Toradora! - Volume 10 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It was the third time he’d been here.

Whenever he stood in front of this gate, Ryuuji had never been alone.

The first time, it had been dark and he couldn’t see anything. He was enveloped by the gentle sound of a heartbeat. He had no thoughts as he drifted, so it wasn’t like he had any memories of that time. That had been eighteen years ago, the first day of fall and the end of summer, at 2 AM—the darkest hour. Ryuuji had been a life without a name, his body nothing more than an organized clump a few centimeters long. As she ran through this gate into the world at the dead of night, Yasuko was also nothing more than a child at the age of sixteen.

The second time, they hadn’t gone through the gate. Standing in a park a short distance away, Yasuko and Ryuuji had simply stared at the gate for a long period of time. He’d grown bored of riding on the swings and tired of waiting for so long. Mooom, he thought he remembered saying, pulling on her pale hand. He slowly got Yasuko to tear her eyes away from this gate.

And now, this would be the third time.

Taiga was by Ryuuji’s side.

“This is it.”

“This is it.”

The two of them both swallowed their breaths.

Before they reached the station, they took a needlessly long route around to allow for the teachers who would be coming after them. They avoided the large terminals, purposefully made inconvenient transfers and, like normal people, got on the wrong train (because Taiga ran into a train at random on the platform), which ended up being an express (that part wasn’t anyone’s fault) and cost them a lot more time than they anticipated.

He probably made the right choice in giving up on his vague memories, relying on the house numbers as they walked instead. As he looked around at the reality that was incredibly different from what he pictured in his mind, Ryuuji tasted the anxiety of a traveler wandering into another world’s dungeon.

The entire area around the park he had considered using as a landmark had turned into a giant condominium. On the house-lined residential street, indistinguishable roads crossed his eyes like the lines of a go board, and the house numbers written on the utility poles were scattered at intervals. He went back and forth between the outer walls that looked like white stone and the deep green hedges of the labyrinth. Once late afternoon rolled around, and the brief midwinter sun started to slant down, they finally reached the place.

“Right. This…is it. It says Takasu on it.”

Taiga hesitantly looked at the nameplate half hidden by the leaves of the trees reaching out from within the walls. She turned around. When faced by the simple truth that the Takasu name didn’t come from his father, Ryuuji once again went silent. It was a bigger shock than he would have expected.

He’d always more or less assumed that the story Yasuko told him so often—“Your dad and I were tied together by fated love, but then he died. A tragedy!”—hadn’t been the truth. Yasuko was a runaway, so she had no reason to purposefully take the Takasu family name. He didn’t think she would have gone back to her maiden name if she was widowed, either. Whether she’d divorced the man or never married him in the first place, this only confirmed there had never been a father happily waiting for the bliss of Ryuuji’s birth.

Even though he guessed as much, it was definitely still—

“What? What’s with you? Why are you being so quiet?”

“Nothing… I’m just brooding over some stuff…”

“Do we have time for you to be hatching eggs?” Taiga demanded. The power of Ryuuji’s imagination swept him easily in the direction of tragedy, but nodding flatly, Taiga pulled off the great feat of bringing him back to reality with her next words. “You’re better off eating eggs than sitting on them.”

R-right, Ryuuji agreed with her momentarily. …I guess? He once again tilted his head.

“Breakfast aside, we really don’t have time to be spacing out. You’re going to make up with Ya-chan, aren’t you? That’s why we came here, right? If you leave things as is after having an argument with Ya-chan like that, then I can’t forgive you for running out back then…”

No, Taiga paused here. 

“…then I can’t forgive myself,” she finished in a lowered voice that was still firm. She looked up at Ryuuji’s face. Ryuuji understood it. The resolve that had brought him to stand next to Taiga in front of this gate was stronger than that.

“Ring the doorbell.”

“I know… I’ll do it now… I was just about to do it.”

In truth, he was pitiful. He was nervous. Yasuko’s resolve probably hadn’t been shallow either when she brought Ryuuji here last time, and he knew the heaviness of the resolve she must have had for deciding not to return home for eighteen years.

He stopped the finger that he reached towards the doorbell button under the nameplate. If he just touched it slightly, his emotions would be soothed. He held back his breath as he repeated that to himself over and over.

“Well, right. You need to mentally prepare yourself for this.” 

A Buddha-like smile spread over Taiga’s face. Yeah, yeah, she nodded along as she looked up at Ryuuji, who was so tense he looked like an ogre. With a gentle grip, she held his sweaty and secretly shaking hand.

“Taiga…”

Who in the world would have expected that Taiga, after everything that had happened, would be so nice? Ryuuji was strangely moved by the honest kindness that she had shown at this time. He felt almost like crying as he tried to squeeze Taiga’s hand back.

“HRAGH!”

“NAHHHH?!”

SNAP! He heard the sound of destruction coming from his once-happy left hand.

“Practice is over, you oaf! Now, hurry up and ring the doorbell!”

