I see you in my dreams. The whale of you swallows me whole. It sings its mournful songs into the unending blue. I reach for you. Don’t go. But you become nothing more than a speck, disappearing into the waves of time.
*
It was raining in Hokkaido, and the tarmac was slick. In the airport, Isamu wore a cap and a facemask to cover himself. He hunched his back, shielding himself from any prying eyes, though none seemed to spare him a second glance. Isamu removed his disguise when he emerged from the metro. He had no umbrella.
It was odd to be back in Hokkaido, a place that he no longer considered home. And it was odd that it was raining in January, fat droplets splattering down on Isamu as he dragged his luggage through the small and winding streets of his old neighborhood, where he’d spent long-lost halcyon days that he couldn’t remember quite so vividly anymore.
Isamu was not sure what to expect when he pulled open the door to his childhood home, what kind of father awaited him, but he didn’t expect to be greeted by the loud chatter of company.
Kobayashi-san and her husband rushed to welcome him in the genkan.
“Isamu-kun, how you’ve grown!” Kobayashi-san fawned over him, as she tugged his suitcase from his hands. “I remember when you were so small.”
Isamu returned her pleasantries in kind. “Yes, I remember. Yes, I was so small.” He craned his neck, eyes searching down the long foyer, and asked, “Where is my father?”
“He’s in the kitchen,” Kobayashi-san said, ushering Isamu into his own home.
Hiroto was standing over a sizzling pot, large bamboo cooking chopsticks in one hand and a cigarette in his other. Tanaka-san, Hiroto’s old co-worker, and his wife were sitting around the table as well. They were sipping Sapporo and playing cards, but when Isamu emerged at the threshold of the kitchen, they looked up and began to clamor over his arrival.
“How is America?” they asked. “Everyone in town speaks of you, Isamu.”
Hiroto cast a look at Isamu from over his shoulder. Isamu noted the new wrinkles that had etched themselves into his skin, his sunken eyes, and the liver spots that had bloomed in Isamu’s absence.
“Tadaima,” Isamu said, bowing his head slightly.
Hiroto took a long drag, his cigarette stuck between his yellowing teeth. “Okaeri,” he replied. He turned away. “Sit down. Eat.”
A large plate of karaage sat on the table already. Kobayashi-san made spinach salad soaked in vinegar and fragrant sesame seed oil, sour and nutty all at once. Tanaka-san’s wife brought a clay pot and a burner, miso nabe simmering in it audibly.
Isamu sat, the neighborhood wives fussing over him, and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t eat this. My nutritionist put me on a pre-season diet.”
The room turned uncomfortably silent, shifting glances exchanged between the retirees. Hiroto coughed through each exhale, air rattling in his lungs like a dilapidated car engine. His gait was heavy, he lumbered to the table with a large pot of miso soup, setting it on a silicon potholder with a resounding bang.
“While you are in my home, you will eat my food,” he said simply. He clasped his hands together. “Itadakimasu.”
Isamu looked silently down at his lap; his fingers were trembling. “Itadakimasu,” he mumbled, and picked up his chopsticks.
When he bit into the food, the rich flavors of home burst on his tongue,
and it brought tears to his eyes, though he refused to let them spill down his cheeks.
Isamu spoke about America, the strange people he met, his coaches and teammates, and all the things he did.
“How long are you staying for?” Tanaka-san asked Isamu.
“Just two weeks. Spring training starts in February.”
Hiroto looked disinterested, smoking continuously through his pack of Seven Stars between long, masticating bites of food, but as Isamu finished marveling about how big America was, which he’d come to realize on a recent trip to Texas, Hiroto cleared his throat purposefully. He raised his Sapporo bottle into the air.
“To my son,” Hiroto said. “The pride of Hokkaido.”
*
In my dreams, I sometimes stand at the edge of the riverbank. You are on the other side. The water rushes between us. I want to call out, but I have no voice.
You dive in, and the violent current sweeps you into oblivion. I sink to my knees, the dirt caking over my creased pants, and the Earth caves beneath me.
*
The scent of mackerel and tobacco wafted into Isamu’s bedroom, filtering in just as the light did through his blinds. Hiroto, as always, woke with the sun. Middle school was the last time he’d slept in his room regularly—he had been fifteen years old. Now, he was twenty-five, and his feet dangled precariously off the end of his mattress.
