メロウレイン / Futtara Doshaburi Mellow Rain

Snowing

 

Nakarai had been adamant that Hagiwara absolutely could not skip going home for New Year two years in a row, so in the end he agreed to stay just one night, from New Year’s Day until the second.

 

Hagiwara could understand something like a Christian saying they had to go to church with their family at Christmas. That was a matter of faith. But he still had a slight grievance about the idea that skipping a New Year visit home somehow made him an unfilial son. 

 

His parents only lived about an hour away. It wasn’t as though he needed to sacrifice precious days from a long holiday when he could visit whenever he wanted.

 

Although, having said that, an entire year had somehow passed in the blink of an eye.

 

“…I really have to go.”

 

“Mmm…”

 

When Nakarai smacked his bare hip beneath the duvet, Hagiwara whined, “It’s cold. I don’t want to get out.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

This time the smack landed harder.

 

“I don’t want to go. It’s a pain.”

 

“No. You have to. They’re probably looking forward to seeing you.”

 

“Ugh.”

 

Hagiwara wrapped both arms around Nakarai, holding on to him along with all the warmth their bodies had created together.

 

“Nakarai-san, what are you doing until tomorrow?”

 

“Probably sleeping and watching television.”

 

“Then go to sleep right now.”

“Why?”

 

“It’ll be easier if I can sneak out while you’re asleep.”

 

“Shouldn’t that be the other way round?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Yes, yes.”

 

Nakarai brushed off Hagiwara’s sulking and started getting dressed first. Once he did that, Hagiwara had little choice but to follow.

 

The closer their bare skin had been pressed together, the more distant even a single layer of clothing made them feel afterwards. 

 

It immediately made Hagiwara want to strip him again. So far, there appeared to be no end to that particular cycle.

 

“It’s snowing.”

 

Nakarai said it while looking out of the window.

 

“Is ‘White New Year’ a thing?”

 

“Then I really am not going.”

 

“It’s barely snowing. Besides, you said you’re meeting your friends tonight, didn’t you?”

 

“Sort of. It’s more like, whoever can make it turns up.”

 

More than half of them lived around Kantō anyway, so it wasn’t some grand reunion everyone had rearranged their lives to attend.

 

Hagiwara was still clearly lacking enthusiasm, so Nakarai hurried him along and wrapped his scarf around him at the front door.

 

“Did you get anything to take to your parents?”

 

“They live nearby.”

 

“Do you want me to walk you to the station?”

 

“If I drag this out any longer, I’m never going to leave. Here’s fine.”

 

“You keep saying things like that… Oh, wait.”

 

Nakarai reached into Hagiwara’s coat pocket, took out a tube of lip balm and ran it around his lips.

 

“There. Ready to go.”

 

Hagiwara clasped both hands behind Nakarai’s waist, pulled him close and pressed his lips against Nakarai’s freshly softened ones.

 

“…Oi. That completely defeated the point of putting it on.”

 

“But your lips are dry too, Nakarai-san.”

 

They shared the cool menthol sensation and a faintly plastic taste until the time really did become too late to linger.

 

Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Hagiwara finally left Nakarai’s flat.

 

The snow fluttered outside as he changed trains on the way to his parents’ house. He hoped it wouldn’t settle. If it did, perhaps he wouldn’t be able to get home tomorrow. 

 

Or transport would become disrupted, and his mother would insist, Stay another night.

 

The thought made him feel even heavier. If only it had dumped down yesterday and given him an excuse not to go at all.

 

Among the passengers were people heading to shrines for their first visit of the year, people going out for the day, and a surprising number whose expressions still carried the unmistakable air of I’m going to work as usual.

 

There were station staff at their posts, trains continued running through the snow on a slightly reduced timetable, and convenience stores were open.

 

When Hagiwara was a child, he remembered the streets being quieter at New Year.

 

Apparently, if you went even further back, department-store New Year sales properly began on the fourth, supermarkets shut, and of course there was no online delivery, so people had to buy enormous amounts of food before the end of the year.

 

People still stocked up now, of course, but if you suddenly thought, Oh, I forgot that, there was always somewhere open to buy it.

