"I don't want to visit father's parents." The words left his mouth without him realising. His mother showed no sign of hearing. Her hands were still manoeuvring the shuttle. Clack, clack! The clangouring was only interrupted by her humming. When more minutes passed, Ryuuzu decided to retreat to his room. Perhaps he should have kept those words to himself. But with age, he had realised how more difficult for him to keep in his words. They refused to bury like some seeds. They would not rest idly beneath his emotions. They needed to be seen or rather be heard. He was not his sister, who seemed content in keeping them in like precious treasure. To keep them patiently, deep, and safe within this bottled silence of hers.

"We must all go. It's not a matter of want but must. To show our respects."

Ryuuzu teetered. "But why now? They have thrived so long without it."

"Perhaps, it's for that very reason. They are starved of it."

Clack, Clack!

Mother had paused her humming. Eyebrows furrowed; eyes hard, deep in consideration. She let her finger—long, coarse—ran over her work. Satisfied she continued.

"I just don't know why father wants to please them now."

"It's expected from him…tradition."

Bah! It was all nonsense. They have lived long in comfort away from their traditions. Just as they lived comfortably without any respect being shown (and given) from both parties. So why now, had old age softened them? No. Ryuuzu does not think so. He remembered his last visit, the unreadable expression in his grandfather's eyes. The sour pinch of his grandmother's lips. They lived through the time when Japan was an empire. Lived through the depression and the wars. People like them don't soften. Ryuuzu wanted to say all this but, alas, despite the fact his words would not keep. His emotions made a mess of them. Of him. Like storm wind, for just a short time they lay destruction to their environment. His emotions were like this, the wind. It jumbled his words and instead, all Ryuuzu could say: "It's stupid, this tradition."

Clack, clack!

His emotion heightened: "¡Wul a dis es estúpido!"

Clack, clack—

He bit his lips and wrung his hands, and waited.

"Ryuuzu, if it is Spanish, it's Spanish. If it's English, it's English. The same goes for Japanese. I have none of that kitchen Spanish in here."

Her eyes were on him, searching. Finding nothing, she turned to her weaving. Her finger running over her work. She muttered something under her breath in K'iché, but Ryuuzu wasn't too certain what was it.

"Sorry about that," she paused, her back on him. "But only talk like that in the company of your peers. Can't have a teacher's son being heard talking like that, hmm?"

Her fingers, long and coarse, played with the threads. Ryuuzu nodded, his eyes never leaving her hands. It reminded him of a poem he had read back in Belize in preparation for his Common Entrance Exam. (Something he considered a waste. Now that they both him and his sister have a two-year interval before entering high school. Despite both being in their last year of primary school to matriculate. Oh well). Ryuuzu had forgotten the name of it, but he still could recall the essence of the body. How the writer wrote so profusely about their mother. How perfect she was—a Madonna of some sort. But the stanza that stood out for him was when the author was describing their mother's hands: smooth, soft, only train to hold a wooden ruler. 'A teacher's hands' the author lightly concluded. He also remembered how none of his peers found that stanza as interesting as he. As if it was not simply revolutionary!

Ryuuzu recalled how his mother had told him she had come to the profession:

"It wasn't my dream, back then people hardly have the luxury to dream. They just do their best with what they were given and work with it. If it didn't turn in favour in their lifetime, they work so that their children's future would be more fruitful."

Mother said that when she was just a child, on the high lands of Guatemala, her parents made it their duty that the tradition of picking coffee beans would end with them. They toiled the lands squeeze what little wealth from the soil, and in turn, the earth asked for their blood. Mother said that her mother made certain she knew Spanish and not only K'iché. "Get better opportunities like that."

Mother also said that her parents made certain that she finished her schooling and that her aunt made certain she finished teacher's college. Even keeping Hitoshi for her when he was a babe. Despite having a cesarean section and her breasts, sore and aching, leaked milk in the middle of midterms. Yet, never once she complained, his aunt divulged.

His mother was a teacher, yet her hands were so coarse he could feel it whenever she fixed his shirt collars when he was going to school or church. Like dull razor blades they scuffed his skin. Hard yet warm.

