THE ONE NO LONGER A YOUNG WOMAN
To this day, I continued to think about thoughts that lead nowhere.
“I guess I lost…”
His words from that moment still remained with me. I fought the Demon Eater and sealed him away, but I still didn’t understand. How did I win?
My defeat should have been a certainty. I lacked his strength and experience. I fought him simply to carry out my will, and I was ready to die. But somehow I survived, and he was sealed away.
Did he not want to hurt me out of respect for my determination?
…No, that couldn’t be it. He could have easily stopped me without causing me any harm.
Then did he lose on purpose to let me carry out my grandfather’s revenge?
…No, that had to be wrong too. My grandfather taught me about his abilities. He could have used his illusions and invisibility to make me think I’d sealed him away if he really wanted to. So long as he never reappeared before me, I’d think I had claimed vengeance for my grandfather, and he would get away unharmed.
He likely didn’t need to jump through all those hoops either, really. He probably could have talked me out of my meaningless revenge if he wanted to.
But in the end, I sealed him away. How that happened evades me.
Since that day, I’ve spent all my time thinking about these thoughts that lead nowhere. I didn’t know if I’d ever have an answer, but my revenge continued anyway.
✦ ✦ ✦
THE ONE NO LONGER A LITTLE BOY AND THE DAUGHTER OF HIS FIRST LOVE
August, Showa 57 (1982 AD).
Twenty-three years had passed since the demonic blade came to rest in the shrine.
“Kei-chin, is it true that your first love was my mom?”
“Huh? Where did you hear that from?”
The boy had grown since his heartbreak six years earlier and was now a high school student. Takamori Keito, now sixteen, visited the small shrine only occasionally these days. Aoba still continued to visit daily to stare at the sword, but since his visits had become less frequent, they met less often. On the other hand, he had grown closer to her daughter, Yunohara Nanao.
Nanao turned fourteen this year. She entered her second year of junior high school, and her looks became more mature. She was shaping up to be just as beautiful a woman as her mother.
“Uhh, my dad. He said there was a boy who went to the shrine every day just to see my mom.”
“Yikes… So the cat’s out of the bag.” Embarrassed by his youthful actions, he buried his face in his hands. He began to make excuses about how it was completely normal for elementary school boys to fall for older women.
“I guess my mom does look kinda young,” Nanao said.
“That she does. Does she still talk in that weird way?”
“Totally. Dad keeps reminding her about it, but she can’t seem to change.”
Aoba always spoke a bit too casually, like a young punk, no matter who she was talking to. That had been part of her charm for the younger Keito, of course, but it was a fairly unusual thing for a woman in her late thirties.
Putting that all aside, even though his first love hadn’t worked out, Keito was honestly glad it had led to him becoming friends with Nanao. He looked for her in his elementary school after he learned Aoba had a daughter and found her surprisingly easily. They hit it off right away once he mentioned he knew her mother, and the two had been constant companions for the six years since then. His classmates sometimes teased him for being a high schooler who hung out with a junior high girl, but he didn’t care. Why should he when he didn’t have the slightest of ulterior motives?
“This place never changes either, huh?” he said. It was summer vacation. As a high schooler, he had to start thinking about his future, but instead he played all day with Nanao.
The sun hung directly above them. Exhausted from playing, they bought some ramune soda from the candy shop and took a break at the shrine.
He wet his throat with the cold carbonated beverage and blocked the sunlight with a hand as he scanned the shrine grounds. The cicadas were noisy, and the air shimmered with heat. The small shrine, only hosting a single time-worn building, was the same as it had been in his youth.
He hadn’t known this as a child, but apparently small shrines like this didn’t have a chief priest, or any priests of their own at all. Instead, there would be a priest assigned to many small shrines like this one. Naturally, that meant they wouldn’t always be around, so a parishioner living nearby would often maintain the place. The sword that was left here wasn’t exactly an offering to the shrine, but something Aoba had asked a parishioner she knew to keep here for her. Why she wanted to put such distance between herself and the sword was something Keito still didn’t understand, even after he became a high schooler.
“We owe that to Kamei-san, I guess,” Nanao said.
“Ah, the parishioner who takes care of this place?”
“Yeah, that guy. My mom and dad get along with him pretty well.”
Hearing her mom got along with another guy bothered Keito a bit. Though his first love had long since been extinguished, hearing that the woman he had liked was close to someone else put him in a bit of a mood. But perhaps that was just puberty.
Nanao continued, “I’m good friends with one of his nieces too. She’s coming here in two days, and she’s super cute.”
“Super cute, you say?”
“You stay away from her, Kei-chin. A high school boy who can’t get a girlfriend and just plays with a junior high girl all day will be a bad influence on her.”
“Rude. Not that it isn’t true.”
“Ah ha ha, I’m kidding. I wouldn’t hate you no matter how much weirder you got.”
She was indirectly calling him weird, but the broadness of her smile made it hard for him to get mad. At any rate, she seemed to be making friends just fine.
Seeing her drink her ramune soda, he did the same, downing the rest in one go. The glass marble in its neck rang as it shifted. Uncharacteristically of him, he thought about how it would likely be these kinds of summer days where nothing particularly happened that he would look back nostalgically upon one day.