Work Text:
The characters in front of Nene were starting to dance around the page, merging into an incomprehensible pattern of squiggles. Nene closed her eyes, rubbing them to try to alleviate the strain. But the words on the page still weren’t making much sense at a second glance, and she abandoned all pretense that she was making any progress in reading through the document.
Nene blinks, turning her attention to the clock in the room. It was already past five.
“I think that’s it for today,” Nene announces to the room, watching as pure joy begins to appear on the faces of the people around the room.
Nene stood up from her desk, wincing as her back protested from having to remain in a hunched position for hours. She ought to have a more ergonomic set-up, especially now that she was getting older, but it was only for another month at this temporary office before she got ready to implement the next phase of her operations.
Nene watches as people begin wrapping up their work, packing to get ready to leave. They had all worked hard these past couple of months, getting ready for the launch of her line of soba products across the country. When she had first embarked on this venture, she had thought it would be easy to implement, seeing as she had been product testing for years before she was satisfied. Months later, Nene would end up realizing just how foolish her flippancy had been.
Nene puts the documents in her bag, turning off her computer with a few clicks. Nene puts on her coat, wrapping the scarf around her neck before grabbing her bag and phone on her desk.
“Good work,” Nene calls out in the room, hearing it repeated as she walks out of the office.
Unlocking her phone, Nene sees a text message from her husband.
When are you coming home tonight?
Nene stops at the elevator, pressing the down button before she quickly fires off a text back. She had to make a quick stop at the department store to buy a new spatula, but after that, it would take her roughly half an hour to get back to her apartment, depending on how busy the trains were at this time of day.
She could see the bubbles as her husband began to text back, but was distracted by the elevator’s doors opening.
Entering the elevator, Nene presses the button for the ground floor, the doors closing as it descends.
Could you get me some more sake? was her husband’s reply.
That was strange, Nene thought she saw a bottle in the fridge last night. But she texted back, agreeing to go to the supermarket before coming home, just as the elevator doors opened on the ground floor. Nene put her phone in her pocket, adjusting her bag as she exited the elevator.
Walking through the foyer and pushing through the main doors of the building onto the busy streets of Shibuya, Nene is momentarily blinded by the lights reflected by the advertisements playing across the various buildings. Blinking back from her temporary blindness, Nene noticed the red and white lights strewn across the trees on the streets.
Was it December already? When? How?
Mentally going through the dates, Nene is reminded that after November 30th came December right on its heels. That was right, yesterday was November 30th, and there wasn’t an extra date after that came before December. So it was the beginning of the last month of the year.
A bump against her shoulder, Nene startled out of her thoughts before continuing to make her way through the crowded streets of Shibuya.
How did this happen? It seemed as though every year, the holidays crept up on her without her knowledge.
Now aware, Nene could see the signs everywhere; advertisements that were red and green, the street lights up above had been decorated, and even the shop windows were decorated with snowflakes and tinsel. The discordance of the streets from its usual displays to the explosion of festive holiday cheer had Nene discombobulated as she headed towards the department store.
The department store was also decorated in festive colours, accompanied by its music. Nene stepped off the escalator to the basement level to the household goods, hesitating upon seeing the latest deals in front of various rice cookers.
After going through various aisles, Nene found a spatula, along with a whisk, a rolling pin, and an interesting egg separator gadget—more for her husband’s intrigue than for herself.
Heading to the cashier, Nene paid for her items, putting them in her bag.
Nene felt a buzz in her pocket, and she took her phone out to see a new text.
Could you also get me some umeboshi?
A strange request, considering that it was neither one of them particularly liked umeboshi, but then again, her husband had recently been in the mood to experiment, grumbling about some up-and-comer chef that was getting some buzz-worthy praise in the culinary world.
Nene acknowledged the text, pocketing her phone as she headed towards the train station.
Another buzz came from her pocket, and Nene sighed, taking out her phone.
Eggs too.
Nene closed her eyes, willing for the gods to grant her patience. She just bought a dozen yesterday.
The bubbles began to appear again, and Nene, exasperated, shot off a text.
Anything else?
Nene had started descending the steps towards the station when the buzzing started again, and continued as she swiped through the ticket gate and walked towards the platform to her train.
The train arrived moments later, and Nene boarded it with some difficulty, wedging her body as far as it could go along with the rush hour crowd.
The buzzing continued, but Nene didn’t have to look at the resulting texts to know that they were getting increasingly inane, a symptom of her husband when boredom began to kick in. In other words, there was no need to humour his requests, considering that none of them were serious.
