Work Text:
When he comes, he’s not the man she has been expecting – the sudden kick of joy in her heart recedes as quickly as it had come. She blinks, looking at him, but the man who stands in the doorway now, his shadow cutting a dark bar through the early morning sunlight where it falls into the room through the open shouji, is a man she doesn’t know, and she turns away.
She can hear them talking in low voices in the next room, her parents and the man she doesn’t know, as she stands in the kitchen preparing lunch – it’s something she doesn’t need to think much about anymore. She does know she has to prepare it every day, in case it’s the day he comes back, as he’d said he would. He’d always brought her something whenever he’d come to see her – a charm, a hairpin, a pendant, a promise: One day, I’ll take you out of here.
Of course she’d left eventually. She remembers the day – she’d had to leave, because the landlord had told her her rooms had not been paid for these last two months, and he was not a charity. Going back to Ibaraki hadn’t been so bad; she had always remembered the soft green grass beneath her feet from when she was a girl, and she had wandered barefoot in summer to the well to collect the day’s water. She remembered the stream that ran by her parents’ house; she remembered the dawn when it broke over the mountains. She remembered the way she’d watched the fireflies with her father in the dead of night, when he’d woken her up especially and told her, Come and see. Things had been very different after she’d gone to Asakusa.
After a while, the man leaves. He doesn’t eat the ankou nabe she’s prepared; he bids her goodbye, though, he calls her Tome-san, and then he leaves, closing the shouji behind him. She doesn’t mind him going; he’s not the one she’s been waiting for.
*
When he returns, a few days later, there’s a lady with him – a lady with pale skin in a pale pink kimono, and flanked by two maids who disappear into the house carrying cases.
“Now, now, Tome-chan,” the woman says, as she reaches out to gently draw her hands away from the knife she’s been using to cut up the burdock roots. “Wash your face, and get changed. You’ll be coming along with us.”
The flutter of fear in the pit of her stomach is a familiar one, and she tries to pull her hands back, fingers curling. “Where will I go? Back to Asakusa?”
The woman laughs, light and delicate. “No, of course not. No, you’ll be coming with us to Kagoshima. But it’s a much longer journey there.”
The fear doesn’t dissipate. She shakes her head. “Hyakunosuke –”
“Well, he’ll be coming too, of course. It wouldn’t do to leave him behind.”
She stares at her – at the elegant lines of her face, the small hairs that cling to her brow, despite the perfection of her swept-back hair. She’s not sure if she should tell her that she’s not sure exactly where Hyakunosuke is right now – he’s often no longer beside her on the futon when she wakes up, though sometimes his warmth still lingers in the bedclothes, to tell her that he is only recently gone. She had worried at first about him roaming so early and apparently so far, since he often isn’t back until midday. But then she’d remembered that she’d been just the same at his age.
She has almost nothing to pack – almost all the things he’d given her had had to be sold, to pay her rent and the little, unthinking debts she’d incurred. And she’d needed to pay her way to Ibaraki.
Hyakunosuke does eventually appear, when the sun is already high, blinking at the strangers who have entered his house, her father’s gun in one hand, a duck – he always brings them, she doesn’t know why – clutched in the other. The man who’d come before kneels down to talk to him, gently prising the gun from his fingers, though Hyakunosuke lets it go only reluctantly. He keeps glancing at it where it sits against the wall, after the man places it to rest there. The duck goes onto the kitchen counter.
She feels she should explain things to Hyakunosuke, trying to remember the things her own mother had said to her, after she’d been told she was going to Tokyo: Now dear, you’re going along with these people now, it’s best not to cause a fuss, there’s nothing we can do about it. She can’t recall if it had comforted her, though. She does remember no one answering her when she asked when she’d be coming home again, but she doesn’t recall the people who’d taken her lifting a hand to comfort her as she’d cried herself hoarse when her parents’ house had disappeared around the bend in the road, and her mother had no longer been there to see her causing a fuss.
Looking at him now, she realises for the first time how strange Hyakunosuke looks without her father’s gun in his hands – he always seems to have it. He’s still standing silently, looking up at the man with his dark, quiet eyes – his father’s eyes, she’s always told him, and the watchful look he’d get in them after he’d sat with her a while, ate the food she’d prepared for him, and twined his fingers through her hair, telling her, It seems I only ever sleep well when I’m here with you.
She knows from experience then there’s no point in crying; she doesn’t think, however, that Hyakunosuke has ever cried. He’d been quiet, even as a very small baby. She helps him up now, holding his hand as he steps up into the carriage that will take them to the train station. He says nothing, though she sees a question in his eyes when he looks up at her. It’s a question she knows she can’t answer, and so she pretends she cannot see it.
“There, now,” the woman says, as she settles in across from them, the man beside her. “Shall we go?”
