[Short Story] Me-Lon!

One

In Shinshu in June, the wind still smells of water.
When I got off the express train and stood at the bus stop nearest my childhood home—a place where the bus only comes twice an hour—after a thirty-minute ride, the first thing I did wasn't to take a deep breath, but to yawn. I think the air was so good that my body let its guard down. In Tokyo, I have a habit of checking my surroundings before I yawn.
The road from the bus stop to the house was shorter than I remembered. It wasn't that the road had shrunk, but that my stride had lengthened. I know that, but every time I return, country roads seem to have rearranged themselves and are waiting for me with a knowing look. The rice fields, where planting had finished, were like water mirrors, capturing the inverted mountains one by one.
In the old days, my grandfather used to come to the bus stop to pick me up in his light truck. On summer evenings, the rice fields I saw from the back of the truck would all flow toward me, and I would pretend to catch them with both hands. Today, no one came. I walked. It is a fifteen-minute walk.
My grandfather's greenhouse is in the corner of the field behind the house. It isn't a grand glass structure, but a small hut about five and a half meters wide, made of pipes covered in vinyl. Every time we called it a "house," my grandfather would correct us, saying "greenhouse." His reason was that he didn't like foreign words, yet the thing he was growing was a melon. Since my grandmother passed away, no one has pointed out this contradiction.
When I peeled back the vinyl at the entrance, the smell of green rushed out to meet me.
The ridges were mostly cleared, and only one vine remained in the back, tangled around a support pole. At waist height, there was one blue fruit. It was faintly covered in a net-like pattern on its surface, supported by a hanging string, and dangling quietly.
A small blackboard about the size of a palm is attached to the entrance pillar with wire. In chalk, it says "Water: Hold." Whether it is an order or a memo, I cannot tell from just those two characters. It is just that, even though the person who wrote it is gone, the instruction remains active.
I touched the fruit gently. It was cool and hard, and even though it was still green, there was already a sense of weight in my palm. It was the one fruit my grandfather had chosen last. The only one of this year that survived the cruelty of thinning.
"Oh, you've come."
When I turned around, an old man holding a watering can was standing there. Mr. Katsuta. He is my grandfather's mahjong friend, eighty-one years old. He is the person who has been watering this last vine for the month since my grandfather collapsed in May.
"How old are you now, Melon-chan?"
"I'm still thirty-four."
"I see. So, has Dora-san's forty-ninth-day memorial service finished?"
The conversation isn't quite clicking, but I know that's how it is. Country greetings only need a period. The seasons will draw the lines for you.
Dora-san refers to my grandfather. His name was Tatsuo. Tatsuo born in the Year of the Dragon (Tatsu), and since Tatsu is dragon, and dragon is shortened to Dora. Incidentally, 'dora' is also a tile in mahjong that increases the value of your hand just by holding it. I heard from Mr. Katsuta at the funeral that it also carried the meaning of a man who makes the game more valuable just by being there.
When I went up into the house, the living room was exactly as it was when my grandfather left. His reading glasses were beside the floor chair. There were thirty mahjong programs in the TV recording list. On the Buddhist altar, a brand-new photo of my grandfather sat next to my grandmother's, and both of them looked as if they were amused by our poor planning.
In the kitchen refrigerator, there was a pot of barley tea, some half-eaten seaweed paste, and some fried tofu that was three weeks past its expiration date. For the refrigerator of an eighty-six-year-old living alone, it was probably on the better side. I poured the barley tea down the sink, decided to take the seaweed paste home after some hesitation, and put my hands together in prayer before throwing away the fried tofu.
My mother had decided to fold up the greenhouse. She lives in the next city over, and the demolition crew is coming next Monday. I took my vacation until then to see the harvest of that one fruit. I told my company I was "organizing my parents' home." It wasn't a lie. There is just one melon among the things to be organized.
I brought my work tools. My profession is proofreading. I have been a contract employee in the proofreading department of a publishing company for eight years. I mark up galleys—trial prints before final publication—with red ink, verify facts, and raise questions in pencil for suspicious parts. It is the technique of pointing out things that cannot be asserted as errors without asserting them yourself. This is called 'raising questions.' It is the custom to always end the sentence with the katakana question mark "ka?". Assertions are the job of the red pen; the pencil only asks. After eight years, I have only become better at asking.
My legal name is Igarashi Melon. It is not a pen name or a nickname, but my genuine real name. My grandfather registered it at the city office on the day I was born without asking anyone, and by the time my parents protested, it had already been accepted. If a name like this appears in a manuscript, I grab my pencil without hesitation and write in the margin, "Confirm reading?" No one has ever pointed that pencil at my own name. Even if they did, there is no way to fix it.
That evening, while organizing the tool shed, I found a stack of college notebooks behind a bag of fertilizer. On the cover, in thick letters, it said "Cultivation Journal." There were twelve in total. On the first page of the oldest one, it said:
"April X. Sowing seeds. The starting hand has arrived again this year."