 

Hagiwara found himself wanting to spend that sort of inconvenient New Year shut away with Nakarai, as if they were under siege.

 

Maybe they should go to some hot spring deep in the mountains? But then they’d have to drive.

 

Would his mother be angry if he told her that since he’d come home this year, he was skipping next year again?

 

His mother complained that she had been waiting forever, which Hagiwara mostly ignored. He exchanged a “Long time no see” with his father and his older brother, who had also returned home, and then the whole family formally wished one another a Happy New Year.

 

He was long past the age of receiving New Year money. In fact, over the last few years, he had begun to wonder whether he ought to be the one giving it.

 

His father was still working, though, so he and his brother, who was two years older, had agreed they would start once their father retired.

 

He no longer felt the childish excitement of suddenly having extra money, but he liked osechi more than he used to.

 

Basically because it made excellent food to drink with.

 

Somewhere along the way he had also started genuinely enjoying marathons, ekiden relay races and sumo wrestling, none of which had interested him in the slightest when he was younger.

 

Apparently there were staircases into adulthood scattered through all sorts of unexpected genres.

 

He sampled everything in the osechi, became pleasantly warm from the New Year sake, relaxed beneath the kotatsu, half-watched a lively yet freezing-looking live broadcast from a shrine in the snow, checked the New Year cards that had arrived at his parents’ house, and exchanged congratulations with friends on his phone.

 

It was an entirely ordinary New Year’s Day.

 

Except Nakarai wasn’t there. And to Hagiwara, that one missing piece mattered enormously.

 

“Hagiwara! Hagiwara!”

 

“…Huh? What?”

 

“Honestly, how many times do I have to call you? Do you want coffee?”

 

“No, I’m fine.”

 

“Oh, and Ritchan’s coming tomorrow.”

 

She named a cousin who lived in Chiba.

 

“What time?”

 

“Late afternoon.”

 

“Then I’ll miss her. I’m going home around lunchtime.”

 

“You could stay a little longer. It’s not as though you have a Shinkansen or plane ticket booked. She’s bringing the baby she had last year.”

 

“I sent her a birth present, and the baby’s too young for New Year money. It’s fine.”

 

“What could possibly be so important that you have to rush home on New Year’s?”

 

“I have things to do. I already told you beforehand what my plans were, so don’t start complaining about them now.”

 

“‘Told us beforehand’? You sent us a one-sided LINE message.”

 

“What, do I need to request formal permission for the exact dates I’m allowed to stay?”

 

Once his mother started complaining, she rarely backed down. Hagiwara, meanwhile, had already come despite not particularly wanting to, and somewhere in the years since leaving home, he seemed to have forgotten the skill of simply saying, "Yes, yes, sorry," and letting her words wash over him.

 

Still, when things got like this, family could be useful, too.

 

“Oi, give it a rest. It’s New Year.”

 

His brother tossed a mandarin at him from across the kotatsu instead of throwing in the towel.

 

His father muttered, “Exactly.”

 

Something about their timing and casual tone loosened the air that had begun to stiffen.

 

“Fine.”

 

Hagiwara peeled the mandarin and ate it. The landline rang. His mother stood up, almost with relief, and went to exchange the usual New Year pleasantries with someone else.

 

For a while, they heard her high-pitched voice saying things like “Oh, really?”, “Congratulations,” and “Not at all, ours is nothing like that.”

 

When she hung up and came back to the kotatsu, she announced, “That was Mrs Kishimoto.”

 

Whether Mrs Kishimoto was a neighbour, a distant relative or one of his mother’s old friends, Hagiwara neither knew nor remembered.

 

His father and brother probably didn’t either, but by unspoken agreement they both gave the appropriate “Oh.”

 

Asking, Who’s that? would only make the story unnecessarily longer.

 

“She has a daughter the same age as you. Apparently she’s getting married this spring.”

 

The information was about as personally relevant to Hagiwara as celebrity gossip, but out of politeness he nodded.

 

“Oh. Right.”

 

Unfortunately, that redirected his mother’s attention straight back towards him. Bad habit number two: resurrecting an argument that had already died.