Hiroto stood over the stove in a worn white wife-beater, flipping charred fish over the metal grill. He paused to cough laboriously into the crook of his elbow. For a moment, as Hiroto bent, his body curling in on itself, he looked small. Isamu had never seen such a sight before.
It had been a few days now since Isamu arrived home, but they had yet to talk about Hiroto’s health, the entire reason for Isamu’s trip. Any time Isamu attempted to broach the subject, Hiroto stubbornly refused to divulge.
“Let’s not talk about such unsavory stuff,” he kept insisting.
When the coughing abated, and Hiroto straightened himself out, his gaze caught Isamu’s, who lingered in the doorway. They stared at each other with very little understanding, two stars that formed no common constellation.
“Good morning,” Isamu said.
In lieu of a response, Hiroto said, “After breakfast we’re going to the market.”
“Okay.”
Breakfast was a hearty spread of rice, pickles, grilled mackerel, and re-heated miso soup.
“Is there anything you’d like me to do while I’m home?” Isamu asked, though the word home caught strangely on his lips as he spoke it aloud. Broken and garbled, it sounded wrong.
Hiroto gave him a confused look. “Such as?”
“Do you have any doctor’s appointments that you need me to attend with you? Or any papers we have to sort through… before… in case…” Isamu trailed off.
Hiroto clicked his tongue. “You are so Western now,” he said, waving a dismissive hand.
The first snow of Isamu’s visit fell languidly when they stepped out into the frigid air. Isamu looked up in a daze, blinking quickly when clumpy snowflakes gathered on his eyelashes.
“Come,” Hiroto demanded. “If we arrive too late, all of the good produce will be sold.”
Hiroto wore an oversized jacket and an old, unlabeled baseball cap to the market, the brim tattered. Isamu wondered where the baseball cap he sent his father was, the one that bore his own team’s logo. Isamu had noticed that there were no memorabilia in his father’s home, though Isamu had mailed him numerous packages of branded merchandise over the past few years.
Hiroto walked much slower than he had when Isamu saw him last, but each step he took was still determinedly resolute. Isamu trailed behind him, trying to ignore the leering way the occasional marketgoer looked at him and their poorly-concealed whispers.
Weaving their way through the crowd of shoppers, Isamu let his mind wander to their local fishmonger whom he’d admired when he was young. Sato-san was his name, thought Isamu absently. Sato-san owned the most popular fish stall in the market. He knew all the good fishing spots with all the best catches. Before Isamu fell irrevocably in love with baseball, he wanted to be a fisherman. Isamu used to spend hours at Sato-san’s fish stall, and he often played with his daughter, an unassuming girl of Isamu’s age.
Despite his sluggish pace, Hiroto stopped at almost every stall. He examined the produce carefully, lifting it in his hands, searching for imperfections with narrowed eyes.
He prodded clinically along the sides of daikon radishes, inspected the split leaves of a cabbage head between his fingers.
“The vegetables aren’t good today,” he announced with a disappointed shake of his head.
“We’ll look at fish now.”
Isamu kept thinking about Sato-san and his daughter—What, he thought, was her name?—as they approached the seafood section of the market. The damp scent encroached offensively upon his nostrils. Her name was on the tip of his tongue, like a cut-off limb his mind still remembered.
“Good morning, Hiroto-san,” a cheery voice rang out. “How are you today?”
Isamu’s head snapped up. It was her.
She stood behind rows of fresh, briny seafood on ice. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun. Isamu couldn’t help but stare. Sato-san’s daughter, who used to cry at the sight of bugs, stared back at him.
“Kaori?”
Her lips parted. “Isamu-kun?”
Hiroto grinned, almost mischievously. He pressed his hand between Isamu’s shoulder blades, pushing him forward. “My son is home, Kaori-chan. It’s been a long time since you’ve seen each other, no?”
Kaori looked down. “Yes,” she replied, with a faint smile. “Not since middle school, I think.”
“I didn’t know you were still here,” Isamu said. “How’s your father?”
“My father died last year,” Kaori replied. “I took over his business.”
Hiroto clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “You’d know that if you ever came home.”
Isamu ignored his father’s pointed comment, bowing his head solemnly. “I’m sorry to hear that. He was a good man.”
“Yes,” Kaori agreed. “He always spoke fondly of you.”
