ch1-ch20 · 011-ch11

Chapter 11: "Rock Kitchen"

"Thaaank yooou!"

Rokuro sends off his takeout customers with a booming voice.

The food truck "Rock Kitchen" is bustling as always today. With that last customer, they've sold out while the sun's still high in the sky.

"That big greeting right to the end. Feels good, don't it?"

Enjoying her after-meal coffee at one of the folding tables set up in front of the truck is a trendy older sister type with silver hair and green highlights.

"Thanks as always, Ryun-chan."

Rokuro steps down from the food truck and starts packing up the menu easel and empty chairs.

Even though there are still customers... or so one might think, but for regular "Ryun"—Arizuki Yanagiko—this is business as usual, and she remains seated and relaxed.

Yanagiko is Sumi's aunt and a hairdresser who owns her own shop nearby.

Since she always lets her staff take their lunch breaks first, Yanagiko usually gets hers last, around 3 PM. Because of this, she often ends up being the final customer at "Rock Kitchen."

Incidentally, Yanagiko is actually younger than Rokuro, but they've known each other since her delinquent days, so the way she speaks hasn't quite shaken off that old habit.

"Oh yeah, morning. Finally colored Sumi's hair the other day."

"Ah, Ai showed me on her smartphone. Sumi-chan was thrilled, right?"

"Well yeah, she'd been sayin' she wanted to go blonde forever."

Yanagiko scratches the tip of her nose, looking a bit embarrassed.

Blonde was the hair color Yanagiko used to have back in the day, and Sumi had admired it ever since she was little.

Rokuro watches Yanagiko's reaction with an amused smile.

"...Seeing you like this, Ryun-chan's really become a proper grown-up lady now."

"Well duh, how old do you think I am? I'm an around-thirty lady, an around-thirty."

"Huh, already? But it feels like just yesterday you were coming here in a tracksuit..."

"Stop, that's black history."

Yanagiko covers her face with both hands.

For Yanagiko, now a stylish adult woman, just remembering her blonde tracksuit days makes her face feel like it's about to burst into flames.

"No wonder I'm getting older too."

"What're you talking about, Roku-san's still young. Ain't Ai proud to have a young dad?"

"Haha, you think so? She's never said anything like that though."

After finishing up with the other tables and chairs, Rokuro pats his own lower back with a thump-thump.

"That move's so old-man-ish~"

Having finished her coffee, Yanagiko folds up the last table herself, and Rokuro helps her with it.

"If Ai ever told me I seem like an old man... I'd probably cry."

"Why wouldn't you cry when I say it?"

"Because I'm aware I seem like an old man. But I don't want to hear it from my daughter."

Rokuro says this with a laugh, but he probably would genuinely get depressed if Ai said it to him.

For Rokuro, his daughter always comes first.

"...But hey, Ai's in high school now, right? Roku-san's got more than half his life still ahead of him—don't you have, like, a good prospect or anything?"

"A good prospect? Hmmm, never really thought about it. I think things are fine the way they are now."

He'd never even imagined someone else joining their father-daughter life.

"But like, but like, once Ai goes to college or starts working and lives on her own, you're definitely gonna get lonely, right? So like, if you want, I could... I could, introduce you to, a nice woman?"

Yanagiko's face as she said this wasn't the forward-looking expression of someone saying "Let me introduce you to someone!"—instead, she was furrowing her brow, wrestling with something inside.

But fortunately, Rokuro wasn't looking at her face. He was gripping the pendant hanging from his neck, his expression serious about something.

"...What's wrong?"

"Ah, no, it's nothing. Just remembered something I need to do. I'll head out now. Thanks for helping clean up."

"Yeah, I'm heading back to the shop too."

Waving goodbye to Yanagiko and climbing into the driver's seat, Rokuro's expression grows even more serious.

"A signal from Penta—did something happen to Ai?"

Rokuro steps on the accelerator and drives off without a moment's hesitation, as if he knows exactly where to go.

Watching the food truck disappear into the distance, Yanagiko holds her head in her hands.

"Where's the grown-up lady in me... Agh, seriously!"

It seems being unable to be honest isn't something that only happens during puberty.