Paths are made by walking
“Paths are made by walking.”― Franz Kafka
The world was becoming an unrecognizable blur of color and sound while the train sped up. September was warm, but rainy, which Touya wasn’t very fond of. Hot air was gluing his hair to his neck while the rain relentlessly hit the windows and the humidity made it hard to catch a breath. Touya rubbed his eyes only to tiredly look back at the screen. The letters were starting to dance in front of his eyes, becoming oddly-looking shapes, blurred and unclear. He sighed and took a sip of his water, wincing at the sour taste of lemons. He quickly put the water away and leaned his chin in his palm, scrolling down the page with less and less interest.
The offers were ridiculous. The apartments were either too expensive, too far away from the university or looked as if time stopped in 1975 and never moved on although that was the least relevant of his worries. Touya sighed, briefly looking out the window while the rain kept pouring. He forgot to bring his umbrella with him. Truthfully, he felt ridiculous looking through the apartment offers, but he couldn’t help but at least browse through them and think of what life could look like—someday, in a different reality, where he could afford an apartment instead of a room with more cracks on the walls than fingers by his hands, and a roommate whom he refused to think of on his day off.
Touya grimaced and leaned his head on the window. He shut the laptop and hid it in his backpack, stealing a glance at his phone. He’d been on the train for five hours already. He’d arrive soon. Finally, he thought although there was hardly anything joyful about it. Touya yawned, stretching his limbs as much as the position he was sitting in allowed him to and then, he heard a rustle of paper in his jeans pocket. His fingers found the pocket on their own and smoothly pulled out a creased piece of paper he must have hidden there and forgot about it until now. Touya watched the piece of paper silently for a few seconds before he reached for a pen. He tried to smoothen it on his knee although the ride proved to be quite shaky. He brought the pen to the paper, staining his fingers blue in the creases of his knuckles. He still had some time left.
Takahama was a fishing town, which had its charm if you liked fishing. Needles to say, Touya did not like fishing. He had no one to go fishing with anyway. On sunny days, Touya would walk along the shore with his feet buried deep in the golden sand, warming up his skin while the sun spilled all over the emerald water. In the rainy season, the beaches turned into mud and the water turned dark and cold. In Takahama, there were not many places to visit and even the beaches became bland and tedious if you spent your entire life visiting them every other day. The town was exceptionally uninteresting and to put it simply, it suffocated Touya every time he came back.
The rain was still pouring heavily on his head while he made his way to his family house, trying to omit the puddles gathering on the street even though his only pair of old red converse had already been through worse. His family lived somewhat on a hill that to Touya had always looked more like a narrow street going only a little bit higher than the main street. Naturally, there was only one main street in Takahama, and it wasn’t extraordinarily crowded. At the street he lived, the buildings were old, quite like their inhabitants. In Takahama, it was unheard of for someone to move to the town and at Touya’s street everybody knew each other better than he wanted to. Touya’s family lived in a two story high house that looked considerably shabbier compared to their neighbors’ houses, but Touya stopped noticing it a long time ago or simply, he stopped caring. They had a little yard behind the house and an old swing hung on a branch of the tree growing there since he could only remember, but it had been ages since anyone used it.
Touya climbed the steps, dragging his backpack upstairs with sighs escaping his lips from time to time. His shirt stuck to his back and his hair was glued to his face while droplets ran down his chin. Touya stretched his hand out and knocked on the door a good few times, impatiently shifting from one leg to another until the door opened and his mother appeared in the threshold. She smiled at him warmly only to quickly pull him inside with terror written all over her face.
“Where is your umbrella?” Naomi asked, brushing his wet hair off his face.
She pulled the backpack off his shoulders and disappeared behind the bathroom door, fetching him the biggest towel that they happened to own.
“Thanks,” Touya said, stealing a glance at this reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall in the hallway.
His black hair had already curled at the ends beneath his ears; his cheeks reddened while the rest of his face shone with a thin sheet of sweat, making the freckles his face was peppered with seem darker than they really were. Even normally, Touya thought he wasn’t the most appealing of sights, but now, he just wanted to lie down and wake up tomorrow, in a reality where he could look in the mirror without a sigh of disappointment leaving his lips every now and then.
“If I’d known you didn’t bring an umbrella, I would have asked Hyuntae to pick you up.”
