The Unfading Lie and the 20-Watt Bulb

Chapter 5: The Inherited LED

"Grandma. I... was always just thinking about running away."
Modern day, 2026.
Kazuya slowly picked up his smartphone from the tatami mats once more.

The screen began to cast a cold, quiet blue light. On it, even at this very moment, countless "words of justice" were being hurled at someone’s mistake or unverified rumors, fueling a relentless storm of online outrage.

"I thought that if I turned off my screen, put it face down, and chose not to look, I could keep myself clean. It might look safe from the outside. But that's wrong, isn't it?"

Kazuya gripped his phone tightly.
"If I do that, I'm no different from the adults who watched from a safe distance in silence while Teru-chan’s mother had stones thrown at her on that autumn day in 1950."

Shizue sat on her floor cushion, staring intently at Kazuya's face. The twenty-watt bare bulb on the ceiling cast an amber glow over their features.

"Grandma. The police of our era don't wear terrifying uniforms. They are the millions of ordinary people whose faces we can't see and names we don't know, hiding behind their screens.

And the most terrifying part... is that every single one of them believes they are doing the right thing."
"...Goodwill, is it?"
Shizue whispered in a raspy voice.

"Yes. 'Let’s help those in trouble.' 'Let’s punish the bad guy together.' That kind of pure, straightforward goodwill and sense of justice is easily hijacked by fake news and distorted, lies of information. No one realizes they are throwing stones to completely destroy someone’s life.

They just happily tap away at their phones.

It is no different—not in the slightest—from the people who threw stones at Teru-chan's mother, calling her a 'traitor' in Shōwa 25."
Kazuya stared at the cold blue light on his screen, and then, looked straight back into his grandmother's deep, transparent eyes.

"So, I will not put my phone face down. I won't turn off the screen and run away to a safe place where I can't be hurt. The screen of this smartphone today is the exact same as that mud-covered road in Shōwa 25.

I will stand in the middle of this storm, clutching my phone, and keep staring down the lies."

"Kazuya..."

"Of course, it's terrifying. I might get covered in the mud of the internet myself, getting called 'wrong' or an 'accomplice,' leaving me bruised and battered.
But I will never let my eyes be clouded. Even if the entire world screams 'that person is evil,' if I haven't seen it with my own eyes and made sense of it myself, I will never join them.
Even if I get covered in mud, I will brush it off with my own hands, stand back up, and say 'no' in my own words—just like you did, Grandma."

Kazuya's voice was trembling. But within its trembling, the same unyielding "flame" that his great-grandfather and grandfather had risked their lives to protect was burning brightly.

A single tear slipped quietly from Shizue's wrinkled eyes. She reached out her hand and gently placed her warm palm over Kazuya's hand clutching the smartphone.
"...What a strong child you are, Kazuya. You truly are the grandson of my father and my husband. You will be able to stand firm, even in this new, invisible darkness."

Shizue looked up at the bulb on the ceiling with deep affection.

"My role is over now. For seventy-six years, to protect my father’s legacy and my promise to my husband, I have kept this twenty-watt bulb lit without ever extinguishing it. ...Take this, Kazuya. Turn it into your light."

Kazuya nodded deeply.

"Yes. Let's change it, Grandma. Into a brighter light, one that will never go out."Kazuya slowly stood up, stepping firmly on the tatami mats, and reached his hand up toward the twenty-watt bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

He gently touched it with his fingertips. An astonishing, intense heat surged into Kazuya's fingers.

It was the rainy gate of the police station where his great-grandfather died; the autumn twilight where Shizue was thrown into the mud; the night his grandfather wept on the tatami mats after lying at work. It was the very heat of their raw, human lives.

Feeling the sting of friction on his fingertips, Kazuya slowly, deliberately turned the bulb and removed it.

For an instant, the room was enveloped in darkness. But it was not a cold darkness. It was a gentle, quiet Shōwa darkness that wrapped around everything.

Kazuya took out the new, white, small LED bulb he had bought and inserted it into the socket. Slowly, he turned it clockwise.
With a tiny click, the moment the switch was flipped.

An blinding, straight, and uncompromising white light flooded the ten-tatami living room.

It was entirely different from the dim, fragile amber of the twenty-watt bulb. It tore through the fog in the darkness, and in an instant, enveloped and erased even the cold blue light of the smartphone. An eternal, white light.

In that brilliant illumination, Shizue narrowed her eyes, looking dazzled but truly happy.

"Oh... It's so bright, Kazuya."
"Yeah. It's bright, Grandma."

Kazuya lowered his hands from the socket and looked straight at the screen of his smartphone. The powerful, transparent white light of the LED was reflected beautifully in his eyes, like two tiny, unextinguished stars.

"This light, Grandma. Even when your life eventually ends, and even when my life is over, it will never go out in this house.

From now on, I will be this straight light that refuses to allow shadows, and I will keep staring down the 'false justice' of our era."

Without a word, Shizue gently but firmly gripped the sleeve of Kazuya's shirt with her slender fingers.

On the tatami mats of the ten-tatami room, the white light of the LED cast their shadows—no longer two, but a single, thick, unyielding shadow—stretching firmly toward tomorrow.

The twenty-watt, unextinguished bare bulb. Its warm heat had now become an immortal flame, truly beginning to illuminate a new era.

📖Previous Chapter:https://note.com/ttukumoo/n/ncaedf92b6566
🌐OriginalJapanesehere:https://note.com/juicy_laelia8513/n/ncf0c2216ce70

"Thank you so much for reading to the very end!"💗