tw: notes of suicide
"Maki!" Hinawa said, shaking her awake. "Maki, wake up!"
"Can't I sleep in for just one day?" she grumbled.
"Look out the window," he said.
Maki swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. She shuffled to the window and looked outside.
"Is that — "
"Yes, it's snow!"
Maki hurried to the kitchen and slid open the door leading to the outside deck. She looked out over the beach and watched as the fluffy snowflakes gathered in small piles. She folded her arms into herself to keep warm against the cold air.
"Here," Hinawa said, putting a thick blanket around her shoulders.
"Thanks."
Hinawa walked over to a small wicker patio set and sat down, propping his feet up on the table in front of it. He watched the snow as it fell and sighed.
"Damn. I was hoping that it wouldn't snow," he said.
Maki sat down beside him and gathered the blanket over their laps. Hinawa put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, ignoring the pounding in his chest.
"It's really pretty though, isn't it?" Maki asked.
Hinawa looked at her. "Yeah, it is."
Maki snuggled into the crook of his arm as she watched the fat white flakes float through the air. She tried to ignore how close he was as she breathed in the smell of his soap.
"So what does this mean now?" she asked him.
"It may take a while longer to go home," he said.
"So we'll be holed up here a bit longer?"
"Possibly."
Maki gnawed on her lip. "So… can I ask you a few questions?"
"Maki — "
" Please? Just to pass the time?"
Hinawa sighed. Maki was hellbent on getting answers out of him one way or another. Now that they were in his childhood home…
"Fine," he heard himself saying.
"If my questions get too personal, you can stop me, okay?" she said.
"Yeah, yeah."
"So how did your parents meet?"
Hinawa felt his face turn red. He'd read about their first meeting, in his mother's diary, after she'd passed away, but he felt like it was something he wanted to keep to himself.
But this was Maki .
"My mom wrote about it in one of her diaries," he told her. "Here, I'll go get it."
He pushed the blanket over on Maki's lap and walked inside. He walked to the library and knelt beside a plastic box by his favorite armchair.
"High school… university… here it is!" Hinawa pulled out a leather diary and unwrapped the cords. He flipped through it and found the date he wanted and smiled softly.
"Here, Maki," he said.
Maki was sitting in the living room when he walked back through to the porch, having gotten cold. She turned to look at him.
"Is that the only one?" she asked.
"Uh, no… But this is the one that details their relationship the most."
He gave Maki the diary and sat down at the other end of the couch. He pulled a blanket over his lap and grabbed the magazine that Maki had tossed the day before.
"Aw."
"What?"
Maki turned to him and read:
"' 23 August,
"' I've started working at this small coffee shop down the street from the bookstore. I have a regular customer who comes in and challenges me with a complicated coffee order every day. Today he came in and asked for basic black coffee and a donut. When he finished, he asked for a cup of tea and a cookie. When he finished that, he told me that he only came into the coffee shop every day to see me, and then he gave me a comment card with his phone number on it! I haven't had anything like that happen to me before! '"
Maki turned to look at him. "This is really one of the cutest things I've ever read."
Hinawa smiled. His parents had a really sweet love story, one that ended too soon. He enjoyed reading his mother's diary of their courtship multiple times because it made him feel closer to her.
He wished his dad kept an account like that, but he verified that everything in the diaries was fact.
"Oh wait, here's another one," Maki said, a small smile on her face. She nudged his shoulder as she read out loud:
"' 22 September,
"' Hinawa-san brought me flowers for our first official date. They were beautiful white lilies. He said they reminded him of me — beautiful and pure. '"
Maki looked over at Hinawa with tears glistening in her eyes. "God your parents were so romantic."
"Shut up."
"Is this whole diary like that?"
"Yes."
"How far does it go?"
Hinawa took the diary from her and flipped through the pages. His mother's handwriting became more excited and unreadable throughout her relationship with his father, and when he handed Maki the diary back, she merely glanced at the pages before looking back at him.
"I can't read this."
"My mom's last entry in this diary was a few weeks before she and my father were married."
"But she has more of them?"
"You only wanted to know how they met."
"It's cold, it's snowing, and this is a great love story. I want to read more."
"You view my parents' marriage as a 'great love story'?"
"Yes."
"I'm not letting you read more about my parents' love life."
He refused to let her read the diaries after this one — the ones where his mother detailed finding out she was pregnant with him, her difficult pregnancy, and the months and years that followed — her dark times.
