So I said nothing.
“Have you been eating?” she asked.
“No...”
“I bought a bunch of stuff for you, so your fridge is stocked now. You’re welcome.”
When I opened the fridge, I saw it was packed with plastic bags full of food from the convenience store. Rifling through them, I picked the thing I thought would spoil the soonest, which was flan. There were two, so I gave Fujieda one, which she actually accepted.
We ate the flan—Fujieda on the sofa and me at the dining table. It was strange. If it hadn’t been for him, Fujieda and I would have never spoken to each other. Even though she’d been bawling her eyes out at the funeral, she was back to her usual self now. Or maybe she was good at keeping herself together.
“Have you been like this ever since the funeral?”
“I...didn’t want to change out of my clothes. I thought if I did, I’d be leaving him behind for real. Not that it’d bring him back, of course. Really, he got taken from us when he died.”
“That’s not true,” Fujieda insisted in her usual forceful tone as she brought the flan to her lips. When I didn’t reply, she went on. “Kadzuki is still with us. I mean, we’ve spent so much time with him. That’s an irrefutable truth, the same way his death is. That won’t go away, no matter how much we forget over time.”
Her voice trembled at the very end.
Fujieda finished eating before I did and placed her empty cup on the coffee table in front of the sofa. She turned her attention to me. Her eyes, moister than usual, stared at me with the intensity of someone noting an important observation.
“I never thought you could have such an intense reaction to anything,” she said.
“That makes two of us.”
My grief was sharp, but also gentle. Perhaps grieving was a way to come to terms with things, to find some kind of comfort. Everything was so different now that I didn’t have to stand all on my own anymore.
He’d given me the strength to cry.
Fujieda hesitated for a moment before she said, “I should come clean now. I heard from Kadzuki before he passed that you stayed with him because he was paying you to, Sacchan.”
There was no hint of reproach in her words, but I spoke up in his defense before I could help it. “And he was in his right to. He did nothing wrong.”
Fujieda smiled teasingly. “‘So don’t blame him,’ is that what you’re trying to say? I know the feeling, because I’ve said as much to you. I agree; Kadzuki did nothing wrong. Not when he hid his illness from you, not when he hid your arrangement with you from us, and not when he paid you to be his friend.”
She smiled softly, the way she always had when she saw him.
“He said he wanted you to be by his side, no matter what.”
Fujieda stood up from the sofa and walked over to the piano, tracing lines in the dust with her fingertips. It was a sort of caress. She slowly opened the lid and played a single note.
“What a beautiful piano. It reminds me of him.”
“Can you play?”
“I played until high school, so I’m all right. Not as good as Kadzuki, of course.”
“Can you play the piece he played all the time? The hold music on the phone?”
“You mean ‘Salut d’Amour’?”
Fujieda sat on the piano stool and placed her hands on the keys. She seemed to hesitate, but her fingers began to move before long. Then came a melody. It was that familiar piece.
And yet it was completely different.
She certainly played the same notes. It was in the same key with the same notes on the same piano. It wasn’t a difference in the fundamentals, which meant it could only be one thing.
That had been his sound.
He had poured his life into every note.
That melody I’d heard every day and had thought nothing of was undoubtedly a part of him. It was a sound that only he could produce.
I hated that song, but his sound had soothed me nonetheless.
Those fingertips, his gentle gaze, and his smile were only ashes now.
I would never again get to listen to his song.
“What was your mother like?”
“You’re so kind.”
“That way, do you think you’ll be able to keep living even after I’m gone?”
“I think you’ll be able to cry this time, Sacchan.”
I could still hear his beautiful clear voice.
Those words and their owner were gone forever now.
His voice would fade one day, in just the same way I could no longer recall the sound of my mother’s voice.
They made me what I am today.
Tears rolled down my cheeks. Even if now they felt like they would never stop, one day they would dry up. One day, I would smile again, even if I hated that thought now.
Although she struggled at a few points, Fujieda played the piece to the end. When she finished, she looked at me, and I sensed a smile ready to peek through her expression somewhere.
“I hope you get to be happy. You did so much for him, so what would he think if you don’t get a happy ending yourself?”
My vision was blurry already. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
“I wanted to make him happy.”
“He said the same thing about you. He said he’d always be thinking of you, Sacchan.”
How could my life, my happiness matter?
But I couldn’t say that anymore.
He had given me the utmost love and the duty to find happiness.
I felt something beneath my eyes and saw my tears run down Fujieda’s fingers. My vision cleared, and Fujieda’s smile deepened.
“I’m jealous,” she whispered. “It sounds like you really loved each other.”
He had left me so many things, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
One of them was a phone number—the number of the investigation company he used to look into me.
Those sharp eyes of his must have seen a future in which I would need it.
He must have known that there would come a time when I would want to let go of all the baggage I’d been carrying.
My father was three prefectures away.
Less than a week after making my request, I learned that he was living with some woman, changing jobs frequently, which was about what I’d expected. I hesitated on whether I should go see him. I was also perfectly fine with losing contact with him and never seeing him again.
But there was one last thing I wanted to ask.
I never got to hear his answer back then.
My father lived in such a remote area that I needed to take a train and then a car to get there at all. With the help of the neighbors, I quickly found him. He stood out, and not in a good way. After I pressed the intercom and waited for him, my father answered the door in his indoor clothes.
“Fumihiro?”
It had been years since I’d seen him last, but I couldn’t say he’d changed much. Judging by what I remembered of him, he didn’t seem to have gained or lost any weight. Only the greater amount of gray hair and somewhat deeper wrinkles served as proof of the passage of time.
My father smiled cheerfully. That joy must have been real.
“What’s up? I’m impressed you found me here. Did you come to see your old man?”
“Hey, dad?”
The word ‘dad’ made me think only of Nishikawa’s father. He was a tender, kind man. I’d never seen him raise his voice at anyone. I knew it was stupid to compare my own father to especially Nishikawa’s.