When Kyo got home with the new scooter, he found the small cardboard box, 20 centimeters on a side, on the table just inside the front door. It was addressed to him, but the return address was a P. O. Box in the United States. He picked it up; it felt very light, and rattled when he shook it. He started upstairs, but his dad called, "Kyo, could you come here a minute?"
Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, looking at his laptop. One of the group pictures of Kyo with Sei and the others was on the screen. Mom came and stood by the door, a worried look on her face.
Dad said, "Your teacher just e-mailed this to me. Are these the … people you work for?"
"Yes, Dad," Kyo said, "they are."
"What are they, Kyo, prostitutes?"
"No Dad, they…they just dress very casually."
"This isn't funny, son! I knew they couldn't possibly paying you all that money just to cook. What is really going on?"
His mother stepped forward. "Listen to your father, Dear. You can tell us."
"Is it drugs?" Dad pressed. "Are they making you make child pornography?"
Kyo gawked at his dad, then laughed. "Holy crap … this is too rich! I don't believe this. After years of worrying that I'm gay because I want to be a pastry chef, now you're afraid some girls like me? This too much. No, I've got it! This will satisfy you: They're all transvestites, and they tie me up and have their way with me every day. It's great, Dad. You should try it."
"This isn't a joke," Dad growled. "I knew this pastry chef nonsense was a bad idea, and now you're mixed up with God knows what. Why can't you be more like your older brother, Moreihei-"
"Oh, yeah, the great Moreihei Tachibana," Kyo exclaimed, "who went to university on a Soccer scholarship and whose team is headed for the World Cup-No, wait, he dropped out of college after a year - or was thrown out for drug possession, I forget which - and now he's a plumber in Tanegashima."
"At least it's honest work," Dad said.
"And being a chef isn't?" Kyo said.
"You're young, Kyo, still too impressionable, still easy prey for someone like that. People like that, they think they can get away with anything, people like that think they can buy anybody's silence-"
"There's no silence to buy, because there's nothing to be silent about, and knowing you, next week you'll say that's proof I'm gay. Yes, Dad, all I do is cook for them, and Sei keeps buying me new scooters because Jo - she's the one with the white hair and no, that's not redeye - keeps destroying them. I've told Sei not to do it, but she won't be talked out of it. She pays me so much money because she wants to be sure I can get to France. She doesn't think I'm gay, and supports me 100%, and she's a stranger. I don't even like her sometimes, but she supports me. You're my parents, and you won't help me at all - you even try to talk me out of it every chance you get. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture? Why can't you just accept me as I am? Why can't you believe I'm a normal boy who loves to cook? Sei does. Some days, that's the only nice thing I can say about her."
He started out of the kitchen, then stopped by his mother, glaring at her. "And another thing: Sei didn't get drunk one night and tell me the only reason I exist is because a condom broke."