Taiyaki Mondays
By Cheryl M.
He always ate from the tail.
Whenever people sat at the counter to eat the taiyaki they’d just bought I always looked to see which side of the fish-shaped pancake they ate from. I hadn’t been working there very long yet, but every single person I saw so far ate from the head. It made sense because we always served the taiyaki with its head poking out of the paper sleeve.
But one sweltering summer day in mid-August an outlier appeared. Someone pinched the piping hot taiyaki with his fingers and turned it upside down so that the tail was now facing up. This stray deviation from the usual pattern snagged my attention for a second. And then another second. And then another, and another until I was surreptitiously staring as I mixed a pot of red bean paste in a corner of the kitchen. He was a tall, lanky boy that looked around my age with dark hair and a battered guitar case on his back. I’d never seen him before. Usually I worked on Fridays, but that week I’d decided to try working on Monday for no reason other than I was a bored college student on vacation. Maybe the boy was a Monday regular. He sat next to a friend who was eating his own taiyaki (from the head) and had red hair and slanting eyes that reminded me of a fox. Instead of a guitar case a hefty camera was slung over his shoulder, under which was sandwiched a pile of what looked like drawings.
The dark-haired boy bit into the tail. With less red bean paste stuffed into the end it was thinner and crispier and I could hear the crunch from his mouth. So that was how it sounded when you ate from the tail. It was such a beautiful, satisfying crunch that I wanted to record it so I could savour it in my ears over and over again. He ate the taiyaki in slow, sure bites. There was a mole on his jaw, a neat, dignified spot, and I watched it move up and down in a subtle rhythm.
If this were a film, he’d look up and catch my gaze. We’d exchange a small smile that conveyed the promise of a future, and jaunty jazz would start playing out of nowhere as the camera cut between close-ups of our faces.
But this was reality, so he just carried on eating.
I didn’t believe in love at first sight. But maybe this was love at first observation.
Later, I tried asking my boss about him. Mr. Hagiwara was the owner of Kubo-taiyaki, an easy-going 52-year-old bachelor who liked chatting up his customers and gossiping about them later. He knew the names of every female customer between the ages of 40 and 60, but the two boys were out of his demographic. College students? Mr. Hagiwara wondered as he rubbed his round chin thoughtfully. I sighed at the lack of usefulness. But they seem to come on Mondays, he added as an afterthought.
I switched my shifts from that week onwards.
Sure enough, the boy came the following Monday. Mr. Hagiwara had gone out to buy ingredients and left me alone in the shop. It was 4pm and the sleepy street had drained of activity. No customers came until he appeared at the counter, almost as if he’d come to visit me right on cue. I could feel a secret smile warming up my throat. Then his fox-faced friend came bounding up to the counter from behind him and I blinked away my disappointment before taking their order with a professionally impassive smile.
Red bean, Fox said.
Red bean, please, he said. The extra please at the end tasted like a small delicious treat, like the excessive crust baked around the edges. He had a fine voice, deep with a soft hoarseness.
We have a 50-yen discount for students if you show us your student card, I said abruptly.
The boy’s eyes flicked up to mine—such big brown eyes—in mild surprise as if he’d never heard of such a thing. Which of course he hadn’t because I’d just made it up. The 50 yen would have to come out from my own pocket but it was a small price to pay. He finally pulled out a card. So he was a student, after all. A student called Teru Honda studying at Shobi College of the Arts. The guitar and the camera and the drawings made sense now. I clipped the name to his face and filed the image away in my head. Now I knew him by something other than the boy who ate from the tail. I could eavesdrop with context too, as I caught words like creative inspiration and video production and storyboards.
The taiyaki at our shop was special because each one was made on individual fish-shaped moulds that we held over the grill with long rods so that they cooked faster and crispier. It also meant that I knew the exact taiyaki I made for every customer. I left an extra scoop of red bean paste in one of them, and gave it to Teru. He showed no signs of realising that his taiyaki was just a tad plumper than his friend’s but it was satisfying enough to know my own hidden delivery. I watched it disappear into his mouth, tail first, and tried not to smile.
