Page 179 of Faking the Goal

"Honestly, it's even better than the ramen you made me," I tell him. "Sorry, Ken-chan."

His tenderness disappears behind an unimpressed stare.

He scoffs. "You told me that was the best Japanese dish you'd ever had."

"It was—until I tasted your mom's cod." I give him an apologetic shrug. "By a very narrow margin."

"How narrow?"

I hold my thumb and forefinger barely apart.

"Microscopic."

He huffs. "Kiss-ass."

"Ken-chan, language, please," Harumi playfully scolds.

I stick my tongue out at him, and he rolls his eyes.

The corner of his mouth twitches. "You're lucky I fed you at all."

A laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it, and Kentaro's restrained smile finally breaks free across his face.

At the head of the table, Harumi looks between us without saying a word. She's wearing the same expression she had when she cornered me into accepting this invitation—quietly triumphant, entirely too knowing, and so genuinely happy that I suddenly understand this dinner was never really about the food.

It was about filling the empty chairs.

And judging by the way she smiles at the two of us as Kentaro continues defending the honor of his tonkotsu ramen, I think tonight turned out exactly the way she hoped it would.

As the night stretches on, Harumi and I settle into the living room with one of the thick photo albums she promised to show me, while Kentaro takes the armchair across from us.

"Oh my God," I whisper, pressing a hand to my chest as Harumi turns the first page. "Look at those cheeks."

Baby Kentaro stares back at me from beneath a knitted blue hat, his round face flushed pink from the cold and his cheeks so adorably chubby that I immediately understand why Harumi must have spent most of his childhood kissing them. His tiny mouth is stretched into a wide, toothless grin, one mittened hand raised toward the camera as though he was already demanding everyone's undivided attention.

"I know," Harumi says fondly. "He was such a beautiful baby."

"Was?" Kentaro mutters.

Harumi and I dissolve into giggles as she turns another page, revealing a slightly older Kentaro sitting in a high chair with rice smeared across his face and a wooden spoon clutched triumphantly in one fist.

"He threw the entire bowl at his father two seconds after this picture was taken," Harumi tells me.

I gasp, delighted. "Ken-chan."

"I was one."

"And already choosing violence."

"He deserved it," Kentaro says without missing a beat.

That only makes us laugh harder.

The farther we move through the album, the more difficult it becomes to reconcile the boy in these pictures with the Kentaro I first met. He is always moving, even in still photographs. Grinning with his whole face as he hangs upside down from playground bars. Sprinting toward the camera with a toy sword raised above his head. Standing beside Miho with one arm hooked around her shoulders while she scowls at him, his smile so smug that I can almost hear whatever annoying thing he said before the picture was taken.

There is mischief in every line of his little face.

Light in his eyes.