Touya could feel his eyebrows rise in some bizarre puzzlement. He quickly looked away, so his mother couldn’t see the sour expression on his face and the grim look in his eyes.
“It’s okay. I enjoy walking.”
At least that was true.
Touya frowned and quickly picked up the backpack from the floor, directing his steps toward the stairs. He’d just gotten home. Talking about Hyuntae wasn’t the first thing he wanted to do after arriving, but it had never been about what he wanted, it seemed, not really.
“Are you hungry?” Naomi called after him, but Touya didn’t stop, climbing the steps quickly.
“I’m tired, mom,” he answered briefly, his face falling the moment he was gone from her sight.
Although he spent his entire life trying to get away, sometimes he thought that he could find the way to his room all the way back from the train station blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back. He pushed the door to his room open and slipped inside, heavily leaning against the wood when the door shut behind his back. Touya closed his eyes and tilted his head back, just breathing quietly for a few moments. He was tired.
With a sigh, he pushed himself off the door and forced his eyes open, running his hand through his untamed hair. He looked around the room. It looked exactly like he had left it—the paint was still peeling off the walls, the windows were still covered with a sheet of dust, and the posters above his bed were still taped in the places where he tore them accidentally when trying to put them on the wall.
Touya sighed and turned around. He intended to kick his backpack in the corner and lie on the bed with his face buried in the pillows that somehow always smelled like home, which he couldn’t quite explain, but when facing the corner of the room, Touya stiffened. Involuntarily, he held his breath for a few seconds while his eyes tried to find the guitar—in vain. Touya buried his hands in his hair frantically, suddenly scanning the room warily. He looked around once again, naively checking whether he would find it behind the door, but when he found nothing, Touya frowned, his hand traveling on its own to the Saint Marry hanging around his neck.
He wrapped his fingers around the silver chain while his lips parted, eyes roaming the room confused and lost, as if he was there for the very first time. He was exhausted. He was hungry and cold from the raindrops that seemed to have permanently sunk into his skin, but he paid it no mind when he strode out of his room and ran down the stairs, his heart beating uneasily against his ribs. He found Naomi in the kitchen, washing the dishes while the radio played quietly somewhere beyond them. Perhaps if she saw the way his eyes were burning while he watched her from behind, she wouldn’t be swaying to the song so merrily.
“Did you change your mind?” Naomi asked, putting a mug on the dryer. “I can-”
“Where is my guitar?” Touya fired, grimly noticing how his mother’s shoulders hunched down although her hands kept washing the dishes, as if she hoped that the running water could fill the heavy silence that fell over them while none of them said a word.
Touya waited for her response silently, but the longer she didn’t say anything, the angrier he grew. He took a few steps closer while his mother kept washing the same mug over and over again, as if refusing to look him in the eyes. Touya couldn’t help the bitter grimace from taking over his features while he kept burning holes in her back with his fierce gaze.
“Mom, where is my guitar?” he repeated, louder and angrier than he intended to sound.
He could feel his heartbeat speed up in his chest when his mother looked at him briefly, quickly averting her eyes away from him.
“I needed money, Touya.”
“...What?” Touya stuttered out, staring at her with his lips parted in disbelief.
The music was still spilling from the radio, crawling up his back while the hairs on his arms rose on their own. Naomi kept silent. Her long black hair was falling over her shoulders while she kept leaning over the sink, shinning like a black river in the moonlight although Touya knew well that she already sported more gray strands than she would have liked to admit.
“What did you do?” he asked although he already knew the answer.
He swallowed the cry rising in his throat and balled his hands into fists, digging his fingernails in his palms painfully.
“What did you do?!” Touya shouted desperately, watching impatiently his mother turn back to him and finally look him in his face.
Their faces were never similar. Touya was always told that he looked a lot like his father, but he couldn’t know for sure—he didn’t remember. From the old photos stored in their family album he gathered that they did share some similar traits. Touya’s black hair was similarly curling beneath his ears and neck. His eyes were similarly the darkest shade of brown, but not dark enough to be called black. His lower lip was fuller than his upper lip, often making him look like he sulked even though he did not, and he sported the same dark freckles peppered all over his cheeks and nose like his father did in the photos from his youth. Looking into Naomi’s face, Touya could never see himself, no matter how hard he tried to.
