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The center building of the Kamisato Estate is large, large enough for footsteps to echo throughout its expansive hallways and tatami-covered floors. The tatami does little to soften footsteps, so for the Lady of the house, Kamisato Ayaka, it is quite clear sometimes who exactly is up and about in the house.
Summer is coming, and with the transition to the heat and humidity that comes with the season on Narukami Island is Ayaka’s inability to sleep, unable to find the perfect balance of comfort under the blankets and the excessive warmth they provide. It comes as no surprise that she would be awake to hear the sounds of footsteps trodding along inside the building, echoing from somewhere on the first floor of the Kamisato mansion.
Without a doubt, it has to be Thoma, she muses. Only Thoma would rise at this hour, as far as Ayaka knew, for whatever inexplicable and unexplained reasons he might have. It is not a behavior that strikes her as particularly odd. After all, Thoma being from Mondstadt and having lived in Liyue would mean that her standards of oddity and normality would not apply. Much of what he has experienced must surely be beyond her wildest imagination. That being said, she has yet to understand why sometimes he wakes so early to go to the kitchen, if her hearing has not failed her yet.
For quite some time since she noticed this habit of his, Ayaka has wondered why Thoma always goes to the kitchen. However, she has never had the opportunity to ask him, nor can she think of any reason why she would chance upon such an opportunity. It would be rude of her to ask him directly, as it wasn’t any of her business anyways. Even then, she still wonders.
Thoma, what would you be cooking before sunrise?
Summer arrives slowly, lazily. Despite having been born and raised in Inazuma her entire life, the first days of humidity are often the worst nights of summer for Ayaka. Still too early for any summer festivals to occur, yet too late for any of the events that bid farewell to spring, since inheriting the direction of the Yashiro Commission with her brother, the first days of summer are always busy with planning for the festivities appropriate for the new season. Both she and her brother go as far as sacrificing much of their sleep for their duties, a yearly occurrence that occasionally, they tease each other about.
Oftentimes, their banter goes something like this.
“Dear brother, the sun has long set. Would it not be in your best interests to retire for the night?”
“Ah, Ayaka. How strange to see you still awake! I’ve only burned one candle; surely, I can handle one or two more. You would never catch me slacking off on something as important as this now, would you?”
“You must be the reason why Furuta has been complaining about running out of candles.”
“If our candle supply is running low, I can simply use my Vision. I’ve done it before.”
“Then, I will make sure to follow my dearest brother’s excellent example, starting with the use of a Vision as a nightlight instead of a candle.”
“Wait, no! It’s bad for your eyes.”
When this is the case, neither of them go to sleep particularly early, although Ayaka has made a valiant effort to prevent Ayato from pulling more than three all-nighters in a row during the days spent on planning for the summer festivities.
It is on one of these late nights when Ayaka is just readying herself for sleep that she hears the familiar sounds of Thoma’s footsteps, this time coming from the direction of the kitchen’s cold storage room. She glances out her window to see the sun rising, but through her tiredness, she decides that some sleep, no matter how late or early it was, is better than no sleep (because as much as she teases Ayato about not sleeping, Ayaka is determined to sleep more than him).
Rising at sunrise is not out of the ordinary for Thoma, but this is the first time that Ayaka has heard him go into the cold storage of all places. For a moment, she thinks that her fatigue has gotten to her and she’s finally starting to hear things, but as she slips under the covers, it’s unmistakable. The sound of the door to the cold storage room hums quietly as it closes; no doubt that Thoma was trying to stay quiet out of consideration for the others who were asleep, or in Ayaka’s case, were about to sleep.
With the long day taking its toll on her, Ayaka only manages a handful of scattered thoughts on Thoma’s habits before she falls asleep soundly.
There are some nights that Ayaka wakes up just enough to hear shuffling from the kitchen, but to her mind that has yet to fully waken, it is merely another dream that has yet to be dreamed. She falls asleep again quickly on those nights, quietly unaware of the muffled motions of a mortar and pestle grinding apricot kernels. She sleeps unknowing of a man in the kitchen who wakes up in the early mornings to recreate the taste of a sweet dream, those pieces of stars and fragments of dreams that will simply be thrown out the next day.
In her dreams, Ayaka can hear the faint sound of flames atop a stove. She does not see who is cooking, nor does she need to see for her dream supplies her with the only logical answer: it must be Thoma who is cooking at this early hour of morning. The time doesn’t matter to her, not in her dreams anyways, but she intuitively knows that it must be Thoma cooking again in the kitchen on the first floor of the Kamisatos’ mansion. It is always Thoma cooking in that kitchen. In her dreams, this fact seems just as immutable as the Raiden Shogun’s rule over Inazuma.