Blue veins rose to her forehead, and suddenly they were in a midair arm wrestling match. With a ridiculous amount of power, Taiga tried to push Ryuuji’s hand towards the Takasu family’s doorbell. Ryuuji grit his teeth and held his ground, both sporting fierce looks on their faces as they pushed and pulled at each other’s gripped hands. Their fingers and wrists were making cricking and cracking sounds.

“You can’t just force me to do it! I-I have to do this in my own time!”

“Your time is up!”

“I need more time!”

“Well, I’m your phee-pheean-fiancée, so we’re one in body and soul now!”

“Ahhh! I said to stop, you idiot!”

Ryuuji guarded miraculously against Taiga’s other hand, which slithered up from the side like a snake. He firmly locked both his hands together and used all of his body weight to push against her.

“Thinking over things here isn’t going to help anyone!” Her out-of-place howl echoed through the quiet residential streets.

“That’s true, but there are a ton of things I need to think about!”

“Are those things going to resolve themselves if you just stand here all day?!”

“They won’t, but I want to get my thoughts in order a little more, and then—”

Mumble mumble mumble—Taiga mouthed something quickly, under her breath. 

“Huh?!” 

Like I said, I need mumble mumble mumble! 

“I don’t know what you’re saying?!” 

I mumble mumble mumble!

“Just say it out loud!”

“I! Need to use! The bathrooooooom!”

SHRK. Ryuuji’s left hand lost its match, overpowered by her confession that her actual goal was to meet her physiological need. He was in a dangerous spot just shy of the doorbell, but the bones in his fist struck the concrete wall.

“Ow! Ouch…!”

“Ahhh…”

Ryuuji wasn’t the only one to shout. Taiga’s face tensed up. She let go of his hand and dropped into a strange half-standing, half-sitting position. Like a doll, she held both her hands out rigidly and bobbed up and down. Now that she said it out loud, it seemed that her need felt more urgent. With the faint smile of one right at her breaking point, she muttered, “I feel like that just might’ve brought me to my limit…”

“I-Is this…an emergency situation…?!”

“Yeargh…”

Her voice became smaller and smaller. Goodbye, cruel world, thanks for everything till now—Taiga was fading rapidly from the real world. Come what may, Ryuuji thought desperately as he pressed the doorbell firmly. All kinds of thoughts were racing through his head—what was he going to say, how could he explain who he was, what kinds of people were Yasuko’s parents, would he be able to accomplish what he decided to do, would they even trust him in the first place, actually, were these Takasus even Yasuko’s actual parents? Innumerable possible outcomes went through his mind. He thought about all the terrible ways things could go and—well, actually, that was all he thought about. Now that he was at this point, the tip of his finger chilled from nerves. He was overcome by the power of “I need to use their bathroom,” but that might have been a good thing in the end.

But…

“Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait… What’s going on…”

“No way…”

He had pressed it two, then three times, but hadn’t gotten a response. No way, no way, Taiga groaned, like a chant. It didn’t seem like anyone was home. 

Ryuuji automatically looked down at Taiga’s face. At some point her chant had changed to, Nor-way, but Taiga hadn’t noticed and just continued to pray. No-way, Nor-way, Nor-way… 

Of course. It was 3 PM on a weekday. If they had jobs, they would naturally be at work right now. Why hadn’t they thought of that possibility?

“What do you want to do? They might not be home.”

“Ahhh.” She’d come back from Norway.

“Wh-wh-wh-what are we going to do… Seriously, hey, what do you want to do?!”

“Hey, now, don’t you touch me.” Taiga’s demeanor changed. “Ha ha ha, don’t you dare touch me, don’t you dare lay a finger on me, ha ha ha ha!”

“Let’s go back to Norway—no—I mean the railway!” said Ryuuji. “No, there was a convenience store on the way, so let’s hurry and get back there!”

“Ahhhhh, I can’t walk.”

“I’ll carry you! There’s a Family Mart right over there! Don’t lose hope!”

“Ahh ha ha, don’t touch me please, aha ha haaa!”

Lit by the slanting midwinter sunlight, two suspicious shadows lengthened on the quiet residential street. Laughing while in a trance-like state was a girl in a duffel coat, and following her was a sadistic demon in a school uniform.

“Oh, excuse me…”

Society would have driven the value of not engaging with such people into anyone, especially the woman who now approached the Takasus’ gate in a roundabout way, curving around to avoid the two as much as possible. Ryuuji bowed his head to her reflexively.

The woman glanced at the two from the side of her eye. Ryuuji, aware they both looked incredibly dodgy, pushed Taiga, who was in her “Nor-way, ha ha ha,” state to the edge of the road. No matter what happened with Taiga, he would at least be her ally. She was his fiancée of one mind and body, and so he grimly prepared himself.

“Oh!”

“No way!”

Without thinking, the two of them raised their voices. The woman suddenly jolted, her shoulders shaking to a deplorable degree as she ran through the Takasus’ now-unlocked gate in a fluster. She was about to lock the gate behind her and just leave them.

