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Sometimes Fuyumi looks out the window of her house and she questions why she is still here and why she hasn’t ran away, left to the wind never to be seen again. No one would blame her if she did. The only person who would blame her would be herself.
Sometimes she just wants to get in her car and drive away just like the silly childhood dreams of her and Touya.
“Come on Yumi, don’t you want to just fly away in a spaceship some days. Just leave.” Touya and her are having a conversation laughing and talking
“ I don’t know, what about mom I don’t want to leave her behind.” Fuyumi is reluctant to admit that she too sometimes just wants to leave sometimes.
“Of course we wouldn’t leave mom behind.” Touya thinks for a second “Do you think that if we went to an ice plant that mom would freeze.” from there the conversation devolves into talks of ice and fire and space and planets and quirks.
Fuyumi thinks of all the conversations she had with her brother so many had been about leaving, running away and starting anew. They were the talks of desperate young children trying to find some way that could be happy and together.
“That doesn’t sound like a very good idea, Touya” Fuyumi spoke softly almost a whisper.
“Well I don’t have any other ideas what am I supposed to do, I can’t just let this keep happening.” Despite the fact that he spoke quietly it almost felt like he was yelling.
“I don’t know Touya, I wish I did, I wish I could do more. I really do Touya, but please stop. just stop. I don’t want you to get hurt, please.” She really didn’t want Touya to get hurt; she just wanted everyone to be okay. From the look on Touya’s face she knew that she had said the wrong thing.
“You don’t want me to get hurt, you don’t want me to get hurt. While what about Shouto, what about him.” And without another word he storms off. Fuyumi wants to follow after him but she knows that he doesn’t want her to follow him.
Fuyumi sometimes wonders whether Shouto is lucky or unlucky to not have memories of Touya. Touya was a lot to handle, sometimes he was like the sun. He burned all those he looked upon but he also lit up the world, made it liveable. Touya was brave, but stubborn. When he set his eye to something he would never give up. He would never give up till he was burnt to ashes.
Sometimes Touya feels so close, like she can just look out the window and he will just be there. Laughing and kicking a ball around. But him feeling close can also hurt. Ever so often there’s a feeling of dread everywhere like she will turn a corner and he will be there slumped up against the wall or laying on the floor.
Those are the days she most wants to just leave. She wants to leave the house that feels haunted and never look at again, but she never does. She nevers leaves and maybe she can’t.
Fuyumi regrets lots of things with her siblings. She regrets never trying harder with Shouto, and never talking loud enough for Touya, she regrets having to be the parent for Natsuo. She regrets, but she can’t turn back time so she tries harder with the children she is responsible for now. She helps them learn. They learn and learn and it almost makes her wonder why she never got it but she doesn’t have the time to think about that.
They’re sharing a happy moment from their weekend in class today and one of the kids asks her for a happy moment and she thinks. She thinks and she can come up with nothing so she lies. She lies and she talks about eating a hearty meal with her family altogether and happy. They don’t need to know that she hasn’t seen anyone in her family over the weekend. That she had sat and ate by herself, alone in that house that feels haunted.
When class is over for the day and she is ready to go home she gets in her car and she starts to drive. She knows the way home by heart but she doesn’t want to go to that house today. She doesn’t think she can be in that house today, so she drives. She drives past stores and apartments and restaurants and she thinks of all the people inside of those buildings and their little lives. Lives that have no impact on hers but she wants to know all about. She wants to know what they do in their spare time. She wants to know how others live in a world that is so horrible.
She drives and she thinks about how she could just keep driving how she could just drive to a new city, to a new prefecture and how she could just never stop driving. She wonders if she just never stops driving if she could ignore the memories of her childhood. Block them out with the sound of the car running and the other cars around her.
No one would be angry if she just left. She could just leave and no one would be hurt, but she doesn’t know how to. Maybe she doesn’t want to leave that house behind, even if parts of it bring tears to her eyes. Where else has she ever lived. All her best and worst memories were at that house. How could she ever leave?
“We have to go, we have to leave Yumi.” Touya is scared, he’s desperate.
“Where are we supposed to go Touya, there’s nowhere we can go. We can’t just leave when we have nowhere to live.” Fuyumi wants to leave too but to leave is to do something brave, and Fuyumi have never been that brave.
“Anywhere is better than here.”
Maybe she is doomed to live and die in that house. Never straying far from it’s grasp, always in reach to pull back in. The house is certain, she always knows what to expect. The outside world is not. The outside world may be better, kinder than the house but you can never know. In the house you know what to expect, you know how you are supposed to act. What role you play. But outside everyone has their own house, places where they play roles.
She has no destination in mind as she drives. Maybe she’ll ask her phone and get directions to Natsuo’s college. She’ll show up unannounced and they’ll talk and maybe she’ll feel a little less alone.
She could go to UA and make them let her in just so that she can see that her littlest brother is safe.
She could go to the hospital and visit her mother and have a nice chat about inconsequential little things.
She could turn around and go to the destination she had planned to go to when she got in the car so that she could visit the little alter in that big room so that she may feel even a little closer to Touya.
If she really wanted to she could just drive her car off a bridge, end it all and not have to think about houses or destinations. But she can’t do that, she has people that rely on her, children that she has to teach how to take the first steps in a long journey that might not end the way they think or hope. She has made promises to herself that she would try harder to teach these children better than she taught Natsuo or Shouto. She has promised that she would do everything in her power to help these children.
She won’t end it because she can’t. She has never been brave enough to make such a big decision. Alway indecisive, unsure of where to go or what to do. She hates decisions and she hates destinations. Things to choose and places she has to be.
“I don’t know Touya this is a really big decision” She looks down at the money it might be enough to rent an apartment for a while.
“How did you even get this money in the first place?” She looks up at him hoping that she’ll get a real answer
“Does it really matter? Do you think it’s enough?” He doesn’t answer the question but he asks his own
“I don’t know Touya, please we have time we don’t have to rush.”
She has made choices but they have all been in her opinion the right choices. She chooses to be a teacher, she chooses to not leave, and she chooses to forgive.
She understands why Natuso can’t forgive their father, she really does. She also understands why he might not understand why she can forgive. She forgives for selfish reasons, she forgives because she wants some normalcy. She wants the things that other families have, she knows that just by forgiving she will not get her perfect family but it might be the closest she can get.
She knows that their father trying to be better will not bring Touya back, and she knows that Touya would never forgive but this is her choice. She knows that she is selfish and she was lucky, her father wasn’t a good father but he never abused her, any time he hit her it was her fault, even if he shouldn’t have hit her, it was still her fault.
She’s glad that her father is trying to be a better person, trying to help heal the wounds he has caused, she’s glad that Shouto is safe and that Natsuo is following his dreams. She is glad that her world is looking up even if Touya isn’t here, she’s glad but she is unsure of what this means for her so she drives.
Fuyumi just drives and her world is shortened to just what she can see out her windows and for that she is glad. And after a while she decides on where she wants to go and even if it’s just a small choice, it’s hers.