Chapter Text
— September, 1887
Susato is six when he returns home from England.
After six years in London and two months at sea, Yujin thought he would’ve felt more prepared for the day he would finally meet her. Of course, given the circumstances surrounding the termination of the study tour, there’d been no shortage of matters for him to contemplate over the course of his voyage, but Susato remained at the forefront of them all like the guiding beam of a lighthouse shooting through a pall of sea fog.
He didn’t know what Susato was like—what she was really like, he amends, because he knew some things, collected pieces of her in letters from Mother over the years—and in place of any solid idea as to how she would respond to meeting him, he spent most of his sixty days aboard plotting various scenarios for how she might.
There was, of course, a chance that Susato wouldn’t care at all for his six years of absence, that time—even more ungraspable in a child’s eye than in an adult’s—apart would’ve blurred together, been discarded in favour of the much more immediate and interesting present, and that she would simply see the addition of a father the same way one might see a new toy or pet. Something to be excited about and cherished, not something to linger on having not had.
That was a slim chance though, and one much too optimistic for Yujin to not immediately file away. No, what was much more realistic was some hesitation, discomfort around the unknown, and budding resentment. Though a child, Susato must be aware of her own unusual upbringing. She must understand by now that the majority of kids, if not two parents, at least had one. The fact that she did have one, but that he had left, appeared in her life only through a monthly parcel packed with a tin foreign candies and the occasional trinket, must have not only registered to her but been internalized to mean something, whether inadequacy on her part or cowardice on his. Even if she lacked the words to describe it now, the feelings would still be there, and such feelings now laid an uneven foundation for their relationship.
Of which he knew he had to navigate carefully.
Of which he felt woefully unequipped to do.
She had only been an infant when he left. Too young to understand assurances of love or promises for his return. Even if she had, it had been him who refused to even look at the bundle in his arms at Ayame’s funeral. At night when he’d heard her cry, it was not him who emerged to tend to her needs, but her grandparents. He cowered away from it. Refused to develop any attachment with it. Looked away as though it would simply remain in stasis until he turned his head back, as if it—as if Susato—would be still there and ready for when he was.
And yet, on some nights, staring up at the murky lines of his cabin ceiling, his mind would drift back to that line of inquiry. Drowsy enough to lack the sense needed to remind himself of his place, he’d think about that neglected possibility; the world where Susato smiled at him, embraced him as if six years was no time at all, as if she truly had just been there waiting for him.
It was a little like a dream. A distant and selfish one, of course, and one he, even while half-way lulled into slumber, understood was nonsensical.
—
Between the deboarding process, papers and luggage checks, and a terribly rocky rickshaw from the port to the station, the morning of he and Jigoku’s arrival is altogether a busy one. Yujin finds himself thankful for it, as it’s only when he steps off the cart and looks on at the station ahead that he remembers the trial awaiting him inside.
He presses down on the thought, though, ignoring the apprehensive pit in his stomach as he picks up his trunk instead. Ducking his head low, he follows into the open doors of the station terminal. It’s changed, too; the last Yujin had been, Yokohama Station was little more than a scaffolded framework with a singular platform bisecting through. In its place a grand hall has been built with Western influences baked into its brick facade, the shape of its windows, and the elaborate moldings that line them.
The sight is similar to the many buildings he saw in Britain over the last half-decade, but it is not Britain. It is, despite everything, Japan. But still wearing his suit and hard leather shoes, he feels almost as though he doesn’t know how to stand on its soil anymore, like a jigsaw piece in the wrong puzzle.
Reflecting on his time in London, six years had felt like no time at all. With Sholmes, it felt like not nearly enough. He had exceeded what the study tour’s conditions necessitated of him, had finished his apprenticeship under Dr Wilson and earned his credentials, and yet he continued his work at St Synner’s. He continued joining Sholmes on investigations, on adventures to Hereford and Norwich and Winchester. He continued sending his monthly letters, in a parcel with the bulk of his earnings and a knickknack he purchased or book he found interesting or photograph he took on the adventures he never wrote about in his letters. He continued everyday waking up in a raised bed, taking his tea with a splash of milk, and going out on the occasional evening to dinner or a music hall or a show.
London had grown into so much more than a guilty respite. It had, without Yujin realizing it, become a home.
But the British capital was always busy, so buzzing and alive, never truly asleep even when blanketed in night and fog. It had been easy, uncomfortably so, to neglect the life he had here when his one there demanded so much of his attention.
And it is only now, looking back, that he realizes how long six years really is.
Yujin did not know what to expect, but when he shuffles into the concourse, the sight of that little girl, his little girl, in a tiny pink kimono at his mother’s side kicks whatever greeting he prepared out of reach.
The last he had seen Susato, she was a soft, pale, hairless roll kept safe in a tight cotton wrap. She did not speak, only cried, and on some level Yujin had been grateful for it. So young, children are hardly distinct from one another. It was easy to detach himself, to pretend that the baby in his arms, in his home, was not his own nor the last living remnant of the woman he loved. It was simply a baby. A prop or doll, if he tried hard enough.
It had taken seeing her eyes open only once for Yujin to accept Jigoku’s offer to join them to London.
Now, Susato stands at her grandmother’s side with large, bright, nervous eyes, flicking this and that way as though scanning for his head in the crush, as if she’d even know what to look for.
For six years, Yujin had had little more than a fuzzy, indistinct image of Susato. When he thought of her, it was the blank shape of a child that came to mind, with only some features supplemented through the occasional silver print Mother would send him in the mail. He did not know her smile, nor the exact colour of her eyes, if she had any birthmarks.
