So We Look to the Sky by Misumi Kubo

Author:Misumi Kubo
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781951627935
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2021-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

“How on earth did this wind up here?” Dad smiled in amazement as he picked up a plastic potty from where it was lying in our garden and flung it into a garbage bag. Our garden was in a total state, full of all kinds of crap the river had carried here. Around Dad went, picking each thing up with his rubber-gloved hands. The night of the crazy rain, he had driven all the way back here from Tohoku. He was so worried that he couldn’t get in touch with us, so when he’d opened the door to my bedroom and found me, Mom, Yusuke, and Takumi all lying there snoring, he felt kind of angry in spite of himself. He smiled as he told me that.

It’s been decided that, starting in September, my brother will go live with Dad. He’s going to take a break from college and work for a while in the factory. Since the day of the storm, my brother has started coming out of his room and spending more and more time in the living room. He’s started eating Mom’s cooking like before, or rather in even greater quantities than before, so that his body, which was all skin and bones, has rapidly filled out again.

Now, he was watching a program on the TV called Total Eclipses Around the World. He looked so serious and into it, and I could see Mom and Dad throwing worried looks in his direction, so I called out, “Hey, this isn’t giving you funny ideas again, is it?”

“No, no, no! It’s nothing like that, I assure you,” my brother said, blushing like crazy.

I’d sat down Mom on a stool and was dyeing her hair, which was going pretty gray. I daubed the dye around her temples and her part, taking care not to get any on her scalp.

“Hey, Yusuke, you’re the only one who’s not doing anything,” I said. “Why don’t you make us some lunch? Anything’s fine, curry or whatever you can do. There’s rice already cooked.”

Hearing this, my brother stood slowly to his feet and looked at me. “How does one make curry?”

“There’s some roux in the cupboard. It’s all written in the instructions on the packet. A person who can’t make curry from a packet isn’t going to make it to the 2035 eclipse, you know!”

Mom slapped my backside.

For the next few minutes, we heard a whole variety of noises from the kitchen: crashes, and thuds, and ows, and ahs. Then silence. After a while, I smelled something burning. I ran into the kitchen and saw the largest pan we owned filled to the brim with curry, bubbling over furiously. My brother was sitting on the chair in the kitchen, absorbed in some book. I turned the hob off, and thrust a ladle right down to the bottom of the pan. Just the texture of it told me that the curry was burnt beyond any possible salvation.

“You’re such an idiot!”

Hearing this my brother finally took his eyes off his book and looked up at me.

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