The Shore Diner: The Day They Attend the Same Ceremony

I heard that next year's coming-of-age ceremony would be a "joint" one before I read it in the newspaper — I heard it from Hiiragi-san, one of my regulars, before I read it anywhere else. She's one of the organizers for the bear-lineage neighborhood association, and every time she came in she used to talk about cleaning up after the autumn festival; somewhere along the way that talk had turned into talk about next year. "Kids from different clans attending the same ceremony — that's something we were already saying back at the festival," she said, taking a sip of beer in her usual seat.

Sitting next to her was a regular of mine, a boy turning twenty next year, quietly working through his bowl like it had nothing to do with him, until Hiiragi-san suddenly turned to him and said, "That's you next year, isn't it." He stopped his chopsticks and let out a blank "huh, me? At that ceremony?" He'd probably never once thought about his own coming-of-age ceremony before working here. Watching a face like that is, I think, the most interesting part of this job.

My regulars include beastfolk, humans, and people of the genetically designed generation. Normally nobody pays it any mind, everyone eating the same set meal at the same counter — but the moment the word "ceremony" came up, it was funny how everyone suddenly started thinking about their own clan or generation. Hiiragi-san said, "It's not that I particularly want to mix everyone together. It's just — the kids who listened to the same drumbeat together at the festival ending up separated just for the ceremony felt a bit strange, that's all we were saying."

After finishing his bowl, the boy turning twenty murmured, "I'll be nervous, but a ceremony with familiar faces might be better than one full of strangers." I barely remember my own ceremony from when I was that age. Hiiragi-san laughed and said, "Just make sure you get the photos taken properly," and the way he simply answered, "Will do," suited him strangely well.

What kind of ceremony it'll actually be next January, nobody knows yet. The paper called it a trial, and Hiiragi-san herself said lightly, "Try it once, and if it doesn't work, stop." Even so, the fact that people from different clans were already talking and laughing about it together tonight, in my little shop, ahead of the ceremony itself — that's probably worth writing down before the ceremony is.