Recapturing the Past or Accepting the Future

Shino's POV: Recapturing the Past

As my alarm clock rang, I slowly got out of bed. When I was awake enough to have a clear head, I immediately noticed something was amiss- my mom had not come for me in the morning.

Walking downstairs, I saw my uncle- Mom's younger brother. His presence was not unusual, since he sometimes stayed overnight when he visited, and left for his home around the time I left for school. But when he visited, he usually talked with Mom in the morning while I made breakfast.

"Good morning, Shino," he said.

"Good morning, Uncle," I said. "Where's Mom?"

"You mean she's not here?" he said. Evidently, he was just as confused about these recent events as I was, since he otherwise would have told a lie, like "She's out doing some shopping" until Mom returned or her absence went on too long for him to cover it up. I was old enough to be aware that there were things adults kept from kids, and young enough to be kept out of the loop on certain matters.

"No, I didn't see her this morning," I said.

We searched the house for any notes that she might have left behind, but a cursory sweep revealed nothing that would indicate where she had gone, why she had left, or if she intended to return.

I made breakfast that morning, for three people, and ended up putting Mom's portion in the fridge when she didn't come to eat it. I think my uncle ended up having it for lunch, since he decided to stay at her house in order to make some phone calls regarding my mother, such as reporting her disappearance.

While this day was very much out of the ordinary, I was still expected to go to school as usual. Luckily, I made myself seem as though I was paying attention in class, and avoided drawing any attention from the teachers.

I couldn't, however, replicate that feat in mahjong, and ended up dealing into some of my friends' hands, losing each of my matches. After one match that afternoon, in which I dropped below zero points, my friends noticed, or at least, stopped pretending they hadn't.

"Is something wrong, Shino?" one of my friends said. "You're not playing like you usually do."

"My mom didn't come home this morning," I said.

Even then, it was clear that it was more serious than that, and it was less a question of when Mom would return, but if she would. But a part of me was hesitant to admit it to myself, much less others; saying it out loud would mean acknowledging that my mother was most likely gone forever.

"I'm sorry to hear that," my friend said. "I hope she gets back soon; otherwise she might miss the awesome dinner you can make"

My friend's joking comment about my cooking was an obvious attempt to lighten the mood, but it worked well enough for that purpose. I managed to put my mom being missing out of my mind long enough to enjoy our last game of the day, and actually win.

But when I got home that evening, Mom was not waiting for me. She never came for dinner, even when I made one of her favorite dishes. She did not come to the mahjong game between my uncle and I, which we ended up playing half-heartedly, and stopped after the first game. She was not there when Uncle and I went to bed.

The process repeated the next day, the day after it, and many days to come, until I realized- but did not fully accept- that my mom was not coming back. She would not simply walk into the door with an apology for being late. A part of me was afraid to find out how she would turn up, if she ever did.

I eventually had to admit to my friends, and by extension, myself, just how serious and permanent Mom's absence was; that this was not a case of her being busy or having fallen ill, but that she had disappeared, suddenly, inexplicably and for an indeterminate length. In hindsight, I suppose that the time I would have to disclose this would have come sooner or later. Uncle made arrangements for me to stay with him in Shimane, which, naturally, resulted in my transferring schools and saying goodbye to my friends.

I was separated from everything that I had once known- not just my mom, but my old school, my and my mom's house, the city we had lived, and the places we had frequented. But even so, my mind kept drifting back to the happy times, notably, the three of us playing mahjong together. My uncle, however, declined all my requests to play, saying he wasn't interested or making excuses, such as how two player mahjong wasn't as fun.

Maybe something had happened to my mom. Maybe she had no interest in coming back. Maybe she was no longer alive. But a part of me wasn't content with not knowing. Just as I didn't abandon a losing game as long as there was some hope of turning my situation around, I was unwilling to give up on Mom coming home until I knew for certain that it was impossible.

But what would be my way to reach out to her without any way of getting in touch with her? How could I get her to come for me if I no longer lived where we used to? It took me a while to find a solution, but I eventually found a mahjong tournament, one that I hoped was prominent enough to attract Mom's attention, especially if she suspected I would be in it. It was my hope that, even after our time apart, Mom still loved me and the game we played together. It was my hope that time apart would not diminish our bond, and that what had been lost could be found again.

Kousuke's POV: Accepting the Future

When I woke up in the morning and, upon looking around the house, saw that my sister had disappeared, I struggled to make sense of what was going on, to find an answer when none were provided.