When they came again the next Monday Mr. Hagiwara was tottering around in the kitchen, so when he was out of earshot I had to tell them the student discount had been cancelled. But with every Monday he came after that, the illicit scoops got ever so slightly bigger and bigger. I never spoke to him out of the necessary but padding out the taiyaki just for him alone gave me a secret thrill. The taiyaki grew increasingly stuffed until it could barely contain its filling. He started to look me in the eye now when I served him.
He’d put the coins in my palm and I’d put the taiyaki in his hands, the wisp of barely-there contact hovering between us like a cloud. Sometimes he and his friend would sit at the counter inches away from me, and I’d hear snippets of conversation about music and cameras punctuated with the occasional crunch. I wondered if he noticed how the paste was almost bursting out of the crust. Or how my quietly simmering infatuation was also on the brink of doing the same.
Well, Mr. Hagiwara knew—not about the fake discounts or the extra toppings—but he was quick to catch on to my one-way admiration. He liked to poke and prod the embarrassment out of me, but was loyal enough to keep it a secret. When Teru and his friend came he simply sidled off to the kitchen and let me take the counter. Mr. Hagiwara was a good wingman.
One Monday though, I screwed up. Perhaps it was the intense afternoon heat that had radiated my senses, but somewhere in my consciousness the carefully constructed barriers had slipped away. I accidentally handed the taiyaki meant for Teru (so fat by now it almost looked pregnant) to his friend. Stupidly, I blurted: Sorry, that’s Teru’s—
Oh. Um. Um, it’shotsopleasebecarefulwhenyoueatit.
I calmly returned to the kitchen where Mr. Hagiwara was preparing more batter.
Mr. Hagiwara, I’m going to die. Please take over the counter.
My oblivious boss didn’t realise that I wasn’t supposed to know the boy’s name in the first place, let alone call him by it out loud, but he obligingly left me to take shelter in the kitchen like the supportive employer he was. I took over the batter, pounding away at it as if I could pulverize my mistake out of existence.
Come the following Monday, he and his friend didn’t turn up at the usual time. They came late at night right before we were going to close. Mr. Hagiwara raised his eyebrows. Should I take over the counter? His amused gaze asked. I furrowed my eyebrows back at him, no. They ordered a red bean taiyaki each and I set about cooking them, this time making sure to squeeze in an equal amount of red bean paste. I resolutely avoided looking at him. Instead I saw the red-haired friend smiling, his eyes and his long mouth stretched into a grin. He looked like a fox more than ever under the moonlight. They took the taiyaki and sat, and I went to the back of the kitchen to clean up for the night.
When I walked out of the shop, I stopped in surprise. Teru and Fox were still sitting at the counter, holding empty paper sleeves and looking at me. Were they waiting? I didn’t know what to say. Was there professional language for talking to customers outside of the workplace? What was the relationship between us now that I was out of my white apron?
Then Teru spoke: Would you like to go for a drink?
The question fell lightly on my head like a drop of rain. And then it bloomed into a warm flush that spread throughout my body all at once, as the invitation settled into place. Somewhere behind me, Mr. Hagiwara’s inquisitive eyes were boring into my back. Inside I was free-falling into a dimension far away from reality, but on the outside I nonchalantly agreed with my expression intact as if men came to pick me up after work all the time. Teru nodded back with equal nonchalance and so off we went to the bar down the street.
Sitting in a bar with two strangers late at night was the most unusual scenario. It also didn’t seem like the wisest thing to do in theory, but it would be a lie if I said I hadn’t already been completely taken in by Teru. We were now sitting at a small table in such close proximity that our knees were just slightly grazing like a whispered greeting. I registered Fox’s presence out of courtesy but my attention was firmly embedded into Teru. The three of us acted like this was completely normal. I suppose if I pretended we were just acting out a scene in a film then it would make sense.
The both of them, two years older than me, turned out to be fourth-year students at Shobi (old information) and Teru studied music composition while Fox worked in single camera production (brand new information). They were long-time friends and often worked with each other; for the final year production Fox was creating the music video for Teru’s song. They had an easy camaraderie that readily opened up to me, and soon enough I let myself melt into this strange night. Fox was a talkative person, constantly moving with his camera. Teru was quieter, but incredibly well-spoken and steadily drove the conversation with sharp wit.
