One day, half a year after they vanished, I met with Nanahoshi.
It wasn’t the first time we’d met up since Aisha and Arus disappeared. When it first happened, I’d wanted to hear her opinion about everything. She looked disgusted at the details of Arus and Aisha’s relationship, but she heard me out. I appreciated that she listened, even if she didn’t give any particularly constructive advice.
Today, for the first time in a while, we talked about something different: the other world. Nanahoshi told me about this little takoyaki joint near her home. It’d been there for ages. When I was little, I used to go there for takoyaki myself. We talked about how we wanted to have a few, that sort of thing. Nothing serious.
On the way home, I remembered something from nearly thirty years ago—a day I could never forget.
It was a story from before I was born, before I came to be in this world. In a sense, though, it was the true beginning of my whole journey. In other words, I remembered something from the day I died.
I’d had siblings in that life. My older brother was married with children. He had two of them, in fact. Both girls. They were Japanese, so obviously they looked nothing like Norn and Aisha, but they were remarkably similar in terms of how innocent they were. His house was close by, so they often came to stay at our family home. Him, his wife, and his two girls.
I used that.
One day, they pulled out the kiddie pool, and the girls were playing. My big brother was a cameraman, so he took photos of them with the new digital camera he’d bought.
I secretly pulled the memory card from his camera, copied the photos, and took them for myself. The photos showed my nieces in their bathing suits. It wasn’t like I was particularly interested in the girls—I just stole the photos because I could.
Then came the day when my parents died.
I used those photos. And my older brother caught me in the act.
Before that day, I think he’d still been willing to talk to me. That was why he dropped by the house. My older sister and little brother might’ve been prepared to beat me to a pulp, but not him. He’d mostly given up on me, but he was open to giving me one last chance.
Mom and Dad are dead. There’s no one left to protect you. Isn’t it about time you get your life moving again? I’ll do everything I can to support you, he would say.
If I’d had a change of heart and decided to try to restart my life, he probably would have provided me with financial support. That was the kind of guy my big brother was—the sort who had watched over me all that time without giving up.
Until he saw those photos. Until he realized what I had done.
My big brother lost it then. Thinking back on it, he was the first one to punch me. It wasn’t my sister, who’d long ago become disgusted with me, or my little brother, who’d wanted to hurt me so badly that he’d brought a bat with him.
When my older brother saw the photos I’d used to get off, he paused for about five seconds, roared, and hit me.
I understood his reaction now. Of course I did. I would’ve done the same. I used his beloved children as masturbatory material. If I’d been in my brother’s shoes, I would’ve hit me too.
I was now my big brother. That was what I was feeling.
But Aisha was not like me. She was a woman and had lived and worked well, much more than I ever had in my previous life. She’d fulfilled her responsibilities. That’s why I hadn’t hit her. Instead, I’d felt a strong resistance to their relationship, like I had to tear them apart. It was based entirely on emotions and my own sense of ethics, not logic.
The guilt and the regret I felt over what happened back then pushed me forward in this life. I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past. That was probably why I’d never felt a sense of inferiority toward my siblings, Aisha and Norn. If I looked at who I’d once been, it was odd that I’d never compared myself negatively to my cute little sisters.
Either way, what I’d done back then was different from what Aisha and Arus had done, even if it appeared similar on the surface.
Aisha and Arus hadn’t stolen photos of one another. They’d faced their respective feelings up front and took the time to build their relationship. Sure, Arus was young, and that might have led to him imprinting on Aisha. I couldn’t say for sure, but that was probably part of it. Regardless, Aisha and Arus had spent ten years—no, over ten years—together. That was a long time.
Me claiming that Aisha was stunting Arus’s growth was just a reason that came after the fact. The root of all of this was my overreaction. I was acting like my brother had that day, only my behavior wasn’t nearly as justified.
My brother and I never saw each other again after that day. I died, and our relationship came to an abrupt end. But had I lived on and apologized, I wonder what would have happened. He almost certainly would have cut ties with me, but at least I could have apologized. I doubted he’d have forgiven me, and our relationship would’ve never returned to normal, but something would have happened. I don’t know what that something was, but…
For now, I understood where my resistance to Aisha and Arus’s relationship came from. That day had traumatized me. The things I’d done and the awful things my actions had resulted in, and that was why I felt so strongly that it was wrong to touch your own family.
There was no way the strength of my trauma, my repulsion, was as strong as what my brother felt that day. But if I ever saw Aisha again, I had to apologize before all else. First, I had to apologize for forcing them apart without explaining myself. If I didn’t do that, there was no way we could have a conversation. We couldn’t begin to work things out.
Aisha had apologized to me during that family meeting, and she’d even asked me to explain why I was against their relationship. I needed to be the one to start things off—to apologize and explain my previous life. Then we’d talk about their future again. This time, we’d have a proper conversation. Maybe it wouldn’t reach a satisfying conclusion, but none of us would feel the need to brute force their way through the discussion.
That was what I’d come up with, at least.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was a year after finding their letter that we located them.