Two

The first time I heard my grandfather shout "Ron!" was during spring break in my second year of elementary school.
A few days after I helped him sow the seeds, I heard a voice from the greenhouse in the morning. When I went to check, my grandfather was standing tall in front of the seedling box. Several small green cotyledons were poking their heads out of the soil surface.
"Ron!"
My grandfather shouted again. My grandmother came out of the kitchen and said it had started again.
"When the buds come out, it's a Ron," my grandfather said. "Me (bud) of Ron, so it's a Melon."
"Since you sowed the seeds yourself, isn't it a Tsumo (self-draw)?"
When I, at my most precocious age, replied like that, my grandfather thought about it quite seriously while holding the watering can. Then he said,
"No, it's a Ron. The buds come out from the other side."
I still don't understand the meaning. Twenty-six years have passed without me understanding.
By the way, my grandfather's melons were known as "Tatsuo's Melons" at the direct sales store, but they were only called "Me-Lon" in the mahjong parlor circles. With one middle dot, the fruit becomes a winning tile.
It wasn't just the melon that was named with this logic.
On the day I was born, my grandfather received the call from the hospital while on the second floor of a public bathhouse. The moment he heard his grandchild was born, he apparently shouted "Ron" on the spot. Whether that was a shout during a game or just a shout of joy, no one is left to testify. However, the next morning, my grandfather ran to the city office without consulting anyone and registered the name "Melon" for his newborn grandchild. So that buds would sprout, so that she would be as beautiful as lapis lazuli, so that she would live with a good sound—he used the kanji "芽瑠音" (Melon) and only kept the reading as "Melon." By the time my parents protested, it had already been accepted.
A few years later, my grandfather planted new variety seedlings in the greenhouse. On the morning the buds appeared, he shouted "Ron" as usual and named them "Me-Lon, so it's a Melon." He layered the same sound he gave his grandchild onto the fruit this time. For my grandfather, his grandchild and the fruit were surely lined up on the same logic. Things you raise, things you name, things that win. I am the only one who has always looked uncomfortable in that lineup.
I also remember my grandfather on the morning of shipment. While loading baskets onto the back of his light truck and wrapping each fruit in newspaper, he was saying something in a low voice. When I asked him what he was saying, he replied, "I'm telling them to go and come back." I know no one else who gives directions to melons. The way he wrapped those newspapers was probably closest to the way one folds a gift envelope for a celebration.
My grandmother was a person who called mahjong "a noisy game of concentration" and never sat at the table once in her life. Yet, she would dutifully act amazed at my grandfather's "Ron" every time. Now that both of them are gone, I realize in the living room that being amazed was also a form of agreement.
The journal was written in the voice of such a house. One or two lines a day. Habitual, upward-sloping handwriting.
"May X. Pollination. The groom is busy."