“P-please wait! Um!” Ryuuji suddenly called out to her. He and Taiga looked at each other. Right. This is her.

She wore incredibly mundane dark grey wool pants, walking shoes, and a beige down coat. She carried a nylon bag from a drug store. Though the bag seemed normal, like something any place would sell, and her clothes screamed normal, forty or fifty-year-old “middle-aged woman,” the skin bordering her short-cropped hair seemed unusually youthful and smooth. Her mouth seemed springy, like a young girl’s, and her cheeks were plump and fresh—the word “genes” very clearly came into Ryuuji’s mind.

This person had to be Yasuko’s mother. The moment he thought that, their faces seemed to superimpose on each other. The shape of their eyes and the way the inner corners were set somewhat far apart made them look so alike it couldn’t have been a coincidence—of course.

When he called out to her, she turned her gaze towards Ryuuji’s tense face. The person, who seemed to be in a hurry to get away, stopped for a moment. He needed to say something. He took in a breath.

“Would you please let us borrow your bathroom?!”

“He’s Ya-chan’s son! Huh?! This is when you want to mention that?!”

“What…?! But you…!”

They’d both shouted completely different things. But Taiga was the one at her limit in this situation, and Ryuuji was resolute.

“Would you please let her use your bathroom?! I’m so sorry to suddenly spring this on you!” He stood firm on feet that seemed about to quiver. “I-I’m Ta…”

As his words caught and his back trembled, he realized that a small hand was patting him in support. Guided by the warmth of that hand, he exhaled all his breath at once and then inhaled.

“I’m! Takasu Ryuuji! I’m Takasu Yasuko’s son!”

He pulled out the watch and photo from his pocket. His hand shook to a strange extent, and he handed those over to the person on the other side of the gate. 

God, will this go well? Will my prayers reach you?

The woman first looked at the watch and then at the picture of Yasuko with her large belly next to a man in a mobster-like suit. Ryuuji could tell her grip loosened in the same way he often saw from the main characters of TV dramas. Her bags thumped down to her feet from her hands.

“You’re…” He saw her lips quake as she squeezed out her voice that was delicate to a painful degree. “Where did you come from… How did you get here…?”

“This is my girlfriend! Some things happened, so she had to come with me and—”

“Wh-where is Yasuko?!” Her yell was almost a shriek. 

Ryuuji pushed Taiga, who was on the verge of breaking loose, forward.

“There are many things we would like to tell you! A lot, really, there are so many things…but before that, please let her use your bathroom!”

“That’s a scam! Don’t let them in! You let them in?! You idiot!”

Even Ryuuji could tell the incredibly loud voice on the other side of the phone belonged to the head of the Takasu household. Yasuko’s father—the person who would be Ryuuji’s grandfather—came home about five minutes later, right as Taiga came out of the bathroom with an expression between relief and apology. 

“What is this?! Who came from where to do what… AH?!”

“Whoa…”

“Ugh…”

Thump! The man threw the door open, and it hit the backs of Ryuuji and Taiga’s heads as they stood there in the entryway, too awkward to come all the way in. They both held their heads, moving in unison. Of course, they were so in sync because they were of one mind and body that they both wailed as they fell to their knees on the tiles of the entryway.

“Honey, um, it’s these children…”

“Wh-which one is it?!”

“The boy said he’s Yasuko’s…”

“Wh-wh-wh-wha—”

It was an incredibly normal house.

The walls and the floors were made from bright wood. A shoehorn hung on a practical black string in the entryway. The snow from the day before might have also come down in that area, since there were still two umbrellas out. There were dried flowers on the wall, along with postcards and other things put up with a clip under the calendar. On the other side of the hallway was a doorway with a navy curtain, and behind that stood the living room, where the sunlight was pouring in. It was a very normal house. Even in that moment, Ryuuji felt like he might see a girl with Yasuko’s face come out in a sailor uniform, flipping the curtain forcefully as she ran noisily in her slippers.

That house had a mother, father, and daughter who would be visited by the regular passage of time that brought morning, afternoon, and night. But Ryuuji also knew that, at the same time, that that “normal” was long in the past.

“I’m…I am Takasu Ryuuji. Taiga, can you stand up?”

He grabbed Taiga’s elbow as she nodded and the two of them gradually got up. He didn’t know how to talk to the suit-wearing old man who he’d just found out was a licensed tax accountant in an office nearby. 

“This is Aisaka Taiga. She had to come here with me today because of some circumstances.”

Taiga ambiguously lowered her head slightly. That had probably taken everything she had in her to do.

“And this. He brought it with him. It’s Yasuko, isn’t it?” Yasuko’s mother brought the watch and picture to the man. Still standing stiffly in the entryway, Yasuko’s father was dumbstruck as he looked between the objects. He did that for an incredibly long time and then raised his face. The spouses’ eyes met without a word.

For the clincher, Ryuuji pulled out the phone store note from his pocket and thrust it at them. In Yasuko’s handwriting was written the address and phone number of the house they were currently standing in.

