“I think,” I said slowly, “that’s the only kind of missing that really hurts.”
“Every day,” she said. “Except when it rains. Then I sit under the shrine’s eaves. The old lady lets me.”
She didn’t cry. That’s what got me. She said it the way you’d read a weather report: clear skies, chance of rain later, but not yet. oniisan… ohitori desu ka?
“Me too,” she said. Then, after a pause: “Can I sit?”
“And which one were you asking?”
“Oniisan,” she said again, softer this time. “Do you think it’s possible to miss someone who’s still alive?”
And I thought: Sometimes the smallest people hand you the largest truths, and you don’t even know you were empty until they fill you. “I think,” I said slowly, “that’s the only
“Oniisan… ohitori desu ka?”