Comments and Chatter

The next morning, I woke up a little earlier than usual. It was strange, because I didn’t even feel the urge to get another hour of sleep. After briefly browsing my phone until the light of the screen woke up my eyes, I got out of bed and put on my school uniform.

The relative success of yesterday was fresh on my mind, so I made my way into the kitchen, and searched the cupboards for my mum’s recipe binder. I pulled it out and examined the pages, each page being a handwritten sheet placed inside a plastic folder. I smiled a little at one of the plastic covers being stained with a thick splodge of pink. I remembered making that stain. Hearing me rattling around, my mum tiredly slid the door open, and rubbed her eyes.

“Yorito, what are you doing this early?” She stepped over to me, and looked down at the recipe binder.

“I’m just looking at the old stuff we used to make together for some ideas. Look, it’s still messy from that time I spilled stuff on it!”

She squinted her eyes a little. “We haven’t made anything in a while. Didn’t you promise you would?”

I gulped a little guiltily, and turned to look at her. “Yeah, we can do something next weekend, if that’s cool?”

She smiled a little. “That’d be nice.”

That day at school, I began to wonder a little about what Una had been up to. I supposed it must actually be rather intense for her to be working as often as she did. Was she just not working on the days I wasn’t? I wonder how she even studied if she was so busy with work. I’d actually forgotten to do some of my homework because of how busy my mind had been, so I quickly finished it on the train, and swore to myself that I would do better next time. I wasn’t used to having much excitement in my life, so I totally took the idea of having time to study for granted. I swore that I’d pay more attention to my studies. Final exams weren’t too far away, after all, and it was that time where you start thinking about your future. I didn’t have much to worry about - admittedly I am a bit of a nerd - but I didn’t want to get lazy or sloppy either.

My favourite comedy podcast went on hiatus because the creator said he was burned out or something, which was quite disappointing. I didn’t have time to look for anything new, so I just played the same song on repeat for my whole journey to the cafe. People say you should put together a playlist, but I think anyone who can’t listen to one song 50 times is just a bit indecisive.

I made my way to the cafe, and saw Mr. Shimizu outside cleaning the tables. I frowned a little, before realising that I probably seemed a little rude for doing so. As I got closer, I raised my hand in a wave, and he waved back at me.

“Hello, Mr. Shimizu! Where’s Una?”

He smiled at me. “Hello, Yorito. She was meant to come in today, but I haven’t seen her. Would you mind pouring some coffee for table six in there? I’m a little busy right now, somebody made a total mess!”

I looked inside through the window, and then walked in through the front entrance. Table six was right next to it, and I made brief eye contact with the people there before walking to the back rooms and getting myself changed. Once I was in the uniform, I went to the kitchen and washed my hands, keeping an eye on the coffee. The percolator was already out, so it wasn’t too much effort getting the drinks ready. I placed them on the tray carefully, and walked into the main area. The cafe was quiet, and as my eyes focused on table six, I was also able to make out their conversation.

“That boy who walked in earlier, god…”

They continued mumbling a concerning amount of things about me to each other. I sunk my head a little and squinted my eyes from across the room. Even though people tended to be polite - or at least quiet - to my face, I had almost forgotten that deep down, everyone wants to make their own rude remarks. Part of me wondered what sort of funny comments they would get if they received a freak injury from hot coffee spilling all over their faces, but I also figured that would be a bit much. As annoying as it is, I sort of understand it? It’s easy to judge from my position, but you do have to accept that most people are just naturally disposed to being judgemental. It’s not really a fault with me, and it’s not that they’re evil either, I figure. They would be bad people if they were rubbing it in my face (or at least what’s left of it), but as they’re talking amongst themselves, all you can do is take it on the chin.

That being said, I had to totally repress my grin when I approached their table with the coffees, and their pale, blank faces of mortification stared back at me.

“I hope you’ve been enjoying the cafe,” I hummed. “Nice place to drink and chat, isn’t it?”

They didn’t respond to me for about five seconds, until one nodded meekly. “Yes. Yes. Very nice cafe.”

Having enjoyed relishing in their cringeworthy moment, I turned around back to the kitchen in order to see what else needed doing. I heard the back door open, and Una stumbled inside, exhaling loudly and making her way to the clipboard to sign in.

“Hi Una, late today are we?”

She grumbled. “Yeah, a little, sorry. I hope you didn’t have to do my work for me too much.”

“Just a little. Thoughtless comments from customers, you know how it is.”

She raised an eyebrow. “No, not really. I don’t know how it is. People here are usually very polite. What happened?”

I smiled and shrugged. “It’s no big deal.” I didn’t expect Una to respond like that, and I didn’t want her to worry.

“If you say so,” she said, smiling at me. “Let me handle the customers, okay? You should probably stick to the back.”

I looked at the wall for a bit. Hell. Even Una thought I shouldn’t show my face to the customers. I suppose it feels a bit different when it’s someone you thought you were making a decent connection with. But compared to other people, my connection with Una was very thin. Most people have had real life friends for years, so I suppose I couldn't expect her to understand me fully after a week or so.

"Hey," she said, snapping her finger. "Stop daydreaming." She seemed slightly amused at how my vacant expression snapped back to reality, and she giggled a little.

"What were you thinking about?" Her tone was more curious than harsh, as if she wanted me to give a truthful answer instead of a 'Sorry, I'll get back to work.' Una’s eyes seemed relatively calm, albeit dark, and her hair looked messier than the usual neat bangs I expected from her.

"Well," I said, my chest growing heavier. I've never actually confronted people outside my family or asked them about what they thought of my complete disfigurement. Well, perhaps I did back when I was in hospital, but that was a decade ago, and it's not like the other kids were going to be judgemental to me if their medical machines were in unplugging distance. Just kidding. Mostly.

"I was just thinking about what you thought of my…" I paused, trying carefully not to mess up the delivery of the words, "...face."

Her eyes scanned me from neck to toe, and then she scratched her head.

"Oh, so that's what you were thinking about? Interesting."

I stared at her in disbelief as she turned around and walked into the main area of the cafe, completely missing the point of the conversation. Part of me should have expected she would have given me a response like that, but I didn't think she'd mess with me over something so serious. The greatest (or perhaps worst, I haven't decided) thing about Una is that you can never tell if she's genuinely clueless about the subtext of what she says, or if she's incredibly deft at controlling the conversation. I'm not sure which I prefer.

But I suppose it was pretty genius of her, in a sense, because I couldn't help but work with a smile thinking about how silly I was for getting hung up over what Una thoinks. After all, after remembering her opinions in the art gallery, I remembered the important fact that Una doesn’t think at all!