The shrine stood empty in the late afternoon light, ancient cedar beams casting long shadows across the weathered stone courtyard. Satoshi had flown here on impulse—another reckless journey at speeds that defied physics, weaving between mountain peaks to avoid detection. He'd told himself he was coming to understand his family's history, to find some connection to the ancestors his father had abandoned.
But really, he just needed to be somewhere that felt permanent.
The Iragawa family shrine was small, tucked into a grove of trees an hour's walk from the nearest village. His great-grandfather had built it after the war, a place to honor the dead who had no graves to tend. Satoshi approached the weathered torii gate, noting how the red paint had faded to the color of dried blood.
Inside, the butsudan was older and more elaborate than the one at his grandmother's house. Rows of ancestral tablets stood in neat formation, names carved in characters he could barely read. Photographs from different eras stared out from behind the altar—men in military uniforms, women in formal kimono, children who had died too young. And there, tucked behind a larger frame, a photo of his father he'd never seen before. Young, maybe seventeen, standing beside someone who must have been his own father.
Satoshi knelt before the altar and pulled out the offerings he'd brought—rice crackers, oranges, a bottle of sake. His hands moved through the ritual motions his grandmother had taught him years ago, when he was small enough that his strength hadn't yet become dangerous.
"Satoshi?"
He spun around, nearly knocking over the sake bottle. He saw his grandmother, with a small smile on her elderly face while a middle-aged woman in casual clothes stood at the shrine entrance, supporting her as she entered.
"This is where Takeshi used to come," she said softly to her companion but also loud enough for Satoshi to hear. "When he was troubled. It only makes sense for his son to come here too"
She said, looking at Satoshi with eyes filled with lucid awareness. Satoshi came closer, his eyes matching hers and understanding passing between them, an amazed acceptance of this rare moment of recognition causing his heart to race. "Grandma, what are you doing here?"
"Keiko brings me sometimes," she said, her words slow but deliberate looking over at her nurse. "I asked to come today. I had... feelings. That someone would be here."
The woman—Keiko—looked between them with curiosity, but seemed to understand this was a private moment and stepped away. Satoshi took up her place and gently guided her grandmother to the small shrine.
"You look taller. When did you get so tall?" She said in a complete understanding and a warm smile.
"I've been growing, grandma," Satoshi said gently, relief flooding through him at such a normal observation.
"Mm." She nodded slowly, then looked around the shrine with a slight frown. "I don't come here often enough. I should” She hummed to herself as she admired the surrounding gifts. “Your great-grandfather would be disappointed." She gestured vaguely at the offerings. "You brought proper gifts."
"You taught me what to bring."
"Did I?" A flicker of pride crossed her face. "Good. Too many young people don't know the old ways anymore." She moved closer to the altar, her steps careful but determined. "Takeshi used to come here when he was your age. Maybe younger. He would sit right there—" She pointed to a worn spot on the floor. "—and talk to the photographs like they could hear him."
"What did he talk about?"
"School troubles. Girl troubles." She settled slowly beside the altar, her breathing slightly labored from the walk. Satoshi gently let her down as she sat and rubbed the spot on the stair, remembering old and ancient things Satoshi had no right to question, but every right to hear. "He was always worrying about something. Too silly for his age, but too serious for his own good." She looked at Satoshi with sudden focus. "You have that same look sometimes. Like you're carrying the weight of the world." She left something off which she wanted to say, but instead conveyed with a brief look down at the worn spot.
Satoshi felt his pulse quicken, but kept his voice casual. "Just normal teenage worries, I guess."
"Is it?" She looked back to him and studied his face with growing intensity. "You have her eyes now."
"Whose eyes?"
"Yuri-san’s" The name came out like a confession. She struggled with the word and then scoffed slightly. "Your mother. I was never kind to her," she said, settling more comfortably beside the altar. "Your mother. I thought she was... I don't know.... Too perfect. Too graceful. The way she moved" She remembered something ancient again and scoffed.
Satoshi's blood chilled.
"She tried so hard to fit in," his grandmother continued, arranging the offerings with trembling hands. "At family dinners, she would ask so many questions about how to cook, how to clean, how to be a proper wife. I made her feel unwelcome," his grandmother said, her voice heavy with regret. "I thought if I could make her uncomfortable enough, she would leave and Takeshi would find someone... normal. Someone who belonged."