His voice returning, he said, "I Just—I don't want to go."

She paused. Inspecting her work, her index finger pressing between her eyebrows. Trying desperately to iron out the creased lines in-between.

Ryuuzu continued, "We only need to send Hitoshi, they seemed to love him."

'Everyone loves Hitoshi' was what he wanted to say but think otherwise. If he did, he would never return to the comfort of his bedroom until midnight. Mother would want to hear him talk it out. To let whatever was settling deep (deep) within him out. She got up to the fridge, pour herself a glass of water and only wet her lips. Draining the rest down the sink. Back in the living room, just a few inches away, she finally said: "You should talk Ryo, and I will listen."

He wanted to scoff. Of course. Mother was insightful, always the first to notice. To see. But for now, he let the silence respond. He knew she would not push. She would wait. Though not for long. In fear whatever was buried inside him would take root. She all but hummed, before continuing her weaving.

"They are terrible. They have no filter to me, to Xóchitl. They said some horrible things to her last visit."

He watched her press her lips into a thin line. She sighed. Ryuuzu hoped his diverting from the topic was not too obvious.

"I know. I talked to them. Such bitterness was meant for me, they never approve of our marriage. Especially Okasan. Ever so bitter. We had a long talk me and your father, there shouldn't be any repeat of before."

"That's good."

She just hummed.

Clack, clack!

"Ryo, you want to join me. You love to weave the patterns in, especially the little flowers."

Ryuuzu teetered. He looked to the clock, then to the door. "Perhaps, another time."

They had arrived in Shizuoka an hour earlier than they have anticipated. Ryuuzu had some books and a CD player under his arm, and a suitcase in his hand. There was a huge reception to greet them, one of his aunts was the first to meet them after stepping out of the car. The others followed. The younger ones too grip with this sudden shyness lingered behind in the adults' shadows.

"You've gotten taller." One of his aunts said. "As tall as the prairie on either side of the path."

He did not know when or which aunt took his bag, while the other gathered a few spectators to prove her observation true by measuring him against the prairie. They dripped on his back, soaking through his sweater. When he shivered, she decided then that they have done enough inspecting of him as she haggled him to the house. Passing his father, he overheard the conversation with one of his uncles.

"You have the KFC?"

"Shush!" Father childishly covered their mouth. He looked over his shoulders before continuing. "Not so loud, unless you want anija to hear."

Before he could hear the rest, he was pulled around the corner where his younger cousins sought refuge. At the sight of him they scattered, their laughter carried on by the wind. Inside, with a house slipper, seated around the kotatsu his aunt finally part from him. "You'll sleep with your brother and my two sons in the last room to the back." Ryuuzu all but hummed as he watched her disappear behind the shoji doors. Leaving him alone in the room, where most of the shutters were open. Giving the impression that the tatami room and the polished wooden floor of the engawa were one.

The weather was indecisive here: It was cold and signs of recent snowfall. Though it doesn't stick. Letting the earth clumped onto his shoes, his aunt promised to wash them after gifting him a pair of slippers to wear. Yet the sun was out and bright. The brightest he had seen since he moved here to Japan. He could see, or rather, hear his cousins in the plat of tea plants. Weaving in and out, reminding him of the rhythmic sound of his mother shuttle as she weaved in and out and over and under.

The tea plants were not their only crop, the main one, perhaps. But their family had hands in other yields such as mandarin oranges, melons and of course rice. In the past, the Hasegawa used to be wealthy landowners. One of the biggest in the area. The height of this wealth was in the Man'en Era. From his father's words, they used to own all the land from here all the way up to one of the smaller rivers a couple miles from here. One of the many tributaries of the Kano River, which drains itself into Suruga Bay. But since after the restoration, the rise of the nouveau riche, the depression, the war, and the occupation. The family wealth has depleted and the land their ancestors toiled so tirelessly over has been reduced to a handful of hectares.

"It seems to me if we had come back here after ten years, there would still be that kotatsu in the centre of the room and those old chests-of-drawers," said Xóchitl.