“Isamu is in town for two weeks,” Hiroto cut in. “The two of you should catch up while he’s here.”
Isamu and Kaori looked at each other reticently. A rosy blush sat high on her milky cheekbones.
“Sure,” Kaori finally said. “Let’s exchange contact information.”
Hiroto bought five ounces of king crab. “Tonight, I’ll make crab kamameshi,” he declared.
As Hiroto and Isamu retreated from Kaori’s stall, out of earshot, Hiroto prodded at Isamu’s side. “Kaori-chan is single,” he said in a matter-of-fact manner.
Isamu turned away. “I hope today’s crab is fresh.”
*
I dream about the day that you left. You are young, I am powerless to stop you. I dream of that withdrawing train, the Shinkansen hurtling down its welded track. Do you remember that American movie? Finding Nemo? We watched it together once, and I couldn’t help but cry.
“What’s wrong?” you asked me, your voice small.
“Nothing,” I told you and averted my eyes, but I should have been honest.
If I asked you to stay on the day that you left, would you have? I wonder about that sometimes. If I told you the truth—that to live without you was sorrow—how would you have reacted? Maybe honesty would’ve changed nothing. Your dreams are too wide and too deep, and my petty regrets are but a drop in the ocean.
I can’t picture myself being honest—I don’t know how. Even in my dreams, I watch you go.
*
Isamu and Hiroto went to the cemetery on a Wednesday afternoon. It snowed the night before. Hiroto brushed off the gravestone where white had settled on its rectangular surface.
Isamu sank to his knees and clasped his hands together in silent prayer. Hiroto knelt beside him, muttering something under his breath with his eyes shut tight.
“Hello, Sayaka,” Hiroto said. “Your son has come to visit.”
Isamu didn’t remember his mother; she died when he was a toddler. He knew her only in photographs and stories, memories that weren’t his own. Your mother loved you very much, Hiroto always said, unmoored.
“Hello, Mother,” Isamu murmured, head still bowed. He spoke more to the snow-covered ground than to the vague entity that was his mother. “I’m sorry it’s been a long time. I play professional baseball in America now. I—”
Hiroto scoffed, cutting Isamu off. “She doesn’t want to hear about that,” he said disdainfully. “Tell her something she doesn’t already know.”
Isamu paused. What else was there to report? He contemplated for a moment, and then said, “The seafood in America is not very good. Except for the lobster. In a place called the East Coast, during the summertime, the lobster is very fresh.”
Isamu glanced over at his father with inquiring eyes. Hiroto nodded. Isamu smiled.
Hiroto brought salmon roe and plum wine, which was his mother’s favorite, and laid it out as an offering. They waited until the incense they lit burned all the way down, wispy trails of smoke dancing mildly in the mid-January wind, and then they packed everything up.
The cemetery was on a steep hill with a poorly maintained path breaching through the middle of it. Half-way down, Hiroto began to pant. He paused. His face was red, the vein by his temple throbbed resentfully, and he placed his hands on his knees. Hunched over, Hiroto started to cough. Quietly at first, then loud and desperately.
“What’s wrong?” Isamu asked, resting an urgent hand on his father’s shoulder.
“I’m… okay…” Hiroto managed to wheeze out, batting Isamu’s hand away. “I just… need… a minute…”
He lifted his head, took an unsteady step forward, and then fell. Isamu caught Hiroto by his underarms, sinking to the ground with the weight of his father, who was now unconscious.
Isamu clutched his father’s hapless body, curling his calloused fingers over Hiroto’s hefty shoulders. The cracking cobblestone beneath them was cold, and the sensation of it digging into his calves was the only thing that proved to Isamu that he wasn’t in a nightmare.
In the ambulance, Hiroto woke up, his eyes cloudy with confusion. Isamu watched as he lifted his arm, his fingers purplish and swollen. He mumbled, “Isamu,” in a choked-up and garbled voice.
Isamu reached for him, but the paramedic intercepted Hiroto’s hand first, pushing it back down into the gurney.
When they reached the hospital, Isamu and Hiroto were
separated. As he watched the doctors wheel his father away, Isamu
shrunk to fifteen again. Wait, he thought. Come back.
After what felt like hours spent on a bench with his leg bouncing up and down anxiously while the scent of antiseptic stung his nostrils, a man in a long white coat approached him.