His mother looked at him with tears welled up in her eyes. Her arms wrapped around her tightly as if to shield her from whatever venom would spill from his lips.
“I needed money-”
“So you sold my guitar?” Touya fired, looking at her accusingly.
He could hear the venom filling his voice and he could feel the grim mockery sitting at the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t care less. He wanted to hurt her because she hurt him, and no one knew how much it would hurt him better than her.
“You didn’t play it-”
“But it was mine!” Touya protested, his voice trembling already.
He knew that the fight to keep it steady was all in vain.
“I had bills to pay, Touya!” Naomi cried, tears rolling down her cheeks while she stubbornly eyed the floor, her cheeks reddening quickly under the kitchen lights.
“Then how about you finally get a job?” Touya stuttered back, the anger and sorrow pouring out of him for all the times he kept it hidden deep inside.
He didn’t want to say that, but at the same time, he did. He regretted hurting her, but he also didn’t regret it because she needed to hear that and he needed to say it—he needed to say it for too long now. Touya gritted his teeth, feeling tears roll down his cheeks as well, but he made no move to wipe them off his face. He wanted her to see them, and he wanted her to know that what she did hurt.
“What were you thinking?” he asked brokenly, seemingly unmoved by the sight of his mother crying in front of him, too. “You had no right to do it,” Touya rasped out although he knew it was pointless.
It couldn’t be that easy, could it? Doing whatever she pleased without thinking of him even once? Touya laughed bitterly at himself, pushing his still wet bangs out of his eyes. She knew what it meant to him, but she did it anyway. He could choose to shrug it off and keep on living, turning a blind eye to everything she did, but he was tired. Touya loved his mother dearly, but he was only nineteen. He wanted to be carefree, irresponsible and immature. He wanted to make bad decisions and worry only about pimples and how uneven his eyebrows were. He didn’t want to think about looking for a job to pay for his dorm. He didn’t want to try to calculate how much he could spend a week so the money would last until next month.
He raised his gaze at Naomi while the bitter tears kept escaping the corners of his eyes; the radio music kept happily skipping through the kitchen like a taunting sprite.
“I’m looking for a job, but it’s not that easy,” Naomi said, raising her watery gaze at him as well.
Touya laughed, running his hands through his hair in frenzy.
“Nothing is easy, mom,” he mocked, letting his hands fall idly along his body. He wiped his face in the sleeve of his shirt, taking a deep breath in although his lungs burned and knees buckled. “Nothing is fucking easy,” he whispered miserably. “But you had no right to do it,” he said and turned on his heel.
He could feel her eyes on his back when he strode for the door. He could hear her calling after him to stop when he pushed the door open and ran outside, but he paid it no mind, running as if he had no control over his moves anymore. It was still raining, but the downpour turned into a meek dribble, tasting salty on his tongue when the raindrops continued to hit his face. He ran past the streets he knew like the back of his hand. His feet chose the direction for him on their own while wind blew past his face, whistling in his ears and pushing his wet bangs back.
In Takahama, you were lucky if a car drove past you once a day. Touya supposed that in his hometown it was considered traffic, but today, the streets were empty. Not a soul was roaming the corners or leaving the stores with the ringing of bells hung above the entrances. Sometimes when he came back, Touya felt he lived in a ghost town, where nothing and no one was real, cut off from the real world and hidden from intruders’ eyes. And when he ran in the rain, his breath hitching and legs starting to ache from how much he strained his muscles, Touya felt like the only person alive in the world drowning in raindrops, tears and sorrow. He wanted to scream, but his breath was cut short and only some miserable wail got out when he finally stopped, bending in half and leaning his palms on his knees.
He pushed his wet hair off his face and looked up. He felt a chill crawl up his back while he kept staring at the grave, trying to catch his breath while the drizzle slowly ceased to fall. Touya pushed himself up and gulped. His mouth felt dry and his throat felt thirsty. His chest burned and his heart was still thumping heavily underneath his palm while he read the letters spelling out a name.
Shirai.
Touya’s last name.
Seventeenth of July 2004.
Two months before his birthday.
