Unbreakable chain

I'm staring at the melon pan we just got from the bakery we always return to, Fridays making the ritual.

We’re in the car, and jazz curls through the speakers—notes restless in the thick hush between us.

My father’s fingers drum the steering wheel, not keeping time with the music but with some private ache.

I try to fake a conversation with my father. He responds not to me, really, but to whatever memory or longing jazz stirs within him— 

“This guy is saiko,” he tosses. “No, wait—listen. This, right here. He’s my hero.”

Words tossed into the air, not quite meant for catching.

I go still, eyes locked on the barber pole spinning outside—a red and white thread winding on and on. 

A man comes out, scalp gleaming yet still holding on to what’s left. 

My father erupts—his fury sudden, sharp, aimed at strangers and maybe at everything else.
“Why are you driving in the fucking middle, you old piece of shit.” Rage flung not as violence, but as proof of life—evidence that something inside him hasn’t settled yet.

Down the stairs we go, gravity thick between us, into the bakery’s warm hush. “Birthday party for Ryugi-kun tomorrow,” he says over his shoulder, voice laced with irony so thin it could cut. “You don’t have to say yes.”

I point at my usual melon pan. He selects the crispiest, turns it over in his hands. I watch it break open—soft, defenseless.

At home, I’m adrift. The melon pan sits untouched on the table. I drift toward the kitchen for coffee, but his hands get there first—always just before mine.

I’m thirsty. I wander to my room for a cup, fill it with water. I sit, trying to ease a hunger I can’t name.

He brings the coffee. 

“Why didn’t you clean up the mess on the table? Why can’t you just DO things?”

His voice finds me, harsh as ever, yet undercut with a weariness I know too well.

And in my gut, something shifts—something sharp, familiar. 

It is childhood: returning uninvited, sitting beside me, asking nothing, saying everything.

But even then, some part of me knows— 

We are linked by more than silence, more than these brittle mornings and broken bread. 

There is a chain between us: not shining, not always kind, but unbreakable— 

Forged in all that is spoken and all that we never will. 

It holds us here, in this small kitchen, in the quiet after anger,

teaching me that even the gentlest restraint, even the weight of memory, can be its own kind of mercy.

Because even here—between jazz and bread, sarcasm and longing—
we are not lost.
 We are simply, beautifully, unfinished.

I guess I’ll have to go look for the keys to unchain this unbreakable chain.