“Are you Mizumura Isamu-san?” he asked.
Isamu stood. “Yes,” he said, his voice oddly hoarse. “That’s me.”
The doctor looked almost shy. “Isamu-san, may I just say, I’m a big fan of yours,” he said. “I love American baseball.”
Isamu blinked. He nodded weakly. “Thank you,” he said. Then, quickly, “How is my father?”
The doctor cleared his throat. “Yes, well, as you know, Mizumura Hiroto-san is suffering from end-stage heart failure and, as per his wishes, has opted to forgo any treatment options, so there isn’t much we can do long-term. Luckily, today, it seems he passed out from over-exerting himself. He’s awake and alert now, and we put him on oxygen and an IV drip. His vitals have stabilized. He should be okay to discharge in a couple of hours.”
“He… He’s opted to forgo treatment?” Isamu repeated slowly.
“Yes. Your father’s condition is advanced, and reversal is impossible at this point. There are treatments that can prolong his life expectancy, but there’s no guarantee. When presented with his options, Mizumura-san chose not to proceed.”
“I see,” Isamu said. That was all he could say.
How long, Isamu thought, at the sound of the doctor’s retreating footsteps, has he known? Why didn’t he tell me it was this bad? Isamu couldn’t understand.
The cab ride home was silent. Hiroto’s eyelids grew heavy, falling in and out of sleep, but Isamu couldn’t rest. He had never known his obstinate father to be the type of person to relent. When he looked over at his father—his sleeping, unguarded face worn weary with illness and with time—Isamu wondered if he really knew this man, or if Hiroto had become a stranger in all their years apart.
It was nearly midnight when they arrived home. Isamu helped his father out of the cab, much to Hiroto's chagrin.
“I’m okay,” he kept saying. “I’m okay.”
Isamu sat his father at the table. “I’ll prepare us some tea.”
Isamu could feel the scrutiny of Hiroto’s gaze as he did his best to brew a pot of hojicha to his father’s standard of perfection.
“You didn’t steep it long enough,” Hiroto complained after his first sip.
“Sorry,” Isamu apologized in a low, barely audible voice.
“Huh?” Hiroto said, his voice rising in irritation. He cupped a hand over the shell of ear.
“I can’t hear you when you mumble.”
Isamu brought his hand down, his fist landing on the table with a loud thud. “Why aren’t you getting treatment for your heart?”
Hiroto paused. “Who told you that?”
Isamu felt his breath hitch. “So it’s true?” he asked, a wild sense of despair cresting over him. “Why not? I don’t understand!”
“It’s my choice, Isamu. Leave it alone.”
But Isamu couldn’t leave it alone, he just couldn’t. “Is it because of money?” he demanded. “I have money, Father! I can pay for anything you need! I want to, I—”
“I don’t want your money!” Hiroto spat out. “You are a clueless child. I don’t want your goddamn money. I don’t want to prolong this painful existence any longer. Why would I want to suffer through hellish treatments just for an extra year or two? I want to live and drink and smoke until I die.”
“I don’t understand,” Isamu said again, his chin wobbling. “I don’t understand you.”
Hiroto looked like he was going to yell some more, like he was going to berate Isamu as if he were still an impish boy in need of scolding, but he deflated, letting out a sigh instead. He sunk back into his seat and into the dark recesses of his unknowable head.
“How could you understand?” he asked. “It’s impossible for us.”
*
When I dream of long summer days, it reminds me of you. It reminds me of that day by the shore, how you screeched at the waves when they lapped against your ankles. You were gleeful and you were scared. You looked to me for reassurance, and I waved you forward encouragingly, even if it meant you got farther and farther away.
There are visions of you everywhere I turn, but there is always something wrong. Your face is distorted when you turn to me, your voice is watery and faraway when you speak. Even my imagination cannot stitch together the fragments of you that lay discarded like grains of sand, slipping between my fingers.
*
Kaori was waiting for him in front of the izakaya, her image backlit in hazy golden light. She was dressed in a blouse and simple slacks. Her face brightened when Isamu drew close.
“Hello,” she said with a diffident smile.
The izakaya was warm and sizzling with life. Cooking oil hung heavily in the air, and drunken patrons loudly demanded more beer. They decided on takowasa and chilled tofu to share.
Kaori ordered a shochu highball and, when the waitress looked at him expectantly, Isamu said, “Nothing for me, thanks.”
