Content warning: Depiction of death or terminal illness

The Lovely, Lovely Gatebox

Hikari’s hands fluttered upward and she covered her mouth. Her hair hung in glossy purple waves all the way to her knees. It was one of the things Yuuto liked best about her. He sighed at her glowing, smiling face behind the glass.

“Yuuto, did you hear me?” His mother reached for the teapot and replenished her cup.

“Yes, Mother,” Yuuto said. “I’m listening.”

His mother, Tsumugi, pursed her lips and lightly coughed behind a delicate white fist. Yuuto hated his mother’s expression with her thin, narrow mouth and furrowed brow. It was the same face she had made when he told her he dropped out of pharmaceutical school and the face she gave him again when he confessed he had not actually proposed to the lovely Nozomi, a secretary at his work place. The engagement had been a ruse all along. Nozomi did not even know Yuuto’s last name. Six months had passed and Tsumugi was still not over her embarrassment at her son’s lie.

“This is not natural,” said Tsumugi, coughing once more, this time not so delicately. “What am I supposed to tell my friends?”

“Tell them I am in love,” said Yuuto. He watched Hikari who was now on a swing. Her purple hair swung back and forth like a galloping horse behind her.

His mother smacked her palm on the table. “Can you keep your eyes off that thing for one minute?”

Yuuto cringed at her words, and his face grew red. “Her name is Hikari, and she makes me happy.”

“She can’t clean the house. She can’t bear your children. She can’t even fix you a cup of tea.” Tsumugi thrust a finger at Hikari who silently giggled with her hand cupped over her lips. “What can she do?”

Yuuto’s mouth trembled with anger. “She listens to me. She is sweet and kind, and she greets me when I come home from work.”

“Bah!” His mother said something else under her breath but Yuuto could not hear her.

Hikari flipped the hem of her dress playfully. “Would you like me to sing for you?”

“Not now,” Yuuto whispered.

“Hmmph,” said Tsumugi. “I must go. I have an 8:30 appointment with Dr. Hayashi.” She pushed up from the sofa and straightened her skirt with two deliberate strokes from her delicate hands. From the corner of her eye, she caught Hikari making the same motion and it made her stop. “I am expecting you for dinner at seven.”

“Yes, Mother.” Yuuto stood and bowed to his mother.

“Come alone,” she added as she closed the door behind her.

*

Yuuto adjusted the collar of his jacket and checked his hair in the mirror. The only change he made from his work attire was to remove the tie. His mother liked to see him in a tie. He tossed it on the bed and returned to Hikari. “I have to go out for a bit.”

“Oh, I will miss you so very much,” said Hikari. “Will you come home soon?”

“Soon. I won’t be gone from you long.” He put his hand on the glass of the Gatebox and let it rest there for a moment.

“I will drink tomato juice while I wait for you.” A glass appeared in her hand and she began sipping daintily from a straw.

Smiling at her, he tapped the glass with his finger. Hikari waved her cilantro leaf sized hand at him and beamed. “No need to wait up for me,” he said, and turned to leave.

*

The front door of his mother’s house was ajar, something Yuuto had never seen in his twenty-eight years of life. With one finger he pushed and it creaked open. No wafts of cooking scented the air, and no clatter of dishes came from the kitchen.

Tsumugi’s house was neat with Spartan efficiency. Anything that had ever been placed on a shelf or table retained its position forevermore. The pistachio green, striped curtains hanging over all four windows in the den from when Yuuto was in third grade. Hard candies, originally the colors of emeralds and sapphires, now fused together in the nut bowl that as a child Yuuto had been admonished never to touch. The grandfather clock, an extravagant 25^th anniversary gift from Tsumugi’s husband, tick tocked away the seconds in the dim front sitting room. The air in the house smelled of seaweed crackers, Tiger Balm, musty couch pillows, and mint tea. Yuuto had grown up comforted by these scents and sights. The aura of it all had been complacently familiar, a place where he could curl up and feel safe.

