"A man's greatest duty and joy is to work hard and support his family," were the words most often heard from the deep throat of his stern father.
Growing up in a backwater town, Masashi never had cause to doubt them. All the men he knew were content to work long, hard hours in order to support their family. All the women he knew were content to obediently support their families from the home. All the children he knew were content knowing that they would grow up and take their respective places in the workforce and house to support their own eventual families. That why when he graduated high school and went to a relatively well-reputed university in Tokyo to get a good job for his eventual family, the girl next door, Tsukimi, coming with him was a surprise.
She had declared she hated the man her parents kept 'acccidentally' leaving her alone with and wanted to pursue a career to become independent. He, like the rest of the town, frowned on the rebellious behavior and hoped she met a good husband while studying, saw the error of her ways, and settled into her place as a wife and mother. Their worst fears were confirmed when Tsukimi dyed her hair neon green and disappeared off the face of the map, only calling home (drunk) on rare occasions asking for money. Her parents were blamed for not being strict enough with her, as well as the influence of 'those city girls'. That's why, after completing his master's, he picked up a job near his home town and moved back. The commute was monstrous, but he found what he was looking for: a demure country wife.
Her name was Ritsuko and she was the daughter of his parent's acquaintance from an outlying farming community. After he was asked to 'show her around' when she was visiting they started meeting again and within six months were engaged. Everyone thought it was the perfect match; she was a high school senior who knew the basic homemaking skills after helping to raise her five siblings and he was a master's grad who had a decent wage job. He thought she would make a good mother, and she obviously thought he was capable of sustaining a family.
Ritsuko quit high school and he was promoted to the main branch of the company in Tokyo with a substantial raise. They bought, not rented, a nice house in a quiet, traditional suburb and a few years later felt settled down and ready to begin their family. However, despite multiple attempts, they eventually had to go to a doctor and be told that Ritsuko was unable to have children.
And thus, for 20 years, they lived together and alone. Masashi could not have been accused of neglecting Ritsuko, however, neither did he go out of his way to take her out for dinner occasionally, or make sure he came home on time, or even once in a while put his own clothes in the laundry basket to give her a break. For her part, Ritsuko said nothing about his behavior. She felt guilty, and any flicker of independence in her was snuffed out with the knowledge that her own inadequacy meant their home would never have little hands tugging on her skirt hem as she made supper, or small footsteps pattering to go greet Masashi when he came home. She became paranoid of her husband's displeasure and went to absurd lengths to ensure that what she lacked as a mother she compensated for as a wife. In their family home it was not odd to see Ritsuko scurrying to fetch Masashi his slippers, or newspaper, or the remote on the other side of the couch, and equally common was Ritsuko puttering about the kitchen cooking elaborate meals for a husband who didn't call to say he wouldn't be home until late and then keeping them warm until he walked through the door, sometimes at 2am. The next day she would wake up early to make him an equally scrumptious breakfast and bento, rubbing her bloodshot eyes. Most days that bento ended up in the garbage as he opted for take-out.
One day, at work of course, Masashi got a phone call from his neighbour saying Ritsuko had been hospitalized. For the first time ever he left work early. Upon arriving at the hospital he discovered she only had a broken leg, several fractures, and a bruised ribcage – nothing fatal. More than her injuries was the strangeness of the incident: there had been an earthquake. This was not unusual for Japan, but this was a very strange earthquake. No weather-watchers, government agencies, storm chasers, or anyone for that matter, had predicted it. There were no before shakes or after quakes, no movement of the plates to suggest an earthquake, just one momentary shudder of the earth in one small section of town. Scientists puzzled over it for decades, for it struck such a small area yet caused enormous damage to that one, contained space. Survivors claimed all manner of strange things such as the sky turning red, swirling high winds, and the appearance of ghost-like monsters and flying unidentifiable fruit. A good number of people had died, but several people went inexplicably missing. In the radius of three city blocks that storm hit there was no way the army, who overturned every stone, would miss these people, but they were simply never heard from by anyone in this world again.
Masashi (uncharacteristically) began arriving home on time to care for his invalid wife, and when she appeared to have gotten a stomach bug he even gave her a back massage. A trip to the doctor revealed a shocking but welcome reality: Ritsuko was experiencing morning sickness. At work, Masashi dumped all the projects he could get away with on his subordinates and occasionally made it home to run errands for his humming and baby blankie knitting wife.
