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"Hm...if I remember correctly, it was a straight line from the mailbox, right around where this rock is." Crouching down, Kaito combed his fingers through the grass, brushing aside the downy blades and the debris tangled among them until at last he bumped against something rigid. "Oh," he said, "could this be it?"
Eagerly, Miku leaned over, pushing back some of the hair that spilled over her shoulder in the process. Beneath Kaito's hand was a rusted metal stake, marking the precise spot the time capsule they had lowered into the ground had slept undisturbed now for twenty years.
Her eyes widened. "It's here!"
With great care, she liberated the stake from the ground, hissing at its coldness against her hand. As she did so, Kaito lifted the shovel he had left propped up against a tree with a heave, then began digging downward until he heard the distinctive sound of metal striking metal.
"They found it! I want to see!" Ducking beneath her father's arm, Rin leaned in and clapped her hands, only to be tugged back by Meiko, who gave a gentle shake of her head.
Gently, Kaito cleared the remainder of the soil away with his shovel before lifting a worn box from the earth. They watched with bated breath as he undid the locking mechanism and removed the lid, then set it on the ground so they could all gather around it in a circle. And right there, folded at the very top was...
An old scarf, of all things. At some point it must have been a deep, royal blue, but age had rendered its color weary and faded. With a faint sense of reverence, Kaito reached for it, allowing the length of the cloth to unravel and pool between his hands.
"I remember this," he murmured in wonder. "This was one of the scarves I wore as a kid, but I ended up outgrowing it and having to buy a new one." He turned to Len with a thoughtful expression on his face, then experimentally draped it over his son's shoulders and tilted his head, considering. Len blinked.
"Aww, it's adorable!" Meiko beamed, reaching out to adjust the scarf so it fit more snugly. "It matches your eyes, Len." In response, the boy turned pink and retreated until the lower part of his face was hidden beneath the fabric.
Following the scarf were a number of other items—old photographs sealed away in plastic bags to protect them from the humidity, picture books tucked into the bottom that Kaito had read aloud to Miku when she was young, electronic devices Kaito insisted might still work if only they had their batteries replaced. Rin and Len watched on with wide eyes, intrigued at being offered a glimpse of what their father's life had been like, once.
Kaito reached back into the box, then blinked. "Oh!" He sounded delighted. "It's my first library card, the kind they would give out to kids. Look, I even signed it on the back and everything." He flipped it over so everyone else could see, revealing the barely legible Kaito inked on the bottom in a childish scrawl.
"Aw, that's adorable! I don't remember ever getting one of those," Miku mused, her eyebrows scrunching together.
"Well, I probably just checked you out using my card until you were older." He laughed as he added it to the pile of recovered items. "You know, I used to spend a lot of time at the library after school before you were born, Miku, since our mother usually didn't come home until pretty late. Eventually I aged out of the kid library cards, or maybe it expired or something, so I figured I wouldn't be needing this old one anymore." It made a soft clink as it landed among the pile.
"I'm surprised you still have yours. Come to think of it, I got one too. I wonder what I did with it." Luka tapped a finger against her chin. "Maybe I threw it out at some point?"
"Kaito has always been a bit of a hoarder," Miku remarked teasingly, and he huffed in indignation.
"Hey, what's this?" Len cut in, reaching into the box and producing a slip of paper. Miku blinked.
"Isn't that..."
On the paper was a crude drawing of a dog. Great care had been put into emphasizing the volume of its fur, and around it someone—most likely a child by the looks of it—had added a border composed entirely of cartoon hearts.
Miku leaned in closer, then frowned. "Wait, that's supposed to be my stuffed dog, if I'm not mistaken. But what's that doing in here?"
"I remember," Kaito said dryly. "I wanted you to put one of your toys into our time capsule—even one, just as a token—but you threw a complete fit over the idea because you felt bad about leaving any of them buried for twenty years—said they'd be sad and lonely down there, or something." She flushed at the unwelcome reminder. "So in the end I settled for having you draw a picture of one instead."
She pouted, kicking up some debris towards his shoes, and he rolled his eyes good-naturedly as he shook it off. "Well, I stand by that," she protested. "Even now, I think I'd feel bad about keeping any of my toys buried underground for twenty years, you know?"
They shared a laugh, and then Kaito reached over to shut the lid on the box once more. "Well, I think that's just about everything."
"What a throwback." Luka's voice was tinged with awe. "Honestly? Kind of makes me wish I kept more of my things from when I was young."
"...Wait, hang on?" Miku ducked beneath Kaito's arm to peer inside. "Kaito, I think there's still something left. Look, right there."
Instantly, he realized what it was, and he reached down before anyone else could react to free the item from the confines of the box and secure it between his fingers. Crumpled against the bottom was an envelope, its once crisp edges frayed with age and its top right corner decorated by a set of stamps that must have represented the postage cost of the time. His lips quirked into a smile when he saw that the delivery and return addresses were one and the same.
"What is it? What is it?" Rin pressed, standing on her tiptoes to try and get a better view. "Dad...come on, show us already!"
He laughed, holding up the envelope so everyone could see. "Just a letter, nothing special," he said. "I'll read it to you later, but first I'd like to look over it myself, if you don't mind." With that, he tucked the envelope away in his breast pocket, the top half sticking out from the lip of the fabric. Rin pouted in response, but seemed mollified by the prospect of being able to read it eventually.
With everything spread out in front of them, they began sorting through their spoils, until at last Kaito excused himself. "I'll be right back," he promised, rising to his feet. The sound of his family's voices followed him inside as he shut the door behind him with a weary exhale.
He leaned against the wood, holding a hand against his forehead in an attempt to stave off the unbidden memories that trailed at his feet. Twenty whole years—had they really gone by so quickly? The road here had been indescribably long and winding, and his life had certainly not been without its missteps, but he found himself suddenly rather grateful that events had unfolded exactly as they had.
Remembering the purpose of retreating indoors, he hastily reached up, freeing the envelope from his breast pocket. On instinct, he moved to tear it open from its side, but thinking better of it, Kaito hooked a finger beneath the flap of the envelope and gently dragged it along the seal. A single slip of paper fluttered out when he turned the envelope over, and with trembling hands he reached out to intercept it in midair.
He angled the paper to face him.
I don't know what things will be like twenty years from now, it read, and in a way, I can't begin to imagine what will happen in the intervening decades—longer than my entire life up until this point. There are many things I'm hoping will happen someday, but I won't write any of them here, for fear of none of them coming true and having to look back on a list of unfulfilled dreams. So instead, what I want to know is if what happens in the future is something I can look forward to—if it's the sort of thing that will make the me from twenty years from now want to go back in time and tell the present me to hold fast, because the future's worth it. In other words, what I'm asking is simple—am I happy, in the future?
Slowly, Kaito lowered the paper from his face, glancing out the window to where Miku and the twins were still sorting through their things in the yard, the clear sound of their laughter resonating back indoors.
"Yeah," he mused softly to himself, "I think I am."