Epilogue: Part Two
About an hour of easy conversation later, lunch finished at a comfortable pace.
“I’d like to talk a little longer just the two of us. Would you two go and pick up some drinks?”
Hatano’s mother directed this at Hatano and her father, so the two of them set off on foot to the nearby supermarket.
The sun had begun to take on a faint tinge of amber. Hatano and her father, lightly perspiring, cooled down in the supermarket’s air conditioning and fell into a conversation, just the two of them, for the first time in a while.
“I’d said they didn’t need to bother with formal introductions — I didn’t want them seeing me make a fool of myself.”
Her father muttered this while browsing the drinks aisle, an air of mild sheepishness about him.
Hatano pushed the trolley along beside him. “Nana was the one who insisted on coming properly.”
“I see. She’s a wonderful person. You look after her, all right?”
“Of course. So — as someone further along in marriage than me, any advice?”
“Let me think. Between a man and a woman there’s quite a lot of difference that comes from the gender gap itself, but with two women I imagine that changes things. Generally speaking, the parts where being opposite genders helps you balance each other out would need some working around — but then the parts that are hard specifically because you’re opposite genders would probably be easier instead. The way you think about things might be the bigger factor, I’d say.”
Hatano gave a low murmur of consideration, and let a trace of her real worry surface.
“I’d rather not fight, if I can help it.”
Her father loaded cans of beer into the basket with a confident expression.
“No chance. You’ll fight.”
“We’ll fight?”
“Two people living together — it’s unavoidable.”
He studied the ingredients list on the beer can with a pursed lip, apparently noting something for his health checks. Strictly rationed on beer by her mother, and cheerfully accepting of that fact, he put it back on the shelf and turned to offer his counsel to his daughter, who was contemplating the future with mild anxiety.
“Looking back on my decades of marriage — the important thing isn’t ‘not fighting.’ It’s how you fight. And how you make up afterward.”
Since it was going on his card anyway, Hatano helped herself to a nearby bag of snacks without checking the price and dropped it in the trolley.
“The content of the fight, and what comes after?”
“Exactly. Rather than denying the other person out of pure emotion, you tell each other what you each want, and then you both use your heads to find a middle ground. And even if you still can’t agree and things get heated — always keep a head that’s willing to bow. In other words, you’re always feeling out which things you can give ground on and which things you can’t.”
Coming from a man who had kept a happy marriage for decades, there was a great deal to learn in those words, and Hatano pressed a hand to her own forehead.
“What is it?”
“I didn’t bring a notebook.”
Her father let out a loud laugh and took over the trolley with the ease of someone performing a paternal duty.
“Come and talk to me any time, as long as I’m alive. Your mother and I will both listen. And — I heard that Nana-san doesn’t get on well with her own family. Please tell her that too. She’s welcome to talk to us, any time she needs to.”
It was true that Shinomiya, partly from everything she’d been through and partly from her own restrained nature, had a very small circle of people she could turn to. Anyone she might consult when something went wrong was limited — and for family matters, she had no one but Rōkai, who had no romantic experience to draw from.
Hatano felt a quiet pride in her reliable, far-sighted family, and smiled and nodded once.
“By the way.”
Her father pinched his chin and looked in the direction of the flat.
“Your mother’s way of getting rid of us seemed a little unnatural. Did something happen?”
He meant the business of sending Hatano and her father off to buy drinks, leaving Shinomiya and her mother alone together. Naturally, Hatano hadn’t been told what her mother intended either. But the look she’d given Hatano as they left had carried something in it — a faint sense of having noticed something about Shinomiya.
Hatano thought for a moment, decided it was fine to say.
“Nana’s self-esteem is pretty low, so she’s been worrying about whether she’s really good enough. She was talking about that worry when we were coming here, and I think Mum picked up on it.”
Her father, understanding it was a sensitive matter, gazed into the middle distance at the snack shelves.
“I see. Well, if that’s what it is, leave it to your mother and it’ll be fine.”
