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,,Dad, why do sea waves keep crying?"
As Arayashiki cuts through me, a memory resurfaces from a while ago. Ages ago. Once upon a time.
Someone asked me this question. It was a girl, sitting along the shores, watching the waves. A young girl, with long hair, oh so similar to my Yoshihide. Although her face I can't recall anymore, I am certain she was important to me.....My first daughter.
,,Because they're sad that they're knocking over the sand castles."
The Prescript told me once:
To Rien: Start a family: Marry someone and have a child.
So....I did just that. I had a beautiful wife and a daughter. I still fulfilled my Prescripts, but now I had something to look forward to every day. I shouldn't have gotten too absorbed in my role as a father. I should have known that it would bite me in the back. I appreciated the Prescripts, because they allowed me to experience the pleasures of the City. Yet....I resented them all the same.
To Rien: Someone around you will be killed. Stand by and do nothing.
I immediately knew. Therefore, I avoided it, turned a blind eye, hoping that if I avoid it for long enough, everyone would forget about it. Ah....How easy life would be if everyone only did the things they wanted and ignored everything that they did not want to do. How much easier that would have been. Life is cruel. You can't do whatever you want. There are things that are such eyesores, yet they must be done. Just like the Prescripts.
,,Then they should just not knock them over!"
I still remember it vividly: The day I came home. There was a person. Hurting my family. Killing my family. The people whom I so very loved. I was nauseous, anxious, TERRIFIED.They kept begging me, screaming at me, yelling at me. And in the end I did nothing. In their final moments, my wife and child were confused and betrayed. They couldn't understand as to why I didn't help them.
How can I not knock them over....?
,,Waves move with the winds. When the wind blows, the high and low tides can't help but knock down everything in their path."
I did knock down everything in my path. The Prescript once told me to change my name. I renamed myself and knocked my old identity down. It asked me to dye my hair black and wear a black suit, so I did that too. I knocked my old appearance down. It asked me to do nothing, when my family was being killed. I knocked my family down. Everything I have ever been, I knocked it all down. All in order to imitate a life that was not mine to live.
,,Then why not just...push back when the wind blows?"
Why not resist? I thought about that before. Disobey the Prescript and you're dead. I still defied the Prescript little by little but I never once openly rebelled. After all, it doesn't care what I want.
Can I even call myself 'I' anymore? There is nothing to call 'me'.
,,Think about it this way darling."
This is what I told my daughter. I didn't want to make her sad. I rephrased everything, so that she could still live in ignorance. There are some things you can't escape, that you must submit to. Even if becoming nothing is its byproduct. I wanted her to smile. It was better that way. Did she smile...though?
,,The waves...built those sand castles only because the wind pulled them in."
I explained. It really was the Prescript that made me build these castles. These....clumsy, flimsy, yet beautiful and magnificent sand castles. Yoshihide gave me a chance to rebuild those castles and be something again. To start again.
Ah. No. It was the Prescript again.
She asked me if there was anything about me that didn't come from the Prescripts. I never thought about it before. However, now that she made me think about it, I suppose there really wasn't.
,,And now, the wind is pushing them to bring the castles down. So the waves have really no reason to feel sad."
Yes. It was all the Prescript's doing. It was it, not me. There really is no reason for me to feel sad. I still feel sad, even when I have no reason to. All I can do is swallow it down and not think about it and continue knocking down everything in my path.
I can't help it.
,,Then Dad......When will they be happy?"
Well...I don't know. I wanted to save the endings for later. I always did that. I am just deeply, inexplicably so afraid of endings. I need to interpret them. What if I interpret them wrong? What if my interpretation doesn't align with what the writer had in mind?
Or maybe I just wanted Yoshihide to stay. I wanted her to stay. I wanted to bind her here.
,,I hear the waves."
I hear them. The way they crash down and wash over the sand. I look beside me and no one's there but me.
,,How do they sound?"
Yoshihide asks me. I look at the waves washing and rolling ashore. They have nothing to knock down anymore. The waves' companions were the sand castles at the end of the day.
,,....ly"
There is none to stand beside me. I have no one. The answer is right on the tip of my tongue.
,,They sound lonely."
The thread snaps.
Will you forgive me at last....?