This one kind of got away from me. I started in one place and got to another by the end. Which is an odd thing to happen in something as short as these little snapshot scenes. But I guess that's just what happens sometimes.
I always figure, if the characters surprise you, you must be doing something right.
.
"Is there . . . a tradition? From your family, I mean. Something you would bring with you into a new era. Teach to the next generation." Ryo was clearly choosing his words very carefully. "I understand, when your brother says the past is only a string of footsteps but the future is infinite, he means to bury his history. Full of bad memories. Loud ghosts and louder scars. But . . . it can't all be bad, can it?"
Noa realized that Ryo wasn't asking this question for his sake, but for his own. Ryo was trying to justify an attachment to his own past—perhaps to his father, or even to the old ghost who'd stolen his childhood from him. If Noa held onto something from his past, then surely it was okay for Ryo to do the same thing. Right?
Noa thought about arguing past the question and pressing Ryo to accept reality as it was, to acknowledge and face the truth of what he wanted. Then he thought about how that was something the old Noa would do. The Noa that he didn't want to be anymore. The Noa whose loyalty to his own loud ghost (and father, incidentally) nearly cost him what family he had today.
So, instead, Noa answered the question in good faith.
Ryo deserved that.
He held out his hands.
"Hahaue," Noa said, "always said that words were never enough. She said . . . if you wanted your words to stick, you had to feel them. You know how a deal is sealed with a handshake?" Ryo was nodding, as he placed his hands upon Noa's. "Something she would do, something I've never seen anybody else do, was extend that idea to any words she deemed important enough. If she had a lesson for me, or if she was wishing me goodnight, or telling me she loved me, or saying goodbye as I went off on some errand with my father . . . she would always insist on holding my hands when she did it."
Ryo smiled. "Your mother sounds like a wise woman."
"She was. Is. I hope she is." Noa blinked, then shook his head. "Anyway. In the end, I think she was the only reason Chichiue held himself together for as long as he did. When the old me died, and she left . . . that was when everything went to shit."
"Do you know . . . what made her leave?" Ryo's voice was quiet. Gentle. Tentative.
Noa nodded. "It was his insistence that he could save me." Then he stopped and stared off at nothing for a time. "No. No, that wasn't it. It was . . . it was when he removed my brain from my skull. To use. She said . . . she said she could have stood by and let him say whatever he liked. She always could. That was what always made her different from everyone else who dealt with him. But the one thing she couldn't abide, the thing that killed her loyalty to him . . . was desecrating my corpse."
Ryo's face fell. His gaze wandered to Noa's hands, and his own. He held them. Rubbed Noa's knuckles with his thumbs. "Perhaps . . ." he said, "this isn't the right time to say this. Perhaps there never will be a right time to say this. But . . . well. I understand your mother's point, I really do, and she absolutely did the right thing by leaving. But . . . I'm glad your father did that. All told."
Noa closed his eyes, then smiled.
"Yeah," he said. "Me, too."