Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eiji claims that, with good rest, he’s expected to make a full recovery. Ibe supports him, adding that it’s already been arranged for Eiji to follow up with the doctors at the local hospital. 

“He’ll be fine though. The surgeon said he was lucky,” Ibe says. Then he seems to register his own words and winces.

There was a time, not too long ago, when Hiroko trusted her son. Well, as much as any mother could ever trust her teenage son. There was even a time when she trusted Ibe with her only son’s well-being in a distant land.

Now, Hiroko sees the dark circles under Eiji puffy eyes, the pallor of his face. She remembers Ibe’s phone calls -- never frequent enough, never substantial enough -- and his apologies -- sincere, surely, but ultimately meaningless. She sees these things, remembers these things, and thinks, Lucky? I nearly lost my son .

Hiroko fears she did lose her son. She doesn’t recognize the Eiji who came home to her.

The boy who left Hiroko would sometimes stare into the distance as if wondering what the future might hold. The boy who returned stares almost constantly but with the melancholy of someone who knows exactly what he misses.

Armed her daughter’s Japanese-English dictionary, Hiroko pours over the medical records from New York City. English wasn’t her best subject in school, but after graduating she worked for several years at a museum information desk, taking questions from confused tourists. She forgot a lot over the years, retaining just enough to help Eiji and Mayumi with their homework.

But even at the height of her abilities, Hiroko would’ve struggled to parse the chaotic notes from these American doctors. She does her best, reading alone in the living room at night while the children sleep. Slowly, she dissects the multi-syllabic language the doctors used to discuss, in the most abstract way possible, what happened to her son when the bullet tore through him.

When it’s time for Eiji’s first follow-up appointment, Eiji asks the doctor no questions. Hiroko asks dozens.

The doctor tries to be helpful, but ultimately he pleads mercy. “I agree with the assessment from Dr. Kor--” The doctor cuts off, references Eiji’s medical file, and gives up on the lengthy foreign name. “I think it’s best to follow the recommendations from the surgeon in New York City. They know far more about treating gunshot wounds there than we do here.”

Of course, they do, Hiroko thinks. This never would’ve happened if Eiji had been here.

She’s not being fair, she knows. Plenty of people visit New York City every day and leave without a scratch. It’s not the city’s fault -- nor Ibe’s, nor Eiji’s.

Hiroko has the name of the person at fault. A name far shorter than that of the American surgeon but all the more strange: Ash Lynx. 

She heard it from Ibe first, Eiji second -- although Eiji only ever says Ash , the shape of the sound familiar on his lips. Ash , he murmurs, his eyes searching thousands of miles away. Ash! he cries in his sleep just before Hiroko wakes him from a nightmare, his limbs thrashing, his stitches straining.

The nightmares occur frequently, almost like he is a child again dreaming of monsters. When Eiji was a young boy, Hiroko soothed the nightmares away by taking him in her arms and stroking his hair. “Tell me about it,” she’d say and Eiji would babble about ogres and ghosts and the big dog down the street that chased him once. 

Now, when Eiji jerks awake, he turns away from her. She asks him to tell her about his dreams, but he insists he doesn’t want to talk about it. With the few details Ibe divulged, Hiroko speculates wildly enough to keep herself awake late into the night.

Two years Eiji was gone with barely a word sent back home to his mother. Two years of her son’s life that Hiroko will never know.

Hiroko is angry at Ibe for failing so spectacularly at keeping her son safe. She’s angry at Eiji for not coming home at the first opportunity. But her true fury has nowhere to go.

Ash Lynx is already dead.

One afternoon, while Eiji dozes and Mayumi promises to look after him, Hiroko goes to the public library to look for him online, this “Ash Lynx.” 

She asks a librarian for help with using the computer and the internet. A lot has changed since the last time she laid hands on a keyboard. Soon, however, the World Wide Web lies before her, as vast and dangerous and wondrous as any nation across the ocean.

Based on what Ibe told her -- censored though it was -- she hopes she might find some newspaper articles about Ash Lynx. Maybe his obituary and a crime report or two.

However, she discovers far more than she could possibly read with her limited English and even more limited time. So she scans the headlines, a dizzying sense of unreality circling around her. It all sounds like something from a crime show on TV or a pulpy manga, not something that could happen to an actual person -- let alone something that could involve her son.

She gives up on the articles and studies the photos instead until it’s time to leave. Ash Lynx is blond and tall. His mouth lays flat in all the pictures, his handsome face hard. 

It startles her how young he looks.

Hiroko thinks of the boys that Eiji was friends with around the neighborhood and at school. She sees nothing of them in Aslan Jade Callenreese, alias Ash Lynx. The only thing remotely familiar are his dim, lonely eyes.

Eiji’s eyes have been much the same. 

Since Eiji’s homecoming, they’ve received an unprecedented number of visitors. Some know little, only that Eiji has finally come back, and they want to catch up with him and ask about New York City. 

Others have heard stories, speculation. No one has whispered anything within earshot of Hiroko, but she knows there are rumors. The whispering neighbors come bearing food and words of sympathy, but Hiroko understands they are truly on her doorstep to sniff out new information to spread.

She tasks Mayumi with turning the visitors away. At least twice a day, someone comes to the door and Hiroko listens as Mayumi brightly tells the well-wisher that yes, her big brother is back, but he isn’t well. No, not up to visitors yet. Thanks for coming by!

Mayumi always accepts the food, pilfering the items she likes best. Hiroko tells her to throw the rest away. They can’t possibly eat it all between the two of them and Eiji is barely eating even his favorite foods.

Perhaps they aren’t his favorite foods anymore.

One evening, after Eiji goes to bed, someone knocks just after sunset. It’s unusually late for a neighbor to call, but Hiroko wouldn’t put such a breach in etiquette beyond some of them. Mayumi had been sprawled on the living room floor finishing her homework; she’s all too happy to spring up and answer the door.

Hiroko keeps folding laundry, though she’s mostly just going through the motions. Her mind is filled by the image of her son’s torso, the once smooth skin puckered pink around surgical stitches. While he can change the bandage on his front, he can’t reach around well enough to manage the one on his back -- the one covering the exit wound.

Exit wound. It’s one of the new English phrases she learned recently. She never needed it before.

“Mom!” Mayumi calls from the entrance. “Mom, come here!”

The urgency in her voice startles Hiroko from her thoughts. She rises, brushing the front of her long skirt just once before hastening to her daughter. 

Mayumi turns to her, eyes wide. She points at the person on their doorstep. Before Hiroko can rebuke Mayumi for the rude gesture, she glances at their visitor.

For a moment, she doesn’t recognize him. The young man wearing a thick sweater and knee-length coat looks little like the teenager in the blood-stained T-shirt from the mugshots. Under the evening sky’s soft glow, he appears more like an angel or an actor in a movie than an actual person -- too handsome, too strange to be real. Then his hand twitches at his side, slipping into his pocket and back out again, and the illusion breaks.

Ash Lynx is standing on her doorstep, nervous, cold, and -- despite all reports to the contrary -- alive.

“I can’t understand him,” Mayumi whispers -- unnecessary since Hiroko doubts he understands her. “Do you think he’s--? Should I wake up Eiji?”

“No. Leave it to me,” Hiroko tells her. Mayumi doesn’t move, so she adds, “Finish your homework.” Reluctantly, her daughter obeys, backing away from the door so she doesn’t take her eyes off their visitor until the last possible moment. 

Hiroko turns to the man and addresses him in English. “Who are you?”

Ash bows respectfully, then rises, his posture straight. “My name is Ash. I met Eiji and Mr. Ibe when they visited New York City.” When Hiroko doesn’t say anything, he goes on. “They helped me, but they also got into a lot of trouble because of me.”

“My son was shot because of you,” Hiroko corrects him.

Ash’s mouth thins, but he nods. “Yes. Twice. Both times were my fault.”

Twice? Neither Eiji nor Ibe saw fit to tell her that, apparently. 

Hiroko folds her arms. “Why are you here, Mr. Lynx?”

Finally, Ash falters. “I...” His hand dips into his pocket again, and Hiroko hears the crinkle of paper before he withdraws his fingers. “Eiji asked me to come. Before he left, he wrote me a letter and…invited me.”

Yet another thing Eiji hadn’t mentioned to her.  “Do you think that is wise?”

“What do you mean?”

Hiroko isn’t sure she’s expressing herself correctly in English, but she lifts her chin anyway. “Someone like you comes here, sees my son. What good will it do?”

Ash looks downward, burying half of his face into his coat collar.  “Maybe none,” he admits.

“Ash!”

They both turn at Eiji’s voice. He stands in the entryway, leaning against the wall, eyes wide and watery.

Ash breathes out, the air escaping in the form of a whispered, “Eiji.” He darts forward, slipping past Hiroko so nimbly she doesn’t realize what’s happening until he clasps her son in a tight embrace.

She can’t see Eiji’s face, but she sees how his hands fist the back of Ash’s coat.

“You’re alive.” Eiji’s voice is thick with tears. “Max said -- they told us you were dead!”

“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“What?”

“It’s Mark Twain.”

Eiji thumps Ash on the back, but there was no punishment to it. “Don’t joke. You can’t -- I can’t. Ash, I thought you were dead.” 

“I know.” Ash murmurs it so low that Hiroko could scarcely hear. His arm moves; she can’t see the full motion, but she guesses he’s stroking her son’s back. “I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything later.”

Eiji leans back just enough to look Ash in the eye. “You’re really here. You came.”

“Of course,” Ash says. “You asked me to.”

Eiji laughs. “When did you ever listen to me?”

“Far more often than I do for anyone else.”

The cold night-time air drifts into the house, bringing with it the fragrance of the chrysanthemums planted near their entrance. Hiroko closes the front door and, forgotten for the moment, observes. Despite his hands’ trembling, Eiji doesn’t let go of Ash. His friend seems equally disinclined to part. 

So, she thinks, This is the man my son took a bullet for.

The embrace is, in many ways, far more shocking than a foreigner on her doorstep. She’s never seen Eiji hug someone so fiercely, like they might shatter if he dropped them. He protested when she hugged him before he left for America. 

Granted, they hadn’t separated on good terms. Their relationship had been suffering for years, in part due to the stress of her husband’s long illness and in part due to Eiji’s burgeoning teenage independence. When Ibe suggested taking Eiji with him to New York City, Hiroko thought the distance might help them heal.

Seeing Eiji cling to Ash, she suspects that the distance between her and her son has grown even wider than she feared.

Mayumi peeks her head around the corner, curious. Eiji doesn’t hear her behind him, but Ash spots her right away. He nudges Eiji. “Are you gonna introduce me?”

Eiji remembers finally that they aren’t alone and shoots a mortified glance at Hiroko. Soon, however, they are seated in the living room and Hiroko is pouring tea. It’s too late for tea, really, but she needs something to do, something familiar, to ground her. 

She’s too furious to trust herself to speak.

When she can put it off no longer, Hiroko sits and Eiji clears his throat awkwardly.

“Mom, Mayumi, this is my friend Ash. I told you about him.”

“You mean Ibe told us. You barely told us anything,” Mayumi complains. 

“Right. Um.” Eiji looks sideways at Ash, who sits placidly, hands wrapped around his hot cup of tea. Hiroko wonders how much Japanese he understands, if any. His twitchy nerves from earlier appear gone, but Hiroko doesn’t trust his calm demeanor.

“Ibe and I met Ash while we were working on the assignment.”

“The gang assignment,” Mayumi breaks in.

“Yes,” Eiji admits. “We were supposed to just take photos of his gang and do some interviews.”

“His gang? He’s a gang leader?”

“Yes,” Eiji repeats, even more reluctant.

“But he looks like an idol!”

Eiji groans with exasperation, rubbing his temple. “Do you want me to explain or not? It’s a long story, we’ll be here all night.”

Beside him, Ash’s stoic expression finally breaks with the smallest hints of amusement: a glimmer in his eyes, his mouth just barely quirking up at the corner. 

“It’s already late,” Hiroko cuts in. “Just explain why he’s here.”

Eiji cringes; her tone came out sharper than she’d intended, but she can’t -- won’t -- take it back. The humor vanishes from Ash’s face and he draws back, making himself smaller.

“I asked him to come,” Eiji confesses. “Mom, he couldn’t stay in New York.”

“He couldn’t ?”

Eiji nods, holding his ground but offering no further explanation. 

“And how long is he going to stay here?”

Her son hesitates and that, finally, is a familiar expression. She remembers that pinched expression all too well from high school, especially after he injured himself vaulting. As relieved Hiroko is to recognize something in her son, it brings no satisfaction to see him in doubt. The muted anger in her chest begins to cool.

“I want him to stay forever,” Eiji says, and all at once she’s furious again.  

“What makes you think he belongs here?” Hiroko demands. “He doesn’t know our language, our customs. What do you expect him to do?”

“He can learn. Ash can do anything.”

“You can’t--”

“Ash belongs wherever I am. If he’s not welcome here, then neither am I.”

His brown eyes hold her gaze, unflinching in the face of her authority. Maybe Hiroko doesn’t hold any authority with him anymore. She doesn’t know what exactly Eiji faced in New York City, but it’s given him steel where once he only had warmth. 

