Not your funny Valentine

Lalo was seventeen years old again, feeling awkward and uncomfortable in the polyester dress he’d been compelled to wear to school. A popular sports guy that he was secretly friends with because of trigonometry class walked past and held out his fist in greeting. Lalo was so shocked to be publicly acknowledged that he forgot fist-bumping was a thing that people did and went for a high five, instead. He cringed the moment his palm hit the guy’s knuckles. High fives were so passé. Fist bumping was it.

Remembering this random moment from the past was helpful. It grounded him in the reality of being a thirty-five-year-old adult who had worked hard to earn every single ounce of social skill and emotional maturity that he had. He brought it all to bear now, as he stood immobilized in front of the counter at the anime store, facing Valentine.

“Hi.” He stepped up and placed Kitchen Boy Losange Volume 1 between them. “I came to return your book.”

Valentine’s eyes narrowed. He picked up the book, examining the cover closely.

“This isn’t mine. It’s dirty.”

The book might have been a little smudged on the front from being kicked across the floor, but Lalo hadn’t considered that an issue. He liked when his books looked well-worn from loving use. Whoops.

“I found it on the floor at your aunt’s bookshop.”

“What? She sent you here?”

“Sort of. I think you dropped it when we ran into each other earlier. Remember?”

“Mn.” Valentine examined the spine. “What did you do to it? The spine has more creases in it now.”

“I...uh...I read it?” Lalo felt like he was confessing to a murder. “On the way here. On the bus.”

Valentine looked him up and down. “You read it.”

“Yeah. It’s really good! Do you carry the rest of the volumes here?”

“We don’t. Try the internet.” His gaze flicked over Lalo’s shoulder. “I need to help these customers now. Will that be all?”

Lalo stared at him, shocked at the abrupt dismissal, but Valentine wouldn’t meet his gaze, tapping his fingers impatiently on the counter top as he waited for him to move. He was wearing black nail polish.

At a complete loss for words, Lalo had no choice but to shuffle out of the way, feeling awkward and out of place. He made a half-hearted attempt to look at some of the manga that lined the shelves, but he didn’t recognize any of the names. There wasn’t much space in the aisles and he kept bumping into people with his duffel bag. He finally gave up and left.

While waiting for the bus, he took his phone out and texted his cousin Claudio.

Have you ever read Kitchen Boy Losange?

hola corazon! wtf ur reading yaoi now?!?! you rotten boy you!

Lalo made a mental note to look up what he was talking about.

I guess? Do you know it?

i dont read much yaoi. but one of leslie’s roommates might have it. he’s moving across the pond to live with his girlfriend soon. ill ask if he’s looking to sell.

He watched the three little dots bob on the screen as Claudio continued typing.

i think the english version is hardest to find. not sure about the japanese or french versions. might be easier and cheaper to learn a new language to read it lol

Lalo groaned. Of course, when he finally got into manga, the first thing he did was get obsessed with a rare one. Why did he always have to learn everything the hard way?

Okay. Let me know what you find out.

the library might have it tho. u never know. or try the internet. you can read a lot of manga online

Lalo much preferred to read on paper, but when it came to manga, reading online was probably more cost-effective. He almost told Claudio about his encounter with Valentine, but thought better of it. He didn’t need to risk initiating “protective older cousin” mode. He knew Claudio wouldn’t hesitate to storm the anime store and confront the guy.

Thanks, Claudi.

ofc. xoxo. i wanna watch anime with you! (✿◠‿◠)

Me, too! :-)

Lalo had absolutely refused to do a web search the moment he left the anime store, simply because that’s what Valentine had told him to do. Now that Claudio had suggested it, though, he felt okay with giving in.

The first thing he did was navigate to Zippipedia to look up the word yaoi.

Yaoi was a term specific to Japan. The genre was known more broadly as boys’ love, also abbreviated as BL. It had a storied history, and Lalo could feel the hair on his arms standing on end as he read about it. He’d always had the vague idea that anime was a bit typical in its portrayal of relationships. Boy and girl meet and fall in love, that sort of thing. He remembered Claudio’s excitement about two of the characters in Sailor Noon who were in a lesbian relationship. Depending on the version you watched, that is. He wondered what he would have done if he’d known there was an entire genre out there that told stories about boys falling in love. Maybe he would have figured things out about himself sooner…

No. That was not a path he needed to tread. There was no changing the past. What mattered was where he was now, in the moment.

A quick web search for Kitchen Boy Losange led to a slew of results in Japanese. One web page yielded a digitized version of the manga, but he couldn’t read it, of course. He paged through part of volume two. There were huge chunks of dialogue. Losange’s aunt was crying again, then she looked angry. He surmised that the chef had fired him. What a quick turnaround! He decided not to look any further until he could figure out a way to read the dialogue, too.

Once he got on the bus, he checked the library, where his search for “kitchen boy losange” turned up one copy of volume six. How random was that? Why would they acquire one volume and not the others? He cleared the search field and tried it again, this time typing in only “losange.” The results included a French cookbook, two different books about men being lured into the seedy underbelly of Paris, and a book about meditation.

Kitchen Boy Losange Volume 6 was on the third page of the search results. Lalo clicked to get more information and discovered that it had 105 holds on it. One hundred and five people were ahead of him in line to check out the book from the library. He did a quick calculation. Assuming each person held onto the volume for the entire two weeks they were allotted, this would mean he’d get to read it in approximately four years. Ah, well. Might as well get in line. He clicked to add the book to his holds list. Perhaps in the meantime, he’d have some luck finding the volumes in between.

He almost missed his bus stop while scrolling through Eboy. There wasn’t anything coming up under the search terms he was using, just unrelated DVDs and books, but he couldn’t help clicking through all the pages just in case.

Back on his neighborhood block, he tried not to trip on the uneven pavement as he kept scrolling. Upon approaching his apartment, however, he tucked his phone away. Mr. Leon was sitting on the stoop as expected, drinking his usual mug of jet fuel, slouching in a short-sleeve button up, his hair all flat from the baseball cap he’d been wearing.

“Eduardo,” Mr. Leon greeted him. He always called Lalo by his full name. “You make sure to turn off all the lights before you leave, right? The electricity is too expensive.”

“Yes, Mr. Leon.”

“You had a good day?”

“Yes, Mr. Leon. How about you?”

Mr. Leon shrugged. “Not too good, not too bad. Same as always.”

“How’s your ulcer doing?”

“Eh.”

“You know, if you quit coffee that might help.” Lalo wasn’t sure how many cups Mr. Leon drank per day, but the entire downstairs hallway always smelled of burnt coffee.

“Get outta here, you sound like Mrs. Leon.”

“Just saying.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Have a good night.”

“I will. You better, too!”

After promising he would have a stupendous evening, Lalo finally escaped up to his sanctuary on the second floor. The bed was by the sink was by the door was by the mini-fridge was by the counter. His books took up most of the rest of the space, but he didn’t mind. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was home sweet home.

The first order of business was to use the bathroom down the hall, and then he made himself unpack his gross gym clothes and hang them on the hamper to dry. And then, finally, finally, he flopped down on the bed and got his phone out again.

On page thirteen of his Eboy search, he found one copy of Kitchen Boy Losange Volume 4, selling for at least five times what the manga had originally been sold for.

Lalo sighed, dropping his phone to his chest. He thought of Valentine, who could have helped, but didn’t. The bastard hadn’t even thanked him for returning his book.