Touya bit his lip, looking idly at his father’s grave. He balled his hands into fists and hid them behind his back, trying to restrain himself, but from what, he didn’t know. He sucked in a rapid breath, feeling blood drip from his lip down his chin. His wiped his chin with the back of his hand while the stinging intensified, blood tasting metallic, but also salty mixed with the rain and his tears. The guitar Naomi sold belonged to Touya’s father, not to Touya per se, but since Touya could only remember, it had been always standing in his room.
Touya looked away from the faded picture of his father’s face attached to the gravestone. He did play the guitar. He’d just never told his mother about it—why, he wasn’t quite sure. Taking it with him to Tokyo would raise questions he didn’t want to answer, so he opted for leaving it behind, in the dusty corner of his room no one had ever cleaned anyway. Touya looked up, torn apart by the desperate feeling growing inside of him. The Saint Marry hanging on his neck belonged to his father, too. Looking at his fading picture, Touya could feel it weighing his heart down and burning his chest, hanging from his neck like a rock, not a piece of silver usually so light that sometimes he could not tell whether it was still there or not.
Touya laughed bitterly, his hands itching anxiously. Would Naomi ask for it, too, one day? Touya cursed and kicked the gravestone angrily, but he slipped on the wet grass and fell harshly on the ground, staining his jeans brown and green all over his legs. He didn’t try to get up. For a second, he felt like staying there for the rest of his life, in this quiet place that no one visited anymore. Would eternal loneliness be worse than this? He looked back at his father, drained to his core.
“What do you think?” Touya asked, not really expecting an answer. He gave up on that long ago.
Touya pushed the door and quickly strode inside. The air conditioning hit his face from everywhere and raised all the hairs on his neck, but Touya didn’t budge nor did he flinch. He made his way through the pawn shop until he reached the counter and put both of his hands on the desk with a heavy thud, leaning over with a stern look in his eyes.
“I want my guitar back,” Touya announced, stubbornly glaring at the pawnshop owner.
Mr. Kato glared back at him, rolling his eyes as if dealing with a pesky fly.
“Your mother sold that guitar, kid. It’s not yours anymore,” he said, trying to attend to another customer lining up behind Touya’s back, but Touya followed his line of sight, blocking the customer from his gaze.
“The guitar is mine, not hers, Mr. Kato,” Touya insisted, wincing at the whiny note he could hear in his own voice. “She had no right to sell it. I want it back.”
“You want it back?” Mr. Kato smiled, crossing his arms over his chest. “Buy it back.”
Touya’s eyes widened. He shivered, feeling a raindrop slide from his hair down his neck.
“The guitar is mine, Mr. Kato, and you know it-”
“Stop making a scene, Touya,” Mr. Kato cut him off, voice harsh and loud when he leaned over the counter as well. “If you want that damn guitar back, buy it. This is not charity. If you don’t have money, get lost.”
Touya kept glaring at Mr. Kato fiercely, digging his fingernails deep into his palm. He did not have money to buy it back.
“But you know who it belonged to,” Touya said, resigned and tired, so tired.
“And what good did it do to him?” Mr. Kato asked, sighing heavily at the hurt expression Touya couldn’t help but sport in front of him.
Touya didn’t know how to answer. He couldn’t quite put two thoughts together while blood rumbled in his head. For a moment, he thought that hadn’t he held onto the edges of the counter tightly, he would have jumped over it and punched Mr. Kato in the face. Hopefully, he would break his nose. Maybe he’d get his nose broken in return, but maybe then Touya would feel something different than this overwhelming numbness and dull ache in his chest.
“Stop blocking the queue, kid,” Touya heard a voice coming from behind his back.
He frowned and ran his fingers through his hair, letting out frustrated grumbles from his throat. He felt a hand try to push him away, but he twisted out of its grip, stumbling back a few steps. Touya glared at the man trying to shove him out of the line and he kicked the counter as hard as he could, sending Mr. Kato a death stare while the man kept shouting at him to leave his store. Touya left the shop buzzing with rage that quickly turned into desolation when he found himself outside.
Touya spent a few seconds numbly staring ahead. He looked around, slowly, as if trying to take every detail of his reality in and for a brief second, he felt like crying. There was nowhere for him to go to, no soul to talk to although he often chose loneliness himself. Touya looked down, feeling his eyes sting. He plopped himself on the sidewalk, full of cracks and wild milts growing out of those cracks, and he hung his head low. He could feel sweat run down his back and a film of humid air spread all over his face, but he couldn’t care less.