Hiroko refuses to back down, but she senses he won’t either. Mayumi senses it too; she glances uneasily from one side of the table to the other, biting her thumbnail. Hiroko and Eiji haven’t fought since their father was in the hospital and, even then, the arguments were never like this.

It’s Ash who breaks the tension. He touches Eiji’s elbow and says in English, “I better go.”

“What? No! You just got here.”

“It’s late, and you need to rest. I’ll be back.” 

Ash stands and, for a moment, he towers over Hiroko. His gaze flits to her, and he bows low for a long moment. “Thank you for the tea.”

Eiji follows him to the door, interrogating him on where he is staying and when he’ll return. Hiroko and Mayumi shadow them from a distance.

“Relax, I’ve got a room at the inn in town,” Ash says. “You’ll see me first thing tomorrow morning.”  

“You promise?” Eiji demands.

Ash smiles, but there’s something grim to it. “Cross my heart.”

He shows himself out, his slim figure vanishing quickly into the night. Eiji stands in the open doorway long after Ash’s gone, shivering in the cool breeze. Finally, Hiroko reaches past him to close the door and he startles.

“How could you treat him like that?” Eiji demands. “You have no idea what he’s been through.”

“I know what he put you through,” Hiroko snaps back, but it’s not quite true. She’s all too aware that she only knows a tiny fraction of what happened. It’s enough.

“He didn’t put me through anything! Ash did everything he could to protect me the entire time!”

“You wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place if not for him!”

Eiji draws in a sharp breath, then winces. His hand flies to his side, clutching his bullet wound. Hiroko presses her advantage, shepherding him back to bed. He must truly be in pain because he goes willingly and doesn’t argue when she hands out one of his prescribed painkillers along with a glass of water.

When Hiroko moves to leave, Eiji grabs her wrist.

“Don’t turn Ash away,” her son says. “I told him he could come here.”

“What does he need from you?” Hiroko asks. It comes out harsher and more dismissive than she meant it; she really is curious. What in the world could someone like Ash Lynx want with her son? Eiji is perfectly ordinary.

“Please, Mom,” Eiji says, his grip tightening. “I promised him.”

“I won’t turn him away,” Hiroko concedes. “ If he comes back.”

To her surprise, Eiji doesn’t insist that he will. He only turns over, facing away from the door. Hiroko switches the light off and leaves, remembering the astonishment on Eiji’s face when he saw Ash. It wasn’t just the shock of seeing him alive. There was a different, deeper relief written in his features.

She wonders if, when he wrote the invitation, Eiji thought Ash would never come.

Chapter Text

Ash Lynx returns early the next morning, after Mayumi has left for school but before Eiji wakes. He’s wearing the same coat over a different sweater and looks as though he didn’t sleep. In both hands, he carries a small, brightly colored parcel. Hiroko recognizes its chrysanthemum pattern; it’s from her favorite sweet shop in town.

“You talked to Ibe,” she concludes.

Ash nods, sheepish. The expression looks odd on him -- too unguarded. “Mr. Ibe said the proper thing to do would’ve been to bring something from my hometown. But even if I’d known, there’s nothing in New York City I would’ve wanted to bring here.”

He holds the gift out to her; she takes it but doesn’t move from the doorway. “Eiji is still sleeping.”

Ash doesn’t appear deterred in the least. If anything, he stands up straighter, determination stiffening his shoulders. “I hoped that maybe I could speak with you?” 

Hiroko has nothing to say to Ash Lynx -- nothing that wouldn’t cause an uproar if Eiji found out, at least. She’s tempted to close the door in his face and hope he vanishes from her step. But she promised Eiji, and things are too strained between them to risk losing any more of his good will. 

She moves aside. Ash comes in and takes off his shoes and coat. He looks smaller without it -- still tall but even slimmer than she thought. Hiroko catches herself thinking about the leftovers in the refrigerator and sternly reminds herself that the feeding of Ash Lynx is no concern of hers.

He follows her into the dining room. It’s farther from Eiji’s bedroom, so their voices are less likely to wake him. Hiroko notes how Ash’s gaze darts quickly across her home, clearly assessing it for...something. She wonders what the house looks to him. Insignificant, she imagines. Hiroko has never been to New York City (never even left Shimane prefecture), but she’s seen it in movies. There’s no building in her humble town that could come close to matching the scale of skyscrapers. 

Ash notices her watching him and explains, “Eiji didn’t talk much about himself. I always wondered what his home was like. His family.”

If he intended it as a conversation starter, it doesn’t work. Hiroko could tell him anout their small family. It’s just her, Eiji, and Mayumi now, with her husband Naoto having finally succumbed to his disease and her mother-in-law following shortly after. She could tell him about life in this seaside city, the place where her children were born.  

But she doesn’t. Instead, she carefully opens the parcel, revealing four individually packaged manju. Hiroko puts two away for Eiji and Mayumi to eat later and begins plating the remainder.

“Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” Ash says when she places a manju before him. “Besides, those are for you.”

If it were up to her, she wouldn't bother to serve him. But she won't give Eiji more ammunition for arguments. Hiroko shoots Ash a look she’s practiced a thousand times since becoming a mother. “Eat.”

It’s far too early to eat desserts, but Hiroko is in a poor mood and finds she doesn’t care. She cuts off a big piece of her confection and eats it, savoring the rich flavor and subtle sweetness.

Ash pokes his manju experimentally, piercing into it just enough to see the dark inside. “What’s in it?” he asks. “Mr. Ibe recommended the...asashio? But he didn’t explain what it was.”

Hiroko has to think a moment to explain in English. “It’s a steamed cake filled with beans.”

“I see.” Judging by Ash’s face, it doesn’t sound appetizing to him in the least. Hiroko likes that: more proof that Ash doesn't, couldn't, belong here in Japan. But then that determination settles over his shoulders again, and he takes a small bite. Surprise lights his features, making him appear younger. 

“Oh! It’s sweet.”

They finish the manju in silence. Hiroko takes the plates away and refills their tea cups. That, she figures, will have to be enough hospitality to satisfy Eiji. Perhaps if she hurries along the rest of the visit, she can have Ash out of the house before Eiji rises.

“What did you want to speak about?”

Like the night before, Ash clasps the warm cup with both hands. “How much have you heard about me?”

“Enough.” Hiroko doesn’t admit that most of her knowledge comes from online news articles since Eiji and Ibe saw fit to leave her in the dark. She has the upper hand and she intends to keep it.

Ash nods slowly. His fingers tap a nervous pattern against the ceramic cup.

“I don’t know a lot about mothers,” he says. “But I understand most mothers would be horrified to have me around their son.”

“You’ve come to change my mind?”

“No. I’ve come to tell you everything.”

Hiroko stares. There’s a curious mutability to Ash Lynx. Moments ago, he displayed transparent, almost childish, unease at tasting something new. Now, he sits before her solemn and weathered as a statue outside a temple. 

“Everything?” she repeats.

“Whatever you want to know,” he amends. “It’s a long story, and almost every chapter in it has enough horrors for a lifetime. If you’d rather not know--”

“I want to know,” Hiroko interrupts. “Tell me everything.”

Ash smiles that grim smile of his. Hiroko is beginning to suspect it’s more of a mask than a true expression. He sips his tea and begins.

“One night, I found a man bleeding out in an alley.”

Ash talks for what seems like hours. Mind-controlling drugs and military cover-ups. Street gang warfare giving way to the biggest American political scandal since Watergate. Senseless sadism. And, somehow, at the heart of it all, Eiji.

Hiroko knew pieces of the story already from Ibe and the news. But hearing it all from the lips of Ash Lynx makes it finally seem real. 

Ash spares no details about the events. He answers all her questions, patiently rephrasing and explaining when her English vocabulary falls short. She wonders how many times he’s told the story before -- and then she wonders whether he’s ever explained it all like this.  

But at the same time, Hiroko can sense he is leaving something out. The story emerges from him, chapter by chapter, practiced and unemotional. He offers no justification for his own actions beyond the basic facts. If at any point in the last couple years he feared for his life or fell into rage, he says nothing of it. He simply reports the details as though he is a news anchor recounting events that had nothing to do with him.

By the time he’s done, Hiroko knows everything there is to know about why her son was shot. She still doesn’t know Ash at all.

Both of their tea cups went cold while Ash talked, but as he finishes he finally takes a sip to ease his dry throat. “That’s everything,” he says, voice cracking from the strain.

“It’s not,” Hiroko argues. 

Ash’s eyebrows -- so blond and strange -- furrow together. “I promise you, that’s all of it.”

It can’t be. Hardened criminal or not, foreigner or not, Hiroko can’t believe that anyone could sit before her -- the mother of a friend -- and talk about killing people without trying to justify their actions. Terror, self defense, heat of the moment, or even revenge: Ash mentioned none of those things. It was almost as if he wanted to give her the worst possible impression of himself.

“What about this Dino?” Hiroko pressed. “You never said how you knew him.”

Something shuttered behind Ash’s eyes. “I did. I used to...work under him.”

Hiroko doesn’t believe that for a second. Sure, it’s probably true, but there’s no way it’s the full story. Other parts of Ash’s tale were like that too; flattened into straightforward facts rather than the complex, emotional events Hiroko knew they must be.

If Ash is willing to confess murder in cold blood, what could he possibly feel he needs to hide?

“Ash!” Eiji shuffles into the dining room, still drowsy from his medication. “You’re here.”

“I’ve been here. Who’s the lazy bones now?”

Eiji grumbles something Hiroko doesn’t catch. Whatever it is makes a soft smile spread across Ash’s face, fond and a little sad.

Switching to Japanese, Eiji asks, “What’s for breakfast?”

Hiroko glances at the clock on the dining room wall and realizes the morning has gotten away from her. Usually she’d be long done cooking by now. Mayumi always just smears a piece of toast with marmalade before running to catch her bus, but Hiroko has been preparing meals regularly for Eiji to help his recovery.

“There’s still some natto leftover,” she says. She made it a few days ago, hoping to pique Eiji’s appetite since it used to be his favorite dish.

“Natto,” Eiji repeats, enunciating it clearly. He casts a sly glance at Ash, grinning, but continues on in Japanese. “Natto sounds delicious.”

Ash pales and Eiji laughs, a full-belly laugh that leaves him cringing in pain.

Hiroko can tell she’s being left out of some joke and doesn’t care for it. “Sit down before you tear your stitches again,” she snaps. 

Eiji scowls. He pulls out a chair, moves it closer to Ash, and sits, all without looking away from Hiroko. She restrains herself from also snapping something about respect; her own mother would twist her ear if she made a scene in front of a guest, even an uninvited American.

Ash glances warily from Eiji to Hiroko then leans over to murmur something to Eiji. He finally stops the staring contest with Hiroko to answer Ash. She turns around, biting her tongue, and takes the natto out of the refrigerator to heat it up again.

Ears pricked, she tries to follow the whispered conversation happening behind her. Their voices are too quiet and the English is too quick for her to catch most of it, but it seems Eiji is questioning Ash about his alleged death. She’s curious as well, but Ash’s answer is too low for her to hear.

The feeding of Ash Lynx is still no concern of hers, but she fixes up three rice bowls with hearty scoops of natto on top. Judging by Ash’s reaction, natto isn’t a preferred dish of his, and she won’t pass up an opportunity to see him squirm. Besides, he chose to come to Japan; he can’t spend the entire time eating burgers and pizza and whatever else it was Americans ate. 

Hiroko turns around to bring the bowls to the table and then stills.

Eiji has his hand on Ash’s knee.

His son has always been tactile. Hiroko has seen him touch his friends plenty of times: bumping shoulders and roughhousing, one-armed hugs, dragging them by their wrist when he’s in a hurry, and so on. But that fierce embrace in the entryway and now this -- that’s not normal, not for Eiji.

Hiroko’s mind whirs with questions. Americans have such a different culture; was touching someone’s knee a casual gesture to them? Was that where Eiji learned it? How could Eiji lay his hands so casually on someone who confessed to killing dozens of people just moments ago? Did Eiji not know what Ash did?

Eiji doesn’t react to Hiroko approaching the table stiffly. Either he’s making a statement or he doesn’t even realize his hand is on Ash’s knee. Ash, however, flicks his green gaze in Hiroko’s direction and shifts subtly. Eiji withdraws his hand, seemingly without thought, and reaches for his natto bowl.

“You have to try this,” he tells Ash.

“I did.”

“No, this is proper, homemade natto. Real food. Mom’s is the best.”

Something in Hiroko’s chest warms just a bit. Her son may be half a stranger now, they may be arguing, but he still likes her cooking.

Ash eyes the bowl Hiroko set in front of him warily but reaches for the chopsticks. As Hiroko and Eiji watch, he lifts a small portion to his mouth, chews, and swallows. Hiroko didn't think it was possible, but his face pales even more.

“Well?” Eiji prompts, though his teasing tone makes it obvious he knows that the answer will be.

Diplomatically, Ash offers, “I’ve definitely never had anything like it.”

Eiji laughs. “All right, so it’s a choir taste.”

“You mean an acquired taste, you senile old man.”

“Whatever, just eat up! Sooner or later, you’ll acquire it too.”

Hiroko realizes, suddenly, that she doesn’t want to be there. She doesn’t want to see Ash choke down more natto or Eiji’s reaction. She doesn't want to hear anymore of their conversation or feel like a third wheel in her own dining room. 

