haikusociety | 9 1/2 Weeks - 14 - (Week 4 1/2: Saturday)

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Week 4 1/2: Saturday

"If you had to run away from a volcano, what would you take with you?"

Akira bumps into Jin for emphasis, though earlier he twisted his sweaty hand out of Jin's the moment Jin let him.

Volcanoes. Why can't his son be into cars, or girl bands?

"You mean, pack?" Jin asks.

Akira nods, squinting up at him against the sun. He wanted to wear sunglasses just like Jin, but Jin and Meisa agreed they looked ridiculous on a ten-year-old schoolboy. Sara, on whom Jin secretly finds them adorable, had to relinquish hers too. Meisa got so fed up with the arguing, she told them to go get their ice cream in America and not come back to bother her before university.

Jin tries to think about volcanoes. It's sweltering out here, which makes the thinking even more uncomfortable. "How much time do I have?"

The queue shuffles forward. They have loads of time here.

"Well," Akira says knowledgeably. "You might have days if you interpret the signs right. Earthquakes and noise and smoke, you know."

Earthquakes. Cheery.

"But let's assume you really have to leave in a hurry, you can't just load a whole truck."

"I'd take Mom and Dad and Momo and my Wii," Sara says.

"I didn't ask you."

"Mom can drive the car and Dad carries the Wii and I carry Momo," Sara elaborates.

"What about your brother, huh?" Jin asks her.

Sara considers that as they move another couple of steps. In five minutes, they might get to a shady bit. In half an hour, they may reach the benches set out for queueing customers. "Well, he can walk, right? So I don't have to take him."

"Hey, dad," Akira says. "That was my question!"

"Yes, sorry, I'm thinking."

"You won't have that much time to think when there's a volcano erupting," his smartass son points out. A shame glaring doesn't work well behind sunglasses.

"I'd take all the money," Jin says slowly. What he'd really do is take the phone, to be able to check they're okay, to find them, because they wouldn't be together because he's a loser, right? "So we could keep buying gas so we could keep driving. And our passports. And your favorite snacks, and plenty of Mom's diet drink because you know what she gets like when she's hungry."

And he'd need the phone even if they were together, to find... out what else was going on.

"That's not bad," Akira says magnanimously. "But you're not really well-prepared if anything else goes wrong."

"All right, what would you take?" Jin asks. Clearly Akira has given this more thought, and isn't stuck on his phone and lines being down. "What should we take?"

"We'd take the earthquake kit first of all," Akira says. "That's got the food, blankets, light, gloves, masks, water treatment tabs, and the first aid stuff, all right there. And then we need to consider the lava, right? It's going to be hot, so the tyres of the car will wear down more quickly, so we'll need spare puncture repair kits."

Jin nods. "I see. I hadn't thought of that." The kid with the family in front of them is peering around her mother's neck at Akira.

"We'll have to drive really fast anyway," Akira says, "because lava is fast. So it's important that the tyres are okay."

"Mom doesn't like it if we drive fast," Sara says. "And there are speed limits on the expressway."

"The police is going to be busy, though. And you have to get away before all the roads get clogged up." Akira's cheeks are a little blotched, the way he gets when a story is very exciting. "Though, of course, you can still get hit by flying rocks and stuff. Then you're stuck."

Or dead, Jin thinks, but the little girl in front of them is starting to look intimidated as it is.

"We'll just have to leave early," he says. "And with how much you know, we'll sure get warning long before everybody else."

"Yeah." When he explains quite seriously about the warning message he has composed, which will go out to his friends at the press of a button on his phone, Jin thinks that even the little girl's mother is starting to look spooked. She's probably just not used to people being that thorough. Sara is, and is unimpressed and a little bored.

"How much longer do we have to stand here?"

"Hey, I told you it was going to be a queue to the moon, princess. That's why you wanted to come, right? Because everybody else comes?"

"They say it's really good ice cream! And all different kinds. And they look like fruit and houses." The excitement seems to have distracted her from her annoyance with the queue.

"Which one do you want to try first?" Jin asks, pulling her closer in the futile hope of lowering her voice a little.

"I want the kiwi ice cream that looks like a kiwi!" Sara announces, and Akira says, "I want a volcano," grinning.

*~*~*

They make it to the entrance after an hour of queueing. The place is huge, restaurants within the restaurant. There is a 'fruit stand' and 'Italy', a 'zoo' and a 'sports corner', and the air is cold enough that you can admire an ice-cream pokemon for several minutes before its face melts off.

No volcanoes, though. Jin's almost surprised, because a volcano would seem easier to construct than the plants, animals, pasta dishes and sports emblems that are on offer. Who would want to eat an ice-cream baseball glove?

Okay, one person he can think of.

Sara finds her kiwi but by that time her entire attention has been captivated by a gorgeous, enormous mandarin duck which is the centerpiece in the next window. Jin estimates it could feed a party of twenty. "Daaaaaad," she says.

Jin ruffles her hair. "You're kidding, right?"

"It would eat you," Akira says.

"It's just so pretty. And look at the feathers." Sara is biting her lip staring at the sugary frosting feathers. "I bet it's got fifteen flavors at least."

"Let's find you something your size with lots of different flavors, huh?" Jin says. She'd just about manage the pink beak of that thing. No need to even think about the price tag. "You don't want to have a belly full of monster duck and fall over, right?" He grabs her and pretends to make her fall down, and she squeaks.

