Chapter 4
It was the third time he’d been here.
Whenever he stood in front of this gate, Ryuuji had never been alone.
The first time, it had been dark and he couldn’t see anything. He was enveloped by the gentle sound of a heartbeat. He had no thoughts as he drifted, so it wasn’t like he had any memories of that time. That had been eighteen years ago, the first day of fall and the end of summer, at 2 AM—the darkest hour. Ryuuji had been a life without a name, his body nothing more than an organized clump a few centimeters long. As she ran through this gate into the world at the dead of night, Yasuko was also nothing more than a child at the age of sixteen.
The second time, they hadn’t gone through the gate. Standing in a park a short distance away, Yasuko and Ryuuji had simply stared at the gate for a long period of time. He’d grown bored of riding on the swings and tired of waiting for so long. Mooom, he thought he remembered saying, pulling on her pale hand. He slowly got Yasuko to tear her eyes away from this gate.
And now, this would be the third time.
Taiga was by Ryuuji’s side.
“This is it.”
“This is it.”
The two of them both swallowed their breaths.
Before they reached the station, they took a needlessly long route around to allow for the teachers who would be coming after them. They avoided the large terminals, purposefully made inconvenient transfers and, like normal people, got on the wrong train (because Taiga ran into a train at random on the platform), which ended up being an express (that part wasn’t anyone’s fault) and cost them a lot more time than they anticipated.
He probably made the right choice in giving up on his vague memories, relying on the house numbers as they walked instead. As he looked around at the reality that was incredibly different from what he pictured in his mind, Ryuuji tasted the anxiety of a traveler wandering into another world’s dungeon.
The entire area around the park he had considered using as a landmark had turned into a giant condominium. On the house-lined residential street, indistinguishable roads crossed his eyes like the lines of a go board, and the house numbers written on the utility poles were scattered at intervals. He went back and forth between the outer walls that looked like white stone and the deep green hedges of the labyrinth. Once late afternoon rolled around, and the brief midwinter sun started to slant down, they finally reached the place.
“Right. This…is it. It says Takasu on it.”
Taiga hesitantly looked at the nameplate half hidden by the leaves of the trees reaching out from within the walls. She turned around. When faced by the simple truth that the Takasu name didn’t come from his father, Ryuuji once again went silent. It was a bigger shock than he would have expected.
He’d always more or less assumed that the story Yasuko told him so often—“Your dad and I were tied together by fated love, but then he died. A tragedy!”—hadn’t been the truth. Yasuko was a runaway, so she had no reason to purposefully take the Takasu family name. He didn’t think she would have gone back to her maiden name if she was widowed, either. Whether she’d divorced the man or never married him in the first place, this only confirmed there had never been a father happily waiting for the bliss of Ryuuji’s birth.
Even though he guessed as much, it was definitely still—
“What? What’s with you? Why are you being so quiet?”
“Nothing… I’m just brooding over some stuff…”
“Do we have time for you to be hatching eggs?” Taiga demanded. The power of Ryuuji’s imagination swept him easily in the direction of tragedy, but nodding flatly, Taiga pulled off the great feat of bringing him back to reality with her next words. “You’re better off eating eggs than sitting on them.”
R-right, Ryuuji agreed with her momentarily. …I guess? He once again tilted his head.
“Breakfast aside, we really don’t have time to be spacing out. You’re going to make up with Ya-chan, aren’t you? That’s why we came here, right? If you leave things as is after having an argument with Ya-chan like that, then I can’t forgive you for running out back then…”
No, Taiga paused here.
“…then I can’t forgive myself,” she finished in a lowered voice that was still firm. She looked up at Ryuuji’s face. Ryuuji understood it. The resolve that had brought him to stand next to Taiga in front of this gate was stronger than that.
“Ring the doorbell.”
“I know… I’ll do it now… I was just about to do it.”
In truth, he was pitiful. He was nervous. Yasuko’s resolve probably hadn’t been shallow either when she brought Ryuuji here last time, and he knew the heaviness of the resolve she must have had for deciding not to return home for eighteen years.
He stopped the finger that he reached towards the doorbell button under the nameplate. If he just touched it slightly, his emotions would be soothed. He held back his breath as he repeated that to himself over and over.
“Well, right. You need to mentally prepare yourself for this.”
A Buddha-like smile spread over Taiga’s face. Yeah, yeah, she nodded along as she looked up at Ryuuji, who was so tense he looked like an ogre. With a gentle grip, she held his sweaty and secretly shaking hand.
