People always believe the world is exactly as they see it. Yet they only ever have one pair of eyes to see with, one pair of ears to hear with, one nose to smell with, and one pair of hands to touch with. After all that limited understanding, they still have only one mouth to convey the restricted thoughts of one brain.
Technology keeps advancing. Even without going somewhere in person, people can see things from tens of millions of miles away. And yet, the distance between one heart and another remains. Even if someone thinks and acts day and night, it feels as though they can only move it forward by a single centimeter.
If someone has already decided that the road ahead and the scenery behind them are both gray, then no amount of brilliant sunlight can shine into that stubborn heart.
It is like clinging forever to a pile of broken memories, trying as hard as possible to recall them and only managing to summon the shadow of a family already shattered beyond repair. Over time, without even realizing it, the person holding them begins to break apart too.
When you are young, people can call that adolescent melodrama. Once you grow up, it is just self-pity.
Unlucky people will eventually get slapped in the face by reality. Luckier people get slapped in the face by someone beside them.
If you really think about it, though...
Is it all that terrible?
At most, the past can only drag on the present. What decides the future is the present, and the present can still be changed by action.
It is like an ordinary romance drama. The male and female leads both love each other, and the audience knows it from their all-seeing point of view, but the writer insists on throwing in one pointless sour little obstacle after another, dragging things out for fifty or eighty more months while side characters keep popping up halfway through and making each lead think the other probably likes someone else.
In reality, by the end, one straightforward "I like you" would solve everything.
A truly skilled writer is one who can have them confess and still find new ways to sour things for another fifty or eighty more months.
Life is the same. Plenty of things that feel so certain will suddenly become clear once they are spoken aloud and seen from another side, and then you realize how childish you used to be.
You decide, all on your own, that no one needs you. You decide, all on your own, that you are useless. You beat a crowd of people and take first place in an arena, then still mutter to yourself that they must be doing better than you in the real world, sinking even deeper into self-doubt.
But looked at another way, if they cannot even beat you in a game, who says they are definitely better than you in reality?
The courage should have been simple enough to find.
Why insist on casting yourself as the victim? Think it through. Even if your parents are dead, even if you are passive, hopeless, and harmless, that does not mean some random girls will start fighting each other to join your harem. And staring sadly up at the sky at a forty-five-degree angle over every tiny thing will not change anything.
The Earth will only curl its lip and say it can keep spinning just fine without you, while billions of people would go insane without it.
Once you understand that, you can look a little more mature.
Even if some more talented writer takes over later and keeps writing the next part of this ridiculous story.
You can smoke a cigarette, curse him a couple of times, and keep walking.
That was... how a guy was supposed to carry himself.
Hillside Cemetery.
The long road had already left the bustle of the big city far behind. Along the way, there were only rolling little mountains that looked almost copied and pasted, and a faintly luminous stretch of green. Even looking out from the car window made the eyes tired. Deeper in the mountains, a stairway paved from stacked stone blocks led step by step into the shadowed forest.
Within the encircling woods, the gray-white firmness of gravestones could be seen among the green.
Square gravestones stood row after row, evenly spaced, nearly covering that entire mountainside. As long as it was not a memorial day, few human voices reached this place. Only scattered little wild birds, unaware of any meaning, sometimes landed on a gravestone when they were tired of flying, blinking and hopping lightly a few times.
In this place where the dead were gathered, perhaps the only one who remained year-round was the hunched old caretaker who slowly shuffled from the middle of the slope to the top and then back down again every day on his rounds.
A metal flask hung at his waist, though what it held was high-proof liquor. The pay for this job was fairly generous, but it was also terribly lonely. Today, the old man swayed up the steps again, his cloudy eyes casually passing over the solemn gravestones on both sides.
When he happened to notice two people, he only watched them for a few extra glances before looking away.
They were two men who had come a long way, both in not particularly new black and gray tracksuits, each holding white flowers. The old man's eyesight was poor, so he could not tell what kind they were, but when he sniffed, he seemed able to smell the fragrance from the blossoms in their open buds.
Though it was not as sweet as the baijiu in his flask.
Rest in the earth, rest in the earth. Once people were dead and buried, they would only decay and break down. Burned clean by a single fire, they were at least as clean as when they came. In the end, what people came to worship was only the stone tablet engraved with a person's name.
Who, across all these thousands of years, did not have to die?
The old man let his half-drunken head wander through these thoughts. He glanced again at the two gravestones that had always had few visitors, lifted his head for a swallow of strong liquor, and continued up the mountain with unsteady steps.
After placing the flowers before the graves, Satoru looked at the deeply carved faces fixed on the stones and could not help lowering his head.
His thin, sharply jointed fingers brushed over the engraved characters. All that reached his fingertips was the roughness of stone, no longer the touch of his parents.
"I had never even come here," he said quietly.
"I rarely came either," Ken Suzuki said beside him. "When your father took my sister and left, I was still in another city. All I could think about then was how I would celebrate her and her fiance when I got home. I never expected that when I returned, what I would see was questioning from her fiance's family and my old father's face dark with anger."
"I called my sister so many times, but she refused to come back. She was dead set on being with your dad. She had always been obedient and filial, but on that one thing, she inherited our father's stubbornness. And in the end, that stubborn old man kept all that anger bottled up. Later his old illness came back, and little by little, he could not hold on."