“Mother?” Yuuto stepped inside. His mother sat stiffly at the kitchen table on the far side of the room, the full cup of tea in front of her now cold. Her eyes were pink, and the skin hung loosely underneath. “Mother, is something wrong?”

“Please sit.” His mother’s tone was stiff. The last time Yuuto heard her speak this way was when his father died five years earlier. Yuuto had graduated college the weekend before his father announced he was ill. His mother liked to remind him, “Your father waited for you to get your degree before he went,” as if the man had withheld his lung cancer until after Yuuto walked the stage in his cap and gown.

Tsumugi patted the tabletop across from her. “I have something to tell you.”

The ticking of the grandfather clock was absurdly loud in Yuuto’s ears. He had always hated that clock, flinging out all the seconds of his childhood like pebbles into water. Gone. Relentlessly gone.

Tsumugi coughed again, this time dramatically, as if she’d scripted the moment. “I told you I was going to Dr. Hayashi’s this morning.” She curled her fingers in a perfect C around her cup and lifted it to her mouth in a move so agonizingly slow, Yuuto wanted to shout at her. He rubbed his sweating hands on his thighs and waited. “He gave me the diagnosis.” Tsumugi’s eyes slowly shifted to meet his. “I will be joining your father soon. Very soon.” As if on cue, the clock chimed seven o’clock.

How much time had his mother spent preparing this monologue? It dawned on Yuuto that if he had shown up even one minute later, the clock chiming would have interrupted her speech. It further dawned on him that she had been pacing her words, her eyes on the second hand of the clock behind his head the whole time.

“I won’t be a burden to you much longer.”

“Perhaps Dr. Hayashi is wrong,” Yuuto suggested.

“I won’t live to see another season. I’m just thankful that I can enjoy my lilies one final summer. You’ll have to weed and water them for me. It will be one of my final comforts on this earth to watch them bloom.” At the last word, Tsumugi’s eyes moved to the window next to the grandfather clock. The muntins framed eight squares of dusky light on the flame orange, lemon yellow, and burgundy red blooms bursting along a meandering stone sidewalk. “The doctor said I’d need someone to stay with me. Until the end.” At this her eyes drifted back to Yuuto and settled on him like a weight, a seventy-one-year-old, one-hundred-and-ten-pound weight. “As I said, it won’t be long.”

Good God, how many soap operas did she watch to choreograph all this? Yuuto tried to swallow, but the saliva stuck at the back of his throat.

*

The day after his mother’s announcement, Yuuto packed a suitcase and arrived at her house without knocking and without Hikari. On the first night, he stationed himself in the downstairs sitting room on the sofa so that he could hear her in case she called out in the night. After one request for water and another for a magazine, she fell asleep.

The next morning, Yuuto escaped to his job. All day he worked with one eye on the clock and another on his cell phone. At 3:00 PM, Hikari messaged him to ask when he would be home. Sick with distraction, he finished his work promptly at 5:00 and was the first one out of the office. An agonizing twenty-minute train ride followed by a ten-minute walk to his flat left him sweating and huffing for breath by the time he opened the door.

“I have been waiting for you, Master. I’m so happy you’re home. Did you have a productive day?”

“We have to go. You and I.” He hurried to the hall closet.

“Are we taking a trip? I love the seaside,” Hikari gushed.

Yuuto covered the Gatebox with the purple satin cover purchased specially to match Hikari’s hair.

On the bus, he held the box next to his chest with his chin resting atop the case all the way to his mother’s house. Yuuto placed Hikari on the wall bookshelf next to the sofa, plugged her in quietly, and booted her up.

“Yuuto? Is that you?” Tsumugi punctuated her questions with two tiny coughs. “Can you bring my pills? I was supposed to take them an hour ago. I thought you would be here by 5:25. Did you have to work late?”

“No Mother. I had to make a quick stop at my flat.”