Melon pollination is done in the morning by picking male flowers and pressing them against female flowers. The groom is the male flower, and one flower is made to work for many houses. I was also made to be in charge of the groom on a morning when I was in third grade of elementary school. My grandfather had me hold the male flower and said, "I'm counting on you to be the matchmaker." The eight-year-old who didn't know the meaning of matchmaker still felt the weight of the duty and brought the flowers together with trembling hands. That tension was probably the same kind as the day I first put red ink on a galley.
"May X. Thinning. Choosing one from three sisters. Cruel."
One fruit per vine. The rest are dropped while they are small. This is to pour everything the vine has into the one chosen fruit.
"May X. Training. The vine is in its rebellious phase."
"June X. Rainy season begins. Even the heavens are in deep thought."
"June X. Netting appears. Good character."
In the oldest year, there was also this line:
"July X. First harvest. In time for Kinu's birthday. Haneman."
Kinu is my grandmother's name. Haneman is a big win in mahjong, surely 1.5 times a Mangan. The first harvest that made it in time for her birthday was at that position on my grandfather's score sheet. It doesn't say how many points my grandmother received it for.
While flipping through the pages, I was fighting an occupational disease. My grandfather consistently writes "harvest" (shukaku) as "shukaku" (using the beast radical instead of the grain radical). As a proofreader, I wanted to grab my pencil and write "Harvest?" in the margin. Just as I endured it for about three volumes, I suddenly thought. The 'kaku' of prey. The way he picks up a win from someone else's discarded tile at the mahjong table. Perhaps it was intentional.
If you can make someone think it might be intentional, the writer wins. Proofreading is a job of doubting, but when you encounter something you can't fully doubt, you surrender quite easily. I put down my pencil.
Incidentally, if I confess, despite being the grandchild of a melon farmer, I have hardly ever eaten a proper melon. The fruits that can be shipped are shipped. What ended up on our table were only the non-standard ones with messy nets. My grandfather called them "no-yaku" (no role/no value). He used to say that even if they have no role, they taste the same if you eat them, and I think they really did taste the same. It's just that every time he cut one, my grandmother would say "what a waste," and my grandfather would reply, "it's delicious, so it's not a waste." The taste included that exchange.
I also appear in one of the twelve volumes.
"March X. Melon goes to Tokyo. The field in Tokyo is rough, so don't force a call."
To 'call' in mahjong means to take someone else's discarded tile to advance your hand quickly. The shape is completed quickly, but your hand is revealed to the opponent, and even if you win, the points are low. At the time, I didn't understand the meaning, and I didn't even know this journal existed. One line was placed there without me knowing.
My grandmother died three years ago. The pages of that year in the journal have wider spacing between lines than other years. What is written doesn't change. Watered, adjusted the vines. Only those descriptions are lined up with strange gaps. And, at the end of that summer, one line.
"August X. Exhaustive draw."
I heard from Mr. Katsuta later that they didn't harvest a single melon that year. Because of nursing care, they weren't in a state to worry about the greenhouse. An exhaustive draw means a game ends without anyone winning. The fact that he didn't write "I lost" was just like my grandfather.

