IV.
dusty red

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By the time she was able to take a leave from work, it coincidentally clashed with that time of the month.

Sora's periods were occasionally harsh somehow this past year. She could spend the first and/or second day lying down above the bed, unable to move an inch. She never really knew the reasons behind it, yet she wasn't bothered to check with a doctor because she thought most females in the world would also face the same problems, and it was something that too should pass anyway—you just had to bear with it.

Nevertheless, it sucked when she deliberately took the leave on Friday so that she could have three days to enjoy, but now she wasn't any different from others who had a regular weekend.

She went through the same cycle for more than half a day: woke up just to fall asleep at instance since she couldn't do anything, hoping that the pain had gone the next time she was awake. Unfortunately, it didn't.

As the clock told her that it was already four in the afternoon, she could not figure anymore whether the stomach pain was because of the period or because she hadn't eaten anything.

Knowing that she probably wouldn't survive if she continued to lay down, Sora pushed herself to get off of the bed, only to end up leaning against the wall as a support. It was painful enough just to sit. She was able to climb back up after taking a very deep breath, and decided to run as fast as possible to the kitchen.

She opened the refrigerator. The foods were neither ready nor appetizing.

She slid open the drawer, hoping that Mimi left a painkiller she used to take in every period, but it turned out there were only five stripes of band-aids. Jyou would hate her for saying this, but Sora was never really the type of person who would rely on drugs so easily, especially if she considered the aches to be trifling.

This, however, was no longer negligible.

It appeared like Jyou had sent her a curse so that she could learn about the greatness and advancement of the medical world, yet the only thing she learned right now was the fact that she could die in a minute.

Sora wanted to collapse after using all of her strength to rush to the kitchen. Her bedroom was too far to reach in her current state, so she used her last might to spread herself face down on the couch. She screamed and cursed so loud—both being things she rarely did—but thankfully, her voice was muffled by the pillow, so no complaints from neighbours.

…or so she thought.

Her house phone rang, and even though it was just on the table beside the couch, Sora didn't feel like reaching for the phone. Letting it be, she could hear a beep then after the continuous rings stopped, and when she peeked, the voicemail sign was blinking. She would usually just ignore such triviality, but even insignificant things had the power to annoy her in this situation, so she decided to give it a chance and pressed the button.

"Ciao, Sora. It's your handsome fellow—but not Takaishi though, since it'll cost too much for a single Paris-Tokyo phone call…." Taichi's voice echoed in her living room. "I tried to contact your mobile, but zero response since lunch break. Are you on a nap marathon? It's Friday night, so why don't we go somewhere? Let me know."

That was where she realized she hadn't looked into her phone for the entire day, but even when she could, she wouldn't want to do it anyway. It was common knowledge that offices preferred to terrorize their employees more often when they were on leave, so she could predict how many work-related notifications were currently nested in her phone. However, she did not intend to also ignore her friends in the first place, including Taichi.

Sighing, she reached for the landline and dialled the numbers she had long memorized.

"Look who's calling," Taichi greeted, and as if she could see through the phone, she knew that he was smirking. "Enjoying the leave too much, so it seems."

"Stop being so cocksure, baka," she scoffed with a raspy voice, which he noticed immediately.

"Ouch. You don't sound like a person who had her beauty sleep."

"That's because I hadn't." Sora tried not to yell, but she did anyway, so she hoped that the pillow did its work to make her sound less impudent. "It's anything but beauty. It's ugly. Very ugly. A beast."

"…are you in your monthly cycle?"

It took Taichi a few seconds, but the fact that he could give the exact answer was impressive enough.

"Have you eaten?" he continued, which she answered matter-of-factly. "At all?" She explained as much as possible without rage that even five meters between her bedroom and kitchen felt like five thousand kilometres.

"What do you want then?"

"Sukiyaki," she said shamelessly.

"Do me a favour and stay alive for the next one hour, okay?"

Sora ended the call with a groan. How on earth did he make her promise on something that looked so impossible right now?

In the end, she fell asleep for the millionth time that day, and the next time she woke up, it was because she heard a click from the main door. Sora didn't even bother to check who it was, although the fact that someone entered her house without her unlocking the door could be worrisome.

