Lit by the slanting midwinter sunlight, two suspicious shadows lengthened on the quiet residential street. Laughing while in a trance-like state was a girl in a duffel coat, and following her was a sadistic demon in a school uniform.
“Oh, excuse me…”
Society would have driven the value of not engaging with such people into anyone, especially the woman who now approached the Takasus’ gate in a roundabout way, curving around to avoid the two as much as possible. Ryuuji bowed his head to her reflexively.
The woman glanced at the two from the side of her eye. Ryuuji, aware they both looked incredibly dodgy, pushed Taiga, who was in her “Nor-way, ha ha ha,” state to the edge of the road. No matter what happened with Taiga, he would at least be her ally. She was his fiancée of one mind and body, and so he grimly prepared himself.
“Oh!”
“No way!”
Without thinking, the two of them raised their voices. The woman suddenly jolted, her shoulders shaking to a deplorable degree as she ran through the Takasus’ now-unlocked gate in a fluster. She was about to lock the gate behind her and just leave them.
“P-please wait! Um!” Ryuuji suddenly called out to her. He and Taiga looked at each other. Right. This is her.
She wore incredibly mundane dark grey wool pants, walking shoes, and a beige down coat. She carried a nylon bag from a drug store. Though the bag seemed normal, like something any place would sell, and her clothes screamed normal, forty or fifty-year-old “middle-aged woman,” the skin bordering her short-cropped hair seemed unusually youthful and smooth. Her mouth seemed springy, like a young girl’s, and her cheeks were plump and fresh—the word “genes” very clearly came into Ryuuji’s mind.
This person had to be Yasuko’s mother. The moment he thought that, their faces seemed to superimpose on each other. The shape of their eyes and the way the inner corners were set somewhat far apart made them look so alike it couldn’t have been a coincidence—of course.
When he called out to her, she turned her gaze towards Ryuuji’s tense face. The person, who seemed to be in a hurry to get away, stopped for a moment. He needed to say something. He took in a breath.
“Would you please let us borrow your bathroom?!”
“He’s Ya-chan’s son! Huh?! This is when you want to mention that?!”
“What…?! But you…!”
They’d both shouted completely different things. But Taiga was the one at her limit in this situation, and Ryuuji was resolute.
“Would you please let her use your bathroom?! I’m so sorry to suddenly spring this on you!” He stood firm on feet that seemed about to quiver. “I-I’m Ta…”
As his words caught and his back trembled, he realized that a small hand was patting him in support. Guided by the warmth of that hand, he exhaled all his breath at once and then inhaled.
“I’m! Takasu Ryuuji! I’m Takasu Yasuko’s son!”
He pulled out the watch and photo from his pocket. His hand shook to a strange extent, and he handed those over to the person on the other side of the gate.
God, will this go well? Will my prayers reach you?
The woman first looked at the watch and then at the picture of Yasuko with her large belly next to a man in a mobster-like suit. Ryuuji could tell her grip loosened in the same way he often saw from the main characters of TV dramas. Her bags thumped down to her feet from her hands.
“You’re…” He saw her lips quake as she squeezed out her voice that was delicate to a painful degree. “Where did you come from… How did you get here…?”
“This is my girlfriend! Some things happened, so she had to come with me and—”
“Wh-where is Yasuko?!” Her yell was almost a shriek.
Ryuuji pushed Taiga, who was on the verge of breaking loose, forward.
“There are many things we would like to tell you! A lot, really, there are so many things…but before that, please let her use your bathroom!”
“That’s a scam! Don’t let them in! You let them in?! You idiot!”
Even Ryuuji could tell the incredibly loud voice on the other side of the phone belonged to the head of the Takasu household. Yasuko’s father—the person who would be Ryuuji’s grandfather—came home about five minutes later, right as Taiga came out of the bathroom with an expression between relief and apology.
“What is this?! Who came from where to do what… AH?!”
“Whoa…”
“Ugh…”
Thump! The man threw the door open, and it hit the backs of Ryuuji and Taiga’s heads as they stood there in the entryway, too awkward to come all the way in. They both held their heads, moving in unison. Of course, they were so in sync because they were of one mind and body that they both wailed as they fell to their knees on the tiles of the entryway.
“Honey, um, it’s these children…”
“Wh-which one is it?!”
“The boy said he’s Yasuko’s…”
“Wh-wh-wh-wha—”
It was an incredibly normal house.
