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Working in the restaurant business had been Osamu’s dream since high school, he had quit volleyball and gone to a top culinary school to chase it, on top of that he got a masters in business in hopes that he could someday open his own onigiri
shop.
He had spent the last ten years working towards his dream, but he didn't feel any closer than when he had just graduated high school.
Working as a sous-chef at a fancy restaurant sounds great in theory but commercial kitchens are incredibly stressful. Osamu wasn' t shaping and filling rice balls, he was sauteeing greens, grilling ribeye, and being yelled at for over-salting mushroom sauce.
Osamu’s boss was a terrible human being, the head chefs joked about him having the rage of 10 ovens burning, anger evenly distributed with equal burning heat.
At night he went home dreading going to work the next day, there was no longer any love for cooking, for his lifelong dream.
He stayed near Atsumu, but Atsumu was travelling more and more for work. Before it had just been weekend games, but as he got older and played longer his name had grown. Weekly photoshoots and ads took him all over Japan.
Osamu knew he needed a change of space, his mother saw it too when he called her one night, she was very detail oriented and she loved her sons dearly.
“Samu,” She said. “Take a break from work, I can see that it draining ya. When your grandfather died he left us his farm. I never sold it because I thought that one of ya boys might need it some day, Tsumu was always busy with his volleyball career, and ya were working hard towards yer dream. I didn't want to force it on ya. Now I can see that it might actually help ya, take a break for a while and find yer dream again.”
It took a few weeks for him to agree, yes he hated his job but was it worth leaving the last ten years of his life behind? Yes. Yes it was.
He had considered staying, but the final straw was eventually reached when his boss threatened to pour cheese fondue over his head.
He knew kitchens could be and were high stress places, but when he chose to work there he didn’t expect to be under a less skilled version of Marco Pierre White, or Gordon Ramsey. Why would he continue to work in a hellhole when he had other options?
“Sorry Tsumu I had to leave, I couldn’t stay here anymore.”
And so Osamu started packing.
(What do you need on a farm anyway?)
. . .
Osamu knew very well that he didn’t know a single thing about plants. He had never been on a farm, much less grown anything, and there were bigger problems to consider…
Was the house in decent shape? If not, where would he live? Why didn’t he bother checking before giving his landlord the one month notice?
“Who would even want to live this far out?” He said out loud, even though nobody was in the car with him. Forgetting the fact that he chose to move ‘this far out’.
Osamu looked down at the GPS, ten more minutes until he would arrive at his future. He had left any semblance of life behind around forty five minutes ago, now he was driving down a deserted highway.
Five minutes from his destination Osamu saw a closed fruit stand. It was next to a bus stop. The fruit stand looked like it had been closed for at least ten years, not just for the season like the faded sign painted on the shutter suggested.
He started to think about what kind of people live in the tiny town, would there be anyone under the age of 75…
Probably a doctor, DEFINITELY a doctor. He knew that much. He wasn’t good at researching, he didn’t like researching, he didn’t actually do any research. Unless googling the village once on his train ride home after work counted.
He lost himself in thought as he turned down the road into town.
The main street was tiny, all the buildings were very traditional, there were trees and flowers growing along the road. The flowers weren’t quite blooming yet and the trees were just starting to bud after winter but Osamu could see how beautiful the town would be later in the year when everything was flowering and blooming. He was surprised that his mother had never visited, especially now that she was retired.
He passed a general store and a small doctors office and then he was on a dirt road. Even though Osamu was driving slowly, it took barely a minute for him to be on the dirt road that led to his ‘home’.
He pulled up to a rotten gate, he got out of his car as his GPS announced “You have arrived at your destination!” He grabbed his phone and put it in his pocket.
He slowly walked up to the gate 107-2013 Inarazaki road was written on a placard nailed to the fence. He carefully pushed the gate open, the rusty hinges made a loud startling creaking sound, the rotten wood shook as the gate moved.
He got back into his car and slowly drove past the gate, he didn’t bother going to close it. It would probably fall over anyway. He quietly laughed to himself, it quickly died when he saw the house… He might actually have to sleep outside.
It reminded him of the house from My Neighbor Totoro, except if he shook the post on the porch more than just a couple pieces of wood would fall. The gutters were overgrown with plants, it was pretty, but definitely not good.
He made a mental note to fix that before it rained next.
Osamu turned off his car and slowly emerged. He slammed the door and then winced as the trees around him shook.
He walked up the path to the house. There were cobblestones lining it but there was grass growing between then kinda defeating the purpose. Not too long yet, but still another task. His list of ‘things to do’ would be miles long before even finished walking through the place.
He climbed the wooden stairs up to the porch, he could feel the rotten wood bend under his weight. Yeesh, definitely more important than the gutter problem.
There was a lockbox on the doorknob, Osamu pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the code. 2013.
If the house hadn’t been broken into the only reason was that it was in the middle of nowhere.
He took the key out of the lockbox, unlocked the door and stepped inside. He walked through the doorway slowly, inside wasn’t as bad as the outside. Just a dirty, spider haven. There was a hallway with a staircase, three doors and an open (flat?) archway.
“I didn’t major in architecture anyway” Osamu said to nobody in particular. Except maybe dust sprites.
He laughed to himself again, it echoed through the house. Creepy.
Through the he stepped through the flat arch and stepped down into a living room, he walked across it and stepped up into the kitchen. It was a decent size, and had a nice layout, but it probably wouldn’t be used for quite a while. Osamu knew he wasn’t going to be ready to cook again for a while. He sighed slowly, dust on the countertop swirled into his throat. He coughed.
He walked back out to the hallway and opened each of the doors, there were two bedrooms, and a bathroom.
He walked up the stairs and found an open airy room. There were windows on three of four walls that probably let a nice amount of light stream in, but it was starting to get dark so it felt more eerie than anything else.
Osamu walked back down the stairs and outside to his car, he wasn’t going to do any cleaning, or unpacking tonight, so he just grabbed his tent and sleeping bag.
By 21:00 he was laying in his tent, exhaustion weighing him down. By 00:00 he was thinking about his choice to move, the weight of stress for his future.
“It’s goin’ to be ok Samu, y'all be happier there.”
That's what his mom said about moving to the farm, and he was hoping with all his might that she wasn’t wrong.
One tear, two, Osamu cried himself to sleep that night.
It wasn’t his first time, and it definitely wasn’t his last, and even with the looming stress of being in a small town over five hours away from Osaka, and even farther from Hyogo he felt better than he had in a while.