He Was Megumi

Many first-time parents cared deeply about the first word, the first name, the first sentence their child spoke after being born.

So they repeated the names that defined their roles over and over in front of their child, along with phrases like "love Daddy" and "love Mommy." Then they fervently hoped that, whatever their child encountered in the future, those earliest memories from infancy would influence him, instructing him to love his parents unconditionally.

If loving Mom and Dad was supposed to be the first thing a child had to say at the beginning of life, then my life must have gone off the rails right from the start.

Because the first sentence Yuanyin taught me was,

"Yuanli, don't cry. Grow up already."

(1)

His black hair stuck out in every direction, as though a wool cardigan had thoroughly roughed it up. His pale face, in stark contrast to his hair, bore no trace of Yuanyin. Instead, he looked very much like his father.

Megumi Zenin, the son of Toji Zenin and Yuanyin, my younger brother by blood. Right now, his deep-ocean-blue eyes were wide with confusion, even a little helplessness, as he avoided my gaze.

After I resolved to stay by his side forever, two-year-old Megumi shied away from the touch I so rarely offered.

"Yuanli, why did you rush home?" Toji, who had come in after me, leaned against the entryway and asked in a flat voice.

"I suddenly remembered I hadn't fed Megumi, so I got worried."

"Tch." Toji looked over Megumi, who was sitting by the door, and suddenly clicked his tongue in irritation.

I didn't know if I was imagining it, but Megumi's gaze seemed to sharpen at that sound. He watched Toji warily, his body slightly hunched, his little hands overlapping in a gesture I couldn't understand. He looked exactly like a kitten about to lash out with its claws.

"Megumi Zenin," I said.

The child stiffened. As though he had realized something, he quickly separated his hands, then lowered his head, looking at neither Toji nor me.

Toji couldn't see the change in Megumi.

He ruffled my hair, then lounged lazily on the living room couch, turned on the television, and started aimlessly flipping through channels. Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out how to reach this younger brother who had suddenly become a stranger.

(2)

When he wasn't hungry, he no longer cried to attract my attention. When he was hungry, he outright refused to let me hold him, sitting up to eat on his own. Almost overnight, Megumi Zenin had become a dependable little child.

Well-behaved, obedient, even rather cold.

Why was he here? Who had he replaced? Who had he remembered? Or rather, who exactly was he now?

All those questions filled my mind, but I couldn't ask them. Because he looked at me as though I were a stranger.

Megumi Zenin wouldn't reveal his truth to me, just as I couldn't reveal mine to Toji. He must have had his own concerns and difficulties.

Then what could I do, having resolved to stay by his side?

The morning sun was especially bright. Sunlight streamed straight through the window onto the floor, completely enveloping the tiny figure sitting there. Megumi Zenin was like a gift the sun had, in a rare moment of generosity, bestowed upon this house. Unfortunately, he didn't fit the house very well.

Standing beside him, I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was only seven, but judging by the child's appearance, he had clearly been sitting here for quite a while.

What are you waiting for? I wanted to ask him.

But when he turned to look at me, that gaze keeping me a thousand miles away, I chose silence.

There was no need to pry.

I went into the kitchen to warm some milk for him, then followed the detailed instructions in a parenting book to cook soft food suitable for a two-year-old's digestive system.

I wouldn't treat him as a child without a will of his own, so naturally, I wouldn't spoon-feed him either.

Megumi Zenin toddled over and climbed into his high chair. He began laboriously controlling his right hand, slowly eating his breakfast one spoonful at a time.

Childhood always brought an endless stream of inconveniences. Like those limbs that felt borrowed.

When the bowl full of soft food fell to the floor, Megumi Zenin reacted even more strongly than I did.

He stared at his hands in disbelief, as though he had only just discovered that limbs could betray the mind.

He hastily jumped down from his high chair, and after his hands betrayed him, his legs stabbed him in the back too.

I watched helplessly as that little sea urchin fell bodily into the sticky trap of spilled food. Then, as though petrified, he froze on the floor, becoming a statue lying flat.

Why didn't I help him up?

Come on, this concerned a boy's pride. Especially when I still had no idea how old he actually was.

A three-year-old boy who fell into mushy porridge might still need an adult woman to gently help him up and soothe him. But what if he was an eighteen-year-old boy? A twenty-eight-year-old man?

All I could do was quietly clean up the mess after he stood up on his own without a word.

Wearing blue pajamas stained dark and light with food, Megumi Zenin walked back to his room, leaving a trail of footprints.

I took a sip of coffee. Once I heard the faint sounds of him changing clothes inside, I brought out the cleaning supplies and cleaned up the mess on the floor. Then I went back into the kitchen, dished up a fresh bowl of porridge, left it outside his door, and returned to my room to read.

Halfway through, I wanted to get some water. As soon as I opened my door, I found a covered cup of coffee outside, still warm.

The soul of unknown age whom I respected was returning that same respect to me, with my eighteen-year-old soul, in his own reciprocal way.

(3)

After "don't cry," the second thing Megumi Zenin said was actually "psycho killer." Not to me, but to Toji, while taking a stance meant to protect me: "psycho killer."

"Huh? What are you talking about, brat?" With blood all over his hands, Toji lifted Megumi Zenin like a little chick.

The "chick" he had picked up tried to resist again, crossing his hands in that way I couldn't understand. He even bit Toji hard.

Meanwhile, I stood off to the side, trying desperately to recall how this had all started.

