The Last Drop-Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Blinding Blue and the Summer of Silence

Outside the hospital window, the lukewarm breeze of the 2026 summer gently rustled the leaves of the roadside trees.

Chihiro remained silent, cradling the rusted iron tin in both hands, staring blankly at the sterile white of the bedsheets.

The memory of "Tokyo in the Showa 30s" that Haru had shared.

It was a memory that quietly yet violently shattered the foundation of Chihiro's glittering dream of a stylish, free life of living alone in Tokyo. In this modern age where a tap on a screen yields every answer, she realized how heavily she had leaned on a shallow sense of omnipotence.

Chihiro traced her thumb along the rough, rusted texture of the lid.

A question hovered quietly in her mind, but she could not find the words to voice it, letting out only a soft, quiet sigh.

On the bed, Haru silently watched Chihiro’s quiet hesitation and the slight tremble of her fingertips.

And then, in her raspy voice, she began to speak softly.

"...Chihiro, your grandmother knows a day when everything, absolutely everything, was lost."

"Eh...?" Chihiro looked up.

"It was August 15, Showa 20 (1945). I was nine years old."

Haru slowly turned her gaze toward the ceiling. Her eyes seemed to pass right through the white ceiling of the hospital room, projecting the unforgettable summer sky of eighty-one years ago.

"On that day, Chihiro... the sky was an astonishing, brilliant blue."

Haru’s voice dropped slightly, taking on a whispering quality.

"It was a blue so deep you felt you could be sucked into it, completely clear and blindingly beautiful. There wasn't a single cloud, and the sun beat down on us relentlessly.

You see, during the war, the sky was always gray. It was either choked dark with the smoke of bombings, or burning bright red with the fires of air raids at night. Looking up at the sky meant looking at death."

And yet, the sky she looked up at on that day was cruel in its beauty. In front of her eyes was a living hell of red-hot rubble and black ash swept away by air raids, but right above her head was an unbelievably pristine, blue sky.

Chihiro listened intently, drawn into the landscape her grandmother painted.

"And then, there was no sound."

"No sound...?"

"Yes. The noise that had dominated our lives until then was completely gone.

The heavy, metallic roar of bombers that shook the sky, the piercing sirens of air raid alerts—all of it had vanished.

All you could hear was the deafening, painful chorus of cicadas filling the world under the blazing sun. The cries of the minmin-zemi and tsukutsuku-boshi echoed through the heavy, suffocating heat.

The only other thing... was a low, crackling voice coming from a radio where the neighborhood adults had gathered."

"The Gyokuon-hoso... the Emperor's radio broadcast, right?"

"Yes. At nine years old, I didn't understand a single one of those difficult words. But you see, the adults who had been prostrating themselves around the radio began to slump to the ground, one after another, and weep.

Men, women, everyone cried like children, letting out wordless wails, clutching the mud of the charred ruins.

Their weeping, alongside the deafening cries of the cicadas, was the only sound echoing under that endless blue sky."

Haru exhaled a long breath. Even after eighty-one years, her lungs seemed to still breathe in the hot dust of that day.

"On that day, the entire nation lost the future it believed in. 'Japan will surely win.' 'It is right to die for the country.' Everyone had blindly sprinted forward, believing that 'assumption' to be the absolute truth.

But on that day, yesterday's justice became a lie. The words in our textbooks were painted black with ink, and the future we believed in turned to ash in a single instant.

The entire country had made the greatest 'mistake' in the world."

Haru quietly closed her eyes and stopped speaking.

Once again, the only sound left in the room was the artificial hum of the air conditioner.

Chihiro clutched the rusted candy tin to her chest.

Staring at her grandmother’s profile, she felt the scene Haru described connect quietly yet surely with the anxiety in her own heart.

(A blackened ruin where adults who believed dying for the country was right were betrayed in an instant...)

Grandmother's words echoed in Chihiro's mind. “Assumptions are fatal.”

It was not just about her regret over losing her little sister.

Before the eyes of a nine-year-old girl, the entire world she believed in had collapsed in a single instant because of a "grand assumption." Under that blue sky of August 15, Showa 20, those words had been carved into her soul as an absolute defense mechanism.

Tears welled up in Chihiro’s eyes.

"...Grandmother."

Chihiro gently wrapped her hands around Haru’s dry hand.

"Everyone made a mistake, didn't they? So many adults, believing in it together... and they were all wrong."

"Yes. Everyone made a mistake."

"But, Grandmother," Chihiro squeezed her hand. "Even though everything turned to ash because of that mistake... you survived, didn't you?"

Haru's eyes opened slightly.

"You were hungry, you were ragged, and everything that was right yesterday became a lie—but you still lived under that bright blue sky. And because of that, my mother was born, and I was born...

I was so terrified of going to Tokyo, of making a mistake. I thought if my decision was wrong and nothing worked out, my life would be over."

Tears rolled down Chihiro’s cheeks.

"But I was wrong. Even if you make a mistake, even if you lose everything... as long as you are alive, you can think again and take another step. Just like you rebuilt this country from those charred ruins.

Since I have this life that you brought all the way from those ruins to this day... no matter how much I fail, no matter how broken I get, I can always stand up again."

Haru stared at Chihiro in wonder.

Deep within her aged eyes, something that had been frozen solid for eighty years began to crack and melt with a quiet, resonant sound.

Haru's lips trembled faintly.

"...Chihiro. What a strong girl you are."

A single tear finally escaped Haru’s eye, sinking into the bedsheet.

Chihiro held her grandmother’s hand, keeping it warm, letting her tears flow without wiping them.

The blue sky outside the window was as brilliant and clear as it had been on that day.

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