The Witch Next Door: Chapter V
Author’s Note: I’m actually serialising this novel-in-progress on FictionPress. But because the safety of that site was compromised earlier today, I am posting it here. If you want to read the previous chapters, please let me know so I can send it to you in PDF format.
V. Brothers
Mr Terasawa grinned when he saw the big black SUV pulling into the parking garage.
It was only seven-thirty in the morning, but the hubbub of the past couple of days meant that things weren’t exactly going to be normal for a while.
Not that he minded, really. He respected his much-younger employer and regarded her like a daughter. He also liked her current houseguest — and he crossed his fingers about that, too.
“Good trip?” he now asked the harried-looking man who was walking over with his wife and three children.
“Pretty good,” the man replied, bowing respectfully then warmly shaking hands. “Mayu’s been over next door for coffee already?”
“Just trotted up,” Mr Terasawa replied with a grin. He held up a small plastic tub. “Brought a bite or two of those tasty little cinnamon buns of hers and saw that she took a much bigger tub over to feed the little girls.”
“I think they’ll always be little girls to you, Terasawa-san,” the merry-faced wife declared with a laugh.
“Oh, they sure will, Miz Theda!” Mr Terasawa said. He gestured to denote a height just about level with his waist. “I’ve known you, Mister Shun, and the Miss since y’all were yay high and the Old Master and Missus lived back in Manila. Y’all may be grown up now and you two in particular have three young ‘uns of your own, but you’ll always be those little school kids to me — and Mister Toshi and the twins’ll always be babies.”
Shunichi Shinsetsu managed to laugh at this. “Never let them hear you say that!” he said.
“Boy, I call ’em as I see ’em — and, the way I see ’em — they’ll always be little kids to me.” He looked rueful. “But young Toshi — boy looked like he was in bad shape when the Miss and young Koji hauled him home the other day. Pale as a sheet and there was this look in his eyes, like he was hungry or something.”
Theda Shinsetsu beckoned her three children closer. They all grinned up at the old custodian and bowed politely. The youngest — a rosy-cheeked little girl with her hair pulled into plaits — trotted up and gave the old gentleman a hug.
“Well, howdy-do, Miss Yumiko!” he greeted her.
“Is Tita Mayu home, Terasawa-san?” she asked him.
“That she is, little missy.” He gestured to the elevator. “D’you want I should let her know y’all are here?”
“No need.” The elevator opened with a loud ding and Mayu stepped out. Yumiko squealed delightedly and threw herself into her arms. “Hey, cupcake! Had a good time with your lolo and lola back in Alabang?”
“Yes, we did!” Yumiko replied, snuggling hard against her. Mr Terasawa chuckled as the little girl’s brothers caught up, looking put out that their sister had beat them to the woman whom they considered their eldest aunt.
“Don’t hog Tita Mayu, Yumi,” the eldest boy chided her. Yumiko stuck her tongue out at him, but reluctantly stepped out of their aunt’s embrace to give way to her brothers.
“You’d all better come up,” Mayu suggested. “Breakfast might get cold.”
“Is Toshi up already?” Shun asked worriedly.
“I’ve been letting him sleep in,” Mayu replied. “Doctor’s orders — and Uncle Hiiragi is sending your cousin Hisashiburo over later.”
“Second opinion house call?”
“No, they’ve talked about it and Hisashi went over Toshi’s lab results and your uncle’s initial assessment. It’s not really kosher, but your uncle and cousin are the best when it comes to CFS and fibromyalgia here in Japan — or anywhere else in Asia, for that matter.”
“He has what you have, Tita Ninang?” the eldest boy asked, his face worried.
“He has what I still have,” Mayu gently corrected him. “It’ll never really go away, you know; but at least I know when to back off.”
“How is the wee nipper, Miss?” Mr Terasawa asked once Mayu had sent Shun and his family up.
“Exhausted,” Mayu replied with a sigh. “It’s a bad case, ojisan. Toshi’s practically burned out and then some.”
Mr Terasawa grunted at this. “Boy was a damned sight happier before he took up with the meachin’ little mess,” he said. “Shouldn’t have taken up with her, if you ask me, Miss.”
“I know,” Mayu agreed, looking more than a little rueful. “I blame myself.”
“Child, don’t,” Mr Terasawa said kindly, patting her arm. “Boy needed to learn the hard way. He’s a sadder young cuss now, but I daresay he’s learned not to take up with gals with too much makeup and not much in the way of common sense — or compassion, for that matter.”
“Still…” Mayu began, but she held her tongue when he threw a stern look her way.
“Miss, even one such as you can’t see everythin’,” he reminded her. “My own ma was like you: could see the wee things most people can’t even be bothered to look at. But even she would get blindsided sometimes.”
“What did your mother do then, ojisan?” Mayu asked, her curiosity piqued.
