Chapter Text
I’ll proceed to tomorrow
In the cradle of tenderness I’ve been weaving
Be it a day of rain or sunshine
So I can tell you I love you
—Michishirube, Chihara Minori
Sunday, 13 August 2000
On the first day of the Bon Festival, seven-year-old Ryuu left the city with his parents to go back to the ancestral home of the Naruhodous.
Granpa usually did the menial task of cleaning the family gravestone every year, but it seems that due to some circumstances he cannot visit this year—so the task fell to Dad, who was next in line. And so it was that they arrived during that sweltering August afternoon on the doorstep of the rather handsome, severe-looking house built almost entirely of wood, said to be around a hundred years old. Actually, half of the house is new, and half of it very old. The oldest rooms of the house might have been built, Dad said, around the end of the Meiji Era or the beginning of the Taisho Era, even before the first World War. That was how old it was.
Ryuu didn’t really know how long ago the first World War was, or even what it was exactly, but at the very least he knew the house was far older than Granpa.
Granpa’s father, Ryuu’s great-grandfather, was the only inhabitant of this house now. Granpa occasionally visits to look after the old man—one of those occasional visits happening to be the Bon Festival—but Great-Granpa was normally looked after by a very kind neighbor whose own grandparents had been friends with the Naruhodous way back, as well as a live-in manservant who kept the house and the garden well-tended. Granpa used to say that Great-Granpa was waiting for nothing but the “grim reaper” to take him away. What a grim reaper was, Ryuu didn’t really know, but Dad’s drawing of one seemed rather terrifying—it was dressed all in black and had a horrifying face, and Ryuu had always wondered what he should do if he did encounter one by chance.
Perhaps Signal Blue’s power would be enough to defeat one, he thought hopefully.
The old house did have a little garden in front. It being the height of summer, most of the flowers had already bloomed, brilliant in color and dazzling in the heat. The tree in the corner provided a most refreshing shade with its huge branches—Granpa used to say that he climbed those low-lying branches as a boy and doze in there when the heat was especially unbearable. Ryuu’s first thought when he laid eyes on the tree was perhaps along the same vein. It did look like an easy climb—but then Mom pulled his ear teasingly and said that he shouldn’t climb it at all, or he might fall down and break his arm.
When he looked upon the memory of this unusual and brilliant summer, Ryuu can still remember when Dad and Mom and Ryuu went to Great-Granpa’s room near the kitchen to greet him and let him know that Granpa won’t be arriving. The room was dominated by that odd scent that was somehow exuded by great age, and the window was opened to let the warm sunlight in. Ryuu’s Great-Granpa himself was on the bed, his eyes clouded, and it seemed to take him a little while to understand that he was not talking to Granpa, but rather Dad.
“And this is Ryuuichi, your great-grandchild.” Dad pushed Ryuu forward. Uncertainly, Ryuu took a few steps toward Great-Granpa’s side, but just out of reach of the bed. “Say hello, Ryuuichi.”
“Hello, Great-Granpa,” Ryuu obediently parroted.
Great-Granpa only uttered a sound that seemed more like an irritated snarl than anything else, and the manservant was quick to show them out of the room and shut the door carefully behind them.
“He’s been in a worse mood than usual lately. It always happens at this time of year,” was the servant’s apologetic words.
Dad told him not to worry about it, and that they should probably get going to clean the family grave already, as the first order of business. “I’ll drive you there,” the servant offered, which Dad answered with a gratified nod.
“Now, Ryuu-chan. Don’t wander too far or you’ll get lost,” Mom cautioned once they were dropped off at their destination.
Ryuu only nodded, his imagination slowly being awakened by the solemn sight of the gravestones neatly lined up in rows. While Mom and Dad were busy with cleaning the Naruhodou family gravestone, he was left free to wander around the cemetery with a curious rather than a frightened air, like most of his peers would normally have had.
To his young eyes, the gray gravestones that rose out of the ground were like miniature buildings.
Most of the other graves also had visitors for the Bon preparations, and the slight tang of incense smoke permeated the air. The blue sky was pale with the summer heat, and the clouds were only the merest wisps. The sun was bright, and hot, and soon his chin was damp with sweat.
