2: Favors

"You stupid boy!" Erin-san lunges at me and locks me in an embrace. I am puzzled; why is she hugging me if she wants to demean my intelligence? I see the bags at the door and smell the scent of red wine as her hair tickles my nose.

Erin-san is Toki's mother, and I do not have the faintest idea why she is in Japan. It also happens to be 3 AM in the morning. I also happen to be up, which has been the case since Toki moved out.

She then sets me apart from her and keeps her hands gripped around my arms.

"I decided to come here when you called me last week," she explains in her heavily accented Japanese. "I've come to help you."

I do not say anything. I stare.

"Eddy hasn't called in a long while, and the only correspondence I've been having with her is through letters and emails. I didn't find it odd until you told me last week that you haven't been able to reach her. How long has it been?"

"Three months."

"THREE MONTHS! And you only called me last week?"

I breathe in response.

"You stupid boy!" she repeats and sighs dramatically. "We have to make things right."

I look at her.

"Speak up, boy!" She is irritated. I am taken aback for a moment – Toki could always understand what I wanted to say even though I never told her verbally. I am not used to interacting with people who cannot understand my form of language.

(Therefore there is hardly anyone I interact with.)

I mentally sigh and voice, "What do you mean by that?"

"We have to find my daughter. But first, let me into the house."

x

"So you're telling me she left because you joined the All Japan instead of furthering your studies as you promised?"

"I never promised."

"And what else did you do?" Erin-san frowns – she knows that it takes more than that to make Toki storm out of my presence and ignore my existence for three months.

I sigh, audibly this time. "I didn't do my entrance exam. I did take it – I went for the examination, that is – but I looked through the paper and I knew I could do all the questions."

Erin-san stops fiddling with the edge of the pillow and her eyes are fixated on me. "You knew you could do all the questions, and that was enough for you?"

I nod.

"So you didn't write anything on the paper?"

I shake my head.

"You stupid boy," she declares. "What else?"

"I resigned from Koueisha."

"No wonder. It makes sense to if you're going to play basketball fulltime, but we all know how much sense it makes to Eddy," Erin-san rolls her eyes. "She has quite a temper when it comes to such things. And I presume you didn't tell her that you were going to skip the exam, join the national team and quit your job as a manga artist until after you did all these atrocities?"

"Aa."

"That's all, right?"

I nod.

"You see, Rukawa-kun, the problem here is that you did not inform Eddy about your plans. If only you opened your gold-filled mouth, she probably will still be around and I wouldn't have had to cough up a huge sum of money for my air-ticket."

One similar thing about Erin-san and Toki is that both of them are as blunt as each other. I presume that their similarities end there. From what I know, Toki is more like her father.

"Can you reply a question honestly?" Erin-san puts her hand on my knee gently.

I nod, only the slightest bit apprehensive.

"Do you love my daughter?"

I shrug. I promised to reply her honestly, so I say, "If I love her I wouldn't have hurt her."

Erin-san frowns and ploughs on, "Why didn't you tell her about your plans, then?"

"I wasn't sure if she would react the way I wanted."

"You are such a selfish apehead."

"Sorry."

"You should have just told her what you wanted to do. My daughter may be stubborn and rash but she is definitely not unforgiving."

"I know."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I thought you're helping me."

"I can't help you if you don't try to help yourself. I can easily get Eddy to meet up with me because I'm in Japan and that alone will suffice as a justification. I think you need to make some sacrifices, boy."

I frown.

"You're puzzled?" Erin-san sighs. "Okay, let me explain it to your properly. Girls often say that they don't expect you to give them anything in return for favors, but that is wrong. It is not only wrong, it is WRONG. You get it?"

I chew the inside of my lower lip.

"Let me hear you speak, boy!"

"Uh, yes."

"Right. What has Eddy done for you so far and she has said 'its okay, no problem' but you think it's a big favor done and you've wondered why on earth does she give you this crap about not wanting anything back?"

I pause to think. There are a numerous number of such incidents. Letting me live with her because of my mother's financial burdens was the first, followed by giving me invaluable lessons in tricks of the manga trade and more recently, coaching me in my university entrance exams, which I didn't take.

"I presume your silence translates to an insurmountable amount of such favors?"

I nod.

"And do you feel guilty?"

Since when do I feel guilty?

I consider this for a moment. I tilt my head and try to understand the feeling that has been troubling me for the past three months. It is like my heart has been anchored to my gut. Often I stay up late into the night unable to rationalize why I feel like tearing the pillows apart. I also often fall asleep thinking about the moment when Toki's normally gentle features had hardened into a harsh picture of anger.

"With love comes expectation – that is human. No such thing as unconditional love here on earth. When there are expectations there are letdowns. Letdowns automatically involve guilt – unless you're an animal, but then if you're an animal it wouldn't be love in the first place," Erin-san muses philosophically. "I think the first thing that you should do is to give her an unconditional favor of your own."

x

Thirteen hours later my cell phone rings. I flip it open and grunt into the microphone.

"Kaede?"

I try to unearth recognition for the voice I hear from the murky depths of my primary processing unit that some people call my brain but Toki chooses to call The Living Sponge. Of course, she hasn't made any explicit reference to it verbally but she has made it apparent in our manga collaborations when she writes the author's notes.

"This is Tadashi."

"Since when have we been on a first name basis?" I growl.

"You are my brother."

I snort quietly.

"Stop being childish."

That's it. I snap the phone shut. Of course, it doesn't take long to ring again. Damn.

"What?" I demand, deciding to shut him up once and for all. He isn't a bad person, but he gets on my nerves often enough.

"I can't reach Kaede and I just want to know if she is with you."

"She is not."

"I'm back in Japan."

"I don't care."

"I would like to meet up with you, actually."

"Don't want to."

"Can you not be so antagonistic? I don't hate you."

"I hate you."

There is silence. Actually, I didn't mean that, but the whole three-worded reply thing was starting to grow on me.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he murmurs softly. The thing is he sounds genuinely upset, and that creates a gnawing guilt somewhere in my chest cavity.

Since when do I feel the presence of guilt?

With a click he disconnects, and I realize that I want to tear my pillows apart.

Author's Note: Thank you all for reviewing. It is much appreciated, and I understand that the chapters are awfully short, but I don't think Ru is loquacious enough to carry on lengthy monologues. At least, I think short chapters fit his personality better. Do leave me feedback if I have room for improvement! Cheers, Hibaku.