The girl swung the large scythe, as if in a dance, and cut countless arcs high up in the air. In the night sky, only the golden moon and the stars shone.
She was about to deliver a soul. She shook her hair as if in a trance. It was a breath-takingly mysterious yet pure dance.
The black cat spread his bat-like wings and flitted about the girl, in synchronicity with her movements.
Then, twirling the raised scythe, she cut a swath through the air. There was a flash. And with it, the soul and body were separated.
In the very end, the soul spoke.
“I’m sorry… but I can go now without having lost what is most precious to me. Thank you…”
✦ ✦ ✦
Daiki felt like he could go on watching forever if nothing prevented him.
Perhaps all he would see would be stars twinkling in the clear night sky. But he was left wondering what it was that gripped his hand, what it was he had held. He’d lost a lot, yet wondered exactly what it was he had lost.
—Ikuma Ichiyo had departed this world.
Daiki had never known, but Ichiyo had suffered from heart disease. He met the end not as a great painter, but as a father.
At that moment, at the very end, Daiki finally realized how much love he had been immersed in.
Ikuma Ichiyo, the man, was a very socially inept person. On the other hand, Ikuma Ichiyo, the artist, could speak of art eloquently. But as a man, he could not find even the simplest words to express his thoughts to his own child.
When he discovered within Daiki a talent that could transcend his own, he was overjoyed. As a father, he worked hard to develop that talent. Ichiyo had seen countless youths, no matter how talented and award-winning, be manipulated by adults, their talent extinguished like shooting stars.
So he was extremely hard on Daiki. But behind closed doors, like on the day Daiki had won his first award or on the night his exhibition was decided, the father toasted the son’s success in private.
Although it was against doctors’ orders, he was simply too overjoyed to stop. It was all born out of love for his son. It was a father’s clumsy feelings for his son, that was all.
“Father…”
Daiki’s voice echoed around the empty room. It was only now, after he was gone, that Daiki realized how deep his father’s love was for him. He didn’t know how to accept it.
He was standing absent-mindedly in his father’s studio. The place still smelled of his father. He could almost see Ichiyo there, sitting in front of a canvas, creating a miracle. The room was smothered by the smell of oil paints and varnish. These paints, no longer used, were arranged in perfect order. It was painful to the point of being unbearable.
—Ring.
That bell ringing again. He would probably remember his father from now on every time he heard a bell ring.
And that boy’s poem.
The window was open. The sun, low in the sky, spread its rays. The light was painfully blinding, enough to compel one to shut one’s eyes. But he would never shut them again. In the face of blinding light, he’d never been aware of his own.
“I’ll look straight ahead from now on,” he told himself.
The curtains swayed in the cold February wind. Emerging, as if from a fog, were Momo and Daniel.
She was a shinigami. Delivering death to Ichiyo, she had come to claim his soul.
Ichiyo had known his death was near. So he had rushed to finish his overseas exhibition and come home. In the end, he finally showed his tears to Daiki. He did it to make Daiki face forward. Towards his future.
Normally, a human cannot see a shinigami. But Daiki was powerfully conscious of Ichiyo, and Ichiyo felt powerfully for Daiki. The scent of death, which he had thought was his own, was actually Ichiyo’s. In desiring death, Daiki had come into contact with death and was able to meet and speak with Momo and Daniel.
“What is it?” Daiki asked. “I thought you already took Father.”
“Yes.”
“Then you shouldn’t have any more business with me!” Daiki said harshly.
“But… I’m sorry.”
She was crying. She was a shinigami, yet she cried with such an unbearable expression on her face. Slowly, like traces of light, warm tears ran down her cheeks.
“Why are you apologizing?” Daiki asked.
“…To be honest, I wanted to give you more time to talk with your father. But that day, it took all I had to extend the time he had left…”
“Yeah, but…” Daniel interrupted, “because of that, Momo got yelled at by the director! It’s against department regulations for a shinigami to deliberately extend the scheduled time of death. Not only that, but she revived his consciousness and allowed him to talk too! You did all that for this ungrateful human, Momo!”
“Daniel, you don’t need to bring that up.” Momo pinched the cat’s mouth, reproaching him.
“Owwwwwwww! I’m sorry, Momo!”
Satisfied, Momo released the cat, who promptly pressed his paws to his aching mouth and then breathed hard, forcing air back into his lungs.
Daiki somehow found the sight very funny. “Ha ha ha ha…” The sound was like that of someone who hadn’t enjoyed a laugh for a long time. “I see. Thank you, Momo.”
He felt as if he understood the reason for her tears now. Momo was not crying because she was sad. She cried because she had sensed what was happening in Ichiyo and Daiki’s hearts and had known something sad was about to befall them. Later, she cried in place of Ichiyo, who could no longer shed tears.
“Oh, I forgot. Oh, oh…”
Without even bothering to wipe her tears, Momo brought out a painting from the back of the studio. Behind her trotted Daniel, who left behind a set of red footprints. It seemed that he had stepped on a tube of paint that Ichiyo had forgotten to put away.
It was such a pleasing scene. Daiki found it hard to believe this little girl was a shinigami. In fact, quite the opposite, she somehow made one feel all warm inside.
“Here, take this…”
Seeing what was in Momo’s hands, Daiki swallowed hard. His chest felt as if it was bound. It was a tight, constricted pain.
Momo held an oil painting. In the painting, a young child was laughing.
The young child was… Daiki.
Momo spoke gently and quietly. “Your father worked on this until the very end. He asked me to give this painting to you. I announced his death to him, and when he accepted it, he hurried to finish this painting. He wanted to celebrate the start of your new journey, and he wanted to leave you something…”
The brushstrokes, the use of light, all of it seemed to lovingly embrace the smile. The colors shone brilliantly, more than in any of his other works. If he had devoted every last moment of his life to this one painting, he would not have regretted it.
Droplets of warm water slid down Daiki’s cheeks and fell onto the painting. The still-drying oils on the canvas mixed with the tears and rolled down as one. He cried for the first time since Ichiyo’s passing. Like a helpless child, he cried buckets of tears.
Seeing this, Momo began to cry again as well. “I think your father always held a vision of you as a smiling child within him… after all…”
She could not finish the sentence… The words only came out as tears.
“Stop crying, Momo,” Daniel scolded her. “It’s unsightly.”
The cat slapped his mistress’s red shoes repeatedly with his tail in an effort to get her to stop. It was his way of comforting her. She smiled at his efforts.
Come to think of it, she was such a small, fragile thing. She had thin arms and legs, a childish voice, and a cherubic face. And though she spoke like an adult, she was still a little child.
She was a strange shinigami, she who cried over the souls she had taken. That she didn’t wipe her tears away may have been her way of showing respect for the dead. Or perhaps her way of putting up a bold front.
“Thank you.” Daiki gently patted this funny little shinigami on the head, her tears still trickling down her cheeks.
“You’re such a crybaby,” added Daiki. “And you’re such a meddler.”
The little girl—still with tears in her eyes— smiled a beautiful smile.
The artist Ikuma Daiki’s exhibition was a huge success. His style of reproducing light, as if it actually existed on the painting, received especially high praise and attention.
At the very end of the exhibition hall hung two paintings.
One was entitled, “From a Son to His Father.”
The other was entitled, “From a Father to His Son.”
The smile his father showed that day, his warm voice and his large, guiding hands were all portrayed by Daiki in vivid color.
—He painted very well.
✦ ✦ ✦
I feel the light — fin.