In a place like this, Ryuu felt as if he was more like a huge beast who was about to destroy a city, rather than the superhero who was coming to save it.
But maybe that could be fun too.
“Gao,” he tried roaring, like the latest monster-of-the-week in Signal Samurai. “Gao, gao.”
No, he decided. I wanted to be Signal Blue, after all.
But no one else had brought their kids along, so Ryuu resigned himself to playing alone, pretending to be Signal Blue, champion of justice, running among the gravestones, until he could hear Mom’s high-pitched voice starting to call for him to come back.
“Ryuu-chan? It’s time to go home!”
Monday, 14 August 2000
On the second day of the Bon Festival, it began to rain in the morning.
Among other things, seven-year-old Ryuu found that it could be quite difficult to keep still inside the old Naruhodou ancestral home on such a damp morning as this one. One cannot watch Signal Samurai, or pretend to be Signal Blue, all the time. And besides, eventually, playing by oneself gets tiring.
Not to mention that last evening, Mom and Dad had insisted on so many rules he had to follow. Mom’s voice still rang in his little head: Ryuu-chan, don’t run in the hallways, you might slip. Ryuu-chan, don’t disturb Great-Granpa in his room, he’s ill and might get angry at you. Ryuu-chan, don’t play with the stuff in the kitchen, you’ll get hurt. Ryuu-chan, don’t sneak snacks out of the tall cupboard, you might fall… But out of all those annoying rules, one in particular seemed very tantalizing in his head, because when Dad told him about this Super Important Rule back in the house, he had his Super Important Face on—
“Whatever you do, Ryuuichi, don’t ever go into that old study, or else…”
Or else what? Ryuu was about to ask, but then Mom entered the room and asked Dad for help on something, and he left without completely clarifying the situation.
Ryuu knew what Dad meant by the “old study”, at the very least. It was an unused room, in what was the oldest wing of the house. It stood out because its door was much older and more worn-out than the other newer doors, and he heard Dad say once that it was one of the only rooms that were left of the original house before Great-Granpa in his youth decided to build what was now the newer, main section of the ancestral home. Ryuu thought that, maybe because of this, the old study seemed much grander and lonelier compared to the other rooms.
And because of this mysterious allure, and the equally mysterious parting warning Dad left him, it made seven-year-old Ryuu very curious to see what was so important in the old study that he wasn’t allowed to see, and during this rainy day in Great-Granpa’s house, he decided to see what was inside the old study at last while Mom and Dad were out to buy something from town and Great-Granpa was sleeping and the servant was busy in the garden.
He inspected the door to the study carefully before going in. Like most traditional doors, it did not have a lock on it at all. It was also so unexpectedly light and well-maintained that Ryuu can slide it open even with little effort. When he stepped into the room and shut the door beside him, he found himself in what seemed to be a rather cluttered old office.
The walls were lined with bookshelves crammed full of old books, so old that Ryuu guessed they might have been older than Granpa, or even Great-Granpa himself. The windows were shuttered, but some slivers of weak sunlight could still filter in through the small gaps, and Ryuu could still see even in the partial darkness, which only emboldened him to go in further into the room.
There was a globe set precariously on top of a tall pile of books on one corner, and a trunk below a window which looked large enough for Ryuu to fit two kids of his size, with space to spare. There was also an old-fashioned desk with ornate short legs in the middle of the room, and on it there were more piles of books, some stacks of paper, and an ink stand with some pens and other writing materials. There was also an ornate rocking chair turned toward the window, and in it—
Ryuu couldn’t help but gasp quite loudly.
—In the rocking chair was a strange gentleman that looked around the same age as Dad, dressed in a formal-looking black suit. He was fast asleep, glasses askew on his nose, and his mouth was slightly open.
Ryuu froze at the realization that there was someone he didn’t know in the room, and instinctively took a step backward, ready to flee at the first sign of danger. However, it seemed that the man’s sleep was lighter than expected, and he stirred uneasily in his chair and opened his eyes, rubbing the sleep blearily off them before he turned his head and spotted Ryuu.
“Oh!” the man exclaimed. “Who might you be?”
