Laid-Back Life in Tokyo: I Really Didn't Want to Work Hard
Chapter 267 - 216: Leaving_2

Chapter 267: Chapter 216: Leaving_2

Passing by one gravestone after another with names and introductions carved on them, the ancestors of the Uesugi Family are located in the farthest left corner of the cemetery.

Uesugi Sakura scooped water from the small wooden bucket into a little depression in front of the gravestone, named "Water Receiving."

Grandfather Uesugi offered wildflowers picked along the way, and placed a prepared cup of sake in front of his father’s name.

Then there was no other movement.

"Sakagawa, it’s been so long, are you still angry?" Grandmother Uesugi said with hands folded, her eyes slightly open.

Grandfather Uesugi just looked at his father’s name above and after a long silence said, "I will never forgive this man... No, abandoning family and children, he doesn’t deserve to be called a man."

"When Rina and I were wrapped in straw raincoats in the snow, holding our mother and crying, we never saw this guy show up, nor did we know where he was."

Grandfather Uesugi’s sharp eyes even refused to see the name again, as he clenched his fist that held the lunch box.

"Ha, perhaps he’s somewhere happily drinking."

Grandfather Uesugi’s real name was Uesugi Sakagawa, and Uesugi Rina was his sister who unfortunately died in an earthquake.

The two children were raised by their mother alone, living a life of poverty in the countryside, eating sweet potatoes every day.

The mother and her three children, one could say, relied on each other for survival.

"But he still came back." Grandmother Uesugi said.

"Ran away is ran away, what’s the point of saying came back or not. Every year, if I can hand him a cup of sake, a bunch of flowers, that’s already being overly kind!"

"Grandpa."

Uesugi Sakura bowed to the gravestone, stood up from a squatting position, "By the way, do I still have a grand aunt?"

Uesugi Sakagawa was always kind to his grandson Sakura, smiling and waving his hand, "All old stories, nothing worth talking about."

Seeing his grandfather’s reluctance to speak, Uesugi Sakura didn’t continue to inquire.

He had never heard his grandfather mention anything about the grand aunt.

But from the words exposed just now, he could speculate that his grandfather had a deep affection for the grand aunt.

A single-parent family, the hardships are unimaginable to most people.

Paying respects at the grave doesn’t need to be overly complicated.

Sweeping, pouring water, offering flowers, worshiping, tributes – that’s the entire process.

The flowers offered can be those loved by the ancestors.

But details should be noted, like cutting off thorny roses.

Like red spider lilies and narcissus, which are toxic plants, not suitable for grave offerings.

Compared to fathers, grandfather Uesugi placed much more importance on what he gave to his mother.

Whether it was the carefully selected camellias or the tributes he personally cooked in the morning, they were all done with heart.

"Another year has passed." Grandfather Uesugi sighed lightly at the epitaph, each word capturing the essence of his mother’s life.

"Lost hope?" Grandmother Uesugi lowered her folded hands at a leisurely pace and asked.

"It would be a lie to say I haven’t."

On grandfather Uesugi’s dignified face, wrinkles had already spread, "Meeting you, Kazumiko, is still fresh in my mind as if it was yesterday, and in the blink of an eye... haha, all my hair has turned white."

Speaking of that summer festival, a gentle, kind smile appeared on grandmother Uesugi’s loving face.

"Old man, the only thing that hasn’t changed with you these decades is that stubborn temper. At seventy or eighty years old, you still think about confronting those guys."

"I have to thank my bad temper!"

"There’s nothing praiseworthy about that temper."

"At least it made me try hard to scoop goldfish that day."

Memories are always tinged with the color of black-and-white photographs, but only the colors of the day we first met refuse to fade away.

"At that time... Rina was still around, wasn’t she?" said grandmother Uesugi with a tone of nostalgia.

"Yes, all were still here... all were still here... all were still here... all were still here..." Looking at his mother’s grave, the white-haired grandfather Uesugi murmured to himself endlessly.

When people grow old, they like to recall the past because they can already see the end of the road ahead.

What remains is only the reminiscence of the people and events that have passed.

When the person who accompanied you half your life is gone, and your children have families of their own,

that’s when elders feel the loneliest.

A room, a chair, a person reminiscing about the blurry past to the sky.

Filled with melancholy.

Grandfather and grandmother kept chatting, and they seemed to want to linger in the graveyard a while longer.

Uesugi Shio stood alone in front of a gravestone, head lowered, saying nothing.

Uesugi Sakura and Hanamaru Hanabi walked over and saw the gravestone inscribed with "Uesugi Chigako’s Grave."

"Speaking of which, I have some connection to my mother’s death." Uesugi Shio said to the two behind her, her voice usual, but without the previous laziness.

"Wasn’t Auntie sick?" Uesugi Sakura asked.

"She did die of illness, but after I was born, she never stopped taking medicine every day."

Uesugi Shio calmly said these words, "Which means my birth further aggravated her condition, which eventually led to the tragedy of her throwing herself into the river."

"..."

"Sakura, Hanabi, about what happened a few days ago with my father, I’m really sorry."

"No, don’t say that. Sister Shio and us..." Hanamaru Hanabi glanced at Uesugi Sakura, "Sister Shio and us are family, right?"

"Yes."

After a moment, Uesugi Shio, except for an answer, didn’t continue to speak.

Hanamaru Hanabi could tell her cousin has been unhappy lately, and she wanted to help this sister who had cared for her since childhood.

But she was just a 15-year-old girl with her own heartbreak, even more unsure of how to guide through such things.

————————

August 13th, the Bon Festival.

Even though it is the grandest festival next to New Year, Uesugi Sakura couldn’t feel happy at all.

Looking up at the drizzle falling from the sky, his heart was full of melancholy.

"Are you sure... you want to go?" he turned his head and asked.

Hanamaru Hanabi paused her hands from tidying their clothes from the day before, her delicate little face looking at him, "If... Sakura doesn’t want Hanabi to go... then Hanabi won’t go..."

"Still... follow your own thoughts."

Girls are always like this, always listening to him since childhood.

No matter how significant the decision, she would follow his advice to change it.

Uesugi Sakura didn’t want to influence her.

"Hanabi."

"Hmm..." she answered weakly.

"If after we graduate, we’re not in the same university, what then?"

"Hanabi... supports Sakura’s dreams..."

"I want to study at the same place as you." Uesugi Sakura rested his hands on the window, with the Orange Garden quietly sitting on the distant Sakura Hill.

"Hanabi’s grades... won’t get me into Tokyo University..." her voice was soft.

"I’ll study where you are."

"But..." Hanamaru Hanabi looked up at him again, "Sakura... doesn’t need to give up such good conditions for Hanabi...

"If you do that, Sakura, Hanabi... will feel even more guilty..."

The girl didn’t want her useless self to drag him, who has a better future, down. Sometimes... being able to silently support from behind is her greatest wish.

Just like the Kendo and Kyudo competitions he participated in.

Even though she didn’t understand any of it, Hanamaru Hanabi still brought a thermos filled with ice cubes in the morning to hand to him as soon as he rested from the match.

She never missed a single match.