Hiroko sets her bowl down on the table with a clack and announces, “I’m going out.”

Eiji blinks and then narrows his eyes. “Where?”

“Out. I’ll be back soon.”

Hiroko sweeps out of the room, grabbing her purse before slipping on her shoes and leaving. Some fresh air will do her good. She’s been cooped up in the house for too long, leaving only to grocery shop and take Eiji to his appointments. His recovery necessitated a leave of absence from her work, but she thinks that she will go back soon. He doesn’t require around-the-clock care anymore -- never did, to be honest. She’d simply wanted to be with him around the clock to prove to herself that her son really was home, that he wasn’t going anywhere.

That quickly turned out to be wrong though. Once Eiji got the call that Ash died -- allegedly -- Eiji worked himself up into a frantic state, saying he must go back to New York City immediately. He couldn’t even bend over to tie his shoes, but he wanted to hop right back onto a plane. Nothing Hiroko said dissuaded him; he didn’t relent until Ibe pointed out that both he and Eiji had grossly overstayed their visas and were therefore barred from immediate re-entry.

Upon hearing that, Eiji started demanding to speak to an immigration lawyer, as if they could afford it. Ibe, however, promised he’d talk to his “contacts”, and Eiji settled down. He slipped into the melancholic slump, sleeping half the day and shuffling around the house silent as a ghost. And he stayed that way until Ash Lynx showed up on her doorstep.

Eiji being defiant was better than Eiji being depressed, but what Hiroko longed for was the Eiji who seemed to only exist in her memories now. Light-hearted, energetic, bristling with the sort of confidence only the naive enjoyed. 

When Eiji was younger, he ran headfirst through life. He made friends with anyone, tried everything at least once, never hesitated. He was the sort of boy that provoked both anxiety and pride in new mothers. How strange that back then Hiroko wished he’d slow down and exercise more caution. She wished she could return to those days and tell herself to savor each moment, warn herself that Eiji would grow up in a blink and transform into an unrecognizable man.

She needs a cigarette.

Hiroko’s feet lead her to the convenience store a few blocks from home. Smoking is an old habit, one that she largely kicked when she first found out she was pregnant. She started smoking during her first job because the boy she liked smoked and she wanted to impress him. He turned out to be a loser, but she appreciated the way that smoking carved out a few precious minutes from each day for her to relax, focusing only on herself, her breath, and the tiny flame.

Naoto smoked too and said nothing about her habit at first. But her mother-in-law declared it was unladylike and Naoto took her side, as he always did. Hiroko didn't mind quitting back then; she’d intended to quit anyway since they were trying to get pregnant. And after the children were born, it wasn't difficult to sneak outside to light up a cigarette when she got the itch. But Hiroko should’ve paid more attention to how quickly Naoto turned on her when his mother-in-law pushed.

Not once in twenty years of marriage did Naoto side with Hiroko over his mother.

Hiroko enters the convenience store, bell clanging overhead. The clerk calls out a greeting and Hiroko nods distractedly in response before heading to the chip aisle. She might as well pick up a snack for Mayumi too. Mayumi is deep in the midst of studying for her college entrance exams; she’d appreciate having something to munch on. 

As Hiroko considers the row of potato chips, another woman sidles up to her. “Long time no see, Hiroko.”

“Good afternoon, Kaede,” Hiroko returns, keeping her words brisk. Kaede could chat for hours if you didn’t head her off early.

“I’ve missed you at the gym. I suppose you’re busier now with Eiji back home.”

“Yes. Actually, I need to hurry back.” Hiroko grabs a bag of Mayumi’s favorite chips and moves towards the checkout counter. Kaede tails her.

“I heard that Eiji wasn’t doing well? He got injured in America?”

Hiroko wonders how long it would take for everyone in the neighborhood to stop fishing for details. “He’s doing better now.”

“That’s good. Actually, that reminds me. I met an American the other day who was looking for your house. Very handsome. Horrible Japanese. But Yohei was with me, so he talked to him.”

“Ah. Mayumi told me Yohei is best in the class at English.”

Kaede waves the compliment aside and casts her fishing line out deeper. “Was that a friend of Eiji’s from America then?”

“Yes.”

“Rather soon to be visiting, isn’t it? Eiji only arrived a few weeks ago.”

“Eiji invited him.” Fortunately, it is Hiroko’s turn to check out, so she places the chip on the counter and asks the clerk for her favorite brand of cigarettes. As Hiroko retrieves her wallet from her purse, she remembers that she needs a lighter as well and plucks a bright red one from the display beside her. The clerk rings her up. Once the transaction is over, Kaede pounces again.

“How long will Eiji’s friend be staying?”

“Not long. Sorry, but I really do need to go, Kaede.”

“Oh, why don’t I walk with you?” Kaede tries, but before she can finish Hiroko is already darting away. She keeps the pace up for another block before glancing back to make sure she’s truly alone. Then she slows, unwrapping the plastic from the cigarette package and opening the carton. 

The familiar acrid smell isn’t exactly pleasant, but it does soothe her. Something about seeing the cigarettes all lined up in their carton is calming as well. For the first time that morning, Hiroko feels completely in control.

A drop of water falls onto her forehead, dripping along the bridge of her nose. Hiroko glances skyward just as the rain starts to fall. It’s only a light shower, but Hiroko duck her head and hurries the rest of the way home.

Instead of going inside, she slips around the house to stand under the small space where the roof juts out. Sheltered from the rain, she taps a cigarette out from the carton and lights it, inhaling with her eyes closed. She breathes out and lets some of her tension go with it the smoke. 

The warm tendrils curl around her and inside her. Hiroko tips her head back, watching water drip off the roof’s edge. It’s not until she hears the murmur of voices that she realizes her back is pressed against the exterior wall of the dining room, where Eiji and Ash are talking. 

They’re discussing a person -- someone Chinese by the sound of the name -- but Hiroko doesn’t have enough context or a broad enough vocabulary to follow the conversation. She just blows smoke rings up to the waterlogged sky and lets the sound of her son’s voice wash over her. 

His English has improved by leaps and bounds. Eiji’s university professors would be impressed with him if he re-enrolled. She broached the topic of re-enrolling a week ago, hoping to distract Eiji from the news of Ash’s death, but he only looked at her like she lost her mind.

Ash’s voice cuts through her thoughts. “I don’t want you fighting with your mom because of me.”

Hiroko startles, accidentally inhaling too much smoke. She coughs as quietly as she can, hand clasped tightly to her mouth.

Inside the dining room, she makes out an odd sound that she suspects is Eiji snorting. “It’s not new. We’ve fought plenty before.”

“Why?”

“Mostly the usual stuff teenagers fight with their mothers about, you know.”

“I don’t. Not really.”

The dining room falls silent. Outside, Hiroko flicks the ash from her cigarette and takes a long drag.

After a while, Ash asks, “You said mostly. What was the other stuff?”

Eiji considers the question for a moment. Hiroko doesn’t know why; she knows what Eiji is going to say.

“She cheated on my father while he was ill. I couldn’t...I can’t forgive that.”

Hiroko closes her eyes. It’s what she expected, but that doesn’t make it any easier to hear such a condemnation from her son’s lips.

Ash’s response does surprise her. “You’ve overlooked far worse crimes that I’ve done.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“You never hurt someone you cared about.” Ash starts to say something, but Eiji interrupts him and sternly adds, “Not on purpose.”

Ash doesn’t argue, but from his silence Hiroko gets the impression he doesn’t agree.

Eventually, Eiji sighs loudly. “Maybe it’s petty to still be holding it against Mom after everything that happened. But I just can’t understand how anyone could betray someone they love like that. I could never.”

When exactly, Hiroko wonders, did Eiji start talking with such authority on the subject of love? He’s never dated, not seriously, as far as she knows. Plenty of girls liked him and he went out with a couple from what Hiroko recalls, but nobody ever inspired genuine passion in Eiji.

No one except Ash Lynx.

Hiroko remembers suddenly that embrace in the entryway, their bodies pressed together. She remembers Eiji’s hand on Ash’s knee, the intimate gesture so casual to him.

But no, that can’t be right. Eiji isn’t like that -- Hiroko would’ve noticed by now. While she’s hardly an expert, she does know a little about men who chase men, and Eiji doesn't resemble them in the least. Eiji has always been a bit soft, but he has also always been very boyish. He never showed any interest in her makeup or clothes, or Mayumi’s for that matter. He dresses, speaks, and acts like any other boy his age.

What is the name of that character on that comedy show Naoto loved? Hiroko hasn’t watched the show in years, not since her husband went into the hospital, but the name is something ridiculous -- Homooda Homoo. Eiji isn’t anything like that man, pink-cheeked and lisping and flouncing around. Of course, she knows that Homooda Homoo is an exaggerated caricature, but aren’t caricatures based in truth deep down?

Eiji has changed though, a voice in the back of her head reminds her. For all that Ash Lynx claims to have confessed completely, she’ll never truly know everything that happened to Eiji in New York City. Eiji’s changed in so many ways; why not that way as well?

Her fingers suddenly burn and Hiroko curses, dropping her cigarette down to the damp ground. It immediately fizzles out, but it had burned down to the filter anyway while her mind wandered. Hiroko plucks the cigarette butt from the ground and buries it in her pocket. 
 
The conversation in the dining room has shifted to another topic -- more people Hiroko doesn’t know and will never meet. Ash says something too low for Hiroko to hear, and Eiji laughs. The sound makes Hiroko’s stomach twist.

Mayumi was right about Ash looking like an idol. While there’s nothing feminine about him, Ash possesses a strange beauty that’s unlike anything Eiji would’ve seen at home. Hiroko can imagine how Eiji might have been drawn to Ash, especially while alone in a foreign city. With a few coquettish words and lingering touches, Ash Lynx could probably capture anyone’s gaze.

Hiroko listens a while longer, hoping for...what? For Eiji to mention an American girlfriend he misses? Any sign that her suspicion is wrong and Eiji hasn’t been taken in by Ash Lynx’s too-pretty face?

In the end, all she hears is pattering rain and the soft sounds of her son drifting away from her once more.

Chapter Text

When Mayumi comes home from school that afternoon, Ash Lynx is still with Eiji. 

Hiroko overheard Eiji suggest to him once that they go upstairs to his bedroom. She couldn’t make out Ash’s low response, but evidently he declined. They lingered in the living room, deep in conversation, as Hiroko flitted around them doing chores. Even when she starts preparations for dinner, she does her chopping at the kitchen counter where she continues her surveillance. While she can’t ban Ash from the house without provoking a fight, she can keep an eye on him.

Mayumi throws her backpack onto the couch and takes one glance at Eiji and Ash seated around the kotatsu before asking Hiroko, “Where’s Dad’s instant camera?”

“What do you need it for?” 

“For school. Do you know where it is?” 

“In his desk drawer.”

Mayumi darts upstairs. Hiroko hears her daughter rummaging overhead as she chops vegetables and pork for stir fry. After a few minutes, Mayumi returns, grinning and clutching the camera like a prize. She sidles up to her brother and prods his shoulder. He ignores her, so she keeps poking him.

“Ow,” Eiji complains, but he’s laughing. “All right, fine. What do you want?”

Mayumi casts a shy glance at Ash and then holds up the camera. “Can I take a photo of you and Ash?”

“Why?”

“I want to bring a picture to school to show everyone. Nobody believes me about Ash.”

Hiroko doubts that. There’s plenty of rumors circulating about Ash around the neighborhood. It’s more likely that no one believes Mayumi’s tales about how handsome Ash is. From the amused look on Eiji’s face, he knows it too.

“Ash doesn’t like to have his picture taken by strangers.”

“Then you take a photo of me and him! Please? I only need one.”

“Ask him yourself.”

Mayumi pouts, a habit she still hasn’t outgrown. “You know I suck at English.”

“Maybe you’d suck less if you practiced more.”

Ash, apparently having figured out he’s being discussed, cuts in. “What is it?”

Mayumi flushes pink. She lifts the bulky instant camera demonstratively and mumbles her way through an English answer. “You and me…shoot photo? I want to, uh, friends look?”

Ash props his chin on one hand and smirks at Eiji. “You’re such a liar.”

“What! When did I lie?”

“About your sister.”

Hiroko has no idea what Ash is talking about. Mayumi doesn’t understand the rapid English. Eiji, however, huffs, his ears flushing just as pink as Mayumi’s cheeks. “Are you gonna let me take your picture or not?”

Ash smiles at Mayumi and gestures for her to sit. She squeezes in on his side of the kotatsu. Hiroko watches, eyes narrowed and knife clutched tight, as the two lean their heads together for Eiji to capture in the frame.

She doesn’t like Ash so close to her daughter. Growing up, she heard plenty of tales about what happened to young women who got too close to Americans. And they were soldiers and businessmen; Ash Lynx is a self-confessed murderer and gang leader from a city famous for vice.

Eiji, at least, is a young man. Mayumi, as a teenage girl, is all too vulnerable.

The camera flashes and spits out a photo. Mayumi immediately reaches across the kotatsu to grab the picture from Eiji. 

Ash, however, meets Hiroko’s eyes. Even from across the room, his irises are startlingly green. He holds her gaze for a moment and then shifts, moving several inches away from Mayumi.

Hiroko goes back to her chopping.

