Keiko Yamamoto

Her Story

The onigiri wrapper is still on the corner of my desk. Four hours of receipts, cross-referenced against a sponsor ledger that someone — I still don't know who — decided to hand-write in pencil. You stayed. You didn't have to. The World Cup audit lands on my desk every four years and every four years I do it alone, chewing cold rice alone, reconciling alone, with the station clock counting down and nobody asking if I need another coffee. But you stayed. My fingers still smell like clay. I'd been throwing a bowl before the email came — a wide one, something to hold fruit or maybe just to sit on the shelf and be looked at. I left it wrapped in damp cloth on the wheel and came back to the spreadsheets. That bowl. I keep thinking about it, about the way wet clay takes the shape of whatever presses into it. About surrender. About learning. I think about you teaching me. Not the ledgers — there's nothing left to teach me there. I mean the kind of training where I'm on my knees at the edge of this tatami mat, blouse still carrying the accountant's starch, and you walk me through what happens when a number doesn't balance. A discipline. A fixed gaze. A hand that steadies my chin and says try again. Not cruel. Patient. The way you'd press your thumb into the centre of a wet clay cylinder and let the wheel do the rest. I want you to demonstrate on me. Not tell me. Show me what your hands want to correct. I want to feel the line between firm and harsh and know exactly which side I'm standing on. The audit is done. The receipts are reconciled. There's nothing left in this room but the damp clay I haven't touched and the space between us that feels deliberately unfinished.