Mitsuyo had told her mother that morning, before the elder left for work, that a man had purchased their previous home. The woman only smiled at her. It was a horrible thing to see her smile like that. Mitsuyo hated it more than her thin futon. More than the second-hand kitchenware her mother had bought from the granddaughter of their late neighbor. Even in summer, when the hollow walls gave them no comfort, or in the winter, when their blankets held the only true reprieve, she held that hatred in her heart like lead.

The autumn winds of Mishima made their strides over the low rooftops. The house was irreverent to such things. Arrogant to such things. When sickness took her father in 1940, she promised to return. When the war burned down most of the neighborhood, she was amazed by its survival. A family friend, Sonochihama Ryuuta, welcomed her for visits again after so long apart. From his veranda, she could still see the eaves of the house rotting away slowly. She could see the man who had bought it come and go with planners and salespeople. Workers were coming and going to modernize the place, tearing out the architecture of her youth and replacing it with a gas stove.

Having graduated the previous spring, she sat on the veranda with no official duties to attend to any longer. She had grown, and the house was no longer hers.  

“It looks like they’re almost done moving in.” Ryuuta pointed to the house across the street with his pen. Mitsuyo only felt hotter looking at the place.

“Good for them.”

“That’s a reaction for you, isn’t it? Resentment?”

“No, I don’t care one way or the other.”

She recalled her father sweating over a cypress beam, maybe when she was six or seven, as he built the second-floor room in that house. It still stood, unperturbed by the war that separated her from those summer memories. As the young men unloaded a truck of belongings into the place she could feel her brain growing too large, stifling itself in her head.

“You care, I can tell that much about you, little Mitsu.”

“I miss when you were more shy,” she shot back.

Ryuuta felt the stab of the youthful insult but recovered quickly.

“You know, your father never liked that house.”

“Yeah, he wanted to live in Nara.”

“It’s nice that you still remember.”

Shortly, the cat, Monpe, appeared. It rubbed itself against its master before betraying him to sniff at Mitsuyo’s crossed legs. She ran a hand down the creature's back and delicately played with its fluid tail, causing a low, rumbling purr to well within it. Monpe stepped into Mitsuyo’s lap and curled within, humming while Mitsuyo loyally continued to stroke its side. 

When the cat had settled, Ryuuta tapped Mitsuyo’s shoulder with a rolled-up newspaper.

“In case you were curious.”

Fixed between sitting in silence while he made his journal entry, or having a small entertainment in the newspaper, her path forward was obvious. She grabbed it with a nod. Ryuuta, just like he always did, slid his journal from the side and began to stare at it. His bald head was shining with reflections of the sun.

There was always something overblown in the news. That was what Ryuuta had taught her. Earlier in the month, one article wrote, the president of the National Railways was found dead. No suspect had been announced, and the police had yet to declare it as either a suicide or a murder. It worked on her patience. First, there was their speculation on the cause, which was hardly something worth saying at all. They could have just said he went missing, was found dead, and the investigation was ongoing. Yet they had to go on about the intrigue of the report as if it were some mystery novel. Then the police themselves, being so mysterious as they were, for fair reasons—but before she could dislike them over-much, she decided they were probably just pressured. A higher-up like that is someone of note, not exactly a good look if the police had trouble finding the perpetrator. So, maybe speculation was a means of saving face. If the cause was unknown, then blame was unplaceable. As long as the possibility that the president had killed himself remained, nobody had to lose their job.

Even as she critiqued it in her head, Mitsuyo realized she had overblown the whole situation as well. Boredom, probably. Despite all her efforts to be patient with Ryuuta, his sedentary nature was something she had been unable to slow down for. She had slowed, but even to a crawl, Ryuuta was outpaced. The month before was his birthday, and he had forgotten to mention it. Circumstance and his friend's intervention were the only indicators of the event. The news always felt like it was attempting to form events from thin air, and it felt as though Ryuuta were trying to fade away altogether. She flipped the page to see the local postings.

“There’s a new film out.”

Ryuuta looked up from his journal.

“It’s called Stray Dog. ‘A gun is stolen from rookie detective Murakami, sparking a hunt throughout the capital for the villain who now possesses it.’ It’s a police film.”

“Seems daring. An action film, then? Gangsters shooting everywhere and the like?” Ryuuta set his pen down while he spoke; evidently he had a hard time filling in his entry, as the page was still empty.

“No, it says here it’s a drama. Want to see it?”

The middle-aged man in his faded green jinbei leaned back while letting the breath escape from his old lungs. He had behaviors like that, acting twice his age. As he returned from the thought, he scratched his bare dome with a thumb.