He had a funny way of speaking, almost like how some people in Mom’s favorite radio dramas would speak, that is, quite stiffly—and almost too formal, like a person from a book. While puzzling over this man’s accent, Ryuu had to take a while before realizing that the gentleman’s face didn’t seem very terrifying after all, and that his voice was much more pleasant compared to Great-Granpa’s irritated tones. Behind the circular glasses on his nose, the man’s eyes were round and very gentle.
“What’s your name, child?” the man asked Ryuu, still in his stilted, odd way of speaking. He seemed to be genuinely concerned.
“R-Ryuuichi,” he answered, meekly, and the gentleman smiled.
“Ryuuichi-kun? A good name.” He said it as if he was testing the sound of it on his tongue—almost like a child, himself, trying to pronounce the name of a newly-made friend. “What a coincidence! I’m a Ryuu, too.”
“Thank you? Uh…” Ryuu felt rather encouraged by the man’s compliment of his name. “Who are you? Are you Great-Granpa’s, um, guest?”
“Guest? I, I guess you could say that.” The man—this other-Ryuu—chuckled rather absently. “Though, we haven’t spoken to each other in quite a while.”
“Um. What… are you doing here?” Ryuu asked tentatively. “Great-Granpa might get angry if he finds you here.”
“Are you scared of him?” other-Ryuu asked, amused.
“When I first met him, he looked… really angry with me.” Ryuu ducked his head.
Other-Ryuu laughed. “And yet you’re here with me. Won’t he get mad at you too?”
“…Un.” Blushing at the observation that other-Ryuu had pointed out, Ryuu looked down at his feet and said nothing else.
“Well…” Other-Ryuu stroked his chin thoughtfully. “How about this? You don’t tell anyone about me being here, and I won’t tell anyone about you being here. Does that sound okay?”
“Un.”—more enthusiastically.
“Ah, excellent,” other-Ryuu said, happily. Ryuu wondered at how the years seemed to melt off his face when he smiled like that. He looked almost boyish.
“But what are you doing here?” Ryuu said, curiously, looking around.
“…I must have fallen asleep while I was looking for something,” other-Ryuu said, slowly. “I didn’t really intend to find it in the first place, but I’ve kind of been left behind by the others while I had been searching… and now that I’ve spent so long looking for it, it seems like such a waste to leave without finding it. It has to be here somewhere.”
“Maybe I could help?” Ryuu asked.
“Thank you, that’d save me a lot of time,” other-Ryuu said, gratefully.
“What are we looking for?”
Other-Ryuu scratched his chin. “The problem is… I think I might have forgotten what I’ve forgotten.”
Ryuu scowled, and other-Ryuu coughed and smiled, awkwardly. “I’m pretty sure I’d know when I find it, though.”
“…I’ll look in all the boxes and show anything interesting to you, then,” Ryuu suggested, gesturing at the clutter all around the study.
Other-Ryuu nodded, cheerfully. “Ah, sounds like a plan. Then I’ll leave the ground search to you,” he replied, and gestured around at the numerous bookshelves and the wardrobe. “I’ll check the higher places.”
“Alright.” Despite the extremely vague instructions given to him, Ryuu was enthusiastic at the prospect that he could open and see what the curious old boxes contained, and he was almost skipping as he started his search in the nearest cardboard box. Inside, it contained nothing but small leather-bound books, and some bundled magazines. “Have you read all of these?” he asked other-Ryuu curiously, as he took the books two-by-two out of the box to search the bottom.
“Oh, no.” Other-Ryuu was smiling rather fondly at the sight of the books that Ryuu was unpacking. “Those are Susato-san’s. She’s fond of importing reading materials from the British Empire. She probably has all the issues of the latest British magazines and novels she can get her hands on in there.”
“Who’s Susato-san?”
“Well,” other-Ryuu smiled sadly. “She’s a very important friend. She used to be my assistant, but… Again, that was a long, long time ago.”
“And what’s a Brit—British Em, Empire?”
“Er, the British Empire? Um, I guess you could say it’s a country… but also not quite a country.”
“A country that is not a country?” Ryuu enquired.
