A trip to Hawaii (IV)

(I) Toji

The night he agreed to go to Hawaii with Yuanli, Toji failed to fall asleep for once.

He was like a pirate who had obtained a treasure map, tossing and turning over the riches marked by that red cross.

His child, whose outward composure had sealed her behind impenetrable walls, had finally revealed a sliver of the vulnerability beneath her iron shell.

On the plane, Toji had already begun imagining their trip.

What attracted him most about the Hawaii he envisioned had never been the waves or the beaches, but the opportunity to prove himself in a setting free of worries.

Toji intended to show what a father ought to be like. He wanted to leave behind the terrible job he had done since Yuanli was born.

After the plane landed, he kept observing and learning from the way the families around him interacted.

He had been quietly watching a family of four not far from him ever since they boarded the plane.

The husband was as bulky as a giant family-size bag of potato chips sold at the supermarket. His wife was thin, had a shrill voice, and pinched the tip of her nose every time she spoke. Then there were their two noisy, ill-behaved children.

On the plane, Toji had failed to see a single redeeming quality in them. But after they disembarked, the moment the bulky husband held his younger son in one arm and dragged an enormous suitcase with his other hand, chatting and laughing with his older daughter, he looked quite the loving father.

Toji compared them with his own family. His physique was a hundred times better than that giant bag of chips. Not only could he hold Yuanli with one arm, he could even lift her up with one hand. As for the brat, he could easily have his son sit on the suitcase, then pull it along while listening to his children chat and laugh.

Following an example was easy. Toji waited confidently for their checked baggage, then froze.

Their family had not brought any luggage at all.

So Toji made a few adjustments to the scene in his head, deleting the image of his son sitting on the suitcase and replacing it with one child in each arm.

At the airport exit, just as he was about to scoop Yuanli up, his daughter was already standing at the end of the passage, speaking fluent English as she coordinated with their guide and interpreter.

This was not the right moment. Toji withdrew his hand and decided to wait for another opportunity. Their vacation in Hawaii was long, after all. He had plenty of time.

They left the airport, took a luxury sedan to the wharf, and boarded a speedboat that took them straight to a popular island.

As soon as they got off the boat, Toji reached out again and took his daughter's hand, intending to carry her the rest of the way, but another luxury sedan had already been waiting for them for some time. As it turned out, once a four-wheeled car appeared, the Good Dad brand of transportation was no longer needed.

Toji felt defeated. He lowered the car window, revealing the blazing heat of Hawaii outside. The beautiful foreign women confidently showing off their figures on the beach held no more appeal for him than the palm trees. What caught his eye were the adults and children holding hands and digging holes in the sand.

Unfortunately, the car was too fast. Before he could figure out whether the adults poured water first and let the children build, or built something themselves so the children could enjoy stomping it flat, they had already arrived at the hotel.

At the time, Toji had thought it was fine. The three of them would be playing by the sea together eventually anyway. He eagerly returned to his room and changed into the floral shirt provided by the hotel, ready to take his children out, only to hear Yuanli say,

"We each have our own interests, so let's do our own thing. Dad, you can go with Mr. Furuya. Megumi, if there's anything you're interested in, go with the guide."

At those words, all the confidence filling Toji's chest drained out of him along with his sweat.

He showed no displeasure, nor did he complain to express his feelings. He merely lowered his eyes as he turned to leave.

This was so hard. Like being forced to attend classes and take exams. So hard.

He left the hotel with Furuya. Beside him, the interpreter chattered on about popular activities and suggested he consider the hotel's private beach, but Toji did not take in a single word.

Standing outside the hotel entrance, baked scorching hot by the sun, he suddenly asked Furuya, "Do you have children?"

Furuya Sō was somewhat confused, but answered, "Yes, I have a son."

"How old is your son?"

"Seventeen, I think? Or maybe sixteen. It's been too long since I went back home. I can't quite remember."

"How's your relationship with him?"

Furuya Sō gave a wry smile. "Pretty good, I suppose."

-Absolutely nothing useful to learn from him.

Toji touched the scar at the corner of his mouth and decided not to question Furuya Sō any further. Instead, after a moment of silence, Furuya tentatively asked him,

"Mr. Zenin, are you struggling with how to get along with your children?"

He murmured an acknowledgment. Immediately afterward, the activity booklet was pulled from his hand and replaced with a flyer whose colors were dizzyingly garish. Several large words were printed prominently across it-Hawaii Parent-Child Summer Camp.

(II) Toji

Kahoolawe Island, one of Hawaii's popular islands.

Compared with Oahu, where drinking, sex, and entertainment all crowded onto a single beach, this island brought together all sorts of three-generation families enjoying their time together.

