I called my ole man later that day.

Actually I didn’t. I would have had too much packing, and we don’t have that type of relationship. Don’t just call each other at random.

Or maybe I did.

Let’s say I did.

Let’s say I called him at the airport, while waiting for my flight to board.

Nighttime my time, morning his.

He’d just wrapped up a workout.

Tryna beat his consecutive push-up record.

He had. Eighty-five.

While doing some wild Wim Hof breath-deprivation method, not breathing the whole time.

“Wild, bro. Careful,” I said.

He was posted in his spot sipping coffee looking out at the Sea of Japan North Korea had been shooting test missiles into.

Short-arming them, dropping em just shy of the shore. But in his direction.

He was ratcheting up his English teaching shit, printing flyers for and hosting home-based weekend lessons to supplement his weekday school lessons at the Waldorf School there.

“Damn, you really the plug for these English bars, innit.”

Only white dude around for miles, way tf up there in Hokkaido.

“Well these kids don’t have many impressions of Americans. Only what they see on TV,” he said. “And there’s still some cultural resentment there.

“It’s important to provide other references of America for these kids—that’s the next generation, ya know.”

“Provide alternate reference points,” I said. “I like that.”

He mumbled something in Japanese.

Like Oh, no, you can have some, it sounded like.

Then went Ah, guess you can’t! laughing.

His wife’s son had come into the kitchen for coffee, he’d told him he’d make some for him, but then had spaced out and drank it all.

Gomen! Sorry!

His wife’s son was eighteen. Was eleven when his birth dad and mom broke up. When my dad swooped in and took over.

I also eleven when my parents split. When my dad dipped.

Like my dad was picking up where he left off.

Round 2.

Second try.

Hell yeah, bud. Giving it another shot.

Not everyone got one.

“He actually sorta reminds me of you,” my dad said. “Very…sensitive.”

“Bitch who you callin sensitive.”

“No—it’s a good thing!” my dad said. “It’s because you’re sensitive you’re a writer.”

“Alright, bro. Careful.”

Could hear the coffeemaker gurgling as he put on a new pot, for his new son.

When I dropped the I-novel burakumin bars on him he already knew all about em.

“Oh yeah, completely rejected by society, the buraku,” he said.

“Seems relevant to all the handicapped folks, growing up. How we hide the deformed, cast out the outcast,” I mused.

They were boarding priority seating. I had a sec; I was Group D.

I gathered my things, swept off all the skin scales I’d scraped off my face, that had fallen onto my lap.