[He knows it's the wrong thing to do, but he stays away from his mom's room as long as he can once they're back in Japan.
He tells himself it's not that bad, but he knows he's lying. He tells himself it's sensible as opposed to selfish, too, and that's a lie as well. But it's been fifty days of travel at a breakneck pace, fifty days of fixating on the same perpetual mantra of we have to do this for Miss Holly's sake, and now that it's finally done and over with, he's not entirely sure if he's ready for it to be real. If it's over and done with, then the people who died are really dead. If their journey is really at an end, then that means he has to accept that they're not coming back, even though he's got to keep going.
The minute he faces his mom is the minute he has to lay a part of himself to rest, and he's not ready to do that yet.
But there's only so long he can put off writing the last few sentences on this chapter of his life, and so he only hides long enough for his grandparents to have their fill of kissing and hugging and squealing their way through their reunion. He sits on the back porch like a shadow, head down and knees drawn up, listening to the shishi-odoshi clunk in rhythm as it fills and empties over and over again.
The passage of time is something he notices a lot more, lately.
But eventually it's twilight, and he can't hide any longer, so he pulls his hat down over his eyes and pulls himself together, and slides the screen open with a thunk to permit him entrance to the house in search of the mother he hasn't seen in fifty days.]
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He tells himself it's not that bad, but he knows he's lying. He tells himself it's sensible as opposed to selfish, too, and that's a lie as well. But it's been fifty days of travel at a breakneck pace, fifty days of fixating on the same perpetual mantra of we have to do this for Miss Holly's sake, and now that it's finally done and over with, he's not entirely sure if he's ready for it to be real. If it's over and done with, then the people who died are really dead. If their journey is really at an end, then that means he has to accept that they're not coming back, even though he's got to keep going.
The minute he faces his mom is the minute he has to lay a part of himself to rest, and he's not ready to do that yet.
But there's only so long he can put off writing the last few sentences on this chapter of his life, and so he only hides long enough for his grandparents to have their fill of kissing and hugging and squealing their way through their reunion. He sits on the back porch like a shadow, head down and knees drawn up, listening to the shishi-odoshi clunk in rhythm as it fills and empties over and over again.
The passage of time is something he notices a lot more, lately.
But eventually it's twilight, and he can't hide any longer, so he pulls his hat down over his eyes and pulls himself together, and slides the screen open with a thunk to permit him entrance to the house in search of the mother he hasn't seen in fifty days.]