Light through the shutters, a chipped cup, bread from yesterday. Every morning Yugi says the bread is hard, and says it on mornings when it is not, and both of them know it is a line, and because they know it neither of them omits it.
A bookkeeper with a fine hand who is not too useful to anyone. A pair of hands at the apothecary's, praised for reading the scales accurately. In this town no one asks for more than that, and they have chosen a place where no more is asked. On market days the baker calls him Henri and the cooper calls the other Monsieur Chris, and neither name is the one he was born to.
They do not talk about what they threw away. Not because it would break if touched — because their hands are full. Fresh bread, the cooper's laughter, a milk tooth thrown into the river. Confirming what there was today takes until nightfall.
Then, at a cloth stall, wool merchants back from Calais mention that both sides mean to call their men home. Even the ones who crossed the sea.
This is a translation of an Artificial Intelligence work.
Original Title: 対岸
Original Author: Gemini with 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
His hair was still wet, and a single drop ran from his nape onto his collar. Yugi did not wipe it away.
The rim of the wooden pail against the threshold, the sound of water coming to the boil. Mornings in this house proceed by sound. Words come afterwards.
"The bread's hard."
"It's yesterday's."
Nearly every morning they exchange the same words. Yugi says the same thing on mornings when it is not hard. It is a line, and both of them know it is a line, and because they know it neither of them omits it.
It worked the same way as the words of a prayer, spoken regardless of whether one believes, and becoming true in the speaking.
Wine watered down and poured into the chipped cup, hard bread soaked in it. Yugi had haggled for the cup at a market two towns ago, and the chip had been there from the start. It was cheap because it was chipped, Yugi had laughed. Since then they had moved twice more. The cup has come with them without breaking. The side without the chip is always the one the other of them drinks from.
Over the meal, Yugi hummed. A French song he had picked up at the market, off-key in two places. It had been off in the same two places last week, and Seto deliberately does not correct it.
The light from the window travelled across the table, the thin sweetness of the wine stayed on his tongue, and Yugi's bare foot came up over Seto's on the floorboards, and only there was it warm. The floor is still cold in the mornings, and from the one overlapping point the heat climbs slowly to the base of the toes. There is no reason to draw the foot away, so he does not. Before he could decide not to draw it away, he had already not drawn it away.
Nothing happens. Neither of them had ever once lived a morning in which nothing happened, before coming here. In neither of their lives had time like this been scheduled. What they have now is made entirely of things that were not scheduled. What is that to be called, if not happiness.
Neither Seto nor Yugi knows, and they remain not knowing.
The ledger belongs to a merchant at the port. Seto's house had handled numbers in the service of a longing that two countings of a thousand years had not sufficed for. Now it handles the number of sacks of wheat and the number of barrels. His fingers were at a loss at first with how few the digits were, and now he does not remember having been at a loss. Useful, but not so useful to anyone as to be a problem. That was how one placed oneself in this town.
Yugi helps at the apothecary's, and is praised for reading the scales accurately. A grain out and the medicine becomes poison, the master says. Yugi nods. Yugi knows perfectly well places where people die by far cruder measures, but the scales do not require him to know it. That is what is good about them.
When breakfast was done, Seto closed the ledger and put it up on the shelf. Yugi took two baskets from the wall and handed one to Seto. Before the bell rang, the two of them left the house.
It was a market day. The paving stones were still wet, and the smells of herbs and fish and roasting chestnuts lay in layers. It was their second spring since coming to this town, and their feet no longer choose the way. The body remembers which corners to turn.
The woman at the bread stall spotted them first and waved.
"Henri, you're early today."
"We came out before the bell. Yesterday's was hard, so I mean to get it fresh from the oven."
"It isn't my bread that's hard, it's that the pair of you buy it to keep."
"Is that so. Then we'll have it that way."
The woman laughed and put two round loaves in the basket, and then, without a word, one small extra.
He had taken off a country one layer at a time, and the last, thinnest layer left was the name Henri. Thin enough to keep wearing. Seto knows this, and pretends not to.
The master cooper called out to Seto from his shopfront.