When he landed on the island with Furuya, Toji felt certain he would gain a great deal from this visit. He simply had not expected those benefits to extend beyond his mind and affect his body as well.

He and Furuya stood a short distance away with their arms folded, watching. Before they could find anyone to observe and learn from, the Hawaiian police approached them.

Amid Furuya's string of explanations involving "sorry" and "kindness," Toji's image as the godfather of some criminal organization somehow became even more firmly established in the minds of the Hawaiian police.

Just as Toji was about to be taken away for questioning, the Kudo father and son appeared.

With sound reasoning, well-supported arguments, and a guarantee offered after firmly making their case, the father and son not only saved Toji with a few words, but also enabled these two fathers to join the only successful loving father present for the next parent-child activity.

Of course, Toji and Furuya still watched from the sidelines. They merely stopped folding their arms, adopting a more humble posture.

This activity was a shared reading session between parents and children.

The children attending this summer camp were all quite young, still at an age for fairy tales. So when imitated duck quacks, cat meows, and even exaggerated cries of "a long time ago" rose one after another, Toji's first reaction was to leave.

What a joke. Never mind Yuanli-even the brat wouldn't read books like these.

He could not picture himself reading a fairy tale with Yuanli. Even if he could, given her personality, she would be the one reading to him, and what she read might well be a police bail form.

Toji had intended to leave, but after seeing the Kudo father and son together, he came back. They were sharing The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Yuanli had read that book too. Apart from Oral Medicine Lecture Notes, it was the only book she had read, and it had nothing to do with medicine.

"What's this book about?" Toji asked Furuya quietly.

The one who answered him, however, was Shinichi Kudo.

The little boy excitedly told Toji about the book, constantly praising how clever this man named Sherlock Holmes was and how intricate and bizarre the cases were.

Toji was not interested in any of that, so when the little boy paused for breath, he asked, "What's so great about Sherlock Holmes? Why do you like him so much?"

"Isn't someone who can understand people's hearts, see through to the truth, and punish evil while upholding good already incredibly fascinating?" the boy said.

Seven-year-old Shinichi Kudo was not particularly precocious, but he was undoubtedly a genius.

For an instant, Toji almost saw Yuanli in him.

He felt as though he was beginning to understand the root of it all.

Toji found it difficult because his children were not ordinary children. He could not learn how to live with gifted, precocious children from ordinary families.

One by one, he overturned all those imagined family scenes and ideas about bonding with his children.

The Kudo father and son's exchange continued, but Toji's mind had already gone blank.

He had never been good at maintaining relationships. He had no friends, not because he did not want any, but because he did not know how and was unwilling to try. He did not know how to make a friendship last, and he was unwilling to lay himself bare to a stranger.

He had no lover. In all honesty, the affection he had felt for Yuanyin at first sight had only arisen because he saw warmth in her. But being drawn to warmth had never produced love, only fondness and need.

All he had was family. Maintaining that bond with Yuanyin had been simple. He only had to listen to her, like a domesticated dog, and he could have a home and an owner who might love him.

No one had taught him how to sustain a relationship or maintain an emotional bond. The experiences and knowledge he possessed were either overturned by Yuanli or entirely unsuitable for her.

Yuanli was different from Yuanyin.

His daughter had slowly transformed him from a dog walking on all fours into a human standing upright.

Toji remained lost in thought for a long time. Only when the activity ended and Yusaku Kudo stood beside him smoking under a tree did he gradually come back to himself.

Yusaku Kudo was a man with both high intelligence and emotional insight. He understood Toji's dazed silence but did not point it out.

He chose a gentle, kind way to guide this helpless father.

He began talking about himself and his son.

"When Shinichi was born, the nurse had to give his bottom three extra slaps before he finally cried. He was such a stubborn little thing."

"I realized he was different from other children on his very first day of kindergarten. He didn't cry, hardly ever. So when he came running up to me with red eyes and told me he'd deduced that a classmate was being bullied, but had been misunderstood and scolded by the teacher when he tried to help, I finally realized I was an inadequate father."

"The year he was born was a particularly busy one for my career. Almost every day, I was buried in revisions, writing scripts, and talking with directors and editors. By the time my new book became a bestseller and the television adaptation aired, Shinichi had just turned three. When I wanted to spend more time talking with him, he was already starting kindergarten."

"I'm not grateful for the setbacks he faced, but I have to admit that they gave me more opportunities to understand him, spend time with him, and be needed by him. I think you must be just like I was back then, Mr. Zenin. You've arrived at that crucial moment when your child needs you most, haven't you?"

Their cigarettes burned out. Toji offered Yusaku Kudo another, but he waved it away.

Little Shinichi Kudo was already calling from a short distance away for his father to join the next parent-child activity, which involved Bomb Disposal.