メロウレイン / Futtara Doshaburi Mellow Rain

In The Garden

 

The journey home was much easier than the journey there.

 

Sei’s anaemia seemed to have settled too.

 

Maybe, if he kept trying, he would get used to things like this more easily than he expected.

 

The old Sei would have felt guilty about that.

 

He would have thought that a wound healing was the same thing as forgetting someone he could no longer see.

 

But he knew now that it was not.

 

“Grandson,” Hiraiwa muttered from the driver’s seat.

 

“That guy earlier was the professor’s grandson, right?”

 

“He literally said ‘my grandfather’ himself.”

 

Strictly speaking, since the dead could not confirm it, perhaps “self-proclaimed grandson” was more accurate.

 

“Still, that surprised me. I wasn’t expecting a blond guy to appear. That was natural, wasn’t it? His eyes looked green too.”

 

“Professor Ishimu’s wife was foreign, wasn’t she? Didn’t I hear that from you?”

 

“Yeah, but genetically he’s only a quarter, right? I didn’t expect it to show so clearly. Still… it was nice.”

 

“What was?”

 

“Like it had been softened just enough. You know how a very Western-looking face can make you hesitate? Really high nose, really deep-set features… He had all the good points without that intimidating feeling. I wonder what kind of name parents give a kid who looks like that.”

 

Only then did Sei realise he had never even asked the young man’s name.

 

“And with that appearance, he goes out to the garden and picks mint. Made me wonder if he actually lives in the same modern Japan as the rest of us.”

 

“If we’d stayed until dinner, maybe he’d have served us Disney-looking mushrooms.”

 

“Seriously? We should’ve stayed longer.”

 

Maybe Hiraiwa was deliberately talking more than usual to keep Sei’s attention away from the drive.

 

“…The garden was beautiful,” Sei said.

 

“Was it?”

 

“Yeah. It looked effortless, but you could tell someone really cared for it.”

 

“Huh.”

 

“Actually, when I was at primary school, our whole year grew flowers. I can’t remember what kind. Then we collected the seeds, tied letters to balloons and released them.”

 

“Oh, yeah. Schools loved that sort of thing.”

 

“Thinking about it now, it was pretty dodgy. Do schools even do that anymore?”

 

“Personal information?”

 

“Exactly. What if it landed at some creep’s house?”

 

“If nobody picked it up, it’d just become litter.”

 

The children had been told they could choose any colour balloon they liked—red, blue, yellow—and everyone had been excited.

 

Sei remembered his childhood friend digging his heels in.

 

He could not write a letter to anybody.

 

The event involved attaching a card saying, If you find this, please plant these seeds.” If you can, please write back.

 

His friend had resisted the idea completely. Why should he have to do that? If they did not want the seeds wasted, he could plant them himself. He had no desire to become acquainted with a stranger.

 

That uncompromising, almost painfully fastidious sense of self had been there even then.

 

The moment Sei saw the books in the study, he knew.

 

Ah.

 

Kazuaki had been here.

 

Whether that belonged to the past tense or whether he was still here somehow, Sei could not tell.

 

He had no way of knowing the circumstances.

 

But the room carried Fujisawa Kazuaki’s presence.

 

Those books, lined up with such precision, were unquestionably his work.

 

So Sei had said,

 

“I’m doing well.”

 

He had entrusted the words to the gentle person who lived in that garden.

 

Like tying a fragile message to a balloon and releasing it—something that might never arrive, or, just possibly, might.

 

“Ah, the service area’s coming up,” Hiraiwa said.

 

“Want to stop?”

 

“No, I’m fine.”

 

“Don’t push yourself.”

 

“I’m okay. I just… want to get home.”

 

Back to Hagiwara, who was probably waiting restlessly after hearing Sei had gone out by car.

 

Back to Sei’s secret garden.