When Tachibana Harumi’s daughter asked her to come with her to the funeral of one of her friends’ father, the last thing she could have said to her was no.
But once she’d arrived with Hibiki, offered her condolences to the family, written her name in the registry, deposited her okoden in the tray, and taken her seat near the back of the room, she felt so out-of-place that even though this funeral ceremony was as normal as could be, it was as though she’d walked onto another planet.
Why was she here? For Hibiki, of course, she reminded herself, because the world had nearly ended and now that it hadn’t, everyone wanted to be with their families.
There was Tsubasa’s family up front, filling two neat rows arranged from youngest to oldest with her at the front right seat (Harumi didn’t question why one of Hibiki’s best friends was a world-famous idol, or why one of said idol’s father’s siblings was the same red-haired mountain of a man who’d given her the news of Hibiki’s death after the Lunar Attack, and three weeks afterward, the news of her miraculous recovery—she didn’t question much of anything to do with what Hibiki got up to these days). Similarly world-famous idol and former international terrorist Maria Cadenzavna Eve was also in attendance, along with Miku, rounding out the numbers of roughly half a dozen other girls who frequently showed up in the photos Hibiki sent home.
From what she’d heard, nearly every adult in Tsubasa’s family besides Tsubasa herself were public servants in the upper echelons of the Japanese federal government. In fact, Harumi could swear she recognized one of the other guests filling out the back seats from the news—a man with feathery white hair and a beaky nose who looked exactly like the vice-minister of… Was it defense? Or foreign affairs?
Harumi had no idea how Hibiki had gotten so close to this family, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out. But Tsubasa had been visibly happy (as happy as one could be at an ososhiki ceremony) to see her and Miku in attendance, and nobody had balked at all at her presence, so she allowed herself to join the mourners.
But there was one person who looked as though she belonged here about as much as Harumi felt she belonged. She sat right beside her, at the farthest end of the back row. She was tall for a woman, lean, perhaps somewhere in her forties, with silver-streaked midnight-blue hair tied back into a severe bun, eyes like a dusky sky, and a face that, upon closer inspection and with the benefit of hindsight, she would realize looked unsettlingly familiar—but for now she only thought that if ever yamato nadeshiko had had a face, it would have had a hard time competing with hers.
When everyone was seated, the priest chanted the sutras, and one by one the attendees would stand, approach the altar before the casket, and lay pinches of makko in the incense burner, murmuring quiet prayers under their breath to the deceased.
Harumi was a bit ashamed of how perfunctory the prayer she offered was, as she did not know Kazanari Yatsuhiro at all, and felt more ashamed afterward when she overhead the faint and fraught whisper of her neighbor’s prayer.
All she had caught was I’m sorry.
After that, the priest spoke the deceased’s dharma name that would be inscribed on his grave marker, Tsubasa stood up to give her closing remarks, and the attendees gathered around the casket to place flowers. Next would come the cremation and the collection of bones, which was reserved only for close family and close friends.
Tsubasa led her nine aunts and uncles out of the funeral hall, where they would proceed to the crematorium; Hibiki was among the half-dozen friends who accompanied her, with her and Maria hewing closest to her sides. But Harumi had felt out-of-place enough already, and didn’t want to show any impropriety toward the Kazanari family by being presumptuous and assuming she was invited.
And so she and many of the other attendees were given gifts of purifying salt and sent on their way.
“So,” the vice-minister asked Harumi on their way out, “how did you know the deceased?”
It was the question she’d dreaded being asked all through the ceremony. “I-I don’t, actually. But my daughter is close friends with the deceased’s daughter.”
“Ah, I see,” he said with a smile. “It’s quite kind of you to do that for her. I’m Masahito Shibata, vice minister of foreign affairs.”
“A pleasure to meet you. I thought I’d seen you on the news once or twice.”
“I’m flattered. And you are, miss…”
“Uh, T-Tachibana Harumi, but you can just call me Harumi. And, um, how do you know the deceased, Masahito-san?” she asked.
“Oh, he worked in the Ministry of Defense, so we found ourselves collaborating here and there. He was a good man. And I’m thankful there are still so many Kazanaris I can say that about.”
He took the salt and sprinkled it on his chest, back, and feet, brushing what remained off his black suit and stepping on the salt that had fallen to the ground. “Well, I must be off… It’s days like these that remind you a public servant’s work is never done. Especially with all those annoying Yggdrasil stalks that have popped up all over the place. Oh, but if you two ladies are hungry, there’s a restaurant just a few blocks down that has the best soba in the country. In fact, I might pop in there on my way.”
He bowed. “It was nice meeting you, Tachibana-san. I ought to have known—your daughter has your eyes. Take care.”
“Thank you, and you as well, Masahito-san,” Harumi said, bowing in turn.
As he hurried ahead of them, she tried not to ask herself why Vice Minister Masahito Shibata knew her daughter well enough to recognize her by her eyes.