“Well, Miss, she’d pull herself up by the bootstraps, hold her chin up, and make the best she could o’ the situation.” He smiled at her kindly. “And I suggest you do the same.”
++++++++++
When Shun Shinsetsu and his siblings were growing up in Manila, he often felt that he didn’t deserve the respect accorded to him by the younger kids.
Being almost nine years older than Toshi and fourteen years older than the twins, it would have been easy to distance himself from them. But the day Toshi was born and their parents introduced them to each other, something stirred in Shun’s heart. He was a big brother now: a protector, a confidant, and a friend. If Toshi had been just a couple of years younger than he was, Shun supposed that the two of them would have had some serious sibling rivalry issues.
If there had been anyone Shun had rivalry issues with, it was the Imatani twins — and Mayu most of all because, from the day they met, Toshi forever seemed to be toddling after her. But over time, Shun realised that there was no reason for him to be jealous. The twins were actually helping him shepherd the younger kids; they did, after all, have three younger siblings of their own.
He thought about this as a sleepy Toshi welcomed them into Mayu’s flat. His younger brother was in his favourite sky-blue pinstriped pyjamas, his hair still tangled from sleep and his eyes squinting nearsightedly at the newcomers.
“Hey,” he said by way of greeting, a lopsided smile on his pale face. “You’re just in time for breakfast.”
“Mayu said something about cinnamon buns?” Theda chimed in hopefully as they trooped in.
“Cinnamon buns and there’s tocino and sinangag — that’s if you didn’t get your fill of that back in Manila,” Toshi said, grinning impishly.
“If it’s Tita Ninang’s tocino, I’ll fight you for it, Tito Ninong,” Shun’s eldest son Kensuke teased his uncle who was also his godfather.
“Age before beauty, kid,” Toshi chuckled, giving him a hug.
“And he bites,” Shun warned the boy.
“Besides, your ninang has to fatten him up,” Theda added, kissing her brother-in-law’s pale cheek. “Boy, you do need fattening up!”
“Hey, it’s not my fault I have a fast metabolism!” Toshi laughed. But Shun noted the sadness in his brother’s eyes. “She’s been feeding me well, though. We had laksa the other day and she made me eat chicken liver last night.”
Akira, Shun’s second child, made a face at this. “How could you stand it?” he asked his uncle.
“Hey, you haven’t had chicken liver the way your Tita Mayu cooks chicken liver,” Toshi informed him as he led the way into the living room. He smiled as Yumiko squealed when the cats scampered up to her. “She cooked it just till the livers were soft, velvety, and you could barely taste the bitterness.”
“And you had noodles,” Shun said with a smile.
“Rice, actually,” Toshi corrected him as he poured cups of coffee at the sideboard. “And I had three helpings.”
Shun whistled at this confession. “Kid, your appetite really is shot!” he exclaimed. “You’re usually up for four.”
“Well, I felt it was unfair,” Toshi admitted as he handed his older brother a steaming cup. “Mayu stopped at two.”
“Did she stop you at three?”
“No, she was actually on the verge of refilling my rice bowl, but I said no.”
Shun studied his younger brother’s pale face. The thing about Toshi was that his face was quintessentially Japanese in the sense that he looked like a traditional woodcut: the shape of his eyes and his face, even his eyebrows; the paleness of his complexion paired with very dark (and currently unruly) hair; dark eyes that wanted to tell a story.
And, for a man, Toshi moved with a certain grace: years on the football pitch and softball diamond had helped. It helped that he was quite slender but well-built; there was no outward awkwardness in him. No wonder girls chased after him when he was one-fourth of Spindrift, the band he’d formed with three of his best high school friends — the band that had to break up a couple of years ago.
“Mayu will join you for breakfast when she comes up,” Toshi informed them, failing to stifle a yawn. “I’m heading back to bed.”
As he turned to leave, Shun turned to his wife, askance at his brother’s weariness. Theda nodded and waved him off.
“Talk to him,” she said quietly.
Shun nodded and followed Toshi to his room. “Mind if we talked a bit?” he asked when he caught up with his brother.
“Sure,” Toshi replied with a shrug as he opened the door.
Once inside, Toshi flopped back into bed, pulling his blanket and duvet up over his head. “How was the trip?” he asked, his voice muffled by the bedclothes.
“Oh, it went well,” Shun said, sitting tailor-fashion at the foot of the bed. “And we got a ton of potential applicants for the next run of the Summer Workshop.”
“Filipinos and Singaporeans, I’ll bet,” Toshi said, pushing back the duvet and sitting up.
“Yeah, but there were quite a number of Taiwanese, too, and Indonesians; Theda and I are going to have to screen at least 50 this year. It’s getting harder to whittle down to the twenty we can take in; there are just so many talented young artists.”
“That’s great,” Toshi said, smiling slightly.