 

“So what are you going to do? You went so far as to live with someone, only to break up. Since then, you seem to be keeping yourself busy going out all over the place, but you haven’t brought a single young lady home.”

 

“Don’t just decide I’m out ‘playing around’.”

 

“Well, you’re rushing home tomorrow too, aren’t you? Have you properly thought about your future?”

 

“Of course I have…”

 

Hagiwara tried to lie down to escape the attack, but his mother was particularly persistent today.

 

“I was looking forward to Kaori-chan becoming part of our family, and then suddenly it was, ‘We broke up, so I’m moving out.’ And even that was after the fact, by email! Being mother and son doesn’t mean you can completely ignore basic manners.”

 

“I said I was sorry.”

 

“He might still be heartbroken, Mum,” his brother intervened. “Maybe he isn’t ready to think about another girl yet. Give him a break today, at least.”

 

“‘Today’? It’s because days like today are the only time he comes home.”

 

His brother’s attempt at rescue was immediately swatted aside.

 

“She was such a sweet, thoughtful girl too… Though I did always think the fact she came from a single-parent household was a little…”

 

Hagiwara sat upright.

 

“What did you just say?”

 

“What?”

 

“What do you mean, ‘single-parent household’? You thought that about her?”

 

“Is there something wrong with that?”

 

His mother faltered slightly beneath his tone, but answered anyway.

 

“If one parent had died, of course I’d feel sorry for them. But divorce is different. Thinking, Oh, she comes from a complicated family, is perfectly normal.”

 

“Families like that aren’t even unusual these days. And her parents divorcing wasn’t her fault. What trouble did she ever cause you? You just said she was a good girl, and all that time you were looking down on her like that?”

 

“I wasn’t looking down on her. I just thought it was unfortunate. That’s a perfectly ordinary reaction.”

 

“No, it isn’t. That’s fucking awful.”

 

His face twisted as he spat the words.

 

“How dare you speak to your mother like that!”

 

“How dare you talk about someone else’s daughter like that!”

 

“Hagiwara, stop it.”

 

“Both of you, enough.”

 

Hagiwara got to his feet, stormed into his old room and returned with his small overnight bag and coat bundled in his arms.

 

“I’m going home.”

 

“Oh, come on.”

 

His father and brother both looked exhausted.

 

His mother snapped, “Do whatever you want.”

 

“Fine. You don’t have to come home when you clearly hate it so much.”

 

“You could’ve told me that before I came.”

 

Outside, the snow was falling harder than it had that morning and a thin white layer had begun to settle over the ground.

The trains would still be running easily enough.

 

And even if they weren’t, Hagiwara decided he would find some way to get home.

 

He tightened the scarf Nakarai had wrapped around him that morning, pulling it much more firmly around his neck.

 

──── 📘📘 ────

 

The snow really was coming down now. Nakarai hadn’t stocked much food because he had assumed the supermarkets would be open anyway.

 

Still, he would survive alone until Hagiwara came back tomorrow evening. They could go somewhere to eat tomorrow. The old flat wasn’t especially airtight and remained cold even with the heating on. 

 

Nakarai was curled up in bed, thinking about things like that, when he heard the lock turn on the front door.

 

“Huh?”

 

He cried out before he could stop himself, threw off the duvet and hurried into the hall. The door opened.

 

“…I’m home.”

 

Hagiwara stood there.

 

The only visible difference from when he had left that morning was the snow dampening his hair and shoulders.

 

“Hagiwara…”

 

Nakarai had been braced for a burglar or stranger, so his first emotion on seeing Hagiwara’s face was relief.

 

Then confusion arrived immediately afterwards.

 

“What? Why? What happened?”

 

“I came back.”

 

“What?”

 

“I had an argument with my mum.”

 

That explanation was hardly enough for Nakarai to simply say Oh, welcome home.

 

“An argument? What about?”

 

“Nothing major. Though I definitely don’t think I was the one in the wrong. It pissed me off.”

 

“You can’t just come home because of that.”

 

Nakarai’s voice came out sharper than intended. Hagiwara’s brows immediately drew together.