When the day of birth came Masashi skipped work altogether in favour of anxiously pacing the drab hospital corridors outside the door marked 'Nakajima-sama', wringing his hands over the not-yet-fully-healed Ritsuko and the 2 months premature Yousuke or Youko. He and Ritsuko had carefully picked that name using either 'ko' from her name or 'suke' from her brother Ritsusuke's and his grandfather's 'You' character meaning 'sun' to represent their feeling at finally having a baby.
After what seemed like years to him his mother-in-law stepped out the grey door and, nodding reassuringly at his anxious face, said joyfully,
"Come and meet Youko." Relief flooded through him that he had a living daughter (girls were so much more obedient!) and he sprang into the room.
His glistening wife proudly held a bundle in her arms, and when Masashi approached she said, "Isn't she the most beautiful baby there ever was?"
There is an old saying that a mother always knows her child. Strangely enough, there is no such saying about fathers. However, in that room, it was not the mother who looked at the pinkish fuzz plastered on the tiny scalp or the green tinge to the tiny eyes and felt that this must be a stranger's child.
His mother-in-law elbowed him in the side and rolled her eyes. "Men! Women turn into mothers when the baby grows inside them, but men need to hold the baby before they turn into fathers." Ritsuko held the bundle out to Masashi. However, even when his arms were ladened with the scarce weight of the new born, Masashi felt nothing. This could be anyone's baby, he felt no special connection to her.
Thinking how Youko resembled a pink monkey Masashi looked into Ritsuko's expectant, joyful face and lied, "Yes, she is."
Ritsuko and Youko remained at the hospital under observation until the doctors concluded that, strangely and fortunately, Youko was completely developed even though she was two months premature. Ritsuko was so busy cooing over her much longed-for baby and knitting pink baby sweaters with little usa-chan and kuma-chan stitched lovingly into them that she didn't notice Masashi never visited. When she was released and, bursting with pride, showed little blurry-eyed Youko all around the house she would grow up in Masashi wasn't there either. He had taken too much time off during the pregnancy, he said, and needed to work overtime for a while to make up. Ritsuko swallowed this; after all, they finally had another mouth to feed! Had he told her he needed to move to Brazil and could only visit once every ten years it would scarcely have dampened her excitement over her baby.
Masashi, however, spent most of his waking hours repeating the nurses reassurances that hair and eye colour often changed in babies and wondering whether or not he should get a paternity test. But they didn't know any Caucasians so how could she be… What would Ritsuko think, and the neighbours? And, heaven forbid, if it was negative then what? So he anxiously watched Youko's hair and eye colour, and it did seemed to him the eyes were getting more grey-black than grey-green, and her hair, now it was beginning to thicken, formed coppery brownish locks instead of a pinkish wisp. Perhaps one side of the family had a distant European ancestor somewhere, and the recessive red hair gene only coincidentally appeared in Youko. As time went on and when Youko began to call out "kah-tha" and especially when she called "doh-tha" he grew more and more fond of her. When she toddled over to him, or came home kindergarten with a picture titled "For my otou-san" he firmly believed she was his daughter and all his early doubt was just the overwhelmed feelings of a new parent.
Of course, he made sure that she wouldn't turn out like the shameless city girls he saw idling on the subways and street corners. He accepted that times had changed and this was Tokyo, so having her get married while still in high school would mark her as a delinquent, but he fully expected her to graduate with high grades and start working or go to a local college, find someone nice, and settle down. After hearing disturbing reports about co-worker's daughters who swung from boyfriend to boyfriend on a bi-weekly basis he insisted she attend an all-girls high school, to eliminate the risk of his daughter engaging in such folly.
The high school he had selected was perfect: private, nearby, traditional, strict, and well-reputed but not famous. Youko had always been a bright girl, so passing the entrance exam wasn't a problem. Initially Youko and Ritsuko had both favoured a far-off prestigious high school that Youko's grades qualified her for, but he talked Ritsuko out of it. After all, it was co-ed and Youko's strange reddish hair was already beginning to attract all manner of attention. What if a delinquent took an interest in her? No, it was better that she go to the nearby girls school, where if something did happen one of the neighbours was bound to tell him about it.