A voice in the back of her mind asks her what exactly Thoma is cooking, but Ayaka gives no answer. She has no answer to give because she doesn’t know the answer and she has no reason to know the answer. However, when the voice asks her if she’s curious about what Thoma is cooking or doing in the kitchen, she cannot deny that she is curious, that she does want to know why.
Ayaka tells the voice that Thoma’s secret of cooking in the early morning is no different from her secret of writing her letters. It is not a secret that she intended on keeping, but since she has had no reason to bring it up and Thoma has never asked, then Ayaka has no reason to reveal her own little habit. If Thoma would like to share with her the reason behind his nighttime cooking, then she will gladly listen. If he does not, then she will not ask. With this analogy the voice is silent, but then it speaks up and asks her another question.
You write letters for someone. In this analogy, for whom is he cooking?
The sound of a window snapping shut jolts her out of her dreams briefly, but when she falls back asleep, her dreams have changed and the voice is gone.
On another night, Ayaka wakes up to hear the sound of a stool slipping. It must be coming from the kitchen, based on the direction of the sound, but still half-asleep, she thinks that she must have been dreaming. She refuses to open her eyes and instead chooses to ignore the sound, focusing on falling back asleep more than anything.
For the rest of that night, she doesn’t dream any more than he does.
As summer comes to an end, so do the summer festivities, and for once, the heads of the Yashiro Commission may have a respite from their duties. While it is abundantly clear to Ayaka that Ayato would like to pretend to be somewhat disappointed at how they wouldn’t have the chance to tease each other about their respective sleeping habits, she knows that he’s relieved and looking forward to this rest. It’s about time he has some proper sleep, she thinks. It’s not only much deserved, but also necessary for his well-being. Unfortunately, this year he managed to pull four all-nighters in a row, even with Ayaka’s diligence and her stubborn insistence to go to bed.
Even with much of her responsibilities finally relieved for the season, the body is not so easily changed from sleeping so little so consistently, and as such, Ayaka finds herself laying awake in bed, even into the darkest hours of night, still unable to sleep. She opens her eyes far from sleep and stares up at the ceiling unseeingly, wondering how far into the night she has to stay awake before sleep will take her. Rationally, she knows that sleeping early is necessary to fixing her sleep schedule, but unfortunately, doing as much has proved fruitless.
Trapped in between the world of waking and sleeping, Ayaka doesn’t know how much time has passed since she first attempted to sleep, but seeing that it’s unlikely for her to sleep much more, she opens her eyes and resigns herself to an early morning.
The faint sounds from the kitchen tell her that it truly is early.
In the spur of the moment, and apparently her sleep deprivation, Ayaka rises quickly and quietly for what seems to be her only chance at seeing what really is going on in the kitchen. Mindful of the others sleeping (except for Ayato, because only the Almighty Shogun knows if he actually retired for the night), she descends to the first floor silently, her footsteps leaving not even a single floorboard creaking. Not even the autumn breezes that chill her can stop her from selfishly satisfying her curiosity just this once.
She peeks around the corner from the hallway just across from the kitchen, a spot where she would have surely been spotted by Thoma had he not been occupied with whatever he was doing in the kitchen. To her surprise, in front of him lies countless plates of… annin tofu. She watches as he takes the two lavender melons left in the bowl on the counter before stopping.
Ayaka freezes, praying that Thoma hadn’t noticed her. To her relief, his gaze seems focused towards something out the window for just a moment, before he returns back cutting the fruits and dropping the pieces into the dishes. It’s an elegant, almost magical, sight to see Thoma prepare this dish. She wonders when was the last time she saw him like this.
She doubts she has.
Ayaka knows Thoma. She may not know everything that encompasses Thoma, as shown by how the reason behind his habit of cooking at night still continues to elude her, but she knows enough of him to believe that she might not ever need to.
With her footsteps leaving no sound, not even the subtle creaking of floorboards under her weight, Ayaka leaves to return to her bedroom. On a sleepless night like this, evident by the fact that she knows at least two people to be awake at this hour, there must be something that unites the two of them, something in common that would lead to them both being up and about. Silently, she prays to the Shogun that Thoma was too occupied to notice her transgressing upon his moment of privacy out of her selfish curiosity before quietly slipping back into her room.
As she prepares herself for bed once again, taking her rightful place beneath the covers once more, Ayaka finally reaches the answer that she has been looking for all this time. The commonality between the two of them, if such a thing were to exist, it must be…
Ah, Thoma…
Have you woken up from a dream you wished for, too?