 

“But she was completely unreasonable.”

 

“Even so, walking out like this is a bit much. They prepared food and everything because you were coming. And what about your plans with your friends tonight?”

 

“There’ll always be another chance to see them. And Mum told me to do whatever I wanted.”

 

“That was just something she said in the heat of the moment, wasn’t it? When you only see them occasionally, you should be the one to give in sometimes and be kind to them. You could still go back now—”

 

“What?”

 

The sheer bad temper in Hagiwara’s response cut him off.

 

“You want me to make another one-and-a-half round trips to my parents’ place? I’d look like a complete idiot. In the snow, when the trains are crawling along?”

 

“But—”

 

“Because my parents are still alive?”

 

A drop of water fell from Hagiwara’s fingers onto the entrance floor as he pushed his wet hair back.

 

“Yeah. I know. You’re right. But if you say that, then there’s nothing I’m allowed to say or do, is there? Are you going to keep saying it until my parents eventually die peacefully of old age and everyone can say, Oh, they lived a long life, that’s good? What, decades from now?”

 

Nakarai had no answer. Hagiwara rarely spoke with such force, yet now the words poured out as though a dam had broken.

 

“I know what you’re saying, Nakarai-san. And I know it’s right. But it’s too right. There’s nowhere inside it for how I feel.”

 

He shook his wet head once, as though that was all he had wanted to say, then turned his back and walked out. He even locked the door properly behind him.

 

What do I do?

 

Nakarai stood frozen.

 

Hagiwara had come home after arguing with his mother, and somehow they had ended up arguing too.

 

He stared at the dark marks left behind by melting snow on the entrance floor.

 

After standing there for a while, he remembered that Hagiwara’s lips had been slightly cracked again. His fingertips had been red. So had the end of his nose. Then the words how I feel came back to him.

 

Only then did regret slowly begin to rise from beneath his numbness. Hagiwara must have been cold after walking through the snow. He must have been exhausted. 

 

Why hadn’t Nakarai at least brought him inside and listened? Hagiwara had wanted to see him. He had worried about Nakarai being alone and had come back. Why hadn’t the first thing Nakarai said been thank you? He had to go after him.

 

Nakarai threw his coat over his loungewear and raced down the stairs. When he pushed through the glass entrance doors, the world beyond them was already completely covered in snow.

 

A single trail of fresh footprints ran away from the building, right-left-right-left in a steady rhythm.

 

Perhaps because it was New Year and the weather was terrible, nobody else had been foolish enough to go walking.

 

The footprints were so clean and isolated they looked like a clue in a detective novel.

Hagiwara’s trace and nobody else’s.

 

The thought that all Nakarai had to do was follow them, and he would find him, felt oddly like something from a fairy tale.

 

The sky was dark, yet the snow-covered ground seemed to glow faintly beneath it.

Nakarai was just about to place his foot into one of the prints, slightly larger than his own, when a phone rang from the bushes beside the entrance.

 

Something was flashing among the snow-covered leaves. It looked horribly familiar. Nakarai cautiously peered at the screen. 

 

The incoming call read Big Brother. The profile photograph resembled Hagiwara.

For the moment, Nakarai answered.

 

“…Hello?”

 

‘Stop ignoring me!’

 

He was shouted at immediately. Even the voice sounded like Hagiwara’s.

 

‘At least answer your bloody phone. And seriously, stop making everything weird at home right from the start of the year. I mean, I suppose it’s very you, but—’

 

“Sorry.”

 

Nakarai apologised automatically.

 

There was a pause at the other end.

 

‘Huh?’

 

Apparently he had finally realised that this was not his brother.

 

‘Wait, this number…’

 

“No, you’ve got the right number. This is Hagiwara’s phone. I’m one of his colleagues. It looks like he dropped it when he stopped by my place.”

 

Calling Hagiwara,  Hagiwara-kun felt strangely ticklish.

 

‘Ah. I rang him a little while ago, and he cut the call off, so he must’ve dropped it then. Idiot.’

 

He had probably tried to shove the phone back into his coat pocket and failed to notice it slipping out. Would he come back for it? Would he retrace his own footprints?