“This ugly, bubbly handwriting…has to be Yasuko’s, hasn’t it?”

“It’s Yasuko’s… She’s still writing the kanji characters for the place she lived in since she was born wrong. This has to be her. Then, this boy really is Yasuko’s…”

Ryuuji also produced his student ID, proving he was named Takasu Ryuuji. He didn’t have any other identifying documentation at the time. All that remained was to fully illuminate the already brightening truth.

“Yasuko—my mother ran away from home yesterday! She abandoned me!”

The photo, note, student ID, and everything else fell from the married couple’s hands. Just as the watch was about to hit the ground, Taiga miraculously caught it. “Got it…”

“I can’t let her do that, so I came here! My mother is an adult, so I need her to stop being a runaway and to come home. I need her to come back here. To come home. I can’t forgive myself for being the reason Yasuko couldn’t come back to her mother and father. I used to think it would have been better if I’d never been born, but—” He didn’t know if his words would get through to them, but Ryuuji had to try. “Right now, I’m alive and have someone I love. I have someone who’s starting to love me. Because I was born, because I’m alive right now, I’m definitely…happy.”

He grabbed Taiga’s hand; his own shook. Taiga firmly gripped Ryuuji’s fingers back. At the entrance of the house Yasuko had run away from, he wasn’t alone.

“So…you might think I’m an idiot for suddenly appearing at your doorstep and suddenly telling you this, and you might think I’m just some strange guy, but! I don’t want to be a weight dragging Yasuko down! For the sake of the person who is here and loves me right now…for Taiga’s sake, because she loves me, for the sake of all my friends, for my mom’s sake, I want to be happy with who I am now! I don’t want to think that someone who loves me needs to pay a price for my existing! I want my existence to be completely acknowledged as I am! I don’t want anyone sacrificing themselves! So I came here…in order to show Yasuko the way home, I came all the way here!”

“We’re not part of a weird cult or anything,” Taiga chimed in once Ryuuji finished his incoherent clamoring. “He really means it. He’s kind of a dangerous guy…but he can’t help that. Because he’s Ya-chan’s son after all, he really—his heart is really, seriously, completely, absolutely full of love.” 

She understood him. A tear fell from her eyes. 

“Can you really show Yasuko the way home?” Yasuko’s mother muttered. “Yasuko so wanted to have you and meet you. She cried so many times when she got in trouble with us, because we were against it…and then she disappeared. Will you be able to bring Yasuko home this time?”

As Ryuuji nodded as vigorously as he could, a regular tick tick tick echoed from the watch. Even on that day, the watch Taiga grasped in her hand was still keeping time. The hands of the watch Yasuko took from this house, and that Ryuuji brought home, continued to move.

He was sure he could turn back time in this house. Just a little longer—just a little bit more. Ryuuji’s sharp eyes looked down at the world he wished for and swam through the clouds.

***

The message they ended up sending had been their second option.

“I wonder if we’ll be punished for this.” Still sighing from worry, Yasuko’s mother—he just couldn’t bring himself to call Takasu Sonoko, the baby-faced fifty-five-year-old, “Grandma”—wandered in and out of the kitchen. Takasu Seiji, who at fifty-seven was also too young to be called “Grandpa,” sat down on a stool by the counter that contained the sink. The man, whose name shared the same final kanji character as Ryuuji’s, seemed to have nothing to do. 

“All we can do is wait, right? Calm down a little, please. We can’t do anything about something we already sent.”

“If we do get punished for this, I think it’ll be on me. I’m the one who did it, after all.” Shameless as usual, Taiga was right at the center of the Takasus’ kotatsu and had thrust herself deep under the blankets in the best seat to watch the TV. She still held her phone in her hand so she could reply whenever she needed to. Like an animal of the feline persuasion, she turned defiant and rested her head on the tabletop.

“If words can affect reality, then I’m headed straight down,” Ryuuji said.

He sat behind Taiga with his knees folded under himself, like a vassal or manager, or if anything, a hit man. Ryuuji had been the one who came up with the message, and he intended to take full responsibility for it. Only an hour had passed since they sent it, but all of them were restlessly pointing their ears to the front door.

Ryuuji’s been in an accident and was hurt really bad, just come over.

He had Taiga use her phone to send that incredibly cursed fake message to Yasuko. Their first idea had been a little tamer—There’s no house at the address anymore. The third was He’s been put in protective custody and can’t go home without someone to come get him. They rejected the first on the grounds she would probably ignore it, and Sonoko struck down the third with a single sentence: “Then he’d be at the police station.” No one could come up with another idea, so they decided on the extreme second option.

“It’s almost exactly like a scam message. Wouldn’t any normal person think it’s too suspicious to be real?”

“I left a missed call, too. I think she’ll fall for it.”

“She wouldn’t call all the nearby hospitals or something, would she?”

“Uhh…she might.” Realizing the clumsiness of the plan, Ryuuji was stunned. But regardless of what happened next, it was done. And in this case, two adults approved of it, too—though they seemed to be regretting it slightly.