Other-Ryuu stepped down from the chair that he had been standing on to reach the top of the wardrobe, and went to the globe in the corner of the room. There seemed to be no sign of anything unusual in the box, so Ryuu abandoned the books to come and see. “Here’s the capital of the British Empire,” other-Ryuu said, pointing at a small group of islands, and Ryuu stood on tiptoe to see it better. “You could say that most of this portion is the British Empire, but it also extends here”—and he swept his finger at various places—“and here and here. It is a great country, but a rather fragmented one.”
“Oh…” Ryuu nodded, quite seriously. “I…”
“It’s fine if you don’t understand now.” Other-Ryuu laughed, lightly. “Some days, I don’t quite understand the entire concept, myself.” He stared very hard at the globe, and then looked away. “…Shall we continue with the search?”
“…Okay.” Puzzled at this reaction, Ryuu hurried back to his box and started putting the books back in.
That morning went by surprisingly fast, and was also surprisingly productive. Ryuu and the other-Ryuu had already looked through half of the study by the time Ryuu heard Dad’s voice from the doorway. Quickly standing up and wiping his hands on his shorts, he turned back to flash an apologetic grin to other-Ryuu. “I’m sorry. I have to leave, or they’ll find me in here.”
“Don’t worry about it,” other-Ryuu said, smiling. “I’ll stay here and continue searching.”
“I, I’ll come back and help you after lunch,” Ryuu promised, stubbornly, and without letting other-Ryuu object to his statement, he spun on his heel and exited the room without a backward glance.
And come back after lunch, the child did. Ryuu opened the door silently to find other-Ryuu snoozing once more, but this time leaning against the wall, with a book in his hand. “Wake up,” Ryuu ran up to the gentleman and scolded with a peevish tone, and other-Ryuu started and looked down at the book in his hands, a sheepish smile on his face.
“I apologize. I’m just really sleepy.” Other-Ryuu chuckled. “You’d think that with all the sleep I had earlier, I’d be more alert than this…”
Ryuu sighed, and in sheepish silence, they both continued digging through the boxes.
“Ah! Is this a samurai? A real one?” Ryuu suddenly asked, holding up a framed sepia photograph with wide eyes, and other-Ryuu glanced at the two proud figures printed on the paper, youthful smiles frozen eternally behind the glass, one of them a man carrying a sword at his hip.
“Are you interested in samurai?” other-Ryuu asked, a fond smile curling his lip, and Ryuu nodded eagerly, seamlessly moving into his Signal Blue pose. “Kick enemies to the curb, and sally forth—Signal Blue!” he declared proudly. “I always watch the Signal Samurai anime after school! I wanna be one when I grow up!”
“Ah, anime?” Other-Ryuu looked rather confused at the display, but chuckled all the same. “All the same, it is a fine ambition. I hope you do become one someday.”
“Except… I don’t know any samurai who can teach me more about how to become one,” Ryuu said, rather sadly, and other-Ryuu seemed pensive.
“I knew the samurai in that photograph, once, and he taught me a little of how he fought,” he said, his eyes gazing rather fondly at the faces in the picture as he took it out of Ryuu’s small hands. Meanwhile, Ryuu’s face had lit up with this new information. “It was a very long time ago, of course, when I was a little younger. But perhaps you’ll meet one yourself when you grow a little older, of course—I’m sure there’s still one who can take you on as their apprentice, somewhere.”
“So cool!” Forgetting all of his apprehensions and most of his manners, Ryuu ran up to other-Ryuu and placed fat little hands on his knee, his dark eyes shining with the romance of childhood. “So did they teach you how to use a sword? Can you teach me too?”
Other-Ryuu seemed rather taken aback at Ryuu’s sudden enthusiasm, but his bewildered expression soon faded away to that of a kind smile. “Er, only a very little. But I was actually talking about a different kind of fighting. Instead of cutting down enemies with the blade, he preferred cutting them down with words. It’s going to be a little difficult to teach you as you are right now. It’s a very difficult way to defeat someone.”
“I’ll listen to anything,” Ryuu said, determinedly. “Tell me what he taught you. Please.”
