Chapter 01
ON A COLD, WINDY NIGHT, Kanba sat at the bright red counter of a little ramen shop on the outskirts of town.
“Freakin’ cold,” he muttered, exhaling white fog. Both of his arms were bandaged nearly to the elbow. He shrank down into his black military jacket, burying his face in the matching black faux fur lining the collar.
“Have your hands healed?” a woman asked, concerned.
“Yeah. They look a lot worse than they actually are, but trust me, it’s no big deal,” he answered in an uncharacteristically calm, gentle voice.
“Kanba.”
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find Takakura Kenzan and Chiemi sitting beside him at the counter, gazing at him softly.
“You’ve been doing a truly wonderful job. You make your father proud,” Kenzan whispered.
“You really are the perfect son,” Chiemi chimed in, a soft smile playing at her lips as she reached out and stroked Kanba’s short hair, ice-cold from exposure to the night wind. Bashfully, he smiled and stared down at the counter.
“We can’t come home until our mission is complete, so you have to protect the Takakura family until then. Understand?”
Kenzan gazed at Kanba with a pained, yet unwavering look in his eyes. Kanba looked back at him with renewed resolve.
“Look out for Shoma and Himari, won’t you?” Chiemi asked in a feeble voice.
“I will.” His arms felt stiff—possibly from the cold—and ached more sharply than they had during the day.
“Give my son the usual,” Kenzan told the man standing behind the counter, dressed all in black. The man set a thick envelope down in front of Kanba.
Everything would be fine. All Kanba had to do was keep putting out fires until Kenzan and Chiemi could return. Then, eventually, there would come a day when the entire Takakura family would reunite. They would all live together, and Shoma and Himari would never have to feel lonely ever again.
Wordlessly, Kanba slid the envelope into his jacket pocket.
Tabuki never came back to our school after that. The only closure we got was a brief morning announcement informing us that “Tabuki Keiju-sensei has formally resigned.” His assistant was temporarily promoted into the newly vacated position, and one of the older teachers took over our biology class.
“Here you can see the chloroplasts inside the leaf of this plant. They harvest energy from sunlight and use it to synthesize glucose and other carbohydrates from water and carbon dioxide. This is how plants produce oxygen. The umbrella term is photosynthesis, but today we’ll be looking at how this process can change under certain conditions.”
Meanwhile, my classmates were gossiping about why Tabuki would suddenly quit his job, though nobody really questioned it. None of the students especially disliked him, but they were never all that interested in him, either. In the past, this was true for me and Kanba, too.
Just then, I heard loud whispers near the back of the classroom.
“So why did Tabuki quit, anyway?”
“Maybe he got sick of teaching at an all-boys’ school.”
“He seemed like a hard-working kind of guy. Maybe the stress got to him.”
They were right—Tabuki was a hard-working guy. That was why, when pushed to the breaking point, he snapped and did the things he did.
I snuck a glance at Kanba. He was resting his chin in his palm and staring into space like he couldn’t care less. His arms were still bandaged up, but you couldn’t really see it through his uniform sleeves. I sighed and looked away.
“As for the process of transpiration, uh…I think we covered that last time, right? In that case, let’s refer to the graph there in your textbooks. The x axis represents the absorption rate of carbon dioxide, while the y axis represents the intensity of sunlight. This shows us how photosynthesis changes based on the light’s brightness. Now, what does the x axis tell us? Anyone? How about you?” The teacher pointed at one of the gossiping students. “Can you tell us the answer?”
“Uhh…I don’t know,” the student answered in a small, sheepish voice.
“Okay then. Someone else?”
With a sigh, I decided I liked this new teacher.
Thanks for everything. I wish you well.
The words were written in stiff, angular handwriting on a scrap of paper on the living room table, placed alongside the key to the condo. Not only that, but the curtains Yuri brought home were now hanging from the curtain rods over each window. Unfortunately, this did little to improve the stark chill.
That morning, Yuri sat alone, drinking a warm cup of coffee and thinking about the halfway-planned reception, about Momoka, about the Takakura children. She sank back into the sofa, wearing slippers on her feet and a cardigan over her champagne-gold silk pajamas. The ring had vanished from her left hand, but that man was still her husband. So where had he gone?
Back in autumn, on the anniversary of Momoka’s passing, Yuri had invited Tabuki to the first Indian restaurant she could think of. They sat on opposite sides of the table and ate beef curry over rice on plates garnished with raisins.
“Married?” he repeated, frowning, as he lowered his clean spoon back to the table.
“Yes, that’s right. The two of us should stick together,” she replied as if it was the obvious choice. Then she started in on her meal without waiting for him.
“You really think so?”
He shifted his gaze to the metal pot full of steaming hot curry. She cleared her throat, then took a sip of water.
“I do. You and I are connected through the Wheel of Fortune,” she declared.
“Through Momoka, you mean?”
Indeed, Tabuki Keiju and Tokikago Yuri were the only two people who knew about Momoka’s secret power—that much was certain. But Tabuki had no romantic feelings for Yuri, and as far as he knew, she didn’t feel that way about him, either. No, what they truly loved was Momoka and the precious few moments they spent with her in childhood.
“If we become a family, we can be with Momoka forever.”
Yuri believed this wholeheartedly. After all, Tabuki was the only other person who knew Momoka like she did. Together, they could spend their whole lives loving her.
“No. We could never be a family,” Tabuki said.
Sure, they could fill out the paperwork and establish a legal connection between them, but family wasn’t as simple as that. Tabuki was already sick to death of being bound and controlled by familial ties. All he needed was Momoka.