The last time that happened, Nene found several aquarium tanks in the living room, a paraphernalia of pumps and filters and tubing haphazardly thrown around as her husband sat on the floor, reading instructions on how to set it all up. When asked what was going on, her husband sheepishly said that he thought it would be an interesting venture to start his own fish farm—something he’d seen on social media and gotten inspired to do the same.
And who was going to take care of all these fish, Nene demanded. Well, after the initial start-up, which was going to take a bit of work, it was going to be a self-sustaining process, which sounded more like the problem was going to solve itself out by the method of dead fish. Nene had forced him to return everything back to the store, with the promise that he was going to have to talk things over with her before he got another one of those brilliant ideas—and although Nene couldn’t stop some of them, like the demolition of their kitchen, at least Nene had done her best to mitigate some of the blow-back, like going through the blueprints to make sure that she had some sway in how their kitchen was going to turn out. And honestly, Nene loved their new kitchen, even though she wasn’t going to tell her husband that, having also experienced three months sans a kitchen and having to cook their meals with a portable stove.
Lately, her husband’s boredom was beginning to ramp up, especially since he had some downtime in between his schedule. And Nene would rather her husband get back to work, or else suffer from the effects of his boredom.
Nene was going to have to rush back to their apartment just to make sure no further shenanigans were to occur without her watch.
Six stops later, Nene rushes out of the train, quickly swiping herself out through the ticket gate and hurrying to exit 9, running up the three flights of stairs to the streets, the ten-minute commute back to her apartment becoming cut down to eight, Nene stopped by the traffic lights as she willed it to change for her.
By the time Nene arrived at her apartment building, she was already imagining all sorts of scenarios that could befall the apartment, her trust in her husband diminished to nil.
The typical elevator ride up to her floor felt longer than it was typically, and Nene resisted the urge to bite her nails, just as it arrived on her floor.
The few dozen steps to her apartment were nothing as Nene got out her keys and opened the door to her apartment, expecting the worst.
There was nothing different to the genkan, no suspicious packages, no new additions.
“I’m home,” Nene calls out cautiously, as she takes her shoes off, feet going inside the slippers.
“Oh, you’re home already,” her husband calls out from the living room—his voice slightly unhinged, from the sounds of it.
Her coat and scarf were the next to go, hung in the closet as Nene tried to ready herself for whatever crazy idea her husband had concocted. It couldn’t have been worse than the time when he had ordered an industrial fan and had to take the hinges off their front door to get that in. It was just as fun as having to tell him in no uncertain terms that he could not keep it, and that he had to take the hinges off their front door to get it out.
But she couldn’t outright dismiss it as something he wouldn’t do again.
With that depressing thought in mind, Nene heads towards the living room.
“What did you do—” Nene stops as she stands in front of the living room.
“Surprise,” Satoshi beams, just as Nene sees the tree.
While Nene had never really celebrated the holidays, the same couldn’t be said about her husband, who enjoyed every moment of the Western traditions, embracing it as though it were one of his own. Last year, he had gone all out with the decorations in their apartment, and it seemed as though he’d gotten even more exuberant in his decorating. If there ever was a shortage of tinsel in the city, Nene knew exactly the reason for it.
Not to mention that it is way too early for that. It was just the beginning of December, after all. Nene tells Satoshi this, even though she accepts the kiss from him, seeing as there is some kind of green twig attached to the doorway.
“I know,” Satoshi grins, “that’s the surprise.”
This means that Nene would have to endure having all these decorations in her living room until the end of the month.
“The best part—” Satoshi begins, ignoring Nene’s muttering that she couldn’t believe there was a best part, “—is this!”
With a flick of a button, the lights on the tree begin to twinkle, and holiday music starts to play loudly.
“Oh, that is the best part,” Nene says faintly.
“I knew you’d like it!” Satoshi beams at her.
And seeing the delight on her husband’s face, it was enough to swallow up whatever Nene had to say about the matter.
The reason for having done all of this was that Satoshi wasn’t going to be back until after the new year, needing to leave for Los Angeles for some kind of super secret project that had Satoshi fill NDAs by the bucketful.
“Don’t open the presents until I get back,” Satoshi pouts at her before he leaves for the airport.
Nene rolled her eyes. Like she was going to. But she agreed to it all the same, even offering her pinky to seal the deal with her childish husband.
And with that, Nene is on her own for the next three weeks. Not that she had much time to enjoy it, having been bombarded with more documents to review and meetings to attend, the final push to get everything ready for her product launch. During this time, it felt as though all the problems Nene had previously pushed aside for her future self to solve had all emerged, needing her to solve them at the eleventh hour.
