Chapter 6: The Forgotten Business Trip
The apartment was too quiet. It was a different quiet from when Shuichi was at work. This quiet was absolute, a vacuum that pressed against Maki’s eardrums. The faint, comforting rustle from the other room—his hesitant movements, the soft click of his laptop, the clearing of his throat before speaking—was gone. The space felt dead.
She stood in the center of the living room, her arms crossed over the hard shelf of her stomach. Her back ached. Her feet were swollen. A low, simmering fury had been building in her chest since lunchtime, a pressure cooker with a faulty valve. She stared at the wall where his jacket usually hung. Empty. The hook was a taunt.
He should be here.
The thought was irrational, seismic. It reverberated through her bones. He had a job. A life. She knew this. Logic was a feeble thing against the tide of hormones and sheer, possessive need that flooded her system. The baby shifted, a heavy, rolling motion that made her gasp. It felt like a reprimand. See? Even she knows he’s supposed to be here.
She walked, her bare feet slapping against the cold floorboards. To the kitchen. The sink was empty, no solitary cup from his morning tea. To the bedroom. The bed was neatly made, one side perfectly smooth, untouched since he’d left it. His pillow. She stared at it. It still held the slight indent of his head.
A snarl ripped from her throat, raw and guttural. She snatched the pillow up, crushing it against her face. It smelled like him. His shampoo, his skin, the faint, clean scent of his sweat. The smell was a catalyst. The pressure cooker blew.
“Stupid!” she screamed into the cotton, her voice muffled. “Worthless! Forgetful bastard!” She punctuated each insult by slamming the pillow against the mattress. “Where are you?!” The last word tore out of her, high-pitched and cracking. She threw the pillow across the room. It hit the window with a soft thud and slid down the glass.
She was breathing hard, spots dancing in her vision. Her hands trembled. She looked at them, these tools that once could disassemble a high-caliber rifle in the dark, that knew the exact pressure needed to collapse a trachea. They were shaking because her husband wasn’t home to make her evening tea.
The humiliation was a cold wave, washing over the heat of her rage. It left her shivering and exposed. She hated this. Hated the vulnerability, the neediness, the way her entire nervous system seemed wired to his presence. It was a weakness. A critical flaw.
Her phone was on the nightstand. She grabbed it, her fingers moving with a familiar, vicious precision. Not to call. Calling was acknowledgement. Calling was needing. She opened her messaging app and stabbed out a text.
If you’re dead in a ditch I’m going to kill you.
Send.
You were supposed to be home an hour ago. Your dinner is cement.
Send.
I hope your train derails. Gently. Just enough to teach you a lesson.
Send.
She watched the screen. No bouncing dots. No reply. The silence from the device was louder than the silence of the apartment. The fury crested again, white-hot and blinding. She flung the phone onto the bed. It bounced. She picked up one of his shirts from the laundry basket—a soft, grey cotton one he’d worn two days ago—and wrapped her arms around it, burying her face in the fabric. It was saturated with him. She breathed it in, a deep, shuddering inhale. It calmed something primal in her hindbrain. For about ten seconds.
Then the phone rang.
The sound was a shock in the quiet room. She dropped the shirt and scrambled for the device, her heart hammering against her ribs. She saw his name. Shuichi. A vicious triumph surged through her. He was calling to apologize. To beg. She would eviscerate him. She would—
She tapped answer, but didn’t speak. She let the silence bleed into the line, a weapon in itself.
“M-Maki?” His voice was tinny through the speaker, hesitant. There was background noise—the murmur of a crowd, a distant train announcement. “Hey… I got your texts. Are you… are you okay?”
The concern in his voice, the genuine, soft worry, was the wrong script entirely. It threw her. She’d prepared for a fight, for his weak excuses. Not for this.
“Okay?” she repeated, her voice dangerously low. “No, I’m not okay. Where the hell are you? Your food is cold. It’s disgusting.
She heard him take a small, sharp breath on the other end of the line. It was the sound he made when bracing for impact.
“Maki, I… I told you about this trip last week,” he said, his voice soft, carefully placating. A train announcement echoed behind him, metallic and distant. “The forensic conference in the next prefecture? I… I have the itinerary on the fridge. You initialed it.”
The words landed in her mind like stones dropped into a still pond. The ripples spread out, disturbing the murky water of her fury. A faint, ghostly image flickered behind her eyes: herself, slumped on the couch, a documentary about Balkan poisons on the television. Him, standing nervously by the coffee table, holding a piece of paper. His mouth moving. Her grunt of acknowledgement. Her hand, scribbling something—her initials—without looking up from the screen.
Her face, already warm with anger, flushed a deeper, hotter crimson. The heat crept down her neck, a burning tide of shame. The memory was clear now, ugly in its clarity. She had given permission. Distracted, annoyed permission, but permission nonetheless.
The silence stretched, thick and charged.