Chapter 22

The incident happened one Sunday after Kento had started spring break. He was eating an early dinner with Miyashita when Nurse Nakagawa came back to visit after taking Saturday off.
“I just got back,” she said, taking a large box out. When they asked, she told them she had gone on a family trip to Hakone.
“Where did you stay?”
“At F Hotel.” The historical luxury hotel was a mix of East and West; it looked like a Japanese temple or shrine on the outside, but the rooms were outfitted in Western style.
“I remember you telling me that the apple pie here was amazing, Doctor, so I brought some back as a souvenir.”
“That’s where John Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed, right?” Kento said, showing off the knowledge that he had gotten from Orihara. Nakagawa nodded and said she had gotten to see the hotel guestbook.
“Apparently, so did Helen Keller and Charlie Chaplin,” she added.
After dinner, Kento decided it was a good time for them to tuck into the souvenir. He made some tea and called Miyashita over from the living room, where he was reading a book.
“It’s been such a long time since I had apple pie from here.” Miyashita took a bite as soon as he sat down at the table. “Delicious,” he hummed. “All of us went there together once, when Yuri was still young. But we haven’t gone back since.”
“A family trip? Was his older brother there, too?”
Miyashita gave him a quizzical look. “Of course,” he said.
“Well, weren’t Yuri and his brother having trouble getting along?” Orihara’s older brother had been on his mind, and Kento decided to ask about it. “One night when I was here watching the house while he was gone, his older brother called and told me Yuri always pretends to be out.”
Miyashita sighed. “I’m only telling this to you because it’s you. Yuri and his brother, Keigo, are not related by blood.”
“He’s not Yuri’s real brother?”
Miyashita grunted somewhat reluctantly. “I guess I should give you the whole story,” he said finally, and began his explanation. “Yuri’s mother is my younger sister.”
He had already heard this from Orihara, so Kento nodded his head.
“My sister and her husband couldn’t have children for a long time. So, about ten years into their marriage, they adopted.”
The adopted son had been Keigo, Yuri’s older brother.
“Did they adopt him from an orphanage? Because they needed someone to take after the hospital?”
Miyashita laughed. “This isn’t the nineteenth century! And this isn’t some cheap soap opera. My sister and her husband just really loved children. That’s all.”
Miyashita’s younger sister and her husband cherished Keigo and raised him with care. Then, in the year that Keigo was set to enter a prestigious middle school, it had happened.
“By some incredible stroke of luck, she got pregnant.”
Of course, even after Yuri was born, the two loved him and Keigo equally. Keigo himself had been adopted at three and so had no memories of his infancy. He loved his foster parents like he would his own. Although Yuri and Keigo were far apart in age, they had been very close.
“Yuri followed Keigo around everywhere. They were almost joined at the hip.”
Kento remembered the conversation that Yuri and his brother had over the phone and found it hard to believe that they got along.
“Then why…”
Miyashita took another bite of apple pie, then took a gulp of tea before continuing his story.
“Yuri found out the truth by accident when their grandfather died.”
At a gathering for the Buddhist Forty-Ninth Day memorial ceremony, Yuri had overheard his distant relatives talking to the mothers.
“You’ll leave the hospital to your biological child, I presume?”
“You gave birth to Yuri yourself, so you must feel more attached to him.”
In this way, Yuri’s relatives had pressed his mother, and Yuri had overheard it all.
“Keigo was already twenty-two and in medical school, so….” Although his parents had had no intentions of forcing him to take over the hospital, Keigo’s intelligence had already begun to lead him down the path of medicine.
A change overcame Yuri after that incident. He abruptly stopped talking about becoming a doctor like the brother he respected so much, and he never spoke of it again. Instead, he began to throw himself into exercise.
Yuri was long-limbed and nimble. His talent blossomed on the track and in the pits, in sports such as high-jumping and hurdles. His family, although perplexed by the sudden change, supported Yuri’s endeavours when he began appearing at tournaments.
At first, neither Yuri’s parents nor Miyashita had any idea what had made Yuri change his prospects.
“By choosing a completely different path, he planned to have the hospital pass naturally into his brother’s hands.”
Kento remembered again how his brother had said over the phone that Yuri was acting out of guilt towards him.
“And?”
“When it came time to take high-school entrance exams, Yuri chose the Athletic stream, and that’s how he came to stay at my house.”
At the time, Miyashita had just lost his wife to illness. He warmly welcomed Yuri as a distraction from his sadness.
“But he injured his leg and couldn’t do sports anymore, right?” Kento butted in. Miyashita gave him a confused look.
“Hmm? He did hurt his leg, but it wasn’t so bad that he had to stop sports.”
“What?” Kento exclaimed this time. “Wasn’t he hospitalized?” He was sure Orihara had said so. Kento rifled through his memories.
“No, the one who was hospitalized was a friend he was training with. Yuri was depressed about it, though, and said it was his fault.”
This was totally different from the story he had heard. Miyashita continued his story, oblivious to the tense expression on Kento’s face.
“Anyway, in his third year of high school, Yuri suddenly announced that he was aiming to get into the faculty of medicine. My sister and her husband were overjoyed, and naturally, I thought it was a good thing.”
Yuri was intelligent enough, and after a year of furious studying he was admitted to the faculty of medicine at N. University.
But a while after entering university, he had declared that he was not going to take over the family business and was never going to go back to his hometown.
“His family was shocked.” That was when they had realized for the first time that Yuri knew that his older brother was adopted.
“By then Keigo was already married and had taken over at the family hospital. When he found out that Yuri was suffering because of that, he was astonished.”
He asked Yuri over and over to come back once he had become a doctor, and that Keigo would withdraw to make way for him.
“But Yuri is more stubborn than he looks.” Miyashita sighed. “He’s… how do I say this? He’s prone to jumping to conclusions. I’m quite worried.”
He then looked at Kento with renewed intrigue. “I’m glad that a cheerful boy like you has become his friend. I know there’s an age difference, but I’d really appreciate if you could continue to be his friend.”
But he sees me as a kid, Kento said inwardly. He never told me anything that was important to him.
If that wasn’t proof that Orihara saw him as a child, he didn’t know what was.