“No, I’m no good at watching films. I don’t think I’ve seen one since I was in university. Eighteen years, I think? Well, no, it’d have been twenty-three now, somewhere in that range. You should go though, if you’re interested in the cinema, that is.”

Bashfulness did not fit him. Or maybe it was shame.  

“I don’t really care.”

Across the street, the men shut the doors of the truck and locked the gate, mounting the vehicle and letting its engine roar to life. Moments later, it moved down the road out of sight, puffing black smoke from its exhaust, which lifted into the air until it faded beneath the purifying sun. They were finally gone, and Mitsuyo could look at the place without fear of catching their glances. Awkward implications of interest as such were always best avoided with men.

The house itself was old. The second-floor room, which jutted unnaturally from the left side of the sloped tile roof, towered in an ugly way. She remembered the new boards when their colors were freshly cut. She recalled when the window was clean and new. Then, sitting there a decade later, the outside wood was greenish-grey like the rest of the building, and the window was dark and dirty, stained by rain dripping down its glass. The ghost of her father stood there, holding a rag as he wiped the outside. Beneath him, a noble wife held a ladder and shaded her eyes from the light of the sun so she could watch him carefully. The two were still in the prime of their love. Their daughter was swaying her legs from a chair in the garden, watching them with a stick of candy in her hand. Even the chair was just a memory.

Ryuuta’s house had burned down during the war. His current construction was a smaller facsimile of the old one. Even the neighbors on his side of the street had lost their homes and, in those post-fire years, rebuilt them to something new and fresh. Her father's house remained as it was before, untouched by flames, and left to rot away beneath the sun and the snow.

She wished it had burned down.

“You should go see it with your mother.”

Mistuyo snapped out of her thoughts.

“She doesn’t like that kind of thing. Besides, she’s busy with work.”

Ryuuta nodded while looking down at the floorboards.

As the two of them sat in the new silence, a man appeared at the end of the yard. Wearing a loose white buttoned shirt tucked into tan pants, he made long strides up the walkway while whistling a tune Mitsuyo had heard on the radio the morning before. It was Ryuuta’s friend, Mister Gendo, and he was holding something wrapped in brown paper.

“Hello there, Miss Kaninohara.” Gendo bowed with a smile, removing his white hat.

“Afternoon, Mister Gendo.”

“Hey there to you too,” Ryuuta chimed up, crossing his arms.

“Well, of course, hello Ryuuta, you killer.” Gendo sat on the step to the veranda and took off his brown leather shoes, leaving them on the walkway stones. He sat on the edge of the veranda, back to the street, as he started to speak to the two of them.

“What’s that about then?” 

“We’re golden, San Francisco is full scale now, and we’re not selling too badly. Apparently the bleeding hearts over there are all over that story about your brother's visit. I’ve already paid Sunokaze for his translation, and your portion of the funds was deposited last night.” He dropped the package in the space between the three of them.

“And that?”

“A present, for the hard work.”

Ryuuta hesitantly grabbed the parcel. It crumpled easily in his hand. He ripped the paper and pulled out a large piece of fabric. Unfolding it, Mitsuyo could see a floral pattern, and once fully spread out, it revealed a buttoned shirt.

“What is this gaudy thing?” 

“I was just thinking that you’re too old-fashioned, man. Even the old coots wear shirts like this these days, have been for a while now.”

“Save me the pleading, how am I supposed to go out wearing something like this?”

Between them, Mitsuyo grabbed the shirt and got a closer look. It was a sasa-yuri flower, whose pink lily petals were slightly exaggerated so they would stand out more against the tan stems. The shirt fabric, a canvas the flowers had been laid over, was a very light cream color, nearly white. The fabric was also very thin, clearly a hot-weather garment. True to his word, Mitsuyo was not unfamiliar with the style; many older food workers and stall owners in Mishima wore the same thing.

“I think it looks nice.”

“There you have it, the girl likes it, that means you have to endorse it now, eh Ryuuta?”

The bald man sighed and received the shirt from Mitsuyo, looking it over.

“Tell you what, since you clearly aren’t busy, I think you two should get out of here and enjoy the weather. How does that sound? It keeps your bones from becoming powder, and you get to wear your new shirt!”

“What would we even do?” Mitsuyo found herself defending Ryuuta without realizing it.

“We could go see that movie,” Ryuuta answered with a smile.

“Very good!” Gendo reached into his pocket, pulled out ten yen, handed it to Mitsuyo, and then turned to put his shoes back on.

“Mister Gendo, I can’t possibly—”

“I insist, Miss Kaninohara,” the man grinned, “anyway, I have to go, just wanted to drop that off and spread the good news. I’ll see you both next week, same place?” 

