A Silent Step

【Episode 2: The Chains of Flashbacks: When the Bond Turns into a Curse】

It was at that very moment, as Tatsumi slid his fingers over the rusted metal buckle of the dusty kissling backpack, feeling the mud-stained weight of real life in his arms.

That was when the wooden bedroom door opened slowly, without a sound.

On the boundary of the darkness, where the glittering light of the TV screen could not reach, stood his mother, Aya. She did not scream, nor did she fall into a violent panic.

Instead, with eyes that had stared at that heavy, unsettling backpack for far longer than Tatsumi had even been alive—knowing better than anyone the raw history of Grandmother Chiyo's defeat—she silently watched her son.

"Tatsumi... You are actually touching it, aren't you?"

Her voice was faint and trembling, yet it did not disturb the stillness of the room. Aya said nothing more. As if refusing to violate the "comfortable space" her son had built to shield himself, she simply watched him in the deep silence—a quiet gaze filled with both prayer and dread as he felt the texture of the backpack.

Tatsumi did not let go of the backpack. Within his mother's quiet gaze, he felt not a cold rejection, but a heavy, sorrowful warmth that transcended words.

(Mother, just like me... you have lived your life bound by this very weight.)

At last, clutching Chiyo’s old climbing journal that had been tucked inside the backpack, Tatsumi slowly stood up. Walking past his mother, who watched him in silence, he took a step out of his room.

Beneath the white, somewhat clinical lights of the living room.

They faced each other across the table. In this unobstructed space, Mother Aya finally began to pour out every word that had settled in the depths of her chest for decades. The truths escaping her lips were as painful as a bleeding wound.

"I loved my mother—Grandmother Chiyo—with all my heart. She was stronger than anyone, and she was my pride. But, Tatsumi... that was precisely why she, and her love, were so suffocating. I hated it."

In the summer of 1956, twenty-year-old Chiyo challenged Mount Fuji, carrying her meticulous preparation and absolute confidence in her backpack. But on the freezing rock face of the eighth station, a single moment of carelessness—fuchūi—caused her to slip and fall, shattering her leg.

"My mother could never forgive herself for that carelessness, nor could she escape the terror of that accident. She was supposed to be perfect, yet in a split second, she was plunged into the despair of a body that could never reach for the heights again. From that day on, she forced me to walk only the 'flat roads'—where it was absolutely safe, and where I could never get hurt."

Whenever a young Aya tried to attempt a new challenge of her own, the excruciating pain of Chiyo's own fall would vividly flash back in Chiyo’s mind.

"My mother's intense cherishing—her desperate desire to keep me from getting hurt—tore off my wings. And while I lived safely protected, never suffering a single physical injury, my heart was left with nothing but an indelible sense of failure, the pain of never once having truly lived my own life."

That was why, when her child was born, Aya defied Chiyo’s fierce opposition and named him Tatsumi. She prayed that he would never be crushed inside someone else's safe cage, that he would stand firm upon this reality with his own feet.

"And yet, Tatsumi... watching you challenge the world, only to return to your room broken and bruised each time, terrified me beyond endurance. The flashback of terror my mother had implanted in me—that 'challenging will lead to irreversible injury'—began to run wild in my head like madness."

Aya pressed her hands onto the table, her voice trembling.

"'See? It turned out exactly as I said!'... If I said those words, you wouldn't have to get hurt anymore. By saying that and shutting you away in that comfortable darkness, I was casting the exact same curse on you that my mother cast on me. Even though I love you more than anyone..."

In the silence of the living room, his mother’s uncontrollable tears fell.

Tatsumi had been so deeply, endlessly sorrowful because the mother he loved so much had rejected his every challenge. But for the first time, he realized that beneath those words of denial lay his mother's desperate love and terrifying fear, trying to protect him.

Tatsumi stared back at the old kissling backpack visible in the corner of his room.

It was Grandmother Chiyo's pride and defeat; it was the vessel of the tears Mother Aya could never shed. A heavy chain that no one wanted to look at, yet could never discard because they loved each other, passed down through the bloodline.

Tatsumi made a silent, but ironclad vow in his heart.

(Grandmother, Mother. I will carry this backpack. To the very place where both of you could no longer walk, I will carry your dreams on my own healthy feet.)

Deep inside the frozen stove of his chest, all of his past sorrows and failures were quietly laid down, transforming into an unquenchable, unyielding coal—sumi.

📖 Next Chapter:https://note.com/ttukumoo/n/n8f09d43cc30c
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🌐OriginalJapanesehere:https://note.com/juicy_laelia8513/n/nfe24f5dbdb0b

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