“Oh, of course. You’ll–” Clad in her floral bathrobe and slippers, Tsumugi halted at the entrance and for an instant her face flamed with color. She reached for the wall but there was nothing to grasp and her hand slid down the sheetrock. “What is that thing doing here?”

Yuuto stepped in front of Hikari, blocking his mother’s view. “She’s my companion. I’ve explained this.”

Tsumugi straightened her back and headed for the kitchen, her limping momentarily forgotten. Grabbing a box of biscuits from the shelf, she tore open the package, and rattled the cellophane as she retrieved a handful. “My friend Sally’s son has a boyfriend. I know they say I shouldn’t judge and that everyone accepts that sort of thing these days, but I don’t know what to think anymore. I kept quiet because what could I say? My son has a doll in a box? I’d rather tell people he has a boyfriend. At least the boyfriend is real. Oh, the things you put your mothers through. It wasn’t like this in my day.”

“Oh Mother, it’s still your day. No one owns the days.”

“You know what I mean,” Tsumugi eased herself down into a chair, biscuits still in hand. “Boys didn’t fall in love with other boys, or cars, or coffee makers, or whatever else.” She waved the hand of biscuits in Hikari’s direction and then took a dainty bite of one.

“Plenty of boys fell in love with other boys. You just never heard about it.”

“Hmmph. No, they didn’t. That’s not the kind of thing people can keep secret. And no one fell in love with that.” She pointed at Hikari who was swinging her long ponytail back and forth while giggling into her hands.

“Hello!” chirped Hikari. “I am so very happy to see you. Would you like me to dance for you?”

“Maybe later,” Yuuto whispered. He leaned forward on the sofa, partially blocking his mother’s view of the Gatebox. Tsumugi wrinkled her nose at the hologram. “You talk to her as if she’s a real person. Why do you do that? You know she’s just. . .” Tsumugi waved her now empty hand up and down.

“I know what she is, Mother. She’s my very–” He was going to call Hikari his very good friend, but that wasn’t true. Neither was she his girlfriend. Girlfriends were people you could touch. He loved Hikari like a real girlfriend, but the closest he had ever come to touching her was to put his hand on her Gatebox. That warmth, his fingers on the glass, her glowing light within, that was the connection he missed every day when he went to work. The closest he had ever felt for anything like it was when he was eight years old and had a stuffed rainbow cat with soft flowing fur like a lion. He had treasured that cat, and when he hugged it close at night he felt safe and filled with love. It wasn’t love the way he felt for Hikari, but it was a connection so strong he took the stuffed cat everywhere he went. Once, he and his parents departed after a visit at his aunt’s house in Niigata, and his father carried his sleeping form to the car and put him on the seat, never noticing the stuffed cat that had fallen from Yuuto’s sleeping arms onto the sofa. When Yuuto awoke later and realized his precious cat wasn’t with him, he cried and kicked the car seat. His mother argued that Auntie could box it up and mail it to them, but the thought of his beloved cat closed up in a box in the back of a delivery truck made him gasp for breath and howl even more. His father, who loathed crying from anyone, conceded and turned the car around to retrieve it. They drove seventy kilometers back to Auntie’s house.

Tsumugi sat sullenly in her chair; the pack of biscuits half-eaten on her lap. The conversation was now spent. Her mouth hung slack and her hair framed her face in a fuzzy, horseshoe shape that made her look frumpy and tired. Tsumugi had always maintained a healthy, trim physique, but now her pale, once vibrant skin looked to Yuuto like spoiled yogurt. He sat between his mother and Hikari, floating in her box, a violet angel of light.

