Dreams Upon A Silver Pine Branch

Chapter 32 A: Putting One's Self Into A Lion's Mouth

The month immediately following the rainy day that ended with Kenta learning about his parents' past, life in the Kinoya residence seemed to have grown quieter and more somber. Akira still maintained her cold shoulder treatment toward her cousin. At the same time, Lee spent less and less time with the rest of his family so that he could focus all of his energy (or what was left of it after hours of assessing his graduate students' dissertation drafts) nursing Chiharu. He was adamant that he was more than capable of balancing his professorial duties with the around-the-clock care his wife required.

"Lee, how come you never seem to run out of energy even after a long day at the office?" the sickly woman asked weakly as her husband fastened the blood pressure checker around her upper arm. "How come you insist on caring for me yourself instead of hiring a nurse?"

"Because you're worth it," the man replied as he noted Chiharu's abnormally low blood pressure and opened a bottle of fludrocortisone gels before helping her keep the prescribed medication down with a glass of non-caffeinated oolong tea. "And because I know you would do the same if I were the one being bedridden. Please don't feel bad about it. In sickness and in health, remember? Besides, it's not like I'm doing this alone. Shiori and Aikawa take turns looking after you too, right? You know we have something like a schedule going. It is my shift now."

"I wonder," Chiharu rubbed her tea mug pensively, "whether your brother and Shiori only do that to be respectful of you. Given that I was unfriendly toward them back when I was still healthier, I understand if they're resentful of me but are too polite to let their resentment show. I also wonder if I am taking their attention away from their son."

"Aikawa probably is being polite, yes," Lee admitted. "But Shiori? She's a saint and I'm sure you're aware of how patient she has always been. You owe her an apology too, just like you said you owe Ezekiel one. As for our nephew, I think he inherited his mother's saintly nature. Have you ever seen a teenager more mature than Kenta? The boy would be okay. He knows Aikawa and Shiori would prioritize him no matter how busy they are."

"I wish..." Chiharu gestured at the family portrait by her bedside, "I wish I had been kinder to Shiori and realized sooner that she's a lot smarter than I gave her credit for. She definitely is smarter than I am when it comes to parenting. Say, Lee, if Akira were her daughter and not ours... If I weren't the one who gave birth to her... If I hadn't valued a degree above all else..."

"Chiharu, stop. I get it. You think you've failed at parenting," Lee put a hand under his wife's chin and forced her to face him. Tears glistened in his eyes as he kept speaking. "But your failure is not solely yours. I'm Akira's parent too. We're a team. I won't let you take all the blame. I fail too, my flower. I fail at being the father she needs. For that, I'm sorry. I'm sorry we ruined our daughter. I'm sorry that I haven't been attentive to her. I should have listened to Aikawa when he told me that he didn't exactly see me as a dad material."

"I want you to answer my question with brutal honesty, okay?" Chiharu gave Lee's hand a weak squeeze. "Do you ever regret having a child with me? If you could go back to when we were bleeding-heart, sparkly-eyed, twenty-three-year-old newlyweds, would you have told me not to keep her because we admittedly were clueless about how to raise a child the right way? You know how to raise a winged elephant and I know how to raise a dolphin-seahorse hybrid, but raising a human is a different matter entirely."

"Our decision not to terminate your pregnancy despite your health issues wasn't a mistake!" Lee argued. "Our mistake was assuming that the way we were raised by our parents, which is to say being raised with little knowledge of how to express affection unashamedly, would work just fine with Akira. We were mistaken in our assumption that she wouldn't expect us to prove our love unabashedly, the way Shiori and Aikawa are always affectionate with Kenta."