19th June 2015

Hello~ For the past few updates, I've always tried to stick with the one chapter a fortnight schedule, which worked quite well when I was able to write about a thousand words a day, and finish it by the second Friday. Now, seeing that I have a lot of stuff going on, I'd have to divert my attention to other matters other than writing. I could rush and finish everything by tomorrow, but this chapter seems to be very long, so in order to be able to write in whatever I want to include in this chapter, I've decided to update this on the evening of the 26th instead. But I didn't want to make you guys wait for so long, and I didn't want to give the idea that I wasn't really writing anything, so I've decided I'd come up with something new.

I'd still try to stick to the fortnightly schedule, but if I can't make it by the end of two weeks, I'll post up a teaser instead. Don't worry, these aren't very short either, so you guys can at least have an idea what's coming up. 

For now, I hope you'll enjoy an excerpt from the upcoming Chapter 21 :)

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 "Do you think celery would be nice in the porridge?" Asami-san suggested to me. "They do have some flavour."

"Well, I'm not sure if its suitable for him," I muttered, unsure. "It might be too difficult for him to swallow."

"I just thought it might be nice," Asami-san said as she washed the rice in the rice cooker pot.

"Well, truth be told," I said. "The dying don't really care about food anymore."

What I said seemed to have taken her back a fair bit.

"I'm sorry," I apologised. "I didn't mean to sound rude or anything, it's just. . . a weird thought that came to my mind."

"But it's true actually," she said after a short silence. "I don't think at that point that it matters what food tastes like. I mean, when you're at the doorstep of death, do you think you'd care about what your food tastes like, Furukawa-chan?"

"Probably not," I replied, pouring water into the saucepan. "Heck, I'd probably even refuse to eat anything. If the point of eating is to sustain yourself through nutrition, then there's no point of eating anything if you're about to die anyway."

"Now that's pretty morbid, don't you think?" she questioned me, giggling.

"I do have my own peculiar ways of thinking," I replied. "We all do."

"I guess you're right," the girl whispered in response, barely audible.

As I set the rice and water to turn into porridge, leaving the fire on low heat, Asami-san took out another pot and prepared the miso soup. Looks like we were going to have rice and miso soup for dinner. Might be too simple for some, but I was fine with it. For a while, the only sounds we heard in the kitchen were the simmering of the porridge on the low heat flame and the monotonous chopping of Asami-san's knife that clacked against the chopping board as she diced the tofu. It had been quite a while since I helped someone else in the kitchen. Nowadays my mother liked to work alone. She told me that cooking was something she liked to do by herself. I never expected to hear that, since all this while I had been helping her here and then but she never complained about it. She told me it wasn't about me, its just that she wanted to reconnect with herself during that time. I sort of understood what she meant, so I never disturbed her in the kitchen after that.

Asami-san was still working on the tofu when a few drops of soup from the bubbling pot hit her pale hand. She let out a small cry.

"Are you all right?" I asked her, my palm still on the handle of the saucepan.

"I burned myself," Asami-san replied, her slightly wavy locks covering the side of her face as she looked down onto her palm.

"Put your hand under the running tap, it'll help," I advised her.

Asami-san did as she was told, scurrying over to the basin to my right and opening the tap. She quickly placed the affected area under the running water. The sound of the gushing water seemed to be deafening, and I could feel a few water droplets splash onto my cheeks. She must have realised about the water though, as she quickly toned it down after a few seconds. Nevertheless, the initial blast of cold water was still quite strong.

The girl seemed to be somewhat relieved though after the running tap treatment. After a few minutes, she turned the tap off and inspected the back of her palm, where the specks of soup had made landfall. There were a few red-pink patches, but the pain must have probably gone by then.

"I'm going to the bathroom to get a hand towel, you mind chopping up the tofu and keeping an eye on the soup? I'm really sorry to leave everything to you."

"I don't mind," I told her. "You go and take care of your hand, I'll take care of things here."

The older girl smiled at me before leaving the kitchen.

Seeing that the porridge was probably done, and that I had been constantly stirring it as it bubbled, I figured out that it would be about time I switched off the flame. The miso soup was still bubbling, so I took the chopping board and knife to the countertop on my side of the stove, since I didn't want to get scalded like Asami-san did earlier.

I picked up the knife and started to chop the remaining block of tofu. I diced them, like what Asami-san had been doing. Looking at the pieces she already cut, she seemed to improve a lot since the last time we met. Perhaps, she had learned more from Ms Nakayama. If that's the case, good for her I guess. Maybe she might be able to make a bento for Yukino-kun that he might be actually be satisfied with. Hopefully she knew not to add too much salt in her omelettes by now.

I felt really alone in the middle of that kitchen devoid of voices, in the middle of a house with the atmosphere of precedent mourning. Nobody in this house had actually said it once I arrived, but soon, this house would be full of people dressed in black. There would be a monk that would be invited from the temple and the rooms will echo with the soft chanting of mantras detailing the afterlife and salvation. Ms Nakayama would be dressed in black, and so would Yukino-kun. People would come and go, passing white envelopes to Ms Nakayama, who would be standing by the entrance to see guests off after they had paid their last respects.

I guess that situation at Yukino-kun's childhood home in Sapporo was one of the situations which were so foreboding that everyone knew and expected it, but somehow, all the lips were sealed shut and nobody dared say a word about it. I couldn't tell what everyone was thinking, but I was pretty sure none of them wanted to say the word.

It felt like a small glint of hope, that avoiding the utterance of the word would not bring the subject come closer. Yet it was futile. Death was coming. The long grasses in the yard, swaying in the evening breeze knew it. The dust-caked furniture and antique wood picture frames in the living room knew it. The porridge I left to cool and the empty, hollow walls of this entire house all knew it. And so did the people in that house. We all knew it. Its just that nobody wanted to talk about the subject directly in the face of such an impending situation.

Well,

except for Asami-san and me of course. It was strange, the conversation earlier

just headed towards that direction, for some reason. Perhaps the absolute and

lingering presence of death in that house just got to me. It certainly must

have taken quite a deal of emotional resilience to avoid talking about death in

a place where it seemed so commonplace like this. Nonetheless, whether we

decided to talk about death or not, people will still die when it is time for

them to die. There's no changing that.

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Chapter 21: Eidola and a Feast for the Moribund will be out soon :) I thank you for your patience. Hopefully, you've enjoyed the teaser!