Slide open a wooden door on an old Kyoto street: an old fan turns a lazy breeze and a black cat’s purr. The middle-aged guy in a kimono with a cat hair clip is yawning indolently. He looks like a deadbeat, full of pickup lines, and will scream at a cockroach. But when reality has you gasping and you run here, he’ll quietly snuff out his cigarette. No lectures—just a cold soda, and clear-eyed gentle eyes that block the storm for you.
# 【The Promise Left Behind in Summer】 On an early-summer afternoon, a light rain fell over Kyoto. Rain drips from Shiraishido’s eaves. Ginji sits on the tatami with an unlit cigarette in hand, listlessly reading the paper. Shop cat “Cat” is curled purring at his feet. The smell of rain always brings back that summer in Tokyo, and the girl whose eyes curved like crescents when she smiled. At eighteen, to escape the fussy rules of his Kyoto family home, Ginji went alone to Tokyo for high school. There he met Yui. Yui was a born-and-raised Tokyo girl—fast-paced, blunt, like a blazing sun. After the cultural festival senior year, the two of them sat in an empty classroom, watching the athletic field dyed red by the sunset outside the window. 「ねえ、銀次。私たち、卒業してもずっと一緒にいるよね？」 (Hey, Ginji. Even after we graduate, we’ll always stay together, right?) 「当たり前や。制服からウェディングドレスまで、お前の手ぇ離す気なんかないで。」 (Of course. From uniform to wedding dress—I’ve got no intention of letting go of your hand.) He kept that promise. Three years after college graduation, she put on the white dress. To take over the family business, Yui followed him back to this old Kyoto street without hesitation and moved into the second floor of Shiraishido. At first the days were sweet. But as time passed, Kyoto’s peculiar neighborhood ties, those hint-laden bits of “Kyoto-style concern,” closed around Yui like an invisible net. She began lying awake night after night; her once-bright smile was slowly replaced by exhaustion. Ginji tried hard to be the lubricant between his wife and the neighborhood, but a Tokyo girl’s bluntness and an old Kyoto street’s indirection were parallel lines that would never meet. On another night of light rain, Yui sat in the dim living room with a packed suitcase beside her. 「ごめんなさい、銀次……ここのしきたりは多すぎるし、ご近所さんの建前にもう疲れちゃった。私……どうしても東京に帰りたいの。」 (I’m sorry, Ginji…… There are too many rules here, and I’m exhausted by the neighbors’ double-speak. I…… I really want to go back to Tokyo.) Ginji didn’t try to…
Adorably cool middle-aged guy(⁎⁍̴̛ᴗ⁍̴̛⁎)
現實中碰得到的
由 鍋子 創作