Our universities turned out to be in the same vicinity. Shobi was a few blocks away from the taiyaki shop, from where they’d begun a habit of passing by Kubo-taiyaki for a midday snack. We also lived relatively close to each other—my apartment was a station away from the flat they shared. But it was near enough to be within walking distance, so when we left the bar Teru offered to walk me home. I said yes, eager to escape the artificial lights of the bar that would eventually disappear. I was lost enough as it is and wanted to just venture into the endless dark with him.
Thankfully Fox headed home first so I could have a whole fifteen minutes with Teru to myself. It still caught me off guard every now and then to be right by side without a counter between us, as if he was a fictional character come to life. We walked companionably in the streets. A deeper sort of night was descending upon us, and I was rising up into it like a hot air balloon going further and further away from the ground.
We stopped at a traffic light. Silence.
Then Teru asked: Are you interested in me or something?
A direct hit.
What a self-confident person he must be to ask such a question, I thought.
I didn’t quite have an answer. All he’d done was bite into a baked fish upside down, but I was the one who’d unwittingly been hooked and reeled in. When you stood for hours in the same small space doing the same actions and saying the same words in an endless loop, the smallest thing caught your attention. And so it just happened that Teru had been the one to untangle something in my senses that had clotted over the mundane days that passed. What did I like about him? I suppose I just liked the fact that he existed at the counter every Monday. Truthfully, my affection was entirely concentrated in the ten minutes he sat there once a week.
I’m interested for as long as you keep coming to buy our taiyaki, I said finally.
Spoken like a good salesman, he laughed, and it occurred to me that I’d never heard him laugh. Our interactions had so far been limited to one specific situation where we replayed the same scene over and over again. The possibility of more ballooned in my mind, so that when he asked me the next question the reply leapt out with light promptness.
Do you want to go out with me?
Yes, I do.
The exchange was brief and concise, and we nodded at each other in assent. It was almost ceremonious; we could have signed a certificate or something. A small thought did nip at my mind, that everything was proceeding almost too perfectly. But I decided we were just two very efficient people who had found each other, so I crumpled up those tiny doubts and threw them to the back of my head. It wasn’t till I got home that my cheeks started to ache, and I realised I’d been smiling the whole time.
And so began our incidental romance. The rest of the summer played out exactly like a montage in a film. We did everything that could possibly appear in a romantic comedy: sunbathing by the sea, eating shaved ice at a café, watching new films at the cinema. He took my hand and led me through the days with the spontaneity of a student whose final moments of freedom were running through his fingers like hot sand. We still had our taiyaki Mondays. He promptly showed up in the afternoon and Mr. Hagiwara would complain about me using the workplace as a dating spot, to which I reasoned I was simply maintaining our clientele. I brought leftover taiyaki from the shop and we shared them after my shift.
Occasionally, when we were tipsy from a few drinks, I’d bite from the head and he’d come in from the tail. Infatuation felt disgusting but good.
The only slight nit I had to pick at was Fox, who seemed to be with us half the time. They were constantly together working on their production, and so naturally he’d tag along when Teru came to find me. He seemed all too happy to be a fly on the wall, so on the rare occasion I wasn’t thinking about Teru I privately questioned the necessity of Fox’s presence. I tried not let this bother me, eventually accepting that Fox was just a part of the package deal. After all he’d come before me, so I had to grant him the privilege of order. Sometimes I wasn’t sure who was being the third wheel, but at the very least it was my hand that Teru preferred to hold and not Fox’s.
Sometimes the three of us went to the neighbourhood park and he’d play the guitar. Teru would let me listen to snippets of the song he was writing for his graduation project. I asked him what kind of song it was going to be.
It’s a love song.
But that’s every song. What kind of love is it?
I didn’t think about it in that much detail, he replied. I just took a girl and a guy and placed them in their roles and bam—they’re now a force of nature known as love. I’ve joined their fates together for the length of a song.
It sounded a little pretentious, but I told him I was looking forward to the final song.
The days passed steadily. That summer had started to feel like chewing on a round rice cake—so soft and warm with every bite caressing my mouth with satisfying sweetness. Strangely though, as I chewed and chewed, I found the density almost smothering from time to time.
