New Beginning - End Beginning

Two hours later and I was at Osaka Central Hospital. I was moving so fast, I nearly knocked over a pregnant lady on my way to my dad room. But I made it. I was there. I would be with my dad, finally, after all these months. It was a reunion long overdue, and now it could be too late.

I wouldn't let my mind go there until it had to.

An overly made-up woman of about 40 hard-lived years met me outside his door. Her eyes wide and scared beneath her helmet of dyed and stiffly styled red hair, and I knew in an instant...

She's my mother.

She had the same look of me on her face. I could never forget her face even though I was barely seven.

Suddenly, someone abruptly came from inside the room. "He's gone, Kaede," he uttered, his voice strangled, tortured. "You don't have a father anymore."

I turned to handle to his hospital room, afraid of what I would find behind it.

"I'm sorry, Kaede," he uttered again. Voice just the same way.

I stayed in the tiny apartment my dad shared with Hamashi while we made his funeral arrangements. It was going to be a small, quick burial with just the few friends he had made in town, and me, the only relative I knew of. My sister can't come here, she was fainted after heard our dad is gone forever. She have to get emergency ceaser for her birth due her condition.

Hamashi paying all the bills for the casket and burial plot from their joint account, no doubt about his love to dad. None of which I would ever see. I didn't care about his money though. Out of the few possessions my dad had, there was only one thing I wanted.

But it turned out. My mom got her greedy hands on that, too.

When I brought my dad lone dark blue suit to the funeral home for the undertaker, I asked Hamashi about my dad gold cross.

"Your mother already took it," he answered, his eyes kind and full of sympathy.

I was spent, unable to sleep. I needed to last one more day and then he would finally be laid to rest.

I would figure out how to get home later.

Without his gold cross.

At the cemetery, a local pastor said a short prayer and quoted some scripture and that was that. Hamashi and I placed roses on his casket and he was lowered into the ground.

Goodbye, dad. You did the best you could. I love you.

The skies were threatening rain, and I felt a few drops give their warning. My mom made a big deal about getting her hair done and her nails freshly painted in color. I prayed it would rain if only to ruin her hair. And if God threw in a little acetone to ruin those gaudy nails as well, that would be nice too.

A moment later, the rain came quickly and fell in torrents. It didn't take long before I was alone with my father, everyone else running from the spring shower as if it contained flesh eating bacteria.

My mother was the first to leave. "Oh no, my hairdo!" She shrieked as she ran to her car, her stilettos digging into fresh mud.

Hamashi invited me to his home. But I refused. I said I can managed. He's too, was very sad. I can see his face full of sadness. His eyes were reddened due of crying. I think he's need some space too. I ask him to go home. And he pleaded that he wants to see me again later. I'm feel guilty for him. I make my promise that I'll see him again. He's really love my dad.

I was profoundly relieved. I could finally cry now that I was alone, and I did, keeping pace with the pounding rain. From somewhere deep inside, years of repressed tears turned to sobs and released in rivers sliding down my body mingling with the cold deluge from the sky.

I wept for my dead father, for my alcoholic mother I would never know, and for the orphan I was now...I wept for my damaged relationship with the Sendoh's. And I wept for Akira.

I had forced my mind to move on from him, but my heart was still broken and bruised trying to hold on to some hope that he cared about me.

Why couldn't I just let him go?

When I was empty of tears I just stood there, a sort of zombie transfixed by the muted colors of the trees in the rain and the rows of dreary gray headstone against the bright manicured green of the lawn. The impossibility of moving on--literally and figuratively--paralyzed me. There was nowhere for me to go...and no one to come get me.

I was utterly alone in the world now.

An hour passed, maybe two. I wasn't sure. As I sank into the saturated ground, frozen in my loneliness, time seem to stand still.

At some point, I felt I left my body. I could almost see myself, a slight figure in an ill-fitting, hastily purchased, black long sleeve, standing in front of freshly dug grave. I was numb and cold, but I didn't care. I didn't care for anything anymore.

When I saw a tall figure move toward me in the rain, I watched with the indifferent curiosity of a ghost. As he approached me, my mind registered it was Akira, but I had no reaction.

I'm hallucinating.

Beneath the concern and worry, his face looked beautiful. Perfect. How I loved that face. The rain caught on his lashes over his dark blue eyes. I focused on a solitary drop hanging onto the tip of one lash...holding...holding, the surface tension fighting to stay intact. And then depleted of will, it gave up and fell into a stream of water racing down his cheek.

He's talking to me. What is he saying?

I couldn't comprehend the words he spoke to me.

Then everything started to turn black. I fought the wave of dizziness, but I couldn't hold on any longer. Like the raindrop, I simply let go.

I'm falling.

Moments later, I woke slightly to the feeling of his tight embrace and a rocking motion over hurried gait, the rain pounding on my upturned face.

He's carrying me.

When he shut the passenger door to his SUV, my senses returned. My head pounded with a headache, so I slouched against the seat and turned toward the car window in an effort to escape the throbbing. I heard him get into the driver's seat next to me, and felt him lean over me to check if I was conscious. I made sure he saw I was, but I avoided eye contact, believing it would lead to talking. And I had nothing to say to anyone.