“You don’t drink alcohol, Isamu-kun?” Kaori asked.
“I try not to,” Isamu replied. “Especially not before the season starts.”
Kaori grinned at him, almost teasingly. “Do you let baseball dictate everything you do?”
Isamu let himself laugh good naturedly. “Most things, yes.”
The waitress brought out their food and Kaori’s drink. She sipped on it, drumming her fingers over the sweating glass.
“You’re quite famous, you know? People are always talking about you, how you were always so strong, but I remember you very differently. You used to come to our fish stall, crying, because your father reprimanded you.”
Isamu’s cheeks began to sting. “That’s how you remember me? I’m embarrassed.”
“It’s not embarrassing,” Kaori insisted. “I was a crybaby back then, too. My dad always said so.”
Isamu looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. “Kaori, can I ask how your father died?”
Kaori took another long sip that was more like a gulp. She placed her glass, now nearly empty, down on the sticky bar-top and said, “There was a bad storm last summer, and he was helping a friend bring his boat to the other dock. They drifted too far out, and they sank.”
Isamu bit down on his lip. He thought of Sato-san, who smelled of fish guts and always had an affable smile on his face, and his heart tightened in his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Kaori replied. “It was an accident, that’s all. Or, at least, that’s what I try to tell myself.”
“My father is sick,” Isamu found himself saying, words spilling from his lips of their own volition. “That’s why I came back to visit. But last week I found out that he wasn’t getting any treatment for his heart disease.”
Kaori nodded. “I see. That sounds exactly like something Hiroto-san would do.”
Isamu looked up, his eyebrows knitting together. “Really?”
Kaori chuckled. “Yes. He talks about death often.”
“I didn’t realize you two were so close.”
Kaori raised her hand towards the waitress to get her attention, then tapped her finger over her now-empty glass to indicate that she wanted another. She turned back toward Isamu and said, in a simple tone, “He helped me last summer, after everything. I was a mess. He cooked for me and kept me company. We took a lot of walks together.” She paused and looked up at the ceiling. “I think a part of him did it selfishly. Your father likes to keep a lot of company. He gets lonely.”
My father? Isamu thought, bewildered. Lonely? Isamu pictured his father with his arms crossed and a cigarette sticking out of his mouth. He recalled the long hours Hiroto used to spend at work when Isamu was young, coming home exhausted and drinking silently into the night.
Isamu could never imagine his father as lonely—it didn’t make sense. When Isamu told him during the last winter of his middle school years that he had been scouted by a school in West Tokyo, Hiroto just huffed and said, “Okay.”
After two years in the NPB, just twenty years old, Isamu told Hiroto that he was posted and would soon be signing a contract with the MLB. There was a long silence over the phone. “Congratulations,” Hiroto said, and let him go.
“He never told me that he gets lonely,” Isamu said quietly.
Kaori looked at him, long and hard. “He never wanted to hold you back.”
The night was dark and cold when Isamu and Kaori stepped out of the izakaya. Kaori was swaying slightly on her feet.
“What kind of seafood sells best this time of year?” Isamu asked as he walked Kaori home.
“Oysters,” Kaori said definitively, “and scallops, too.”
“Ah, of course,” Isamu drawled, his mouth filling with saliva as he recalled the tangy, sweet taste. “I miss Hokkaido oysters. Nothing else compares.”
“I’ll have to bring you some.”
“I leave in two days,” Isamu said, almost apologetically.
“Do you miss home? When you’re in America?” Kaori asked, as they started up the stone path that led to her house. Kaori stepped up onto the front landing; Isamu lingered behind.
“I lived in dorms all through high school,” Isamu said, answering as honestly as he could. “Then, in Yokohama. Now, I’m in America. I guess that’s just how it is. I spent so many years chasing after my goals, I never had time to miss home.”
Kaori looked at him for a long time, her dark eyes piercing through the laminated night. Isamu wondered what she saw—the fearsome pitcher he’d become, or the crybaby she once knew? Or maybe she didn’t see anything at all, staring through him like clear tap water in a glass.
“Goodnight, Isamu-kun,” she finally said.
“Goodnight, Kaori.”
The house was eerily quiet when Isamu returned.
“Tadaima!” Isamu called, but no response greeted him.
