Summer Rain: Chapter 04

For a nine-year-old, Ichigo knew a lot of things. He knew that there was no rabbit living on the moon, that just because he could not see the stars in the day it did not mean that they were not there, that there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He knew how it was like to wake up in the morning wishing to never wake up at all, spending all his waking moments rewinding the tape of his life over and over again, watching the parts that he wanted and never wanting to be in the present. And he had seen enough and learnt enough for him to know that no one person's death could make the world stop spinning.

He also knew that when one parent dies, the other tries to overcompensate.

His father started building his life around his family, arranging his life like iron fillings around a magnet. He opened his clinic only after the children have gone to school and closed it early to bring the girls back from kindergarten. He made house calls because it allowed flexibility to his work schedule. He closed his clinic during the weekend so that he could spend all his time helping out with their homework, bringing them out for shopping, for picnics or for so many other activities that he seemed to have kept secretly lined up.

During the mornings, no matter which day of the week it was, his father's voice could be heard booming throughout the house, yelling 'Good Morning' and other strings of nonsense that Ichigo seldom took the effort to decipher. He would be bustling through the kitchen, energetically preparing breakfast while allowing Yuzu to set the table. Unlike many families, the house would not be filled with noises coming from the television during meal times. Instead, it would be filled with his father's rowdy voice and non-stop conversations about school and friends and everything under the sun that anyone could think of.

In the dining room, what used to be a painting of a sunflower field was now replaced with a blown-up poster of his mother's face. The first time Ichigo saw it, which was three days after he learnt to stop looking for his mother by the river side, he had frowned in disapproval of such an unorthodox display. His father must have seen his frown, for he ambled over, pulled him into a headlock and demanded that he had better liked it. Ichigo sort of understood. To his father, to his sisters, to him, his mother was larger than life. She was a blazing source of sunshine that did not belonged to a little altar, framed in a tiny wooden border, in the company of nothing more than a few incenses. So Ichigo may criticize his father's sense of respect to the dead, but he would never ask him to remove the poster.

There were nights when Ichigo woke from his recurring nightmares of blood, rain and death. He would crawl out of bed and silently pad past his father's room, in which through the partially opened door, he could see Yuzu and Karin huddled on the bed with their father. Each of his arms would be wrapped tightly around the two girls, as they clutched onto him in their sleep. And on such sleepless nights, Ichigo would fight the urge to join his sisters in that bed that used to belong to two. Instead, he would choose to sit in the living room with his knees drawn up to his chest, rocking back and forth on the couch, staring at the unobstructed view of his mother's poster on the dining room's wall. The first time his father had came down and found him sitting alone in the darkness, he had ruffled his hair, poured him a glass of milk and told him to go back to sleep after he was finished with his drink. The second time his father had came down and found him, he had sat down beside him and pulled his trembling son into his arms, allowing him to cry silently in his warm embrace. There was no third time though. For Ichigo stopped going downstairs. He would feign sleep when his father entered his room night after night, tucking him in carefully and planting a kiss lightly on his forehead before leaving the room quietly.

Ichigo sometimes think that his father probably knew that he was pretending. But perhaps neither of them wished to spoil each other's carefully scripted act, for they were afraid of the consequences that would follow, so neither of them would breathe a word about it.

But even if Ichigo was only nine going on ten, he clearly saw that for his father, the pretense did not just end there.

His father would smile and crack jokes. He would piggy-back Yuzu and Karin from the living room to their bedrooms to coax them to go to bed. He would cook the children's favorite dishes and eat heartily at the table. He would play the role of the perfect father, dedicating all his time to his children. But when nobody was watching, his father would sit for hours with a book in his hand and never turn a page. He would stand at the door and stare into space, seemingly to have forgotten why he had entered the room in the first place. He would sit at the steps of the house late at night, smoking one cigarette after another, till all that was left was a scrunched up empty packet and a tray full of ashes.

His father was bereft but he had never cried. Ichigo grew afraid of this quiet, tearless face that seemed to be miles away. But he grew even more afraid of the lively, jovial face that belonged to a father who had gone away and left him with a stranger who only looked and acted like his father but was not him.

His father was empty.