She nods – there’s not much else she can do. Still, she takes Hyakunosuke’s hand in hers as the carriage pulls away; for once, he doesn’t draw it back.
*
Kagoshima isn’t what she expects; but then, what did she expect? She’s not sure she can say. Once she arrives at the house, however, she’s told to bathe and then given new clothes: a light summer yukata, new tabi, new sandals. As she watches her old socks be carried away, she realises that until now she hadn’t noticed how shabby they’d become, dirty on the soles, and worn through on one heel.
“You should rest after your journey,” one of the maids, an older woman, her hair streaked with grey, tells her. “Do you want your child here?”
She stares at her. Of course she does – where else would he go? Where is he now? She feels ashamed for having lost track of him. “Yes. Please.”
When Hyakunosuke comes, he too has been given a new yukata, a light blue one that’s obviously seen prior use, but still, it’s nicer than any she’s ever been able to give him. “Have you eaten?” she belatedly remembers to ask him, as he stands in front of her with those eyes, gazing at her face.
“Yes.”
He never speaks two words together when he can answer with one. People have always told her what a good, quiet boy he is.
“Do you need to rest?” She wants, desperately, to say something more to him, to offer him something, to tell him everything will be all right.
“I’m not tired, Mother.”
“Then… just sit with me for a little while. You may feel tired later if you don’t rest now.”
He does as she asks, because he always does – he comes and tucks himself up next to her, and they sit and watch the motes of dust that move through a streak of golden sunlight, just the way they sometimes had back in Ibaraki, at least until Hyakunosuke had started to fidget, and she’d had to let him go. He doesn’t do that now, however, and she rests her palm on his forehead, murmuring a song to him – it’s been a long time since she’s paid attention to the words, and it slips out of her mouth now without her conscious thought.
But it’s meaningless anyway, just a children’s song; just something to sing, to pass the time.
*
There are other children in the house – she sees them when the woman with the grey-streaked hair is showing her around the kitchens, asking her what she can cook, what dishes she’s familiar with.
“Well, that won’t do,” the woman is saying. “You’ll have to learn some other things. Koito-sama likes simple things, but she’s also very exacting. Let me show you –”
She becomes distracted as the woman speaks, however, on hearing the sound of running feet – a moment later a boy, older than Hyakunosuke, though she can’t tell his age, appears from around the corner of the room, skidding to a halt when he sees them.
“Keiko-san,” he says politely, nodding to the grey-haired woman. “May I have –”
“You may not. Not when you’ve been told not to run, Heinojou-kun.”
The boy seems to accept the scolding with good enough grace, wandering off back the way he came without argument. Later in the day, as she slices daikon – something she has assured Keiko-san she can do – she sees the boy again through the windows of the kitchen, carrying a much younger child in his arms as he walks across the wide green gardens. There’s a pang in her heart – she had always wanted a brother for Hyakunosuke, someone with whom he might have found a little companionship, or wanted to take with him when he went off wherever he went in the mornings. He has so often been alone.
She’s not sure what to say a few weeks later, when Koito-sama calls her into her study and bids her sit down, and asks her what she thinks of it here.
“Everyone has been very kind,” she says, stammering a little. Does it matter what she thinks? But it’s true, in any case – Keiko-san has been teaching her cooking, and she recently declared her tsukeage to be acceptable. She’s been learning how to plate kibinago, arranging them gently in silky, silvery patterns.
“And Hyakunosuke-kun,” Koito-sama says. “Has he had any formal schooling?”
She shakes her head. “No… not really.” She licks her lips, swallowing. “He wouldn’t go.”
Her father had taught him some letters, and how to read, she knows that much. But he would never stay at the village school, even if she took him there herself. He would simply slip away, returning home when he felt like it. I don’t like them, is what he’d always say – she assumes he meant the other children. And then, one time, They tease me, because – but he’d never finished the sentence.
“Well, then,” Koito-sama says, without pressing her. “Let’s see what we can do.”
After that, she sees them sometimes, through the window – Heinojou-kun and the younger boy, sometimes being carried, sometimes walking unsteadily along on his own two legs, but now, more often than not Hyakunosuke is with them, following at a small distance behind. Heinojou sometimes calls back to him, and then Hyakunosuke will hesitate, before walking quickly to catch up.
*
Are you happy here? she wants to ask Hyakunosuke when he lies down on the futon next to her at night. Do you want to stay? Maybe she’s frightened to ask because if he says no, it will break her heart.
There are still things she remembers – she remembers the gentle touch of a hand at the back of her neck as he let down her hair, the soft curl of smoke rising from a stick of incense. The rustle of silk as she rose to pull the man up by the hand, leading him into the other room. She still thinks of him, of course, and she wonders where he went; why he disappeared so suddenly. Why he never comes to see his son.