One day towards the end of the summer, when the autumn wind was starting to make its tentative approach, Teru suggested going to an outdoor rock festival. I was about to say yes when he added that Fox would be there taking videos with his camera, and I shut my mouth. Today I didn’t feel like sharing Teru. All too often it was them taking the lead, with me following after the guitar and the camera on their backs. I wanted to take Teru and me and put us in our roles as girl and boy, as lovers. Let me be the director today, I thought. And just write Fox out of the scene for once.
Let’s go to your place and watch that show you told me about, I said almost plaintively. I’m not in the mood for rock today. Can’t we just vegetate together on your sofa?
It didn’t come out as romantic or funny as I wanted, but I could see Teru wavering. So I touched his elbow, the tiniest weapon of physicality crushing whatever other ideas he had. At last he conceded, and we headed to their empty flat.
For the first time I saw the place where Teru slept, ate and created. Several guitars and a keyboard were crammed into a corner, and pages and pages of sheet music were everywhere. They wallpapered his bedroom, burst out of drawers, and overflowed into the living room that he and Fox shared. I followed the sheets out and settled myself down carefully among them in front of the television. The tape for the show was buried somewhere among the musical mess of his room, so Teru disappeared in search of it.
As I waited, I peered at the papers strewn across their tiny coffee table with pencils and erasers littered all around. There I found a few stray pages labelled Final Year Project in rough black marker, clearly the song Teru had been working on. A wave of curiosity swelled and sent my arms afloat as I reached out to pick it up. It was then when I noticed another haphazard pile of paper next to it. They didn’t contain lyrics or scores; instead there were rows of neat boxes filled with pencil markings. Post-its lined the pages with short notes: Storyboard completion by early August. To be filmed August/September. Post-production by September.
It was a storyboard for a music video. I briefly remembered the drawings that Fox always had sandwiched under the camera on his shoulder. The sketches in every box were drawn with enough skill that I immediately recognised the first frame—the taiyaki shop. There was the wooden Kubo-taiyaki sign, the counter...a small, thin figure, standing at the register with two taiyaki in hand. Clearly not my pot-bellied boss.
A conversation with Teru bobbed up in my memory. I’d pressed him to tell me about his graduation project, which he never talked about. All I knew was that they were hard at work putting Fox’s music video to Teru’s song. It’s coming together, he said vaguely. We finally found our inspiration at the beginning of summer so it was always just a matter of execution.
The beginning of summer, when Teru first saw me.
The sequence led my eyes across the boxes, one after another, as more figures began to appear. A lanky boy with a guitar on his back, sitting at the counter in front of a girl. Lyrics to a love song and timestamps marked the scenes. A page later, the setting began to change. The shop became a bar. To be filmed 8/20. Then the dark streets outside, then they breezed into a cycle of beaches and cafes and parks. To be filmed 8/22. To be filmed 8/23. To be filmed 8/31. The calendar of my own summer flashed across my mind as I turned the pages, memories starting to fill out the black pencil lines with colour that was real and familiar.
My story was metamorphosing into a music video right before my eyes, drawn by a phantom hand that had scripted the affair between me and Teru before it even began. Except there was a missing character.
Fox.
Fox, the fly on the wall that hovered in the background but was very much there.
Fox, with the camera in his hands. Fox, who had scouted and given me to Teru.
At the bottom of the page I saw a box with a drawing of a stage. Otodashi Rock Fest, the caption read. To be filmed 9/2. Today. The boy and the girl stood together among a pencilled mass of bodies. It was the climax of the song, the self-indulgent swell of passion during the bridge. The boy was now embracing the girl, his face close to hers—although her expression had been left blank as if unpredictable. So this was where time had stopped, where I’d interrupted the plot. I turned to the next page and saw a future that shone too brightly for reality. I thought about how smoothly Teru had been rendered into my life, as easily as a pencil slicing across sheets of paper.
On the last page was a final post-it: Deadline for completion September 24.
I’ve joined their fates together for the length of a song, Teru had said.
A raindrop of realization fell lightly on my head once again. Only this time it was acidic, slowly spreading through my veins and inundating my blood with loathing. Apparently I was a convenient actor who’d passed an audition I never entered.
That’s okay.
It’s fine.
I can take over the director’s role.
Shoving the piles of paper aside, I found an eraser. I picked it up and with executive certainty scrubbed straight down the page, erasing the rest of the story for good.