Ryuuzu all but hum. Stunned, he had not heard when she had entered. He watched her inspect a framed photo of a wedding. He does not recognize the faces in the picture.

"Perhaps," he found himself saying.

"It's comforting in a way." She now sat just adjacent to him. A scarf around her neck. She had yet to adapt to the cold, he could see traces of her nose running before wiping it. Xóchitl sniffed.

"It's drab," he concluded after a final inspection.

She hmphed. "I know you'll say something like that."

His aunt finally returned with a tray in her hands.

"It's a good thing I brought another cup. Help yourself, I'll see what taking the other so long."

When she had gone, Ryuuzu finally made the connection to her face. She was the woman in the photo, his uncle's wife—Ume. Father eldest brother. Meaning, that she was the current woman of the household. It explained the welcomeness.

"When do you think, we would return to Tokyo?"

Ryuuzu turned to his tea. Too hot to drink, so he just wet his lips. A bit too sweet. Xóchitl would love this.

"Dunno, Boxing Day?" he offered.

She sighed. "I hope so. I made a promise to Henri to spend the day with him…so needy." The last part was said off-handedly.

He tilted his head. His lips twitched. So, she does not like Henri. Makes sense. She always likes taller boys, with more sharp, masculine features. It was one of the few things they agreed on. Back in Belize, they would huddle over magazines and draw a circle over the models in the commercial pictures of the ones who looked the best. The worst of their fights usually birthed from these sessions. His men were too white, too dark, too athletic, too smiley, too glum, too unlike hers.

"Next time don't make a promise you cannot keep."

Xóchitl huffed. Lips pressed tightly together.

Ryuuzu tried to drink his tea again. Then if it was not Henri she liked, then who? He heard the giggles in the room whenever her friend (Hemera, was it?) came over. The kind of giggles that hinted they were discussing current infatuations. The giggle they used to share. They would sit back home under the spreading shade of the Royal Poinciana tree and talk about the boys they saw at the market, the senior boys taking the bus to high, the brooding visitor at church.

He would have to ask Hitoshi in their talks. He could ask her but recently she had gotten rather private with herself. At first, he thought it was the move and gave her space to heal. But as time went on, the space had become bigger somehow until it become the uncomfortable rift it was now. Perhaps, he was going about it the wrong way. Maybe he needed to be more delicate with his approach—but Ryuuzu was never a delicate person. Always brash, a bit too harsh in certain circumstances. Ah! The confusion of interacting with the fairer sex. He does not think he would ever understand them.

"Why can't you agree with me this once?"

Ryuuzu chuckled, but he had breath through his nose so hard that it sounded more like a scoff. "There is nothing for me to agree on."

Xóchitl pressed her lips together tightly. It was a wonder she does not press them away from existence.

They continued to drink their tea in silence.

By evening everyone was seated inside, the shutters closed, and the braziers changed every few minutes with new coals. The men sat around one table, the visitors, and the children around another. While Ume and his father eldest sister and grandmother dotted in and out of the kitchen to serve warm sake, drinks, and snacks before serving dinner. After spending the better part of the day catching and now satisfied with what they have learned. They have turned their attention to a more interesting prospect: Hitoshi.

"You've gotten taller from the last time we've seen you. Soon you'll be too tall to fit inside."

"Probably we got to trim you, cut a little off your legs or something."

Ryuuzu watched how his father pressed a fist into the shoulders of his uncle. Hitoshi smiled, provoking the dimples in his cheeks, and widening his nose. All the while declining the sake his uncles poured for him. "I hope it doesn't come to that; my height is all I got."

"Don't be so eager to sell yourself short. You're fine young, in good health and in your youth springtime—"

"Not much of a springtime, when it reached the end of the blooming cycle and much of the blossoms on the branches have been deflowered." Another said. His father and his uncles laughed. Even Hitoshi ducked his head between his shoulders, a horrible shade of red-dyed the tip of his ears.