Fear spiked in Isamu instantly. A chill ran through his veins. Did something happen? Where is Father? Did he pass out again? He kicked off his shoes quickly, rushing through the house in search of Hiroto. The kitchen was empty and so was the sitting room. It wasn’t until Isamu pulled the back door open that he let out a sigh of relief.
Hiroto was sitting on the garden deck, smoking a cigarette. Their naked camphor tree shivered violently. Hiroto turned, signaled by the noise of Isamu’s arrival. “You’re back?”
Isamu sank to the ground, crossing his ankles over the polished cedar wood. “I’m back.”
“Did you walk Kaori-chan home?” Hiroto asked.
“Yes,” Isamu replied dutifully.
“Good, good,” Hiroto said between long drags. The distinct scent of tobacco was heady, even in the open winter air. “Kaori-chan is a nice girl, a hard-worker. You should marry her. Come home, raise a family together.”
Isamu thought about it, this strange request. What kind of life would that be? It was one that Isamu had never thought to picture before, so foreign a concept. Would he still play baseball? Come back to the NPB? Maybe he’d retire young, start coaching. It wasn’t the craziest idea, was it? If he squinted, Isamu thought it might even be pleasant. It might even be happy.
“If I did,” Isamu began, “would you change your mind about the treatment?”
Hiroto’s face twisted into a shocked expression. His lips parted and his cigarette almost slipped from his mouth. He caught it in his fingers and began to chuckle.
“There’s no hope for an old geezer like me.”
“You won’t even consider it?” Isamu asked.
And then—as Isamu looked up at his father, the hard-set features that made up Hiroto’s enduringly stoic face—he had a sudden thought: I don’t want you to die. It was a thought he couldn’t remember ever having before, a thought so primal that it ached. Like a lost cub, he wanted to cry out: Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me.
He almost said it. He was almost ready to get on his hands and knees, to beg, but Hiroto spoke first.
“I won’t.” There was firm resolution in Hiroto’s wane voice.
So Isamu said nothing. Instead, he sat silently at his father’s side and treasured each passing second like it was something precious to be hoarded and tucked away.
*
I don’t dream of death. I know that it beckons me kindly.
Others fear death, but I don’t. I welcome it. I anticipate seeing Sayaka again, though I am ashamed of what she might think of me. Of what I’ve become, of the way I raised you, of the way I let you go.
If Sayaka was still here, I wonder if she would have done things differently. But if she’d seen your face that day you told me you were going to Tokyo, still slightly chubby with unshed baby fat, and the determined gleam in your eyes, how could she have denied you? How could she have stolen your dream away? You were born for great things; you were always going to leave. Fate wills it so.
I don’t dream of death, though I know it awaits me. Still, when I imagine the great beyond, something tugs me back.
I look, and you cling to my legs like how you used to in the mornings before I left for work. You couldn’t have been older than three or four.
Isamu, Isamu, Isamu. My son, my blood, my last attachment.
How silly of me, really. You are not a child anymore. In fact, sometimes I wonder if you’d even notice my absence at all. But still, I remember your little face and your pudgy hands gripping at my pants. Maybe it is I who clings on.
*
The cab came very early the next morning. The sun hadn’t yet fully risen. Isamu’s breath came out in visible puffs.
“I packed you a lunch and a dinner,” Hiroto said, pressing a wrapped-up parcel into Isamu’s hands. “Make sure to eat it. Plane food is no good.”
“I will,” Isamu promised with a nod.
They looked at each other for a long, unending minute. Isamu studied his father’s face, his graying eyebrows, and the strong jut of his squared chin. Will I look like you one day? Will I get to become you? Is this the last time that I ever get to see you?
It was a strange and distorted mirror, the unknowable future and the unrelenting past. Isamu reached forward, pulling his father into a hug. Hiroto’s shoulders tensed at first, then he seemed to relax into the tight embrace.
In a rough, uncertain voice, Hiroto whispered, “Isamu, to be your father was my greatest joy.”
Isamu buried his face into the curve of his father’s neck, the tendons protruding where the skin had given way to wear of age. “Do you forgive me?” he asked, impossibly young.
“For what?” Hiroto asked.
“For leaving you,” Isamu replied. “For always being so selfish.”
Hiroto laughed heartily. He patted Isamu’s cheek.
“Stupid child,” he said through a thin, insistent smile. “There is nothing to forgive."