Mayumi either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, too preoccupied with shaking the photo to make the image emerge more quickly.

“Stop flapping it around,” Eiji tells her. “Waving and bending it like that can mess up the picture.”

“Says who?” Mayumi asks, though she does stop shaking the photo.

“Your big brother does know some things.”

“Well, oh wise big brother, can you help me study math?” Mayumi jumps up to grab her backpack and then spreads several papers over the top of the kotatsu. “I bombed the last test, but I can’t figure out what I did wrong on half of these problems.”

Eiji picks up the nearest sheet, grimacing. “You realize I nearly failed the math portion of the Center Test, right? That was the last time I even looked at math.”

“But I thought you knew some things,” Mayumi teases.

The two of them start bickering. It’s good-natured enough, but Hiroko already has a headache. She thinks longingly of the cigarettes in her purse as she cuts a stubborn yam into rounds to saute. 

Mayumi will probably need to start attending cram school soon if she’s to have any hope of scoring well on her university entrance exam. The tuition fees will take a big bite out of their monthly budget, but Hiroko can work take on extra shifts if it comes to that. She worked overtime for weeks to pay for Eiji’s fees, and she’ll do the same for Mayumi so long as she studies hard.

The children are still bickering when Ash plucks the paper from Eiji’s hand. He studies it for scarcely a moment before reaching for a pen and writing something down. He slides the test paper back across the tabletop to Mayumi, who finally notices him.

Her nose wrinkles as she reads Ash’s addition and then her face clears. “Oh,” she says, drawing the sound out. “That’s a lot simpler. Why couldn’t the teacher show us how to do it like that? Wait, can you tutor me, Ash? Are you good at math?”

Ash stares back at her, one pale eyebrow raised.

“He’s definitely not good at Japanese,” Eiji reminds her.

“Whoops. Right. Eiji, can you translate Ash tutoring me in math?”

“Talk to him yourself. Then you can study math and English.”

Mayumi grimaces but turns back to Ash and switches to English. “You...teach me...math? Please?”

“Um.” Ash bites his lip and shoots Eiji an alarmed look. 

“It’ll be fine,” Eiji tells him. 

“You should stay here and--”

“Nope!” Eiji gets to his feet with some effort. “She needs to practice English and you need to practice Japanese. Mayumi’s probably the closest thing you’ll get to Sesame Street.”

“Eiji--”

But Eiji walks away, joining Hiroko at the kitchen counter. “What can I help with?”

“You need to rest,” she says. 

“I can handle a little cooking.” Eiji grabs the remaining yam before she can get to it, pulls a knife from the block, and starts rifling in the cabinets. “Where is the other cutting board?”

Reluctantly, Hiroko points him towards it. She could use help, true, and she’s missed cooking with Eiji. Mayumi never demonstrated much skill in the skill in the kitchen, nor willingness to learn. But Hiroko would much rather Eiji stay out in the living room to be a buffer between her daughter and Ash.

Between the two of them, they make fast work of the food prep. Eiji takes over sauteing the yams while Hiroko sees to the stir fry. It’s hard to keep an eye on the living room from the stove, but Hiroko peeks out whenever she gets an opportunity. Nothing appears to be happening at the kotatsu except very quiet math tutoring, Ash seated a careful distance away from Mayumi. Good.

The pork finishes browning, so Hiroko adds in the vegetables and the oil hisses loudly in the pan. Next to her, Eiji murmurs, “Mom?”

“What?”

“Could Ash stay here?”

Her stomach twists. She swirls the cooking chopsticks through the stir fry with more force than necessary and a chuck of onion escapes the wok, darkening rapidly in the burner’s flame. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?” Eiji demands. “You let Ibe stay here when he visited.”

“That was different. Mr. Lynx is hardly a college student visiting for an assignment. Flip that yam over before it burns.”

Eiji scowls but flips the yam. “Then what is Ash?”

Hiroko cuts him a glance before returning her attention to the wok. It pains her to see Eiji’s frustration directed at her, but she will put her foot down on this. Really, Eiji should feel grateful she lets Ash into the house at all.  

“He told me plenty about his...gang activities. I do have your sister to think of.” 

It takes a moment for Eiji to unravel what she left unspoken, but when he understands his expression hardens. “Ash would never do that to Mayumi.”

“You can’t know that for certain. He comes from a completely different world.”

“Ash would never,” Eiji hisses. “And don’t you dare imply to him that you think he would. If I find out you did, I’ll--”

“You’ll what?” Hiroko snaps. 

“I told you before. If he’s not welcome here, then neither am I.”

That stops Hiroko cold. Before, she thought it was just another one of Eiji’s hot-headed ultimatums. He was all too prone to them, like most teenagers. But she remembers Eiji’s hand on Ash’s knee, the way he clung to Ash, and her heart sinks. 

Ash Lynx truly has her son twisted around his finger.

What should she do? If Hiroko forbids Eiji to see Ash, it will only drive him farther away from her. But if she doesn’t put a stop their relationship somehow, Eiji may soon reach a point of no return -- if he hasn’t already. 

“I won’t say anything to him,” Hiroko pledges. She never intended to in the first place. “But for now, he must stay at the inn.”

“For now? Until when?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you mean forever. What’s your problem--shit!” 

Eij flips a yam over with too much force, splashing hot oil over his hand. He recoils from the stovetop and Hiroko shepherds him towards the sink, telling him, “Run cold water over it.”

“I know!” Eiji snaps. “Stop babying me.”

Hiroko jerks back. Stop babying me pales in comparison to other things Eiji has snapped at her over the years, but the words strike a vulnerable place.

At some point in the last two years, Eiji really did grow up. And she missed it.

“Is everything all right?” Ash asks.

Hiroko startles. She didn’t hear him coming behind her with his cat-like steps.

“Everything’s fine,” Eiji grumbles. “Mom’s just being...” He trails off, searching for the right English word before finishing with something Hiroko doesn’t recognize. “Overprotective.”

“Overprotective,” Ash repeats. From the way he glances between Eiji and Hiroko, it’s obvious he senses at least some of the undercurrents running through the kitchen.

“Yeah. You and Mom have that in common. You two should get along so well.” Eiji twists the faucet off, wiping his arm dry with brusque swipes of the dish towel. Brushing past them, he marches back to the stove and resumes cooking.

Ash and Hiroko look at each other. She doesn’t understand the sudden shift in her son’s mood, but she’s used to it. Ash, it seems, has some experience with Eiji’s moodiness as well. 

After a moment, Ash rejoins Mayumi in the living room, and Hiroko returns to her station at the stove. They finish cooking in silence.

Later, when Ash finally leaves and the children fall asleep, Hiroko cracks open Mayumi’s Japanese-English dictionary and searches for “overprotective.” There's no entry for it, but she figures out that “over” is the first part of the word and finds the definition for “protective.” Based on that, she pieces together Eiji’s meaning.

A tendency to shelter someone to an excessive degree.

Does she do that? Hiroko doesn't think so. If anything, “overprotective” is the perfect word for the way her mother-in-law acted around Naoto. In her view, Naoto could do no wrong and deserved to have everything in life come easily to him. At first, Hiroko thought it was charming how much Naoto’s mother doted on him and how much he loved her in return. Eventually, she realized the two of them were utterly co-dependent, twisted around each other so tightly there was no room for Hiroko in between. She vowed she wouldn’t do that to her own children.

Has she started acting overprotective without realizing? It seems doubtful. If she was overprotective like her mother-in-law, she never would’ve let Eiji go overseas. Even now, she doubts any other parent would behave differently. Eiji was shot; he’s still recovering. Not to mention he’s entangled with at least one gang member, possibly more. A little bit of protectiveness is called for, absolutely.

Hiroko returns the dictionary to Mayumi’s backpack and gets ready for bed. It’s not until she’s lying down, lights out, that her mind turns to the other half of Eiji’s accusation.

Ash Lynx, overprotective? He dragged Eiji into a deadly mind control conspiracy between the mafia and the military, and Eiji called him overprotective?

Maybe Eiji is the one who needs the dictionary.

Chapter Text

Eiji’s doctor encourages him to exercise more, and so he starts going on long, slow walks through town with Ash Lynx.

At first, Hiroko battles the urge to tail them. But soon, she realizes it’s unnecessary; whenever she goes out herself, everyone she meets informs her on her son’s movements. 

“I ran into Eiji at the shrine,” one of Naoto’s former coworkers tells her at the grocery store. “Eiji sure has grown; he's taller than his old man now! Last I saw him, he was still a shrimp. He doesn’t look tall next to that American though.”

“My wife saw Eiji at the middle school,” the butcher tells her. His wife, Hiroko remembers, was Eiji’s third year math teacher; he often complained about her classes. “She said he was showing a foreigner around.”

“I sat next to Eiji and Ash on the bus heading out to the ocean,” Mayumi’s friend Yui tells her in line at the pharmacy. “Mayumi showed me a picture, but I couldn’t believe how blond Ash’s hair is!”

Sometimes, it seems, all anyone in the neighborhood talks about is Eiji and Ash Lynx. Hiroko always smiles, deflects the more invasive questions, and hurries along on her way.

It only takes a few encounters to piece together what Eiji is doing. He’s showing Ash all the spots around town that mean the most to him, showing him what it was like to grow up here. 

Eiji’s track team went to the shrine at the start of every season to pray for many victories and no injuries. Middle school was awkward, lonely years for him; almost overnight, Eiji went from an excitable boy to a withdrawn teen. He struggled to make friends until he started high school and something changed again, restoring the shine in his eyes and the readiness of his smile. And the ocean -- 

When Eiji was little, he loved to look at the sea so much that Hiroko was convinced he’d become a sailor or a fisherman. He begged Hiroko to take him to the ocean nearly every weekend, and she was happy to oblige; it got her out of the house and away from her mother-in-law. Eiji would splash around in the shallows, and Hiroko and Mayumi would walk hand-in-hand through the sand, Mayumi practicing her tottering steps. 

On the hour-long bus ride back home, Eiji and Mayumi would fall asleep. Tucked in the last row, with her children dreaming and the driver and everyone else facing forward, it was the closest Hiroko got to being alone those years. That was when she allowed herself to cry.

Eventually, Eiji lost interest in the ocean. By then, Hiroko had started smoking again, stealing moments of privacy whenever she stepped out to light up. She didn’t need the time to cry anymore though. 

By then, she was quietly, silently furious. 

One day, it rains from morning to afternoon. The rainfall isn’t heavy, but between the seasonal chill and the wet weather, Eiji and Ash decide to stay inside. 

As they’ve always done since Ash’s arrival, they linger on the first floor where Hiroko can’t help but overhear. She suspects that Ash knows she dislikes being Eiji alone with him, and his avoidance of Eiji’s bedroom is a concession. 

She doesn’t know what to think of that.

Eiji tutors Ash on Japanese. Her son is a terrible teacher; his lessons meander without any logic, and he can’t explain grammar beyond saying, “That’s just how it is.” Somehow, though, Ash learns. His syntax is clumsy due to Eiji’s haphazardness and his accent remains terrible. But he picks up vocabulary at an alarming rate, seeming to only need a word explained once before it’s caught in the steel trap of his mind.

Neither Eiji nor Ash have mentioned anything within earshot of Hiroko about how long Ash will be in Japan. 

An hour before Mayumi is due to arrive, someone knocks on the front door. The stream of visitors from when Eiji first came home has died down but never stopped, so Hiroko plasters a false smile on her face before answering.

However, the pretense isn’t necessary.

“Jun!” Hiroko exclaims. “What a surprise!”

The boy -- young man now, really -- grins and ducks his head. “I’m sorry for dropping by so suddenly, Mrs. Okumura. But I came home for my grandmother’s birthday and heard that Eiji is back?”

“Nonsense, you’re always welcome. Here, let me take your umbrella.”

Jun hands over the dripping umbrella as well as a package that contains several slices of his grandmother’s massive birthday cake. “Mom wouldn’t let me leave without it,” he explains sheepishly as he removes his wet shoes and raincoat.

“Mayumi will be delighted. Come in, Eiji’s in the living room with a guest.”

When Eiji sees who is behind Hiroko, his mouth drops open, and he scrambles to get up from the kotatsu. “Jun! Hey!”

Jun laughs. “No, you stay there and rest. I heard you got hurt.” He claps Eiji on the shoulder gently and sits beside him. Casting a curious glance at Ash on the other side of the kotatsu, he gives him a friendly nod in greeting before returning his attention to Eiji. “You’re looking good though. New York treat you well?”

Eiji flushes. “Yes. Um, this is is Ash. He took care of me in America.” Switching to English, he says, “Ash, this is Jun Furukawa. He was my...upperclassman? On the track team.”

“And we were together at university,” Jun cuts in; his English accent is even worse than Hiroko’s. He returns to Japanese to tease Eiji. “Until someone left for a two-week trip to New York and vanished for two years. And after all my hard work helping you study for the entrance exam too.”

“Uh. Sorry?”

Jun chuckles good-naturedly. “You’ll have to tell me all about it sometime. But first, I’ve gotta tell you -- you won’t believe who got married.”

Jun starts catching Eiji up on everything that happened at school while Eiji was gone. Hiroko bustles around long enough to set them up with drinks and some snacks before taking leave. She hopes Jun can convince Eiji to go back to college, but she knows Eiji is more likely to actually consider it if she isn’t around.

