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After the divorce, Kunishige respects her request of no contact — for the most part. The only exception is once a year, a week after August 11th, when he sends a picture of their son in the mail.
The first one catches her off-guard, and she’s annoyed by that fact, annoyed enough that she almost throws it away — but she doesn’t. She sticks it in a drawer instead, tucked between old bills and a copy of her apartment’s lease, and vows not to think about it too much. But sometimes, she finds herself pulling those photos out, a little wistful for what never was.
There are only fifteen photographs in the drawer, but when she opens the door to her apartment, she immediately recognizes Rokuhira Chihiro all the same. He should be… eighteen, now? Nineteen? Something around there. A world away from the boy in the photographs — practically a man, with callouses on his hands and scars on his face.
She lets him in, mostly because she can’t think of a good reason to turn him away. He leaves his shoes by the door, but he lingers in the entryway like he’s not sure what to do, like there’s an unspoken barrier he’s not sure he wants to cross. She pretends not to see, because that’s what’s polite.
They’re strangers, after all.
Eventually, he crosses the threshold and follows her inside. Maybe a little belatedly, she wonders if she should offer him something to drink — water, tea, coffee — but she has no idea which way his tastes lean and doesn’t want to admit it, instinctively doesn’t want to show weakness. She made her decision all those years ago, when her brother handed her son back to her wrapped in a bloodsoaked blanket with a strange look on his face. Any half-decent mother would have been overjoyed, overcome with emotion — she’d only felt tired, all the way down to her bones. Kunishige had seen, and when she left him to raise a colicy six-week-old baby by himself, he didn’t give her any grief — he only said that he understood.
He’d been a good man, she thinks. Not perfect, but good. She’d loved him, once upon a time. Sometimes, she thinks that if she’d just been a little stronger, or held out a little longer, or been more open about the dark swirl of her thoughts, maybe they could have worked things out. Figured out a better arrangement than what they ended up with. But Kunishige never pushed, and she never reached out, and it was years too late to wallow in regrets.
Chihiro looks like his father, she thinks. He’s got the Rokuhira eyes. But she sees bits of herself in him, too, in the shape of his nose and face and jaw, and she’s more unnerved than she’d ever admit.
For a moment, his eyes trace the photos lining the wall — friends, neighbors, her students at the dojo, evidence of the life she’s made for herself — and then he looks to her. He cuts to the chase, which she can appreciate — he needs a teacher. A swordsmanship teacher, more accurately. He’s never asked his mother for anything, and his first request is that she teach him how to kill.
It’s almost funny. Before today, she’d assumed that he would’ve been more like his father, but somehow, he’s grown up to be more like herself.
She turns away, so she won’t see the wounded look on his face, then asks him to leave. It’s the only thing her son has ever asked of her, and she refuses. There’s too much hurt there that never healed quite right, disaster and tragedy that’s written in their blood, a mass of scar tissue too thick to excise.
He lingers for another moment, like he’s hoping she’ll change her mind, but she doesn’t. This time, he’s the one who leaves.