"Your knight in shining armour is here!" She should have seen it coming, but fortunately it was really Taichi—announcing himself with such a loud voice—instead of a burglar. By the sound of it, he was probably taking his shoes off. "How do you like your sky today? Oh, wait, let me guess. Hmm… bloody red?"

"Don't be so vulgar!" she snapped.

"Ah, can't I? How about… amber-kissed? Dusty red?"

At a better time, Sora would lecture Taichi about where amber lay within the spectrum; it was more of an orange rather than red. But not today.

"You're incorrigible as hell, Taichi."

"Ooh, filthy. Your parents must be disappointed." He liked to joke about her parents, saying that they were so formal no wonder Sora's upbringing was very classy compared to her friends.

"Just go …"

"Are you really going to kick me out after what I have done?" His figure finally emerged within her vision, just behind the sofa's armrest. He brought two plastic bags with him; one was bigger than the other.

"How did you get in?"

"I called Mimi. She said the spare keys were below the mat." Mimi still came back sometimes to grab her stuff, but she put her key there so Sora could use it if she forgot hers, now that no one would open the door for her. "You should ring her, by the way. She was worried when I told her about your condition."

"My phone is somewhere… ngh, in the bedroom."

"Forget it—I'll tell her later. You should eat first."

He started to rummage on the bigger plastic. "I dropped by the drugstore and bought you these tablets. They said it can help you ease the pain. I also bought you tampons, just in case." Taichi showed her a pack of medicine—the same one with Mimi's—and tampons, before returning them to the bag. "Let me reheat the sukiyaki first. I did a quick search, said that red meat can restore your blood somehow, so I asked for extra fillets."

After putting the drugstore bag above the lounge table, he went to the kitchen with the smaller one. Sora peeped at the bag to realize it wasn't really a drugstore bag. There was indeed a smaller plastic with a pharmacist logo inside, but the bigger one was from konbini. It was filled with snacks that she loved the best; strawberry daifuku, butter-flavoured potato stick, milk pudding, and custard bun.

She didn't even ask, yet he bought them all because he knew it would make her happy.

He really knew her the best, didn't he?

Taichi came back with a portable stove for Mimi and Sora's monthly steamboat night. Setting it up above the table, he then brought the sukiyaki that had been placed inside claypot, complete with a bowl of rice and a raw egg.

"I don't feel like eating egg or rice," Sora mumbled weakly.

Taichi blinked.

"I guess it's settled for my dinner, then."

Taichi grabbed an extra bowl and chopstick from the kitchen shelves, along with furikake to compliment his own dinner. He helped Sora to sit on the floor, her back against the lower part of the sofa. While Sora started to scoop the broth, Taichi was mixing the raw egg in his rice and spread furikake above it.

It felt unfair that Sora had all the luxury when Taichi only got a tamago kake gohan for himself. She slid the stove nearer to him. "You can have my sukiyaki too."

"Nah, I'm good."

The guilt still lingered inside her, so she left some meat and vegetables on purpose when she finished nevertheless. Taichi was never a man who could see food gone to waste, and for that reason, he ate them eventually.

They shared strawberry daifuku for desserts before Taichi urged Sora to take the medicine. Sora, feeling a tad better after the sukiyaki, told him about how she put less faith in medication, and Taichi agreed about the potential of Jyou scolding her. Putting aside the joke, she drank it anyway. She decided to clean herself while Taichi cleaned up the dish. Her steps were wobbly, but as she got her hands to the wall, she finally managed to maintain her balance.

Still, she looked so fragile it made him worry.

He questioned with a concerned look when she stepped out of the bathroom minutes later. "Are you really able to walk by yourself?"

"I'm fine."

She had passed Mimi's bedroom door. Her room was literally a few steps away.

She hastened, took a turn, and when she found her bed, she sprung with a big sigh, relieved as if she had just won a sprint competition. Taichi stood at the door frame, clapping his hands as an appreciation. "Impressive," he stated before throwing the potato sticks he bought earlier towards her. "Your trophy."

Sora caught the cup-shaped pack easily, tore the lid, and took one bite. "Just come lie down here—you must be tired. We can share."