One thing snapped me back to reality- her daughter, my niece, asking me where she had gone. It was then that I realized that there was a person who was relying on me to keep myself together and be there for her, an adult's duty toward a child in his care. As an adult, there were many things beyond even my understanding, but my resolve to do the best I could for Shino enabled me to keep up a façade of calmness.

As Shino headed off to school, I made many of the necessary phone calls and other arrangements. I learned nothing about what had become of my sister, but I had done all I could. As much as I did not want to admit it, I now had to act under the assumption that my sister was no longer around, including taking care of her young daughter when she could not- or perhaps, would not.

In most cases, this duty would have fallen to Shino's father, but he was unable to handle that responsibility in this case. I knew what had happened with him, and as much as I did not want to consider it, I had to acknowledge the possibility of the same thing being true for my sister.

The next step was bringing Shiho to my home in Shimane. It was close enough to where my sister lived for occasional visits, but too far for me to commute from there. And as such, the process of packing up our belongings and transporting them to my place began in the days after my sister's disappearance, when it became clear to most who were concerned that she was not going to simply walk back into her house. It was a less than pleasant task, as among the many things we packed up, there were old family photos, gifts from one family member to another, precious keepsakes, and the mahjong set we used to use in our family games.

As I looked at the mahjong table the three of us used to play at, I saw it as a painful reminder of the past, of times that would never come back, like a wooden stick that is left after you eat the popsicle on it. For Shino, mahjong was fun, but I believed it was fun in large part because she did it with people she cared about- whether her mother and I, or her friends at school. With her mother having vanished and her old friends far away, playing would likely only be a way of trying to relive the past, and I saw that there would be little point or pleasure in doing so.

I brought the table to an associate of mine, hoping to sell it. One tile, however, was missing, and he said that he would not likely be able to sell it without a complete set. He was reluctant to simply hold onto it, but it worked well enough; the mahjong set was out of the house, which I hoped would enable us to move forward. I had no intention of forgetting my sister, or expecting Shino to do the same for her mother. But when someone dies, it is best to not spend the rest of one's life consumed by grief and missing their presence. My sister's disappearance was functionally similar, and I believed that Shino would have to spend the rest of her life getting accustomed to her mother's absence. It was by no means an easy task, and comparably difficult for me, but it would only be made more difficult by attempting to act as though she was still around.

Little did I know that Shino had the hope that those days would come once again. To my eyes, it might have seemed a foolish hope, but if clinging to that hope was what allowed her to keep smiling after everything that had happened, then maybe it wasn't such a bad thing. As much as the adult in me thought in terms of practicality, considered what could happen rather than what should, and acknowledged that not everything in life turned out well, a part of me that remained from when I was Shino's age wanted to hope, to be reunited as a family again, to see my sister again and reunite her with her child. And as much as I realized full well that Shino was by no means likely to get what she wanted, there was no one who hoped more fervently that she would.

Author's Notes

Thank you for reading this fic.

This was written for a few reasons. The first was to portray- and contrast- Shino and Kousuke's states of mind after the disappearance of Shino's mother and Kousuke's sister; Shiho believes that her mother will come back, whereas Kousuke doesn't want her to keep thinking of the past. The second was to add a Saki Shinohayu: Dawn of Age fic to FF dot net. The third was to try something new, writing a fic for a series in progress, based on information that might change; I'm personally interested in seeing if any developments occur that contradict what I wrote in this fic.

Shino and Saki's similar goal of reuniting their family through mahjong may seem somewhat unrealistic at first glance, in large part because they, so far, have nothing to show for their efforts as far as progress on their family-related goal goes. However, as I noted in "Some Things Talking Can't Fix", it's difficult for children like Saki and Shino, the latter of whom was in elementary school at the time of her mom's disappearance, to simply accept that things won't go back to the way they were before. I decided to contrast that point of view with Kousuke's belief that she should get over it, with the caveat that Kousuke most likely is having trouble coming to terms with the fact that his sister has vanished, and wants to believe that she'll come back.

On a side note, it can be interesting to see what terms people use to refer to those who are both related to them and those they're talking to or about, just as how Shino's mother is Kousuke's sister. I had him emphasize the latter when discussing his own feelings about the disappearance, and emphasize the former when talking about Shino's.

One has to wonder what happened to Shino's father, since she goes to stay with her uncle after her mother's disappearance. I decided to leave that ambiguous, and word it as though he might have abandoned them, died or disappeared.