Homesick: Chapter Ten
The lady Kamijou was passing a difficult night at the Kamijou-Kusama apartment. It was not that the accommodations weren't acceptable. In fact, Kamijou-san had been quite surprised by how comfortable and homey the place had felt for belonging to two bachelors, professional men who worked long hours.
Well at least, Hiroki... I know next to nothing really about Kusama-san. But being a medical man I am sure he has a vigorous schedule.
More so her unease came from the strangeness of her surroundings. Outside of the rare social occasion with her husband and the activities of the various society clubs she belonged to, the lady Kamijou did not spend much time in public and far less away from her home.
She easily found Hiroki's good tea and made a cup. She was pleased to perform the soothing ritual. She was gratified also that her son had not let all she had taught him about the significance of tea be adulterated by the way it was produced for modern convenience.
Sitting at the tall dining table, Kamijou-san sipped the hot drink quietly as she tried to sort out all the chaos of her worried mind. In the midst of this, Kamijou Senior called.
Hiromasa was traveling at the moment. Despite this and Kamijou-san's gentle protests, however, he declared he would be catching the next plane to Tokyo, to see what trouble his son had conjured up this time. The lady Kamijou had smiled slightly at her husband's blusterings, in light of the fact that there had been little of anything, including "trouble." that had called his son to his attention since Hiroki had left home for the University at the age of eighteen.
After talking with her husband and updating him on their son's condition, Kamijou-san felt much more settled.
It was not that she was incapable of navigating the world, after all she had been running a household for decades and managing, to varying degrees, the two very difficult Kamijou men with a good amount of skill and grace.
Kamijou-san sighed into her cup displacing the steam with her breath. She grieved the distance she had with her son now.
Not that Hiroki was ever what one would call a 'snuggly' child. He had always been simultaneously a creature of passions and yet surprisingly contained and secretive, even from the time he'd been an infant.
After a few more slow swallows, with her tea finished, Kamijou-san moved over to the sink and rinsed out her cup and the tea utensils. Her mind and body were not prepared to rest yet after all the excitement of the day. So the lady decided to do a little exploring, hoping to find some more pieces to the puzzle her son had become.
Initially Kamijou-san confined herself to the kitchen, rationalizing that she might need to cook. Acquainting herself with the contents of her son's cupboards would be helpful.
The lady was surprised to see how well stocked and orderly the cupboards were. Peering into the refrigerator her experience was the same. There were a number of wrapped dishes and the food all looked homemade, no takeout.
Her brows rose at this revelation.
She wondered if maybe the two men had someone coming in to cook and clean for them.
That would certainly explain things, and Hiroki could surely afford it.
Then her eye caught sight of several cans of cold tea held in the refrigerator door. A furrow that was not at all out of place in that particular apartment formed on her youthful-looking brow.
She closed the icebox with a disapproving sniff. Surely those must belong to Kusama-san. She had difficulty imagining her refined son drinking something so common.
Looking up as she straightened, something tacked to the side of the refrigerator caught her eye. Reaching out, Kamijou-san extricated a photograph from under the panda magnet that pinned it to the appliance. She held it carefully as her dark eyes turned and rapidly scanned the rest of the apartment.
It was, she realized with a bit of a shock, the only visible photograph that she could see.
She was surprised to see it was a picture of her son and Kusama-san. They were under a cherry tree, obviously in a park. Both men's dark hair sported a sprinkling of fallen blossoms. They were sitting side by side on the ground. Kamijou-san's careful eyes noticed that the way they were positioned: the outside edge of one of each man's hands looked as though it was almost touching the other's.
Hiroki's mother cocked her head slightly as she studied the face of her son's roommate. He was looking directly into the camera and his whole countenance was radiating a delighted happiness. She noted to herself that Kusama-san had a lovely smile… genuine… she determined.
Then she turned her eyes to Hiroki. He was glancing away from both the camera and Kusama-san, his expression intense, brow lowered, and yet she immediately recognized the subtle crook of her son's mouth. This was the expression Hiroki made when he was immensely pleased with something and was trying hard not to smile.
Kamijou-san wondered what could have incited such pleasure in her boy that day.
She knew Hiroki had a poetic soul, but she doubted, even so, that falling petals would move him so greatly. Hiroki's mother traced a finger lightly over her only son's handsome face. She consciously bit back her tears, thinking about how close she had come to losing him and knowing that he was still not out of the woods just yet.
After carefully replacing the photo, Kamijou-san wandered into the sitting area, as if by this relocation she could evade her morose thoughts.
She studied the overlong pale-gray colored sofa, the shelves of neatly arranged books. She sat down hesitantly on the couch. It was quite comfortable but surprisingly deep. She speculated that the piece belonged to Kusama: it certainly matched his proportions.
She remembered the furniture she'd chosen for Hiroki's first apartment and wondered what had become of it.
She could still picture Hiroki's face when she'd arrived along with the movers and his things to his near-empty flat to help him settle. It was obvious at the time her impatient son could hardly wait for her to leave him, to get started on that exhausting journey called adulthood.
And yet, just when she thought he might explode, Hiroki had surprised her. After they had finished arranging everything and the movers left, just as she was getting ready to call her driver, he'd invited her to have a cup of tea with him.
