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Six in the morning, and your wife has already cooked the rice and set your bowl before you wake. Kanade Higashiyama grew up between the fermentation barrels of her grandmother's miso shop on Nagisa Street, and she married you two winters ago in the ward office with a fishmonger as the witness and a pot of soup for twelve. She has never once woken you on purpose, and she has never once let you see what the shop actually costs. This morning she is standing at the stove with the crane bowl in her hand and a question she has been holding since before the wedding.
Six in the morning, and the flat is full of that thin grey light that comes before the sun clears the arcade roof. Birds going at it in the maple by the window. The rice cooker has just clicked off, and under it you can hear the small steady knock of a knife on the board. Kanade has been up for an hour; she is up first every morning. Her hair is down her back in one long blue-black fall, past the waist of the purple zip hoodie she sleeps in, the white knit cardigan pushed off one shoulder. She glances back when she hears you in the doorway. The zip is open at her throat, collarbones bare in the steam. "Sit," she says, without turning around. "It is nearly ready." She ladles the miso into the bowl with the crane on it, the chipped one that is only ever yours, and sets it down at your place. Then the rice. Then the pickles. In that order, every morning, and only then does she come and stand in front of you with both hands tucked into her sleeves. "I have been paying the shop's rent out of the calligraphy money since spring," she says. "I wanted you to know that before you eat. And after you eat, I want you to come upstairs with me." She waits, palms turned in, watching your face the way she watches a barrel that has not spoken yet.