Tatsuko was gazing at Hyoutan Lake. There was no sign of her son on the water.
Sora imagined how heartbreaking this must be for her, and he wanted to pull her away from all the children playing with their parents in the water. Their laughter rang out in the air as they looked for crayfish, wild with excitement. Many of them were boys.
“Once you become a parent…you never lose your love for your child.” Tatsuko gazed out without blinking, listening to the voice of each child.
“…I said more than I meant to. I’m really…”
Sora couldn’t find the words to apologize enough for going too far, and he stood frozen in place. Instead, Fuuka plopped his chin on Tatsuko’s lap.
“Oh, you want some skritches, dear Fuuka?”
“Coo, coo.” Fuuka cooed sweetly, and Tatsuko stroked him with her aged hand.
“Coo,” he murmured softly, leaning against Tatsuko and swishing his tail.
Tatsuko’s hand remembered where she needed to caress to comfort a child, as vividly as if it were yesterday. Tatsuko was a mother who had been given a child, then lost him.
“…I’ll pay you a visit soon to return your cooler bag,” said Sora, desperately looking for a way to change the subject.
“Let me stuff it with something again and bring it to you.”
Fuuka pressed his head against Tatsuko’s belly, asking for more.
“Thank you for always looking out for Sora and Fuuka.” Tamuramaro bowed, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
Tatsuko smiled quizzically, but she didn’t press why. Perhaps she was weighed down by her dream about her son, destined to remain seventeen forever.
“Coo.” Fuuka whined as the three of them walked back to Sanpouji Lake. His voice carried Tatsuko’s sadness.
“I really shouldn’t have said that,” muttered Sora, staring at his toes.
“I’m sure many different people have tried to console her all kinds of ways. But words are meaningless in the loss of a child. Don’t worry about it,” Tamuramaro said, patting Sora’s back.
“What would you do, Tamuramaro? If they asked you to settle their divorce.”
Since the Kashiwagis had welcomed him into Shizukuishi and cared for him fondly, Sora had harbored an affection for them before he learned about their history.
“If Ms. Tatsuko really tried to get a divorce, in legal terms, it could happen immediately. She’d have the advantage.”
Although they were half-joking, the Kashiwagis had often asked Sora to mediate their divorce. For him, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say the matter weighed on him as if they were his own parents.
“I would follow my own heart rather than the law,” said Tamuramaro in a low voice. From what he had observed recently, Sora expected as much.
“But it was your side that created ritsuryo and spread it across the country in the first place,” Sora pointed out. He couldn’t easily buy into Tamuramaro’s reasoning after 1,200 years.
“Those codes of law were made by people. That feels truer than ever to me today.”
Tamuramaro’s voice clouded over just a little as he mentioned “today.”
“Where did my obedience to ritsuryo get me? I had to watch as my friend, who surrendered because he believed in me, was executed. And then they put his head on display,” he muttered, his eyes fixed on the small shrine in the distance, though he didn’t know who it was for. A shadow fell over his face. “That’s why I decided to follow my own heart.”
Sora couldn’t say anything as he stared at Tamuramaro’s profile for a while.
“Coo,” Fuuka murmured at Sora’s feet. Sora knelt down, rubbed his cheek against Fuuka’s, and ruffled behind his ear.
“Tamuramaro,” said Sora. He was encouraged by the presence of Tatsuko, who embraced her own loss yet still stood strong and continued to wait. He decided to put into words something he’d suspected for a while, perplexing as the idea was. “You’ve been bringing us up, haven’t you?”
Tamuramaro turned to him in surprise.
“You brought us up like we were your children, didn’t you? I realized for the first time that I don’t have any recollection of growing up with my own parents, and it’s because you raised us.”
He thought of Tatsuko again, who was probably still sitting on the same bench. His experience was the opposite of hers, but similar, in a sense—he wouldn’t have discovered his own lack if he wasn’t given what had been missing.
“You taught me patiently what it meant to have a parent, so when I moved to this town, and Ms. Tatsuko and Mr. Rokurou were so generous with me, I could understand what it was. I could embrace it. I’m glad I’ve been able to connect with people and get to know them… I’m grateful.”
It was brief, but for the first time, Sora thanked Tamuramaro for bringing them up. And Tamuramaro didn’t tease him with jokes about sudden hail like he would have normally.
“Once I started learning new things, I found there were more and more things I couldn’t understand. It shook everything I believed in, and I got so scared I ran away from your house.”
“You’re starting to see the world, I think.”
If what Tamuramaro had said was true, Sora was starting to see Fuuka, too.
“The more I knew, the more I knew that I didn’t understand anything. That was a frightening thing for me, and I’ve been running away from that fear for a long time.”
But now he was trying to seek out a new path, along with Fuuka.
“I’m still running away,” he went on.
Perhaps he was clinging to Fuuka so much because he didn’t want to change. If he was going to follow a new path, he wanted to do it with Fuuka.
“Then I’ll keep you company,” Tamuramaro answered.
“Why?”
Tamuramaro had said he was keeping an eye on him, but that wasn’t quite true. Even Sora had to admit, after many years of denial, that he was watching over them to protect them.
“A friend’s last words.”
Sora could guess what he meant.