The Flashback

In the deep, narrow tunnel, while I was putting batteries in the camera, I was crying because of our condition. I never imagined my husband would be in worse condition.

However I needed to save us.

Wiping my tears, I closed the bottom of the camera and then switched it on. The camera showed me a beautiful image of us being happily marriage, staring into a camera, smiling. Laughing.

I switched to the next one.

We were lost in the woods, without a way out.

Then, I typed my future in the camera about me being a housewife, cooking food and serving the family. The camera clicked.

I called Sohma gently, "The camera knows a way out. Let's go."

I rushed to helped him, he was almost fainting and half asleep. I felt faint too but I had to save us both.

I failed to climb out of the steep exit to the outer world five times. Inside, I screamed with despair and a small voice told to give up and die in the tunnel. However, reminding myself of the love we both shared and tried one last time.

I did it. I got both of us out of the tunnel.

-

Kyoto was only five miles away. So we had to keep walking.

When we saw a beautiful hut in front of us we stopped and then Sohma collapsed. The door opened to welcome us.

-

I volunteered to make the dinner which was oyakudon and even fried tofu, decorated with parsley.

Sohma almost fell into a cycle of depression and was crying in his room, unable to speak a word.

He once told me, "I wish I could think about living on...But I'm not brave enough..." before he cried in my chest. I embraced him and comforted him.

I knew that he was trying his best to go on living despite the trauma. Sohma was one of the people who tried to find meaning in everything, like me.

After the dinner, I replayed Mother Asuza's comforting words:

Oyakudon is the best when eaten together. Come back to Japan, please, my children. I don't wanna lose you. I lost my parents. Someone found their bodies in the woods...they died without food or water.

However it was more than death. It was something decided to do themselves.

Asuza's parents had wished they were dead because of marriage problems. And their wish came true. Staying without any resource, they died.

Their daughter walked out of the funeral hall, towards the seashore and screamed out while crying helplessly.

-

Walking over to Mother Asuza, Natsuko complained to her that she was hearing a sound in her head. Like Asuza was screaming because she was mad with grief.

"Shut your mouth," Asuza told her harshly. "I screamed out at the shore. My parents wished they were dead."

-

When Sohma woke up from sleep, he felt me sleeping next to him. He embraced me lovingly, in a way that is.

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