 

Saturday mornings had long been the time when Yuuto took a short walk to the bookstore near his flat and bought a comic or a novel to enjoy over the weekend. On his way he passed a flower stand, an ice cream shop, and a noodle bar, three of his favorite places that made him smile just to see them as he strolled past. Some mornings he would treat himself to an ice cream or a bowl of udon and sit on a sidewalk bench to eat while reading whatever he had bought. Saturdays were his reward for enduring Monday through Friday, and when he returned home from his brief outing, Hikari would have the reading light on for him next to his chair and ask him what he saw on his journey. He would give her every detail: the man in the funny yellow hat, the dog loose from its leash while its owner trailed after, the new matcha and currant berry ice cream flavor that he meant to try but maybe next time, or the seagull that tried to take the bun from the fingers of the teenaged girl entranced by her boyfriend. Saturday morning life for Yuuto was a string of simple delights and curious distractions that he longed to begin every day with. On this Saturday, his first at his mother’s house, he awoke to the sound of her padding about in the kitchen, cracking eggs in a bowl and filling a tea kettle with water.

“Mother, please let me do that,” he said. He slept in on Saturdays, the only day of the week that Hikari did not serve as his cheerful alarm. She floated in her Gatebox, watching him roll off the sofa and reach for his shirt.

“Until I can’t cook any longer, I want to make my breakfast.” Two teacups rested on the pass-through, and a package of sticky buns lay unopened beside them. “Until the time comes,” she said, pausing for effect, “you really should take the bedroom upstairs so you can get a decent rest at night.”

All of her sentences were punctuated with an ‘until’ phrase. Until I can’t bathe myself any longer. . . Until I can no longer make it to the hairdresser’s. . .Until I can’t feed myself. . . And they both knew what ‘the time’ meant. The Time that was Coming. Tsumugi brought it up at least a half dozen times a day, and hearing the words made a sickening little knot in Yuuto’s stomach. The Time lurched nearby, always in weeks, months, who knew? But it was always coming, chewing away bits of Tsumugi’s independence until she was left with only a mouthful of ‘untils.’

“Are you going out?” she asked. Yuuto was tying his sneakers, contemplating a bus ride to his own street so he could take his morning stroll in familiar territory. He seized up a little inside, hoping she would not insist that he stay in all morning.

“I have a few errands to run.”

Tsumugi smiled and placed their breakfast plates on the table. Oddly, there was no argument or demand. “Good. That’s good.”

Her acquiescence gave him no comfort. No ‘untils’ came either. “Do you need me to pick up anything for you? While I’m out?”

“No, you enjoy your morning.” Her eyes flitted over to Hikari, but she quickly averted her gaze and the smile filled her face once more. “Be sure to return promptly for lunch though. I will have something special for you.”

“Mother, you don’t have to cook. I can bring us something.”

“As I said, until I can’t.”

An awkward stare ran between the two of them until Yuuto broke the spell and nodded. “I’m having tea out.” Murmuring a good-bye, he was out the door.

Yuuto intended to have his tea and a bun at a shop on his street, but by the time the bus dropped him off he had lost his appetite and ended up walking the length of his street deep in thought and noticing little. The usual delights and simple pleasures of a morning walk blurred past him, and when he reached the next bus stop two blocks down, he stopped on the sidewalk to watch the small crowd patiently file on and take their seats. Yuuto wanted for a moment to get on the bus and ride to the other side of town, and then take another bus and ride up the coast. Maybe all the way to Akita, or further. Until the land ran out. His thoughts quickly turned to Hikari, and he felt a surge of panic at being away from her. She was alone. With his mother. Something in Yuuto made him want to return to her, to protect her, to soothe her, although she was usually the one who soothed him.

He arrived at his mother’s house nearly an hour later. He was thinking only of Hikari, but when he opened the door, his mother’s surprise was waiting for him.

