My heart clenched at the sad look on Toriko’s face. If I could be a bit more proactive, I’m sure that would make her happy, but what corner did I need to turn to make that happen?
Feeling I should do at least something for Toriko, I reached out and patted her on the head. She didn’t seem surprised; she closed her eyes and let me pet her in silence. As I went on stroking her silky head, questioning whether she was enjoying it, Toriko let out a satisfied sigh, so I got frightened and pulled my hand back.
When she opened her eyes, the words “You’re stopping?” were written plainly on her face.
Seeing the way her expression looked so soft it seemed to be melting, I couldn’t help but murmur, “Does romance do this to everyone?”
“Do what...?”
“Change them. You’re not the usual, sharp Toriko.”
“Anyone would be like this when the love of their life pets them.”
“You think?”
I felt left behind. It wasn’t like that for me...
I averted my eyes with a feeling of loneliness. It was the middle of the day, but it was still raining outside, giving this scene unfolding in the living room a low color saturation. The little details I hadn’t spotted finally rose to my consciousness. The pictures on the wall and shelves were probably of her family. Looking closer, a number of them were of Toriko. She was little, and her face was younger... It was a Toriko from long ago.
There were a number of pictures of her with two adult women. A dark-haired Asian woman, and a blonde white woman were both smiling happily.
Following my gaze, Toriko turned to look behind her.
“Ohh, right. You’ve never seen them before, have you?” Toriko stood up, heading over to pull down a largish photo from the wall. “Let me introduce you. This is Mom,” she said, pointing to her Asian mother, “and this is Mama,” she finished, pointing to her white mother.
“Mom, Mama, this is Sorawo. She’s an important person to me.”
“Uh, hi...” I bowed my head somewhat confusedly, having just been introduced to a photograph. “Mama was a soldier, right? What did Mom do?”
Looking at Mama’s solid build, I could believe she was in the military. The other photos on the wall featured her in camo, as well as full ceremonial dress. As for Mom, on the other hand, I couldn’t guess her occupation at a glance. Many of the pictures were of her in relaxed, indoor clothes, though. Come to think of it, I don’t think Toriko ever told me before.
“Mom was...a comic artist.”
“Huh? You mean a mangaka?”
“Well, yeah.” For some reason, Toriko sounded evasive about this.
“Oh, wow! What kind of stuff did she draw?”
“Um, well...”
After some hesitation, she looked at a door facing on to the living room.
“Could you come with me for a moment?” she asked.
“Huh? Sure.” Once I stood up and followed her as requested, Toriko opened the door.
Unlike the living room, which was cleaned up, there was a lot to take in about this room. It’s not that it wasn’t clean. In fact, it was well organized, but there was just fundamentally a lot of stuff in here. The walls were buried behind bookshelves and glass display cases. Figures of female characters lined the cases, while the shelves were stuffed absolutely full of manga and large-sized artbooks. If you asked someone to draw what an otaku’s room looked like, this is the kind of thing you would get.
There was a big desk in one corner, and it was completely covered in sketchbooks and art supplies. The PC, monitor, and tablet were all slightly older designs, probably several generations out of date at this point. They were from when Toriko’s mom was alive.
“This was Mom’s work room?”
“Yeah. Look behind you.”
“Hm?”
As I turned, a ridiculously vibrant bookshelf jumped into view. The spines of the books were covered in groups of women in various states of undress. The amount of exposed skin was incredible, and nearly all of them had a yellow oval with bold black text declaring them to be “Adult Comics.”
“Mom was an erotic manga artist.”
I doubted my ears at these words I’d never expected to hear come out of Toriko’s mouth. As my brain shut down, Toriko reached out and pointed out a number of volumes on one of the middle shelves.
“These are Mom’s books.”
“...Her pen name’s Canadensis, huh?”
“Wanna read them?”
“M-Maybe not right this moment.”
It was clear from their spines that they were pervy, and I was a little taken aback by that.
“You read them, Toriko...?”
“They’re age-restricted, so she wouldn’t let me while she was still alive.”
Toriko’s expression was a mixture of sad, lonely, and awkward. I didn’t know how to react to this information for a while.
“It... It’s pretty rare for a woman to draw erotic manga, isn’t it?”
“You’d think that, right? Turns out it’s not uncommon at all.”
“Oh, really?”
“I hear there’s tons of them. Mom told me that, when she came to Japan, a lot of her friends who were in the same industry helped her out.”
“Hmm...”
“Mom originally bought this place so that she’d have somewhere to work while she was in Japan. She started drawing manga in Canada, but the regulations on sexual expression there got pretty tight there for a while. I hear she could’ve gotten arrested. Don’t know how it is now, though. Mom was someone who wanted to draw stories with sexual themes, so, after agonizing over it for a while, I’m sure, she made the decision to set up a workplace in Japan and relocate here.”
“Uh-huh...”
“I hear it was hard for her, going back and forth between Canada and Japan, but...Mama had to fly all around the world for her missions, and she could never say where she was, so Mom was able to laugh off the inconvenience, saying she had it the better of the two of them.”
“And where were you in all of this?”
“It depended. I’d stay at Grandma’s place, or home alone, and sometimes I’d come over here to play...” Toriko wore a nostalgic smile as she told me about her past.
“So, is this the other reason you alluded to earlier? Why it was easy to talk to them about stuff...”
“Yeah, that’s right. She wouldn’t show me what she drew, but even when I was a child she explained what it was she did for a living. She said it was a fun, creative job, and nothing to be ashamed of. She was proud of her work. Thinking back, she may have been exaggerating a bit so that I wouldn’t feel inferior because of it, but I don’t think she was lying. She seemed to be having the time of her life. That’s why I was never embarrassed about it... Buuut...” Toriko got a little awkward here. “Once I was talking to the girl who I wanted to be my lover... I was kinda hesitant to come out and say, ‘Oh, yeah, my mom was an erotic manga artist, by the way.’ Sorry, Mom.”
After apologizing to the volumes on the bookshelf, Toriko glanced in my direction, as if trying to gauge my response. “What did you think?”
“What? Well... I was surprised.”
Toriko chuckled at my answer. “You’re always getting surprised, Sorawo. Anything else?”
“Uhh? I dunno. That it’s a shame that you couldn’t read your mom’s work while she was still alive...?”
As I struggled for something to say, Toriko went from staring at me to shaking her head, overcome with emotion.
“You’re surprised, but you’re still accepting of it.”
“What’s to accept? It is what it is. There’s no good or bad in that.”
“Can I hug you?”
“Sure...?”
Toriko approached and wrapped her arms around me. I was standing in front of a bookshelf that could hardly be called romantic as she hugged me tight.
Life’s full of mysteries. You never know what’s going to happen, I thought as I looked at the bookshelf over Toriko’s shoulder.
Who would’ve known there could be such a touching scene right next to a shelf stuffed full of erotic manga with titles so incredible that I couldn’t possibly name them...?
I remembered that, when Toriko came to my house before, she’d stood in front of my ghost story books, looking like she wanted to say something. Oh, so this is what it was, I convinced myself. I had just thought she was weirded out by them, but—no, I feel like she was still weirded out, but maybe she’d wanted to talk about this and gave up without saying anything.