“My thinking exactly. And if it isn’t fine — Dad can prostrate himself on the floor. ‘Please don’t abandon our daughter.’”
“Leave it to me. A man my age carries about three different heads ready to bow for other people.”
“I’m sorry to keep you sitting here so long. Are you feeling comfortable?”
While Hatano and her father had been out.
The two of them sat facing each other in the quiet living room, evening light beginning to come in through the windows.
Even Shinomiya couldn’t entirely shake the awkward tension, but she had no doubt at this point that Fuyuko was not a difficult person, so there was nothing to actually be frightened of. The difficulty was only in knowing what to talk about.
“Not at all — I’m starting to get used to it.”
She managed a smile, and Fuyuko smiled back and nodded. “Good.”
There was a small measure of social grace in the answer, but not all of it was false. This house would probably become something like a second home for Shinomiya over time. Hatano Fuyuko was going to be her mother-in-law, and Hatano Kazuki her father-in-law. They were both clearly good people, unmistakably Hatano Yukihime’s parents, and knowing she would have family like this made her genuinely happy — but alongside that happiness was something like envy, and a weight of inadequacy, at the knowledge that she had no such family of her own to offer in return. She could introduce her sister, just about, but the thought of not being able to introduce parents the way Hatano had done pressed down on her sense of her own worth until it shrank further and further.
She was sinking into these thoughts with her eyes cast down when Fuyuko tilted her head.
“Is something on your mind?”
Shinomiya’s eyes snapped open. Fuyuko was watching her with a quiet smile.
The colour drained from Shinomiya’s face as she registered how rude her expression must have been, and she stiffened with mortified anxiety and dropped into an apology, “S-sorry!” and started to explain — but:
“Oh, no — I’m not reproaching you at all. Pure curiosity. If there’s something about the marriage that’s worrying you, I want to hear it. Something like — mother-in-law trouble, for instance!”
She said it lightly, with an expression that made the joke clear, and Shinomiya felt the tension ease fractionally. She cast about for words, weighing what to say and what not to, and settled on something.
Fuyuko didn’t hurry her. She simply waited, with a kind expression.
Ah, thought something in Shinomiya’s chest. This is Hatano Yukihime’s mother. And before she knew it the words were coming.
“Whether — whether I’m really all right, for Yukihime-san. Whether I’m really good enough to marry her.”
That was not at all what Fuyuko had been expecting, and the smile left her face as her eyes went wide. She started to say something by reflex, thought better of it, and stopped herself, and then started again; she went back and forth like that, clearly choosing her words with care, before asking at last:
“Is that a worry about Yukihime herself? Or about us — about the two of us as her parents?”
Pressed directly to the core of it, her throat tightened. But Shinomiya nodded, her eyes lowered.
“The latter. Whether you — both of you — really and truly accept me.”
This was not a gracious thing to say after the welcome they had given her, and she knew that, but it was precisely because Fuyuko had been the one to draw it out that it had come. Fuyuko made a sound of settled understanding.
“Of course we accept you — though that’s a strange way to phrase it. There’s no reason not to accept you, and we genuinely want to entrust Yukihime — our daughter — to you.”
It was wonderful to hear, and yet something still snagged in Shinomiya.
“I’m so glad to hear you say that. But — I can’t introduce my own family to you. I’m practically estranged from them, and I worried that from your side, in terms of — propriety, that it might not look well.”
She was in a state of effective estrangement from the family she had been born into, which meant that even a formal meeting between families was impossible. She had been worried that this might reflect badly on the Hatano family — that it might mark her as a blemish in Hatano’s bloodline, somehow. Fuyuko heard all of this, gave a sound of understanding, exhaled in a sigh-tinged way, and then laughed, softly.
Shinomiya flinched. But Fuyuko said it with a smile:
“Oh, that’s completely fine. If anyone in our extended family dared to say something about that, I’d flatten them!”