Three

Caring for melons is a battle in the morning.
The field before six o'clock still holds the coolness of last night. When I opened the greenhouse vinyl, a streak of outside wind passed through the fruits. It seems plants also have moments like deep breaths. The leaves all change their orientation just a little bit at once. I had started waking up a little earlier every morning for that one moment.
That said, care during the finishing period was essentially "not doing too much." Restrict the water. This is to add sweetness. According to Mr. Katsuta, "When they get thirsty, the fruits hurry to become sweet." It makes me feel a bit guilty to use the plant's impatience, but I have seen many people on the other side of the galleys who can't write without a deadline. Living things generally show their true potential after being cornered.
I water sparingly, look at the color of the leaves, and gently turn the fruit. The work of changing the orientation so that the sunlight doesn't hit it unevenly is called 'tama-naoshi' (fruit adjustment). The journal also said that quality depends on how the sun hits it.
The fruit is hung from the beam with a special string. This is because the vine alone cannot support its own weight, meaning this melon has been raised while being hung by someone since it was born. It looks more like it's being entrusted than just dangling.
Mr. Katsuta came to check on it every other day. Even when he came, he didn't talk much. He would stroke the fruit, turn over the leaves, and once told me my watering was "too much." With that one word "too much," my touch changed from the next day.
Then, I pull the weeds that have grown at the edge of the ridge. While pulling, I noticed myself chanting "toru" (take/delete) in my head and laughed a little. 'Toru' is a proofreading mark meaning to delete unnecessary characters. It's a serious case if I'm bringing my profession even to weeds, but unlike a pencil, this one makes my fingernails black.
In the afternoon, I took a folding chair to the corner of the greenhouse and read the galleys. It's a romance novel about a man and woman in Tokyo passing each other and coming back together. The light through the vinyl is soft on the paper, and honestly, it's better for my eyes than the company's fluorescent lights. The desks in the proofreading department are far from the windows. Manuscripts hate sunburn, so we usually sit in seats inside the building where we can't tell the weather. For eight years, I have only read the seasons on paper. In the galleys, cherry blossoms bloom, typhoons come, and snow piles up. There were years I met summer in print before the real thing. This year is the opposite. Sitting in the middle of the real June, I am doubting the May in the paper. In the May chapter, the protagonist "munched on a field-grown melon," so I ran my pencil in the margin. "Field-grown, too early?" When the grandchild of a melon farmer becomes a proofreader, the writer's luck runs out in places like this.
There is a method to the "ka?" of raising questions. Don't assert. Don't interrogate. The decision-making power of whether to fix it or not is left to the writer's side until the end. When I was a rookie, a senior told me: red ink is for characters to be fixed, pencil is for characters to be thought about. While writing "Too early?" in the margin, I suddenly think. Is restricting water red ink or pencil? Is fruit adjustment—and just then, thunder rumbled.
The evening shower came sideways and passed in ten minutes. During that time, the inside of the vinyl became the body of a drum, and the melon and I were in the same sound. When the rain stopped, I felt the green throughout the greenhouse had become one shade deeper. I think it's my imagination, but there is no way to verify it.
The day after the evening shower, I rode my bicycle to the direct sales store to buy groceries. The lady at the register saw my face and said, "Tatsuo-san's," finished the transaction before I could introduce myself, and put two extra tomatoes in the bag. There was no room to refuse, nor room to finish saying thank you.
"Is this year's melon," the lady said, "coming out?"
"Just one."
"I see. Just one, then."
The lady nodded and didn't ask any more.
One morning, the net pattern on the surface of the fruit had increased a little more.
"Mr. Katsuta, why does the net form?"
Mr. Katsuta, who had come to water, put down the watering can and stroked the fruit.
"The skin can't keep up with the fruit growing. So the skin cracks. The fruit covers the cracks itself. That mark is this."
"A mark, you say?"
"It's like a scab. The ones that crack cleanly and heal cleanly have finer nets. Those sell for a high price as high-quality goods."
I looked at the blue fruit for a while. A fruit where the mark of a wound becomes its value. I didn't know there was such a mechanism in the world.
"I didn't know."
"You can eat it without knowing."
Mr. Katsuta carried his watering can and went home. The eighty-one-year-old's back is good at ending conversations.
In the evening, I got a call from my mother. After a business-like report that the contractor was coming on Monday and that the greenhouse pipes could be bought, she asked at the end, how are things there?
"Going well. The net is increasing."
"Net? Are you talking about work?"
"Talking about the melon."
My mother said, "I see." "I see" has about twenty meanings, but this one was a conjugation of "I'm glad you're doing well."
After hanging up, I opened my company email. The message from general affairs asking for three dates for the contract renewal interview has been at the top of my inbox for a week. I have written a draft of the reply. I have also chosen three dates. I just haven't sent it.
The ninth-year contract, or—the continuation of that is not written anywhere in the draft. Things that aren't written cannot be proofread.
On the ceiling of the greenhouse, the vinyl rattled in the wind. I turned my smartphone face down and went to draw water in the watering can. Even if I say I'm restricting it, it doesn't mean I'm making it zero.

