“Oh, right, rent…” He nodded gravely. “How much should I charge?”
“Huh?”
“I technically own both of these apartments.”
“What? You bought them?!” I mean, it’s a free country, but where the hell did a freeloader like you get that kind of money?!
“No, I inherited them.”
“From who?!”
“Grandma.”
He explained that this office building, as well as the lot it was on, originally belonged to his great-grandfather on his father’s side. At one point, he took the top floor and remodeled it into a residence—as a gift for his newly married grandson, Homare.
“I actually lived here for the first two years of my life, apparently. I don’t remember it at all though. Then, when we were forced to move back to the Wakamiya estate, my mother decided she liked the place so much that she didn’t want to do anything with it except pay for basic upkeep. So when she died, Grandma claimed the rights to the fifth floor as a sort of…memento, I guess.”
Because of her chronic lower back problems, Grandma Tsuzuki couldn’t live in a building without an elevator. She hired a property management company to rent out the apartments for a little income on the side. There were conflicts, however, and then these rooms were left vacant for several years.
“You had a free place to live this whole time and you never told me?!” I said.
“I didn’t know it existed until now! I just happened to mention to her that I was house-hunting and she dropped this bomb on me!”
“Aha…”
It all made sense. Grandma Tsuzuki wouldn’t have volunteered the information of her own accord, since she was afraid Ushio wouldn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want him to think she was one of them, after all. But, clearly, she had decided he was ready to know.
“Can’t believe my mean old grandma was holding out on me all this time…” he muttered to himself, but I was sure he understood her intent as well as I did.
“But why would your parents have two separate apartments? Shouldn’t they have knocked down the walls and turned it into one big one?”
“About that…” He grinned like my question was hilarious. “Apparently, they were going to use one of them as my dad’s atelier. He wasn’t even a professional painter—can you believe how spoiled he was? Free real estate from his grandpa! What a mooch! And he thinks his shit doesn’t stink!”
Wakamiya Homare was once described as having a “carefree” life. If it was never upended…if Ushio had grown up here…what sort of person would he have become? Would we have still met? I knew there was no point in thinking about it, but still.
“I’m thinking I wanna put a door here,” Ushio continued, patting the wall. “That way we’ll have separate apartments on paper, but we can still see each other as much as we like. See? I’ve got it all covered.”
“Aren’t you gonna have guests over?”
“If I do, I’ll hide it with a bookcase or something—maybe get one of those sliding ones they have at the library,” he said. “Ooh, that way I won’t need to buy more than one fridge or washing machine…”
“Oh, so that’s what you’re really after.”
“Well, how about it? There’s still time to make customizations, so I can put in shelves or whatever you want.”
Truth be told, my heart was already mostly made up, but I didn’t want to look eager. I waffled a bit. “Let me see the place first.”
“All right, fine.”
The apartment next door had been remodeled with exactly the same layout. Ushio designed the kitchens and bathrooms himself, but I didn’t have any preferences there, so I didn’t mind. A rise-and-grind prince had no time to be looking at home improvement catalogs. Then, I noticed the ivory wallpaper was peeling.
“You’re gonna replace this, right?”
“Yeah, totally. You want it to look like TV static? How about SMPTE color bars?”
“That would drive me insane.”
Seeing as he was going to have it all replaced anyway, I gave the wallpaper a tug and ripped it down. It was surprisingly fun, like breaking the factory seal on something brand-new.
“What are you, five?” Ushio scoffed, but he then went back to devising his secret passageway.
Meanwhile, I crouched down, grabbed the loose flap of wallpaper near my feet, and ripped it up with all my strength. And when I did…
“…Hey, look!” I shouted.
Startled, Ushio turned around. “What, did you find a skeleton?”
“Look here!”
When I failed to play along with his joke, he came walking over with a dubious look on his face. Then he crouched down with me…and gasped.
There, I had discovered three old, faded handprints in small, medium, and large—a child, a mother, and a father. They were all in a beautiful shade of blue, just like the sky outside. The prints were rather low to the ground, the perfect height for a little toddler to have waddled over and slapped his hand to the wall while his parents were repainting. They were each autographed with a single letter—U, H, and H.
“…Hana,” Ushio whispered. “That was my mom’s name.”
Ushio, Hana, and Homare.
He didn’t have any memory of this place, and obviously I wouldn’t know either. But a young Ushio must have put his handprint on the wall, and instead of scolding him, his parents joined in to celebrate the occasion. They were a happy family with no inkling of the way their lives would be changed forever… At least, that was my headcanon.
Ushio stroked the wall, then looked down at his hand, now much larger. He and his parents had lived here once upon a time, and his mother had loved this place. How had his father felt, entrusting it to his mother-in-law’s care? How did Ushio feel now that it ended up with him? He must have been thinking about all these things, swallowing some of them and wrestling with others.
As his palm floated helplessly in midair, I laid my own upon it. His tears fell onto the back of my hand. Meanwhile, the morning sun streamed in bright and pale through the window, with no curtains to obstruct it. We were all alone, holding hands in an empty space, illuminated by the light of a new beginning.