The Unasked Questions

The shrine garden was a pocket of deep green silence. Yuko sat on the old wooden swing-chair that hung from the thick branch of a cherry tree, her sandals scuffing softly against the mossy stones below. She pushed herself gently, the chains creaking a familiar, soothing rhythm.
‘Please, Mama,’ she thought, staring at the closed kitchen door. ‘Just be normal. Don’t ask him about marriage. Don’t ask him about kids. Don’t do the whole “future son-in-law” routine. Not this time.’ She’d seen it before friends, delivery boys, even the poor internet repairman all sent fleeing by her mother’s nuclear-grade curiosity wrapped in a smile. Kenji was too fragile for that. He’d just bolt again, and something in her didn’t want to watch him run.


Inside the kitchen, the air was still thick with the scent of curry and anticipation.
Yuko’s mother finished her tea with a satisfied sigh and leaned forward, her elbows on the table, chin resting on her folded hands. Her eyes were bright, laser-focused.
“So, Kenji-kun,” she began, her voice deceptively casual. “Big question time. What do you do for a living? And what about your future? Big dreams! And…” she leaned in closer, a playful, dangerous glint in her eye, “…what’s your type in women? Is it, perhaps… a certain shrine maiden I know?”
 The directness was a physical force. Kenji felt his spine go rigid. He stared into his half-finished bowl of curry as if the answers were written in the steam.
“I… I don’t have a job,” he said, the words tasting like ash. “I’m… between things.” He swallowed, forcing the next part out. “My parents are police officers.”
Yuko’s mother’s eyebrows shot up. “Police! Oh-ho! So you’re a rich kid, then? You don’t even need to work!” She said it with a laugh, meaning no harm, a common assumption.
The silence that followed wasn’t quiet; it was a roaring vacuum. The cheerful clatter of the kitchen seemed to mute. Kenji’s vision tunneled on a single crack in the wooden table. Rich kid. The words echoed in the hollow space where his childhood should have been. Money for a big, empty house. No money for time. No currency for a glance.
He didn’t correct her.
“And your type?” she pressed, mercifully moving on, though her gaze was now tinged with curiosity at his sudden, frozen stillness.
“I…” Kenji’s throat tightened. The image of Yuko—sharp, honest, seeing him flashed in his mind. But to say it here, under this smiling inquisition, felt like trapping a butterfly in a jar. “I… think I should get to know someone properly first. Before… before having a type.”
It was a pathetic dodge. He braced for more teasing.
Instead, Yuko’s mother’s face softened into an expression that was neither mockery nor triumph. It was a knowing, wistful look, her eyes crinkling at the corners as if remembering a private joke from a century ago. A look that said, ‘Ah, youth. I remember that particular flavor of panic.’
 “Why…” Kenji mumbled, unnerved by the shift, “why are you making that face?”
She chuckled, a low, warm sound. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just thinking you might make a very sweet son-in-law someday. Hahaha!” She waved a dismissive hand before he could combust. “Ah, I’m just a silly old woman! Go on, go find Yuko. Love birds shouldn’t be kept apart by boring kitchen talk.”
“We’re not !” he started, but the protest died as he practically launched himself from the table, bowing hastily. “Th-thank you for the meal!”
He was out the door before she could fire another volley.
 Alone in the kitchen, her smile faded into something more tender and weary. She began gathering the bowls, her movements slow. “I was just like him,” she murmured to the empty room, the ghost of her own past shyness in her voice. “All nerves and no map.”


In the garden, the swing creaked. Kenji burst through the side door, breathing slightly hard, as if he’d run a mile, not ten feet.
Yuko’s feet planted, stopping the swing. “Why are you running? Did something happen? Did Mama ask you to marry me on the spot?”
“No! No, nothing like that,” he said, too quickly. He walked over, trying to appear nonchalant. “Just… the food. Moving it around. You know. Digesting." 
 Yuko gave him a look that could etch glass. “You’re a terrible liar.” But she scooted over on the wide swing-chair, making room.
He sat down. The wood was warm from the sun and her presence. For a few minutes, they just swung gently, listening to the wind in the maple leaves, the distant sound of the city a faint hum beyond the shrine walls. They talked about nothing the stubborn hydrangeas, the coming autumn, the weight of the humid air.
Then, Yuko spoke, her voice casual but with an undercurrent of something hopeful. “By the way, our shrine and the big ones downtown hold a major joint festival every year. The Kami no En, the Feast of the Bonded Gods. It’s this huge night market with lanterns, food stalls, sacred dances… It’s really beautiful. This year it’s in December. About five months away.”
She glanced at him, then away, focusing on a dragonfly skimming the pond. “My family always goes. I was thinking… if you wanted… you could come with us. You could bring your family, too. It’s… it’s fun.”
 The invitation hung in the air, delicate as a dandelion puff. Bring your family.
The gentle creak of the swing stopped. Kenji’s whole body went still. The peaceful garden, the warm wood, Yuko’s shy offer it all shattered against the cold, silent wall of that phrase.
He saw it instantly the empty seats beside him. His father checking his watch. His mother getting a call and leaving. Or worse, them standing there like statues, a void of normalcy in the laughing crowd. A fresh, special kind of humiliation.
“No,” he said, the word flat and final, like a stone dropping into the pond. “I’ll come alone.”
He stood up, the movement abrupt, breaking the spell of the swing. He didn’t look at her. “I should go. Thank you. For the food. For… everything.”
And he walked away, not running this time, but with a stiff, hurried pace that was somehow worse. He disappeared through the gate, leaving the shrine behind.
 Yuko sat frozen on the swing, the space beside her suddenly cold. The dragonfly landed on the armrest, its wings glittering, oblivious.
A moment later, her mother bustled into the garden, wiping her hands on a towel. “Yuko-chan! Where’s Kenji? Did he leave? Ara, ara, did you two have a little lovers’ spat? It happens, it happens!”
“No, Mama,” Yuko said, her voice quiet, distant. She was still staring at the gate. “I just… I asked him to the Kami no En festival. I said he could bring his family.”
She finally turned to look at her mother, confusion and a dawning concern in her eyes. “He just… shut down. And left.”
The playful light vanished from her mother’s face. She followed her daughter’s gaze to the empty gate, her expression shifting into one of gentle, deep understanding. The teasing matriarch was gone, replaced by a mother who recognized the silhouette of a different kind of pain.
“Ara…” she breathed, the sound heavy with compassion. “I see.”
 The garden was silent again, save for the wind. The invitation had been given. And in refusing it, Kenji had just shown them the first, raw outline of the wound he carried.
END OF CHAPTER 5