He was late to work for the first time in four years.
His boss lectured him for fifteen minutes about responsibility and commitment to the company, and he didn’t
even have the strength to properly apologize.
After work, he didn’t go to the bars. Instead he
explored the garbage cans behind his apartment. Climbing through the filth, he burrowed for Kou’s body amidst
the refuse. He found plenty of biological stench—rotten
scraps of hair, meat and flesh, the skeletal husks of fish
and a shiny tin can reflecting his distorted features back
at him, but there was no cat. Just more garbage. Occasionally, he’d look up to see the open-mouthed glass face
that led to his own apartment six stories up. However,
there was too much garbage, and he could not rifle
through it all. After an hour, he quit.
He’d only discovered how much of himself was
missing.
That night he ignored Yuna’s calls as he wept into a
bottle of sake and looked at photos of Kou buried in the
bivouac of files on his laptop. He began vomiting before
he reached the bottom of the second bottle and left a
phone message at work to say he was sick. He knew his
voice slurred into the machine, but didn’t care.
He woke sometime after noon, if it could be
called waking without a meow expectantly demanding
breakfast. He had thirteen missed calls, half of them from
Yuna. He decided to see her after she got off work. The
only other number he recognized was his brother Koji’s.
The rest were probably calling to collect on his debts, as
though he had anything else to give.
The rest of the day, sobriety bled into his cerebellum as the toxins tumbled out his guts from both ends.
At 7:00, he finally set out to see Yuna. He didn’t
know what he’d say, but he had to tell her that the cat
she’d given him—the “rescue kitten” as she called it—was
gone.
She’d cry when she heard the news. She might leave
him. He might leave her. He just didn’t know what to
think or feel.
On the train, he leaned on the handlebars like a
gallows offering, swaying pendulously in the speeding
stretch between stops. Elbows bruised his ribs as commuters fell into one another, strangers struggling to
maintain their space as more people crowded on and
jostled out at every station. Finally he reached his stop,
and pushed his way past the throng of uniformed school
children, salarymen coming off work, and unidentified
scowls.
The walk to Yuna’s was only three blocks from the
station, but the uphill slope sapped his strength as his
pores wept beneath the oven of the summer sky.
When he finally got there and used his key to enter
the building, he climbed another seven flights of stairs to
get to her, and then, finally at the green-varnished frame
of her door, just stood there.
He didn’t know what he’d say.
She’d loved his cat, almost as much as he had. She’d
even adopted Kou’s brother, a tabby from the same litter
named Kiriko.
He knocked. Her voice greeted him first, and a
moment later the door swung open.
“Ken!” she shouted, the surprise of her smile warm on
her face, and then she saw his state and she cooled,
tensing. “What’s wrong?” she asked, hesitantly.
He stepped inside her home, passing the threshold
without another word.
Ken felt a furry head nuzzle against his ankle. A pang
stabbed through him. Kiriko was so similar to Kou, but
he knew the difference in the force, the purr, the movements of his cat.
Then he felt the second cat headbutt his ankle, its
temple pressing into his leg.
“Poor Kou’s been crying for you since I picked him
up. I got him when I went by your apartment the other
day, and he was leaping up toward the open window to
get at a bird. I didn’t want anything to happen, so I
brought him here. You got my note, right? I left you a
message,” Yuna said.
He looked at her, then looked down at Kou, nuzzling
his temple into Ken’s ankle to proclaim “I love you.”
The memory of important papers tumbling unread
from his upturned table returned to him. He could curse
himself, but he was too relieved.
Smiling as he looked back up at Yuna, he didn’t say a
word. He just lowered his head, pressed his temple
against her, and nuzzled.