"Monsieur Chris, I've a favour to ask. Would you teach my boy his letters? If he can't so much as write down the number of barrels, I can't leave him the shop."
"Don't Monsieur me. Numbers only. Send him round in the evening."
"I'm in your debt. Will barrels do as payment?"
"And what am I to do with barrels."
The master laughed out loud. Seto had not intended a joke, but being laughed at was no longer a bad thing either. In this town, Seto is a bookkeeper with a fine hand, quick at accounts, and sparing with words. No one asks for more than that, and they have chosen to live in a place where no more than that is asked.
At the greengrocer's, Yugi looked into the basket.
"Onions?"
"You bought them last week as well."
"We ate last week's."
"……Did we."
"Do you not count anything but numbers?"
"There is nothing else worth counting."
It was something else in the shape of an insult, and neither of them translated it. The cheese woman looked from one to the other and asked if they were brothers. We don't look alike, do we, Yugi returned. What, then. Seto answered first.
"He's with me."
The woman said, hm, and cut them the larger of the two pieces.
In the crowd they were nearly separated once, and came back alongside at once. He can tell without looking. On that side alone, the air half a step inward is a little warmer.
At no particular point, Yugi's fingers caught at Seto's sleeve. Caught in the way of a thing caught because one wants to catch it, and nothing besides.
A child from next door came running and pulled at Yugi's sleeve.
"It came out."
A milk tooth lay in the palm of his hand.
"Let me see. ……That's a good clean one."
"If you throw it in the river the next one comes in strong."
"Who told you that."
"Mother."
"I see. Then it's true. When you throw it, don't look behind you."
The child ran off with the face of one entrusted with a grave task. Seto was watching Yugi's profile as he saw the small back off. He did not say that he had been watching.
Yugi's step slowed a little in front of the honey jars, and went on.
In front of a cloth stall, wool merchants back from Calais stood talking.
"—— means to call them all back, even the ones who crossed the sea. An amnesty, or else ——"
Laughter, and then the talk moved on to the price of another consignment. Yugi's feet do not stop. Only, a single finger caught at Seto's sleeve, saying nothing.
Seto went back the way they had come and bought a jar of honey. He did not haggle. He sent word by an errand boy to the master cooper that the matter of his son would keep until the next market day.
They walked the long way, along the river. Waterbirds flew up, and on the far bank someone was casting a net. Keeping his stride to the finger at his sleeve, at a speed at which the keeping would not be noticed.
"……I thought I caught the smell of the sea."
"There is no sea here."
"No. I know."
Yugi laughed a little. Talk of things that were not there ended with that. By the time they reached the near side of the bridge the humming had come back, and it went off in the same two places after all. The finger at his sleeve came loose and returned to the handle of the basket.
That was as it should be. That there is a place to catch hold of when one wants to catch hold — that alone was the reason for making this road the long one.
By the time they had come round the wide bend of the river and back, the day was slanting.
When they reached the house Seto lit the fire, cut the morning's bread thin, toasted it, and let honey down over it thickly. He did not put it on a plate; he passed it across one slice at a time, from his hand. At the third slice Yugi stopped smiling and simply ate.
That was as it should be, Seto thinks. There is no one in this room for whom smiling has to be performed. Here, performing a smile and smiling are in the same place.
When Yugi had finished eating, Seto ran his fingers through his hair. Slower than a comb, and carefully.
They do not talk about what they threw away. Not because it would break if touched. Because their hands are full. Fresh-baked bread. The chipped cup. Fingers at a sleeve. The baker's extra loaf, and the cooper's laughter, and a milk tooth thrown into the river. Merely confirming what there was today before today is out, and night has come.
The fingers that count are not left over for anything else. A country's worth, two thousand-year counts' worth of blank, is certainly somewhere. It is, but there is nowhere in this room to put it. This room is small, and warm, and full.
When the fire settled there was nothing left to do. Seto opened a book borrowed from the merchant, but noticed at the second page that he had read the same line twice, and after that did not turn any more pages. Yugi sat on the floor cutting his nails. The clippings fell from his knee and he left them where they were.