There’s still time before Mayumi comes home, so Hiroko slips outside to smoke. The rain has cleared up, leaving the air cool and sticky with moisture. Lit cigarette between her fingers and warm smoke in her lungs, Hiroko tips her head back to the sky and breathes out.

For the first time since Eiji came home, she feels like she can relax. Jun’s a good boy from a good family, hardworking, and earnest. He helped Eiji out countless times, and Eiji always looked up to him in return.  If anyone can talk sense into her son, it’s Jun.

The back door opens, and Ash steps out. For a moment, Hiroko instinctively panics and nearly flicks the cigarette away. But then she remembers that she hardly cares what Ash Lynx thinks of her and instead blows out a big, defiant cloud of smoke.

Ash doesn’t seem surprised to find her with a cigarette between her lips. Perhaps women smoking is more common in America. He approaches slowly, finally stopping when he’s beside her under the roof’s eave.

For a long while, neither of them speak. In their silence, they can hear Eiji and Jun talking: just the murmur of their voices since they are in the living room and too far away for distinct words to carry.

Hiroko’s feeling charitable, so she asks, “Too much Japanese?” She barely manages to keep the smugness out of her tone.

Ash shifts his weight, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I didn’t want to intrude.”

Hiroko doesn’t recognize that last word, but she doesn’t care enough to ask. She takes a long drag from her cigarette, the tip glowing red-hot. When she breathes out, they both watch the pale smoke drift through the heavy air.

“You might not believe me,” Ash says suddenly, “but I admire you.”

It’s another word she doesn’t understand; this time, however, her curiosity is piqued. “Admire?”

“Respect.”

He’s right; she doesn’t believe him.

Ash stares out into the backyard, gaze lingering on the bed where her chrysanthemums bloom. She hasn’t been giving them as much attention as she should since Eiji came back, but they’re thriving regardless.

Slowly, Ash says, “My parents didn’t have a happy marriage. My mother left when I was a baby. When I was old enough to understand that she was gone, I was angry at her for leaving me.”

Ash’s green eyes flick in Hiroko’s direction. 

“But eventually I grew to understand what a terrible position she’d been placed in. When a marriage is bad, both staying and leaving are hard to do. Especially when there’s children involved.”

Hiroko doesn’t follow all of his words, but she understands the undercurrent of Ash’s message. The smoke in her lungs goes cold. 

“Eiji told you I had a bad marriage?” 

She never wanted Eiji and Mayumi to know, never wanted to burden them with the thought that she only stayed because of them. It was true, yes, but what parent would give that guilt to their children? 

“He told me you cheated on your husband. But I don’t think he’s given much thought to how or why that might’ve happened.”

“Then how you know?” Hiroko asks.

“Some things are more obvious to outsiders.” Ash looks toward the backyard again, leaning his head against the house. “As far as Eiji knows, he had a normal, happy childhood. You gave that to him despite what it cost you.”

Part of Hiroko is touched. No one has ever known -- no, no one has ever appreciated the sacrifices she made to maintain stability for her children. 

Another part of her is wary. She doesn’t like how deeply Ash Lynx has peered into her, how easily he discerned her most vulnerable point. 

Is this how he lured Eiji in? Flattering words to soothe his deepest insecurities? When Eiji left for America, he’d been insecure, directionless. It would have been easy for Ash to feed him what he wanted to hear, to quickly establish a false intimacy, a sense of dependence. 

Beside Hiroko, Ash lifts his head off the wall to look her in the eye. “I respect you and what you did,” he says. “But don’t you think Eiji is old enough now to know the truth about his parents?”

Something inside Hiroko recoils at the very notion; she’d rather Eiji think her a wicked woman who cheated on her loving husband than tell him about the most miserable years of her life. 

“What good is that? Why do you care?”

“Eiji is important to me. I don’t like seeing him fight with family.”

“You want me to tell Eiji all his life I lied so he’ll hate me. You want to, to,” Hiroko struggles to find words, her fury rising to the surface faster than her thoughts can follow. “You want to drive him away from me so you can take him.”

“I never meant to come between you and Eiji.”

“Just being here, you come between us,” Hiroko snaps.

Ash shivers, shoulders hunching, but it’s impossible to tell if it’s from a guilty conscience or the cold air. He won’t meet her gaze.

Lowly, he says, “I won’t make Eiji choose between me and family. I’ll leave before it comes to that.”

Hiroko scoffs in disbelief, and Ash turns to her again. 

“But I’m not the person driving Eiji away. That’s you.”

Ash pushes off the wall and slinks back inside, quiet as he came. Hiroko’s fingers begin to heat; her cigarette is down to the filter. She stubs it out and sighs.

Mayumi will come home from school soon. Hiroko should go back inside and start working on dinner, find out if Jun is planning to eat with them.

Instead, she lights another cigarette and lets the smoke obscure the backyard.

Ash stays long enough to tutor Mayumi and leaves before dinner. Hiroko wonders if she can count it as a victory or if he’s only making another concession. Eiji protests when Ash announces his departure but gives it up when Ash leans over and murmurs something to him.

Eiji’s hard gaze lands on Hiroko, and he frowns. But then Ash is leaving and Jun distracts Eiji and Hiroko assumes that, whatever he was thinking in that moment, Eiji’s let it go.

She’s wrong. Eiji waits for Jun to go home and Mayumi to go upstairs before cornering Hiroko in the laundry room.

“What did you say to Ash?” he demands.

“What did he say to you?” she asks, tone carefully measured. It only seems to fire Eiji up more.

“He didn’t say anything. I’m not stupid. He went out with you, and when he came back he was acting off.”

Hiroko keeps folding the still-warm laundry, focusing far harder on her motions than necessary. Outside of lounging under the kotatsu and cooking on the stovetop, folding laundry right out of the dryer is the best way to keep warm this time of year. She usually enjoys the chore, but now the heat feels stifling. 

“You were busy with Jun. Maybe he realized there’s no place for him here.”

“What?”

Hiroko knows that fighting with Eiji more will only make things worse. Ash’s accusation linger like a sour taste. She doesn’t want to risk driving Eiji away with quarreling, but it’s a parent’s duty to protect their children -- even from themselves.  

Carefully but firmly, she says, “You already have family and friends. You don’t need him here like you did in New York City.”

Eiji tugs the sheet Hiroko is folding away from her, forcing her to face him. 

“I don’t need Ash,” he says, unwavering gaze boring into her. “I want him. No one here or anywhere else could replace Ash.”

Who says things like that? Hiroko wonders. Only someone too drunk on passion to swallow reality could make such a reckless declaration.

Before, she feared that she was too late, that she lost Eiji. With those words, she knows she has.

Hiroko fists her hands into the pile of laundry to quell their furious tremble. “Do you have any idea how thoroughly he’s twisted you around his finger?”

“Twisted?” Eiji bites out the word.

“You’re so obsessed with him that it nearly got you killed. He told me everything! There were so many times when you could’ve backed off and come home. Any reasonable person would have!”

“You just don’t get it! I’m in love with Ash.”

Eiji’s words suck the heat from the room and the anger from her chest, leaving her cold and hollow.

“Oh, Eiji.” Hiroko reaches out, laying her hand over Eiji’s so the sheet falls between them. “What did he do to you?”

“Nothing!” Eiji tears away from her. For a moment, his entire from seems to quake, his mouth a thin, hard line. And then he explodes.

“The first guy I had a crush on was Jun! Are you gonna accuse him of twisting me around his finger? I’ve known I liked boys since middle school. Did Ash travel time and space to seduce me back then? Ash and I aren’t even -- we’ve never even kissed! So whatever you’re thinking, you can just, just shove it!”

He flings the sheet at her. It flutters to the floor as he storms away. Hiroko watches him go, frozen. Her mind roars but there’s no thoughts, no words, just a rush of noise. Eventually, her feet unstick and she stumbles out of the laundry room. She finds Eiji pulling on his shoes at the entryway.

“Where are you going?” Her voice sounds wrong, too far away; she’s shocked she managed to say anything at all.

“Where do you think?” he snaps. 

Eiji stands, rising until he’s taller than her, bigger. She remembers suddenly what Naoto’s coworker said about Eiji having grown; it’s the first time she’s really noticed.

“You know what Ash told me?”

Hiroko can’t begin to guess over the roaring between her ears. She shakes her head.

“He told me that he could tell how much you cared about me. And that he didn’t want to mess things up between us. But you know what? If you really cared about me, you’d treat Ash the way he’s treated you.”

Then Eiji opens the door and steps out into the night, his arms wrapped around his torso. Hiroko watches until he’s gone, the cold air blowing inside. She shivers, but doesn’t close the door. 

Maybe she’s in shock or denial. Maybe her mind simply doesn’t know how to begin to process it all. Whatever the reason, all she can think as she stares into the dark space where her son disappeared is that he forgot to put on his coat.

Chapter Text

Hiroko wakes feeling as though she hardly slept. With a groan, she pushes herself out of bed and dresses, her eyes tender and her body aching. The frigid air almost drives her back under the covers, but Eiji’s breakfast won’t cook itself.

It isn’t until Hiroko walks into the kitchen that she remembers Eiji isn’t home.

She makes a cup of tea. As it steeps, she looks out the window at her chrysanthemum beds. She feels guilty that she hasn’t been tending to them properly recently, but the blossoms seem fine -- more than fine. They’re supposed to only bloom through mid-autumn, but hers show no sign of wilting even on the cusp of winter. 

Naoto’s mother hadn’t liked the chrysanthemums. When Hiroko first planted them, she complained relentlessly that Hiroko shouldn’t be working outside the house when there was so much to do inside. Naoto took his mother’s side, like always, though he tried to compromise by suggesting Hiroko plant something practical instead, like vegetables.

Hiroko ignored them both, her second act of rebellion after the cigarettes. She never argued back about the flowers, not wanting to escalate the situation into an argument the children might notice. She’d smile thinly, nod, and then go outside to garden more, mentally daring them to try to stop her.  

It wasn’t about the flowers. It was about doing something Hiroko wanted -- only Hiroko. Not Hiroko the humble wife, Hiroko the dutiful daughter-in-law, or Hiroko the hardworking mother. The chrysanthemums were purely for her.

Was Ash Lynx Eiji’s chrysanthemums? Hiroko could understand somewhat if she thought of it like that. She knew well the impulse to break from the mold others cast for you, even when that impulse led to reckless, damaging decisions.

Her affair had been her third act of rebellion.

Hiroko’s tea finishes steeping just as Mayumi emerges. She’s already dressed in her school uniform, her bag packed as well.

“You’re up early,” Hiroko says, voice raspy. Usually Mayumi flies downstairs mere seconds before she needs to catch her bus. “Do you want breakfast?”

Mayumi shakes her head, already sticking her customary piece of bread into the toaster. She glances sideways at Hiroko, then fixes her gaze firmly on the toaster’s glowing coils.

“I heard you and Eiji last night.”

Oh. Hiroko’s fingers clench around her hot mug as she tries to figure out how to proceed. “What did you hear?” 

“Mostly Eiji shouting about being gay.”

Hiroko winces. That word sounds almost vulgar coming from the lips of her daughter. Maybe it’s old-fashioned of Hiroko, but she’s not used to hearing people speak plainly about such matters. “I don’t know if Eiji is actually...like that.”

“He pretty much said he was.” Mayumi fiddles with a jar of marmalade, still not looking at Hiroko. “What makes you think he isn’t?”

Hiroko doesn’t have an answer for that. She searches her tea mug and finds nothing besides Eiji isn’t anything like that Homooda Homoo character , which she already recognizes as ridiculous. No real person is like Homoo Homodo.

Still, she can’t help but feel she should’ve noticed earlier, seen the signs. Looking back, she recalls a middle school teacher remarking that Eiji was shy about changing with the other boys. She remembers finding a small stack of well-thumbed sports magazines under Eiji’s bed and chuckling to herself because that was where teen boys were meant to keep their porn. And Jun -- when she was introduced to Jun at a track meet, he threw his arm across Eiji’s shoulders, praising his vaulting like a proud sempai, and Eiji’s face turned so red Hiroko worried he’d overheated. 

What kind of mother is she if she missed something this big about her son?

“Would Eiji being gay really be so bad?” Mayumi asks, fingers tight around a dull knife.

Hiroko sighs. “You’re young, you don’t--”

“I’m not that young! What’s so bad about being gay?”

“Is it so awful of me that I want my children to have normal lives?”

The toaster pops loudly and they both startle. Once she recovers, Mayumi retrieves the bread and spreads a thick layer of marmalade on it with vicious, sloppy strokes.

“Why can’t Eiji be gay and have a normal life?” she demands.

“This is what I mean about you being young. You don’t understand how the world works.” Hiroko drains her tea and starts steeping another cup, thinking longingly of the cigarettes in her purse. “Do you realize what it would mean for your brother? Everything would be harder: school, work, relationships. He’d have to keep it a secret and when it can’t be kept secret, he’d have to deal with the consequences. Do you think I want that for Eiji?”

For a moment, Mayumi stares at Hiroko, toast dropping crumbs onto the counter. Hiroko realizes she surprised her. When Mayumi finally speaks, her tone has softened.

