“Seriously. One over there. The next one’s over there, this time the last one is going to be there.”
She aimed for the ceiling, the wall, the top of the table in the living room. Taiga snorted as though she were enjoying herself.
“Well, you might have done the right thing by avoiding them. Those actually weren’t free. Each kiss costs three thousand yen.”
“You were going to charge for kisses? And they’re expensive to boot!”
“But wait just a minute! If you can catch all of them, you’ll get bonus points for ten thousand yen!”
“You’ll pay me that?”
“It’ll be added to the other charges…”
“You’re making it more expensive?!”
“But, in full, the burden will go to the shopping giant Japanet Takasu!”
“Yeah, Japanet Ta…so you mean me!”
He raised his right hand, thinking of giving her a physical comeback on the top of her head, but Taiga challenged him with her eyes—If you want to try, I dare you!
Then Ryuuji turned reflexively to the entryway.
The faint sound that came to him was familiar. When he stood without thinking, Taiga looked up at his face in curiosity.
“It’s Yasuko.”
Sonoko and Seiji looked at Ryuuji’s face as though surprised. “You heard something?!” “Well, I just…”
Ryuuji had heard it. The sound approaching them was certainly familiar. They were the shrill footsteps of teetering high heels awkwardly going at full speed on the asphalt. At the nursery, at the kindergarten, at school, and at home, Ryuuji would take that sound as a signal to raise his head from his toys or books, and to run to the entryway. Even now, he almost automatically kicked away his chair and headed to the front door, but no—he returned his butt to his cushion.
“That’s the sound of Yasuko’s footsteps. I think you can meet her at the entrance.”
“Honey…!” Sonoko raised her voice practically to a shriek as she looked into Seiji’s face. Seiji also froze for a second, and the couple both forgot to breathe as they looked at each other. They heard the owner of the approaching footfalls open the gate without hesitation and didn’t even turn around as they ran into the hallway.
“You go, too! Hurry!”
“No, we’ll come after. They’ve been waiting for eighteen years. We shouldn’t get in their way,” Ryuuji said to Taiga. His throat felt hot, like he had swallowed fire. He’d said what was actually running through his mind, but that was only half of it. The other half of him felt scared of facing her.
The words he’d shot off at Yasuko, who raised him this whole time, still felt fresh in his throat. It was like they were still stuck in his ears. It would have been better if I’d never been born, he had told his mother, who’d sacrificed everything away for his sake, Your life was a mistake. You’re a failure, and my existence was a mistake.
He’d thought that Yasuko’s extreme attempts to control Ryuuji’s future were rooted in her inabilities. That she had been trying to atone for her failure to follow her parents’ guidance when she was a child by making Ryuuji do what she couldn’t. In other words, she must have thought having Ryuuji was a sin. She must have regretted it. He had wanted to blame her for that.
Don’t control me just to make things easier for you. To throw around that easy phrase, which no other seventeen-year-old would have batted an eye at, he had to cause this much hurt.
Now he thought differently.
Would he be able to do things over?
Would he be able to overturn everything that happened in the last eighteen years and still affirm that everything in the present was fine as it was?
“Ryuuji—”
Would he be able to bring Taiga all of her joy without missing anything?
“This is a disaster—”
“Even if it is, no matter what I need to do, I’ll do it. Who said that wishing for something was a crime? There doesn’t need to be any sacrifice or mass destruction, I’ll do everything I can for—”
“It’s a disaster, Ya-chan’s—”
“I’ll…huh?”
“Ya-chan is avoiding the entryway—”
With a look of astonishment, Taiga pointed, and he turned. Yasuko was taking apart the living room window frame, using all her strength to shake the window glass. They could hear Seiji and Sonoko’s voices from the entryway, “Huh?!” “Where is she?!”
Fwump. Yasuko abandoned her high heels and stepped into her parent’s living room. It seemed to Ryuuji that her wide-open eyes were flashing red and white with her ragged breath, which made her shoulders heave. She didn’t smell like alcohol. Her hair didn’t look like a bomb had dropped on it, either. She might have just come out of a bath without drying it; its long, perm-damaged, golden locks stuck to her pale face in tendrils.
As she approached, Ryuuji noticed she was wearing a green tracksuit from his junior high school days that did not match her shoes at all, along with a black down coat.
“Ya-Yasuko! Yasuko…!”
“Yasukoooooo!”
The Takasus had come back from the entryway and were stumbling over each other. They were absorbed in going around either side of the heated table in order to hug Yasuko.
“Ryu-ryu-ryu-ch-ryuu-chan…wh-wh-wh-where did you get…hurt…”
Ryuuji could only stand there petrified, unable to touch Yasuko’s hand, which shook like a person on the verge of freezing to death. Yasuko’s knees seemed unable to support herself. Her whole body shook intensely as she looked at Ryuuji. It seemed her mouth wouldn’t move properly, either. When she tried to speak, she held her mouth with her shaking hand and took long breaths, like she was spasming. That was all she could manage.
He could see that the eyelashes surrounding her wide-open eyes were wet.
He couldn’t move at all now that he was in front of her. He listened to Taiga speaking in place of him, but the sound seemed to come through stuffed ears.
“Ya-chan…sorry…”
What a terrible thing they had done.
“I’m sorry, it was a lie… I’m sorry…”
“Yasuko!”
It seemed that Yasuko hadn’t noticed Sonoko’s hand reaching out to her. The table went flying like it had been kicked over. Yasuko flew straight towards him, her right hand high. She’s going to hit me, Ryuuji understood, and he waited for the impact on his cheek.
But that hand first went to his forehead.
Then it cupped his cheek.
“Oh—”