She reached for the photograph of his father, her fingers touching the glass gently.
"But she loved him. Really loved him. I could see it in how she looked at him, like he was the most precious thing in the world. And he looked at him the same way." Her voice cracked slightly. "I was jealous, I think. Of how complete they were together."
"grandma..."
"And then you came along." She turned to Satoshi, and for a moment her eyes were completely clear. "Such a beautiful baby. So strong. The way you would grip my finger. The way Yuri-san would watch you, like she was afraid of something, too afraid to let go, but too afraid to hold on..."
She paused as tears wavered on the edge of her clear eyes, before she turned to look back at the altar.
"It makes sense to me," his grandmother said firmly. "More sense than it used to." She struggled to her feet and moved closer to Satoshi. "You're like her now, aren't you? That's why Takeshi had to go away."
"He didn't go to America," she continued, her voice growing softer. "I know that much. Men don't just disappear and never call their mothers, no matter how far they go. Something happened to him. Something connected to what Yuri is, and what you're becoming."
Satoshi felt the weight of her stare, the desperate need for truth in her failing mind. He knew what had happened to his father—the transformation, the pain, the mission and desire, and the death that had followed. But he couldn't tell her that.
"You're right," he said quietly. "He's not in America."
She nodded, looking back to the frame and wincing as some old memory snaked through her heart. She shook her head, looked up to the trees and the cloudy sky, and then back to Satoshi. He came up to her and placed a hand on hers and simply felt her presence, that weary age that had seen so much and taken on such impossibly burdens of family, culture, and necessity.
He nodded slowly, understanding passing between them.
"I failed them both," his grandmother said, her voice breaking as she turned back to the altar. "I failed your mother when she needed family the most. When she was trying so hard to be something she wasn't, just to belong somewhere." She picked up a stick of incense with shaking hands. "And I failed my son. I made his life harder than it had to be."
“No…grandma…” Satoshi tried to say gently. He could sense that his words had no effect.
Her shoulders shook as she struggled to light the incense. "I should have supported him instead of questioning."
"Grandma..." Satoshi reached out to steady her hands.
"I was so afraid," she whispered, the incense finally catching flame. "Afraid of things I didn't understand. Afraid of losing him to something I couldn't be part of. But I lost him anyway, didn't I? Because I was too proud, too stubborn to just... accept."
She pressed her hands together before the altar, her whole body trembling. "I wish I could tell him I'm sorry. That I understand now why he had to choose her world over mine. That I don't blame him for leaving us behind."
"You can tell him that," Satoshi said gently, though the words felt hollow. His father was gone, beyond apologies or understanding. But his grandmother needed to believe otherwise.
"Will I?" His grandmother's confusion was returning, the moment of raw emotion leaving her drained. "I forget so much now. Important things slip away like water. What if I forget how sorry I am? What if I forget why it matters?"
"The love will stay," Satoshi said, hoping it was true. "Even when the words are gone."
She lit the incense, the smoke curling upward toward the photographs of the dead. "I pray for them both sometimes," she said quietly, her voice still thick with emotion. "For Yuri and for Takeshi. I pray that wherever they are, they know I would do everything differently if I could."
"She knows," Satoshi said, though his throat was tight with emotion he hadn't expected.
They stood together in silence, the three of them, watching the incense burn. His grandmother's clarity was fragmenting again, her eyes growing distant, but something had shifted between them. When Keiko finally suggested they should return, his grandmother went docilely, her moment of raw emotion having taken her back into gentle confusion. But as they reached the torii gate, she turned back once.
"Take care of yourself, Satoshi," she said with surprising firmness. "And if you ever see your father... tell him his mother loves him. Tell him I understand."
After they left, Satoshi remained at the shrine until full darkness fell. He knelt before the altar, not praying but thinking about the weight of family secrets, about regret and the words that could never be spoken to the dead.
His grandmother would never get the chance to apologize to his father. Takeshi was gone, his body dissolved by the very power he had sought to control. But her love and regret were real, and somehow that mattered, even if the recipient could never hear them.
When he finally took flight again, disappearing into the clouds sky at impossible and silent speeds, he carried with him the image of his grandmother's tears and the knowledge that love and regret could exist side by side, burning like incense smoke coiling up into the sky long after the flame had died.