The dying song

Chapter X: Hope is a human need. So let us steal a glimpse of it.

2016.

Satoru. Utahime.

He froze on the spot, her voice coming in unexpectedly. Sighing, Satoru turned around to face her.

He had to tell her the truth, no matter how hard it was. She had the right to know it.

"Sit down." He prompted her, taking her hand until both of them were sitting on the counter bar stools. She frowned in tense expectation, waiting for him to speak again.

"What's wrong, Gojo?"

Breathing in, Gojo took her hands in his. He didn't like beating around the bush; he was always straight to the point, but this concerned Utahime's father, and it was complicated because he didn't want to hurt her further. He hated the idea of her taking it so badly that she would try to leave again. So he steeled himself as she faced him with a quizzical expression, following every motion.

"It's... about your dad, Uta."

"Did you find him? Do you know where he is?" Utahime almost jumped upright from her seat, but he held her in place, nodding.

"I did."

Gojo paused, hoping that the raw truth—the one his tongue couldn't elaborate—would slip out in the growing silence. Slowly, her eyes went from the floor to his face, finally fathoming what she had feared since her father went missing.

"Is he... dead?"

Her voice trembled, and she bit her lower lip nervously. It reminded Satoru of the good old days, back when they were teenagers and she was just a jumpy, scaredy cat girl instead of the fierce woman she had now become.

He nodded again, her hands still in his.

"How?" The dawn of her grief was already making its way into her heart, and her mind was still trying to register the weight of his answer.

"He... He was found in an alley. That was the cops' report. Ijichi tried to take the corpse to Shoko, but the police body didn't allow it, so I guess I gotta go there to fix that problem for you to give him a proper burial."

Utahime's mouth felt suddenly dry. It had come as a sad song, one of those lullabies her mother once sang to her as a child, soft and low. She didn't know why she wasn't crying; her eyes were lost in a corner ahead, her expression blank. Something heavy fell from her shoulders, an invisible weight abandoning her body as if the waves of the sea were washing away the sorrow she had never allowed herself to feel until this moment.

"It's over..." she whispered, staring off into space, finally mourning who he used to be. "It's over."

Even though it sounded selfish and cold-hearted, she almost felt relieved.

Every lost night, every day he wasted his life in alcohol and made her waste her own, was now concluded for them. No longer ensnared in the guilt of trying to salvage a life drowning in self-destruction, she found herself standing at the crossroads of liberation and lingering emptiness. The time squandered in the relentless pursuit of his redemption had transformed her into the one in need of a desperate salvation. Memories, both of a tumultuous childhood and a restless adulthood spent beside him, now manifested as burdens, heavy anchors tethering her to the pain and vulnerability etched in her heart.

How could she let that happen?

Even though her love for her father had endured, it had been a sentiment entangled with the barbed wire of suffering, turning her life into a living hell. And now that the inferno had been extinguished, she didn't know what to do with the ashes left by the fire.