[OC] Bar Aoi Stories ― Dad, Can You Take a Look?

Hey, you.

When something breaks at home, who gets called?

Clink-clink.

The sound of the doorbell always makes me feel like my day is finally coming to an end.

I took my usual seat at the counter, and Mama set down a glass of Harper without asking.

The ice made a soft clink.

Taka was sitting next to me, looking at his phone.

“Kenichi, didn’t appliances used to come with really thick manuals?”

“They did.”

“They’re pretty thin these days.”

“Some don’t even come with one. Just a QR code you’re supposed to scan.”

“Yeah, exactly. And remember when you bought a computer and there were all those books in the box?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I laughed.

“You’d open the box, right? There’s your computer. And next to it, a whole stack of books.”

“What was in all those books?”

“No idea.”

“You didn’t read them?”

“I read the parts I needed.”

“All of them?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why were they so thick?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Tom tilted his glass.

“Very useful story.”

Shut up.

“Appliance manuals used to have more stuff in them too, I think. Maintenance instructions. Troubleshooting. Things like that.”

“Oh, yeah. They did.”

Taka nodded.

“Come to think of it, whenever something broke at home, didn’t Dad always show up?”

“Yeah.”

“He’d open up the back of the TV and stuff.”

“Sure did.”

“My dad used to hit things.”

“That’s not repairing them.”

“But it worked.”

“Were appliances in the old days powered by sheer will?”

Mama laughed.

“You don’t see dads fixing appliances much anymore, do you?”

Now that she mentioned it, she was right.

“You can’t really open them up anymore.”

“Even if you could, I wouldn’t know what I was looking at.”

“Exactly. Back then, sometimes you could see a broken wire or a loose connection and at least make a guess.”

“But you’re a systems engineer, Kenichi.”

“That doesn’t mean I can repair a circuit board.”

“You’re a computer guy.”

“Apologize to every systems engineer in Japan.”

Tom picked up an edamame bean.

“Were dads back then really that good at fixing everything?”

“...”

I thought about it.

I remembered my father sitting there with a screwdriver, taking apart a radio or something.

What I didn’t remember was—

“Oh.”

“What?”

“My dad once took apart a radio and couldn’t put it back together.”

“So he broke it.”

“He said he was still fixing it.”

“Did he ever fix it?”

“We threw it away.”

“So he broke it.”

Memories are convenient things.

“These days, if something breaks, you call the manufacturer or replace it.”

“Wouldn’t you look it up online first?”

Mama said.

“Oh. Right.”

“Manuals are online now, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. Search the model number and you’ll usually find one.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Good point.”

Taka looked down at his phone.

“So the appliance-fixing dad is extinct.”

“Maybe not.”

Mama tilted her head.

“Who gets called when the Wi-Fi stops working?”

Taka and I went quiet.

Tom laughed.

“Dad?”

“...Yeah. Dad gets called.”

“What if the printer won’t connect?”

“Dad.”

“What if somebody wants to watch a streaming service on the TV?”

“Dad.”

“What if someone gets a new phone and needs help setting it up?”

“That too.”

Huh.

Apparently we were still working.

“But Masato knows his way around a smartphone, doesn’t he?”

“He does.”

The other day, I was trying to look something up on my phone when Masato reached over.

“Here. Give me that.”

I handed it to him.

His thumb moved.

Fast.

I couldn’t even see what he typed.

“There.”

“...What did you just do?”

“Search.”

“I know that. What did you type?”

“Just the normal way.”

There was nothing normal about it.

“Young people are really fast at flick typing.”

“Watching them scares me. How many characters are they typing with one damn thumb?”

“You’re fast on a keyboard, though, right?”

“Damn right I am.”

“Then it’s a tie.”

“What kind of competition is this?”

Mama smiled as she wiped a glass.

“Being a dad sounds exhausting.”

“What does?”

“You get lonely if nobody needs you, but whenever someone does need you, you act like it’s a huge pain.”

I said nothing.

“You do.”

“I do not.”

Even Tom joined in.

“You do.”

“Will you all shut up?”

I took a drink of Harper.

My father used to open up the back of a TV with a screwdriver.

I reboot the router.

And beside me, Masato works his phone faster than my eyes can follow.

Well.

Even so, whenever something goes wrong, someone still says—

“Hey, can you take a look at this?”

And I’ll probably keep giving the same answer.

“Here, Let Me See.”

Hey, you.

Has anyone asked you to “take a look” at something lately?

See you at Aoi.

---

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