The walls and the floors were made from bright wood. A shoehorn hung on a practical black string in the entryway. The snow from the day before might have also come down in that area, since there were still two umbrellas out. There were dried flowers on the wall, along with postcards and other things put up with a clip under the calendar. On the other side of the hallway was a doorway with a navy curtain, and behind that stood the living room, where the sunlight was pouring in. It was a very normal house. Even in that moment, Ryuuji felt like he might see a girl with Yasuko’s face come out in a sailor uniform, flipping the curtain forcefully as she ran noisily in her slippers.
That house had a mother, father, and daughter who would be visited by the regular passage of time that brought morning, afternoon, and night. But Ryuuji also knew that, at the same time, that that “normal” was long in the past.
“I’m…I am Takasu Ryuuji. Taiga, can you stand up?”
He grabbed Taiga’s elbow as she nodded and the two of them gradually got up. He didn’t know how to talk to the suit-wearing old man who he’d just found out was a licensed tax accountant in an office nearby.
“This is Aisaka Taiga. She had to come here with me today because of some circumstances.”
Taiga ambiguously lowered her head slightly. That had probably taken everything she had in her to do.
“And this. He brought it with him. It’s Yasuko, isn’t it?” Yasuko’s mother brought the watch and picture to the man. Still standing stiffly in the entryway, Yasuko’s father was dumbstruck as he looked between the objects. He did that for an incredibly long time and then raised his face. The spouses’ eyes met without a word.
For the clincher, Ryuuji pulled out the phone store note from his pocket and thrust it at them. In Yasuko’s handwriting was written the address and phone number of the house they were currently standing in.
“This ugly, bubbly handwriting…has to be Yasuko’s, hasn’t it?”
“It’s Yasuko’s… She’s still writing the kanji characters for the place she lived in since she was born wrong. This has to be her. Then, this boy really is Yasuko’s…”
Ryuuji also produced his student ID, proving he was named Takasu Ryuuji. He didn’t have any other identifying documentation at the time. All that remained was to fully illuminate the already brightening truth.
“Yasuko—my mother ran away from home yesterday! She abandoned me!”
The photo, note, student ID, and everything else fell from the married couple’s hands. Just as the watch was about to hit the ground, Taiga miraculously caught it. “Got it…”
“I can’t let her do that, so I came here! My mother is an adult, so I need her to stop being a runaway and to come home. I need her to come back here. To come home. I can’t forgive myself for being the reason Yasuko couldn’t come back to her mother and father. I used to think it would have been better if I’d never been born, but—” He didn’t know if his words would get through to them, but Ryuuji had to try. “Right now, I’m alive and have someone I love. I have someone who’s starting to love me. Because I was born, because I’m alive right now, I’m definitely…happy.”
He grabbed Taiga’s hand; his own shook. Taiga firmly gripped Ryuuji’s fingers back. At the entrance of the house Yasuko had run away from, he wasn’t alone.
“So…you might think I’m an idiot for suddenly appearing at your doorstep and suddenly telling you this, and you might think I’m just some strange guy, but! I don’t want to be a weight dragging Yasuko down! For the sake of the person who is here and loves me right now…for Taiga’s sake, because she loves me, for the sake of all my friends, for my mom’s sake, I want to be happy with who I am now! I don’t want to think that someone who loves me needs to pay a price for my existing! I want my existence to be completely acknowledged as I am! I don’t want anyone sacrificing themselves! So I came here…in order to show Yasuko the way home, I came all the way here!”
“We’re not part of a weird cult or anything,” Taiga chimed in once Ryuuji finished his incoherent clamoring. “He really means it. He’s kind of a dangerous guy…but he can’t help that. Because he’s Ya-chan’s son after all, he really—his heart is really, seriously, completely, absolutely full of love.”
She understood him. A tear fell from her eyes.
“Can you really show Yasuko the way home?” Yasuko’s mother muttered. “Yasuko so wanted to have you and meet you. She cried so many times when she got in trouble with us, because we were against it…and then she disappeared. Will you be able to bring Yasuko home this time?”
As Ryuuji nodded as vigorously as he could, a regular tick tick tick echoed from the watch. Even on that day, the watch Taiga grasped in her hand was still keeping time. The hands of the watch Yasuko took from this house, and that Ryuuji brought home, continued to move.
He was sure he could turn back time in this house. Just a little longer—just a little bit more. Ryuuji’s sharp eyes looked down at the world he wished for and swam through the clouds.