The TV was off in the quiet living room, and four people’s worth of silence hung over them. Ryuuji stood up and slightly awkwardly flipped open his phone. “Um, here. It’s Yasu… It’s a picture of my mom from last week. We were having hot pot…”

Sonoko and Seiji hesitantly stretched their necks to peek at the phone in Ryuuji’s hand. They looked at the picture of Yasuko for a while without a word. Without makeup on, she looked glossy, like a peeled egg, and she wore a stupid-looking topknot and Uniqlo loungewear. She didn’t have any eyebrows drawn in, and she was flashing jovial peace signs with both hands through the steam of the hot pot. The photo might have been too stupid to show them, Ryuuji thought.

“Yasuko…really hasn’t changed…”

“She really hasn’t changed at all…”

Muttering quietly, the two of them came closer to take a better look at the small screen.

“I have a better one.”

He rummaged through a folder that he had left unorganized and tried to look for a photo that made Yasuko look a bit better. He felt like the one where she was walking in the middle of intense white light in the middle of summer might be good and let it fill the screen. He couldn’t remember just what possessed him to take the picture, but it might have been from when she was going to the river shore to have a barbeque with all the other women from Bishamon Heaven, based on how Yasuko had a cooler box dangling from one hand. Yasuko wore a hat with a large rim, a T-shirt, and jeans. Of course, she was smiling widely. A little ahead of her, the skirt of the dress Taiga wore fluttered, and she smiled in the same way. The photo itself was pretty askew. Ryuuji might have been smiling as he took the photo, too.

“Oh, she looks so good. It looks fun,” Sonoko muttered in a tone like she was talking to herself, and for the first time, wore a faint smile. “If she looks fine… If she was fine this whole time, then that’s good enough, right honey?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not? I think it’s fine. I’ve been worried this whole time, and then eighteen years went by. The neighbors told me that they saw Ya-chan.” As she smiled, she used her fingertips to gently wipe the corners of her eyes. “There used to be a park over there before. They said that Ya-chan had brought a little boy and was standing there. They said they saw her. That she was so thin and looked so pitiful.”

Heaven’s net is wide, but its mesh is fine—it seemed no one had heard Ryuuji say that in a low voice.

“Even if they made a mistake and it wasn’t her…I didn’t understand why they hadn’t stopped her! I was so angry that I couldn’t help myself. But it was my own fault. I was waiting every day for Yasuko to come home, but that day, I was at the bank and other places and doing trivial errands. Usually I’m at home all day, but I wasn’t that day. I was so full of regrets and sorrow and I couldn’t stop… In my imagination, Yasuko was getting worse and worse, and I thought maybe she might have died or been killed… I have dreams about that, of following Yasuko holding a little boy in her arms, calling out, ‘Mooom, help me, why aren’t you here for me?’ and running to that park as fast she can, crying… Ahh, I’ll stop. She was fine the whole time. I can stop.”

Sonoko lifted her youthful body and stood. “Want anything to eat? Do you need to use the restroom again?” she asked Taiga, who was buried under the table in the living room.

Taiga crawled out, still in her uniform, and came to the kitchen. “I kind of do… Something with rice…”

Ryuuji pulled on Taiga’s sleeve. “You…! Do you have any shame…!”

“But I’m hungry. We haven’t eaten any lunch. Actually, last night and this morning, my stomach hurt so much I couldn’t really eat. But it’s the same for you, isn’t it? I was thinking in the hotel yesterday, I’m sure Ryuuji is so sad right now that he probably hasn’t been able to eat anything… His stomach probably hurts just as much as mine… Isn’t that right? Since we’re of one mind and one body?”

“I ate! After Yasuko abandoned me yesterday and I was left alone at the apartment, I actually took out leftovers and made sure to have a decent meal! I even ate your chocolates!”

“No way?! Are you heartless or something?!”

“I ate breakfast, too! You have to feed yourself to make sure you have enough in you to get around everywhere today, right?! You didn’t even eat a meal to prep for a big day like this or make sure you were taking in enough nutrients?! That’s way more heartless!”

“My…!”

Taiga whispered purposefully into Sonoko’s ear, See what he says, that’s your grandson’s true face. Seiji chimed in, Let her eat, and ended up standing from his seat. 

Sonoko laughed as she peeked into their fridge. “Oh, I have frozen rice and eggs, ham, onions, and a little…”

“You have mustard greens, too! Ryuuji can make mustard greens fried rice, then!” Taiga was all smiles as she checked out the leftovers in a stranger’s fridge. Ryuuji ended up blushing and turning his face down. 

“You…! How can you be so chummy right off the bat… Don’t you have manners?!”

“But they’re Ya-chan’s mom and dad. And they’re your grandma and grandpa. Next year if I marry you, then they’ll be my grandma and grandpa!” Taiga’s mouth opened up into a triangular smile, and she raised both arms in the Glico man pose. Seeing that, Sonoko smiled slightly.

“You want fried rice? Want me to make you some?”

“Yay!”

