"Susato-chan, are you really leaving?"
With Kazuma staring at her like that, Susato's resolve almost left her. She nodded despite the tightness in her throat and strengthened her grip on her suitcase.
"I have to, Kazuma-sama."
"You're really going to travel all that way alone. Are you certain it's safe?"
"I have mastered my takedown technique," Susato said, and smiled weakly.
Kazuma smiled back, but it looked remarkably sad. "I understand, Susato-chan. I just wish I could go with you."
"I wish you could too, Kazuma-sama. But you are the man of the house while Genshin-sama is away. You're needed here. But it's alright! And one day I'm sure you will get to see it too!" Susato said, forcing herself to sound more cheerful than she felt.
"Say hello to Father for me," he said and looked away, letting out a long breath.
"I will. Genshin-sama is going to meet me at the harbour. And...you will take good care of obaachan while I'm away?" she said, her vision misting.
"Of course."
They stared at each other. Light fell through the rice paper, glowed molten in the crack between shoji and frame. A bird released a sharp call.
"Promise me you will write. Send me a telegram if you can, the moment you arrive," Kazuma said, his eyes warm and deep with concern.
"I promise! I will write you so much it will irritate both you and obaachan."
He laughed.
Sudden fear gripped Susato. She was scared to travel without him, scared to leave her home, scared of what would happen when she found her father. She knew Genshin was with Yujin Mikotoba, her biological father, that Genshin would take her to him, and finally she would see the man who had abandoned her when she had only just entered the world.
But...she had been so long without him—sixteen years, in fact. Perhaps she would be fine carrying on this way. She had her grandmother, and the Asogi family to keep her company.
No, she had to do this. She simply had to. Letters were not enough. She was too old now to subside on imagining her father, on pretending she did not ache to know why he had left. To pretend that she did not dream about meeting him, about their family being whole—as whole as it could be without her mother.
Trembling, Susato reached for Kazuma. For a moment, they held each other tightly. Then she pulled away and stepped into the sunlight.
***
Susato watched Japan grow small. Just a smudge of green on the grey horizon. While the world filled with far too much noise, far too much motion. And her legs threatened repeatedly to betray her.
You've made a wretched mistake. The thought pressed into her mind yet again, swept a chill up her spine. Susato closed her eyes. The wind was sharp and vast around her, pushing while the water pulled and her feet throbbed, unsettled.
She could feel it, in the way the air moved past her ears, in the way it rolled up over her and continued onwards, wide and wider. She felt how small she was. Just a tiny petal that had fluttered onto the tip of a pinky, and would soon be shoved towards the palm of a body so big she could never see all of it. The world waiting, the mouth hanging open to breathe. This calmed her and terrified her all at once. To think of herself beside all the vast space of land and sea, and all the lives existing, trying to find just one other petal.
How brave a journey you are taking, my dear Susato-chan. That was what grandmother had said, touching her hair, hand so frail and scented like sakura, yet so sure and so steady. Just like the hope that trembled inside of Susato's chest.
"I will come home with good news, obaachan," Susato promised, and opened her eyes to the unending sea.