One of them cleared their throat, shifting the conversation to school and Ryuuzu could finally see Hitoshi return to some semblance of before. Albeit he refused to meet his eyes.

"Heard you're going to Todai coming spring," they chuckled amongst themselves like a schoolgirl, and he had to fight the urge not to roll his eyes. For grown men, they were so childish.

"Then the tradition continues," said grandfather. "What are you studying?"

"Marketing."

His grandfather nodded the loose skin on his neck wobbled, reminding Ryuuzu of a rooster's wattle. He poured a cup of his own sake gifting it to Hitoshi, and he accepted. Drinking it in one swallow.

"That's good. I like for me to be the only one in this family to pursue politics," a huffed before he continued. "I rather that tradition dies with me." He poured another cup of sake gifting it to Hitoshi. "You'll make us proud." It sounded more like a statement than a question. Ryuuzu could see his father's hand resting on his brother's back. He did not notice when or how long it was there. It let him wonder how long it was he had touched him? A firm reassuring hand on his shoulder or a playful tousle in his hair? He took a bite of the yaki mochi, too sweet for his liking but it brought a new distraction for him. His grandfather then pointed his crooked finger, lined with aged spots, at him. Ryuuzu stirred.

"What about you, how is school?"

Through his peripheral he watched his father light his cigarette, eyes lingering on nothing. To anyone, it might seem he was not interested in the current conversation. But Ryuuzu knew better. He was waiting.

"It's good." He hoped they would lose interest soon. He shifted on the zabuton. His legs hurt. He hated sitting seiza, how his extended family did it was beyond him. His grandfather all but nodded and the skin on his neck wobbled.

"Still attending that international school?"

Ryuuzu started to nod but realise his mistake. "Yes."

A hum. "Thinking of attending high school?" Another 'yes'. "Public?"

"I—I have not decided yet."

A hmphed from the older man before parroting his words under his breath. Ryuuzu shifted in his seat. He tried to gauge his father's reaction, but his face remained expressionless. The mirth from earlier conversation had gone, completely.

He was all but happy when his uncle shifted the topic to sports.

"Involve in any sports Ryuuzu-san?"

He took another bite of his yaki mochi before answering. "Yes, I am a part of the track team."

Ume returning from the kitchen, replacing sake bottles, overheard the conversation smiled and made a comment before leaving. "Ah, athletic and handsome. All the girls must like you."

They laughed. One of his uncles slapped him on his shoulders. While another tried to coax him in to confess if he fancied any girls at school. Ryuuzu tried to tell them (failing miserably so) that all his attentions were on his studies and clubs. He had no time or interest in girls. They do not believe him. Thinking he was being coy. The teasing continued.

Through his peripheral, he tried to see his father's reaction but failed. He shifted in his seat. The yaki mochi stubbornly refused to pass his throat. He started to grasp for a cup of iced tea when Hitoshi took hold of his hands under the table and squeeze it. Once. Twice. Thrice.

"What do you think would be a good minor Ojii-san?" He rubbed a comfortable circle on the back of his hands and Ryuuzu knew tonight the older boy would not sleep until they talk.

In the middle of the conversation, he looked to the other table. His mother chatting animatedly to one of his aunts — the one who was a teacher, one of the few who knew enough English to hold a conversation. Whilst Xóchitl sat at their mother's side, seeming more interested in the sweets on her plate than the conversation at hand. (Or conversating at all). He wished he could tell her telepathically that he agrees. He wants to go. Perhaps, he was being childish, but the previous conversation had done nothing but unearth a topic he did not want to discuss. Not now. Not with the current unease between him and his father. Ryuuzu wanted badly to just go, not to Tokyo. Not even to Belize. Somewhere far. Perhaps, the edge of the world, just them three. Mother can visit but… He rests his hands on his cheek, a phantom sting. He remembered that day, the feeling, the taste of blood and the look. Ryuuzu would always remember the look. It was the same when he had found the magazines under his bed. The day when his father finally decided to ponder on the many whispers that had presaged him of his son's supposedly wayward ways. The same look and…Ryuuzu just wanted to go.

I was suppose to update in June...