“So… I have to play for myself now.”
Ichika gets up and walks to the small kitchen. She opens the cupboard and stares at the row of instant ramen cups. Her mother used to cook nikujaga on cold nights. The smell of simmering soy sauce and beef would fill the whole apartment. Ichika hated the carrots. She would pick them out and leave them on the side of her bowl. Her mother would always sigh and eat them herself.
Ichika closes the cupboard.
The Space Between Notes
She looks around the room. Her mother’s shawl is still draped over the back of the chair by the window. A small ceramic fox—a souvenir from a trip to Inari Shrine when Ichika was seven—sits on the windowsill. Her mother had bought matching ones. Ichika’s fox has a tiny chip on its ear.
“So…”
Then, for the first time in three weeks, Ichika cries. Not the wracking sobs of the funeral. Not the numb tears of the days after. But quiet tears—the kind that come when you finally admit that a door has closed, but you’ve just noticed another one, slightly ajar, on the other side of the room. Seta Ichika - I Don-t Have A Mother Anymore- So...
She says it out loud to test the weight of it. The sentence lands on the tatami mat like a stone dropped into deep water—no splash, just a dull thud.
The word hangs there. So. A bridge to nowhere.
It is not a sad note. It is not a happy note. “So… I have to play for myself now
“I’ll forge it. She would have told me to.”
She returns to the bass. This was her mother’s idea, years ago. Not the bass specifically, but the music. The late nights practicing. The small, proud smile when Ichika finally nailed a difficult riff. Her mother never understood the songs—they were too loud, too fast, too young—but she understood the effort.