When Youko applied for admission, however, they encountered an unexpected obstacle: there was no coloured hair allowed in the school except in foreigners and halfs. Ritsuko actually had to march into the principal's office with pinkish fuzz-head baby pictures before the man would accept Youko had not dyed her hair. Now that she was no longer growing and it became apparent that her hair would not continue darkening past the coppery colour it had faded to Youko was bound to be followed be whispers and glances. Several people had asked him if she was adopted, and numerous co-workers of his gave him pitying glances when he introduced his daughter. It was humiliating. Youko herself had taken to tightly braiding her hair together so the bulk made it appear darker, and kept her head down and out of trouble. One morning she accepted money from Ritsuko to go to the hair salon and cut off all the faded pinkish spilt ends. He sighed in relief and hoped she would look presentable enough to not attract attention now, and went to work contented.
Several hours later he got a hysterical phone call from the school secretary. Nakajima-san, she said, had stayed behind after school to talk with the vice-principal when a strangely dressed man with knee-length blond hair had come barging in claiming he'd been searching for Nakajima-san, smashed all the windows (how he did it she didn't know), and dragged Nakajima-san away. When the windows had been smashed most of the staff had been injured by falling glass shards, and by the time help had been found and it had occurred to someone to go look for Nakajima-san she had disappeared.
Masashi never remembered what he said, or what happened next, but his subordinates swore he spent the whole evening snapping at them with unreasonable demands, such as to finish the current project by last week. All he remembered was numbly getting off the subway and walking home to a tear stricken Ritsuko pouncing on the phone every time it rang. Every time she shouted at the good intentioned people seeking to comfort her,
"If you haven't seen her get off the line right now and don't call back! What if Youko is trying to call me right now!"
This grated on his nerves, especially when he noticed his sister's number on the call display.
"For heaven's sake, woman, stop alienating all our friends and family!"
Ritsuko spun on her heels and turned on him venomously, waving a stirring spoon with crusted on cookie dough in his face, "You!" she cried, just noticing he was home, "Where have you been all afternoon? The school called at…" Masashi was saved from his wife's suddenly discovered inner lioness by the ringing of the phone. This time it was the police, saying the hadn't found Nakajima Youko-san yet and asking a bunch of questions. Thus, Masashi was forgotten for the time being as Ritsuko railed against the incompetence of the police force.
However, this was just the first sniffle in pneumonia. Ritsuko stubbornly claimed Youko had been kidnapped, and refused to believe anyone who said there was no sign of her struggling against this man. Personally, Masashi believed his worries about her hair attracting the notice of the wrong people had come to fruition and that for some time now Youko must have been involved in a gang. Suddenly he was suspicious of her red hair. Sure, she had been born with red hair, but wasn't it supposed to change to a more natural colour once she became a teenager? In their completely Japanese family, how likely was it that some random recessive red hair gene would surface over the many dominant black hair genes? Hadn't Youko been dying her hair for years now, deceiving her parents, and getting involved with the wrong people? Did 'going to the library' actually mean 'going to go meet up with my gang friends'?
There was now an unbridgeable gap between himself and his fiercely protective wife. Even when Ritsuko herself started to believe that perhaps Youko was not the model daughter they always believed she refused to join his slander of the ungrateful brat who ran away. Two years after Youko disappeared Ritsuko filed for divorce and started law school, seemingly strengthened by the trying ordeal of losing her beloved only daughter. She lost most of her possessions in the settlings and moved to a small apartment. Masashi had once seen her on the subways and almost not recognized his demure, obedient wife in the self-confident businesswoman he saw, complete with – to his horror – a pair of dress pants!
Far away, unseen by any people she had previously known, a young woman known variously as Nakajima Youko, Chuu Youshi, Queen Sekishi, the Royal Kei, and the Empress of Kei strapped a sword to her waist, lifted her head, and walked straight into a throne chamber filled with people who hid murderous thoughts behind bows and court smiles. She was no longer the stunned schoolgirl who had been – quite literally – dragged into a storm with high swirling winds, a red sky, shuddering earth, and nightmarish monsters flying around for the second time in her life – not that she remembered the first since she was still in a fruit. She turned, swishing her blood-red hair that shone with a pinkish glow in the early morning light and faced the Imperial Court of the Eastern Kingdom of Kei with her determined jade eyes. Far, far away, an older woman stood outside the Court of Law, and faced it was just such a look. Truly, however children grown from fruit are preserved when they drift to this world in a storm, the seven months spent growing in one's womb and years of living together had made these two mother and daughter.
However, Masashi neither wore that unyielding determined look himself, nor saw it on the face of either.