Shun frowned when he saw the dark circles under his eyes, the forlorn expression on his face; the way his shoulders slumped forward as if he was carrying a great weight on them.
“I was planning to scold you, but Mayu threatened to rip my ears off and stick them someplace where the sun doesn’t shine,” he began slowly. “But I talked to Yamanashi last night.” The smile on his face was grim. “I gave him a piece of my mind — several pieces, as a matter of fact. Then I found out that you were practically the only person working on that goddamned app because the juniors kept screwing up.”
“Can’t blame ‘em,” Toshi said with a shrug. “Fresh out of college and all: they want to enjoy themselves a bit.”
“I don’t remember you ‘enjoying yourself for a bit’ when you graduated,” Shun grunted. “Remember: Papa was suggesting that you go to Europe but you took that job for Erudite’s Tokyo bureau long before Dean Sacafuego’s signature had dried on your diploma.”
“I wanted to work already,” Toshi said. “And my friends had all applied at MoMacSeH’s HQ in Makati, so I figured I’d go grab job forms during my internship there. Tita Ernie Balcruz noted that I wanted to work for Erudite’s Manila bureau, but she advised me and Sanno Nishiyama that there were around four vacancies for junior features writers in Tokyo. Well, to make a long story short: we passed the exam, aced the interview, and got ourselves shipped off.”
“It was you, Sanno, Kai Kurosawa, and Sebastian Gris, right?” Shun asked.
Toshi nodded. “Tita Ernie figured that, because Kai and I were both Japanese and Sanno’s half, we’d fit right in — and we did,” he recalled. He dimpled wickedly when he spoke of Sebastian. “Took Seb forever to adjust, but he did. Plus, he’s always had a thing for languages so he picked up Japanese pretty quick, even if Erudite is bilingual.”
“You boys stay in touch?”
Toshi grinned hugely and took his phone from the table to the left of the bed. He unlocked it and showed a message thread on WhatsApp to his big brother.
“Of course we do!” he laughed. He thumbed through the messages and showed his brother photos of his friends. “Kai and I see each other from time to time — he’s now managing editor of Vive Japan, by the way. Sanno and Seb are back in Manila helping Ate Nellie Balcruz and Johann von Hoven revive Philippine Vive.” His expression suddenly grew sombre. “It hasn’t been the same since Kai and Sanno both got hitched, though.”
Shun smiled sympathetically at this. “You’re friends with their wives, though,” he reminded his brother. “Kai’s Katya is great friends with Theda and Mayu; pity Nell lives all the way back in Manila! And Sanno’s Hilda has been stealing horses with you boys since you were all toddlers.” He sighed. “But you’re right: things do change when you get married — even more so when you have kids.”
“You and Wooks are still friends,” Toshi reminded him, referring to Mayu’s twin brother Louis whom they all called Wooks.
“The very best,” Shun agreed, nodding. “But still: we aren’t young lads anymore. We’re both married, we both have kids, and we both run our own businesses. We can’t do bugfuck mad stuff anymore.” He chuckled. “What kind of examples would we be to our kids?”
“Very good ones,” Toshi replied soberly. But Shun noted a wistfulness in his brother’s face; an unspoken yearning as he looked around the four corners of the room. The younger man looked up and smiled. “You’re a great dad, nii.”
Impulsively, Shun hugged his brother. “You will be, too,” he said quietly. “I’ve seen how you are with my kids; you’ll be great to your own when the time comes.”
Toshi shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said with a forlorn sigh.
Shun grinned impishly at this. “Consider this,” and he gestured around the room, “an opportunity.”
Toshi narrowed his eyes at him. “Care to explain that, nii?” he asked.
“Well, neither of you are getting any younger. Mayu more so — but don’t even think about telling her that to her face — and, well…”
Toshi raised an eyebrow at this, but said nothing. The deepening blush on his face, however, said everything.
“She wouldn’t adopt you this way if she didn’t care about you,” Shun told his brother. “Think about that.”
Presently, the door opened and Mayu came in. She handed Shun the coffee cup he’d left in the living room; he noted that someone had already added cream and sugar to it.
“Teddy seasoned your cup for you,” she explained. “Drink it before it gets too cool for your liking.”
She went over to Toshi’s bedside and took an old-fashioned glass thermometer from her pocket, swabbing it clean with the cotton and antiseptic on the bedside table.
“Open your mouth, Mister Unhappy,” she said. Obediently, Toshi opened his mouth and sat still as she placed the bulb of the thermometer under his tongue. “Close up; thank you.” She ruffled his already messy hair. “I take it you slept well?”
“I did,” he replied around the thermometer.
“Do you want to join us for breakfast or do you want to get more sleep?”
“I’ll sleep in a bit longer; thanks.” He squeezed her hand. “Save some tocino for me, please; don’t let nii’s eldest glutton gobble it all.”
