After the broadcast, I dashed out of the studio, hung up my work clothes faster and sloppier than ever before, and ran down to the basement parking lot. I didn’t even have the composure to make up an excuse about some urgent, last-minute assignment. First things first, I’d go back to my condo and check my personal phone. Next, I’d grab my spare key and go to Ushio’s house. And then, once I combed his place and determined I had the wrong idea, I’d tear him a new one for giving me that wrong idea in the first place. I planned it all out in the taxi.
Tonight, I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to worry about spying reporters. I ran into the condo building, mashed the elevator button, fidgeted the whole way up to my floor, and when I finally reached my front door, I put in my key and unlocked it. And there…I came to a stop.
The lights were on, and Ushio’s sneakers were in my entryway.
This same scenario had happened once before, back when I was on the verge of a breakdown. Back then, I wasn’t happy to see those shoes since I knew I’d lash out the second I saw his face—but this time, things were completely different. Clearly I was worried for nothing. He was done with his job, and now here he was. This was, by all accounts, a relief.
So why couldn’t I bring myself to feel even the tiniest bit happy? If I kicked my shoes off, walked into the living room, and said hi, we could have a normal night…and yet I didn’t budge. My heart, my stomach, my lungs—they were all quivering in my chest, afraid that something bad was going to happen the moment he opened the single door that kept us apart.
“…Welcome home,” said Ushio as he peeked in from the living room. But I couldn’t bring myself to say, “I’m back.” No, what I said was…
“Wakamiya Homare.”
His expression clouded over, and I knew Eba was right. Tsuzuki Ushio was, in fact, Wakamiya Ushio.
“Old man Eba was concerned about you when he saw you the other day.”
“…Ah.” He let out a breath. “Man, he’s something else. I knew he might recognize me, but I figured it’d been long enough since we last met in person. At my mother’s vigil, after we lit the funerary incense, I remember him walking up and ruffling my hair real hard… Totally caught me off guard, but I appreciated it.”
There was so much I didn’t know, and I had no clue where to start. The invisible balloon over my head swelled and swelled, like in one of those TV game shows. If I didn’t give the right answer, it would pop—but what was the right answer? Instead, all that filled my mind was formless panic.
“See, my mom died when I was in my third year of junior high… Wait, let me back up.” He frowned and scratched his forehead. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one having trouble thinking straight. “It’s hard to talk about my life in chronological order. My father was a politician, my mother was a ‘politician’s wife,’ and neither of them felt much like parents. I can’t remember having many conversations with my dad… What I do remember is back in first grade, I won an award for a drawing I did over summer break. My dad was home that day, so I went to show him, and he said to me in a deadpan voice, ‘Ushio, you don’t need to do these things.’”
His fingers tapped his temples like they were knocking the memories loose.
“If he said it was a shitty drawing, or that he was too busy to bother with me, I would’ve understood. ‘Oh, okay, Dad’s in a bad mood.’ But instead I got, ‘You don’t need to do these things,’ and I was like, ‘What does that even mean? Don’t draw? Don’t come show you? Don’t try to bond with you?’ Honestly, I still don’t get it.”
“…What about your mom?” I asked.
“Well… Everything she ever said revolved around him. ‘You’ll embarrass your father,’ or ‘Your father would like that.’ One time I asked her what she thought, and she looked at me like I grew a second head. I suspect she honestly didn’t understand what I was asking. Even as a kid, I could tell she only cared about being a politician’s wife. Every election, she’d get way more invested than Dad himself, holding meet and greets every day, making a mountain of onigiri for the supporters’ association… It was crazy to watch.”
There was a palpable distance in his last sentence, more like it was something he watched on TV. He seemed to sense this.
“Man, I suck at telling this story, don’t I?” He shook his head. “Anyway, my parents were both super serious and worked their asses off, and I knew it was for that reason we had a big house and I went to a fancy private school and all the other aspects of my life. Whenever I walked down the street, people would say, ‘Tell your father I said hi,’ or they’d brag to me about how they took a picture with him. Because of that, well, I had a decent amount of respect for him myself. People were always coming in and out of our house. We had housekeepers and my dad’s secretary too, so I didn’t need attention from my parents anyway. But I knew for a fact I didn’t want to have the same job as my dad, no matter how special or important it was. I wasn’t trying to rebel—I just sincerely wasn’t interested.”
He told me how he hated schoolwork and would always doodle in his textbooks. All talk of money aside, I could easily imagine how uncomfortable it must have been to live at the esteemed Wakamiya estate.
“The winter of my third year of junior high, the House got dissolved right at the start of the new year. All of a sudden, it was election season, and just as I was prepared to watch my house turn into a battlefield all over again…my mom got sick and died.”
Just like that, he tossed it out so abruptly. Maybe it was a representation of how sudden it felt to him at the time.
“Caught pneumonia from running around in the snow. She must have been enduring a lot—it was a cold year, and the election wasn’t looking too good for us. But of course, my father’s secretary always said there’s no such thing as an easy election. Anyway, she was pregnant at the time. I would have had a little brother or sister, not sure which.”
Their family would have grown by one…if only his mother had taken better care of her health? If only there was no election that winter? If only his father wasn’t a politician? I wasn’t sure what Ushio was thinking.
“I was just a kid, so I was confused why people kept caring about the election after she died. I figured they should take time off for mourning, like I did from school. But they didn’t. At the vigil, I overheard people talking about it. ‘Why did it have to be now, when we’re so busy?’ ‘Well, Wakamiya-kun’s basically guaranteed to win after this.’ ‘The voters love a good sob story’…” He paused. “C’mon, don’t look at me like that.”
It was only then I realized I was grimacing.
“To this day, it still doesn’t upset me, oddly enough. All those strangers joking about asking their wives to die strategically, and yet it feels more like I caught a glimpse of someone else’s dream. You know, it’s funny—after my pops won his election, they put a photo in the paper of him standing at my mom’s grave. It was a beautiful shot, pure white snow all around him…and I fucking despised it.”
For the first time, anger rose up in his eyes, visible even to me.