But as she sprinkled the salt on herself and brushed it off, she did wonder why she’d been singled out and not her neighbor. In fact, no one had so much as said ‘hello’ to her, let alone ‘goodbye.’
She turned to the woman just as she’d been about to use her salt. “Excuse me?” she asked.
The woman froze and set the pinch of salt back into its little ceramic dish. “Yes, Tachibana-san?” It was barely January, and bitter cold as Januaries were; her every word produced a puff of white steam.
“You can just call me ‘Harumi.’ If you don’t mind me asking… were you brought here by one of Tsubasa-san’s friends as well?”
“You mean to ask how I knew the deceased.”
Her frosty tone and icy glare somehow felt like they were intended to be less severe than they came out—or maybe that was just Harumi trying to be the optimist. “If it’s private, then, don’t bother. I just meant that you looked about as out-of-place as I felt.”
“Did I? Well… I suppose. I haven’t seen him in nearly twenty years.” She broke away. “Pardon me—I didn’t mean to keep you.”
Harumi felt her heart leap into her throat in a way it hadn’t in years or maybe even since high school, so she hurried after her. “No! No, you’re not keeping me, not at all! I-I just realized, it was rude of me not to ask your name. Just because I almost feel like we already know each other is no excuse.”
She offered a penitent bow.
“Tsuru,” she said, and Harumi couldn’t have imagined a more perfect name for her.
“Tsuru-san, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m glad we could be neighbors—I’d have felt awful if I’d been there alone.”
“I’m glad to know that. Thank you for telling me. Take care.” Tsuru turned away and took a pinch of salt. Harumi realized they’d walked well beyond the funeral hall’s grounds.
“Wait,” she said. “I don’t mean to pry, but… were you and the deceased…”
“I’m nothing to him now.” Tsuru’s voice cracked, and Harumi felt awful for asking that. She should have known!
Because Tsubasa so obviously had her eyes.
Before she knew what she was doing, she’d reached out and taken Tsuru’s hand before she could sprinkle the purifying salt on herself.
“I’m sorry,” Harumi said. “Almost twenty years… whatever happened then, you have my condolences. I’m sorry it’s been so long.”
Was she? For all she knew, Tsuru might have left her husband and daughter under the same circumstance Akira had left: because she’d encountered a struggle she hadn’t expected to encounter—a birth, a death, a life-threatening injury, a witch-hunt—and it had taken the bravery and strength and responsibility inside her and twisted it and snapped it until she’d ran away from it.
“But you should be in the crematorium with your daughter.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“You left after Tsubasa was born, didn’t you?”
Tsuru was quiet for a while.
“I had to,” she answered, her voice a thin whisper, its icy sharpness blunted. “I’d failed him; how could I do anything else?”
“You’d failed him? Tsuru-san, you gave your late husband a healthy, beautiful baby girl who grew up to be an international idol! Nothing about that can be called a failure… how could you have been nothing to him?”
An answer sprang to her mind immediately, and it was so horrifying that she didn’t dare let Tsuru speak it, because as long as Tsuru didn’t answer that question, she could pretend the answer was wrong.
She wrapped her arms around her waist. “No, it doesn’t matter what it was. You didn’t deserve it… and it definitely didn’t make you ‘nothing’ to him.”
Even Akira wasn’t ‘nothing’ to her, though he’d never be ‘husband’ to her again.
“Those nine months,” Tsuru said, “were the hardest and most miserable months of my life. I knew what had happened. He knew what had happened. And we each knew that the other knew what had happened. But neither of us could bear to speak about it to each other. To acknowledge it had happened. When Tsubasa was born, I was afraid I’d hurt myself, or worse, the baby, so I left. I asked him to tell Tsubasa I’d died in childbirth when she was old enough.”
“I’m so sorry… But do you think that means your daughter didn’t miss you?”
“In that family—in the Kazanari house, a sword has to be strong. It has to bend without breaking. I bent, but not enough. So I broke. I wouldn’t have been a proper role model for Tsubasa. Look at how strong she’s become without me.”
“That doesn’t matter. I wish I could ask if you’d like to go to that noodle shop Masahito-san recommended with me, but… you really do need to be in there with your daughter. If you still came this far for him in spite of that, you can go a little farther for her.”
“I had to do it.”
“You have to do this, too.” Harumi let go of her.
Tsuru turned to face her with eyes that looked like they ached. “You wish you could ask me out to lunch?”
“Hot tea, hot soba… it just looks like that’s something that might do you a lot of good right now. But it’ll feel more rewarding if you go to the cremation first.”
She laughed. It was a weak, fragile little laugh, but it still counted as one. “Our daughters are good friends, right?”
“Yes. Hibiki was a bit of a fan of her back in her, um… What was the group called? Tri-Wing?”
“Zwei Wing.”