“Your nephew-godson takes after you, buddy,” Shun laughed.
“Ken was actually asking if he could have two eggs!” Mayu informed him. She eyed Toshi critically. “Reminds me of a couple of other fifteen-year-olds I knew a long time ago.”
“I was growing,” Toshi reminded her, an impish look on his face.
“Yeah, and now I know why Mama and Papa spaced us all as long as they did,” Shun declared. “We would’ve eaten them out of house and home if we were too close in age.”
“Yeah, two teenaged gluttons constantly raiding the pantry,” Toshi agreed.
“Excuse me!” Shun protested. “I happen to be a gourmand!”
“Which is just a fancy way of saying ‘glutton,’” Mayu remarked dryly. “Which begs the question of how the hell you two gluttons have stayed so damned skinny.”
“Metabolism,” Shun replied with a shrug and a grin.
Mayu rolled her eyes as the brothers laughed. Then, she gently pulled the thermometer out of Toshi’s mouth, swabbed it again, and looked at it gravely. She heaved a sigh of relief.
“Normal,” she said quietly, as the young man regarded her gratefully. As he lay down, she pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Hisashi will be over after lunch; you’ll be well-rested by then.”
“Super,” Toshi mumbled sleepily. He was asleep in just minutes.
Shun sat there on the foot of the bed, staring worriedly at his brother’s pale woodcut face, those dark grey circles beneath his eyes, his brow furrowed with worry even in slumber.
“He’ll be fine,” Mayu said quietly. Shun looked up and saw certainty in her eyes — a certainty that made him feel a little less worried about his younger brother’s health. “He needs to mend — or, like my granddad used to say, he needs to knit himself back together.” She turned to Shun seriously. “He never really got over that break-up, you know.” There was anger in her eyes as she spoke. “If I didn’t promise him, I would actually hex that little whore six ways into hell — and then some.”
Shun nodded his approval of this. “If and when you do, I’ll go sell tickets and popcorn,” he said without the faintest trace of irony. He hated his brother’s ex, too. “You can throw in that guy she cheated on him with — and his immediate former employer.”
Mayu laughed as they made their way out of the room. But Shun couldn’t help but take another look before he closed the door and sighed as he turned away.
++++++++++
While Shun and his family were visiting Mayu for breakfast, Koji was quaking in fear as he drove to Narita to pick up their parents who were flying in from New York that morning.
Toshi was usually the one who picked them up whenever they flew home from their trips overseas. However, seeing how that was out of the question at the moment, Koji had to take over. Fortunately, Toshi lent him his car for the task.
It was, to be perfectly honest, a really good car: one of those mid-sized SUVs which were handy for road trips with friends. Also, Toshi kept the storage compartments stocked with an assortment of sweets and snacks. He was kind enough to tell his little brother to help himself.
“Do you need gas money?” Toshi had asked when he stopped by Mayu’s the previous evening to let his brother know that he would be the one to pick their parents up. “I filled it up the other day, but you might need…”
He was about to take some money out of his wallet, but Koji quickly said, “Come on, nii; I can pay for the gas.”
“You sure?” Toshi asked, regarding him dubiously.
Koji had rolled his eyes at this. “You’re forgetting that I have a job and money of my own,” he said. “I can pay for the gas — and you know that Pop will tell us to put our wallets away ’cause he wants to pay the bill.”
Nevertheless, Toshi gave him a wad of folded bills — the amount of which, when Koji counted the money out when he got home, caused the youngest Shinsetsu sibling to half-shriek at his brother’s generosity.
“Go take your woman out someplace nice,” he had said, placidly returning to the book he had been reading. “Take her to Sadaharu Aoki’s or Laduree for tea one of these days. Should give her fresh ideas, I think.”
Currently, though, a date was the farthest thing from Koji’s mind. What was important this particular morning was that he managed to drive his parents home without either — or both — of them exploding and threatening murder and worse to the people responsible for his older brother’s collapse!
To calm himself as he drove to the airport, he turned on the radio. He managed to laugh when Western pop music began to play.
…I can see that we’re falling apart
From the way that it used to be.
No matter the distance,
I want you to know
That deep down inside of me…
For all that Toshi’s musical genres were pop-rock and metal, he had a soft spot for boy band music. He really was something of a romantic, but he would never admit that publicly.
Poor Toshi, Koji thought morosely as he navigated through the traffic. All that love to give and that bitch messed him up! He shook his head in dismay. If he asked me my opinion about this whole thing, I’d say he move in with Mayu-nee, put a ring on her finger, chuck a bun into her oven, and be happy already!
A light bulb seemed to go off in Koji’s head at that thought. He blinked, then he put on his Bluetooth earpiece and voice-dialled his sister.
When Kimiko picked up, he said, “Kimmy, I need you to hear me out about something…”