Saturday morning smelled like burnt soy sauce and effort. A very specific kind of effort—the “I read a cooking blog at 2 a.m. and now I’m convinced I’m a chef” kind.

  Dad was in the kitchen again, spatula in hand, brow furrowed like he was defusing a bomb instead of frying rice.

  “You trying to kill me?” I asked, peeling a mandarin and watching smoke drift like ominous fog from the pan.

  “I prefer the term revolutionizing your palate,” he said, dramatically flipping the mess in the pan. Some of it made it back in. The rest… achieved orbit.

  I squinted. “That’s rice and eggs.”

  “Omurice,” he corrected. “But the omelet is inside out.”

  “That’s not omurice. That’s just… scrambled failure.”

  He grinned. “Great chefs are never appreciated in their time.”

  “Great chefs also don’t nearly set off the smoke alarm twice before 10 a.m.”

  He paused. Looked at the scorched pan. “Minor casualties in the war for flavor.”

  I snorted. “Then consider me a conscientious objector.”

  We both laughed.

  This was what mornings looked like now.

  No schedules. No perfectly plated meals under perfectly silent ceilings. Just mismatched dishes, terrible puns, and the kind of warmth that didn’t come with conditions.

  ?　?　?

  After breakfast—if you could call it that—we cleaned the kitchen in tandem.

  Dad hummed some old 90s pop song, slightly off-key, while I dried the dishes.

  I kept sneaking glances at the living room bookshelf. It had grown chaotic. Novels stacked sideways, manga leaning at odd angles, a few volumes definitely borrowed and never returned from Sugimura.

  I’d started reading again. Not for grades. Not for quotas. Just for… story.

  Dad noticed. He always did, even when he pretended not to.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “You like that one?” he asked, nodding at the book I’d been eyeing—March Comes in Like a Lion.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s… soft.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Soft?”

  “Like… it doesn’t yell at you to feel things. It just lets you.”

  He nodded, drying his hands on a towel. “That’s good. We all need quiet stories sometimes.”

  He sat across from me, elbows on the table. His face had a kind of thoughtful stillness I recognized. The kind he used to wear at ceremonies. Except now, it was gentler. Less armor.

  “You’ve been quieter than usual lately.”

  I smiled faintly. “I’m always quiet.”

  “Not like this.”

  I set the book down. “It’s not a bad quiet. Just… different. Like I’m waiting for the echo, but it never comes.”

  Dad tilted his head. “Echo of what?”

  “Expectations. Pressure. The need to… prove something.”

  He didn’t speak right away. Just nodded, slowly.

  “I used to think I had to earn everything,” I admitted. “Love. Peace. Even the right to sit at a table like this and laugh at your horrifying cooking.”

  “It’s not horrifying. It’s experimental.”

  “I’m not sure eggs are supposed to be that color.”

  “Taste the rainbow.”

  “Hard pass.”

  We both chuckled. The kind of laugh that fills in the gaps where hard conversations used to live.

  Then he looked down, fingers laced. “I spent so long trying to make you strong. Thought I had to carve out all your softness so the world wouldn’t.”

  “It worked,” I said. “For a while.”

  “But now?”

  I hesitated. Thought of Sugimura’s dumb grin. Hayasaka’s steady presence. The basketball court. The sakura tree.

  “Now it feels like I don’t need to fight to exist. Like maybe I can just… be. And I don’t know what to do with that yet.”

  Dad looked up. His eyes were tired but open. “You don’t have to know. No one knows at your age.”

  I smiled. “Did you?”

  He chuckled. “Still don’t.”

  We sat in silence, the good kind.

  Then I said, more softly, “I used to resent you.”

  He didn’t flinch.

  “But now… I get it. Maybe not everything. But I see the man who’s trying now. And honestly? I think I like him more than the one who had everything ‘under control.’”

  He looked stunned for a moment. Then he smiled. Not a perfect, confident smile. But the kind that made room for honesty.

  “You did something different,” I said.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “You changed. You chose this version of us. That’s more than most people do.”

  He didn’t say anything. Just reached over and tousled my hair like I was ten again.

  “Still weird that my son’s turning into a philosopher.”

  “Still weird that my dad’s turning into a pyromaniac.”

  “Character development,” he said.

  “Plot twist,” I replied.

  ?　?　?

  That night, I couldn’t sleep. Not from stress. Just… stillness. I stared at the ceiling, my mind quietly full.

  Sugimura yelling my name across the court.

  Hayasaka stealing fries off my tray like it was her birthright. Missing a shot and laughing about it anyway. The world not ending.

  That little voice still lived in my head.

  The one that said: Be better. Be perfect. Be useful.

  But there was another voice now. Quieter. Warmer.

  Be here.

  So I got up. Pulled my notebook off the desk.

  It was full of old assignments, diagrams, even notes Hayasaka had doodled in the corners.

  But this page—this one—I left blank.

  Then, slowly, I started to write.

  Not homework. Not analysis. Just… words. Fragments.

  Things I’d never said aloud. Jokes I didn’t want to forget. Maybe a letter I’d never send.

  Or maybe—just maybe—the beginning of something else entirely.

  The boy I was becoming, learning to write himself in.

  To be continued...