“Hey, big bro. That wall’s wobbling.”

Yuji pointed at the kitchen doorway. Kanta’s stomach dropped. Behind that rippling wall sat a tin of rice crackers — imported from some other world, and not cheap. He’d hidden it there minutes ago. He’d splurged on just one tin, a payday weakness.

That was just how this housing block worked: put something heavy against a wall, and the wall behind it rippled like water. Something about mass bending light slightly, or so people said. Which meant hidden things rarely stayed hidden for long. Then again, the walls here already had a faint, permanent waviness of their own, so most tenants blamed any ripple on “the building being old.”

“Oh, that? It was wobbling last night too. Place is old, that’s all.”

Kanta played it cool. Yuji just said “Huh,” and turned back to the TV.

Yuji had been crashing at his older brother’s place for three years now, rent-free — a fact Kanta tracked down to the day. And yet the guy had a nose for anything good to eat. So Kanta hid the tin. The plan was simple: eat the whole thing himself before his brother could sniff it out.

That evening, while Kanta was in the bath, Yuji found the tin without even trying — right behind the doorway wall. He popped the lid and ate two crackers. Good stuff.

If I keep eating these, he’ll notice the level dropping.

Yuji shoved the tin deep into the futon closet, tucked behind the bedding. Now his brother would just think it had vanished.

The next morning, Kanta checked the doorway wall. Still. No ripple. No tin. That little— he’d eaten the whole thing. Kanta clicked his tongue. But early that afternoon, walking past the closet, he noticed the wall there was wobbling.

…Wait. Is he hiding a stash of his own now?

Kanta opened the closet and ate three crackers straight from the tin buried in the futons — payback, he figured. Then, so his brother wouldn’t catch on, he moved it behind the refrigerator.

And so the tin began its tour of the apartment — from the doorway to the closet, to behind the fridge, to the top of the shoe cabinet. Walls and floors rippled in turn, one spot after another.

How many tins does this guy even have stashed away?

Kanta muttered to himself. Yuji, for his part, was just as annoyed.

“Cheapskate big brother’s got, like, five tins hidden somewhere and won’t share a single one.”

Each brother was convinced the other hadn’t caught on. Or maybe they just wanted to believe that. The ripple kept migrating through the apartment. And yet, oddly, there was never more than one wobbling wall at a time. Neither of them noticed.

A month went by. On a Sunday morning, the tin — now sitting on top of the shoe cabinet — finally ran empty.

Yuji found it first. He grabbed the empty tin and marched into the living room.

“Bro! Not fair, hoarding a whole stockpile! Where’s my share?!”

“What? You’re the one who ate all my crackers. And then hid your own stash on top of that—”

Kanta trailed off. He stared hard at the tin in Yuji’s hand. Imported rice crackers, the pricey kind. Even the little dent in the lid looked familiar. It was the exact tin he’d bought on that one payday.

There had only ever been one tin.

For a whole month, the two of them had been chasing a single tin of crackers around the apartment — sharing it, more or less evenly, the entire time. Each one convinced the other was hoarding a fortune.

”…”

”…”

That week’s payday, Kanta quietly brought home a new tin. At the front door, he ran straight into Yuji, grocery bag in hand. The corner of an identical tin was just visible, poking out of his brother’s bag too.

They both looked away, fast. That night, each of them hid his tin — one on the left side of the same wall, one on the right.

Side by side, two ripples bloomed on the wall.