And those silver prints would, by dint of the two month voyage to and from their countries, lag behind her development. It lagged behind every development: if she ever nicked herself, or scraped her knee, or cut or changed her hair, he never heard of it, let alone saw it. Those were the everyday products of life that simply had no reason to be conveyed in writing or immortalized through photograph.
It is Mother who eventually spots him and draws him abruptly back into the station by a wave. Gripping tight around the handle of his trunk, Yujin forces his feet into motion, squeezing through the crowd until he reaches the space beside the newspaper kiosk, far enough away from the train platform and ticket office for it to have petered out.
There, he greets them both with a bow of his head. “I thought when you wrote that you were going to meet me at the station, you had meant the one at home.”
It takes hardly that one sentence out of his mouth for Susato to shrink, then retreat behind Mother’s legs.
And he blinks. Something in him stops and shifts, as his world tilts suddenly and invariably off-kilter. Until he grabs it and sets it right back on its axis.
By all accounts, the surprise he’s feeling doesn’t make sense. He prepared for this reaction, too. He distinctly remembers musing about it. What he doesn’t remember, though, is how past-him decided would be the best way to handle it.
“Well, Susato has never been on a train before. I thought it would be nice to take her.” Mother says. His attention flits back to her—she’s changed too, he knows. Her hair has gone entirely grey now, with duller eyes and deeper grooves outlining the age in her face.
He clears his throat. “Ah. Of course.” And a part of him wants to bend towards Susato, to ask if she had fun. Such behaviour was typical between adults and children, was it not?
But nearly seven years later, he still can’t seem to meet her eye.
“I hope it was a pleasant ride.” he says, chancing only a glance her way.
Perhaps he’d been hoping for anger. Or resentment, or bitterness of some kind. But Susato isn’t angry. She hides behind her grandmother like a scared stray cat beneath a food cart, her brows pinched up and her eyes small and nervous, trained tightly on him as though any sudden movement would prompt her to flee. And frankly, it forces him to grapple with just how little experience he has with children, let alone his own.
“It was, thank you.” Mother replies. Then, her hand moves behind herself, falling on Susato’s small head to pet her gently. “Susato, dear. Don’t you want to say hello?”
Yujin straightens himself out, letting it rush through him. It’s shame, stinging at him like a breath he’s held too long, and a clinging, irrational wash of disappointment. “It’s okay,” he tells her and himself. Because it’s entirely warranted. He’s all but a stranger to Susato.
As if reading his mind, Mother lends him a pitying look. It isn’t lost on her, either, just how difficult this must be for Susato. All the girl has known is a household of herself and her grandmother. Suddenly, she’s been told there’ll be a new and permanent addition to her life—a father. A term she must be familiar with from books and friends at school, but a concept that has remained wholly ungraspable.
Perhaps she’s read one of his letters. Perhaps she’s been shown a photograph. But could a child understand that the ink on the paper was put there by a real person, somewhere far away, where she couldn’t go? Could she see a picture of him—toned to only greys and browns, grainy and overexposed—and perceive him as anything more than a flat, still, lifeless image? Could she look at that photo and read those words, and understand that there was a man out who loved her? That the reason that man is not around isn’t because he doesn’t love her enough?
A father is new. A parent at all is new. He would be nervous, too, in her tiny shoes.
Finally, he crouches, takes off his hat. The suit, yes. It must be—at least partially—the clothes he’s wearing. Susato has probably never seen someone in Western-style dress before, and offering more of his face, without the shadow that the brim of his bowler might cast, might make him look friendlier, more approachable.
“Hello, Susato,” he starts, and he plasters a small, tentative smile on his lips, doffing his hat to her then holding it to his chest. For a long minute, she simply stares at him, trepidation in her eyes and her tiny hands clasped tight around a pleat of Mother’s robes.
When she does eventually speak, her voice is just as small as she is. “H-Hi.” Like the peep of a mouse. She moves to twiddle with the fabric, wringing it between the tips of her fingers. “Um. It’s nice to meet you, sir.”
Sir. Yujin’s smile flickers at the word. His chest caves in for just a moment, squeezing the heart inside tight. Still, he steels himself, smooths out his expression, and responds in kind.
“It’s nice to meet you, too.”
—
The train ride home is short and silent, mediated by occasional spells of small talk between him and Mother: how the journey home had been, if he had brought back souvenirs for them, if he was planning on shaving that moustache—all the fussing he was dreading but finds himself strangely thankful for.
As for Susato, she sits across from him, glued to her grandmother’s side while glancing warily at Yujin the whole trip. Yujin, intent on making this as comfortable a transition as possible for her, avoids meeting her gaze, allowing her to take in all the visual details of the man and allot them under the designation of ‘father’.
Family is tricky like that. Good or bad, family is something you’re born into this world having. It’s the home you’re raised in and the people you’re raised around. But there’s a critical step missing in the typical parent-child bonding scheme. Six years worth of critical steps, in fact, that has divorced the title of father from the category of family.
Susato was going to need time. Yujin accepted that long before he saw Tokyo on the horizon line from the top deck of the SS Andromeda. Even if she understood on some plastic, surface level that the man across from her was to be called father, that alone meant nothing to a girl who has never known one all her life.
The association of father as a figure to trust, as someone near and dear, as a source of security and comfort and affection, was not there. It had not been made. It could not have been made. A child was not born with such a concept inlaid in them. No, like all things, it was one fostered with time, informed by experience, and it could have only been made had only Yujin been there.
And so he would not push it. He would not push it because the last thing he needed was for Susato to feel as though Mikotoba was barging into her life, disrupting all she had known and would know and setting her on a course he was to decide for her. He would not push it because the last thing he needed was for Susato to feel as though she owed him anything after having failed her the way he has.
Instead he would wait. For however long Susato needed, and for however long it took, for him to earn that title.