She has a strawberry pig with chocolate and black sesame mud stains in the end, giggling about eating piggy butt. Jin has a chocolate banana monkey and Akira a bright green grass monster that Jin recognizes from the Disney movie they saw in winter. He says it tastes of melon, apple and pistachio.

Looking around, Jin finds that everybody seems to come here. Lots of families, but old couples too, and school kids, and groups of young women, and here and there people who are clearly dating. He pushed his sunglasses up when they came in and completely forgot about them; and it's not a problem because nobody pays him any attention anyway. Nobody knows him.

Nobody pesters him. It's what he always wanted.

"Are you coming to my birthday party, dad?" Sara asks, wriggling in her chair, which is a hollow ice cream cone with different-colored fillings. Akira discreetly rolls his eyes. Jin heard from Meisa that the invite list was quite a topic of evaluation and re-evaluation.

"I don't know yet, sweetie, I may have to work," Jin says. He should be okay, Meisa's always let him come, even to Akira's last year when he owed Meisa enough to buy a small car. He still wants to ask her first. "But I'll try, okay?"

"It'll be great," Sara says. "We thought up lots of games. Akira helped, and I invited two of his friends too, even though they're older. And one of them's a boy."

"We tried to make it so the games aren't lame," Akira says, looking pleased despite himself. If Jin can't make it to the party because he's really got work, he promises himself they'll do something even more awesome on the Thursday that's Sara's actual birthday.

They finish their first round, and Sara successfully argues that after standing in line for one hour they should at least have two. After a bit of walking and staring, they end up with pizza napoli ice cream for Akira and a princess with a frosted tutu for Sara, who turns her a few times admiringly, then leans forward and bites her head off.

Jin has a coffee and, eventually, two princess legs that taste of marzipan when Sara has reached her capacity. She is adorable, grinning at him with the frosting on her nose. Akira is spearing his last olive-imitating grape, and Jin feels warm and cozy even with the chilly aircon.

Sara insists that they walk past the duck on their way out. "I'm going to put a photo up for my class to see," she says, and brings out her cell phone. They take a second picture of the duck with Sara and Akira beside it and send it to Meisa, and then they have to go because Jin needs to be at work by six.

"Are you working with someone famous tonight?" Akira asks, helping Sara struggling out of her ice-cream restaurant extra sweater.

"No, just the usual, helping out with someone's recording," Jin says, his standard line. It's been a lovely day and they had princess ice cream and admired ducks together, so not even that can get him down.

*~*~*

It's five when he deposits them back at Meisa's door. She looks a little worried, checking her watch. "Will you be all right?" she says. "I didn't want you to get in trouble..."

"I'm fine, I've got an hour to get there." He's learned to be on time; late, but he learned it, how not to be dead weight Meisa or his mother or... other people had to shoo around.

Sara is bubbling over with princess talk and kiwis and the duck, but Meisa shushes her, saying, "Tell me over dinner, honey, it's almost ready, okay?"

The kids know this part, too. Jin's half in, half out the door, and this is Mom and Dad time, so they hug Jin goodbye and disappear into the kitchen.

"How was it?" Meisa asks, though her grin says she's drawing the right conclusions from the chatter.

"Well, I've always wanted to eat a Porsche," he says, and she laughs. "They were great."

"I'm sure you were great too," she says. "Have you seen them beaming?" It makes him flush – he knows how great he isn't. But he smiles anyway. She's beautiful, leaning against the door frame in her jeans and with flour dust on her t-shirt. He always sees it more when they're relaxed with each other, and he wants to hug her that moment, just for what they made together; all the parts he didn't turn into a mess.

"You're looking happier," she says, thoughtful, maybe a bit relieved. Like in spite of everything, she worried about him.

"Blame them," he says, nodding inside. "Oh, and... about her birthday..."

She nods right away. "The party's in two weeks, starts at two. That means you can come, right?"

He didn't think he had to be concerned, but the ease of it makes him feel much lighter. "Yes. The shifts are night, I'll be there."

*~*~*

That night he's back in his little box, surfing the web on his phone with the radio on low. His eyes itch from three night shifts in a row; he never quite caught up on his sleep, especially today, with the kids. But this was a good week. Kame and his sharks, never mind the dumb argument. And then two extra shifts here, and then ice cream. He can deal with that.

He flips through to his pictures, to the one of Sara with her piggy. There's nobody here to see his silly smile.

He checks the road ahead, checks his book and all that, just in case. Nothing much moving tonight. When the radio turns to news, he shuts it off, and ends up tapping a lazy rhythm with his feet.

Summer blue, fading deep, let's keep this all, before the fall...

He hums it a little, too. Nobody to hear either.

The next picture is of Sara and her duck and she looks so proud and perfect, Jin wants to give her that duck and anything else she wants.

He has extra money, from the extra shifts. It's a stupid thought. Frivolous. But for once he could afford it. Probably. Assuming they even deliver. Just imagining her face if the duck rolled up for her birthday party makes him laugh.

He hunts down their website on his phone, just to check, just in case. And of course they do, they probably deliver to the emperor's banquets.

He's not sitting in this box earning extra money so he can blow it on ice cream. It's irresponsible. Meisa would say so too. Akira's got that school trip coming up.

The duck stares back regally when he looks down at the picture again. He hasn't been able to give Sara really awesome presents for a while now. Always something, and always nice; but nothing fantastic. Nothing like an oversized ice cream Mandarin duck his girl fell in love with at first sight.

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