The shock was visible enough that if this were a manga, a solid-black speech bubble with white text would have appeared behind Shinomiya’s head. She froze. Fuyuko waved her hand in cheerful reassurance and kept going.
“I don’t judge a person’s character by things they couldn’t help.”
“B-but — I’m from, from an artistic family —”
“Ah, yes. I’m sorry — Yukihime mentioned a little. Something about not being able to get results as a painter, and then an arranged marriage proposal came, and when you turned it down they said something terrible.”
Shinomiya had asked Hatano in advance to let her parents know the broad shape of things, so she wouldn’t need to explain it all from scratch. She felt not a trace of regret about this, and in fact felt some of the weight lift from her shoulders as she gave a self-deprecating smile.
But Fuyuko folded her hands on the table and looked at Shinomiya directly.
“You did nothing wrong.”
Shinomiya’s face twisted and she looked down, the words reaching her and saving her and making her feel guilty for being saved by them. But seeing that expression, Fuyuko said a little more, choosing carefully:
“And — would it be all right if I said something critical about your family?”
“About — my family? Yes, my sister aside, please — go ahead.”
There was no instinct left in her to defend the people she had been born to.
Shinomiya nodded, and Fuyuko stated it plainly, with the air of someone planting a flag:
“Your parents are at fault. And that has absolutely nothing to do with your marriage to Yukihime.”
Marriage is not something that concerns only the two people involved — that is said often enough that the word elopement exists because of it. That was precisely why Shinomiya had come here today to pay her respects. And precisely because the Hatano family were such decent people, and the warmth between them shone so brightly, she had seen her own shadow more sharply against that light. Had worried she wasn’t good enough. Had — just slightly — doubted the choice they had both made with such care.
And Hatano Fuyuko had, just now, swept that worry away.
“Though, if anything — and this is just a thought — it might be worth making the estrangement official rather than just practical. Legally speaking! Ahaha! But really — if anything comes up, you can always count on us!”
She softened the point into a joke, seeing Shinomiya’s expression crumple. Shinomiya bit her lip and looked down, tears gathering at her lashes, her voice trembling as she let out everything that had been pressing on her.
“And — and there’s the matter of, of — ch-children. Because we’re two women, we can’t have children, so —”
“Yes.”
“I can’t give you grandchildren, and Yukihime-san is an only child, so I’d be the end of the line for her family, and that — I felt a little — I was sorry about that too.”
Neither of them had said a word about same-sex marriage. But a single daughter who would have no children meant no grandchildren — a situation that could arise in any marriage, regardless of who was involved, and not something that should be turned into a failing of same-sex love. Even so, Shinomiya had said it, because she wanted to be as much of value as she could to Hatano and to Hatano’s family. To be worth something to the people who had given Hatano what she had.
Fuyuko understood this too, and nodded slowly, thoughtfully, with her eyes cast down.
“Well. I won’t pretend I never dreamed of grandchildren.”
Shinomiya’s shoulders began to fall quietly. But Fuyuko answered the dream with a bright smile:
“But that child loves women. There’s no point in wishing for what can’t be. I probably shouldn’t be talking about things like this at a wedding introduction, but — even if fate had been different and she’d never met you, she’d simply have married another woman. So please don’t carry that.”
Which meant: the question of whether Shinomiya could give them grandchildren was not Shinomiya’s burden to carry. Whether Shinomiya was suitable or not came down, ultimately, to her family of origin — and Fuyuko’s position on that, the same as Kazuki’s without a doubt, was that Shinomiya Nana had done nothing wrong.
Shinomiya raised her face, drew a breath. She felt everything she had been carrying peel away from her, layer by layer.
She bit her lip, trembling fists pressed to her knees, and bowed deeply, forcing out an apology.
“I’m — I’m sorry. For making you say all these comforting things.”
At that, Fuyuko gave a small deliberate cough. She looked at Shinomiya, who raised an uncertain face toward her, and smiled.
