Dream; / driːm / (n.) a cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal.
Munehisa never had a dream. He didn't have the luxury of picturing what his future looked like. His life had always been about running away from the past. Scraping for lunch money and avoiding the inevitable teacher-parent meet in school had been a norm. Not that he didn't have a parent, but his mother was more concerned about getting herself drunk enough to earn some extra tips from customers than she did about her own son getting some food and education. The father, well, was never in the picture.
Family was never an asset to him. It was a liability.
While it wasn't an excuse to stray into an illegal path, Munehisa wasn't mature enough to think it through. He was desperate for an escape. He found one in the Hashiba clan. What he didn't realize, though, was the fact that the clan was more of a dead-end route instead of an alternative path.
Tsuda gave him a temporary, illusionary family that he thought he needed to finally look into the future. Alas, temporary it was. Munehisa noticed later on that what Tsuda wanted wasn't a brother but someone inferior to whom he could validate his self-value. The concept of the future went stale. But the concept of pride crept in. He was Munehisa Iwai of the Hashiba clan. He would trudge against the bleak tomorrow if he had to.
When a crazy, drunk lady tried to sell off her baby for some meager drugs, Munehisa wasn't even sure what to feel—anger, confusion, sadness, all mixed into one. That baby was Kaoru. Unwanted, unloved. Worthless. So worthless in fact, the woman didn't even bother to take the baby with her when Munehisa refused. He shouldn't project his scarred past onto the baby. But as he picked the baby up and held him in his arms, he couldn't help but see flashes of what could and couldn't be that he had missed out his whole life.
How would it feel to have a parent holding your hand during your first step? Or when they walk you into your classroom for the first time? Or maybe when they scold you for picking on the kid who sat next to you in the classroom?
It was a fantasy of the past. Munehisa was a realist. The hard life on the street had taught him that. Dwelling about the past was not in his book of survival. What he needed right now was to connect his present to his future. One step at a time. Money was a necessity in an altruistic way that he had never experienced before. And for that reason, he couldn't use the money he earned from the Hashiba clan.
Munehisa knew more than anyone how that would hurt the baby's future.
Quitting the clan wasn't easy. Aside from the lengthy protocols of quitting a yakuza, starting a new life in a fake gun business while juggling with being a single parent was more exhausting than he thought. Kaoru wasn't a difficult kid to take care of. And he had some regular enthusiasts he could gain profit from. Granted, he had zero experience of being a father—he was totally at the mercy of his neighbors during Kaoru's infancy period. But Munehisa had all the experience of being a little boy; of what he wanted, what scarred him, how he lived.
He worked hard day and night to build a stable business with Untouchable. It was tiring and not any close to satisfying. But the money was quite good. Except that he now knew money didn't mean anything when he didn't have time or desire to spend it.
So he started to buy things for Kaoru. He bought Kaoru a tricycle on the boy's third birthday. He got Kaoru a baseball mitt and bat on his sixth birthday. He even bought video game consoles when the kid was old enough to know he had to spare time studying as much as playing. The delight reverberated from the little boy brought happiness to his days. The little jumps Kaoru made each time Munehisa gave him the toys were so cute, the smiles were infectious. He thought putting up with a business like Untouchable was worth the effort if it meant coming home to that joy.
Munehisa wondered when Kaoru started to give him stuff, too. He recalled the gecko keychain he got when Kaoru first entered high school. Something he smiled so fondly of. And now here he was, sitting at the counter of his shop with two tickets to the Koshien final game. How the boy managed to snatch a pair of tickets was beyond him. But the message was clear.
Kaoru wanted to go with him.
On the day of the match, he came back to a plate of chicken cream stew with rice. It made him smile when he remembered Kaoru telling him how similar it was to chicken curry—he only had to replace curry roux with white sauce. The kid was excited that he now knew two recipes instead of one.
The game wasn't particularly remarkable. The team's batter bunted in loaded bases and lost the game against a double play. The opponent walked multiple batters and somehow won by luck. It was Kaoru's laughter and shouting which made it worth it.
The boy had a smile Munehisa probably never had when he was Kaoru's age.
And yet he wasn't envious. He was proud.
When he found out Kaoru felt like a burden, he wondered where he had gone wrong. Kaoru was all he had left. A burden was the last thing in his mind where Kaoru was concerned.
The moment he decided to tell Kaoru the truth, he was surprised by how well the boy took it. Kaoru had been more mature than he and Masa combined. How he missed seeing the man Kaoru was becoming was beyond him. Maybe because he was blinded by his mess with Tsuda and Masa. Or maybe because he was too busy trying to make money with a store he didn't even like.
A few nights later, Kaoru was in charge of dinner, and Munehisa came back to a plate of chicken curry. They both sat at the table to savor the familiar, traditional taste they had grown to love.
"Do you remember the first time I made curry?" Kaoru asked when they were halfway into their dinner.
"When you were thirteen? It took you three years to learn from a book I bought you," Munehisa replied, not bothering to stop or to look at the boy.
"I was so frustrated that I couldn't do it right. I initially wanted to make it for your birthday that year. It was so overdue," Kaoru said with a soft chuckle.
That halted Munehisa's meal. Memories came rushing in when Kaoru said that. How Kaoru was begging him to use the knife and stove, how frustrated Kaoru was with each failed attempt, and how bright he beamed the moment he presented his first plate to Munehisa. It hit Munehisa that the gecko keychain wasn't the first gift Kaoru gave him. If he was being honest to himself, the curry wasn't the first either. Kaoru gave him the best gift the moment the boy entered his life.
It wasn't that Munehisa didn't have a dream. It was simply because he was disappointed by it over and over again. A cherished aspiration, an ambition, an ideal—he wanted a family. He didn't get one from his mother. He didn't get one from the Hashiba clan either.
He got it now. Despite the struggle he went through battling his demons, there was never a day he wasn't happy when he came back to the presence of his son.
And right here, sitting with him at the dining table and enjoying dinner together, Munehisa knew.
This was his dream. It had been since he was a child. And Kaoru made it happen the moment he entered Munehisa's life. This was where he belonged. He would protect this dream at all costs.
He wanted Kaoru to have a good childhood. That was the entire reason why he went out of the way to hide his past, after all. In the end, those were just his selfish projections stemming from his trauma of being bullied and unloved. It was amazing how Kaoru could bring so much joy and, at the same time, teach him about himself.
"It wasn't overdue at all." Munehisa's lips curved slightly into a small smile. "I kind of lost ten years of my life. I wasn't exactly in the right mind."
Kaoru's laughter sounded clearer somehow. Munehisa wondered if it was because they finally came clean and saw eye to eye.
They were the Iwai family. They might not be connected by blood, but they were connected by the gecko. And like a gecko, he would protect his home and family.
No—
They both would protect their home and family.
Befitting of their family crest.
The End