Chapter 3 So What if I’m High-Maintenance Potato Salad #4
“Sorry, do you mind if I smoke?” Makiko, seemingly unable to fight the urge, got up and fumbled a pack of cigarettes from behind the counter. She brushed off the dust from the plastic wrapper before pulling the tear strip and drawing a cigarette out of the pack.
“Want one?” She tilted the pack toward Iori, but he shook his head in silence. She knew neither Hozumi nor I smoked.
Makiko lit her cigarette with a disposable lighter in a confident, practiced way. A sweet scent of raspberries mixed with the smell of burning tobacco.
“I’d quit because Akira said that the smell of cigarettes distracted him from his work, but I guess I can start again now.”
How could this happen to someone as nice as Makiko?
Some people in this world are impossibly generous. They’re the kind of people who sacrifice themselves to keep giving to someone else. People like that deserve to be rewarded. I so wanted them to be rewarded. Why did the world have to be so unfair?
The four of us fell into silence. We each found something to gaze at—a hangnail, the ashes in the stainless steel ashtray, random marks staining the wall. We quietly tried to suppress our unbearable emotions.
I felt somewhat restless and decided to step outside for a moment.
A cold sensation hit my head. Seeing that it had started to sprinkle, I quickly took shelter under the awning.
It always seems to rain on the Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee nights.
Hozumi had once muttered these words. Now that I thought about it, it did seem that Fridays were always enveloped in the earthy smell of rain. I supposed it was only fitting that the air was so damp.
My phone screen told me it was almost two in the morning. I hadn’t realized how late it was. The night felt awfully long.
Akira, what are your intentions?
It must have taken Makiko so much courage to say those words. She must have been driven to the point where she felt her suffering would become intolerable unless she had an answer.
And even if his answer was that he didn’t intend on having a committed relationship with her, at least she would have a clear answer. And yet Akira didn’t even…
“How can he be so cruel?” I said out loud.
I knew I had no reason to cry. But the more I thought about it, the more my nose started to burn. I lifted my head, fanning my watering eyes with my hands.
A thought crossed my mind and I pulled out my phone. I started typing Akira Nagayama in a search engine app, but before I could finish, his name autofilled, and that fact infuriated me even more.
Akira Nagayama. Age 25. Painter. From Fukuoka prefecture. Debuted as a modern artist after winning the 51st Taiyo Arts and Culture Award as a student. In addition to holding solo exhibitions, he has been involved in the art direction of TV commercials and package branding.
His profile came up straightaway. I found some interview articles, and in all of them, he was dressed in black and wore round sunglasses.
The reason he wore head-to-toe black was apparently because “black makes paint stains less noticeable,” and the reason he wore sunglasses was because he’s “a shy person lol” and he’s “not good at making eye contact with others.” He gave ambiguous responses to every question asked, and my stomach tightened with more rage.
“The ones that claim to be ‘shy’ are never that shy,” I muttered to myself.
An overwhelming smell of rain-soaked concrete rose up from the ground.
What should I do? How can we let her love rest in peace?
As the Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee, our duty was to listen to our client’s story, eat a memory-filled dish, and most importantly, give their smoldering feelings a proper burial.
But however much we try, no matter how many words of consolation we offer to Makiko, without knowing Akira’s true feelings, we won’t be able to lay her feelings to rest.
As these thoughts went through my mind, the bar door opened quietly. Makiko popped her head out.
“I thought I’d smoke outside—oh, it’s raining.”
She came out anyway and put a fresh cigarette between her lips. She must have caught a glimpse of what was on my phone screen because she gently took it from me and started to scroll through the articles about Akira.
“He’s saying pretty cool things, isn’t he?”
“Hey, Makiko.”
“Hmm?”
Makiko took a long drag on her cigarette and exhaled. The smoke turned the air murky, then faded into the drizzle.
“I think it’s unfair,” I said.
“What is?”
“Akira was well aware that you were in love with him, and he used that to his advantage. And the fact that he said he ‘had intentions’—by saying something that could mean a million different things—he was allowing himself plausible deniability. He avoided facing you properly because he knew that would make him the bad guy.”
Makiko said nothing.
“He hurt you, and treated you unfairly, and once everything started to become inconvenient for him, he moved on to a new nest. And here he is going around saying all this pretentious bullshit, like ‘My art is born from time spent in complete solitude,’ and doing exhibitions of his so-called masterpieces.”