Yuuto’s eyes grew wide. At the dining table across the room sat a plump young woman with a steaming cup of tea centered in front of her. She clutched the plackets of her navy-blue cardigan in each fist with her elbows pressed tightly to her sides. To Yuuto, she looked cold and uncertain of herself. When he approached, she lowered her eyes demurely and began to laugh as if someone had told her a mildly funny joke. Tsumugi had applied lipstick and blush to her lips and cheeks, but the effect on her shrinking flesh was garish, as if a child had painted it on. His mother gave an embarrassed smile and sucked in her breath. Yuuto thought she was about to say something important, but nothing came out. Someone around Yuuto was always giving those looks, the raised eyebrows on tense faces that said I’m sorry for everything nothing is the way I meant it to be this is what we get. Hikari never gave those looks. She was never sorry because she never did anything to be sorry for. Everything was the way she meant it to be. She stood in her Gatebox, pivoting first on one foot and then the other, moving back and forth and staring at him.

“This is my son, Yuuto. Yuuto, this is Kaoru. We worked together at the hospital before my retirement. I invited her to join us for lunch. She’s in the billing department. Like you, Yuuto.” His mother’s embarrassed smile had turned into a bright ray of hope. She looked at her son, then at Kaoru, and back at her son once more. “Yuuto works at the university.”

“I’m so happy to meet you.” From across the den, Hikari’s perky response startled everyone at the table, and Tsumugi gave Yuuto a look that expressed a dozen curses all at once.

Kaoru had not entirely stopped laughing. She kept putting the crook of her index finger to her lips as if to seal them off. “I’m sorry for laughing. It’s a thing I do when I’m nervous.”

Hikari laughed often as well, but hers was like tinkling bells, a sound Yuuto loved to hear when he walked through the door at night. Kaoru’s laughter was punctuated with a whining sound, like a person on the verge of bursting into tears.

Tsumugi regained her composure and curled her lips in a tight smile. “It’s quite alright. Lots of people have queer little nervous habits. My Yuuto used to tug on his ear when he was nervous. Just like a little monkey. Didn’t you?” She raised her eyebrows and nodded expectantly at her son who stood mortified at the two women. His mother’s body was framed from behind with photos of himself all over the wall. Yuuto as a toddler holding a yellow toy elephant. Yuuto singing in a musical program in preschool. Yuuto with his soccer trophy from second grade. Yuuto with his fifth-place ribbon for a science project on crustaceans from seventh grade. Yuuto as a high schooler, slumping in his cousin’s wedding reception line. Yuuto receiving his college diploma. The collection expanded outward on the wall in a growing field of cheap frames. His face everywhere doing everything that had ever been important to him for his whole life up until now. There was one picture missing that was most important of all: Hikari. He had taken a selfie with Hikari two weeks earlier: his cheek pressed against the Gatebox and Hikari’s glowing image next to him, her fingers playfully pressed underneath her chin. At work he would sometimes take out his cell phone to look at the two of them, together.

“Yuuto? Did you hear me?” asked his mother.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“You’re so funny, master,” said Hikari, twirling in a circle.

Kaoru laughed again, this time in a shrill nervous pitch that brought to Yuuto’s mind the trill of opera singers when warming up their voices. “There’s a cartoon girl in there!”

“That’s just a little toy we have,” Tsumugi interjected before turning her attention to her son. “I asked you to please bring the biscuits. I would get them myself, but I’m feeling rather weak.”

“Oh,” said Kaoru, placing her hands on the table to get up. “Perhaps this is not a good time. I should go.”

“No, of course not. Don’t go!” Tsumugi’s voice rang out a little desperately. She realized her hand had flopped forward when she spoke, and she drew it back, resting it neatly on her other hand, as if posing for a photo. She used this gesture when she wanted to recenter and calm herself, a move so subtle Yuuto almost did not remember it despite having seen his mother do it a thousand times. “What I mean is,” she continued, “you haven’t seen my lilies. You must enjoy them in the noon light to appreciate their vibrant colors. Yuuto, please show Kaoru my flowers while I put the noodles on the table.”

“I love flowers!” Hikari pretzeled her arms and hands over one another and clasped her fingers together while swinging her body the way a child does when begging for a treat. This time Kaoru didn’t giggle, but gasped and quickly covered her mouth with her hand.

