was the highest.

And I was damn right, because the stream of customers hadn’t stopped. Parents, joggers, couples. People with lives that weren’t paused like mine had been.

I catered them with the exact professionalism and cheerfulness like before, but this time, it felt more like a duty rather than a mask.

I never took that oath, it just came in naturally.

And seeing the girl in the corner of my eye, I wanted to make everyone feel the happiness I am feeling right now.

Kousaka-san was seated on the low brick ledge, hugging her knees, pretending my textbooks filled with completed computations were more interesting than they really were.

She kept flipping pages while I resisted the urge to look.

She wasn’t on the usual bench today.

She was closer, near enough to not be considered casual, but far enough to still feign indifference.

I could feel it.

The weight of her glance brushing against my face like wind I couldn’t name.

And that was the reason why I am elated.

“Hello, young Itsuki.”

“It's been a while, Watanabe-san!”

There she was, an old lady wearing a constant kind smile.

She had a trimmed gray bob, and cheerful blue eyes rare for a Japanese.

Watanabe-san paid for her usual two mitarashi and a single kinako and leaned slightly on the stall, elbow perched like we were familiar.

Of course we were. She was my regular customer for three years now, and that's when she was still with her husband in a wheelchair that I assume probably died 8 months ago.

"Things changed, huh?" she said, unwrapping one skewer with deliberate slowness.

I lowered the reviewer, just enough to see her face.

"She's the pretty girl that sat on the bench across, right? Now she's sitting closer."

My hands froze for a beat. “She’s just studying, Watanabe-san.”

She was unconvinced. Old people had the habit of seeing everything.

“Mm, studying you, maybe?”

I forced a small laugh, trying to diffuse the tension curling in my stomach.

I'll consider myself delusional if I ever thought of that.

“She’s not—It’s not like that.”

“I never said what it was,” she replied, biting into her dango. “But as someone that first saw her in spring, she was always here in the same place and at the same time doing the same thing. And lucky you, she's always looking your way when you’re not looking at hers.”

I blinked. “You…noticed? Is that true?”

“When you get older, you stop needing words to understand feelings. You just learn to watch closely. Like she does.” she explained with a smile.

Her words dropped like pebbles into a still pond—rippling through everything I was trying to suppress.

I turned to glance again.

Kousaka-san was scribbling something now. A problem set? A new drawing?

Or maybe it was just a distraction?

A mask? Like the one I wore every time I laughed and said “I’m fine”?

I had to watch her closely as she said, and now…the questions started to swirl in my head.

“She’s not from around here,” she added, voice gentler now. “But neither are you.”

“…What do you mean?”

"Oh, young Itsuki. I can see your face turning into this tired look all the time when your customers turn around. I've been an employee myself before. We had to wear masks to hide what we really felt beyond our duty."

That struck something in me.

People are born with the ability to dictate how they can project themselves to the outside world: their faces. But there is something that they cannot manipulate: their feelings. Because expressions are just external manifestations of feelings, we can control it the way we want it to be.

And she's right, that's what I've been doing all the time before. I smile towards customers as if I was the one giving them light, but it was me that was enveloped in darkness inside.

"That's true, but I can promise now that I'm really fine."

And for the first time, I said those exact words without a mask covering an empty heart.

I handed her the change, and she wrapped her last skewer in napkins.

“Be kind to her,” she said, before walking off. “Girls like that don’t sit close to just anyone. She might have taken a liking to you.”

She brought the certainty of someone who’s lived long enough to tell the difference between affection and coincidence.

The wind picked up a bit, and Kousaka-san's hair caught the sunlight—golden like the stories I used to believe in.

I turned away, trying to focus on the skewers, the sauce consistency, and the gas burner heat.

But all I could think of was how close we had gotten.

How her presence no longer felt like intrusion.

How she said she didn’t get Algebra and let me teach her, even though I’m sure she could’ve figured it out alone if she wanted to.

How her laughter made the ceiling of my small apartment feel higher.

How she waited quietly beside the stall, even now, pretending she wasn’t waiting for anything.

And the lingering question: What are all of these for?

What was she trying to aim for?

And why am I just standing here and not doing anything?

I want to, because this part of me was screaming that it was something akin to a deep warmth.

That dangerous, fleeting and fragile warmth.

The kind that creeps in unnoticed and then never leaves.

The kind that once made me pick up a paintbrush and believe I could turn the world into color.

I looked at her again.

And I felt it—that gnawing cravings for her presence and the fear of her absence.

At this point, I can't imagine a day where I was standing here and Kousaka-san wasn't around.

Would I just be another puppet getting dangerously close enough to getting swallowed by the mechanical grind of growing up too soon?

Would I stay wearing a mask and pretending I don't need a savior?

And worst of all…would my paintings stay locked in the dark, forgotten?

I am considering continuing where I left off.

And I'm frightened of the things we only say without words.

Feelings.

These…stupid feelings.

From a heart that I thought was already empty.

From the thought that could never reach her.

Now I asked myself a question I had been afraid to face—

What if these untold feelings…aren’t meant to stay untold anymore?