He likes to eat crabs with vinegar. The supple texture of the meat, combined with the all the other elements that make it taste so good just tastes even better when mellowed with the sourness and sharpness of vinegar. Mixed with bland, hot rice is also good. Sometimes he manages to finish one crab all by himself, even though it was almost as big as his head.
Tonight, he brought a big one from the store. The vendor put it in a small box, just for him; and he laughed a bit, because he remembers the same thing about eyes and vials and blinding wishes thrown away in the wind. He sets it gently on the countertop, and reaches in. The crab snaps at him angrily, scuttling away from him; but food is food and so he grabs one of its pincers and drops it into the pot. He then adds a little bit of water, some butter, shallots, and salt. He watches its little pincers through the transparent cover of the pot, and it gives him a morbid sense of happiness as it tries to breath amidst the heat and the pain.
In a few minutes, it was done. Bright orange and steaming, he took it carefully with his hands and set them on a plate. He took out some rice (miraculously, he still has some) from the pantry and boiled them, careful not to burn the while little things (things that are burnt are never good anymore, even if they were white and good in the first place), curbing his hunger for a little while. When it was done, he took his bowl and filled it with rice, then went to his table and placed everything on top: crabs, rice, bowls, and all.
He grabbed the crab's legs and tore them apart, piece by piece; breaking them in half to take the sweet flesh inside. He ate hungrily, only pausing to grab something to help him open the crab with. What he can't eat anymore, he set aside on a spot on his table. What meat he gets, he dips into vinegar; and the sourness overcomes everything. He ate in silence, listening to the traffic outside his apartment; listening to a voice message from his phone that kept repeating itself, as if it wasn't a message he's heard before: we care for you... you have your own life as well... Subaru, where are you?
The pile of legs and shells on table was growing. To him they look like skeletons who can walk and dance when midnight calls; orange, broken apart and hollow. He smiled in his analogy. Maybe he was somebody else's crab before: green, broken apart and confused. In a way he felt that he and his food feel the same when it comes to the end: they try to breathe, amidst the heat; but then they both suffocate and die, becoming food for someone else.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hands, and tossed the last piece of shell into his skeleton pile. He ate up all of the rice in his bowl, careful not to leave a single grain, because he doesn't like wasting food. He felt so full, and as if he ate for hours.
He stood up and grabbed a pitcher of water from his fridge, and poured himself some on a glass. He drank slowly. Afterwards, he set all of the dishes onto the sink, the skeletons on a plastic bag to be thrown away. He washed his hands with soap and lemon, because there was no good in killing if your victim says that "you smell like a crab". Wincing slightly on that line ("you smell of crabs,ojisan"), he rubs his hands vigorously in cold water and then wipes them on his coat. He frowns at the lemon scent on his hands, but they'll change to metallic later on after his job. Maybe even sakura. Maybe. He decides to wash whatever he has used after that, because he doesn't like lemon and the sweet smell of dishwashing soap on his hands. He's afraid that they'll cover sakura and blood and everything else.
He sets them one by one on the rack and then washes his hands for the last time (because they're not clean) on cold water, never hot. He walks to the plastic bag with crabs and picks them up along with his coat. He threw them outside in the garbage bin, because skeletons have a tendency to smell if you leave them be. He then wore his coat, lit a cigarette, and walked into the night.
He doesn't lock his door anymore, because he believes that someday, he will come back and join him to eat crabs; and then his hands will smell of sakura instead of lemon, like they do right now.
He wasn't pleased, however, to find that his apartment smells of crabs when he got home. So he rubs his hands on the floor, on the sink, on the walls, on everywhere he can reach until it seemed like a canvas flooded with red paint. He steps back, looks at his handiwork, and admires the way he colored his little house. Afterwards he vowed never to eat crabs again.