“But it doesn’t matter whether you want. He’s not gonna change.”

Hiroko isn’t entirely convinced on that. If Eiji finds the right girl, maybe he could change. But she also knows how stubborn her son is; once he makes up his mind, not even a typhoon can sway him. Judging by last night’s blowout, his mind has been made, at least for now.

Mayumi keeps going, pressing her advantage. “Eiji’s already been keeping it a secret. And he’s dealing with the consequences right now. Things will be harder, but doesn’t that mean we should do whatever we can to make it easier?”

Ash Lynx’s voice rings in her ears. I’m not the person driving Eiji away. That’s you.

“Enough.” Hiroko raises a hand. “It’s not up for discussion. This is between your brother and I, not you.”

She refuses to be parented by her own seventeen year old daughter -- or a foreigner. 

Mayumi huffs. “That’s the real problem with this family, you know. We never talk.”

With that, she sinks her teeth into her toast, shoulders her school bag, and leaves.

The house is quiet, still. Despite her exhaustion, restless energy prickles through Hiroko. She putters around, finding chores to occupy herself and glancing at the clock impatiently. Around noon, she realizes that she’s waiting for Ash Lynx to appear.

Ridiculous. He has no reason to visit now that he has Eiji with him. But he caught her up in his routine of morning appearances. Not to mention she half expects him to seek her out to…to do what? Not gloat, that didn’t seem to be his style. Perhaps admonish her while establishing that he has the higher ground.

But, no, that isn’t his style either. During his visits, Ash was always deferential, at least on the surface. And when he wasn’t deferential, he acted like her equal at most. 

She hasn’t forgotten the hours he spent that first morning explaining what happened in America and answering her questions. Neither Eiji nor Ibe seemed to think she could handle the truth, but Ash Lynx laid it all out before her.

What Ash thought he would gain, Hiroko doesn’t know. It would’ve been easier to maintain the shroud of mystery Eiji and Ibe draped over the last two years. None of the details painted him in a positive light. 

Really, Hiroko doesn’t understand Ash Lynx at all. What did someone like him want with her son? If, as Eiji claimed, they weren’t...involved, then why is Ash here? Was Eiji simply an easy mark or a convenient accomplice? Did Ash hope to lie low in Japan until things calmed down in New York City?

As Hiroko wipes down the top of the kotatsu, she realizes there is someone who might have answers. He might not be completely unbiased, but he’d at least be less biased than Eiji. 

Curling her fingers through the landline’s cord, she dials Ibe’s number.

“Hello?”

“It’s Mrs. Okumura.”

“Oh! Uh, hello?” Ibe fumbles his words, clearly throw off-center by her call. They hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms. “Is there something I can help you with?” 

Hiroko has no energy to deal with his awkwardness. “Tell me about Ash Lynx.”

“Ash?”

“You know he’s been here, right?”

“Yes. He gave me a call recently.”

That’s right; Hiroko remembers Ash mentioning he asked Ibe for advice.

“Max told me he was still alive,” Ibe continues, “but it was a shock to hear his voice. The kid has nine lives, I swear.”

This isn’t what Hiroko wanted to hear, so she repeats, “Tell me about him.”

Ibe hesitates. “What do you already know?”

“Everything. He told me about that drug, banana fish or whatever, and all the rest.”

“Ash did?” 

“It didn’t paint a very flattering picture.”

“No, I expect not.” Something rustles on the other end of the line; Hiroko suspects Ibe sat down. “That sounds like Ash though. He never had much self-preservation when it came to Eiji.”

That, finally, is information she can use. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’d think he’d want to make the best possible impression on you, right? Telling you the truth would only give you reasons to run him off. But that’s how Ash is. He doesn’t think he deserves good things, so he sabotages himself.”

Hiroko remembers the cold young man she first saw on doorstep, gaze cast downward and admitting that his arrival might bring nothing good.

“Then why would he come here?” she asks. The facts simply don’t line up.

“Probably because of Eiji. He wanted more for Ash; he wanted Ash to want more.”

Despite Ibe’s straightforward phrasing, the inherent sentiment of the statement makes Hiroko clench her teeth.

“What do you know about those two?” Hiroko demands.

“What do you mean?”

“What was their relationship like?”

For a while, silence crackles through the landline, a subtle buzz broken only by hints of Ibe’s breathing. Eventually, he sighs. 

“Mrs. Okumura, I can understand why you’d want Ash far away from Eiji. I tried to keep them apart myself, though maybe not as much as I should’ve. Even Ash tried to get Eiji away from him.”

Hiroko doubted Eiji took that well, her stubborn son. 

Ibe continues. “I know it’s hard for you to trust Ash, but at least trust this: he doesn’t want Eiji to get hurt. Ash would rather get hurt himself a hundred times than let something hurt Eiji.”

And that -- she can use that. If Ash doesn’t want Eiji getting hurt, then surely she can make him see that this...relationship will only hurt Eiji in the end. Maybe not physically, maybe not even emotionally. But Eiji’s life will never be what it could’ve been: easy, secure .

Before she even gets off the phone with Ibe, a plan forms.

When Hiroko goes to the inn Ash is staying at, the proprietor turns her away.

“Mr. Lynx isn’t here,” she says. Hiroko went to school with her; she can’t remember her name, but the proprietor clearly recognizes her. Her gaze has a keen glint like a hawk spotting prey. “I believe he and your son were planning to visit the Ise’s ice cream shop.”

Hiroko thanks her and lights up a cigarette once she steps outside. She wonders what rumors are circulating through town that no one dares to speak in front of her. It’s only a matter of time before the idle curiosity in the Okumura boy’s foreign friend becomes suspicious scrutiny of their relationship. Perhaps it’s already begun. The inn proprietor certainly seemed to think something was amiss.

Has Eiji considered what will happen once people in town know? Hiroko witnessed it before. 

The summer she was pregnant with Eiji, whispers spread like wildfire about two male teachers at the elementary school. As far as Hiroko recalls, no one had ever caught them in the act; she can’t remember how exactly the rumors started. But the whispers followed the men through town everywhere they went, separately or together, until finally parents complained to the principal about that sort teaching children.

The younger teacher, still fresh from university, didn’t return after summer holidays. He left town. The older teacher stayed, but last Hiroko heard he hadn’t taught in years. She didn’t know what he was doing now. Maybe he wasn’t in town anymore either.

That was twenty years ago, but Hiroko knows this town. It hasn’t changed.

Hiroko finishes her cigarette and set off in the direction of Ise’s ice cream shop. It’s another of Eiji’s favorite places, a short detour from the high school. Eiji and Jun used to stop there after practice, buying a cone each plus one for Mayumi, dashing home before it melted. 

The first guy I had a crush on was Jun! Are you gonna accuse him of twisting me around his finger?

When Eiji started talking about an upperclassmen called Jun, Hiroko breathed a sigh of relief. He struggled so much with making friends in middle school, so to hear Eiji babbling excitedly about a classmate was reassuring. To think now that it was a crush unsettles Hiroko, but...Jun is exactly the sort of young man she wants Mayumi to date when she’s older. Good humored, dependable, respectful. If it was Jun Eiji declared passionate feelings for the night before, Hiroko wouldn’t be so troubled.

Experience has taught Hiroko to be wary of men. She already worries enough about the men who might approach her daughter, all the ways she could be hurt so easily. To have to worry about the men her son might encounter as well is more than she can bear.

As if summoned her dark thoughts, Ash’s low voice pours from the park Hiroko passes. 

“It’s so...green.”

Hiroko freezes at his stilted, accented Japanese. The boys are seated on a bench near the park’s entrance, facing away from her. Hiroko creeps closer, peeking around a tree. They’re the only ones in the park; it’s school hours still and the weather is too chilly for most mothers to feel inclined to bring their young children out. Eiji is already deep into his pink ume soft serve; Ash holds his matcha cone skeptically.

“Of course it’s green. It’s green tea,” Eiji says.

“Green tea is... not so green.”

“Just try it!”

  “Why I can’t get...?” Ash pauses and then finishes with something in English.

“Vanilla,” Eiji fills in. “Vanilla’s boring! You can eat vanilla anywhere. You’re in Japan, you should try something you can only eat here.”

“If you looked around, you could probably find green tea ice cream in New York,” Ash says in English.

Eiji keep eating his ume ice cream, but he wags a finger at Ash. Ash scowls, but even from a distance Hiroko see there’s no real annoyance behind it.

“Green tea ice cream,” Ash starts, but then he comes to a halt, stymied by the grammar of the sentence. He gives up on Japanese and finally licks his cone.

“What do you think?” Eiji asks, switching to English.

Ash takes a second lick. “The flavor’s really strong. It tastes like grass, but not in a bad way.”

Eiji side-eyes him. “You’ve eaten grass?”

“Of course not. I just meant what I imagine grass would taste like.”

They keep eating their soft serve and talking. The longer Hiroko watches, the more she feels like she’s invading. Not because they are discussing anything private or heavy -- the conversation stays fixed on light topics and gentle teasing -- but because it’s all so normal. There’s nothing to justify Hiroko’s continued lurking. They’re just boys, eating ice cream in spite of the cold weather and talking like friends do.

Hiroko doesn’t know what she expected, but it was not this. Eiji was so upset yesterday, frustrated and vulnerable and furious. Today, he grins full-faced as Ash tastes Eiji’s soft serve and puckers his mouth at the sour flavor. 

Eiji finishes the rest of his cone in a single bite, smears his sticky fingers on Ash’s cheek, and darts away when Ash grabs at him, cackling. Ash chases him, still clutching his green tea cone, so Eiji scrambles up a jungle gym dome until he’s out of reach.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself,” Ash says. Hiroko agrees; Eiji’s bullet wound has closed on the outside, but there’s no telling what it looks like on the inside. The doctor said Eiji was ready for light exercise, but she doubts this is what he had in mind.

“I feel fine!”

Ash ducks into the dome and stops underneath Eiji. He takes a big bite of his soft serve. “You know I don’t actually need both hands to climb up there.”

“Come and get me then,” Eiji taunts, kicking his feet.

Calmly, Ash eats the rest of his cone, melted ice cream dripping down his hand. He starts to wipe himself clean with a napkin from his pocket -- then he surges upward, leaping to clasp his still-dripping hand around Eiji’s bared ankle.

Eiji shrieks “Gross!” but the sound carries more delight than disgust.

“That’s what you get for smearing it all over my face.”

“I should’ve put it in your hair!”

Footsteps approach behind Hiroko, the accompanying voices indicating a mother and child. Hiroko should leave before she’s spotted. Slowly, she edges backward from her hiding place, reluctant to look away from Eiji’s bright expression. His broad smile crinkles his eyes at the corners; his laughter shakes his entire body in helpless, giddy tremors.

He looks like the boy Hiroko lost, the boy who loved the sea, the boy she thought lived only in her memories. He’s older and scarred and not nearly as carefree, but her son is here in this park. He is here, and he is happy. 

Ash did that. Hiroko doesn’t know how. She doesn’t know how long it will last. In her experience, these feelings fade or turn out to be false or falter under the stress of life. But for now, Eiji is happy.

And isn’t that what she wanted?

Chapter Text

Hiroko stops by the inn again the next morning. This time, the proprietor deigns to call Ash’s room. Hiroko knows it’s Eiji who picks up on the other end because the proprietor converses with him in quick, hushed Japanese, but after several long moments Ash Lynx emerges into the lobby alone.

Ash waits until they’re outside and out of the proprietor’s earshot before telling Hiroko, “I couldn’t convince Eiji to come.”

“That’s fine. I don’t have a lot of time.”

Hiroko shakes a cigarette out of its pack. Her supply is dwindling, but she needs to cut back anyway. After lighting her cigarette, she tilts the open box towards Ash.

He hesitates but takes a cigarette and accepts the lighter when Hiroko passes it over too. She watches as he ignites the cigarette’s end, drawing in a slow, careful drag, before handing the lighter back.

“You don’t smoke often,” she observes. He clearly knows what he’s doing, but he lacks any of the long-worn mannerisms Hiroko recognizes in a habitual smoker.

“No. I don’t like the taste.” Ash blows his smoke out in a steady stream. It disperses lazily across the inn’s modest landscape. After a moment, he adds, “The smell is fine, but the taste reminds me of…things I’d rather forget.” 

“Then why did you take one?” Hiroko asks, although she already knows the answer.

“It’d be rude to decline.”

Hiroko inhales deeply, letting the cigarette warm her frigid fingers. She spent all night preparing for this conversation, but it hasn’t made it any easier. Still, she knows what needs to be said, and she’s never been one to back down because something is hard.

She inhales again, exhales, and swallows her pride.

“I have been rude,” Hiroko says. When Ash doesn’t react, she adds, “Rude to you,” in case she didn’t make herself clear enough.

Ash gazes across the inn’s small, impersonal garden, though he’s surely seen plenty of it during his stay. “Is that an apology or an acknowledgement?”

“Acknowledgement?” Hiroko echoes, fumbling through the strange syllables.

“Statement. Fact.”

“It’s both.”

“I don’t need an apology,” Ash says. The cigarette sits rigid between his fingers. He nurses it just enough to keep the ember from going out. “You being rude was a relief. Any mother would drive me away if she knew about me.”

