“But I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“No,” he agreed. “And neither have I. Nothing that can’t be forgiven, anyway.”
She shook her head dismissively. “I don’t care what they do. I might be able to find a different job. Though I wouldn’t have the same salary, and with all the low-wage foreign workers Japan’s brought in, there aren’t as many openings as before. But I’m sure it won’t come to that.”
Sedge didn’t want her to lose her job, but she reassured him repeatedly.
“Has Takahashi done anything I should know about?”
“Nothing so far.”
From the corner of his eye he noticed Riku staring at them through the window. The bird continued to stand at the end of the bench, with a towel on its shoulders like a customer at a spa.
After dinner, Riku finished building the cage. He had done a good job, and Sedge trusted it would keep the bird safe overnight and make it easier to transport in the morning. After coaxing the bird inside, they closed the cage door and slid a latch to keep it shut. The heron banged against the bars for a few minutes, but soon gave up its struggle.
The workmanship of the cage was sturdier and of a more complex design than Sedge expected. He was impressed, too, with the speed at which Riku had completed it.
“Thank you for this, Riku. If the bird recovers, you’ll be a big reason why.”
Riku peered inside the cage. “Do you think it will be all right?”
“It depends on its injuries.”
“I guess I’ll stay with it tonight.”
“Outside?” Sedge said. “You’ll get eaten by mosquitoes.”
“I don’t mind.”
The next thing Sedge knew, Riku ran back to the kura. He returned a moment later with a blanket and pillow.
“You don’t have to stay,” he told Sedge. “You can trust me, you know.”
Mariko arranged a futon for Sedge two rooms away from hers. In the middle of the night, however, she tiptoed into his room, slipping under his covers and hugging him. “Riku’s watching over the bird. He won’t hear us.”
When Sedge woke up with sunlight streaming through the shōji windows, she was gone. The house had filled with the smells of toast and coffee and also with the thumping of footsteps on the first floor.
He went downstairs and into the dining room. In the veranda, Riku was looking through the window at the bird. He had stayed beside it until Mariko awakened him. The bird, sitting on its towel as if on a brood of chicks, its yellow eyes level with the hump of its back and pinned on Riku’s movements, was more lethargic today than yesterday, which worried all three of them.
“Did you hear it in the middle of the night?” Riku asked. “I untied its beak and it started squawking. I had to open the cage and retie that old shoelace around it again.”
“Why did you untie it?” Sedge said, glancing at Riku’s hands. “It could have cut you badly with its beak.”
“I wanted to give it water and food. Anyway, I grabbed it quickly, before it could peck me.”
“It would have given you more than a peck. You were lucky.”
“Good morning,” Mariko said as Sedge walked into the kitchen.
“Good morning.” They were careful not to be affectionate in front of Riku, who was observing them. “What time do you want to leave?”
“Riku has to go in an hour. I thought we’d leave then, too, if that’s all right.”
An hour later Riku left the house; Sedge stood in the kitchen listening to the uneven clomping of him running down the street to meet his bus. When he was gone, Mariko came back from seeing him off. She ran into Sedge’s arms. Almost immediately the bird started banging against it cage.
On the way to the bird reserve, Sedge pointed to a road slightly below the one they were on. “That’s where I found it.” He wanted to inform the veterinarian of this, so when the time came to release it into the wild, they might try to do so as close to there as possible.
She dropped him off with the bird and the bicycle he had rented yesterday, apologizing again for having to leave him alone. She walked the bicycle to the entrance of the observation building while he carried the heron in Riku’s cage.
“When will I see you again?” she said.
“It depends on where the ryokan assigns you.”
She peered down the road they’d taken here. “I thought I might talk to Riku at dinner this evening. I think he might like having you around more. He seems to have more in common with you than with other men he knows.”
“If you think that’s best,” he said. However, he was unsure why she needed to do this.
“I’m sorry, that’s not quite what I wanted to say.”
He waited for her to continue.
She didn’t speak again right away, perhaps hoping he would understand without her explaining herself. “You said you have to leave the ryokan in several days. But there’s no way you’ll find anywhere to move to before that. For the time being, I thought you might want to move in with us.”
He set the heron down and came closer to hug her. His commitment to her was complicated by the fact that neither of them had explicitly shared what they wanted from each other. He enjoyed being with her and found her as giving and supportive as anyone he could hope to meet. That seemed as good a place to start as any.
“Thank you. But I don’t want to move in if he’s going to resist. Even if you don’t always feel like his mother, the fact is that you are.”