 

‘Sorry my brother’s caused you trouble.’

 

“It’s fine.”

 

My brother.

 

Nakarai envied that expression.

 

He stepped beneath the awning to escape the snow.

 

“Um… Hagiwara said he had an argument with his mother and cut his visit home short. Is everything all right?”

 

‘Ah.’

 

His brother gave a small, awkward laugh and explained what had happened. Of course. It was exactly the sort of reason Hagiwara would react like that. Nakarai could also understand why he hadn’t wanted to explain it.

 

‘Actually, it shocked me too,’ his brother admitted. ‘I never thought our mother would say something like that.’

 

He paused.

 

‘I think children want their parents to be “good people”. I mean good in the sense that they don’t hold prejudices like that. Mum had never said anything about people from single-parent families in front of us before. Maybe she’d always known it wasn’t something a parent should teach their children.’

 

“But perhaps it felt different once it involved someone her son might marry.”

 

‘That too. Or maybe now that we’re both adults, she thought it was all right to show us what she really thinks. But he reacted so directly, almost like he was ashamed of her as her child, that she couldn’t back down either.’

 

“…I don’t think either of them is entirely wrong.”

 

‘Yeah. I was pretty taken aback by what she said, but I can understand her feelings too.’

 

She had probably built a family so far removed from divorce that the possibility barely existed in her own life, and had raised two sons within that family.

 

If she had found fulfilment and happiness in her marriage, it made sense that she would want her sons’ partners to come from similar circumstances.

 

I hope my child can have the same happiness I did. Parents, after all, had only lived their own lives.

 

They used that single experience as the standard for what they hoped their children would become, and what they hoped they would avoid.

 

Of course, choosing something different from a parent’s wishes did not automatically equal unhappiness.

 

Nobody’s life was that simple. Which meant Nakarai loving Hagiwara, and Hagiwara loving Nakarai, was nothing either of them should ever have to feel guilty about.

 

Nakarai knew that. Intellectually, he knew it perfectly well. I know, Hagiwara.

 

‘So, er…’

 

“Nakarai.”

 

‘Thanks. Nakarai-kun, when Hagiwara comes back for his phone, tell him to be the one who gives in first. Tell him it’s a message from his brother.’

 

“I will.”

 

‘This is a bit weird, isn’t it? I’ve just told a complete stranger who’s never even seen my face all about our family argument.’

 

“Sometimes it’s easier that way.”

 

Sometimes precisely because the other person had nothing to do with your life or because you believed they didn’t, they were easier to talk to.

 

‘We both live in Tokyo, so next time the three of us should go for a drink. I’ll make my idiot brother pay for causing all this trouble.’

 

“That sounds good.”

 

Nakarai laughed and ended the call. He had become thoroughly chilled while standing there, but returning to the flat was still not an option.

 

He tucked Hagiwara’s phone and his brother’s message safely into his pocket.

This time he would talk properly. Without making him angry. Even if the falling snow completely covered Hagiwara’s footprints, it didn’t matter.

 

He would look for him. Because he wanted to see him. He followed the prints around a corner, away from the station. Straight ahead. Still straight… Then other footprints appeared. Tyre tracks. Marks from all sorts of people and things muddled together until Hagiwara’s trail vanished among them.

 

Right, left or straight?

 

At the crossroads, the clues became impossible to distinguish. Nakarai was looking around helplessly when a figure appeared from the road to his right beneath a streetlamp.

 

“…Nakarai-san.”

 

Hagiwara carried the same small Boston bag in one hand. In the other was a supermarket carrier bag. Apparently, he had simply gone to the nearby supermarket that stayed open year-round.

 

“What are you doing out here?”

 

He hurried towards Nakarai, bags swinging, and immediately scolded him.

 

“You’re barely wearing anything. You’ve got tracksuit bottoms on and no socks… Come on, let’s go back. Let me inside. I was just about to call you.”

 

“I’ve got your phone.”

 

Nakarai took it out and deliberately dropped it into Hagiwara’s coat pocket.

 

“What? How?”

 

“You dropped it in the bushes by the entrance.”

