Chapter 5:
The Survivor's Baggage
The click.
The morning after the truth, the small house smelled not of ghosts, but of curry. Rich, golden, and bubbling a scent so aggressively normal it felt like a declaration of war against the night before.
Rchi moved in the kitchen with a quiet, focused intensity. Knife through vegetables, rice steaming, the sizzle of spices in oil. He was building a fortification of routine, brick by brick.
The soft click of the front door.
He was at the entrance before she’d even set her woven basket down. Ma-chii blinked, surprised by his sudden presence. In his eyes, a storm of unsaid things from the dark hours.
“Welcome home, Ma-chii,” he said, his voice softer than usual. He took the basket from her hands, his fingers brushing her worn ones. It was heavy with river fish and wild mountain herbs.
“What’s all this?” she asked, nodding toward the kitchen’s symphony of smells.
“I… I wanted to say something. But it can wait until after we eat.”
They ate in the warm, savory silence of the meal he’d built. He watched her take a bite of the curry, watched her eyes close for a brief second.
“Your cooking is good,” she said finally, not looking at him. “You got the balance right. Not too much turmeric. Your mother… she always used too much. Made everything taste like sunshine and stubbornness.” A faint, pained smile touched her lips. It was the first time she’d offered a memory so casually.
It gave him the courage.
After the bowls were clean and the light had shifted to a deep afternoon gold, he spoke.
“Ma-chii. I will destroy that faceless thing. For our family.” He met her gaze, unwavering. “But I can’t do it here. I need to go to Osaka.”
The air in the room tightened. Osaka. The city of his father’s failure, his mother’s death. The heart of the curse.
“Foolish boy,” she whispered, but the fire was gone from the words, replaced by a deep, weary dread. “I won’t let you go there alone. You’re still”
“I am the son of Tanaka and Akari,” he said, and the statement was like iron. “I am not a child protecting a village legend. I am a survivor hunting the thing that made me an orphan. My battlefield is there. In the city she haunts.”
They argued. Not with shouts, but with the heavy, relentless logic of love and fear. He spoke of clues, of police records, of the ruins of the Special Paranormal Unit. She spoke of danger, of loneliness, of the cold weight of a city that had already eaten their young.
For an hour, the house held their stalemate.
Finally, Ma-chii’s shoulders slumped. She looked at him really looked and saw not the boy she’d raised, but the ghost of his father’s resolve fused with his mother’s gentle, unyielding strength.
“Uff. Fine. You win, you stubborn stone of a boy.” She sighed, the sound seeming to age her another year. “Pack your bags. You will go tomorrow. And you will be careful. If you die before me, I will find you in the next life and scold you for a thousand years.”
The next morning at the tiny Fujiwara-guchiko station was a quiet, private earthquake. Mist clung to the mountain pines. Rchi stood laden with a duffel bag Ma-chii had stuffed until it was spherical and threatening to burst.
“Why are you forcing me to take all the clothes in the world?” he grumbled, adjusting the strap biting into his shoulder.
“So you don’t catch a cold and die of stupidity before the ghost can get you,” she shot back, patting the monstrous bag with finality.
A distant whistle cut through the mist. The train emerged like a slow, gray serpent.
Time compressed. He stepped up into the carriage, then turned. He leaned down and wrapped her in a hug that felt too small to contain everything he was leaving behind. She felt fragile, a bundle of bird bones and fierce love.
“Always be careful,” she mumbled into his jacket, her voice thick. “Take care of yourself. Don’t forget to eat. The food is in your bag. The good container, with the blue lid.”
She was sobbing now, quiet, hiccuping tears she couldn’t hide. Rchi pulled back, cradling her face in his hands. With his thumbs, he gently wiped the tears from her wrinkled cheeks.
“I will avenge our family, Ma-chii,” he promised, his voice low and steady, a vow etched in stone. “Don’t cry. We will celebrate together after I end her. I will eat a feast made by my favorite person in the world.”
She managed a wobbly, watery smile, squeezing his hands. “Okay, okay, my little Rchi. We’ll celebrate our win. With a big smile.”
The train hissed. The doors began to close.
He slipped inside. As the train pulled away, he watched her through the window a small, straight-backed figure in a gray world, growing smaller and smaller until the mountain mist swallowed her whole.
On the train, the world became a blur of green and tunnel black. Hours bled together. The other passengers chatted, opened bento boxes, dozed. The normalcy was a foreign country.
A deep, hollow pang in his stomach reminded him he was human. The food. The good container, with the blue lid.