Four

On the edge of the shopping street, there is a shop called "Pon."
It used to be a coffee shop, and now it's a mahjong parlor. The sign doesn't say mahjong parlor, it just says "Pon." On the walls inside the shop, the menu tags from the coffee shop era still remain. Cream soda 350 yen. No one orders it, and no one peels it off. It was the first time I saw a shop where only the price tags were still in business.
Because the fourth member was hospitalized for back surgery, I was made to sit in.
Mr. Katsuta was called Kan-chan at the table. They say it's because he only wins on Kan-chan waits. The other members were Haku-san, who handed over his barbershop to his son, and Nan-san, a former postmaster. White and South. Two tile names are sitting at the table.
"Dora-san," Haku-san said while mixing the tiles, "would say 'ron' in a small voice at the mahjong parlor. In a voice like a mosquito buzzing."
"But he was loud in the greenhouse."
"I told him many times that it's usually the opposite," said Nan-san. "It seems his logic was that you shouldn't be arrogant in games, but it's fine to be arrogant to buds."
I feel like that's not logic, but my grandfather's logic was usually like that.
"Come to think of it," Haku-san said while stacking the tiles, "Dora-san was the one who named Melon-chan, too."
"Yes."
"Are you not happy with that face?"
"For thirty-four years, I haven't been happy with it once."
The three of them laughed in unison. I know no other place where people can laugh at someone else's dissatisfaction so pleasantly.
The half-game proceeded slowly. The old men had many long thoughts, and in between, gossip about the shopping street was inserted. I had too much of the speed of play I had trained with mahjong apps on my smartphone, and I realized that at this table, thinking time is part of the points.
Around the time we entered the South round, Haku-san said to no one in particular,
"What will happen to the greenhouse?"
I searched for an answer for a moment while holding the tiles. While I was searching, Nan-san said "Pon." The conversation flowed, and the game progressed.
I also had a winning hand come to me once. Of all things, it was a Kan-chan wait, and the 8-pin tile Haku-san discarded fit perfectly into that gap.
"...Ron," I said.
My voice was smaller than I thought. The three of them looked at each other and laughed.
"You're Dora-san's grandchild."
When it came time to count the points, I reflexively folded my fingers. Even in proofreading, what counts in the end is fingers and intuition. The old men's point calculation was the same. No one looks at a mental arithmetic table. Their long-time fingers automatically calculate the winning amount.
The result of the half-game was Mr. Katsuta's solo win. I was in third place with only one win, Haku-san said "Not bad for a first table," and Nan-san said "Next is Thursday."
The way home was at dusk, and the smell of rice fields was flowing in from the break in the arcade. My smartphone vibrated once in my pocket, but I walked without taking it out. The water is in the middle of being restricted.