That afternoon, Toji had bought groceries for once. Apparently, he had finally lost patience with the bland, watery meals I made without a sense of taste, and decided to show off his own skills.

Speaking of cooking, I had to bring up that cleaver again-the one that had survived all sorts of incidents intact, aside from a chipped blade.

Toji wasn't going to chop vegetables or tofu with it. He was going to hack through beef bones.

With the blade pointed down at a beef bone, he had barely made the first chop when I, sitting at the dining table, witnessed the cleaver's edge shattering. If a flying fragment hadn't sliced through my right ear, I would have gladly called that gorgeous sight "the birth of Bakusaiga." Right, Bakusaiga, Sesshomaru's beloved sword. Sesshomaru probably needed no explanation. If I really had to give one, he was the dog whose fur I had burned.

Right now, I just felt like an innocent victim of a cooking accident.

I touched my right ear. The slight pain and the wetness coating my entire palm told me the injury seemed fairly serious.

"Toji, did my ear fall off?" I joked.

Toji glanced at me, his expression changing in alarm. He hurried over, carefully supported my head with his left hand, then touched my ear with his right.

Seeing how serious he looked, I quickly tried to smooth things over. "It's fine. I can still hear. It's nothing major."

Toji said nothing, his expression deathly serious. I reached up to touch the injured part of my right ear again, but the moment I touched the missing piece, he stopped me. "Don't touch it. We're going to the hospital."

"No need. Just bandage it."

I really thought it was fine. There was just a piece missing from the tip of my right ear. Given that I could heal a broken bone in half a day, it would probably grow back before we even reached the hospital.

Unable to change my mind, Toji could only dig ointment and bandages out of the first-aid kit and wrap it up for me.

Once he finished, he looked at the knife on the counter and seemed to get a little angry. With his hands still covered in blood, he tossed that survivor of a cleaver into the trash, pulled an obviously expensive long blade straight out of the big worm, and went to town on the beef bones on the cutting board.

The sheer noise made it clear just how angry he was.

When the beef bones had been reduced to fragments mixed with meat, Megumi Zenin came out of his room.

What happened next really was a misunderstanding.

"Megumi, that isn't my ear. There's only a little piece missing from my ear, and it definitely won't end up in your dinner."

"You hear that, brat? Let go!"

"Mmph mmph mmph!" (He was probably arguing back, more or less. I couldn't understand him, anyway.)

My explanation seemed to make the situation even more chaotic. Left with no choice, I had to intervene physically.

I wrapped my arms around Megumi Zenin and pulled him backward. My sudden touch made his entire body go rigid. I took the opportunity to pull him off, then set him on the living room couch, adding an apology before I left.

As for Toji, I used the first-aid kit still sitting on the table to give him a quick bandage. When he muttered about whether the brat was part dog, I redirected his attention to cooking.

After all that commotion, dinner still ended up being my tasteless, watery fare.

(4)

Lying in bed that night, I was still bothered by how I had overstepped with Megumi Zenin. After turning it over in my mind, I warmed a cup of cocoa milk in the kitchen and left it outside his door as an apology.

I knocked to let him know something was outside. Just as I was about to slip back to my room, the child called me back.

"Do you want to come in?"

Would that be appropriate? I hesitated.

Subconsciously, I had been treating him as someone older than me. His politeness and the taciturn silence he occasionally displayed made it hard for me to imagine that he might be a boy still in his youth.

"Could you come in?" he asked again, very earnestly.

"Okay." This time, I agreed.

Megumi Zenin picked up the hot cocoa from the floor and sat barefoot on his bed. I looked around, found a child-sized chair, and sat facing him a short distance away.

The child looked down at the hot cocoa milk in his hands. After a long silence, he asked me, "What time is it now?"

Of course, he wasn't asking about the time shown on the wall clock. I thought there must be a deeper meaning behind it.

I chose to answer his question with one of my own. "Are you Megumi?"

He nodded without hesitation.

"Then, are you Megumi Zenin?"

He paused.

Apparently, that question touched on the truth he didn't want to tell me.

I said, "It's okay. As long as you're Megumi, you're still Toji and Yuanyin's son."

At Toji's name, Megumi Zenin frowned in irritation. But at Yuanyin's, obvious confusion appeared on his face, as though he were asking me-who was Yuanyin?

"Yuanyin was your mother. But she passed away from illness last month," I explained without being asked.

He gave an almost imperceptible nod, as though digesting that enormous amount of information.

Only after a long while did he recover enough to ask me, "Then who are you?"

Honestly, I couldn't bring myself to tell him outright that I was his older sister. It wasn't because I disliked him or anything. I just felt I couldn't live up to that title.

Instead of answering, I asked him directly, "How old are you, really? I mean your soul's age. Or how old you were in your previous life?"

Once again, he lowered his head without speaking. In that respect, he really was Toji's son. Astonishingly reserved and quiet.

I thought I wouldn't get an answer. Just as I was about to speak and end the conversation, he actually opened his mouth.

"Fifteen. I was fifteen in my previous life."

My eyes widened slightly. I couldn't believe my ears, and I was shaken to my core.

Fifteen. What did that mean?

Suddenly, I didn't dare think about it. But I realized that if the experiences I couldn't even bear to imagine were what he had lived through, day and night, for fifteen years, then what kind of suffering had this child endured?

I regretted how cautiously I had touched him before. Because what this child named Megumi needed was probably a tight hug, filled with comfort.

Even if I still couldn't give him that now, I wanted to try. To try changing a touch into a proper embrace.