Hiroko studies the strange man beside her. When Ash Lynx was just a mugshot in a foreign newspaper, she’d been startled by how young he looked. His youth made the accompanying headlines even more alarming. Two years younger than her own son, and already a killer.

The Ash Lynx standing beside her now is still young, but he’s also weary. She sees it in the slump of his shoulders, his thin frame only somewhat hidden by his coat. Just yesterday, she watched Ash goof around in the park like any boy his age would. Now, he looks more like the shell-shocked ex-soldiers from her childhood, wrung-dry by a war that had little to do with them.

Something about this man makes her son happy. She’s seen it. She knows it. But she can’t trust that it will last because...

Hiroko doesn’t realize what she is about to ask until the words are already emerging. 

“Ibe said that you...” She struggles to express it in English. “Hurt yourself. Instead of being happy.”

Finally, Ash’s green gaze cuts over to her. Just as quickly, he looks away and drags on the cigarette, making its end flare bright red to match his cold-flushed cheeks. “Max probably told him that.” 

It’s not an answer to her unspoken question, but it’s not a denial either.

One piece of the puzzle that is Ash Lynx clicks into place. Just like that, Hiroko understands why Ash doesn’t need an apology, why he’s been so deferential, why he’s let the fighting between Eiji and her play out without any interference.

“What are you doing here?” Hiroko asks, although -- again -- she already knows the answer.

“Eiji wanted me to come.”

“And what do you want?” she demands. 

Ash’s expression is one she’s not yet seen from him until now -- somewhere between taken aback and trapped, like a stray cat that never thought you’d catch it.

“You want me to, to…to be the bad guy and drive you away so don’t have to...” Hiroko doesn’t know how to say it in English. Confront his fears? Risk being happy? Hiroko starts over. “Eiji is fighting for you. Why won’t you fight for him?”

“I’d die for Eiji.” 

Coming from anyone else, that would sound ridiculous to Hiroko. But Ash doesn’t shout it or declare it or even stiffen his tone. He speaks plainly, and -- knowing what she knows -- Hiroko believes him. 

Eiji doesn’t need someone to die for him though. Especially not here, at home, where he never would’ve been shot once, let alone twice.

She asks, “But can you live for him?” and Ash turns away.

They smoke in silence for a while as the town wakes up around them. Outside the inn’s gate, schoolchildren walk by, jostling each other and laughing. A car honks its horn, startling a flock of birds into the air. Eventually, Hiroko’s cigarette burns nearly to its filter, and she can’t afford to stay any longer.

“I want Eiji to have someone who fights for him,” she tells Ash. He turns back to her, the startled expression from earlier lingering still in the shadows of his face. “I want Eiji to have someone who supports him and takes his side.” 

This is what she decided last night. She wants her son to be happy, and that means he can never be in a relationship like hers.

“Is that person you, Ash Lynx?”

“I want to be that person,” Ash says. It’s impossible to know whether his hoarse voice is due to the smoke he’s breathing or something else. “I want to. But…” He pauses and she can tell the next words cost him to admit. “I don’t know how to live for someone.”

“Then learn. Eiji told me you could do anything.”

Hiroko kneels to grind her dwindling cigarette against a stone and then pockets the snuffed butt. When she rises, she finds Ash watching her, his gem-like eyes guarded but keen.

“Mrs. Okumura,” he says, “are you giving your blessing?”

She doesn’t understand the phrase, but she doesn’t have time to find out what it means. 

“Tell Eiji that I’m going back to work, starting today. The house is open to both of you, if you want to get out of here. Tell him that: you’re both welcome.”

Once Ash nods, Hiroko leaves, her quick strides carrying her away from the inn. Her shift starts in fifteen minutes, and it will take at least ten to walk to the factory. She doesn’t know what she’ll find at home that evening, but she knows Eiji will understand her message.

Ash Lynx isn’t the only one who can make concessions.

With some groveling, Hiroko gets reinstated to her usual shift at the canning factory. While her leave of absence was approved, no one expected it to be so long. Her supervisor will likely be annoyed with her for a while, but that will blow over soon. Hiroko rarely asks for time off and never slacks off, plus she has worked there longer than most. 

She welcomes the return to routine. The constant rumbling of the machinery, the dull smell of metal, the curve of each can under her fingers -- all of it is as familiar to her as her own home. She’s posted near the end of the operation, filling cardboard boxes with cans after they’ve been sterilized and then transferring the boxes to the loading dock. Seventy-two cans per box: four rows and six columns, each stack three cans high.

It’s mindless work and there’s eight hours of it, which gives her plenty of time to think. Surprisingly, it’s not Eiji or Ash on her mind or even Mayumi, Naoto, or his mother.

Her thoughts drift to her own mother, dead now for decades.

Fusae raised Hiroko alone. Hiroko’s father died at war before she was born – or so the story went. Raising a child as a single mother was difficult then. It still is, but when Hiroko was a little girl, there were even fewer resources to turn to and even fewer jobs available to women. 

Fusae made ends meet in whatever ways she could, but their lives were forever precarious. They drifted from place to place, sometimes staying with a relative, sometimes moving in with the latest man in Fusae’s life, sometimes managing to hold on to their very own apartment for a few months or even a few years.

As a child, it was an adventure because Fusae made terrible circumstances seem like a game. When they packed up their belongings and slept several nights in the park, Fusae called it camping. When food ran out, Fusae challenged Hiroko to foraging contests of “who can pick the most shoots” and “who can find the biggest mushroom.”

It wasn’t until Hiroko started going to school more regularly that she realized how different her life was from her classmates’. She learned that her Fusae’s frequent bouts of “illness” were the result of drinking, that the reason they never moved in with her grandparents was because of Fusae’s own stubborn refusal. And the older she grew, the more she grew to resent Fusae for her capricious ways, her inability to make anything last. 

Life was always more stable when Fusae was seeing a man, so it seemed to Hiroko that if her mother could just find a proper husband, settle down, commit , then everything would be better. She wouldn’t have to keep changing schools and leaving friends behind. She wouldn’t have to come home and find Fusae shifting through their meager belongings for items to sell. She wouldn’t go to bed hungry, stomach clenching upon itself.

As a young woman, Hiroko dreamed about her own marriage not because of any romantic fantasy but because she craved stability more than anything. But since she inherited none of Fusae’s good looks and easy charm, men didn’t orbit her like they did her mother. None of the men she met seemed interested in more than clandestine, casual encounters.

So when Naoto entered her life, he felt like her one chance. He was tall, soft-spoken, and perpetually disinterested in a manner that Hiroko thought, at the time, was mature and cool. He worked at an office and had recently been promoted to a manager position. While he didn’t pursue Hiroko, he accepted her attention easily enough. Most importantly, when she started hinting towards a proposal, he asked her to marry him soon after.

Fusae hated Naoto. She made her distaste known with small remarks and slights throughout their relationship, but it wasn’t until Hiroko announced her engagement that they fought outright.

Even now, Hiroko doesn’t know what red flags her mother saw in Naoto that she missed. But when Hiroko stormed out of the apartment, Fusae called a warning after her: “You’re kidding yourself if you think that man will make you happy!”

Hiroko whirled, her cheeks hot. “I don’t need happiness!”

It wasn’t just her anger talking. She truly believed it then.

Later, when Hiroko learned she was pregnant with Eiji, she promised herself that she wouldn’t be the kind of mother Fusae was: unreliable, self-centered, and more concerned with ideals than practicalities. Her children would have the normal, easy childhood she didn’t.

Certainly, she accomplished that much; Hiroko wasn’t anything like Fusae. But was she any better? 

What would her mother have said when Eiji declared his love for Ash Lynx?

During her lunch break, Hiroko sits at an empty table in the cafeteria. Soon, however, she is joined by Chikage, a woman she went to high school with, though they weren’t friends then. Hiroko isn’t certain she’d call Chikage a friend now, but she’s the closest thing to it at the canning factory.

“Thank goodness you’re back,” Chikage says, snapping her chopsticks apart. “I’m much too old to be hanging around with the young girls here, but I’m not old enough yet to talk to granny Futaba everyday.” 

Hiroko smiles wanly through her exhaustion. “I’ve been hard-pressed for adult conversation too, at home.”

They talk idly as they eat, Chikage catching her up on all the workplace gossip she’s missed. As Hiroko picks the last of her rice from the bowl, Chikage comments, “I’ve seen Eiji and that American boy together.”

Her purposefully light tone puts Hiroko on edge. It’s too much for Hiroko to hope she can avoid these conversations forever, but that didn’t stop her from wishing. She matches Chikage’s carefree air. “Yes, he’s been showing him around town.”

“I couldn’t help but notice...well, they seem awfully close.”

Hiroko glances up at Chikage. There’s no censure in her tone or demeanor. Chikage looks back, her eyes soft, concerned. Hiroko realizes that she’s warning her, the real message being, They’re too obvious; people besides me will notice . 

The thing is, Hiroko doesn’t know if Eiji intends to hide his relationship with Ash. It’d be wise of him to do so, especially if he wants to stay in town. But maybe he doesn’t plan to stay. Maybe soon he’ll leave with Ash for Tokyo or somewhere else less traditional; maybe he’ll even return to New York City. The thought of Eiji faraway once again makes her chest tight. But if she wants him to stay, she’ll have to make him feel welcome, both at home and in town, and that means presenting a united front to outsiders.

“I don’t know about awfully.” Hiroko chews the final bite of her lunch, thinking before swallowing. “It’s good to have someone to be close to. Wouldn’t you agree?” 

“Yes, it is.” Chikage speaks slowly, as if testing out each sound. “So, it doesn’t...bother you?”

It does, but her feelings aren’t what matters most. “I wish he’d practice more subtlety.”

Her honesty startles a laugh out of Chikage. “Eiji, subtle? We’re talking about your son, right?”

Hiroko sighs. She already knows she’s asking for the impossible.

The factory bell rings, calling an end to lunch. As they gather their dishes and line up, Chikage leans in close.

“If there’s anything I can do to help you or Eiji, let me know.”

The offer surprises Hiroko; perhaps they are friends, after all? She’s never been a good judge of these things. “Thank you.”

“I might be able to teach Eiji a thing or two about subtlety,” Chikage murmurs. Before Hiroko can respond or even fully process her words, Chikage is already darting away to her post for the remainder of the shift.

Watching her back, Hiroko realizes that Chikage is the oldest woman she knows who has never married.

Hiroko’s feet and back ache by the time she gets home. She moves slowly, stiffly as she removes her shoes in the entryway, only noticing when she’s done that Eiji and Ash’s shoes are lined up next to Mayumi’s.

The murmur of soft voices emanates from the living room: Ash tutoring Mayumi. Closing her eyes, Hiroko hears something sizzling on the stovetop, someone moving around in the kitchen: Eiji.

She takes a moment to compose herself.

When she walks through the living room, Mayumi ignores her as she’s been doing since the morning before. Ash, however, meets her gazes and holds it. She’s the one who looks away, ducking her head in a brief nod before heading into the kitchen.

Eiji stands at the stove, his back to her. The taut line of his shoulder tells her that he knows she’s there.

When she says, “Thanks for making dinner,” his shoulders relax just a bit.

“It’s just the salmon you had marinating in the fridge,” Eiji replies, though she can see he’s also grilling the eggplant that was about to go bad. The rice cooker’s timer will go off in a few minutes.

Hiroko sets the table and fills drinks, taking more care than necessary. By the time she’s done, the rice cooker chimes and all four of them start filling their plates.  

Dinner passes quietly, but not silently. Once Mayumi realizes no argument is about to erupt, she starts quizzing Ash about American actors in a slapdash mix of Japanese and English. Ash doesn’t seem to know half the people she’s talking about, but he gamely attempts to answer her. Eiji mostly stays out of it, though he translates briefly when Mayumi and Ash completely lose each other.

Hiroko eats but barely tastes her food, too occupied with working up her nerves. She picks her salmon apart with her chopsticks, rehearsing dialogues mentally. 

Eventually, Eiji interupts her thoughts. “Whatever it is, just say it.”

The delicate mood surrounding the table breaks, Mayumi and Ash both sitting up straight. Across the table, Eiji stares at her head on, chin lifted defiantly, ready for anything.

Hiroko isn’t ready in the least, but she suspects she never will be. She sets her chopsticks down and looks each of them in the eyes, finishing with Eiji.

“We need to talk.”

Chapter Text

Mayumi pushes her chair back, dish in hand. “It’s about time. I’ll leave you to it.”

Ash’s pale eyebrows pinch together, parsing through all the Japanese, and starts to rise as well.

“You can stay,” Hiroko tells him in English. To Mayumi, she says, “I need to talk to both of you.”

Mayumi sinks back into her chair, arms folded over her chest. Beside her, Eiji sits in almost the exact same pose, fingers tapping against his forearm. They look so much alike, her two children. 

Ash casts a sharp contrast from his end of the table, so tall and blond and handsome in his disconcerting way. But she’s become used to the sight of him in her home. He doesn’t look like an angel or actor anymore, just someone who stopped being a stranger not long ago.

“You can explain anything Ash doesn’t understand to him later,” Hiroko tells Eiji. She can’t speak her mind well enough in English for this conversation, not to mention Mayumi wouldn’t understand then. 

Eiji lifts his chin. “Start talking then.” 