“Momo-chan…”
Before I knew it, my eyes were filling up. Only a moment ago, I had been able to hold back my crying, but now the floodgates had opened. I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down my face.
Makiko went back inside, brought out a box of tissues for me, and rubbed her hand against my back.
I’m the one who should be comforting her, not the other way around!
“Someone has even said ‘Nagayama-san’s work has expressed the pain I’d been carrying all alone.
’ How is it fair, that a guy like that is getting all the praise?
I want to say to him: Stop running away.
Before you talk about your own pain, why don’t you face the fact that you have hurt someone? ” I said.
Right.
My vision turned blurry, warping the view before me. I replayed the scene of my breakup with Kyohei in my mind—that love hotel, that bleak winter day.
I realized that Kyohei hurting my feelings wasn’t what angered me.
“I was trying to get you to break up with me. I did things on purpose, so that you would initiate the conversation.”
Kyohei had uttered these words awkwardly. Though he seemed mostly apologetic, I couldn’t help but notice that part of him—maybe about twenty percent—wanted the whole ordeal done and over with.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get hurt.
I was fine with that part. To find love, you need to risk getting your heart broken, and I was prepared for that.
What impacted me the most was that he had let four years pass by without ever being prepared to get hurt or to hurt me. The stakes were so low for him.
If we had confronted each other, if we had fought a fair fight, and if it still didn’t work out, then I could have accepted that.
But it turned out that I had been the only one who was serious, and I didn’t realize until the very end that I was the only person in the relationship who had loved with so much passion.
What was I supposed to do with myself now?
How was I supposed to lay my smoldering feelings to rest?
“I was the same, though…”
I raised my head toward Makiko’s whispery voice. She gave a faint smile and threw down her cigarette, stubbing it out before speaking.
“I didn’t want him to think that I was a high-maintenance woman.
The fact that I’m thirty-six and single automatically puts me in that category.
It doesn’t matter if nothing about me has changed or if I wasn’t interested in marriage.
If I want to have a romantic relationship with someone, the weight of being in the ‘high-maintenance woman’ category keeps growing, whether I like it or not.
It gets so heavy. Gives me knots in my shoulders. ”
“Makiko…”
“To be honest, I kind of knew that Akira wanted a low-maintenance relationship, and that was why I kept pretending like I didn’t need much attention, as if I wasn’t serious, as if I was a no-strings-attached kind of woman.”
Makiko stared into me intently. It looked as though she was forcing a smile to hide her emotions.
“Akira didn’t run away. There was nothing to run from. Nothing had started in the first place. I was the one putting on a performance, making it look like an easygoing, casual relationship. But anyway…”
As she spoke, Makiko’s mask gradually peeled away. Her features contorted, her eyes and cheeks tensed up. The corners of her tight-lipped mouth lowered.
Makiko was crying.
“When you put off getting hurt for so long, it really stings when it finally hits you.”
Makiko’s face became even more contorted as she forced a smile. Instinctively, I embraced her.
Makiko said, “Thank you,” and nothing more as she cried quietly. I cried with her.
Our sniffles disappeared into the patter of the rain.
One week later, Makiko called to let me know that she had met up with Akira to have a proper talk. I quickly stopped her, and suggested we do another Funeral Committee meeting, this time the right way, at Amayadori. I told her to be prepared to make her potato salad.
—
Makiko and I started in the kitchen and instructed Hozumi to peel the boiled eggs. Iori, who had an inventory deadline at the end of March, sat glued to his computer with deep bags under his eyes.
I watched as Makiko effortlessly cut the smoked cheese into the thinnest slices.
“So, what did you do with Akira’s stuff? Did you send it to him in the end?”
Makiko chuckled at my question. “I delivered it to him.”
“You delivered it? You mean you took it to him yourself?”
“Yes. I took it to his exhibition.”
“What?”
Makiko nonchalantly mashed the potatoes and drank her beer.
“Oh, and his real girlfriend was there, standing right next to him. It seems that the whole industry knows that they’re a couple. They were bowing together and everything.”
I imagined the girlfriend acting all proprietorial and bit down on my lip. We knew next to nothing about the girl, but the image hit a nerve.