He unzipped the duffel’s abyss and found it. Nestled atop the avalanche of sweaters was the tiered lacquer box, tied with a simple cloth furoshiki. As he lifted it, a folded piece of paper, soft as a moth’s wing, fluttered out.
My Little Rchi,
I know the fire in your heart needs no fuel but revenge. But your body is not made of fire. It needs a roof. It needs food that is not just convenience store rice balls.
This is not a gift. It is an investment in your survival. Use it for a safe room, for good knives, for warm socks. Do not be proud. Be smart. Your parents’ enemy is clever. You must be cleverer.
Avenge them. Then come home. The sushi is in the top tier. The rice will still be warm.
Ma-chii
Tucked inside the fold were several crisp 10,000 yen notes. Seventy thousand yen. Her life’s slow, careful savings, scraped from selling herbs and mending clothes.
“Ma-chii…” he whispered, the word cracking. “I told you… I told you I would work.” A hot pressure built behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw, the way his father might have, but a single, stubborn tear escaped, tracing a path down his cheek. He wiped it away roughly, a boy’s gesture fighting a man’s emotion.
He opened the top tier. Neat rows of nigiri tuna, salmon, tamago lay like precious stones, the rice still faintly warm from her early morning labor. He ate slowly, each bite a taste of home, of her love, of the life he was walking away from. He ate, and he wept, silent tears falling onto the lacquer box, salting the rice with the flavor of his promise.
“Next station: Osaka. Osaka.”
The automated voice jolted him from a half-sleep of memories and tracks. He looked out the window. The gentle mountains and patchwork fields were gone, replaced by a sprawling, concrete panorama. A forest of steel and glass, buzzing with a relentless, electric energy.
The train sighed to a stop. The doors slid open, and a wave of sound hit him the murmur of a thousand conversations, the rhythmic train announcements, the distant pulse of the city.
Rchi shouldered his impossibly heavy bag, the weight of home and history on his back. He stepped onto the platform, into the stream of hurried strangers.
He looked up, past the station roof, at the towering skyline of Osaka. The city where his parents’ story had been cut short.
A cold wind, smelling of exhaust and distant rain, swept through the station.
He didn’t flinch.
“Yes,” he said to himself, his breath a faint plume in the city air. The word wasn’t excited. It was an acceptance. A cocking of a weapon.
“Now, I will destroy you.”
END OF CHAPTER 5
Rchi moved in the kitchen with a quiet, focused intensity. Knife through vegetables, rice steaming, the sizzle of spices in oil. He was building a fortification of routine, brick by brick.
The soft click of the front door.
He was at the entrance before she’d even set her woven basket down. Ma-chii blinked, surprised by his sudden presence. In his eyes, a storm of unsaid things from the dark hours.
“Welcome home, Ma-chii,” he said, his voice softer than usual. He took the basket from her hands, his fingers brushing her worn ones. It was heavy with river fish and wild mountain herbs.
“What’s all this?” she asked, nodding toward the kitchen’s symphony of smells.
“I… I wanted to say something. But it can wait until after we eat.”
They ate in the warm, savory silence of the meal he’d built. He watched her take a bite of the curry, watched her eyes close for a brief second.
“Your cooking is good,” she said finally, not looking at him. “You got the balance right. Not too much turmeric. Your mother… she always used too much. Made everything taste like sunshine and stubbornness.” A faint, pained smile touched her lips. It was the first time she’d offered a memory so casually.
It gave him the courage.
After the bowls were clean and the light had shifted to a deep afternoon gold, he spoke.
“Ma-chii. I will destroy that faceless thing. For our family.” He met her gaze, unwavering. “But I can’t do it here. I need to go to Osaka.”
The air in the room tightened. Osaka. The city of his father’s failure, his mother’s death. The heart of the curse.
“Foolish boy,” she whispered, but the fire was gone from the words, replaced by a deep, weary dread. “I won’t let you go there alone. You’re still”
“I am the son of Tanaka and Akari,” he said, and the statement was like iron. “I am not a child protecting a village legend. I am a survivor hunting the thing that made me an orphan. My battlefield is there. In the city she haunts.”
They argued. Not with shouts, but with the heavy, relentless logic of love and fear. He spoke of clues, of police records, of the ruins of the Special Paranormal Unit. She spoke of danger, of loneliness, of the cold weight of a city that had already eaten their young.
For an hour, the house held their stalemate.
Finally, Ma-chii’s shoulders slumped. She looked at him really looked and saw not the boy she’d raised, but the ghost of his father’s resolve fused with his mother’s gentle, unyielding strength.