Ken gently crouched down too.
"Back then, I dragged my sister to the hospital with everything I had, but I never thought I would still be just a little too late... In the end, they never got to see you even once. They only knew you had been born. They did not know your name, what you looked like, or what it felt like to hold you."
"As for that father of yours, I suppose the only thing worth praising was that he was honest and proper enough. He did not have many strengths. I met him before. I thought any man who could run off with a woman who already had an engagement must have some temper in him, but in the end, even you took my sister's surname."
He could not help shaking his head with a laugh.
"At least while we are here, let's not talk about him like that," Satoru said.
"Even if he were alive, I would still say it." Ken glared and snorted. "He had no ability worth mentioning. That was why my father opposed him. He took someone and ran, and afterward he did not even have the courage to come back and apologize. Most importantly, he left just like that, even more cleanly than when he stole the bride. Even if a car had not killed him, I would have beaten him to death myself."
"Hey..." Satoru could not quite hold back.
"I come here to see my sister. Whoever wants to see him can see him." Ken turned his neck away.
"..."
"What about Dad's relatives? I have never heard anything about them all these years," Satoru asked.
"He seems to have been an orphan. No family."
"I see." Satoru pressed his lips together. "You also said you do not like coming to see him... So the person in this world who most ought to visit him is only me now."
Ken looked at him and could not help saying, "When I come to see my sister, if I sometimes bring too much fruit, I share some with him too."
"I do not think that would make him very happy..."
"Tch."
Satoru simply sat down on the ground and gazed at the two stone markers in front of him.
"Dad had no parents, so I had no paternal grandparents. My maternal grandparents are gone too."
He spoke slowly.
"Then Mom and Dad both left as well."
"Those relatives in name only all thought only of themselves."
"So in the end, the only family I had left was my uncle."
Ken stood beside him without speaking.
"But actually, before this, I thought I did not even have an uncle. I felt like I was no different from an orphan. I did not even have teachers or classmates who were orphans like me. Look, I could not afford meals, and I could not find anyone to help me. Before, I was always angry at the world, as if heaven owed me something. If I had not barely managed to support myself, I really would have been miserable." At this point, he smiled faintly.
"...Sorry." Listening to him, Ken quietly forced out the word.
"It is nothing. On the contrary, I think it is good. Now I have family. And the one who should say sorry is me."
"Why...?"
"Because for you, I am the only family you have left in this world too, right?"
Ken suddenly froze.
"I'm sorry. I made you worry for two years. I should have come back sooner, and I even messed up the life you were supposed to be living," Satoru said softly.
"You brat, you grew up a little... and your head started working fast."
"Go back to Kyoto," Satoru suddenly said.
Ken looked at him in confusion.
"A few days ago, while you were out, I answered a call. It was from your old workplace in Kyoto. They said if you wanted to go back, you absolutely could."
"I'm not going. They are definitely looking for me to cover some miserable work. I am not doing it. Think about it. What kind of workplace calls an employee two years after he quit? There has to be a trap," Ken muttered with a snort.
"Not after two years... They have been calling this whole time, haven't they?" Satoru said.
Ken put away the exaggerated smile on his face.
"It is your girlfriend, right? Of course, I do not mean the old one," Satoru asked.
"No. She is just my boss."
"She may have been your boss at first, but maybe she fell for you later. After all, when she found out I was Satoru, her voice was so delighted I could practically picture her jumping in place... She said quite a lot, including that you refused to let her come back with you."
"Taking care of you was my business. There was no need to drag her into it. Besides, her shop is still over there. That stupid woman does not know what matters. I have even met her parents, and they are practically carved from the same mold as my old man. I do not want to become someone like your dad," Ken complained. "She still has not found someone new after nearly two years. Just as I thought, she really is not a likable woman."
"So go back. She has waited for you for two years, and the assistant manager position has been kept open this whole time."
"Will you come with me...?"
"I still need to stay in Tokyo. There are things I have to do."
"Then I cannot leave either. You are the only nephew I have," Ken said bluntly.
"That will not work either. I already told her over the phone that you were going. From her tone, she might be too impatient to wait and already packing her bags to come find you first."
"Damn it, you brat, you set up your own uncle!"
Satoru stood, stretched, and patted his shoulder.
"Your nephew merely did a tiny bit of work. Besides, with a girl waiting for you like that, are you really not moved at all?"
"Who could ever tame that she-devil? I think what you need is a little great-unclely love." Ken stood as well and rolled up his sleeves.
"Hey, hey, let's talk this out!"
"They say a good beating builds character." Ken cracked his knuckles. "Right now, I'm building some character."
"Wait, why does that sound like violence?!"
"You'll know soon enough!"
Satoru, caught in a joint lock, twisted his face into an exaggerated, ridiculous expression, while Ken slowly increased the pressure, pouring even more love into his lesson.
"Stop resisting. This move has never failed me!" Ken shouted.
"W-watch this."
"Hmph. What a powerless struggle... Damn it! Do not touch my armpit!"
The two of them, laughing and crying, wrestled into a heap in front of the two gravestones.
They were both adults, yet they were as childish as kids.
The smiles of the two people long gone, carved into the stones,
And the gentle gaze they seemed to cast upon them,
Were almost too perfectly fitting.