Ryuuji blinked, and with speed on par with that of a launching battleship, Taiga was perched right at the dining table in the next moment. Seriously? He covered his face.

“I’ll help… Please let me help. I’ve really lost face…”

He came to stand next to Sonoko in the ordinary little kitchen. When Sonoko pulled on a string, the once-dark sink top was lit up by a harsh fluorescent light.

“Ryuuji is suuuuuuuuuuper good at cooking!”

“Is he now?” Urged by Taiga’s proud voice, Sonoko watched Ryuuji chop up an onion, and her eyes went wide. “Wow! I wouldn’t have thought you were Yasuko’s. She’s terrible at that, and she could never remember the steps, so nothing came out of it. If she just put the time into it, she would have been able to make some tasty meals…”

“I know,” Ryuuji continued to chop in an unfaltering rhythm as he answered, “because I was raised on Yasuko’s cooking. Ever since I learned how to cook, I’ve been doing the cooking, but we always did it together before.”

“I see. That’s how it was.”

I hope she’s not going to cry, he worried as he looked at Sonoko, but Sonoko’s gaze had only gone distant momentarily. She was silent for a while, mulling over something.

“She was stupid, that kid.”

She stared out the window as sunset approached. He didn’t know whether she meant, The two of you going through all that without a father was stupid, or No matter how you tried to live, running away like that was stupid, or whether it was both, and Ryuuji had no way of checking.

He was sitting at the table eating fried rice with Taiga when—

“You can take a look through these.”

Thump thump thump! Seiji, who must have gone up to the second floor, piled albums of Yasuko onto the table. He brought the baby-faced spectacle of seeing her grow up through kindergarten, elementary, and junior high school. Ryuuji and Taiga became unintentionally absorbed in staring at the pictures, and at some point, night fell outside.

“Whoa… She’s got a kid’s backpack…! Whoa…a recorder…!”

“Hey, Ryuuji.”

“And her face looks exactly the same as it does now…!”

Taiga’s pointer finger prodded at the back of Ryuuji’s hand, which held the page, trying to gain his attention. Next, she pointed at the Takasu couple. They wouldn’t even sit at the heated table. They had just been staring out the living room’s front window the whole time, even though it was too dark to see anything. They were waiting for the time when Yasuko would come home.

“If Ya-chan doesn’t come back, then what do we do…?” Taiga asked him, bringing her face close and lowering her voice.

“We’ll wait until she comes home, and if we can’t wait for her, we’ll look for her until we find her.” Ryuuji rasped next to Taiga’s ear so only she would be able to hear. It seemed Taiga accepted that. She rubbed her apparently ticklish ears as her eyes once again dropped to the album. Even though there were plenty of photos of Yasuko in her junior high school blazer and in her own clothes, Ryuuji was disappointed there were only a few pictures of her after she reached high school.

The answer he’d just given Taiga was flawed. He knew that his wish would never come true, even if he and Taiga went searching for Yasuko after waiting for her to show up. That wouldn’t be enough to fulfill it. The message they sent was toeing the line of legality…and they had done something terribly dark by sending it. 

The watch that had been left on the table pointed out that it was long past dinnertime. The world he wished for was still far off, and his heart was growing impatient. 

“Are you nervous?”

“Why? Of course not.” Ryuuji used both hands to prop up his face to hide his mouth. At some point, Taiga started to stare intently into his face. I said I’m fine, he mumbled back to her.

“Hmm…” She closed her eyes and lightly shook her head. After she took a long breath, she said… “Smooch.”

She threw him a kiss.

Ryuuji immediately threw his head to the side to avoid it. She continued to smooch smooch smooch in quick succession, and he dodged to the right and left to escape from them.

“Seriously. One over there. The next one’s over there, this time the last one is going to be there.”

She aimed for the ceiling, the wall, the top of the table in the living room. Taiga snorted as though she were enjoying herself.

“Well, you might have done the right thing by avoiding them. Those actually weren’t free. Each kiss costs three thousand yen.”

“You were going to charge for kisses? And they’re expensive to boot!”

“But wait just a minute! If you can catch all of them, you’ll get bonus points for ten thousand yen!”

“You’ll pay me that?”

“It’ll be added to the other charges…”

“You’re making it more expensive?!”

“But, in full, the burden will go to the shopping giant Japanet Takasu!”

“Yeah, Japanet Ta…so you mean me!”

He raised his right hand, thinking of giving her a physical comeback on the top of her head, but Taiga challenged him with her eyes—If you want to try, I dare you!

Then Ryuuji turned reflexively to the entryway.

The faint sound that came to him was familiar. When he stood without thinking, Taiga looked up at his face in curiosity.

“It’s Yasuko.”

Sonoko and Seiji looked at Ryuuji’s face as though surprised. “You heard something?!” “Well, I just…” 

Ryuuji had heard it. The sound approaching them was certainly familiar. They were the shrill footsteps of teetering high heels awkwardly going at full speed on the asphalt. At the nursery, at the kindergarten, at school, and at home, Ryuuji would take that sound as a signal to raise his head from his toys or books, and to run to the entryway. Even now, he almost automatically kicked away his chair and headed to the front door, but no—he returned his butt to his cushion.

