My SRY and My Locked-Away First Love <18. Kotatsu and Bath>
18. Kotatsu and Bath
"Sui. It's better not to be alone tonight. You should stay over. I have futons."
Without looking at Sui as he took off his shoes, Kritika muttered. The entrance to Kritika's home was neatly swept, and a pair of summer sneakers and winter boots were placed side by side. It smelled of Japanese incense.
"It's not Nepalese incense?"
"That's right. I like this scent."
To the left of the entrance were the washbasin and the bath. I followed Kritika down the short hallway.
"It's a studio apartment. The rent is cheap."
"My place is, too."
There was a kotatsu in the middle of the room. The quilt part was made of patchwork fabric in reddish-purple and blue. As Sui gazed at it, Kritika smiled and said, "My mother in Nepal sewed it for me."
"Wait in the kotatsu until the room warms up."
"Thank you, Kritika."
The electric kettle roared.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
"No. Just sit and wait."
As I curled up inside the kotatsu, Kritika returned with a glass teapot and a tin of tea leaves.
"Chamomile tea. It will calm your frayed nerves."
With a click, steam rose from the kettle. After adding the tea leaves and pouring the hot water, the pot filled with a dull yellow liquid. Chamomile tea was poured into matching green mugs.
A fragrant scent wafted over, and when I looked toward the kitchen, Kritika was taking sel roti out of the oven.
"I reheated them. I think they turned out well."
"Thank you, Kritika."
"No need for thanks. Just eat as much as you like."
Sui reached for a sel roti and took a bite. It was chewy as always, with a subtle sweetness.
"It's delicious."
Sui's eyes welled up. They were warm tears. Kritika gently stroked Sui's head.
"Today was tough, after all. You can have another one."
"Kritika, you're like a mother."
Critica laughed out loud.
“I was blessed with a mother. That’s why I do for those who don’t know a mother’s kindness what my mother did for me.”
“What kind of person is your mother, Critica?”
Critica pulled a blanket over her head and crossed her arms with a “Hmm.” A refined scent of fabric softener drifted from the neatly laundered blanket.
“She’s like a mountain. She doesn’t waver no matter what happens. At the same time, she’s like a bird. She flies through the sky and looks down at the situation from above.”
“That’s nice. She sounds like a wonderful mother.”
“Yeah. I was lucky. I want to be born as her daughter again in my next life.”
“I’m envious.”
“Sui, your mother is a bit messed up. She bound you. She forced you to live a life of lies.”
“I know.”
“Maybe your mother has her own circumstances.”
Critica took a sip of chamomile tea and looked diagonally upward. She was deep in thought.
“Sui. Please do for yourself first what I do for you.”
“Why?”
“It will stabilize your heart. You’ll become as unwavering as a mountain, just like my mother.”
Inside the kotatsu, my body gradually began to warm up.
“Critica, why are you always so kind to me?”
Critica blinked three times. She looked exasperated.
“Did I say something strange?”
“Sui. Why am I kind to you? Isn’t the answer obvious? Because you were kind to me, weren’t you?”
“People often tell me I’m blunt and cold, though.”
Critica let out a sigh. Her thick, expressive eyebrows dipped.
“Why do you think I became able to speak Japanese? Because you taught me, right?”
“Huh? I wasn’t really teaching you. I just found it a hassle to speak in English, so I kept talking to you in Japanese.”
“That’s what was good about it. If you had spoken weird, broken English, I don’t think my Japanese would have ever improved.”
“So that’s how it was...”
“That’s not all. In class, you were the only one who treated me the same as the other Japanese students. You didn’t discriminate against me and always treated me with the same smile.”
Critica’s eyes were filled with the power of her will.
“Sui. Thank you, truly, for everything.”
Critica smiled. Sui, who had been crying so much, finally smiled too.
“I’ve drawn a bath for you. Your body must be cold, so please take your time. Don’t worry, there are fresh clothes for you.”
Sui bowed deeply and headed to the bathroom. The tub was full of hot water, and as I smelled the lavender bath salts, my fatigue seemed to dissipate into the steam.
After washing my hair and body, I stared intently at the body reflected in the bathroom mirror. I placed my hand on my abdomen. The scar from when my testicles were removed had become much less noticeable. There had been a suggestion to use skin from another part of my body to erase the scar. But I decided to leave it. I felt that if I erased the scar, it would be like pretending the half-life I had spent suffering never happened.
I stepped into the tub. I lay back and submerged myself up to my shoulders in the purple water. In the steam-filled bathroom, as I inhaled and exhaled, the air that had been settling in my head began to clear. I looked at my body swaying in the water once more. A woman’s body. But a body without a uterus or ovaries.
“What is my body here for, I wonder?”
Bubbles tickled my back as they rose to the surface. I ruminated on what Critica had said. Critica's mother. A person who remained as unmoved as a mountain and looked down from above like a bird.
"Does Mother regret giving birth to me?"
Since the day she received the diagnosis at the gynecologist, my mother had not smiled in front of Sui even once.
"What can I leave behind?"
I had carried this unanswerable question for thirteen years. I still hadn't found an answer. But Sui had stopped holding his body as a secret. Critica, Ato, So, Hiroto. With a heart-wrenching feeling, he had confessed his secret to them. No one looked down on Sui. No one turned their back on him.
"My body belongs only to me."
Sui wrapped his arms around his body and hugged himself. He curled up just like that. Perhaps he had been floating in his mother's amniotic fluid like this even before he was born.
The scent of lavender calmed his heart.
After changing clothes and drying his hair, he returned to the living room to find the LED lights turned off. The scent of incense wafted through the air. The kotatsu had been put away, and a futon was laid out beside the bed. On the kitchen counter, the flame of a large candle flickered.
"You can go to sleep first. I'm going to take a long bath."
"Critica."
"What?"
"I really do love So. I made a fake contract with So to put Sena-chan at ease. I can only be So's girlfriend when I'm in front of Sena-chan. So is suffering. I want to accept all of So's feelings right now."
"You really are a hopeless child, Sui."
Critica lifted the corners of her mouth.
"Good night, Sui."
Critica entered the bathroom. He could hear the sound of running water. The sound was so comforting that Sui immediately fell into the world of sleep.
"Princess. It is dawn!"
He had a dream. So, in the form of a young boy, was holding up the baby Sena and shouting.
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