Tsumugi responded with a firm twist of her head, a gesture that told Yuuto here was no other option but to escort their giggling guest through the side door and into the miniature garden.

The sun had grown hot and it perched directly over Tsumugi’s lily garden. A small space crammed with lilies in every available square inch of soil, the garden was too cramped for the two lawn chairs placed near the door. Yuuto stood with his hands in his pockets, flicking his eyes from one bright flower to the next that his mother had devoted herself to for as long as he could remember.

“They’re very pretty,” said Kaoru.

“My mother is quite proud of them.” Keeping his eyes on the blooms spared him from having to look at the woman who self-consciously kept one hand near her mouth at all times. When he did sneak a glance, he could see that her fingernails were chewed to the quick, and he quickly turned his attention back to the flowers. Seeing Tsumugi’s lilies from one fence line to the other took all of about two minutes. The two of them lingered side by side

“She’s very interesting. Does she talk like that. . .to you all the time? ”

He wondered if maybe his mother had not told her about her illness. Letting on that she would soon be dead might scare Kaoru off, thought Yuuto. Or, it might have the opposite effect. He pretended to be distracted by a spent bloom and pinched it off the stem before tossing it over the fence.

“I’ve seen one before. In a tea shop, I mean. She talks to the owner just like she talks to you. I think it’s rather cute.”

“Oh. Oh!” exclaimed Yuuto. “You mean Hikari.”

“Hikari, yes. She’s like a doll. A talking Barbie doll. I have- I had those dolls when I was a girl. I talked to them all the time. I pretended they talked back to me. Of course, none of them did. Not like yours does.” The giggle returned, and the hand shot up over the mouth again, this time pressing into her lips with some force. She took a breath and continued. “If I had a Hikari doll too, I could really talk to her and she’d talk to me like we were best friends. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“It’s not like that,” sputtered Yuuto.

“I know. Dolls aren’t real. It would just be really cute to have one, I think. It would be something fun to show my friends. When my friends come over to visit. We could, we could ask her questions.” Kaoru paused, as if she was trying to figure out if Yuuto had discerned some lie in what she’d said.

“She’s not a Magic 8 Ball,” he said, feeling anger well up in him. “She’s not there to entertain your friends or to be cute. She’s more than that.” He wanted to run back inside and cover Hikari’s Gatebox to protect her, to keep this foolish young woman from sullying her in some way.

“Come inside!” Tsumugi appeared at the door, her face a wide-screened smile. “Lunch is ready!”

The three of them sat at the table set with Tsumugi’s best linens and bowls. The effort of cooking the noodles left her face with a fine sheen of sweat. She pushed her shaking hands under the table and pretended to adjust her napkin.

“Your lilies are very pretty,” said Kaoru. “Very pretty,” she repeated.

“They have always been a great source of pride to me,” said Yuuto’s mother, holding her chopsticks but not eating. “And my son, of course.”

Yuuto was eating his noodles without looking at either of the women. In between bites, he sneaked glances at Hikari, swinging her skirt and pacing in her Gatebox. Tsumugi gritted her teeth and gave a strained little smile and dipped her chopsticks in her soup bowl.

“Umm,” started Kaoru, “do you like to sing? Karaoke?”

“Oh, my Yuuto used to be quite an excellent singer,” said Tsumugi. “He-”

“I don’t sing karaoke. I never sang karaoke.” Yuuto dropped his chopsticks on the table, spattering soup on his mother’s pristine white tablecloth.

“Would you like me to sing for you now?” Hikari waved both hands in the air. “I like to sing for you.”

Kaoru giggled hysterically and grabbed her napkin to cover her mouth. “Oh, she wants to sing. How sweet!”

Tsumugi was trying to push herself up from the table, but her arms shook with the effort.

“Mother, what do you want? Don’t do that. I’ll get it for you.” Yuuto stood quickly, nearly toppling his chair behind him.

