Rin Matsuoka only remembers 3 things from when he was 6 years old.
He remembers being horribly upset because he couldn't go to the summer festival. It was the highlight of the year. There were to be a million things to see and eat and do, with the harbour transformed overnight into a magic wonderland lit up by lights and chatter. All of his friends had been given allowances and full leave to explore at their hearts content, but he alone was rudely told he couldn't go. His mom's explanation, long and full of adult phrases, felt like an insult to his 6 years of experience at life. He was angry that he could not go and angry that he could not understand and angry that once again, he had been proven inadequate compared to everyone else. He spent the day of the summer festival sulking and watching reruns of Atomic-Man, ever so often glaring at his parents. When his friends came back the next day with tales of rescued goldfish and elaborate masks, he didn't speak to his them for a whole 2 days.
He remembers the typhoon. He remembers that by the end of it, he had no father or grandfather.
The funeral was numbing. Adult after adult he had never seen before got up and paid their respects, a long procession of ghosts mourning the newly dead. The only thing that seemed alive at all was a slip of a girl who could not stop bawling. Some relative had explained that that disgrace was his sister, though not directly, one year younger than him, named Gou, she had lived with his grandfather before he passed and now such and such arrangements would have to be made with this or that relative. It was all white noise—he'd never seen his grandfather and he only remembered his sister vaguely.
He remembers staring at the coffin and desperately hoping that perhaps his father was still alive somewhere on a desert island, fighting to get back home. There was no body, he had heard his uncle say. There was no body. Clutching onto that last waning hope, he had not even bothered to cry.
Months later, terrified he was forgetting his father's voice, he remembers turning the house upside down for his father's old belongings. He was not allowed in his father's room and there was no comfort to be found in his father's fishing gear in the garage, so he had clenched his fists and braved the spiders in the attic to look for memories. The photo albums had been wedged beneath a mountain of old DVDs and forms, but he had got them out in the end. To his endless disappointment, none of the photos were of him and his father. He was near tears when his mom discovered him upstairs, and upon seeing the scattered mess in the attic, smiled for the first time in 3 months.
"Rin, you've found your father's photos from his swim team days!"
She took the photo album downstairs and did not even scold him a little bit about the mess he made in the attic. They settled down together on the comfy sofa downstairs and made a day of the photo album. His mom knew all the stories of his dad's exploits.
"He wanted to become an Olympic swimmer, Rin," she told him confidentially, pointing to a picture of his father and his friends clutching a golden trophy and beaming.
The next day, Rin signed up for swimming classes.
Gou Matsuoka remembers everything from when she was 6 years old.
After her grandfather dies, Gou spends weeks bouncing from place to place, relative to relative. All of them say that they love her but none of them can seem to afford to keep her or stand her crying after the first week, so Gou switches families over and over. Gou hates it, but she can't imagine it any other way. She doesn't want anyone replacing Grandpa, but without someone to fill the gaps, she's without anchor. She desperately wants someone to love, someone to love her back. So Gou cries a lot.
When Aunty Naoki tells her that she's going to go live with Aunty Yasuhiko near the beach, Gou thinks that her tears might overflow the Pacific Ocean and flood all of Japan. Leaving another family is upsetting enough, but living near the sea is terrifying. The sea is a cold ancient monster, gargantuan and heaving, one so dangerous it swallowed her grandfather whole. Despite this, she manages to keep herself to snuffles on the car ride there until Aunty Naoki tells her to enjoy the sunset on the ocean out the window. Then she bawls.
She tires herself out and arrives at Aunty Yasuhiko's house tear streaked, drooling, and unconscious.
Halfway through the night, she wakes up in a strange room. Someone changed her into pajamas and tucked her in with thick soft blankets on a flowery futon. The room is small and plain, with a desk and what appeared to be a closet, and her forlorn little pink suitcase lies at the foot of her bed, toppled over and cracked open. The wind howled against the window pane, and the salty smell of the sea air was everywhere. She briefly panics—then realises where she is—then panics again.
It takes her a while to calm down and she thinks she is going to cry again, so she pulls up the covers and tries to be as quiet as possible and not get any tears on the sheets, which look new and smell nice. Halfway through her third hiccup the blanket is rudely yanked back.
"Hey!"
There is a boy kneeling by her bed, with red hair and redder eyes. He looks to be about her age, but his pajamas look like they were made for someone much older, and the oversized black material hangs loosely from his wiry frame and pools at his midriff. Her blanket fisted in his hands, and he looks thoroughly annoyed.
"You're so loud," he grumbles, and starts to fumble in his pockets, searching for something.
Gou's eyes widen. "I wasn't being loud, I had the blanket covering me before you—hey!" Gou is thumped over the head with a package of tissues for her trouble.
"Crying's loud wherever you do it. That's the whole point." he says as Gou clutches the package of tissues, flabbergasted. "Now shush. I have swim practice in the morning."
And with that, the boy tucked himself in next to Gou, jostling her over to make room on the futon. Then he tucked himself in next to her. After a while, they fall asleep.