She’s been mulling over how to begin for half the day, and she still doesn’t know what would be best. There is one thing though that she wants to make absolutely clear.

“I never regretted marrying your father because that is how I got you two. Raising you children is the greatest thing I’ve done in my life and I’m -- I’m proud of you both.”

Her words, sincere as they are, emerge stiffly. She’s unused to doling out such plain-spoken affection, preferring to let her actions speak for themselves. Eiji and Mayumi aren’t used to hearing it from her either. Mayumi slouches low in her seat, flushing a little. Eiji’s fingers twist together in a tight knot on the tabletop.

“But?” he demands.

“I don’t regret marrying your father,” Hiroko repeats and then she pushes through her next words. “But I hated him.”

Her children stare at her, eyes wide. Their surprise satisfies her; they truly never realized. She wanted them to have the security that came from believing one’s parents were partners in every sense of the word -- despite everything, she managed it.

“Neither of us married for love,” she continues. “I married him because I felt I didn’t have other options. He married me because he needed a wife to take care of his house and his mother.”

It’s not unusual for a woman her age to have married without love. Plenty of her peers had omiai marriages; while she and Naoto hadn’t been matched, their marriage was born out of the same practical, business-like considerations. 

“I thought your father and I could become fond of each other over time. But he never seemed to notice me or anything I did unless your grandmother had something to complain about. And she found plenty to complain about.”

Hiroko stares down at her pink salmon, ashamed of what she’s about to admit.

“I wasn’t a wife or daughter-in-law to them. I was an asset to the household. Convenient. Perhaps I brought it upon myself since my own reasons for marrying your father were much the same. I wanted stability, and I got it. I could’ve contented myself with that if only they weren’t so...dismissive of me. If they could’ve treated me like a person rather than a tool.”

She faces her children again, aching from baring herself but exhilarated at the chance to finally speak honest words. 

“So I grew to hate your father. And when he died, and your grandmother, I could only feel relief.”

The dining room is silent except for the clock ticking on the wall and each of their quiet breaths. Ash sits rigid as if to avoid drawing attention to himself. Mayumi, still low in her seat, has a glossy look to her eyes and a frown on her lips, like she’s on the verge of tears and resents it. And Eiji keeps opening and closing his fists, grasping for words until finally he asks, “Why are you telling us now?”

“I feel like I don’t know you anymore,” Hiroko confesses. “Especially not since you came back from New York City. But even before then I felt distant from you. And Mayumi too.” 

She turns to her daughter. “You said that our problem was we never talk, and you’re right. When did we last talk about something besides school or chores or your plans for the day?”

“Never,” Mayumi mutters, and it’s not exactly the truth, but it stings regardless.

“I know I can't expect you two to speak honestly to me if I won’t speak to you. You’re both old enough now to know me as a person, not just your mother. That’s why I’m telling you this.”

Hiroko’s throat dries up. She sips some of her water, noticing only then that her hands are shaking. Quickly, she sets the glass down again and conceals her hands under the table. A moment later, she realizes what’s she’s done and puts her hands back into view, under the eyes of her children.

The room falls silent again. Mayumi sniffs, and the sound seems to echo off the walls. 

Once again, Eiji’s the one who finally speaks. “What does this have to do with me and Ash?” Before Hiroko can answer, he barrels on. “Is Dad the reason why you’re so against it? You made a mistake, so you think I’m making one too? Because that’s stupid.”

Mayumi gapes at her brother. Eiji’s rudeness makes anger flare to life in Hiroko’s chest and she has to bite down on her lip to stop herself from saying something cutting. If she’s to have any hope of mending things with her children, she knows she can’t keep falling back on the habit of rebuking them whenever they say something she doesn’t like.

Hiroko makes herself breath slowly, focusing on the fish rapidly cooling on the plate in front of her. She wills herself to cool down as well.

“Have you considered this at all from my perspective? Is it wrong for a mother to disapprove of her child tying himself to a literal criminal?”

Eiji starts to argue, but Ash touches his arm and quiets him. They exchange a look, and then his green eyes find Hiroko’s.

“I understand your concerns,” Ash says in English. “But I wouldn’t have come here if I thought it’d put your family in danger. I made sure it wouldn’t, as best I could. And no matter what happens, I won’t be returning to that life. I broke everything off for good before leaving America.”

He mentioned ending things before, the morning he explained everything to her, but Hiroko is less than reassured. There’s no guarantee that an old enemy won’t be motivated enough to track Ash to the other side of the world. And there’s no guarantee that Ash can give everything up, even if he wants to. 

She remembers the shell-shocked men who came back home from war in her childhood, the way they were never quite right afterward. 

Ash, she thinks, has been at war nearly all his life.

He’s not the partner Hiroko would’ve chosen for her son -- far from it. Just as her mother Fusae never would’ve chosen Naoto for her. Maybe he is making a mistake, like her. 

But, maybe, after everything Eiji and Ash went through together in New York City, her son knows Ash better than Hiroko knew Naoto. And maybe Eiji knows himself and what he wants better than Hiroko did at his age.

Maybe decades from now, she’ll look back on Ash’s arrival on their doorstep and be unable to remember a time when he wasn’t family. It sounds impossible to her. But if she doesn’t try to make it happen, her own flesh and blood might slip from her reach forever.

“And what are you going to do now?” Hiroko asks. “Both of you. What are you planning?”

For the first time since the conversation began, uncertainty creeps onto Eiji’s face. He looks sideways at Ash, whose hand rests still on his arm. Have they really not discussed the future yet? Hiroko wonders. Ah, to be that young again.

Ash says, “I want to stay with Eiji, wherever he is.” His hand slips lower, beneath the table. Judging by the way Eiji’s ears redden, Ash has entwined his fingers with his.

“If that means Japan, then I’ll learn whatever I need to know to not be a burden.”

“You’re not a burden,” Eiji insists, so earnestly that Mayumi’s cheeks flush too, even though Hiroko doubts she understood all the English.

Hiroko pumps the brakes before the conversation completely derails. “What about you, Eiji?” she asks, switching back to Japanese. “What are you planning to do now?”

Eiji grimaces. “I talked to Jun about returning to school,” he admits. “But...I don’t think I’m interested in finishing my studies anymore. It seems pointless after everything.”

That’s disappointing, but Hiroko can’t claim to be surprised. “Okay.”

Mayumi perks up in her chair. “Wait, does that mean I can skip university too?”

Hiroko resists the urge to rub her temple. At least her hands aren’t trembling anymore. “Maybe, if you really don’t want to go. But let’s discuss that later.”

“I want to talk to Ibe,” Eiji says, the words rushing out all at once. “About how to break into photography. I want to take pictures that show people the truth and beautiful things and, and.” He sputters to a stop and regroups. “Maybe that’s silly. I don’t know.”

It’s not silly. Hiroko has her doubts about photography’s viability as a career; from what she understands, Ibe would be flat broke were it not for his career-driven fiancee. But anything that puts the gleam back into Eiji’s eyes and makes him raise his voice in excitement is not silly.

“If that’s what you want to do,” she tells him, “then I’ll support you.”

This seems to throw Eiji for a loop. He blinks, mouth open a little, and then says, “Um. Thank you.”

And with those words, finally, the tension around the table falls away. Mayumi sighs a little and pick ups her chopstick, eating her likely now-cold eggplant with relish. Ash glances at her and seems to take her relaxation as a good sign. His mouth quirks into a small smile he sends in Eiji’s direction before he resumes eating as well. 

Eiji doesn’t notice it though. He’s watching Hiroko just as she’s watching him. She wonders just how long it’s been since they both saw each other this clearly. Never, as Mayumi said? Surely not. Hiroko hopes not.

But if it is so, then Hiroko hopes from now on, they won’t lose sight of each other. 

Days later, the chrysanthemums' unnaturally long blooming season finally wanes. 

Hiroko studies the wilting flowers from the kitchen window as she prepares breakfast. Mayumi has already left for school with her usual toast. Eiji and Ash are still upstairs, although she can hear someone moving around -- most likely Eiji. It turns out that Ash, left to his own devices, is a late riser. 

She set Ash up with the spare futon in Naoto’s old office, where Ibe stayed so many years ago. She’s uncertain whether he’s actually been sleeping there, and she’s determined not to find out. Things had been awkward enough recently. Better, but awkward.

Breakfast finishes cooking. Hiroko covers the food to keep it warm, and, after a moment more of thought, sifts through a cabinet until she finds her one vase. 

It’s too late for most of the chrysanthemums, but some of them are still in full bloom.

The morning sun warms her enough that she only needs a sweater. Hiroko goes through the flowers carefully, cutting off only the best and smoking while she works. Before long, she has a vase bursting with chrysanthemums and a cigarette edging close to the filter.

Behind her, Eiji says, “I didn’t know you smoke.”

“Not anymore.” Hiroko exhales one last plume before stubbing the cigarette out in the grass. She puts the butt in the otherwise empty box. “That’s the last one.” 

And she doesn’t intend to buy anymore, if she can help it. It’s time she quit for good. For herself, this time.

Eiji starts to say something, then closes his mouth. Hiroko corrects flowers’ arrangement, balancing the blossoms so they don’t all lump together. After a moment, Eiji picks up the shears she set aside and cuts another chrysanthemum. Most of her flowers are varying shades of pink, but this one is just dark enough to be called red.

Eiji hands it to be her and says, “I’m sorry.”

Hiroko stills. She hadn’t expected any apology from Eiji. Not with how stubborn he can be, and not with how justified he likely feels in his recent behavior. She’s not sure she deserves an apology.

The lowest hanging petals brush her skin as she closes her fingers around the flower’s stem.

 “You don’t need to say sorry,” Hiroko tells him. “I’m the one who should apologize for these last couple weeks.”

Eiji looks away, his shoulders hunching. “No, I meant...I’m sorry I never called. Or wrote. I don’t regret staying with Ash, but I am sorry I put you through that for two years.”

Her knees ache from kneeling so long on the cold ground, but she doesn’t dare rise.

“Why didn’t you call?” 

Were you still mad? Punishing me? Completely aware of how worried I was? The fragile air between would surely break if Hiroko asks any of these questions, so she only waits as Eiji shifts his weight from foot to foot. It’s the same tic that once preluded his vaults.

Finally, he turns to her, his brown eyes brimming with something long withheld. 

“I didn’t want to leave Ash, but I missed home too,” Eiji admits. “I knew that if I talked to you, it’d be even harder to stay in America.”

And he stops short of saying it, but Hiroko understands her son. I missed you.

She thinks suddenly of the day Eiji was born, the first time she held him. He was so pink and so small. She kept him close to her chest like a second heart, overcome with awe and responsibility and more love than she’d ever thought herself capable of.

How could she ever make him choose between his family and his devotion? How could she when he deserves everything?

She stands and reaches for Eiji. It’s nothing like that departure two long years ago, when he tensed in her arms and complained until she let him go. He folds into her, making himself smaller as if he were a child again. With one hand, she holds onto the chrysanthemum. With the other, she rubs his back, right over the exit wound.

“It’s all right,” she says as his shoulders start to shake. Her own eyes burn. 

It’s been over a decade since she last cried, longer still since she cried in front of another person. The welling tears sting so much she’s blinded by them, but she won’t let go of Eiji to wipe them away. She’s long overdue. She thinks, perhaps, she’s been holding these tears back since Ibe called and said, “Eiji’s in surgery. He was shot. It’s bad,” each distant word dragged from him.

“I was so scared sometimes,” Eiji whispers. “That’s what I dream about. The scariest times. I can’t...I don’t think I can talk about it yet.”

“You’re safe now.” Hiroko presses more firmly, until she can feel the scar’s texture through his shirt. “And Ash too.”

“He’s good, Mom. I promise. You’ll see”

Hiroko hopes she will. “So long as he’s good to you. And you’re both more careful.”

Eiji pulls back. “Careful?”

“The entire town has been talking about you two.”

His ears turn pinker than she’s ever seen since middle school, but his mouth sets into a resolute line. “W-well, they can talk! I don’t care what any of them say about me. As long as Mayumi doesn’t get bullied at school, at least.”

So that’s how it’s going to be then. “Okay.”

Her agreement seems to make Eiji deflate. “Is it okay? I don’t…I don’t want to make trouble for you and Mayumi.”

“We’ve already discussed it. We’ll support you.” She never wanted such a life for her son. But Mayumi was right. If they can make his life a little easier, they must.

Hiroko slides the stem of the red chrysanthemum into the vase, re-positioning the flowers around it. Satisfied finally with the arrangement, she hands the vase to Eiji. “Here. Put it in the dining room, and get Ash up for breakfast. It’s time to eat.”

Eiji looks at her, eyes still puffy and lips spread slightly as if he’s about to say something. But in a heartbeat the moment passes. Instead he smiles, nods, and goes inside.

Hiroko watches him go, rooted in place. It was the first smile Eiji directed at her since his return. Small but thoughtlessly real and achingly familiar. 

He’s really home. Not the same as he was, no. He’s more self-assured, more jaded, more insular. But he’s still her son. And he doesn’t need a mother anymore, but she thinks maybe he still wants her.

Hiroko lets her gaze wander over the chrysanthemum beds, going dormant as winter approaches. They grew well enough without her this year, but she planted them, and they deserve her attention and care. Next year, she can do better. 

She will do better.