This probably wasn’t something he could run from.
Ryuuji’s world had been nothing but Yasuko for so long. Yasuko, too young to be a mother, had held him, and it was as though the two of them had been sent alone together on a safe boat into the sea in the middle of night. Ryuuji clung desperately to Yasuko, and their family traveled the endless waves. He thought letting go of her hand would mean the end. If the one and only person who would hold his hand disappeared, that would be the end of everything. He would be alone for eternity. He had been feared that for so long.
But Ryuuji slowly got bigger. He almost drowned several times but became more courageous at swimming through the waves each time. He felt letting go of Yasuko’s hand would be okay. He could swim by himself, eventually find a safe boat all on his own, and then pull Yasuko up with him.
That was what he thought.
Then his mother’s hand had reached out to him as though saying, “You can’t let go yet.”
“Takasu-kun, you’ve never rebelled against your mother until now, right?”
When that happened, he brushed aside Yasuko’s hand.
“Sit with me.” “Be a good boy now.” “Wait until I get home.” “Make sure you study.” “Eat dinner with me.” “Don’t work.” It was the first time Ryuuji had rebelled against something Yasuko had told him. Deciding he wouldn’t go to college and would work was rebellion. He had done it because he wanted to brush away Yasuko’s hand in order to rebel.
He didn’t know which direction to head or where to go, but Ryuuji wanted to try swimming on his own. He wanted to win. He wanted to be superior. He knew that he was taking the “virtuous route.” Ryuuji wasn’t sacrificing college in order to work. He didn’t even know what his aspirations were, only that he was so afraid of finding them that he was using self-sacrifice as an escape. He also couldn’t deny that there was something appealing about the idea of sacrificing his own future as he ran away.
He’d known he was hurting Yasuko by doing that, but he still went through with it. He had gone over the head of his one and only mother. He wanted to become larger and stronger than his mother—strong enough that he would be fine even if she were taken from him.
Did he really have the strength to swim by himself? He didn’t know. It was precisely because he didn’t know that he wanted to try. But he’d endangered himself, and when the adults had offered him their hands, he’d pulled away. Yasuko hadn’t believed that he would be okay, and she’d tried to pull her son back as he left her in the waves. Then Ryuuji was caught again. He was caught by the anxieties and fears from his childhood.
However, this time his fear wasn’t of the cold sea that could steal his mother from him, but that his own faltering swimming would be the cause of his mother sacrificing herself and drowning.
It wasn’t just because of the cold that the fingers he put to his mouth were trembling.
“I-I caught youuuu!”
He felt something latch onto his elbow from behind, and he staggered. Taiga, who was still in sandals, and whom he hadn’t expected to follow him this far, took hold of him with a terrifying force. She spun him around with an intense momentum, and he wasn’t able to hold out as he stumbled.
“Ryuuji! Stop! I said stop!”
“My—”
“It’s fine, so just stop, you idiot! That was close! Didn’t you notice the car coming by you just now?!”
When he still tried to run, she ended up aiming a deadly kick at his behind. It didn’t hurt, but it made him collapse so he finally couldn’t run away.
“It’s all my fault… This is my fault, isn’t it?”
He crouched pitifully before an electrical pole. In his mind, he wailed, Give me a break. He didn’t want to show Taiga his face, so he desperately grasped at the electrical pole and buried his head in his arm.
“What’re you saying?!”
“Yasuko collapsed because of me. It’s my fault. I was wrong.”
“You…you feel like you’re to blame because she pushed herself too hard for you? But, but, um…you couldn’t do anything about it! It was anemia and her health. No matter how much you look after her, she’s human and she’ll get sick every once in a while! There’s nothing and no one to blame! Plus Ya-chan is your mom! No one can stop Ya-chan from doing stuff for you, right?!”
Taiga was breathing hard, and her voice seemed to vibrate desperately. She was saying that even though her own parents probably never did anything for her before. It was because she didn’t understand how a parent’s feelings could build up that she could so innocently just tell him to accept things as they were. When Taiga did that in front of him, Ryuuji felt even more cornered. He was being confronted with his absolute weakness and how spoiled he was.
“How would you know?” His voice grated and pitched up, and his lips trembled. “Yasuko ended up like that because of me. If I had gotten myself more together, she would have actually believed I could do it, and she would have relied on me more, and she wouldn’t have ended up like that.”
“I…I don’t…really get it…”
He felt her touch his shoulder slightly with her small hand, as she was unsure of what to do. Her hand was probably rising and falling near his back as she hesitated.
He tried to push away her hand. Just as he had brushed aside Yasuko’s hand, he tried to ward off Taiga’s, now.
“What am I supposed to do…?!”
“Ryuuji—”
They touched for just a moment.
Her warmth, her body heat transferred over to his frozen fingertips, but it was too intense. Even then, Taiga stayed next to him. His instincts told him that this was his final saving grace. Everything he was thinking about burned away in that moment.
Even though he had been trying to brush Taiga’s hand aside, he ended up gripping it instinctively. In the ring of indifferent light from the streetlamp, Taiga’s eyes opened wide.
She didn’t breathe a word of complaint or tell him to let go. Instead of saying anything, she just concentrated her bottomless gaze on him. It felt as though she were roughly rummaging through the inside of Ryuuji’s head with her giant eyes. She stepped towards him in that overbearing way that no one else could ever mimic. With a strength that was difficult to oppose, Taiga pushed her way in on him. It was as though she tore apart the expansive canopy of dark sky over the sea in his imagination, and her white face was looking through into Ryuuji’s soul.
Through the torn hole, Taiga offered a hand to Ryuuji as he drifted on the waves.
Would he take it?
“What am I supposed to do?! Are parents supposed to push themselves until who knows what happens to them?! How can I get Yasuko to stop doing that for me?! Will she ever get how I’m feeling?!”
He grabbed Taiga’s tiny hand.
“I—I just—”
It was so small that, if he wanted to, he could have broken it.
“I just hate it so much, but I can’t do anything about it…!”
But he didn’t want to hurt her.
He was insistent about that. He didn’t want to cling to Taiga. He could grab on to her hand, cry and wail emotionally, and expose all the pain in his heart—but Ryuuji desperately brushed aside that temptation.
Because if he did that, he was sure Taiga would do something for him. Taiga was the kind of person who would do anything for him—for the person she loved. He couldn’t have that. That wasn’t okay.
He couldn’t let her do something for him.
He couldn’t let Taiga do anything.
He couldn’t let her do something that would make her drown for his sake.
That was because Taiga was important to him. She was someone he could never lose. He had realized painfully clearly during the blizzard.
If she was important, then he needed to act like it and make sure she didn’t do anything for him. That was why he couldn’t show her his pain. He didn’t want her to know what was in his heart.
He’d thought that finding connection was what fueled joy and helped people go on living. He hadn’t thought there was such a thing as not wanting others to understand his feelings.
“I want to show Yasuko that I’m strong…”
Strong? Taiga asked him back and nodded solemnly. Ryuuji’s mouth formed a line as he spoke with his trembling lips.
“I’m not a kid anymore. Even if Yasuko isn’t helping me, I can swim through this world. That’s why she doesn’t need to strain herself for me anymore. All I can do is prove that to her. All I can do is thrust it in front of her eyes.”
Like that, once again, he could only brush aside his mother’s hand. This time, he wouldn’t be a failure. He wouldn’t sacrifice anyone, and he wouldn’t have anyone drown for his sake.