(1) Interlude
As that sticky, nauseating gaze swept over Toji's chest, he curled his lip in disdain.
He knew that look all too well. If he had just turned nineteen, the setting would not have been the Racecourse, but a party full of clinking glasses, and he would not have been so repulsed.
The woman's blood-red lips opened and closed, and every so often, she flirtatiously tugged at her collar.
Toji chose to ignore all of it. He had only stopped to draw out more advice on raising children.
What he had not expected, however, was how good she was at talking. She made him lose track of time, leading him to make one small mistake.
And a coincidence magnified that mistake beyond measure.
In the end, it turned into the worst possible outcome.
From the moment the police arrived until the criminal was taken into custody, Yuanli seemed to have vanished into thin air.
The brat dragged him out of the Racecourse by his sleeve and back to the Hotel.
He heard a hint of accusation in the brat's voice as he asked,
"Are you that desperate to remarry?"
He was speechless.
No. That wasn't it.
For once, he tried to explain himself to the brat, but his son, who always seemed sick of him, refused to listen. He let go of Toji's sleeve and locked the door.
Toji stood outside the closed door, cold sweat beginning to break out across his back.
He wondered whether his daughter thought the same thing.
If she did, what would she do? Would she hate me? Would she abandon me?
Toji began experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms. Breathing started to feel difficult.
Having grown up in suffering, he could be satisfied with even the smallest taste of love.
Toji had known love in his life, but that familial love had been shallow. Yuanli had never given him her whole heart, but what did that matter? Just a little was enough. He could live on that little bit.
But Yuanli had shattered that sense of contentment.
This was doting love, weighty and almost overflowing.
After tasting that kind of love, who could ever live without it?
Toji sat downstairs at the Hotel, waiting with his full attention.
He would keep waiting. If she did not come, he would go looking. He would scour the entire world to find her.
He would apologize properly, then explain everything properly.
He had to return that love. He had to answer the child who shared his blood.
Nearly five hours passed, and he smoked several packs of cigarettes.
It was already the next day when the child finally arrived.
(2) In Progress
I kicked aside the aluminum can stuffed with cigarette butts, took a tissue from my pocket, and wiped the ash off the step. Then I sat on the cold steps beside a silent Toji.
Right before us lay artificial turf turned brown beneath the dim streetlights. In the distance stood ugly buildings with lights that never went out.
This was scenery worth no more than a passing glance, yet Toji had stared at it for almost five hours.
I felt an urge to apologize.
After all, ever since the Racecourse, I had made so many mistakes without realizing it.
But when I turned to look at him, I found I did not dare speak.
Right and wrong would not torment me. The separation that followed them would kill me.
The whole thing had started when he spoke to Fushiguro Tomomi.
When a woman approached him, whether he answered had always been his choice.
The person at fault had kept him there by talking about children, causing him to overlook the obsession in her eyes. That, too, had only been a momentary lapse.
And beneath that lapse, I had seen him rebuilding.
He was rebuilding his identity as a father, learning how to keep his children from leaving him.
So Toji had done nothing wrong.
Then who had?
Fushiguro Tomomi?
She was certainly at fault, but she was not the heart of the problem.
The person truly at fault was me.
In that situation, I could clearly have dealt with Fushiguro Tomomi without making a sound. Instead, because of my ugly suspicions and childish assumptions, I had exposed the whole affair right in front of Toji.
That made it seem as though he had caused the incident, while I had resolved it.
In truth, Toji could have handled it himself. I did not believe he had sensed nothing at all. He had simply been biding his time for information. But I had not thought any of that through, and it had instantly reversed who was right and who was wrong.
I knew Toji too well.
He was bound to think he had done something wrong. He had to be blaming himself, or...
I suddenly remembered the look in Megumi's eyes back then.
Only now did I recognize the fuse that could set off a tragedy.
Had I lit that fuse?
Would he discover my ugly suspicions and my immaturity, then, just like Yuanli, slowly grow disappointed in me, distance himself, and abandon me?
I was so stupid.
I really was nothing but a burden.
With my head lowered, I gripped my own hair and sank into severe anxiety.
I hadn't been calm enough. I hadn't been rational enough.
Hadn't I seen enough of those disappointed looks from Yuanli?
Hadn't Yuanli distanced herself from me precisely because I couldn't be perfectly rational, couldn't choose the option that was one hundred percent correct?
My body began pulling at my hair without my awareness, but my mind knew clearly that I could no longer hide the symptoms.
At that moment, my soul seemed split in two. The half I could control was my mind, watching my actions from a third-person perspective, cold and objective. The uncontrollable half was my behavior. My body's stress response could not stop the anxious scratching and tearing.
I had lost control of my body. My subconscious self-loathing surfaced and took command of every nerve.
I scratched harder and harder. Just as I felt the back of my neck begin to bleed, the skin torn open, my hands were forcibly pulled apart, and my whole body was locked in an embrace.
My teeth were still chattering.
Even though my mind had expressly forbidden me from saying anything apologetic.
My subconscious was wreaking havoc. The psychological issues I had buried came flooding out, quickly drowning every pretense of normality.
I began apologizing, rapidly and without pause.
Then, over and over, I repeated that I would do better, that I would do everything more perfectly.
As though I had gone mad. Or perhaps I had already been mad for more than a hundred years.
Yuanli's death, Yuanli's abandonment, and the centuries of pathological pressure I had put on myself all erupted at that moment.
I...
I, who strove to be rational forever, mature forever...
Was someone utterly terrified of being abandoned.
I had never been held with both arms. When Yuanli held me, she always used only one, as though-as though I were a partner of hers who had died.
I had never received a gift in return from family. The arms Yuanli had left me were tenants, every one of them. They had never belonged to me.
I had never been acknowledged, either. Even though I looked so much like her, whenever she introduced me to others, she glossed over everything by calling ours an employment relationship.
Every bit of acknowledgment, protection, and love I had received had come from this father and son, who had shared a genuine bond with me for barely a month.
"I'll do better, be more perfect, more mature, more reliable, more..."
Scalding tears soaked the wound at the back of my neck.
The seizure-like symptoms gradually subsided.
Toji was not actually someone who cried aloud. He had always preferred to restrain his voice. Even his hysterical breakdowns in the Zenin Clan had been lonely, silent sobbing.
Yet now, I heard broken sobs beside my ear.
And an indistinct murmur whose meaning was unwavering: "...won't leave you."
For some reason, a bitter smile came to my lips.
It was as though I had only just learned that this cruel affliction did not require surgery that cut me open. A few pills could actually cure it.
As overwhelming happiness swept over me, it also brought a pain I could not put into words.
I leaned into Toji's arms, my eyes settling on an advertising poster in the lobby behind him.
LED lights illuminated the poster. The abundant light made the sea and beach in the picture look both tacky and dreamlike, while the bright yellow words across it were glaring and out of place.
After staring at the poster for a long time, I turned my head and nuzzled Toji, who was hurting for me. I closed my eyes, feeling both the weightlessness and the safety as he lifted me into his arms.
Then I silently repeated the bright yellow words on the poster,
[Time to say bye-bye to the past. Vibrant Hawaii, welcome me.]
Before you continue