By the time Nene returned to the apartment, she seldom collapsed in bed, mostly missing it entirely and falling asleep on the floor, only to wake up in the middle of the night when her body protested enough to climb into bed.
So busy was Nene that she’d managed to forget the holiday cards that came in without fail around this time of the year.
When Nene received the first card in the mail, from one Tadokoro Megumi, it had sent her in a tailspin to the point where she texted her busy husband in the early hours of Los Angeles to ask whether she needed to send holiday cards out to their friends and family.
Relax, I sent them before I left, was his text back, hours later. By then, Nene had bought a stack of cards and envelopes and was on her way to trying to figure out how to write a holiday greeting before abandoning all pretense that she was going to be able to write and mail all these cards out in time for the holidays.
It wasn’t just Tadokoro Megumi’s card that came in the mail either. By the time mid-December rolled around, Nene received holiday cards from nearly everyone that they’d known, from the familiar to the bizarre, from family members to an organizer they’d met years ago at a world gourmet competition.
Nene did her best to place the cards around the tree for Satoshi to see them when he came back, but whenever Nene would approach the tree, it appeared to be possessed with the ability to scare the shit out of her, suddenly belting out holiday tunes and flashing lights at her until she scurried out of harm’s way, wondering when it would stop, and how Satoshi had managed to hide the switch that would kill the damn thing and put it out of its misery.
She had tried to find the kill switch among the branches and tinsel and ornaments to no avail, giving up when the music turned out to be too much for Nene to handle, and defeated, she opted to just leave it for Satoshi to dismantle once he returned.
As the holidays approached, Nene wished her employees a happy holiday as they took a break for the next two weeks. Nene forced herself to take a break as well, aware that she was nearing burning herself out from overwork.
On her second day of her enforced break, Nene receives a holiday card from Rindou-senpai and Tsukasa-senpai, with a return address somewhere in Australia. A photo slips out from the card, and Nene manages to catch it before it falls on the floor. Looking at the photo, Nene could see a happy Rindou-senpai and Tsukasa-senpai grinning at her with their baby girl, all dressed in matching sweaters.
To the Isshiki family, it began.
Nene stopped reading at that, the simple greeting somehow reaching into her heart and squeezing it.
That feeling, coupled with being all by herself in the apartment, made Nene realize that she missed Satoshi.
So much so that Nene had started to compose a text to her husband to let him know. She erased her text in the end before she sent it.
No, that would make him feel worse, knowing that he was stuck halfway on the other side of the world without any means to return in time for the holidays.
Nene just had to suck it up. It was just an ordinary day like no other. When Satoshi returns, she’ll just have to celebrate it with him then.
Didn’t mean that the bed felt any warmer by the time Nene got in bed, looking over at the empty side where her husband slept next to her.
In the morning, Nene woke to loud holiday music. With a start, Nene’s eyes widened as she realized there was someone in the living room.
How does she deal with intruders? Nene reached for her phone, dialling the police as she looked for something to defend herself with. She finds a hair dryer, which is better than nothing.
She didn’t think there was anything valuable in the apartment, just a few awards from Satoshi that were placed in the living room, but it was likely they’d take whatever that was not nailed down on the floor.
Opening the door, Nene peeks out towards the living room. She couldn’t see anything unless she turned around the corner.
“There’s an intruder in my apartment,” Nene whispers at the police dispatcher, creeping closer to the living room.
As she rounded the corner, Nene dropped the hair dryer in surprise at the person standing in the middle of the living room.
“Surprise,” Satoshi says, just as the police dispatcher asks her if everything is okay.
Nene quickly reassures the police dispatcher that it was a mistake, ending the call. For a moment, Nene wonders if everything was just a fevered dream as a result of a yearning to see her husband for the holidays.
Satoshi proved that it wasn’t a dream when he crossed over to her, kissing her.
“Merry Christmas,” Satoshi whispers.
He was going to have to do a lot more than that, Nene thinks, as she reaches up to pull him back down for another kiss.
“Explain,” Nene demands, moments later, when they were cuddled on the sofa, because last she checked, Satoshi wasn’t due to return until January.
“I couldn’t miss spending Christmas without you,” Satoshi explains, and even though that date had no meaning to Nene, somehow, the infectious spirit of the Western holiday had also managed to warm her heart.
Nene smiles, leaning against Satoshi. This was how it should be, spending the holidays with Satoshi at her side.
“Merry Christmas, Satoshi,” Nene says, even as the confounded tree begins to come to life, blasting out the holiday music amidst the twinkling lights.
“Merry Christmas, Nene,” Satoshi kisses her.