Chapter Text
Kazusa never regrets buying the seat next to her and placing her instrument on the window seat. Although the nasty looks sometimes make her wince, it is worth keeping her instrument with her. She would her koto be hurt by some careless mistake she had made, rather than someone else bearing the burden of her ire should anything happen to it outside of her control. Kazusa knows her default is cruelty better than she knows how to dole out earned kindness. It makes her equal parts self-aware yet challenging to deal with.
She has not made the trip back home since she moved to the United States years ago. Kazusa is not sure whether she should be going back. There are whispers of a pandemic in the making, the constant refreshing of the news cycle makes the pit in her stomach grow. But she doesn't know what else to do. She has a dissertation to figure out, and it cannot simply be an extension of her master’s work, without symbolizing some sort of growth. Kazusa is exhausted from the growth that seems to be demanded of her. However, she did not expect this to be the path she would take when she first decided to take her music as seriously as she took others.
There are marks and scars of growth all over her body. The most obvious are the tattoos that cover her hands. Like too many choices she had made, it was a naive, and almost reckless decision to cover her hands with patterns and hearts that wrap aimlessly around her fingers; but to a younger Kazusa, it was an affirming action towards her music. She sat in front of the tattoo artist as they had asked her younger self, almost obsessively, if she was sure this was what she wanted to do with her hands. The tattoo artist has cited statistics about employment and cautioned against it. Back then, Kazusa was determined to show the world that she would only allow herself to be judged by her music. Now, she is not as sure. She does not know whether her music will ever love her back the way she needs it to. That is scary, she has always poured the definitions and assumptions she has made of herself into her music.
Kazusa met the woman she is going to marry through music. And while Hana is Japanese American, her family is carefully traced back to times before Pearl Harbour, there is only so much Hana can understand about Kazusa without Hana’s Americaness seeming like an endless chasm they have to cross over the most mundane things.
She is going back home to Japan to figure it out. Kazusa is leaving her love, hoping to discover if there are still parts of herself that she has not clawed out with ferocity since she left. She had built a life she was quite proud of outside of the one she was destined to inherit. She has found love and made herself a name that is only hers alone. Interestingly enough, she has worked herself to the bone to carve out her own path. All of this was really meant to be so much easier though.
Kazusa was supposed to be an heir, but no one seems to have patience for an heir that is not interested in carrying on her legacy through marriage with a man. It is a pressure that Kazusa never wished for Nene, but if Himesaka taught her anything, it is that she doesn’t owe her life to any man, no matter how sweetly her imagination begs her to fulfil their desires.
Before she knows it, she has landed home, and Kazusa is not prepared for how different everything looks. Yuuki had warned her about making assumptions that her visions of home would be the same as reality. Yuuki is simple like that, he warns gently but never lets Kazusa be anything but responsible for her own actions. He is the reason she found herself in the United States to begin with, after wandering hopelessly from conservatory to conservatory, hoping to find a place for koto outside of Japan. He had opened his home to her when she did not have much of one, to begin with, and she knows that she will always be in Yuuki’s debt because of that one kind gesture.
The flight is painless and so is getting her luggage from the turnstile. She packed without extra pounds to spare. Still, she is grateful that she didn't let Hana talk her into large care packages. Her arms are already screaming with the effort of keeping her instrument safe as she navigates the airport. Her hands are full, and as she turns into the pickup terminal Tetsuki is there, waiting to take her to the countryside.