Chapter Text
Takaaki Ishimaru has changed.
As soon as he held his son in his arms for the first time, the realization hit: This tiny living, breathing thing is his legacy; the already piercing wails calling him, stumpy, uncoordinated fingers stretching out to him.
In this moment, all loose strings connected. Why he stood up in the morning, why he took pictures, why he collected newspaper clippings, why he remembered stories to tell, why he had a wife, why he worked and why he breathed. This, or rather he was the reason. Takaaki held responsibility, he held life.
Are you alright, sir?
The nurse's voice made his head snap up. He looked into the round face of a young woman and their eyes met. Her lips curved to a grin. I see, I see, just amazed.
She nodded along with her words. And tired, understandable.
Takaaki felt his body all of a sudden, every muscle in his face, the bags under his eyes, the numb parts of his hand where his wife had grabbed on. For how long had he been awake?
If you don't mind, sir, we'll take over from here.
A Thank you
escaped his lips as the weight in his arms was lifted. They stayed in position for a moment longer than necessary. Then he turned to look at his wife.
Sachiko was lying next to him. Her hair had been messy from the start (nine hours ago, about eleven p.m.), tied ineptly into a ponytail (by him by the way) that had opened during the last hours. But now it looked like a dog had played with a stork nest. Sweat had wet her hairline. Her face and neck glistened. She barely managed to keep her eyelids from falling but there was enough energy in her to faintly smile.
She was the best of all women. He said that out loud and Sachiko laughed, all despite everything.
That dream shattered six years after.
The first and last time Takaaki accepted a cigarette someone offered, he was watching the news. Sachiko had left the room. She had tried her best to hold it together, even asked if he or Kurusawa needed something out of the kitchen as this was where she stayed all night. But tears welled in the eyes of the best of all women while in the background her father Toranosuke unseated from the office of Prime Minister.
What's going on inside you right now?
Kurusawa asked. He was somewhat a colleague to the now impeached Prime Minister, aware that he had basically lost his job and a close friend of the family. In this exact moment, the only friend. He blew the smoke from his own cigarette to the side.
Takaaki coughed out grey clouds. The smell burned in his nose. It was disgusting. Nothing compared to his thoughts.
Kiyotaka was seven months old. When did it all start? Six months ago. And also. This was Sachiko's father. He could leave. Toranosuke wasn't part of his family.
The second drag dried his throat. He swallowed a hard cough. You wouldn't like to know.
Sachiko hated to come home. Even during her father's peak and their wealth, she had kept her job as a nurse. Just for fun. It's still fun,
she'd say.
Day by day, she arrived in their puny apartment in this godforsaken skid row and started to prepare their dinner. It was two p.m., she could have worked so much longer if it weren't for her little boy she picked up on her way home, and she prepared a bland dinner for the two because they were not able to afford warm meals twice a day and more spices than salt and pepper. Takaaki would join them much later, deep into the night.
Sachiko never told her husband what she would hear when she picked up their son. He eats too little. He doesn't play with the others. He doesn't play in general. He's obedient. Like a little soldier. He cried again today. For a solid hour.
Sachiko automatically translated every single word of the kindergarten teacher to What are you doing to your poor son, Ishimaru?
She stretched her mouth to a smile, drilling into the other woman's face and into her own, took her son's hand and left.
Don't you like coming home with me, Mother? Don't you love me anymore?
Of course, he had noticed how she slammed the pots onto the stove and in the sink, how her fist clenched around the handrails on the train. I'm your mother, silly.
She knelt down to him and put her hands on his shoulders. Her knees creaked. Kiyotaka's eyes shot down to them, then up. Fire met ember. That means I'll always love you, no matter what you do or where you are. Got that?
He nodded silently. A corner of Sachiko's mouth twitched up, not because of happiness. She hugged her son, he hugged her back, pulling at her shirt and squeezing her shoulders. The pain on Sachiko's spine grew and she had to let go.
A few years later on a June afternoon, Takaaki was called back to the station while he was on patrol. A call for you, Ishimaru.
Usually, all policemen handled him rough like an old belt they wore during some dirty work since it would break anyway in a while. Today, one of them said, I'm sorry
before handing him the sticky receiver. Its color was faded under Takaaki's bony fingers.
The nurse on the other side of the line had hung up a minute ago. The receiver dangled from its cable, scraping the ground with each sway. The scratching, the whirring of the ceiling fan, the disconnect tone, the officer's voice crawled closer out of the background Takaaki had banished them to. Reality encircled him, wolves surrounding their prey.
Without explanation, he ripped his son out of class and rushed to the hospital Sachiko had been working at. Kiyotaka's fellow classmates, all train passengers gaped at him with their round childrens' eyes or their judging whispers. They pierced the man who looked tired, out of breath and the boy at his hand who pulled and screamed at him to finally tell him what was going on.
Kiyotaka was silent as he stared down at his dead mother. Bones shone through her death pale skin, sticks wrapped in wax, hair dull and strawy, glazed eyes drying out in the uncomfortably warm room.
When Takaaki's son was six years and ten months old, he attended his first funeral. Mother said that she'll always love us no matter where we are,
he whispered down the grave. She said that.
Takaaki's brain was too drained to answer. She said that, didn't she?
He didn't know. A weary smile dragged onto his lips because he felt Kiyotaka's eyes on his. That smile would later become the only one he knew. She did.
An actual laugh awakes inside of Takaaki when he hears his son starting to recite his vows for the third time.