Touya sighed deeply, trying to trick himself into thinking that he was alright. If he sounded normal, how could anything be wrong? But if he was alright, why look for tricks? Touya hid his head between his knees and wrapped his arms around himself tightly, rocking back and forth on the cold concrete sidewalk. He scowled, hearing the pawnshop bell ring behind his back.
“Hey.”
“I’m going!” Touya shouted, pushing himself up angrily.
“I thought you wanted it.”
Touya halted rapidly, eyebrows drawing together when he realized that the voice he heard didn’t belong to Mr. Kato. Touya turned around, suspiciously narrowing his eyes only to cock his head in a silent question when he saw a boy standing in front of him although Touya was sure he’d rather be called a man. He sported a friendly expression when stretching his hand out to Touya, holding Touya’s guitar by its neck. Touya tensed up at the sight, glaring at the newcomer with newly found odium.
The boy looked at the guitar significantly and motioned for Touya to take it. Touya’s gaze sharpened when he kept trying to burn a hole in the boy’s face. His expression seemed friendly, quite different from the feeling Touya got from the scar he sported in one of his eyebrows or from the piercing in his nose.
“Isn’t this yours?” the boy asked again.
Touya couldn’t help but bare his teeth in ill-concealed anger. He felt mocked and it was worse of a mockery than his classmates pointing their fingers at him for wearing second-hand clothes and shoes with no brand name on them. Touya felt mocked in the worst kind of ways because here he was—dirt poor and helpless against a stranger who now had something Touya valued the most.
Touya gulped, measuring the boy with a judging look once, then twice. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and accepted that, judging by the looks, he’d probably lose against the boy, and he charged at him, gripping him by the hem of his denim jacket.
“If you wanna fight-”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” the boy protested, trying to create some distance between them with his one free hand. His eyebrows rose in surprise as well as his hand rose in a surrendering gesture while his other hand was still gripping the guitar by the neck. “I’m not trying to pick up a fight-”
“Are you sure?” Touya hissed, letting go of the boy before his voice could break down and betray him pitifully.
Touya turned on his heel and pulled the hood of his jacket on his head, burying his hands in his pockets. He managed to take only a few steps when the boy’s voice reached him, making him halt on the sidewalk with eyes like saucers and a grimace on his face.
“Have you ever heard that besides using your fists, sometimes you should use your brain, too?” the boy called, catching up with him.
Touya glared at him, feeling his hands starting tingling again. Maybe all this day, Touya was just badly looking for an excuse to beat someone up or better, get beaten up and get the turmoil he was feeling beaten out of him, too, so no lingering feeling of despair would be left when he would try to sleep tonight.
“Look, I saw what happened at the pawnshop. It’s yours. Take it,” the boy said, trying to push the guitar into Touya’s hands, but Touya remained stubborn, oblivious to the boy’s actions.
“I don’t need charity,” Touya spat out, wincing when he was inevitably reminded of the words spoken to him by Mr. Kato over the old stickered counter.
“This is not charity. Can you play?”
Touya raised an eyebrow, lips falling open at the unexpected question. He was only able to nod his head, tired, angry and confused. He’d rather just get punched instead of having this conversation.
“Play something,” the boy said, finally managing to push the guitar into Touya’s arms.
“You think you’re in a circus?” Touya snapped.
The boy seemed to have finally started to lose his patience when he rolled his eyes and sighed, rubbing his face with his hand.
“You’re a stubborn kid, aren’t you?”
“A kid?” Touya repeated. He couldn’t believe that out of everything, he got hung up on this word, but it was too late to back down. “I’m not a kid. I’m nineteen.”
“I’m twenty two,” the boy grinned, to which Touya huffed out an annoyed breath.
“I don’t care,” Touya shrugged his shoulders, eyeing the guitar with some sourness starting to fill up his mouth. He stretched his hand out, averting his eyes from the boy. “You paid for it. It’s yours now.”
“You can pay me back.”
“I don’t have any money,” Touya admitted with his gaze stubbornly locked on the cracked concrete.
“You can pay me back when you have some money. Here,” the boy said, catching Touya’s stretched out hand in-between his fingers. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and, with the aglet held between his teeth, he scribbled something on Touya’s hand, letting go as soon as he was done. “Hit me up if you’re in Tokyo, kid,” the boy said and started walking away, not waiting for any answer.
