Day 7: Part II

After the initial slurps from our spoons, the always welcomed silence of eating fell upon us as for once we let ourselves enjoy a full breakfast before aimlessly wandering around the country. The miso soup was warm and fishy. That loitering tang made it hard not to meditate upon the significance of this meal. Sean had prepared it for us to eat together and yet once it was done I would be one step closer to becoming nothing more than another empty ceramic bowl, imported from abroad, and devoid of meaning unless someone brought me out of the cupboard again on this side of the globe. And if it happened to return tonight--well, I didn’t even know.

I set the soup aside in favor of the rice.

“How was everything?” Sean asked, as though he were a waiter and not someone who had kissed me the night before.

“Oh, yeah, it’s really good.” I had tried to play it off by shoving extra rice into my mouth, but his eyes wavered slightly to my full but discarded bowl. “Sorry. That’s not…having soup for breakfast is a bit of a culture shock. ‘Ya know?”

He chuckled a little, then pointed with his chopsticks. “Well, if you don’t like it, then can I have it?” His soup bowl was empty. His rice was gone. His stomach grumbled.

“When did you…? Yeah, sure. It’s all yours.”

Part of my heart was warmed by his stoic return to an easy day indoors, hanging out as though it were any other day of the week. The other part was boiling over the fact that we had gotten so close and then returned to a previous status quo as though it were any other day of the week and not the day after he took my first kiss. My first kiss. My first kiss was from the same guy who had cried during our first sleepovers at my house and had to have his father come to bring him home.

“It’s okay that you didn’t like it,” Sean said as he reached across the table to grab the bowl. There was a gleam in his eyes that had read through my attempted composure to the obvious manifestation of those thoughts across my face. “It was something I always wanted to try. Plus, it was my first time. Not like it was going to be perfect.”

“It wasn’t bad!” I insisted. He was speaking so nonchalantly that it made me wonder if he had wanted to kiss me at all, but I knew that was just another excuse rising from the deeper pits of doubt on my part. If there was any subtextual meaning to what he said at all, it was nothing more than a slight indication of self-deprecation. “I’m not used to it at all.”

“That’s fair. Plus, it’s easy to go overboard.”

It was reassuring to hear him say that he had similar feelings. I was not some toxic jerk who had levied my vulnerability for some cheap gratification, but I was a kid who could simultaneously experience something meaningful while not needing it to mean anything at all.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I chuckled, recollecting the steps that led to the moment--bursting out into tears and asking to cuddle out of nowhere--it was embarrassing. At least I no longer felt the pressure to outdo ourselves somehow. “And, I mean, it was so fast.”

“Fast? Not really. It usually takes half an hour.”

“Usually?” How much experience did he have? Was it possible that I had fallen for the poetic charms of someone who turned out to be nothing more than your typical playboy? “But we--”

“Although using the leftover dashi instead of making a fresh batch saved some time.”

“A new batch? Wait. You mean the soup?”

“Oh, sorry. Dashi is like the broth you dissolve miso in. Usually, it takes like thirty minutes for the kelp to soak, or longer, but--”

“Right! Dashi. I understand now, ha ha.” Sweat began to accumulate around my forehead. Thank goodness I didn’t keep talking. I almost said…I sprung to my feet. “I'm going to, uh, go get changed.”

“Okay.”

I was surprised by how smoothly I was able to slip away, but then the only other place I could go was his room. Last night I hadn’t thought twice about where to sit but now it felt like it was a life-long commitment one way or the other.

I distracted myself with his manga collection. I looked for the number one on the spines and then analyzed the cover, sometimes recognizing the title and sometimes not. The best I could manage in terms of reading was to look at the pictures of a manga I had seen the adaptation of and piecing together the episodes. Yet I found myself constantly twisting the book to see it from different angles. The panel felt like a Van Gogh painting. The lines swirled and seamlessly paired with one another to form the full image of a giant robot smashing into a crowded office building; shredding windows and walls; exposing the beams, pipes, and wires; and leaving behind a hiatus between cubicle and skyline. The backs of the survivors’ heads seemed to merge with the naked curve of wreckage like a black hole.

“What’re you reading?”

The book flew out of my hand and fell on the futon as I squirmed to the bookshelf, some of the manga falling.

“Sorry. I forgot you're jumpy,” Sean apologized with a playful laugh. He didn’t seem at all tormented by regret like I was having knocked his manga all across the floor.

“It’s okay,” I responded meekly, as he leaned closer to me. “I, uh, d-didn’t notice you come in.” There was such determination in his eyes that I wasn’t sure I could keep facing him. “I was just so into the art!” I covered my face as his arm brushed past my ear. He put his manga back on the shelf.

“You liked the art?” he said, retrieving the one I had read from the futon, ignoring the rest on the floor. “I love the details she puts into the mechas. It’s like every bolt serves a purpose. Makes me wonder if she was an engineer before.”

“Yeah, it surprised me. I expect that from a show since they’ve got, like, a whole team and all that, but this is just the one person. It kind of blows my mind. Like, how does she come up with that? And then still have time to do all those backgrounds.”

“Right? And the writing, too. I hated the main guy at first but by the end of volume one I was hooked.”

“Dang, it must be really good, then. I think I binged the show a while back, but I usually binge stuff anyways, so it’s not like I remember it. I wish I knew what they were saying.”

“I can tell you. Here,” he slid back against the bookcase and wrapped one arm around my side. He held the manga in the center as there was no other way for us to be together. “This’ll be a rough translation,” he said, making a strained effort not to turn my way, letting loose a faint smile as he titled the manga towards me. “This is the narrator saying something like…”

As Sean read to me, I felt my head naturally rest against his shoulder. He read all the parts with the same leisurely tempo he recited his haikus, he had a few voices that he liked to use. A valley girl accent for the lead girl, a puffed chest and high-pitch for the lead boy, and a dry, airy voice for any side character he found to be somewhat annoying. It was fun.

“There’s always a meeting on the school rooftop,” Sean commented when such a scene occurred in Chapter Three. “They’d get suspended in real life, you know, with how often they go up there.”

“Wait, you’re not allowed up there?”

“Nope. It’s locked.”

“So you’ve never been up there?”

“Never.”

“Dang, that would’ve been cool.”

“You’re saying I’m not cool?”

“That’s not what I--”

“If I took you to my school, would that make me cool?”

“What?”

“You wanted to see a high school, right? I know we already did but that was before...don’t you want to see where I go?”

“Like a…date?”

“A date to school? I hope you think I’ve got more game than that. I thought you liked the more lovey-dovey stuff when it came to dates and stuff."

“I don’t know. I've never been on one or planned one. I mean, I figured people just get food and go shopping, or sightseeing, or see a movie, or something.”

“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for the past week?” Sean said flippantly. I could feel the heat rising to my face. Sean started to blush, too.

“It’s not a date unless you say it is from the start!” I said, shoving him away from me.

“But you just asked if this would be a date. Wait-” Sean covered his mouth as though to keep his screams internal. “Are you asking me out?”

“What? No! I mean, not ‘no’ no, but, like, I was asking if you were asking me.”

“Then, Alex,” Sean said, taking both my hands as though he were asking me to dance. “Would you like to see my high school? As a…date?”

I almost thought he’d kiss my hands. “Well, I mean, yeah, sure, if you’re gonna make a big thing of it. Yes. I will.”

He smiled up at me. Our eyes danced around, not sure where to go but always landing back at the other.

We never did make it to his school.