Final Chapter:
Visiting the Remains of a Red-Light District
PART SIX: HOTARU
AUGUST, SHOWA 57 (1982 AD).
It was the height of summer. There were fewer trees in Tokyo now, but the cries of the cicadas were as incessant as ever. The summer sky felt oppressive overhead and made the words being spoken feel all the more pointed.
“Hey, Jii-chan. Didn’t you tell me you were only heading out for ‘a bit’?”
Koyomiza looked unchanged from the past. The building had been completely destroyed by an air raid during the war, but Toudou Yoshihiko and his wife Kimiko worked hard to restore the theater to the way it had been in Taisho times.
Of course, it was still just as Jinya had remembered it once he returned. Nothing had changed.
“Hm? Oh, did I say something like that?”
“You definitely did.”
But for humans, things weren’t that simple. Now that Yatonomori Kaneomi’s seal had faded, Jinya was finally free to return to the Toudou family. But an absence of twenty-three years was a bit much.
“You’re so mean, Jii-chan! How could you just vanish for twenty-three years?!”
The Toudou couple’s eldest son, Jingo, was ecstatic to see Jinya return—but he was also livid it had taken him twenty-three years.
Jinya had been forced to sit formally in the living room. His scolding had gone on for a full hour already.
“C’mon, Jingo. Go easy on ’im. He was only gone for a mere twenty-three years.” Izuchi, an employee of Koyomiza, tried to lend Jinya a hand. Izuchi looked like a large, well-built man in his thirties, but he was actually a demon. Jinya had known him since the Taisho era, and he made for a good drinking buddy. He let out a hearty laugh to try and lighten the mood, but it seemed to have the opposite effect and earned him a glare from Jingo.
“It might’ve been short for you, Izuchi-san, since you’re a demon and all. But for us humans, who only live to around sixty or seventy, twenty years is more than a quarter of our lives! While he was gone, I had my third son and even became a grandpa myself.”
Most of Jingo’s hair had turned white, and his eldest son had children of his own. A long time had passed. The fact that Jinya left like he was only stepping out for a short while and never came back must have weighed greatly on his mind.
“Forgive me. I have no excuse for my actions.” Jinya deeply bowed his head, feeling Jingo’s anger was justified. There was no argument he could make for himself. It had been through his own carelessness that he had been sealed away.
Faced with such a genuine apology, Jingo gave a heavy sigh. “I’m angry. You really made me worry. I get you had circumstances, like that one girl told us, but I still wish you could have at least contacted us every now and then.”
“It is as you say. But who is this girl you mentioned?”
“A young woman named Motoki Aoba. Didn’t you ask her to come here in your stead? She told us you were busy with a troublesome job and couldn’t come back for a while. I just didn’t think that ‘while’ would be more than twenty years.”
After Jinya asked some more questions, he learned Aoba had come to Koyomiza about half a year after he had set off for the Dove District. She told them that after he had finished his business in the Dove District, he got involved with a troublesome opponent—one that would take an unknown number of years to defeat—and that he would return only after he did so.
As Motoki Soushi’s grandchild, she must have already known Jinya was living with the people of Koyomiza. She must have told them that so they wouldn’t worry about him too much.
Good grief, he thought. He had been defeated in every sense. Strength must have been a word reserved to describe people like her. He longed to have more of the non-violent strength she possessed.
“You knew her, right?” asked Jingo.
“I did. She comes from a line of spirit hunters and is the one who soundly defeated me.”
“Oh, she did, did she? …Wait—what?!” Jingo knew Jinya was a demon who had fought and overcome his fair share of deadly battles. The revelation that a girl like Aoba had defeated him was shocking, even if she was from a line of spirit hunters.
“I know no human as strong as her,” said Jinya.
After he was unsealed, he paid a visit to Kogetsudou and talked to Aoba, who showed him he was incapable of even properly making someone unhappy. That had been her revenge against him. She portrayed his actions as meaningless, yet Jinya’s heart felt full. She was telling him not to feel guilty about what happened anymore, and that lifted a burden from him.
When he lost to Okada Kiichi and when Magatsume took Nomari from him, he had managed to stand up once more. But his battle against Aoba could only be considered a complete and utter defeat. In the twenty-three years he was sealed away, she had completely forgiven him and seized happiness on her own. He had been soundly defeated by her smile, her strength as a person, and her warm kindness.
“I guess people aren’t always what they seem,” Jingo said thoughtfully. “But anyway, that’s all from me. I can only keep you so long. Of course, I could chew your ear off longer if I wanted to, but, honestly, I’m just glad you’re back. Think a little more before doing something like this again, though.”
Jingo smiled somewhat bashfully. He was still a bit angry, but he didn’t want to trouble Jinya too much. He had said most of what he wanted to say, so he decided to call it there. Grateful for his graciousness, Jinya lifted his head. But then Jingo’s smile faded for some reason, replaced by an awkward expression. Before Jinya could ask what was wrong, he felt someone pound his shoulders.
“Me next.”
He looked to see Ryuuna standing behind him. She, too, was ageless. She looked the same way she had in the Taisho era: a slender face, sleek black hair, and the small body of an adorable fourteen-year-old girl. The only difference was that her cheeks were puffed up to show her anger now.
“After Ryuuna-neechan, my mom will want to have a word with you. Then it’ll be my son’s turn,” Jingo said. Jinya finally understood why he was making that face.
He got his ear chewed off for many, many hours after that.
Ryuuna was mad he’d taken so long to return and complained she missed him. Kimiko cried and said she thought he might never come back. Jingo’s eldest son greeted him with a smile, then complained that he hadn’t been around to play with him when he was growing up. Jinya got lectured for almost three hours in total and was left exhausted.
He knew he deserved to be dressed down, having made them worry so much. He also knew all their anger sprang from worry. Though he felt discouraged, he was equally happy.
After all the scolding was done, he received a visitor while he was resting in his room. It was Toudou Yoshihiko, who was enjoying retirement after entrusting the position of theater manager to his son.
“Hey, Yoshihiko.”
“Ah, they really put you through the wringer, huh? Here, I brought you some tea.”
Yoshihiko had been just a ticket boy when they first met, but now he was seventy-five. There wasn’t a hair left on his head, and he was skin and bones. There was no trace of his younger self in his face, but he smiled just as warmly as he used to.
He had aged well. That was Jinya’s honest belief every time he saw him. The man had married Kimiko, been blessed with children, and rebuilt Koyomiza after the war. He’d lived through the tumultuous times spanning the Taisho and Showa eras and had become able to look back on the past with a nostalgic smile.