Touya wanted to run after him, but at the same time, he didn’t want to. His feet felt glued to the ground while he kept watching the boy walk away with his backpack thrown over his shoulder and a quiet song on his lips.
Touya made a face, bringing the guitar closer to his chest.
“I’m not a kid!” he called after the boy, but he didn’t turn around, gradually disappearing behind the corner.
Touya pushed the door to the house open, for a few seconds just listening to the eerie stillness. He tried to hear steps, voices or any sign of someone’s presence inside, but standing in front of the threshold, he heard nothing. He bit his lip anxiously and slowly, he made his way inside, trying to close the door behind his back as quietly as possible. He froze in the hallway with the guitar clutched tightly by his chest. He held his breath, but when he still couldn’t hear a sound, he took a step further. He kept sneaking through the hallway until he reached the stairs, involuntarily sticking his tongue out when he was about to climb the steps.
“Touya?”
Touya stilled again. He was sure that the sound of his heart thumping against the resonance box could be heard across the entire floor while he kept breathing shallowly. He gulped and started turning around only to let out a silent sigh of relief when he didn’t see his mother standing in the hallway. She hadn’t seen him yet.
“Come here,” Naomi called from the living room, her voice quiet and faint when traveling through the hallway.
Touya bit his lip and leaned the guitar against the wall, slowly and quietly. After he made sure it wouldn’t fall, he went back, hesitantly entering the room. The truth was he hated arguing with his mother. They were close. They were friends. They cared for each other like for no one else in this world, but sometimes, there were things Touya knew he could never say to her, no matter how close they were. There were also things he wished he could shout out in her face, but he couldn’t do that, either. Sometimes, the only thing he could do was keep silent until his silence eventually turned into a cry that his mother didn’t listen to although she heard it.
“Do you know what time it is?” Naomi asked from the old couch. Television was playing quietly in the corner, but she didn’t seem to be really watching whatever was on the screen anyway. Despite that, she didn’t look at him once. “You didn’t take your phone with you.”
Touya locked his eyes on the floor, focusing on the frayed edges of the dirty rug lying underneath his feet. He regretted making her worry, but if he picked up her call, they would end up fighting again. Touya knew himself. He would be mean in the most hurtful of ways even though Naomi was the last person on Earth that he wanted to hurt. He just was a spiteful creature like that. He would regret his words, but he wouldn’t be able to find a way to take them back. Touya lost count of how many times he had already chosen to remain silent instead.
“I went on a walk.”
“I know you’re an adult, but you’re still a child—my child—and since you still live in this house-”
“This is not my house,” Touya interrupted her, feeling something new grow inside of him—something ugly and unpleasant. “I don’t have a home.”
Resentment.
That was what it was.
Naomi sighed and looked away while Touya frowned, angry again. He hurt her. He knew that, but she hurt him, too, and she knew that, too. They spent a few moments like this—silent, bitter and miserable, too, while the clock kept ticking above their heads.
“If I’m still here, this is your house,” Naomi whispered, but Touya couldn’t help the laugh that got out on its own.
He shook his head, looking at her with bitter mirth glistening in his dark eyes.
“This is not your house, either,” he said, smiling crookedly although there was nothing joyful about his smile, only desolation and grimness.
“I know,” Naomi said.
He could see that she was wiping her face and he wanted to say something. He wanted to wipe her tears for her and console her, but sometimes, a vile voice whispered into his ear that she deserved to cry for making him like this, and he made no move to comfort her or assure her that everything would be alright. Frankly, he doubted it. Touya looked away, feeling somewhat guilty, but refusing to do anything. He had cried, too, a good many times, and she’d done nothing to hush his cries. Sometimes when he tried to sleep late at night, Touya thought that he gave in to this ruthless voice inside his head a little bit too often. He wanted to be a better person. He just didn’t think he could.
“Hyuntae is going to Tokyo on Sunday. You could go with him-”
“I already bought a train ticket for Sunday,” Touya interrupted her again, already making his way backwards towards the hallway, where he knew his guitar was waiting for him. “Some other time,” he added and strode towards the stairs.
He closed his eyes and pretended that he didn’t see her expression when he refused her yet again. He was not going to wait until Sunday to go back.