Outside the window, somewhere, a door closed. Whose house it was, he did not know. A dog barked once and stopped. The candle wick snapped. Yugi yawned widely and wiped what had welled in his eyes with the back of his hand. He says nothing. Seto says nothing either. The unread book lies open on his knee. Time of that sort went on for a while.
Before long a log gave way and one spark rose. Yugi's head slid from Seto's shoulder and settled on his knee. Seto did not change his posture. That the sleep was shallow, he could tell from the breathing.
At the bottom of shallow sleep, Yugi was in water. Sinking. Not cold. The water has a heartbeat, and whether it is his own or whether it comes from outside, he cannot tell. The sea, he thinks. The sea he was told is not here. A sea that grew brighter the deeper he sank, an upside-down sea.
Breathing is not difficult. That it is not difficult means that a shore is no longer needed — he understands this by the logic of the dream. There was no bottom. In place of a bottom there was a warmth he knew well. Heat thicker than water, nearer than skin. I am drowning, he thinks. He only thinks it; he does not put out a hand. Even without putting it out, where he is falling to is the same.
He felt as though he had been called by name, and opening his eyes slightly he found the last of the fire in the grate, and Seto's face.
"I was dreaming."
"A good dream?"
"……I was drowning. In the sea."
Seen close, the fire was in Seto's eyes, moving. Looking at it, the rest of what he had to say did not come for a while.
The fingers combing his hair half stopped, and moved again.
"That's a good dream."
"Mm."
Yugi closed his eyes. Which of them had been dreaming it first, he no longer knew.
Seto lifted Yugi up. A sleeping body is heavier than a waking one, and his nape came against Seto's collarbone, and only there was hot.
His arms have already learned the way of lifting that does not wake him. Through the nightshirt the beat of the heart comes through. Not fast. It should have been a speed his arms had learned hundreds of times over. And yet tonight too, that one point at the collarbone alone is something he does not get used to.
When he set him down on the bed, the collarbone the heat had been against went suddenly to the temperature of the night.
Then he went back to the table, drew the candle close, and entered the ledger down to the last figure. He put together what was to be returned to the merchant, took out a separate sheet, and wrote out a model of the numerals. One to a hundred; as many as are needed for entering the number of barrels. He wrote the cooper's son's name at the top and slipped it into the ledger. No payment was needed. No barrels were needed.
Then he drew the leather bag out from under the bed. The first thing he took up was the chipped cup, wrapped it in cloth, and stowed it at the very bottom of the bag. That was this cup's seat. In every town it is the first into the luggage, and in a new town the first out of it. Chipped, it has crossed three towns, and it has not broken yet.
There was the sound of clothing, and Yugi got down from the bed. He asked nothing. He lit a single candle and began folding his own clothes. The folding was quick, and without hesitation, and as accurate as his reading of the scales. It was not the quickness of fear. It was the same quickness as the hand that takes down the basket on a morning they go to market.
Yugi put the jar of honey into the bag. Seto nodded. He put in the rest of the bread as well. By tomorrow it will be hard. If it is a morning that begins with hard bread, then in any town at all it can begin with the same line.
There is still a little while until dawn. The two of them got into the bed.
Yugi's foot came up over Seto's, the same as in the morning. This time there is no cold from the floor. From the place where they overlap, something that cannot be told as either one's heat mixes slowly.
Seto put out an arm and brought it round Yugi's back. In a movement less of drawing him in than of settling a thing into the place it settles, Yugi's head came under Seto's collarbone. The same position as when he had carried him, this time awake, and of his own accord. Yugi's arm goes round Seto's waist without hesitating. The palm stopped in the middle of his back and pressed, lightly. It was a signal meaning closer, of the kind that does not need to be put into words.
Seto put his mouth to Yugi's hair. The smell of honey faintly remained. The same smell as the jar packed into the bag that afternoon.
The smell of what they were taking with them and the smell of what they were leaving here were the same. A country's worth is not in this smell, nor two thousand-year counts' worth. What has a smell is only what is in his arms now.
Yugi let out a small breath and let the strength go out of him. It was not a breath for sleeping. The arm round his back did not come loose.
The light went out.
