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“I’m back,” Josuke called out as he opened the front door.
“Welcome back,” Tomoko greeted from the kitchen, leaning against the counter and sipping coffee. “Rohan-kun came back a little while ago, he’s in his room working.”
“Then I won’t bother him,” Josuke replied. He slipped off his shoes and wandered into the kitchen, plopping down at the table and staring into nothing.
Tomoko noticed the thoughtful look on her son’s face. “What’s up, Josuke? You look like you’re thinking hard.”
Josuke was silent for a moment before staring down at the table, biting his lip. He looked uncharacteristically nervous. “Mom,” he started, “how did you meet Joestar-san?”
Tomoko looked at her son, who refused to meet her gaze. Then she glanced away, carefully hiding a smile behind her coffee mug. No wonder he’s nervous, she thought.
Josuke had never shown any interest in knowing about his father before, stubbornly insisting that she and Ryohei were all that he needed. But it was natural for children to wonder how their parents had met, how they themselves had come about. In truth, Tomoko had been expecting this conversation for a long time.
“It was in the fall of 1982,” Tomoko recalled nostalgically, moving to sit in the seat across from Josuke at the table. His gaze darted to meet hers, then back away. She smiled gently, knowing he was listening carefully. “I was in college studying to be a teacher. Joseph was in Japan for some real estate business, and we ran into each other on the street.”
Josuke blinked, forgetting his shyness and looking back at her face. “What, just like that? That’s it? What the hell, that’s so normal!”
Tomoko mock scowled, barely holding back a laugh. “Shut up, you brat! Do you want to hear the story or not?”
Her son grumbled something that sounded like never thought that geezer could do anything normally.
“So,” Tomoko began again. “I was walking down the street, just minding my own business. I’d meant to go grocery shopping, but then I passed this beautiful boutique with these darling shoes on display, and I just had to get them. Who needs food anyway? If it comes down to buying good food or buying some nice shoes, I’ll buy the shoes and spend the next however-long living on ramen.”
Josuke nodded understandingly. He, too, was obsessed with shoes.
Though he was wondering if this story would ever get to Joestar-san….
“So I buy the shoes—these sandals with woven straps of real leather and a bit of a heel, and it’s getting a bit cold for sandals but I wanted to start breaking them in right away, so I put them on and put my other shoes in my purse…”
“Is this a story about you meeting Joestar-san or about your new shoes?” Josuke asked skeptically.
“I’m getting there, you brat!” Tomoko yelled, mock glaring. “If you keep interrupting me, it’ll just take longer, you know!”
She waited to see if Josuke had more to say, but he pouted quietly, having gotten her point. So she continued.
“So I’m wearing my new shoes and walking down the street. And then some sleazy asshole comes up and starts hitting on me—”
“Joestar-san?!” Josuke gasped dramatically, half-joking, although a flicker of worry remained in his gaze.
“No!” Tomoko snapped, scowling for real this time. “Did I say that this was Joseph? No, I didn’t! Don’t just jump on the first man I mention and think it’s him!”
Josuke laughed sheepishly. “Sorry, sorry. But you said ‘sleazy’! Surely a guy twice your age counts as sleazy.”
“Hmph! You won’t think that when you finally let me finish my story,” his mother said pointedly. Josuke waved for her to go on. “Where was I…”
“Sleazy asshole,” Josuke supplied.
“Right, the sleazy asshole. He was being annoying… so I punched him and knocked his teeth in.”
The line was delivered with such conversational blandness that Josuke burst out laughing, knowing full well how often his mother knocked entitled jerks on their asses. Tomoko watched him laugh with a smug expression on her face.
When he had calmed down, she continued, “So I knocked him flat. But the guy had friends who didn’t like what I did so much. And normally I would have taken then out as well, but I was wearing my new shoes and they weren’t broken in, so I didn’t really want to have to fight or run. So I looked around, hoping that someone would help me out.”
Here Tomoko quieted and grew more serious, scowling into her coffee. “But everyone whose gaze I met turned away. They wouldn’t help me. They thought I was acting embarrassingly, that I was ‘asking for it’ by standing up to a man, that I was being ‘a bitch’ just because I defended myself with force,” she snarled.
Josuke felt his hands clench into fists as his temper rose dangerously. That was exactly the kind of despicable behavior that he loathed.
“You know, Japan is relatively safe in terms of murders and violent crimes—though Morioh has a strangely high homicide rate,” Tomoko observed (Josuke tried not to think about Kira). “But there’s still this… deeply entrenched male-centric view that sees women and children as the property of men. This country doesn’t take women seriously. Everyone just turns a blind eye to the harassment and abuse. And this time too, everyone around me turned away.”*
Josuke’s firsts started to shake, his nails biting his palms. He stared into his lap and bit his lip.
“So there I was, one against five, resigning myself to getting blisters from doing too much activity in new shoes. And that is when I met your father.”
Josuke’s head snapped up, his eyes wide. Tomoko smiled.
