daystar_nitesun

Day-Star, Night-sun

Windows glint with rays shining from the skies above Tokyo, bathing the entire second-floor bedroom in a pale yellow light. They chase the shadows away from the corners, within nooks and crannies, illuminating the piles of notebooks and MRI images stacked like flapjacks on the table. Of course, the flapjacks on the table have greater authority in the air, its smell filling the space with the smell of honey, butter, and imported maple syrup.

On most days, those pancakes are enough to stir Michiko Daimon awake from her slumber. Today, however, she sits up straight, blanket draping the top of her head, staring in wide-eyed shock at the woman sleeping soundly next to her.

What happened?

She’s snapped awake now, instinctively covering her torso with the heavy sheets. Unintelligible movements form in her mouth as she props herself off the futon. Just about every scenario flashes before her eyes as she tries to make sense of her current situation.

What did we do last night?
Or, I suppose, who did I do last night?
Could I even do that? I mean her?! Huh!?

But Daimon shakes her head. It’d be the most preposterous thing to happen. She wasn’t one for pleasure, even if she tends to touch herself sometimes once she comes home after nine consecutive surgeries in a day. And sure as hell she isn’t one to swing that way, much less swing with her.

Yet if I’m naked, she must be naked too, right?

The rumbling in Daimon’s stomach interjects her thoughts, then rudely implores her to eat. After all, the flapjacks are about to turn cold and soggy under the weight of the lavish dressing Akira Kanbara puts on them. Plus, she may just finally figure everything out after filling her tummy with 10 pancakes.

Daimon slowly begins to rise to her feet, careful not to disturb her bedside companion. The futon gives down on her toes somewhat, her steps a little more forceful than usual, but still silent enough that she reckons she can get away with going faster. Finally, her person is off the futon and onto the hardwood floor. Now she jogs to the table, and promptly sits in a flash, cross-legged, to have her fill.

She puts her palms together. “Itadaikimasu”, she whispers. But a thought nags the surgeon as she scans the table filled with all sorts of papers.

Oh, right. I have to save some for Hiromi.

Normally, it’s Hiromi Jonouchi who cooks breakfast for herself and her daughter Mai, a ritual reserved intimately for them before taking the seven-year-old to school. Today, however, she’s turning to her left side, more comfortable than Michiko has ever seen the anesthesiologist before. Hiromi’s not cooking up anything anytime soon.

Michiko takes another long look at the figure filling the futon, still wondering what to do. She’d never been this lost in thought before, never been confused. Not since she went under the knife, anyway, and even then she still reckons she had the hang of everydaystar_nitesunthing as she wrote the very surgical procedure doctors at Totei University Hospital used to cut her retroperitoneal sarcoma.

And yet here she sits, chewing a slice of yummy pancake, sitting on the proverbial fence. Michiko cannot decide if she can indulge herself knowing Hiromi has yet to eat.

Daimon sighs. “I guess I gotta cook for her. Seems easy enough — there’s frozen squid and bream downstairs.”

She has yet to see the bento box by the lamp that’s marked in Pentel for Hiromi.

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