There was a reluctance in his face, but he approached thereafter. Just as he was ready to occupy the space beside her, he eyed at the bed suspiciously as if he was searching for something.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Just making sure there wasn't any pool of blood or something …"

Flustered, she gasped and reached for her pillow to hit him. "Bakaichi!"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding!" he shoved the pillow away so that he could finally join. Sora handed him the potato stick as a welcome snack, which he grabbed one. The sound of their teeth crunching filled the room while they were lying side by side above her double bed, only separated by a significant span of a gap. The ceiling might be empty, but with two pairs of eyes fixated upward, it felt like they were watching a picturesque landscape that wouldn't be boring even if it was to be seen for a long time.

"It's just like the good old days, isn't it?" Sora began to wonder. "After we finished the training, we would rest on the side of the field, enjoying the breeze…."

She then glared at him, pretending to be irked.

"And after I went home, you would take extra practice by yourself because you're that cunning."

Taichi could not hold his laugh. "Did I really?"

"You were always the one who practiced so hard. I thought you were going to be a J-League superstar."

"But you could also become the next member of woman's national team, you know? If only you didn't betray me by joining the tennis club, of course."

"Please. I'm not that great."

"No, I'm serious. You could be the next Homare Sawa. Hells, you could even be the next Shunsuke Nakamura because you're as good as the boys."

"Stop it—that's hyperbolic," Sora finally giggled. "But thank you. You earn yourself one potato stick."

Taichi received Sora's offer without a second thought. "This also reminds me of the first day of practice," he continued. "Remember when the coach gave each of us a pack of potato stick as a token of appreciation at the end of the session? Kenji sat beside you and forced you to swap because you got mentaiko and he got butter."

"Aaah," she nodded in agreement.

"But thanks to him, I learned that your favourite potato stick is a butter-flavoured one."

"Well, truth be told… that was the first time I tasted the butter. I usually went with mentaiko."

"…you're kidding."

"Kenji had scary eyes! I couldn't refuse him!"

"No, it was because you're too kind as always," Taichi countered. "Kenji was picking up on you because he was threatened. He was a sore loser who would never accept the fact that there was a girl better than him."

"Nevertheless, I grew to be fond of the butter-flavoured, so… yeah, probably thanks to him."

As they both reminisce in their own heads, Taichi shifted to use his two arms as a pillow, but his eyes didn't bulge for a second, still gazing at the ceiling with such a yearning look.

"It's been almost twenty years, huh…" he pondered with a low voice that sounded more like a statement rather than a question.

It was funny how Mimi's words always reverberated in unexpected moments just like this. Did he really like her since school? Mimi didn't specify the grade, but they all had gone to the same school since elementary. Was it possible that he already kept such feelings since they were so young? Two decades, she reiterated inwardly. That long. Either he—who was usually a mess—managed to hide his feeling so neatly, or she—who was actually one of the most sensitive people in the circle—became so oblivious that she could not interpret although they enjoyed a lot of time together.

But then again, she told herself, it was impossible for them to become lovers, wasn't it?

Sora always looked after her parents when it came to love. They spent most of their marriage in a long distance—with her father being assigned in Kyoto not long after Sora entered the school—but the relationship was as solid as ever. It was like how the sun loved the earth, radiating his warmth from outer space. And each time they were together, there were no grand gestures as often shown in romantic movies. No intimate kisses, no slow dances under the rain, no acoustic guitar serenades, or even jumping out of the train for a big round of hug in a spinning motion. However, Sora felt the warmest each time she saw her parents sitting together in the dining room with two cups of tea; her father read a book while accompanying her mother, arranging flowers in comforting silence.

That subtle kind of love was perfect for her—so reserved, yet so beautiful.

And that was why she would never work it out with Taichi. Their friendship was so strong indeed, but it was peculiar. They were so easy and unguarded. He even bought her tampons, for God's sake.

Nevertheless,

"Thank you for coming here, Taichi. And for the snacks, also."

"Well, Hikari has a noticeably big appetite every time she's in the period." In contrast to her insatiable big brother, Hikari usually ate very little.

"Have you ever bought her a tampon also?"

"…actually no, this was my first time."