“That’s the sound of Yasuko’s footsteps. I think you can meet her at the entrance.”

“Honey…!” Sonoko raised her voice practically to a shriek as she looked into Seiji’s face. Seiji also froze for a second, and the couple both forgot to breathe as they looked at each other. They heard the owner of the approaching footfalls open the gate without hesitation and didn’t even turn around as they ran into the hallway.

“You go, too! Hurry!”

“No, we’ll come after. They’ve been waiting for eighteen years. We shouldn’t get in their way,” Ryuuji said to Taiga. His throat felt hot, like he had swallowed fire. He’d said what was actually running through his mind, but that was only half of it. The other half of him felt scared of facing her.

The words he’d shot off at Yasuko, who raised him this whole time, still felt fresh in his throat. It was like they were still stuck in his ears. It would have been better if I’d never been born, he had told his mother, who’d sacrificed everything away for his sake, Your life was a mistake. You’re a failure, and my existence was a mistake. 

He’d thought that Yasuko’s extreme attempts to control Ryuuji’s future were rooted in her inabilities. That she had been trying to atone for her failure to follow her parents’ guidance when she was a child by making Ryuuji do what she couldn’t. In other words, she must have thought having Ryuuji was a sin. She must have regretted it. He had wanted to blame her for that. 

Don’t control me just to make things easier for you. To throw around that easy phrase, which no other seventeen-year-old would have batted an eye at, he had to cause this much hurt.

Now he thought differently.

Would he be able to do things over?

Would he be able to overturn everything that happened in the last eighteen years and still affirm that everything in the present was fine as it was?

“Ryuuji—”

Would he be able to bring Taiga all of her joy without missing anything?

“This is a disaster—”

“Even if it is, no matter what I need to do, I’ll do it. Who said that wishing for something was a crime? There doesn’t need to be any sacrifice or mass destruction, I’ll do everything I can for—”

“It’s a disaster, Ya-chan’s—”

“I’ll…huh?”

“Ya-chan is avoiding the entryway—”

With a look of astonishment, Taiga pointed, and he turned. Yasuko was taking apart the living room window frame, using all her strength to shake the window glass. They could hear Seiji and Sonoko’s voices from the entryway, “Huh?!” “Where is she?!”

Fwump. Yasuko abandoned her high heels and stepped into her parent’s living room. It seemed to Ryuuji that her wide-open eyes were flashing red and white with her ragged breath, which made her shoulders heave. She didn’t smell like alcohol. Her hair didn’t look like a bomb had dropped on it, either. She might have just come out of a bath without drying it; its long, perm-damaged, golden locks stuck to her pale face in tendrils. 

As she approached, Ryuuji noticed she was wearing a green tracksuit from his junior high school days that did not match her shoes at all, along with a black down coat.

“Ya-Yasuko! Yasuko…!”

“Yasukoooooo!”

The Takasus had come back from the entryway and were stumbling over each other. They were absorbed in going around either side of the heated table in order to hug Yasuko.

“Ryu-ryu-ryu-ch-ryuu-chan…wh-wh-wh-where did you get…hurt…”

Ryuuji could only stand there petrified, unable to touch Yasuko’s hand, which shook like a person on the verge of freezing to death. Yasuko’s knees seemed unable to support herself. Her whole body shook intensely as she looked at Ryuuji. It seemed her mouth wouldn’t move properly, either. When she tried to speak, she held her mouth with her shaking hand and took long breaths, like she was spasming. That was all she could manage.

He could see that the eyelashes surrounding her wide-open eyes were wet. 

He couldn’t move at all now that he was in front of her. He listened to Taiga speaking in place of him, but the sound seemed to come through stuffed ears.

“Ya-chan…sorry…”

What a terrible thing they had done.

“I’m sorry, it was a lie… I’m sorry…”

“Yasuko!”

It seemed that Yasuko hadn’t noticed Sonoko’s hand reaching out to her. The table went flying like it had been kicked over. Yasuko flew straight towards him, her right hand high. She’s going to hit me, Ryuuji understood, and he waited for the impact on his cheek.

But that hand first went to his forehead.

Then it cupped his cheek.

“Oh—”

It touched his chin. Her fingertips warmed his ear. She didn’t even hesitate to flip Ryuuji’s lips up as she continued to check his face. She patted his shoulders from over his uniform and then turned him around to check his back.

“I didn’t know what to do.” Yasuko tried to hug Ryuuji, and her arms went limp. As he watched that, his head went white, and he was only able to say one thing. 

“I’m so sorry…”

He wasn’t even able to support his falling mother.

Yasuko sank down onto the living room floor and cried out loudly. Her cry was a dreadful scream, like a baby just born, like a beast about to be killed. She opened her mouth wide and couldn’t even wipe away the tears that overflowed from her eyes. Like she had gone mad, she could only yell over and over again, You’re okay, you’re okay.