“Taiga…”
Who in the world would have expected that Taiga, after everything that had happened, would be so nice? Ryuuji was strangely moved by the honest kindness that she had shown at this time. He felt almost like crying as he tried to squeeze Taiga’s hand back.
“HRAGH!”
“NAHHHH?!”
SNAP! He heard the sound of destruction coming from his once-happy left hand.
“Practice is over, you oaf! Now, hurry up and ring the doorbell!”
Blue veins rose to her forehead, and suddenly they were in a midair arm wrestling match. With a ridiculous amount of power, Taiga tried to push Ryuuji’s hand towards the Takasu family’s doorbell. Ryuuji grit his teeth and held his ground, both sporting fierce looks on their faces as they pushed and pulled at each other’s gripped hands. Their fingers and wrists were making cricking and cracking sounds.
“You can’t just force me to do it! I-I have to do this in my own time!”
“Your time is up!”
“I need more time!”
“Well, I’m your phee-pheean-fiancée, so we’re one in body and soul now!”
“Ahhh! I said to stop, you idiot!”
Ryuuji guarded miraculously against Taiga’s other hand, which slithered up from the side like a snake. He firmly locked both his hands together and used all of his body weight to push against her.
“Thinking over things here isn’t going to help anyone!” Her out-of-place howl echoed through the quiet residential streets.
“That’s true, but there are a ton of things I need to think about!”
“Are those things going to resolve themselves if you just stand here all day?!”
“They won’t, but I want to get my thoughts in order a little more, and then—”
Mumble mumble mumble—Taiga mouthed something quickly, under her breath.
“Huh?!”
Like I said, I need mumble mumble mumble!
“I don’t know what you’re saying?!”
I mumble mumble mumble!
“Just say it out loud!”
“I! Need to use! The bathrooooooom!”
SHRK. Ryuuji’s left hand lost its match, overpowered by her confession that her actual goal was to meet her physiological need. He was in a dangerous spot just shy of the doorbell, but the bones in his fist struck the concrete wall.
“Ow! Ouch…!”
“Ahhh…”
Ryuuji wasn’t the only one to shout. Taiga’s face tensed up. She let go of his hand and dropped into a strange half-standing, half-sitting position. Like a doll, she held both her hands out rigidly and bobbed up and down. Now that she said it out loud, it seemed that her need felt more urgent. With the faint smile of one right at her breaking point, she muttered, “I feel like that just might’ve brought me to my limit…”
“I-Is this…an emergency situation…?!”
“Yeargh…”
Her voice became smaller and smaller. Goodbye, cruel world, thanks for everything till now—Taiga was fading rapidly from the real world. Come what may, Ryuuji thought desperately as he pressed the doorbell firmly. All kinds of thoughts were racing through his head—what was he going to say, how could he explain who he was, what kinds of people were Yasuko’s parents, would he be able to accomplish what he decided to do, would they even trust him in the first place, actually, were these Takasus even Yasuko’s actual parents? Innumerable possible outcomes went through his mind. He thought about all the terrible ways things could go and—well, actually, that was all he thought about. Now that he was at this point, the tip of his finger chilled from nerves. He was overcome by the power of “I need to use their bathroom,” but that might have been a good thing in the end.
But…
“Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait… What’s going on…”
“No way…”
He had pressed it two, then three times, but hadn’t gotten a response. No way, no way, Taiga groaned, like a chant. It didn’t seem like anyone was home.
Ryuuji automatically looked down at Taiga’s face. At some point her chant had changed to, Nor-way, but Taiga hadn’t noticed and just continued to pray. No-way, Nor-way, Nor-way…
Of course. It was 3 PM on a weekday. If they had jobs, they would naturally be at work right now. Why hadn’t they thought of that possibility?
“What do you want to do? They might not be home.”
“Ahhh.” She’d come back from Norway.
“Wh-wh-wh-what are we going to do… Seriously, hey, what do you want to do?!”
“Hey, now, don’t you touch me.” Taiga’s demeanor changed. “Ha ha ha, don’t you dare touch me, don’t you dare lay a finger on me, ha ha ha ha!”
“Let’s go back to Norway—no—I mean the railway!” said Ryuuji. “No, there was a convenience store on the way, so let’s hurry and get back there!”
“Ahhhhh, I can’t walk.”
“I’ll carry you! There’s a Family Mart right over there! Don’t lose hope!”
“Ahh ha ha, don’t touch me please, aha ha haaa!”