“Right. And she went to Lydian because of her scholarship, but also she was so excited to see Tsubasa there. Imagine being a fan of an idol, and then getting to be one of her best friends… it might sound silly to us, but it’s just such a sweet little adolescent fantasy to have come true.”
“I can see why,” Tsuru said, forcing a smile. “Maybe we can meet for lunch another time, Tachibana-san.”
“I’m not san or kun or anything like that—it’s just Harumi.”
“Thank you, Harumi.” She bowed, and for some reason right then and there Harumi just wanted to hug her.
But if she did, she thought, she might have a hard time letting go, and Tsuru had places to be. One place to be, in particular.
Tsuru cupped her hand over the little dish of purifying salt and headed off to join her family. Harumi watched her go, proud to have helped her connect to them… and the way her cheeks ached reminded her how Hibiki had smiled when she’d brought Akira to the house and brought their hands back together.
Then she realized something important.
“Wait!” she called out, hurrying after Tsuru, hiking up her dress so she could walk faster. “Tsuru, I need your phone number or email address so we can schedule lunch! Are you doing anything next week? Or next month?”
One month later, Tachibana Harumi sat in the middle of the restaurant Shibata had recommended, waited, and felt butterflies in her stomach she hadn’t felt since her first date with Akira back in college. Half of her fully expected Tsuru to never show up—she probably had more important things to do. For example, perhaps she was making up for lost time with Tsubasa at this very moment. If it were that, then Harumi wouldn’t begrudge her at all for standing her up, even if it had taken an hour and a half to drive from Chiba to Tokyo and therefore she’d called out sick to a whole day of work for this.
She took a deep breath and a sip of tea to settle her nerves. She couldn’t jump to conclusions so quickly—she’d gotten here an hour early, after all, and she’d only been waiting for forty minutes.
And then, at last, Tsuru walked into the restaurant.
For Harumi, breathing ceased to be an involuntary function. She waved Tsuru over. She seemed to be doing a lot better now, whatever had happened over the past few months—whether or not she’d attended the cremation and reconnected with Tsubasa (Harumi had considered asking Hibiki if Tsubasa had said anything, but couldn’t bring herself to ask—she was better off not knowing the answer if the answer ended up being ‘no.’).
Or maybe Tsuru just looked prettier wearing more colorful clothes and more makeup than one would wear to a funeral, and she had been awfully striking to begin with. Here, she looked like she’d stepped in from another world or another time, clad in scarves and shawls layered over a double-breasted wool coat like an old-fashioned movie star.
Tsuru sat down across from her. “Harumi.”
“Tsuru! I’m glad you made it.”
“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”
“Oh! No, I just got here early. You’re early, too.”
“I was afraid I’d be late. So, what do you recommend here?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never eaten here.”
Tsuru raised her eyebrows. Harumi felt her heart flutter like she was twenty-five years younger all over again. It was so easy to tell that she was Tsubasa’s mother, especially with her hair down and makeup on—the beauty that lifted Tsubasa from talented singer to international idol had obviously all been inherited from her.
“This is the restaurant Yatsuhiro-san’s old coworker recommended on his way from the funeral hall. I thought we’d try it,” Harumi said. “Why don’t we both look for something on the menu we haven’t had before? That way, it’ll be an adventure.”
She was amused enough at Harumi’s suggestion to smile.
“Oh! A-And I have a gift for you,” she said, reaching over for the package she’d wrapped up for her. “I thought you might like some comfortable new bath towels.”
Tsuru took the package in both hands and stared at it. “Thank you,” she said, setting it aside. “That reminds me. I have a gift for you as well.”
“You don’t owe me anything, it’s no trouble—”
Too late. She had produced a package of her own. It was perfectly wrapped in a pastel patterned furoshiki. Like her clothes, like her hair, like her face, nothing was done by half-measures. If Tsubasa were half as fastidious, Hibiki could learn a lot from her.
Harumi took the package in her hands. “You don’t have to tell me what it is,” she said. “I like the surprise.”
She put the gift away and searched the menu for something she’d never had before. Tsuru did the same as her. “Do you think our daughters ever had lunch together at Lydian?”
“They must have,” Harumi said. A part of her, some part of her deep inside that had never quite managed to grow up with the rest of her, felt the urge to rest her chin in her hands and just stare at her. “How are things?”
She didn’t say with Tsubasa. She made sure not to.
“Things are going well,” Tsuru said, rather noncommittally. “And what about you? I haven’t asked you much about yourself. What do you do for a living?”
“Well,” Harumi said, pushing aside her trepidation, “I do data entry for a manufacturing company in Chiba. It’s a work-from-home job, so I can still look after my mother—we live in a town outside the suburbs. The pay isn’t much, but between it, Mom’s pension, and the Noise survivor’s fund…”
Tsuru nodded along with a little smile on her face as though she, the mother of an international superstar, found the details of Harumi’s personal life interesting.
But Harumi didn’t mind being asked the questions this time. If Tsuru was happy to get to know her better, that was all that mattered.