part1 c5 (1/2)

Chapter 5 : Menma's Wish[edit]

I went back home and checked: Menma was not there.

Would she just vanish like this? If she really vanished, did this mean he had forgiven me, the present me?

No. It should be completely the opposite: he wanted to make me feel much more pain.

It was because I had always wanted to say ‘my dear Menma’ that I saw the hallucination of Menma.

‘The present I’ was cowardly and timid.

“Jinta, what bath salt do you want? Kusatsu or Abas.h.i.+ri?[1]”

My dad’s slovenly voice sounded from the bathroom. As usual, I told him anything was fine.

Dad didn’t have any means to reproach me for not going to school. He just acted usually and lived a leisure life. However, it was certainly abnormal for him to permit his son me to hide at home.

He even helped me to put bath salts after he had finished bathing. This kind of care, or this kind of empathy weighed too much on me.

Having bathed and unwinded, the first thing my dad did was not to drink beer but to brew coffee.

Then, he also placed a cup in mum’s shrine. Crossing his legs, he sat in front of it and drank slowly with her.

“Touko, I’ll also do my best today—to do my best.”

It was a saying mum always repeated.

My mum’s body conditions weren’t good from the start. Ever since I got into senior cla.s.ses of primary school, she had always been living in the hospital. I hated the view from the windows of the ward, as it was a scene that would only change colour according to the seasons. I would always find excuses to abstain from seeing her.

I didn’t want to see mum’s face changing even quicker than the view outside the window in that unchanging ward…the only thing was…

I would have never expected Menma would pa.s.s away even earlier than mum would.

That day, my father also told me not to tell mum about this. I also planned on doing so.

Yet rumours spread fast in this town, and got to the hospital swiftly. When my mum heard of this, she…

“Jinta, you have to do your best—to do your best.”

She didn’t ask me anything, and only repeated her usual motto, lightly holding me in her arms.

Her warm chest and rhythmic heart beat patterns a.s.sured me. When I was still a baby, mum would do this to me every time I cried. But at that time, mum’s chest was skinny and thin, her collarbone exposed, the rich smell of medicine running into my nose…my eyes started to become sour—the dam collapsed and tears overflowed, way beyond my control.

I wanted to see Menma—I really wanted to. I wanted to cry and sob at that skinny chest.

“What am I doing…” I couldn’t help but murmur. The chance came to me, the rare chance that I could apologise. Even if it was a hallucination, something I made up, still wasn’t it a rare chance I could apologise?

I was lost in thought and didn’t enter the bathroom until dad had gone upstairs.