“I…” Other-Ryuu seemed hesitant, but when Ryuu placed his chubby hands on other-Ryuu’s knee and stared intently into his face, his hesitation visibly and slowly melted away. “Oh, alright,” he said, laughing, and stood up. “Let’s take a break from searching and let me tell you a rather curious story about myself. It also concerns him, of course,” and he patted the glass that protected the photograph, with a rather tender look in his eyes, “and it was just the beginning of a rather long adventure.”
Ryuu followed other-Ryuu back to the rocking-chair, and when other-Ryuu had made himself comfortable in it, he reached out to the child’s surprise and lifted Ryuu up quite easily, to sit on his lap. “Please hold this for me while I talk, Ryuuichi-kun,” he said, gently, and Ryuu accepted the photograph. “The story I am about to tell you happened a short time before that photo was taken, starting in a certain restaurant during a rather strange November…”
It was a long and beautiful tale that you probably already know. And even though Ryuu cannot understand perhaps half of it, nor can he picture things like a courtroom, or a judge, or a lady with a huge swan on her head (or maybe he managed to draw a rather funny image in that little head, because he giggled when other-Ryuu described Miss Jezail Brett, which was the name of the swan-lady, in full detail), he seemed drawn into the story, huge dark eyes getting even huger at the mention of any exciting detail. However, perhaps what absorbed the child was not so much the details but the way other-Ryuu seemed to grow younger at every sentence he uttered, as if everything he was retelling had just happened a few hours ago, and as if he was turning back to being the young university student he had been during the events of that story.
How many years melted away every time other-Ryuu smiled! Ryuu felt as if he would have liked to understand everything too, if only he knew what the difficult words meant, but other-Ryuu looked so happy talking, so happy, that it seemed rude to interrupt him with questions…
“Ryuuichi-kun?”
Other-Ryuu was startled when he felt the child’s head finally droop and rest against his heart in healthy, childish sleep, his tiredness finally getting the better of him. Perhaps uncertain about how to handle a situation like this, other-Ryuu cradled Ryuu in his arms gently, lost in thought, as his gaze wandered from the child to the photograph clutched in those small, fat hands.
“How much time… has passed?” he asked, quietly, to no one in particular.
If there was another person in the room, they would have observed that other-Ryuu had indeed become younger. It was not a trick of the light. Ryuu’s observation was not at all incorrect. Or perhaps, it was more accurate to say that Ryuu’s initial observation that the gentleman had been elderly was the trick of the light, and that his twenty-three-year-old self had only been hiding inside him, waiting for the right moment to shed his adult self and marvel at this old study with new eyes.
The sleeping child he cradled so softly he finally graced with a loving smile. Perhaps, moved by the sight of this young child who was a hundred years removed from himself, he impulsively placed a kiss on that wide forehead, as if he was granting a blessing kept secret to everybody but himself.
“Only one more day, child,” he said, and his voice was a sigh. “One more day.”
When Ryuu woke up much, much later, evening was already starting to creep in, and with a surge of panic, he raised his head and realized that he was left alone on the rocking-chair. He bit his lip and looked all around, only calming down when he finally spotted the figure of other-Ryuu in the room. Other-Ryuu was already seated in a new corner of the room, searching through more boxes. The study, with all the scattered boxes around increasing in area, looked smaller than before.
Ryuu was puzzled over why other-Ryuu looked so different, and then realized that the latter had taken off his glasses. Without them, his face seemed more youthful than ever.
“You had a nice nap,” other-Ryuu said, gently.
“You should have woken me up,” Ryuu pouted. “I wanted to help more.”
“It’s fine. But it’s getting late, and you should go,” other-Ryuu told him with a smile. “Or else, you’ll get scolded.”
“Mmyeah.” Ryuu rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”
“Of course. Goodbye,” other-Ryuu said kindly, and with a wave, Ryuu quickly slipped out of the study and made his way to the hall—
“Ryuu-chan?”
He froze in his tracks, and slowly turned around. On the other end of the hall, Dad was peeking out from Great-Granpa’s room, a stern frown on his face. He looked angry. If there had been something nearby to spank him with, Ryuu was fairly certain he’d have one in his hands right now, and the idea terrified him.
“Ryuuichi! I told you not to go in there! What if something had happened!”