And she loved him. God, did she love him. He remembered how it felt when she'd hug him tight while reading to him as a little kid, or when she greeted him after he came back from school.
"You know, this entry says your mom was pregnant when your parents got married," Maki said, jarring him from his thoughts.
"Huh?"
"Did you really read this part of her diary?" she asked him.
Hinawa took his mother's diary from her and re-read the entry. It was dated just a few weeks before his mother's final entry in the diary.
He wasn't born until his parents had been married for three years.
"I always assumed…"
"You really need to read into her diaries more. She definitely goes into detail around Christmas about… well," Maki shrugged.
Hinawa groaned before flipping to the Christmas entry. It was exactly what he thought.
"Why didn't you keep this to yourself?" he told Maki.
"I had to read it, and I thought that you should too."
"This is a very detailed account of my parents' first time together. I'm their son."
Maki took the diary back from him. "Where are the others?"
"There's a plastic bin in the library."
"Thank you!"
He watched as she practically skipped down the hall to retrieve more of his mother's diaries. He opened the diary in his hands to New Year's Eve and read the entry:
"' 31 December,
"' Takeda-san has asked me to marry him, and I said yes! We're going to a movie to celebrate. He wanted me to pick out my engagement ring but I told him a ring doesn't matter. This makes me so happy, I love him so much! '"
This was the first entry in the entire diary to mention his father by his given name. He should have read it more closely. He flipped through the last few pages and a photo fell out into his lap.
"What's that?" Maki asked.
He looked over at her and saw she had two more diaries in her hands. He sighed before waving the photo in her direction.
"It's my parents, on New Year's Eve. My dad proposed to my mom then."
Maki looked at the photo and smiled. The lieutenant's parents were genuinely happy as they exchanged a kiss.
"Have you read the diary about you?" she asked him.
"Yeah. I changed my mom."
"No, you didn't. She thought you were the best thing that ever happened to her."
"Then why?"
Maki set the diaries down on the coffee table beside the first one. She laid her hand on his arm. "Why what?"
"Why did she leave me and my dad?"
"She was sick , she couldn't help that."
"Maki, she — my mom killed herself."
Maki couldn't breathe. "I'm so sorry."
Hinawa sighed. He didn't want to tell Maki the full truth about his mother just yet. But the cat was out of the bag.
"I want to be alone," Hinawa told her.
"Okay. I'll be in the library if you need me," she whispered.
She gave him a tight-lipped grin before heading down the hall, taking the diaries with her.
Hinawa leaned back on the couch and took his glasses off. His dad had lied to him about his mother's death for years, and when he found that letter from her — in the diary about him, of all places — a few years before, he knew.
"Damn it!" he hissed quietly. He wiped his eyes and rolled over on the couch.
His mother was very depressed after he was born. She tried to hide it from him, but she had her dark moments. His dad worked every day from dawn to dusk to make sure that he had everything he needed — clothes, books, food, even shelter.
He tried to hide the darkest memories of his childhood from himself but to no avail. One that came back often while he was alone was of him as a small five-year-old child, waiting on his mother to pick him up from school.
He didn't know she had had an episode while he was learning and had forgotten him.
"Lieutenant?" Maki's voice was quiet, so as to not disturb him.
"What?"
"It's stopped snowing, would you like to go into town?"
Hinawa leaned up. "Actually, I'd love to. Let me go change and we can leave."
Maki walked into the living room holding a pair of boots. She was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a pink shirt. She pulled a white sweater on over her head and fixed her hair.
Hinawa's eyes roved over her outfit. Holy shit. "Maki, you look…"
"Your next words better be good."
"Great."
He walked to the top of the hall and looked back at her. If she was dressed like that, then he supposed he should dress up a bit too.
He dug through his bag and came up with a pair of blue jeans and a white polo. Fine, but the jeans were not appropriate. He stuffed them back in his bag and pulled out a pair of khakis, and a beige zip-up sweater. He quickly changed and grabbed a pair of brown boots from his bag.
"All neutrals?" Maki asked him.
"It's what I look best in."
He sat down to put his shoes on and looked up at Maki. "You're not taking a coat?"
"I'll be fine."
"Suit yourself."
He led her outside into the chilly afternoon air and locked the door behind them.
"Lead the way," Maki said, pointing toward the small town.