“Uff. Fine. You win, you stubborn stone of a boy.” She sighed, the sound seeming to age her another year. “Pack your bags. You will go tomorrow. And you will be careful. If you die before me, I will find you in the next life and scold you for a thousand years.”
The next morning at the tiny Fujiwara-guchiko station was a quiet, private earthquake. Mist clung to the mountain pines. Rchi stood laden with a duffel bag Ma-chii had stuffed until it was spherical and threatening to burst.
“Why are you forcing me to take all the clothes in the world?” he grumbled, adjusting the strap biting into his shoulder.
“So you don’t catch a cold and die of stupidity before the ghost can get you,” she shot back, patting the monstrous bag with finality.
A distant whistle cut through the mist. The train emerged like a slow, gray serpent.
Time compressed. He stepped up into the carriage, then turned. He leaned down and wrapped her in a hug that felt too small to contain everything he was leaving behind. She felt fragile, a bundle of bird bones and fierce love.
“Always be careful,” she mumbled into his jacket, her voice thick. “Take care of yourself. Don’t forget to eat. The food is in your bag. The good container, with the blue lid.”
She was sobbing now, quiet, hiccuping tears she couldn’t hide. Rchi pulled back, cradling her face in his hands. With his thumbs, he gently wiped the tears from her wrinkled cheeks.
“I will avenge our family, Ma-chii,” he promised, his voice low and steady, a vow etched in stone. “Don’t cry. We will celebrate together after I end her. I will eat a feast made by my favorite person in the world.”
She managed a wobbly, watery smile, squeezing his hands. “Okay, okay, my little Rchi. We’ll celebrate our win. With a big smile.”
The train hissed. The doors began to close.
He slipped inside. As the train pulled away, he watched her through the window a small, straight-backed figure in a gray world, growing smaller and smaller until the mountain mist swallowed her whole.
On the train, the world became a blur of green and tunnel black. Hours bled together. The other passengers chatted, opened bento boxes, dozed. The normalcy was a foreign country.
A deep, hollow pang in his stomach reminded him he was human. The food. The good container, with the blue lid.
He unzipped the duffel’s abyss and found it. Nestled atop the avalanche of sweaters was the tiered lacquer box, tied with a simple cloth furoshiki. As he lifted it, a folded piece of paper, soft as a moth’s wing, fluttered out.
My Little Rchi,
I know the fire in your heart needs no fuel but revenge. But your body is not made of fire. It needs a roof. It needs food that is not just convenience store rice balls.
This is not a gift. It is an investment in your survival. Use it for a safe room, for good knives, for warm socks. Do not be proud. Be smart. Your parents’ enemy is clever. You must be cleverer.
Avenge them. Then come home. The sushi is in the top tier. The rice will still be warm.
Ma-chii
Tucked inside the fold were several crisp 10,000 yen notes. Seventy thousand yen. Her life’s slow, careful savings, scraped from selling herbs and mending clothes.
“Ma-chii…” he whispered, the word cracking. “I told you… I told you I would work.” A hot pressure built behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw, the way his father might have, but a single, stubborn tear escaped, tracing a path down his cheek. He wiped it away roughly, a boy’s gesture fighting a man’s emotion.
He opened the top tier. Neat rows of nigiri tuna, salmon, tamago lay like precious stones, the rice still faintly warm from her early morning labor. He ate slowly, each bite a taste of home, of her love, of the life he was walking away from. He ate, and he wept, silent tears falling onto the lacquer box, salting the rice with the flavor of his promise.
“Next station: Osaka. Osaka.”
The automated voice jolted him from a half-sleep of memories and tracks. He looked out the window. The gentle mountains and patchwork fields were gone, replaced by a sprawling, concrete panorama. A forest of steel and glass, buzzing with a relentless, electric energy.
The train sighed to a stop. The doors slid open, and a wave of sound hit him the murmur of a thousand conversations, the rhythmic train announcements, the distant pulse of the city.
Rchi shouldered his impossibly heavy bag, the weight of home and history on his back. He stepped onto the platform, into the stream of hurried strangers.
He looked up, past the station roof, at the towering skyline of Osaka. The city where his parents’ story had been cut short.
A cold wind, smelling of exhaust and distant rain, swept through the station.
He didn’t flinch.
“Yes,” he said to himself, his breath a faint plume in the city air. The word wasn’t excited. It was an acceptance. A cocking of a weapon.
“Now, I will destroy you.”
END OF CHAPTER 5
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