French Cup: A Neighborhood Story

Chapter 89: -Kazuya- Waves

My apartment's kitchen smelled like chocolate. Needing to do something with my hands. Busying them, needing to do it. He'd left a while ago, saying he needed to go back to the hotel. His obligations, but there were so many things he didn't know. That I didn't get to say. If he'd stayed, I'd have said them, but I was out of control. Trying to make him think he'd calmed me, but there was no calming me.

The cupcakes were rising in their neat pan in the oven. These cakes I was planning to bring to him in the morning, before he had to go to work. That awful hotel. Where those boys and their mom were staying. I'd suspected they were staying there when I'd met them, but now it was confirmed and it was them... They'd done this. 

It was those same boys. Gone were their shy smiles at me. The little boy's expression of surprise and delight when he came out of the bathroom, vanished. Their mother's sympathy making tale about their home, having to be here due to their father working, erased. 

All I saw were both of them outside. Holding that device somehow whole, plotting together. Impossible, but there they were, those same two boys. How they must have looked just before they threw it into French Cup. Before they ruined our lives.

Had she mentioned how old they were? I didn't catch that. But, the younger one had been pretty small and I'm not that tall. How had he been involved? That little boy? Doing this... 

From what Gyeong-Wan had said, it was a hate crime. There was no other way about it. Wanting to hate them, but their hate had gotten us here. Unable to realize, to understand that they were involved with hate. Unable to wrap my mind around that concept, connect the dots between those two boys and them holding the device all wrapped up and ready to go. Them lighting it and opening the door. Throwing it inside.

There couldn't have been anyone helping them. Not that day. Gyeong-Wan would have mentioned a third person. Maybe there was a third person involved, but I- even just this first scenario seemed impossible and yet it happened. It happened, and I-

Blankness descended. Just like it had after my initial freakout. A silence. I'd held Gyeong-Wan's sweater and he was patient with me. He hadn't said anything else, but everything had been said. I don't know how long we stayed there together like that, but I couldn't process it. Those awful things he'd said.

Now it was coming in waves. Super intense feelings, and then that dark blankness. My brain shutting down, like a machine that had overheated. 

The kitchen was becoming overwhelmed with the smell of chocolate cake. Reminding me so much of French Cup. Those early mornings, when it was just me and my raw ingredients. Wondering what I should make, to delight everyone that day. Will it be a baba au rhum for Ayane? Would I make too many almond croissants so that I could give the extras, oops my mistake, to Yuko?

Yuko... I still didn't know what had happened to Yuko and I was too scared to ask. To go look. If this was what it was like before I knew she was dead, I wanted it to last forever. This blissful ignorance, but I wasn't blissful. 

Those two boys. They had no idea. Yuko might be dead, and then they'd be murderers. 

Murderers for what? Because we had a rainbow flag over our entrance? Was that enough? Was that all it took? To kill somebody, just because there were rainbow colors floating in the wind?

My throat choked. Trying to swallow it down, but it was coming. This same reaction I'd had, overflowing. 

Somewhere in it, my oven dinged. The cakes were all done, just like I'd done every day for over ten years. Every day, my continuous mission to make everyone happy. Just trying to spread joy, making people feel better and whole. I knew why I did that. Worried about everyone. Almost everyone who came into French Cup was LGBTQ, part of our community. Older people, younger people. People I didn't know. They let you know in their own ways, being part of the community you could often tell. These little cues. How comfortable they were there, letting their hair down sometimes not even figuratively. How relaxed they were, to be in a common and inviting space. A welcoming, loving space. They were family.