Hyakki Yagyou

Chapter Thirteen: Confessions, Absence

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” 

-        Leo Tolstoy

December 18th, 9 am

The market was crowded with women, children, the merchants and even animals – the people’s pets they saw fit to bring for an early morning shopping. Emi never liked crowds. The moment she came there, she started to feel uncomfortable.

Even during her high school days, she stayed away from large groups of people. On a daily basis, she talked with maybe four-five people but to all at different times of the day. Not once did she engage in a group conversation. Somehow, it was all strange to her.

Maybe that was why the website was useful for her. She did not have to be around those people to talk with them. She could not see their faces and wonder if that smile was fake or not or if their worry was genuine or not. It was easy. Just she and the laptop screen.

Such sentiments are not something one would expect from a person who actually works with people, though. Emi assumed that this was her own irony. No. She was a sort of an incarnation of irony – she hated being around many people but she worked with them and now that she worked at Derira she had to talk to over fifty of them on a daily basis. The Purple Rose meant mostly communicating with her co-workers so that was not so bad.

Yet, in spite of her introvert nature, she managed well at Derira. More or less.

Abe appeared some ten minutes after she arrived, with a child jumping up and down and somehow managing to time his pace to hers.

“I’m sorry I’m late.” Abe said, bowing ever so slightly in an apologetic manner. “Yuji took a longer time to dress.” She explained, looking at the boy who just hid behind his mother and shot a quick, shy glance at Emi.

“I didn’t know you have a son.” Emi said, completely taken aback by the picture.

Abe, of course, did not wear her uniform. She had jeans and boots, accompanied by a deep red turtle-neck sweater that was visible underneath the thick, olive green almost knee-long winter coat. Her hair was almost invisible under the winter hat she wore and her face had almost no make-up, save for some mascara and a light touch of lip gloss – something they all needed to prevent sudden drying of lip on his more or less harsh winter weather. It wasn’t too cold but it wasn’t to be messed around with either.

The boy was approximately tall enough to be an eight or nine year old. He wore full winter gear with a large scarf wrapped around his mouth. Emi could only see his forehead and large, brown eyes sparkling with curiosity as he stared at her.

“Mmhmm.” Abe nodded with a smile on her lips, glancing at the child. “Say hello, Yuji-kun.”

The boy muttered a hello and soon walked away on his own, still keeping a small distance from his mother.

“I didn’t even know you’re married.” Emi said.

Abe sighed. “I’m not. My husband passed away.”

Emi bit her lip and sighed. Way to go. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

After a short moment of silence, Emi asked. “Why did we meet here?”

“Well, it’s my day off and I do need to do grocery shopping. So I figured let’s kill two flies with one stone. Or whatever they say.”

“Birds.”