Five

The break in the rainy season ended, and it turned to rain.
Raindrops hit the greenhouse vinyl incessantly. Being inside felt like sitting inside a large musical instrument. I finished reading the final proof of the galleys in the folding chair and put down my pencil. The man and woman in Tokyo ended up passing each other. Since the writer wrote it that way, that must be the kind of love it is. Proofreading complete. All I can do is guarantee that there are no typos in the two people passing each other.
Then, I opened the last volume of the journal.
The last line on the last page.
"May X. Tenpai."
I think it means the melon is almost ready. My grandfather collapsed the next day. One more tile. Since then, the margins have continued.
The last time I talked to my grandfather was a phone call at the end of April. There was no particular business, we talked about whether the flowers were finished in Tokyo, or if the seaweed paste was still edible, and just before hanging up, he said one thing: "The starting hand this year is good." I gave a vague reply.
I stared at the margin for a while, then took my pencil. A proofreader must not add to the manuscript. It's a rule I was drilled in during my twenties, and I have never broken it. However, this is not a manuscript but a journal, and I am not a proofreader but a grandchild.
"June X. Restricting water. Fruit, unmoved."
I wrote the next day, too.
"June X. Galley proofreading complete. Melon incomplete."
"June X. Rain. Heavens enter deep thought."
I sent the proofread galleys by express mail from the local post office the next morning. The young man at the counter was about the age of the successor to Nan-san's successor, and seeing the publisher's name on the address, he asked if it was a company that makes books. When I replied that it was more like the side that reduces mistakes, the young man thought for a moment and said, "Same as us." Because we are the side that reduces misdelivery. After leaving the post office, I thought that reply was the best winning hand of the day.
When I try writing it, surprisingly little fits on one line. That smallness makes my hands lighter before I write.
On the afternoon the rain stopped, Mr. Katsuta came and taught me how to judge the harvest.
"Look at the border between the fruit and the vine. When it ripens, it cracks by itself there. It's called an abscission layer. The fruit starts preparing to separate from its side."
"By itself?"
"Don't pick it. Receive it."
As he was leaving the greenhouse, Mr. Katsuta turned around and looked up at the pipe frame. I thought he would say something, but he didn't, and returned the watering can to under the eaves and went home. The eighty-one-year-old's back also has the technique of not starting a conversation.
I got another call from my mother. After the business of checking the house's locks on Sunday, my mother was silent for a moment, and then said, "So..."
"How's the melon?"
"Harvesting it the day after tomorrow."
"...It's Grandpa's last one, after all."
"Last, or..." I said. "The last win."
"What's that?"
"Mahjong talk."
My mother laughed and hung up, saying, "You've started saying things like that, too." I missed asking what I had started saying.
At night, in my futon, I read the draft of the reply again. The three interview dates I chose were all after the harvest. I realized that for the first time, laughed a little, and pressed the send button. After pressing it, I turned my smartphone face down by my pillow.
The night before the harvest, I went to the greenhouse with a flashlight before going to sleep. The melon at night looks bigger than during the day. The net pattern floats in the circle of light, and the fruit was just quietly leaning toward tomorrow's side.
I turned off the light and sat in the darkness for a while. When my eyes got used to it, one or two stars could be seen through the vinyl. The sound of insects overlapped in the distance, and nearby, the sound of the vine creaking slightly from the weight of the fruit could be heard. My grandfather must have listened to this sound alone for hundreds of nights. The melon field at night is much noisier than I thought. It was me who was quiet.
I didn't water it. This was the last night of the period where not doing it is the care. I packed my bags. The galleys are sent to Tokyo by express mail. The twelve volumes of the journal are still on the tool shelf. I haven't decided whether to take them home or leave them here. There is only one thing I decided. I won't put my pencil in that journal anymore. The habit of writing "harvest" (shukaku) as "shukaku" (using the beast radical), and the disorder of the lines, will remain as they are. Not fixing things is also part of proofreading. My bag has just enough space for twelve volumes, but that is a separate matter.

Six

That morning, it was clear.
When I opened the door, the wind hit my face straight on. It was a blue and thin wind, as if the air had been replaced during the night. The heavy smell of the rainy season had been cleared away somewhere, and the air alone had stepped half a step ahead into summer. The hydrangeas in the garden had stopped their damp purple from yesterday and had a slightly drier color in the morning sun.
Before breakfast, I drank only barley tea and went out to the field. Dew still remained on the grass of the ridge, and the tips of my sandals were cold.
When I entered the greenhouse, the smell had changed. At the bottom of the green smell, something sweet was definitely passing through. At the border between the fruit and the vine, a thin, ring-like crack had formed. As promised, the preparations were finished on the other side.
I erased the "Water: Hold" on the blackboard at the entrance with the pad of my finger. The chalk powder remained on my finger.
Leaving the stem in a T-shape, I inserted the knife.
The melon I caught in both hands was much heavier than I thought. The net pattern spread from end to end, and in the morning light, all the healed wounds were shining silver.
"Ron!"
A louder voice came out than I expected. The vinyl on the ceiling rattled, and Mr. Katsuta's voice came from outside.
"Did you win?"
"I won."
Outside, the morning wind was still blowing. The one fruit in my arms had a weight that still remembered the water of the vine.