He laughed to himself before making his same gait down the walkway until he disappeared in the direction the truck had also gone. Ryuuta took a deeply affected breath as he watched his old friend disappear for the thousandth time.

“Back and forth like a sozu...”

“Mister Gendo’s always been like that.”

Ryuuta looked at her and then back at the afterimage. Then he looked again and returned to it. It was almost like he was comparing the two, and the exhale from which a half-hearted grin grew was familiar, and not in the least bit frustrating.

“Do you want to go see that film?”

“It sounds good.”

Ryuuta turned his head and crossed his arms, staring at the blank journal before him. Retreating into thought, the man hummed to himself as though he were mulling over a greater concern than had really been approached. Mitsuyo drank some of her water while watching him. It was nostalgic to see him like that. When they had been reintroduced to each other  such mannerisms were too far gone in her childhood memories to take notice of with any appreciation. It took time to learn his moods, his meandering dialogue about mundane things as if they held great meaning. He really was too much.

“I suppose I’ll get dressed then.” Ryuuta stood with the shirt in his hand as he went back inside the house. On his exit, the cat roused, stretching its legs out over Mitsuyo’s legs with extended little clawed toes. Monpe stood, rubbing itself against Mitsuyo as it left her lap and followed its master into the dusty warmth of the building.

The autumn wind carried a cool breeze through the bushes of the neighboring yard. The leaves swayed, rustling loudly in the silence of the neighborhood’s hibernation. The volume of them was nearly enough to overcome the phantom of her father's radio. Alone again, she imagined its static washing away into the sound of a shakuhachi, perhaps even a violin. They played so many nice songs before the war. Soft songs she could listen to while resting in her mother's lap as they watched her father saw and hammer and build things with those large hands. Hairy hands. Warm hands.

A tickling came to her neck just below her right collar that shook her from the daydream. Her hair had come loose. She set the glass down on the tray and grabbed the bun of hair. Pulling the hairpin from it and letting the length droop to her back and her shoulders. Mother loved long hair on girls. Mitsuyo hated being hot. A conflict of interest she considered while tying her hair together into a fresh bun again, sticking it in place atop the back of her head with the plain brown pin yet again. Her head felt tight. At once a sign of comfort, which her exposed neck made known as the sweat thereon felt cool against the open air of that same rogue wind.

When she reached for the newspaper again, she saw Ryuuta’s notebook. The blank page was reflecting white into her eyes. Almost as though it was asking her for something. Before the wind could again melt into radio static, she grabbed the notebook and pen that were left alone beside her.

“19 October, 1949. Okay, Uncle Ryu, I admit it. I hate that house.”

The entry was short, but it felt light. Her brain felt like it could stretch and do jumping jacks in the space freed by such a small exhalation. She heard the sound of Ryuuta shutting a door inside, and she hastily shut the book and set it back in the spot where he had left it. A moment later, he appeared in large brown pants and the sasa-yuri shirt hanging from his deceptively thin shoulders.

“You look good.”

“Sure I do, that’s why you’re stifling a laugh, is it?”

“I have no idea what you mean…” Her hand shot up to block her lips as a smile crept along against her will. Eventually, her struggle proved pointless, as her lips popped open with a burst of air, releasing the hearty laugh his outfit had provoked.

“And you call me a pain, honestly. Children these days are all so disrespectful.”

He put his journal on the tray and set it on a table just inside the front door, then slid it closed. By the time Ryuuta had turned around, Mitsuyo was standing at the end of the walkway and facing her childhood home. Lost to her father's sickness, separated by a global war. Ryuuta approached and chuckled to himself at her expression towards it.

“I’ll have you know I’m not a child anymore, Uncle Ryu. I’m out of high school now, and I’ll be in university before you know it. How long until I’m checking you into the hospital, old man?” Her smile was unwavering as she made long strides with Ryuuta in tow.

“I’m not that old. You’re getting to be a bit of a pain in the ass yourself, aren’t you?”

“I learned from the best!”

Ryuuta could not help the crease his lips made. Of the many faults he could pass on, he was aware, at least, that she held none of the burden with great weight. She was only a hair away from being free of him; she was only just free of her father's memory. After all, he felt proud seeing that once sorrowful girl then sticking her tongue out at the ghosts that sought to destroy her. The house gave her no reply; it was a dead thing. She killed it herself.

“Uncle Ryu!”

Ryuuta was startled and found he had been lagging behind in thought.

“If you don’t hurry up, I’ll leave you behind! From here on it’s a race to the bus!”

Her long legs darted off into the distance.

“I hated it too, little Mitsu.”

As he threw his feet forward, autumn leaves fell across the quiet outskirts of Mishima.