“Nana-san. What matters to me more than grandchildren I don’t have yet is the happiness of the daughter I do have. And if Yukihime calls being with you her happiness, then it’s something we should call our happiness too.”
Shinomiya thought of her own parents for one brief moment, then let the thought go, and looked back with tear-bright eyes and a small, soft smile.
“…I envy her.”
“And — we don’t know each other well yet, but —”
Fuyuko cut gently across Shinomiya’s wistfulness and continued:
“Someday your happiness will become ours too. I’m looking forward to that day.”
A single tear slipped from her eye, catching at the corner of her makeup as it fell to the table.
Shinomiya stared in surprise as the tear landed, then drew a shuddering breath. She tried to exhale it away, let it out trembling, fixed her eyes on a point in the middle distance and fought to hold back what was coming. But her face crumpled slowly, and biting hard on her lip couldn’t stop the tears this time, and she bowed her head to hide them. The moment she saw two drops fall onto her skirt, her composure gave out entirely.
She covered her face with both hands, shoulders shaking with small, muffled sobs.
“S-sorry. Just a moment — I’ll — st-stop in a second.”
But before she could finish, Fuyuko rose from her chair and came to sit beside her.
And she held Shinomiya’s slight frame, gently, the way a mother would.
Shinomiya went rigid — and then felt the warmth of a mother’s embrace, a warmth she no longer had any memory of, and let herself rest in it.
“Cry as much as you need to — and one more thing.”
Fuyuko patted Shinomiya’s back with a light, steady rhythm, and decided to make a long-held wish come true.
“If you’d like — call me Okā-san.”
Shinomiya sniffled and looked up with wet eyes, and through her tears a small, warm smile broke through.
“Okā-san — feels like Yukihime-san’s mum.”
“Haha, what does that mean?”
Some ten minutes later, Hatano and her father returned, slightly sweaty from the walk.
What greeted them was this:
“Wait, really? You’re that age, Okā-san? I absolutely don’t believe it!”
“Oh, you flatterer! Sweet-talking me won’t get you more than New Year’s money, you know!”
“Yukihime-san and I are both useless in the kitchen at New Year, so — hehe — I want to eat Okā-san’s ozōni.”
“You little—!”
On the sofa, shoulders together, chatting with great warmth: her mother and Shinomiya.
Whatever had happened in those few dozen minutes had produced a complete transformation — the formality gone without a trace, Shinomiya displaying her usual cheerful impertinence toward her mother-in-law, and her mother responding by poking her in the side with an elbow as though she’d been fond of her for years. Hatano had no idea what had passed between them, but the change was complete.
“Oh, welcome back!”
Shinomiya noticed them and half-rose to bow in greeting — she wouldn’t have stood for Hatano alone, but her father-in-law was present.
“Please don’t get up,” her father said with visible delight, gesturing her back down. Hatano laughed and nodded.
“Welcome back, put the drinks in the fridge — Nana-chan, speaking of New Year —”
Fuyuko waved lightly, making clear that Shinomiya was the priority, and sat her back on the sofa. Shinomiya, barely settled, seized the opportunity she had been waiting for.
“Oh — would you want to go on a trip somewhere together?”
“Ooh, yes, that sounds wonderful. Any good ideas?”
The two of them were already leaning over a phone together, searching for destinations.
Hatano and her father attended to the shopping — drinks into the fridge, ice cream and frozen things into the freezer — and while they worked, they looked at the entirely predictable scene unfolding in the living room, and then at each other.
“There you have it.” “There you have it.”
Some days later, Hatano’s mother apparently came into a pair of theme park tickets through her work connections. Rather than passing them along via Hatano, she apparently went directly to Shinomiya and invited her herself. And then a few days after that, a photograph arrived in the family group chat — which had grown from three members to four — showing a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, beaming ear to ear in matching sunglasses, thumbs up.
Hatano could only laugh.
She would have to find some way to thank her mother, one of these days.