Chapter 2.3
When Motoko returned from Chigusa, her mother-in-law Tomiko came to meet her at the entryway as if she couldn't wait any longer. "Ah, Motoko-san. I was just wondering if I should telephone Chigusa."
When Tomiko said those words, Motoko felt the blood drain from her face in an instant. "Did.... something happen?"
It couldn't be, not to Shigeki or Shiori. In an instant, the worst her imagination could muster flooded her mind, her knees going weak.
"Tokio-chan has died, they say."
Eh, Motoko started. It took her a few seconds to realize who "Tokio" was again, but when she finally realized it, Motoko instantly felt gratitude towards someone. Thank godness that God--if such a being existed--was not that unkind, Motoko thought, characteristically.
"Tokio-san, the firefighter?"
Maeda Tokio who lived in the Sotoba district washer husband's cousin. He was a little older than Isami and worked at the Mizobe fire station. At first Motoko thought that there was probably some kind of accident at work, or something along those lines.
"Yes, that Tokio-chan! It seems he was sick with something. Well after all, he was a fireman, so of course he was a hardy man but even he as bedridden since the day before yesterday, from the sounds of it."
"My.... Was something wrong with him?"
she asked as they went from the entryway towards the living room, prompting Tomiko to make a sullen face.
"Well about that... They say they don't know. Tokio-chan was a boy who could take a lot after all. It seems he didn't say a thing. Though it seems like his parents were worried and called for the doctor of the Ozakis."
Tomiko was saying, but the moment she had said "doctor of the Ozakis", it was with an expression of open disgust. It seemed she still hadn't forgotten the squabble from when her father-in-law Iwao had died.
"They did call for him but it looks like it didn't do much good," said sounding thorny, snorting through her nose. "It sounds as if Tokio-chan suffered in silence but apparently he had been sick for a long while. I don't know if he might have been seeing a doctor in Mizobe, because he never leaked anything even to Rika-san."
While speaking, Tomiko sat down in the living room and poured hot water from the small tea pot.
"Oh..." Rika was Tokio's wife. If she remembered, she was about Motoko's age. "Rika-san must be very depressed with how sudden it was. I'll have to pay my condolences..."
"Today she seems to be doing well, she even forced herself to go into work it looks like. Since Tokio-chan was always so serious like that."
"It's because there was a lot of responsibility with his job."
"Actually, it seems someone's taken his post. They said he apparently quit at the fire station."
"My---Why?"
"They say they don't know. It seems he just said that the fire station was hard on a body, so he must have actually been sick for some time. Since he quit, they can't just shift gears to somebody new right away. So for the time being, since there were many things they had to sort out and train a replacement, so he was forced to keep coming in, but."
Is that so, Motoko said as she took the teapot Tomiko passed over and peered inside. Tomiko was the spitting image of a fireman, and he seemed to think of the vocation as his purpose in life. For him to quit something he thought so much of, his body must have been in a terrible state of suffering. Surely Rika must have been relieved that he had quit. She was more afraid of Tokio dying at his post than anything. And yet, he still died---.
It's scary, she thought. Why do people die? Death attacked from the shadows. Why couldn't people sense it and avoid it? Motoko didn't believe in the likes of God but sometimes she couldn't fight the feeling that they were in the palm of somebody's hand. That somebody was none too kind. If anything they were malicious. Their actions were capacious, poisonous in a way.
(Let me be...)
Even if just the people precious and near to her. Motoko wrapped up the tea put and held it tightly in both hands.
(I'm begging, please don't do anything cruel to me.)