Four weeks after his mother's death, was his birthday. Exactly twenty-eight days; Ichigo had been counting the days away, wondering if time could really heal all wounds. His father had gotten him an excessively large chocolate cake and prepared a feast. Karin and Yuzu had combined their efforts to draw him a card filled with hearts and stars, colored in all shades of pink, purple, orange and yellow. They sang him a birthday song at the top of their voices and the song ended up a little off-tune, but Ichigo had not minded at all.

"Make a wish! Make a wish Onii-chan!" Yuzu hopped about the room, waving her hands excitedly.

Ichigo wondered what wish to make then. He did not believe in making wishes, for he was certain the one thing that he most wanted to wish for would never be granted. He closed his eyes and leaned forward like he was making a wish, though running through his mind were just images of the day that he wished to forget. He carefully measured the amount of time he should take before he blew out the candles, knowing that if he was too fast, it would be obvious he was undermining the importance of this celebration. He opened his eyes finally like he was done, and he moved away from the uncomfortable heat of the flame, which was an invasive sense of expanding air that was warm and prickly to the nose.

"Make sure you blow out your candles all at one go! Or else your wish won't come true!" His father roared in his loud boisterous way.

Yuzu tugged at the hem of Ichigo's shirt, insisting that he told her what wish he made. But his father bent down and placed his hand on her head, telling her that if Onii-chan told her what he wished for, the wish would not come true. Yuzu had pouted and scrambled to Karin's side, and said that it was unfair that wishes had to be secrets because she told everyone everything.

Before Ichigo got around to cutting the cake, his father gave him his present. "Open it."

Obediently, he tore open the wrapping and unveiled the leather-bound book that he had much coveted since he had set eyes on it. It was William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in its original old English version. When he had asked for the book several months ago, his father had laughed and insisted that Ichigo would not understand it even if he attempted to read it, so he had not bought it for him. This of course, would be entirely true, but Ichigo had wanted it because it was one of his mother's favorite stories and he wanted her to read it to him.

"Like it, Son? You said you wanted it."

Ichigo felt the urge to cry, but he did not. Instead, he held the book against his chest tightly, his eyes searching for the father that he knew before. He did not know what had made him do it then – perhaps it was the abrupt realization that he had already blown out his candles and it was perhaps too late to make a wish - but he suddenly reached out to grab his father's shirt and he said, "Daddy, please don't leave us."

His father looked confused and Ichigo tightened his tiny fist and pulled at his father's shirt even harder, with an effort that one would recognize as desperation. "Daddy, please come back. Don't leave us. Don't leave me."

And it was precisely at the end of that sentence when Ichigo witnessed a pivotal change, unwinding like the release of a spring that had been coiled up too tight for too long. It was at that end of the sentence, where his father's eyes shifted uncertainly, and the irises unfocused themselves and focused back, and the corner of the eyes tightened up. The process passed in such an infinitesimal fraction of a second, that if Ichigo was not searching for that change, he would have missed it completely. In fact, if his father's tears had not come, he would have believed that the moment that had just passed was just part of the hallucinatory clarity of the mind of a child who was frantically looking for hope.

Ichigo noticed that his father must not have realized that tears were streaking down his face, for he looked surprised when Ichigo wiped them awkwardly away from his father's face with the heel of his small hand. Then his face crumpled as he began to sob and he buried his face into the nook of Ichigo's neck. Ichigo then dropped the book and put his small arms around his father's large frame. It was terrifying, watching a fully grown man falling so completely apart, weeping like a lost little boy who had just found his family. But bravely and firmly, Ichigo held onto his father, learning that there was no Man on earth who was as infallible as they appeared to be.

Yuzu and Karin ran over anxiously to ask what was wrong, but neither Ichigo nor his father could find the voice to speak. Ichigo was certain that crying was strangely contagious, for not only his father and him, but his sisters too burst into tears. The four of them simply hugged each other wailing like lunatics for a long time, though in the end, the reason behind the tears would probably remain too difficult to be put into words.

That night, they set out five plates, five cups, five forks and five slices of cake on the table. And when the celebration was over, the four of them slept together in that double bed, curled up securely beside their father's warmth, their father who had finally returned home to them, safe and sound.

And now, for a ten-year-old, Ichigo knew a lot more things. He already knew that no one person's death could make the world stop spinning. But the thing was, the world did stop spinning when his mother had died. His world had stopped spinning. And so had his father's. But he also knew that things would surely start moving again, and all that was needed, was for someone to reach out and help you.

- YL -

Note: Thank you for reading. I truly hope you liked it.