He rushed forward, even leaving the door to Great-Granpa’s room slightly ajar, and was dragging Ryuu away with rather unnecessary force. Frightened by his father’s temper, Ryuu felt the tears rise to his throat, and unhesitatingly, began to wail, uncaring if Great-Granpa were to come and yell at them for being noisy—
“Ryuuichi?” a frail-sounding voice suddenly called from beyond the half-closed doorway, and father and son paused to glance toward the source of the sound. Grimly, Dad marched Ryuu into the room by the arm. The child was pale, perhaps feeling the same emotions that a prisoner about to be sent to the gallows would have.
Beyond the doorway was Great-Granpa’s bedroom, and the sickbed where he was mostly confined to nowadays.
If he had had the strength to get up, Great-Granpa would have been hunched over due to great age; his every movement was strained. Even just turning his head to look at them go through the door looked as if it took a lot out of him.
“Great-Granpa…”
“What is the matter?” the old man asked, in a voice that was kindlier than it had been yesterday. Perhaps, he was in a good mood today.
“Ryuu-chan was playing in the old study,” Dad was saying stonily. “After being expressly forbidden to.”
Ryuu swallowed, afraid of the yelling that might happen, but the old man only beckoned to him. “I… I didn’t mean to…” he was saying, but the old man simply shook his head.
“Can you let Ryuuichi talk with me for a while?” he told Dad, and Dad seemed so surprised by this unusual request that he only stared, but Great-Granpa inclined his head, and he finally got up and left the room without asking a single question. However, the scowl on his features did betray his confusion about the unexpected request.
Silence descended upon the room once Ryuu and Great-Granpa were left alone. Ryuu was bowing his head, still afraid of the anticipated typhoon that might arrive any minute now, but the old man only peered at him with half-blind eyes, as if studying him carefully. Then—
“Is he in there again this year?” was the question.
Ryuu looked up sharply to see the twinkle in his great-grandfather’s eyes.
Great-Granpa only smiled. “Has he finally found what he was searching for?”
“…” Ryuu can only gape at him. Did he know, after all?
“Do you know who the person in the old study is, Ryuuichi?”
“N-No,” Ryuu said, dazedly.
“He’s… well, it might be strange to you,” Great-Granpa said, “but that person is probably my father.”
Probably?
“I think… I think that my father still comes back into his old study every summer, during the Obon,” Great-Granpa said, rather absently. “Perhaps, he still thinks that he can come and go as he pleases. He built this house himself, did you know that?”
“Ryuu-san did?”
“Yes, my father, and your great-great-grandfather,” Great-Granpa said. “The first character of your name was chosen in memory of him, you know.”
The other… Ryuu.
“Is he… a ghost?” Ryuu asked, timidly. But he was so kind.
“I wonder”—tentatively. “At any rate, he’s not a hungry one… and he certainly makes summer much more interesting whenever he makes noises in the study. It scares the living hell out of that boy.”—referring to the manservant.
Great-Granpa sighed heavily.
“Every summer after his death, during the three days of the Bon Festival, I will always hear him rifling through the drawers, searching through his books, as he was wont to do back when I was a boy. My wife has always been frightened by the noises, but I can never leave this house behind.
“I remember that he was a very clumsy man. He always loses his things. I wonder… if he forgot to take something very important with him before he died, too. I was always too afraid to go and ask him myself. I’m afraid to open the door to his study once more—and now, I’m not physically able to.”
Ryuu sucked in a breath, still rather unbelieving that he had been talking to the person who was apparently…
“Your father met him once, when he was around your age,” Great-Grandpa was saying. “Perhaps, that fear is the reason why he did not wish you to go in that study as well.”
“But Ryuu-san is so kind,” Ryuu said, frowning. So kind, he repeated to himself.
Great-Granpa only stared at him.
“Do you remember what the Bon Festival is for, Ryuuichi?”
“To, to lead the hungry ghosts of our ancestors to rest,” Ryuu recited from memory.
“Correct.” He gave Ryuu an approving pat on the head with a trembling hand. “Can I ask you a favor, Ryuuichi?”
“Of course, Great-Granpa,” Ryuu said, obediently.
“Please…” He smiled, sadly. “Please help him look for whatever it is he is searching for, will you? To help him rest in peace.”