“That’s right,” she said. “This huge American man with graying hair walks up, and, in rough but understandable Japanese, asks why five men were so afraid of one woman that they had to gang up on her instead of going one-on-one. He says, ‘I heard this was the country of samurai, but all I see here are honorless thugs.’ ”
Tomoko laughed at the memory, smiling, and Josuke grinned as he imagined the scene.
“And then,” she continued, “just when I thought those jerks were going to attack him, there was this… strange energy in the air, and a gust of wind, and then a whole bunch of sparkling leaves swept up in the thugs’ faces, and they started jumping around and howling like they were getting electric shocks or something. They were so freaked out that they just ran away.”
Was that… Hamon? Josuke wondered. Joestar-san had mentioned the power that came from a special breathing technique, and had even said that it could be stored in some objects, but were leaves one of those things?**
(Josuke was curious about Hamon, but after hearing about the grueling training it took, he had lost any interest in trying it himself, and he understood why Joseph hadn’t kept it up. It sounded like way too much effort.)
His mother wasn’t done talking, however, so Josuke put the thought on the backburner and returned to listening.
“I was grateful that he had saved me the trouble of fighting without belittling me for defending myself, so I offered to buy him a coffee in return, and we got talking. Then it turned out that he could use a guide getting around the city and a Japanese tutor, so we kept meeting up. And pretty soon, I was in love,” Tomoko finished, with a smile that was still as adoring and giddy with fresh love as it must have been all those years ago.
Josue could now understand why his mother would have found Joseph admirable, but there was still something he didn’t understand. “But he was so much older than you!” he burst out.
Tomoko laughed. “Unlike what you seem to think, that wasn’t a detracting factor in any way for me. I didn’t love your father despite his age—I loved him because of it!”
While Josuke gaped, she explained, “The more I got to know him, the more I saw how stressful his life was. I saw the weight of the world on his shoulders, even though he wouldn’t tell me much about his responsibilities. I saw the loneliness in his eyes, even though he could easily chat with strangers. I saw the way certain random little things would make him sad—like soap bubbles—even though he celebrated life and happiness with all his being.
“Here was this man, weighed down by years and years of life, shouldering so many responsibilities, burdened with so many secrets—but still smiling, still laughing, still living his life; and with more vigor and enthusiasm than I had ever seen in my peers. Even though life had been hard on him, he had such a joy for living. I was attracted to that. I fell in love with that. And I knew, then and there, that I wanted the father of my child to be someone like him.”
Tomoko sighed, bittersweet and longing. “I knew that he was married. I knew that I couldn’t keep him even though I loved him. It just wasn’t meant to be. I was born at the wrong time and place to share a life with him. But I’m not bitter, and I don’t regret a single thing. Because I existed in a time and place where I was able to meet him. And meeting Joseph Joestar, even if it was only a short time, gave me you.
“More than I wanted a romantic partner, I had always wanted a child. And when I met Joseph, I knew that I wanted my child to be his. I wanted my child to live a full, happy life, to persevere in the face of any difficulty and still be able to smile afterward—like him. Like you.
“Josuke, you are all that I’ve ever wanted. I love you more than anything. And I’m so proud of the man you’ve become.”
Josuke choked, tears glistening in his eyes. He stumbled out of his chair to the other side of the table and threw his arms around Tomoko in a hug, while she rose to meet him. “I love you too. I’m glad you’re my mom.”
Tomoko rubbed his back comfortingly. “I know, Josuke.”
Without breaking the hug, Josuke asked quietly, “Do you think you’ll ever fall in love again?”
“Probably not,” Tomoko sighed. “I doubt I’ll ever meet another man who can compare to Joseph Joestar. But it’s okay if I don’t. I already have everything that I need.”
OMAKE
Meanwhile, an eavesdropping eavesdropper was hiding behind the doorway to the kitchen and listening in with a maniacal smile and a sketchbook full of notes.
This will make such a good reference for my manga! Rohan thought gleefully.
“I heard this was the country of samurai… but all I see here are honorless thugs!”
“Wow, isn’t that just such a powerful line? These new characters are amazing!” Koichi exclaimed to his friends. He, Josuke, and Okuyasu were all crowded around the latest Jump volume, reading Pink Dark Boy together because they were all too impatient to take turns.
“I know!” Okuyasu agreed excitedly. “Man, this new lady is so badass! I think I’m in love. But, yanno… don’t you think this American character looks a bit like Jotaro-san?”
Koichi studied the man posing dramatically on the page. “Oh, you’re right! He really does.” He turned to the third in their group, who was being strangely silent, when he usually gushed loudly over every new Pink Dark Boy chapter. “What do you think, Josuke?”
Josuke was looking at the comic with a complicated expression. The pompadoured teen’s face was a shifting, conflicting mixture of embarrassment, outrage, and that particular brand of amused exasperation that came from dealing with Kishibe Rohan.
Suddenly Josuke threw his hands up and let out a yell that sent birds flying from nearby trees and made Koichi drop his Jump in surprise:
“ROHAN, YOU BASTARD!”