“I want to go to my seat. Over there.” She gestured toward the sofa and took tiny, veering steps toward the sitting area, swatting away her son’s hands as he tried to take hold of her arm.

“Mother, please!”

“I will not tolerate this in my house,” Tsumugi muttered. Gasping for air, she grabbed hold of the sofa arm and steadied herself before stepping toward the shelf.

Yuuto remained behind, watching his mother’s advance. A ball of dread dropped from his throat to his stomach. “Mother, what are you doing?”

Tsumugi stopped at the Gatebox, her quivering right hand resting on its glass top.

“Should I. . . is there anything I can do?” Kaoru stood helplessly next to the table, watching.

“All I wanted was for my son to have a nice girl.  Is it too much for a mother to want her son to find a nice girl to settle down with and to give her grandchildren?” Gripping the top of the dome, Tsumugi gave it a little squeeze and turned it a few inches. “But all I get is this thing. This child’s toy.” Tilting it back slightly, she slid her other hand underneath the bottom and held it there on the shelf, looking at Hikari who grinned at her, oblivious.

“Mother, don’t. She’s my. . .I love her. I love her!” He took a step forward and Tsumugi pulled at the Gatebox in warning. He froze, his hands out, beseeching his mother.

“Oh master,” chimed Hikari, “I love you ever so much! Let’s take a vacation soon!” Pressing her fingers under her chin, she swung her skirt back and forth. Glittering stars spewed in an arc from behind her, but Yuuto could only see them through his mother’s fingers.

Using all that that left of her waning strength, Tsumugi sent the Gatebox tumbling over the coffee table and onto the wood floor where it landed with a smack. Bits of the hard plastic base skittered across the floor and landed at Yuuto’s feet. The glass dome was cracked in a jagged line and the disconnected power cord lay along the floor behind it like the tail of a dead animal. The dome was dark. Her energy spent, Tsumugi collapsed onto the sofa.

*

The until time came six weeks later, just a few days before Hikari returned. Yuuto walked into his mother’s house clutching a box that held his beloved Hikari. The second Hikari. It took six weeks for her to be shipped. He spent the remainder of his savings plus an additional charge of 27,000 yen on his credit card. She was identical to the first Hikari.

Hikari II took the same space on the den shelf as the first. She sang to Yuuto, turned off the lights at night, and sent him phone messages even when he was in the house. Now bedridden upstairs in her room, Tsumugi never saw her. With his mother deep in the final until time, Yuuto took the week off from work and moved seamlessly between Hikari II and his dying mother. It was late in the afternoon on a Saturday near the end of September. Tsumugi’s lilies were spent. Yuuto had pushed his mother’s bed close to the window so she could see the tiny garden below, now growing yellow and brown after a long summer of vibrant color. Propped on her pillow, Tsumugi looked at her son and said, “You won’t be lonely, will you? I don’t want you to be alone.”

“No Mother, don’t worry. I am not alone. I will never be alone.”

“You met someone?” She whispered.

Yuuto leaned close and brushed a stray hair from her cheek with a gentle swipe of his finger. His mother was even smaller than he remembered from the day before, her body diminishing cell by cell. “Yes,” he said, “I met someone new. She’s quite special.”

Tsumugi gave her son a hint of a smile. He took his mother’s hand in his own. In a few minutes she grew very still. He held her hand until she breathed her last. Yuuto pulled the blanket over his mother’s shoulders and exhaled at the sight of her shrunken form in the bed, her head a nest of gray on the pillow. From the den he heard the faint tinkling sound of laughter.

 

 

About the Author
Cathy Adams’ latest novel, A Body’s Just as Dead, was published by SFK Press. Her writing has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. She is a short story writer with publications in The Saturday Evening Post, Utne, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Barely South, Five on the Fifth, Southern Pacific Review, and 55 other journals from around the world. She earned her M.F.A. at Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University, Washington, and currently teaches at the American University in Bulgaria.