"Oh my Lord," Sora stifled her laugh, imagining how hard it was for him to face the cashier. His face must be flushed red at that moment. "Sorry you have to get through that. And I'm sorry for yelling at you either."

"That, I agree. Hikari isn't as fierce as you."

"That's because she's too much of a saint to do such things."

"She yelled at me once, though, when I decided to lodge with Koushiro. She said Odaiba isn't that far."

She didn't make any comment.

"Sorry for ruining your Friday night."

"Okay, Sora. That was your third apology in five minutes," Taichi pointed out. "Fine. If you feel so guilty, I'll let you owe me one."

"Deal. I'll pay you next week."

He didn't give an immediate answer.

"I think we have to go with another raincheck next week."

"Well, okay. Just hit me up when you're available."

Taichi paused for quite a time before he escaped a heavy sigh.

"I'm going to Africa."

"Africa? That's great—"

"For two months."

And that was where she followed him into the silence. His workplace often sent him for business trips to various countries, which completely made sense because they were a multinational organization after all. It usually lasted one or a couple of weeks, but never even a month.

"It's a sudden one. I wasn't originally assigned for this project, but someone got very sick that I have to replace him," he said. "I should be back before Christmas, but there will always be room for extension if things go south. It's pretty intense."

She was somehow afraid to raise the next question.

"And when will you depart?"

"They're currently rushing my visa application. Should I get my passport back on Monday, they want me to fly Wednesday midnight."

Bit by bit, she could feel her tongue steeled.

Emptiness was something she no longer felt after being so accustomed to a quiet house, with her father being in the other city, not to mention her mother running ikebana school and flower shop. Sora was usually okay with her best people going away for a long time, but the thought of not having Taichi around for approximately six weeks was odd. Come to think of it, they were never really apart for so long after they knew each other; the longest being school holiday if their respective families decided to travel outside Tokyo. But even in a six-week summer vacation, they would always find a way to see each other.

For the first time in years, emptiness started to creep inside of her, even though that certain someone was lying beside her.

"Well…" she swallowed the fret that held her back from talking. "This is a wonderful opportunity, right? Maybe it will boost up your career in the future. Do your best, Taichi."

He remained silent at first, fixing his arm's position before finally turning slightly to face her.

"The painkiller—does it work?"

It actually worked like magic, but judging at his tone, Sora knew where Taichi was heading with the question. If she told him that she was feeling better, he would bid his goodbye and went back home, officially starting the two months countdown because they would hardly see each other again before he departed—him probably being busy with packing on the weekend.

She didn't want him to go yet.

Not giving any words, she averted his gaze by looking down on her feet.

He continued, "I'll wait until you get better."

And so he stayed.

They spent the next course talking about things, until at one point, Sora felt her eyelids heavy—most probably because of the drugs she took—and unintentionally fell asleep. The next morning when she woke up, Taichi was not there in her bed anymore. She wasn't sure whether he stayed the night or not, but the space beside her felt so warm.

Just like the radiate of the sun kissing the earth.

Just like two cups of tea her mother used to brew on a restful afternoon.

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reference:

(1) Strawberry daifuku: mochi filled with red bean paste and a whole strawberry.

(2) Tamago kake gohan: Cooked rice mixed with raw egg, usually for breakfast.

(3) Homare Sawa is Japan's female footballer with the most caps and goals of all time, while Shunsuke Nakamura is also a Japanese footballer—only, he's a male.

notes: 4 May 2020. (Edited on 19 February 2022)

I just realized I often make a lot of food references, haha. Sorry for being such a foodie. Not sure whether it's because I'm fasting or what.

Honestly, I struggled a lot writing this chapter, so I won't be surprised if my insecure heart decides to butcher this chapter again for a rework in the future. Well, I hope not, but even if I do, rest assured I have conveyed all the main ideas that I have to express in this chapter. This chapter should be a minor one, yet it passed 3000 words somehow. I hope it's still understandable though.

This was inspired by my own experience last month when I couldn't get out of my bed until near sunset. Two of my male friends coincidentally called me, and I ended up reprimanding them about how they should be more grateful to their mothers because of the pain women have to get through every month lol.

Can't wait to write the next chapter; more kids are coming up.

Thanks for the reviews!