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He’s walking out of the grocery store when he sees his mother for the first time in ten years.
It happened like this: it was Mizuki’s turn to cook dinner that night, and they had decided to make soup to warm everyone up during the snowy winter evening. However, they hadn’t realized that they were out of onions, so Kanade, Ena, and Mafuyu had played rock-paper-scissors to decide who would have to go out to grab some more. Mafuyu had lost, so he had put on his warmest jacket and a scarf and walked to the corner store.
Except the corner store was closed because of the snow, and so was every other store he had walked to in a half-mile radius around the Yoisaki household. Mafuyu should have given up at this point and gone home, except he was really looking forward to Mizuki’s soup. He’d already been walking for half an hour. He didn’t want to see Mizuki’s disappointed expression, so he had continued walking to the supermarket a mile away. Thankfully, that one was open, so he bought the onions. And then bought some hot chocolate powder because he knows that the others would appreciate the treat on a cold day.
It was when he had rushed out of the grocery store without paying ample attention to his surroundings that he ended up accidentally knocking over a woman walking out at the same time.
“I’m so sorry,” he had said, extending his arm out to the fallen woman. “Are you alright? Can you stand?”
Which brings him to the current moment, where he’s standing over his estranged mother, looking down at her, hand outstretched.
She looks the same, but older. Her purple hair, still in loose waves that fall slightly past her shoulders, is now streaked with strands of silvery gray. Her smooth skin is slightly more wrinkled, with frown lines creasing her forehead. Her eyes are sunken in. Pale foundation covers the dark eye bags underneath, but Mafuyu can still recognize the telltale traces of makeup even ten years later. Her face is slightly thinner and more worn, most likely from exhaustion.
In other words, Mrs. Asahina looks worse than when he had last seen her. He thinks he should feel vindicated by this, but all he feels is hollow.
Your mother is suffering, some part of him whispers. You have to comfort her. You have to make things right.
Mafuyu ignores that inner voice. Instead, he withdraws his hand. “I should go,” he says, keeping his voice as steady as he can. “Goodbye.”
He turns to leave.
“Wait…!” his mother calls out. “Please… Mafuyu.”
He should ignore her. There’s nothing to be gained from listening to the ghosts of his past, no matter how much they still haunt him to this day, ten years later.
Despite this, Mafuyu turns around. “What is it?” he asks. His voice slips into the higher-pitched “good girl” persona, the one he defaults to when he’s nervous, even a full decade after leaving his mother.
Snap out of it, he tells himself.
“What could you possibly have to say to me?” He deliberately uses his more monotone voice—his true voice—despite the way he wants to cower in fear.
His mother stands up, patting down her long skirt. She’s still shorter than him. It’s strange to tilt his neck down to look at her when he’s so used to looking up at her.
“How have you been? It’s been ten years since I saw you last… you’ve grown up a lot.” His mother’s voice is gentle and blisteringly cold. It sets off alarm bells in Mafuyu’s head.
Still, Mafuyu doesn’t see why he can’t answer honestly.
“I’ve been well,” he says. “I graduated college and medical school, and I’m onto the third year of my career as a nurse at the local hospital. In my spare time, I compose music with the other members of my music group. Do you remember Kanade, that girl who ‘bewitched’ me? She’s now my girlfriend. So are the others. We all live together now.”
“You’re romantically involved with multiple women?” For once, his mother is too shocked to hide the emotion in her voice. In a sick way, it’s satisfying to hear her horror at the idea that Mafuyu could be a lesbian. “Is that why you’ve changed your appearance?”
Mafuyu grins. “No, I did it because I felt like it.” Cutting his hair short, binding his chest, and dressing more masculine were all his decisions, and he’s proud of himself for coming to terms with his true self—someone who isn’t entirely a woman.
“I see.” His mother looks him up and down with a scrutinizing eye before her expression softens into something Mafuyu has never seen on his mother’s face before. It’s not warmth, nor the anger that Mafuyu was expecting either, but something else entirely. Something almost like… regret?
“Are you happy?” she asks.
“Yes.” He’s proud that his voice doesn’t waver. “I’m doing what I love for a living, I have time to enjoy my hobbies, I’m presenting as my true self, I’m being accepted for who I am, and I have three girlfriends that love me.” His expression grows softer at the thought of Kanade, Mizuki, and Ena. “I’m perfectly happy.”
Happier than I would’ve been if I had stayed with you, he doesn’t say. Happier than if I hadn’t run away back then. Happier than if I had let myself be held down by the past—by you.
There’s an awkward pause between them, as Mafuyu’s mother digests his words.
“I see,” she eventually says. She crosses her arms. “I thought you’d be slightly more upset, living a life without your mother and father.”
Anger rushes through him—colder than the snow falling around them and harsher than the wind blowing against his face.
“You mean the mother who smothered me with her expectations? The one who projected her own dreams of becoming a doctor onto me? The one who only cared about having the perfect daughter? The one who said she made a mistake giving me a computer? And rectified that mistake by throwing it away? That’s the mother I’m supposed to be upset about?”
“It was because I cared—”
“I’m not done talking.” Mafuyu doesn’t hesitate to interrupt his mother. He has ten years’ worth of resentment, anger, and hatred against his mother built up inside him, and he lets his words flow freely. “You said you thought I’d be upset that I’m living without my father. You mean the one who stood by and let you manipulate me for seventeen years ?”
He laughs bitterly. “Don’t you remember what he said when I came back to pick up my things?”
His mother attempts to cut in again. “He didn’t mean it. He was angry and didn’t understand—”
“‘We’ve wasted seventeen years of our lives. I’ve officially given up on her. Let her go.’”
Mrs. Asahina flinches.
“You didn’t even try to argue back,” Mafuyu says. Tears are welling up in his eyes. He ignores them. “You just handed me my things and shut the door. And now you have the audacity to say that I should be upset that neither of you are in my life?”
“And you know what?” he continues. “I am upset. Upset that you controlled me for so long before I gained the courage to run away; upset that my father didn’t care when I left; upset that I let myself care about the opinion of a selfish, abusive woman who clearly doesn’t give a damn—”
“Is everything alright here?”
Mafuyu swivels his head toward the direction of the voice. A store employee stands next to him, looking between him and his mother with a concerned expression.
He takes a few calming breaths. In, out. In out.
“Of course,” he says. He’s stopped shouting, his voice back to its usual quiet monotone. He turns away. “I was just about to leave.”
“I see,” the store employee says. He politely ignores the tears streaming down Mafuyu’s cheeks. “Very well then.”
He turns around and walks a few meters away—technically inside the store, but near enough to still be able to keep an eye on them.
“I’m going to go now,” Mafuyu says. Around him, snow still falls, a few flakes landing against his face and blending in with the tears streaked across his skin. “You’re not going to follow me. You’re not going to look for me after this. We are never going to speak again. If we run into each other again, you’re going to let me go. Am I understood?”
“Mafuyu—”
“That wasn’t up for discussion.” Mafuyu’s voice is firm, and he’s proud that he’s grown enough to properly stand up to his mother.
His mother falls silent. No I’m sorrys or I love yous fall from her lips. Instead, she remains silent as Mafuyu walks away.
He turns to look at his mother one last time. She looks smaller than the version of her that lives in his memories, ten years older and shivering as she stands at the entrance of the supermarket. Her expression is still cold. He’s not surprised anymore. Since when has he gained anything from expecting love from his mother?
“Goodbye, Mom,” he murmurs, and then he is gone.