A Promise

Take this a step further, and imagine my surprise when I walk onto the tried and true streets that took me to the market when I do not recognize a single sign that stand at the corners of the roads. What had once been English and Chinese signs had been fully replaced by Japanese ones. The names were now fully unrecognizable, such as “Kirishima-­‐Dori”, which only left everyone puzzled and angry that the classic road names had been stripped down.

For a few days, the street children and families seemed unnaturally silent, as if feeling a sudden loss of history in what had been their streets for decades.

Clang!

I almost drop my knife. The sound of metal on metal was fully recognizable: someone had entered home, and by the way the footsteps were brisk and rhythmic, I knew it was Tadashi. Sighing in equal parts relief and expectation, I slide the tofu down into the warm pot, watching as it sizzled at the contact between hot and cold, waging a war before suddenly everything went still.

“Fish, I have something to say to you.”

I turn, wiping my greasy hands on the makeshift apron. I wait, my hands folded across my chest, as if that barrier could protect me. I am already prepared for bad news – that is what this life is about, anyway: endless disappointment and anger.

Dressed in his ‘teacher suit’, as I call it, Tadashi approaches me slowly, with a sense of wariness that he rarely shows. He is stiffer than usual, and he does not exude a sense of calm in his actions anymore; he is twitchy, and I notice him fidget and play with something in his pocket before he opens his mouth.

Even then, he hesitates before speaking. My gut falls, falls, falls.

“I sent someone to check up on your family, and he came back today. Your family isn’t where they used to be – your house is empty and everything appears to be gone. There is no sign of breaking in, and no struggle. That’s not all, though.

The entire village seems to have evaporated into thin air: nobody lives there, and a thin layer of dust has covered the stalls in the market. They have disappeared.”

No. Now I do not have a home, either? Why are you so unfair, heavens above?