As Koharu hyped Anzu up to go fishing for bouncy balls, I massaged my eyelids with my thumb and forefinger. It seemed staring at all those bright fireworks for an extended period of time had given me a headache, because both my eyes and brain were throbbing in pain. It would probably be a good idea to head home and go straight to bed as soon as they were done with their little kid’s game. Pinching the inner corners of my eyes, I took a deep breath and turned my head toward the sky—when all of a sudden, I caught a glimpse of a woman passing by in my peripheral vision.
To be clear, all she did was casually walk past me. Yet something about her put my brain on high alert.
I turned toward her as she walked away. She was wearing a yukata and had her hair tied up on the back of her head. I couldn’t tell much else from behind, not even how old she was. Yet for some inexplicable reason, this crazy impulse in my head told me I needed to get a better look. Before I knew it, I was chasing after her, sprinting as fast as I could so as not to lose her in the crowd. The more I closed the distance between us, the more the strange emotions inside me began to take on clearer and more discernible shapes.
Devotion… Dependence… Déjà vu… Nostalgia?
Then the woman stopped, turning to speak with the forty-something-year-old man who stood beside her, and I finally got a look at her face.
“Wha…”
I had to rub my eyes and do a double take.
It was my mother. The woman who’d thoroughly disappeared on us five years prior. But how? How could she be here? No, perhaps that was the wrong question. After all, it wasn’t as if she had died. She just woke up one day and decided to walk right out of my life without ever looking back. She didn’t even handle the divorce paperwork herself; she made her parents take care of that. Nevertheless, I obviously should have known in the back of my head that there was always the possibility that I would run into her somewhere.
More importantly, who was that man beside her? Was he her new partner? They seemed to be having a good time together, anyway. My mother was laughing. Enjoying herself. Content.
But what about me? What was I supposed to do? …No, it went without saying. I would not say anything, pretend I never saw her, and go home and forget about this. That was the right thing to do. My mother had made her choice, and it wasn’t my place to infringe on her happiness anymore.
Was I really okay with that? Walking away without trying to get closure on any of the unanswered questions she’d left me with? Like why she walked out on us, and if it was my fault, or if she ever loved me in the first pl—
All of a sudden, she turned toward me.
Then our eyes met, and for a moment, time stood still.
The bustling sounds of the festival grew distant.
Everything around us started flowing in slow motion.
Neither of us moved a muscle.
We simply stood there, keenly aware of one another.
She knew who I was. And I knew who she was.
An eternity distilled into a few, fleeting seconds.
Then it was over, and not a moment later, her face twisted in abject horror.
One of the corners of her mouth twitched with disgust, and her lips trembled as though she were about to cry out for help—like a prisoner who’d been thrown into a dungeon, locked up in a cage with a ferocious, bloodthirsty monster. That reaction told me more than words ever could. In her eyes, I probably did look like some horrible abomination, the very manifestation of her trauma that she’d spent the last five years trying to forget.
My brain sent out a distress signal to every one of my nerve endings, telling them to get me the hell out of there, right now. So I turned on my heel and attempted to walk away as calmly as I could.
I didn’t know what I’d expected. For her to apologize for abandoning me? To tell me it wasn’t my fault, and she didn’t hold anything against me? No, I knew better than to get my hopes up. Yet somehow, it still felt like I’d been grossly betrayed. My legs began to quake. I was so dizzy, I thought I might faint. As I stumbled away, I bumped into several different people walking in the opposite direction, a couple of whom yelled at me. To be clear, I could see where I was going just fine—it was only that my brain wasn’t processing any sensory information whatsoever.
“Tono-kun?”
All of a sudden, Anzu was standing right in front of me.
“What’s the matter? Why’d you run off? …Hang on. Why do you look so pale? Are you feeling all right?”
“Hanashiro…” I mumbled, walking to her with heavy, plodding footsteps. Then I threw my arms around her.
“T-Tono-kun?!”
I held her firmly in my embrace, squeezing her delicate frame as tightly as I could, skin touching skin, my chin hanging over her shoulder. I couldn’t explain it—it was just something I had to do. I knew that if I didn’t find something to hold, something to anchor me, I’d be dragged into the swirling vortex of emotions that now threatened to swallow me whole. The water was rising, and I needed her now more than ever. So, I held her close, so as not to be swept away.
At first, Anzu’s entire body seized up in shock. Then, bit by bit, I felt her muscles relax, until eventually she let her guard down completely and accepted me into her universe. We stood there like that for a while, her holding me down as I took shelter from the storm in the comfort of her existence, my only source of warmth in the entire vacuum of space.
I don’t know how long it lasted, could have been five seconds, could have been a full minute. However, when I finally felt calmed down enough to stand on my own two feet again, I pulled away…only to see that her cheeks were flushed pink, which made me start blushing up a storm as well. What the hell was I thinking, doing that right in the middle of a public space? The people around us probably thought I was some cringey lover boy who’d let myself get swept away by the throes of intense passion.
“S-sorry, I just… I don’t know what came over me…” I stammered.
“Are you okay?” Anzu asked, her voice full of genuine concern.