Seiji stepped towards her. 

“Get yourself together.” As though to bring her to her senses, he slapped her cheek. “You’re a mother, aren’t you?”

I-I-I, Yasuko’s throat fluttered as she looked up at Ryuuji. “I’m…a f-failure as a mother.”

Her wide-open eyes filled with more fresh tears.

“I made Ryuu-chan think that. I’m a failure. I wanted him to be happy, that was all, but I couldn’t make that happen… I don’t think that about you…! Not that—”

Yasuko desperately shook her head side to side, trying to shake off a fretfulness that she couldn’t put into words.

“If you hadn’t been born, then I wouldn’t have anything! Ryuu-chan, you’re everything in my life that makes me happy! So…I was scared!”

Sonoko and Seiji stayed silent. They already understood everything Yasuko wanted to say. They listened to her earnest voice as Yasuko heaved with even more intense sobs. 

“I was thinking of what I would do if you left like I did. This whole, whole time since you were a baby, I’ve been scared you would eventually leave someday. I just couldn’t help but be scared! I abandoned my mom and dad, and I thought the punishment for that would eventually come for me! When…when you were born, I finally understood what a horrible thing I’d done…so I thought you would leave, and that I couldn’t stop you. I thought that time had finally come, and I didn’t want to see it. I couldn’t, I couldn’t bear it…so I ran away…! All I know…is how to run…”

The echoing words Yasuko breathed out filled the room with sadness, seeping out from corner to corner. No, no. Ryuuji bit his lip and glared down the sadness.

We’re done with the sadness. We don’t need any more.

“I thought that I needed to ask the landlady to watch until you left. Then the landlady said that you were crying yesterday…and I thought, I did it again…! I did another terrible thing, and I finally understood that…so when that message came, I thought this really was the end! I’m an idiot, so I thought that everything would be taken from me…and I thought this would be the end!”

“I’m alive!” Ryuuji declared firmly in order to keep Yasuko from making him cry. He got on his knees and held Yasuko’s shoulders. As though rebuking the sorrow that oozed around them, he breathed out sharply. No one had to run away from home again. Not anyone.

“I was born! And I am alive! What do you want after that?! What else do you want?!”

Like seeing a person for the first time, Yasuko’s eyes opened wide. Her lips trembled, wet with tears.

“After that…? What else…?” she repeated back at him, like the words puzzled her. “I’m happy that you were born and that you lived…and…after that…if that happiness were to last…forever…and ever…”

“Then it’ll last. Let’s make sure it lasts.” Nodding, he pulled on Taiga’s hand next. “She’s going to be here, too. Always. For a lifetime.”

“Taiga-ch—”

Yasuko swallowed her breath and trembled slightly, then eventually grabbed and roughly pulled Taiga’s head closer after Taiga crouched down. The rest wouldn’t form into words. She grabbed Ryuuji’s arm firmly and cried again. No matter how much she cried, her tears wouldn’t run dry, but if sadness tried to break into that place, Ryuuji decided he would strike it down as soon as it emerged.

“I was thinking about you, Taiga-chan.” Yasuko buried her crying face into Taiga’s small head and patted her hair several times. “I was thinking that you would end up going somewhere where I couldn’t reach you. I was thinking about how much pain and suffering you might have felt. I thought…if only I hadn’t cared about you so much. Because I can’t tell you not to go myself! No matter how much I wanted to! Even when I thought Ryuu-chan would leave me as long as you two were together… As long as there was something left for you two, I thought it was okay.”

“It’s okay. There’s something for Ryuuji. There’s something for me, also. Your share is here, too. Ryuuji already said so, and I agree.” 

They exchanged words that were cryptic to everyone but the two of them. Thank you, thank you, Yasuko said over and over again. She was saying it to Taiga.

“Why? Why are you thanking me?”

“For everything. For being here. For coming to our house. For coming to love Ryuu-chan. For meeting me. For your mom and dad, too… I’m thankful for all of it. I’m thankful for everyone.”

“Are you gonna brush off your own mom and dad?”

At her son’s joke, Yasuko seemed to look around her surroundings like she was noticing them for the first time. She sniffled and rubbed at her tear-puffed eyes as she finally looked at Sonoko and Seiji.

“Huh?”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Sonoko and Ryuuji sighed like tornadoes at the same time. That’s all you’ve got to say? they were probably both thinking.

But…

“It’s…okay now. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s fine now,” Sonoko’s tensed back suddenly curved gently. “Were you living together with Ryuuji-kun? Just the two of you? This whole time?”

Yasuko hesitated slightly and then finally nodded just once in response. Neither Sonoko, Seiji, nor Ryuuji asked anything more of her.

This was as far as they needed to go. 

“You did a great job coming home. You finally made it home… You must have traveled so far. Isn’t that great? Everyone came home safe. I’m so happy.”

For the time being, give them something to eat—even though they had just eaten fried rice, Seiji’s words made Taiga’s eyes glitter.