Chapter 1 – Hard Hearts

"Makito, how can you be so simple?" Eriko's voice was shrill and angry. Her pretty face was screwed up in an expression of exasperation and he felt a wave of shame washing over him. Standing there in his garden, the little urban plot he had grandly titled "Aniki farms", he felt grubby and foolish. His dirt stained apron and gloves, his grimy face, and his mud encrusted boots, all contrasted poorly with Eriko's pin-striped suit and high heels.

"I did apologize to her, several times," he replied, feeling about ten years old as she scolded him. Next to his girlfriend, stood her best friend, a woman as refined and elegant as Eriko was. They both wore identical expressions of disapproval. Somehow, at the stylish dinner party her friend had given, Makito had managed to offend several people. He still wasn't quite sure how. He had been polite to everyone, even the horrible old auntie who had spent the whole evening talking about her dog.

"You are always apologizing, Makito, and it never changes anything." Eriko looked sad now, as though it pained her to speak the words. "You heart is good, but you don't fit into my world," she finished and her head drooped down. "I think that we should stop seeing each other."

"You don't have to be so kind, Eriko," her friend butted in, with her hands on her hips and feet planted apart. "He's rude and boorish. He has no manners or polish. He's just a hyakushō! He's a nothing, a stupid farmer!"

Eriko frowned at her friend and jabbed her with a finger for her rudeness, but the words lingered in his mind. Even as her friend was dragging her away, Eriko looked back with sadness in her eyes, but she didn't stay and she didn't refute the hurtful words.

As they walked away, her friend tripped over the roots of the spreading cherry tree that grew at the edge of the lot and landed face first into the dirt. Eriko helped her up and then they were gone and out of sight.

Makito, called Aniki by his siblings, stood in his garden surrounded by the vegetable he grew to supplement his family's meager earnings and stared at the earth for a long time. Finally, he picked up his hoe and went back to work.

It took him a long time to do his work that day, sweat mingling with tears on his face.

She watched the two women walking away with a feeling of savage satisfaction. Tripping the rude girl up had been far less than she had wanted to do to her. How could they possibly have been so cruel to Makito-san? Talking to him in such a terrible way, it was unforgivable.

She sighed as he went back to his labors, obviously distraught. He stood, the sides of his black hair tied back in a short ponytail behind his head, the rest hanging down behind, staring sightlessly at the ground. He had a strong face, with two slashes of black brows over eyes that laughed more often than they frowned.

He was tall and sturdily built, reminding her of nothing so much as an oak tree. Strong, with roots planted deep in the earth, branches spread out to shelter all those around him, he deserved better than that stuck up girl.

She wished that there was something she could do to help him.