right, come along. Granny’s looking for you because she’s cut up some peaches.”
“Okay.”
We headed back to the house together.
I could still feel where my pinky had hooked Yuu’s. I ran to the front door, hoping no one would notice I was blushing. Yuu, too, was walking fast and looking down at his feet.
Ever since then, Yuu has been my boyfriend. The magician would be the girlfriend of the alien, at least until he traveled back to his home planet.
Granny’s house opened onto a huge hallway, which was easily as big as my bedroom at home. I always felt a bit lost going inside.
“We’re here!” Mom called loudly. Dad, as usual, remained silent.
It smelled of fruit, a mix of peaches and grapes, along with a faint animal odor. The neighbors kept cows, but they were some distance away, so maybe the animal smell in this house came from us humans.
“Oh, come on in! It’s hot today, isn’t it?”
The shoji slid open, and an older woman, probably an aunt, came out into the hall. I thought I remembered having seen her before, but I wasn’t sure. We only came here once a year for Obon, and I had trouble telling the various adults apart.
“Kise, Natsuki, you’ve gotten so big!”
“Oh, you brought gifts. You really shouldn’t have! Sorry you went to all that trouble.”
“You remember Natsuko? She’s done her back in and can’t come this year.”
As Mom greeted the gaggle of vaguely familiar middle-aged ladies one by one, they all started chatting excitedly. This was going to take ages I thought, sighing quietly. The ladies had now gotten down on their hands and knees and were bowing to each other. Dad stood vacantly in the entrance.
Granny and Grandpa appeared from the living room, supported by a middle-aged man. Granny bowed to Mom and said, “Thank you for coming all this way.”
Grandpa smiled at me and said, “Misako, you’ve gotten so big!”
“Come on, Grandpa,” an aunt said, patting him on the back. “This is Natsuki!”
“You took a long time,” Uncle Teruyoshi said cheerfully to Dad as he came out. “Did you run into traffic?”
Uncle Teruyoshi always spent a lot of time with us kids, so I knew him really well. He called out over his shoulder, “Hey you guys! Kise and Natsuki are here!”
Three boys came hesitantly out. These three were Uncle Teruyoshi’s sons, my cousins. They were always getting up to mischief, and every year they got told off by the adults. The oldest, Yota, was two years younger than me.
They looked at me and Kise like wary animals. I recognized them all, but they were different from how I remembered. The features on their faces had spread out to the edges, and their noses were more prominent than before. Their bodies had changed too.
I would always recognize my boyfriend, Yuu, of course, but I had a lot of other cousins, and some of them already had their own children, so I felt a little disorientated whenever we met. Even though we all spent every summer here and had a lot of fun together, after a whole year of not seeing each other some distance had always opened up between us again.
The adults were embarrassing us, saying things like: “Hey, no need to get all shy because those two have gotten so pretty.” Yota and his brothers looked even more awkward and standoffish than usual.
“Hello,” I ventured. A rather self-conscious chorus of “hellooo” came back.
“Yuu’s here, too, you know.” Uncle Teruyoshi said. “He’s been asking when you were going to arrive.”
Trying hard to keep my cool I asked, “Really? Where is he now?”
“He was doing his homework just over there not long ago.”
“Maybe he’s up in the attic now? That boy likes it there.” This came from Cousin Saki, a tall woman who was much older than me. She was holding a baby. She was the eldest of Aunt Ritsuko’s three daughters, all of whom were married. Aunt Ritsuko was Dad’s eldest sister.
It was the first time I’d seen this baby. It was kind of weird how a new person that hadn’t existed last year had suddenly come into being. The little girl crouching at Saki’s feet must be Miwa, who had been a baby just last year.
I couldn’t remember all the kids who were close in age to me, let alone my cousins’ kids, and had to relearn who everyone was every year. I just followed what Mom did and bowed my head at each new person who appeared.
“Oh, is Mitsuko here?”
“Sure, she’s in the kitchen.”
“Where’s Yuu got to?” Aunt Ritsuko put in. “He’s been asking after Natsuki all morning. Maybe he couldn’t wait any longer and went off to have a nap.”
Uncle Teruyoshi laughed. “Yuu always sticks close to Natsuki, doesn’t he?”
They probably said the same thing every year, but considering we were an item now I quietly looked down, feeling embarrassed.
“It’s true, the two of them are like twins,” another aunt said.
For some reason, everyone said I didn’t look like my sister or my parents, but I did look just like Yuu.
“Oh, but you mustn’t stand out here in the hall talking. Kise, Natsuki, come inside. You must be tired!” A fat aunt I had absolutely no recollection of ever having seen before said this and clapped her hands.
“Yes, let’s go in,” Dad said, nodding.
“Go put your luggage upstairs. You can use the far room. The Yamagatas are in the other one. The Fukuokas are already up there, but they’re only staying for one more night so you don’t mind sharing, do you?”
“Fine by us, thanks,” Dad answered, taking off his shoes. I hurried after him.
In Granny’s house, everyone called the various families by the name of the place they lived in, like Yamagata or Fukuoka or Chiba, which made it hard for me to remember their real names. They must have had names, though, so why didn’t anyone use them?
“Kise, Natsuki, first go greet your ancestors,” Dad said.
We headed for the room where the family altar was kept, between the living room and the kitchen. Yuu and I always called this the altar room. There was only one corridor in Granny’s house, leading to the bathroom. All the other six rooms on the first floor including the kitchen, living room, and the two main tatami rooms were connected by sliding doors.
The altar room was a modestly sized six-mat room, about the same size as my bedroom back home in Mirai New Town in Chiba. Yota called it the ghosts’ room to frighten his little brothers, but somehow I always felt safe there, perhaps because I sensed that my ancestors were watching over me.
Mom and Dad each lit a stick of incense, and my sister and I did the same. We didn’t