There is still the same rabbit’s kick of pain in her chest when she sees Hyakunosuke in a certain light, and thinks, Ah, but he has his eyes. He’ll grow up to look like him, and maybe he’ll never know.
But she knows as well, has come to realise, that he wouldn’t know to look for her here; and so, it’s pointless to wait.
*
“Have you ever been to the seaside before?” Koito-sama asks her, as they stand and watch the four boys – there’s a fourth one now, though she doesn’t know where exactly he came from, only that he’s a friend, and that, when he was introduced to her she’d thought he had exemplary manners and that he was extremely, almost femininely pretty, with his long dark eyelashes – playing together in the foaming surf as it surges up from the bay. Hyakunosuke is still at a slight remove, digging at something in the sand – though he unearths it quickly enough, and then lifts it to show the other three.
“No, I don’t think I have,” she says, shaking her head. She’d never had the chance – she’d seen, briefly, the sunshine glittering on the bay when she’d arrived in Tokyo, but that was all. “It’s very beautiful.”
Koito-sama laughs, then gestures out at the boys. “Yes – and it’s good you’re here to help keep an eye on them. Keiko-san is getting old, after all. And she’s always hated sand.”
They’re interrupted a moment later by a wail rising from the shoreline – distracted for a moment, Otonoshin-kun had wandered off and apparently been bowled over by a wave. She doesn’t think; she simply hops down from the small platform on which she and Koito-sama have been standing, and swiftly makes her way to the water, pulling him up, soaked to the bone and still wailing like a demon.
“Now, now,” she says, not minding when his sodden clothes press against her side, getting her yukata wet. “Don’t cry. It’s only water. You’re safe.”
Otonoshin, hiccupping, seems to accept what she says, looking up at her with huge, dark eyes, and sticks his fingers in his mouth.
“You need to watch him better,” she says to the other boys, putting him down on the sand, holding his hand. “He’s all wet now, and we’ll have to go home. Hyakunosuke, Heinojou-kun, Yuusaku-kun – come get your things. Let’s go.”
*
“Mother – look at this.”
She turns to see Hyakunosuke looking up at her, his eyes bright and interested, lifting a stick up to show her – but when she looks again, she realises it’s not a stick, but a large insect that only looks like a stick.
“Oh,” she says, affecting fear and jumping back. “Oh, why would you show me something like that? You gave me such a fright! What a terrible creature.” But then she adds, just to see the small, soft smile she now knows will curl across his mouth, “But how clever of you to find it!”
*
Winter comes in – she remembers winters in Ibaraki, and how ruthlessly cold they could be, and all the evenings she spent shivering under a worn, thin blanket as the coals in the hibachi had slowly burned lower. She’d never been cold in Asakusa – not compared to that, anyway. Or perhaps she had been. She’s not sure she can say.
She doesn’t remember much about those times now. Sometimes something rises up within her – a sense that there’s something she’s forgetting that ought to be remembered, something she’s been waiting for that she’d better not forget. But she’s here now – Koito-sama keeps her house warm, saying she can’t abide the cold, and asks her every morning if her room is warm enough.
“Of course, yes,” she says, smiling. “But in any case, it’ll be spring again soon enough.”
*
She watches from the kitchen window as she ties her sleeves back in preparation for the day – Hyakunosuke had been running in the garden and tripped and skinned his knee. Her first instinct had been to run to him, but then, Heinojou-kun had come, doubling back to check on him, kneeling down to inspect the wound; evidently, he deems it not serious, because he helps Hyakunosuke to his feet, and together they continue on their way, and she lets out the breath she was holding, knowing that she’s not needed.
*
When the warm weather comes again, Tome finds herself thinking of the golden summer days of her childhood, when she used to walk barefoot through the tall grass that grew by the stream that ran by her parents’ house. It had always felt soft and warm beneath the soles of her feet, and, on impulse, she slips off her sandals and her tabi, and presses her feet into the sun-warmed earth.
This summer they’ve gone to the mountains – One year the beach, the next year the mountains, Koito-sama had explained to her, as Tome had packed her things for the journey. The sunlight dapples the path in front of her, shining softly through the trees – somewhere over to her right, she can hear the boys playing. When she turns she sees Heinojou-kun, who’s grown so tall, pointing at something in the pond with a stick; he still takes the time to be kind to the others, even though they are so much younger.
She watches them awhile, until Hyakunosuke glances up and sees her looking – he gets up from where he’s been sitting next to Yuusaku-kun, their heads bowed together, and makes his way across to her at his usual unhurried pace. She reaches down, putting her socks and sandals back on before he reaches her.
“Mother, come and look,” he says, reaching out for her hand.
“All right, Hyakunosuke,” Tome says, standing up from where she’s been sitting on the engawa. “Show me what it is you’ve found.”