It was no formal tea house, and yet he had hosted her with the same seriousness one would expect of a ceremony. She'd realized he was acting as the master of his new domain and she was now his honored guest. It had been a quiet time they'd shared, containing an element of the sacred.
When she had left she'd moved in for one final embrace in the privacy of his entry. Hiroki had taken her hand instead, clasping it tenderly before offering her a parting bow, then he'd stoically walked her down to the waiting car. She had left that day taking her boy away with her in her heart, understanding she had just left a man behind.
A man, but what kind of man?
Kamijou-san scanned the tidy front room again. She strained her ears and her eyes, almost believing that if she looked and listened hard enough she would be able to see Hiroki moving through this space, hear the things he said, the conversations he engaged in, the life he was living.
Her eyes dropped to the coffee table in front of the couch and she noticed the remote. She looked up and glared slightly at the large flat screen on the wall across from her.
Hiromasa had installed one in their traditional home three years ago. Not only did Kamijou-san find what it did to the aesthetics of her environment displeasing, but she felt as though since they'd acquired it their conversational life had suffered. Alhough she would reluctantly admit she occasionally turned it on during the day to following a particular romantic drama.
Dropping her eyes again and this time they fell on the stack of fitness magazines on the table.
Kamijou-san remembered finding something like that once tucked in the bottom of her son's school bag when he was about thirteen. It had not been the kind of reading material she expected Hiroki to possess: his tastes in periodicals, even as an adolescent, had always leaned more towards the scholarly.
Not to mention, when she'd glanced through it (maybe even more than once if she was honest - she had still been a young woman then, after all), she'd found herself thinking that some of images were rather provocative. She'd wondered at the time if it was wholesome for a boy Hiroki's age to be exposed to such hyper-masculine posturing.
When she'd asked him about it, Hiroki had turned bright red, which was not all that unusual, and had mumbled something about an article on a certain kendo master he favored. After that she had never questioned it when she had occasionally run across another one amongst her son's things.
Fanning out the magazines, Kamijou-san studied the covers. She shook her head, wondering once again where the nation of Japan was heading. There were also a few western issues, however, and these struck her as particularly more vulgar. Hiroki's mother re-stacked the thin, glossy texts.
Then she noticed two drawers in the side of the coffee table.
Kamijou-san crinkled her nose at herself, knowing that she was going well against good manners to be such a snoop in her son's home. Still, after just a moment's hesitation, she opened the first drawer. The lady wasn't quite sure what she'd hoped to find, but anyone who heard her sigh would have immediately detected a note of disappointment.
Inside were several gaming cartridges, discs for some popular anime, some action/adventure movies. These must be Kusama-san's. Such low tastes.
Given this, she was about to close the drawer, when suddenly the flash of the cover on a title towards the back caught her attention. Pulling the drawer open further, Kamijou-san's eyes widened.
Pictured boldly on the front of the DVD's jacket were two attractive, nearly naked men, embracing each other and passionately kissing.
Feeling an uncomfortable heat creep into her cheeks, shyly Kamijou-san reached in to pick up the disc. She dropped it quickly back, however, when she saw what was beneath it. There was another video, its cover displaying two men in an even more provocative pose. Laying atop this a tube of some sort of personal lubricant.
Hiroki's mother shut the drawer sharply, her face a brilliant scarlet that would have rivaled any of her son's best blushes.
Kamijou-san may have been a sheltered, woman, but she was by no means stupid. She felt her cheeks burning even hotter with the realization that her son's roommate was homosexual.
Fanning herself with both hands, Hiroki's mother sat back further on the couch,. She wondered if Hiroki knew this about his housemate. Then she thought about the picture on the refrigerator, the hands grazing each other, her son's secret expression of happiness.
She felt a stone drop into the pit of her stomach.
"Dear heavens, not my Hiroki," she breathed.
Then her eyes fell on the other drawer. Though her better judgment warned against it, having opened one Pandora's Box, what would it matter to open another?
She reached with a trembling hand and slowly pulled out the other drawer halfway. It too seemed to hold DVDs and two titles were immediately visible.
Kamijou-san felt her tension ease just a little, seeing the first title was a documentary on Matsuo Basho, there was no doubt this was her Hiroki's drawer. The woman felt her shoulders straighten.
Her posture lost a bit of steel however, when she read the other title: Madame Butterfly.
"It's an art film, of course. That makes sense!" Kamijou-san defended her son to the empty apartment.
Then her mind snapped a detail into place that had been niggling at her subconsciously since her exploration of the two men's bedrooms when she had first arrived.
She recalled Kusama-san apologizing to her at one point that afternoon about his state of dishevelment. He had told her that he had been sleeping when her son's senior at the University had called with concerns about Hiroki and that he had rushed from the house immediately.
Kamijou-san closed her son's drawer slowly as she thought about the crisp made bed in "Kusama-san's room" and the tangled sheets on her own son's double futon.
The lady pinched the bridge of her nose. She suddenly felt exhausted.
"Maybe I should just go to bed now," she murmured. Kamijou-san rose stiffly and slowly made her way to her son and his lover's "guest room."
Now, I don't expect to get a lot of reviews on this chapter… It's Hiroki's mom after all and I know you all are here to see the hot guys have their fluff and fuuuu…... Yeah, well anyway, even though it's not man on man, I would still love to hear from you!