 

“Huh? …Oh. Right. My brother kept calling me, so it must’ve been after I cut him off. Shit, thanks. Seriously.”

 

Nakarai took the supermarket bag from his hand and started walking.

 

“Nakarai-san.”

 

“What?”

 

“Sorry about before.”

 

“You can apologise to me easily enough.”

 

“Because I don’t want you to hate me.”

 

“You spoilt bastard…”

 

But beneath those words was something else. Hagiwara knew his parents would not stop loving him. And he knew he would not stop loving them either.

 

He had been raised with enough affection to take that for granted. Hagiwara understood that too.

 

Sometimes two people’s sense of what was right, and their attempts to understand one another, did not draw them closer. Sometimes they repelled each other like identical poles of a magnet. Yet even then, they could still walk side by side. 

 

Together beneath a snowy sky cold enough to freeze the ends of their hair. They hurried straight into the bathroom when they got home.

 

The bath was not wide enough for two, so instead they clung tightly together beneath a hot shower. They adjusted the water so it struck around their calves first, slowly warming their bodies from their feet upwards.

 

“Hagiwara, somewhere along the way you completely stopped using polite speech with me, but when we argue it suddenly comes back.”

 

“Does it? I never noticed.”

 

“I spoke to your brother on the phone, actually.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“Because he called.”

 

“What did you talk about?”

 

“Not telling you.”

 

“Oi.”

 

“Come to think of it, it’s strange that your name contains the character for ‘one’ when you’re the second son.”

 

“My brother’s does too. Apparently our parents decided to put ‘one’ in both our names. They didn’t want to number us by birth order and have us grow up thinking it meant some kind of ranking.”

 

“They sound like good parents.”

Nakarai said it teasingly.

 

“I know,” Hagiwara answered.

 

Steam rose from the floor, leaving both their skins damp and warm. Nakarai clung tightly to Hagiwara.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“For what?”

 

“Thank you for coming back today. I was happy. But I was scared that if I told you how happy it makes me when you put me first, you’d start doing it even more.”

 

No matter how tightly Nakarai dug his fingers into Hagiwara’s back, he felt as though they might somehow slip away.

 

“I feel guilty towards your parents. Your relationships. All the other people in your life. And… sometimes I get scared because I don’t know how I could ever repay it. Like I don’t have anything of equal value to give you. It feels almost selfish.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Hagiwara’s arms closed around him until there was no space between them.

 

“Sorry.”

 

“No. I understand. Sometimes I feel like nothing frightens me, and sometimes everything does. I’m the same.”

 

“Good…”

 

Perhaps storms were necessary more than calm seas. Clouds more than clear skies. Without them, perhaps there would be no reason to keep checking that they were still holding on to one another.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Let’s be together this year too.

 

Later, while Hagiwara filled the bath and had Nakarai soak, counting to one hundred, he apparently phoned his mother and made peace with her.

 

“Did you really?”

 

“I did. Seriously. I even asked her properly how to make white sauce while I was at it.”

 

The cream stew Hagiwara cooked contained pork mince meatballs and large chunks of sausage.

 

“Don’t people normally pick one kind of meat?”

 

“My brother was a fussy eater when he was little and barely ate anything. The only meat he’d touch was mince, ham or sausages, so this is what stew always meant in our house.”

 

“Huh. Well, it tastes good, so who cares.”

 

Hagiwara had gone to the trouble of making the white sauce from scratch, but browned bits from frying the meatballs floated in it, making it look far from elegant.

Somehow that only made it feel more like home cooking.

 

“If there’s any left, you simmer it until it thickens, add grated cheese and stuff, then use it as sauce for cabbage rolls.”

 

“Oh, that sounds good.”

 

They sat opposite each other at the table on the first of January.

 

Nakarai found himself wishing there were some system where, if two people lived in the same house and kept eating the same food for long enough, they would naturally become family. He did not say it aloud.

 

Hagiwara surely had countless thoughts he kept to himself, too.

 

Snow that accumulated without a sound in the private spaces of each of their hearts.

Nakarai did not think that made their relationship unhappy.