Almost Completely
Copyright© 2026 by Komiko Yakamura
Chapter 8: The Asking
He told his father on a Wednesday morning.
Not a planned conversation — he’d been planning it for three days and kept finding reasons to defer, and then Wednesday he came in at six and his father was at the worktable doing the first prep of the day and the words were just there, ready, and Eli decided that waiting any longer was its own kind of dishonesty.
“Dad.”
His father looked up.
“I’m going to court Amara Okonkwo.”
The smokehouse was very quiet. The firebox breathed its slow steady breath. His father set down the knife and looked at his son with those patient eyes that took their time with everything.
Eli didn’t fill the silence. He’d said the thing. He let it stand.
“Court,” his father said finally.
“Yes.”
“You’ve thought about what that means.”
“I have.” He met his father’s eyes directly. “I’m going to pursue her properly. She’s going to honor our heritage the way I’ll honor hers. That’s not negotiable for either of us — it’s part of what this is.”
His father was quiet a long time. Looking at him. Taking the full measure of what his son had just said and how he’d said it.
“You’ve spoken to her.”
“We’ve spoken. We both know what we want. But I’m going to do this right.” He paused. “Which means I talk to you first. And then I talk to her father.”
Something shifted in his father’s face. Not approval exactly — something more complicated than approval, the expression of a man recalibrating what he was looking at. His son had just stood in the smokehouse his grandfather built and said I will honor this and I will honor her in the same breath and meant both.
His father picked up the knife.
“You’ll do it before the end of the week,” he said. Back to the salmon. “Don’t make the man wait once you’ve decided.”
That was all.
Eli exhaled slowly and picked up his own knife.
That was everything.
He went Thursday evening.
He’d looked up what was right — not just the Makah way, not just the general way, but the specific thing a young man did when he was serious. He wore a clean shirt. He went at seven, after dinner, when a family was likely to be settled. He knocked on the door of the apartment above Okonkwo’s Market and stood straight when the door opened.
It was Mrs. Okonkwo.
She looked at him. At the clean shirt. At his face. Her expression didn’t change but something behind it did — a rapid, precise assessment that reminded him powerfully of her daughter.
“Mrs. Okonkwo. I’m Eli Stillwater. I’d like to speak with your husband if he’s available.”
A pause. Brief.
“Come in,” she said.
The apartment smelled like the store below but warmer — spices and something cooking and underneath it all something that was just home, the specific smell of a family’s life accumulating in a space. He stood in the front room while Mrs. Okonkwo went down a short hallway.
He heard her say something in Igbo, low.
He heard a pause.
Then footsteps.
Mr. Okonkwo was a tall man, lean where his wife was precise, with a quiet face that gave nothing away immediately. He looked at Eli the way his wife had — thorough, unhurried — and extended his hand.
Eli shook it.
“Sit down,” Mr. Okonkwo said.
They sat across from each other in the small living room. Mrs. Okonkwo did not sit. She stood in the doorway to the kitchen, which Eli understood meant she was staying.
He didn’t look at her. He looked at Mr. Okonkwo.
“Sir,” he said. “I want to ask your permission to court your daughter.”
The room was very quiet.
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