The funeral was a blur of folded hands, low bows, and a wall of white chrysanthemums. Haruki stood behind the altar with his mother, Tomiko, her face porcelain-hard. She didn't weep. Neither did he. The sounds of chanting monks and rustling sleeves filled the air like smoke—beautiful, distant, suffocating.
Masanori Saitō had passed quietly, without protest. Just as he had lived.
A week later, the family gathered inside the ryokan's largest tatami room. Slippers were left at the door. Green tea had already gone cold on the tray. At the center sat the family lawyer, an old family friend with spectacles so thick they made his eyes look like fish in a bowl.
Haruki's cousin Takeshi adjusted his necktie. His parents sat beside him—Haruki's uncle and aunt, both draped in grey like vultures waiting for thunder. None of them touched the tea.
The will was brief. Too brief.
"To my son, Haruki—I leave behind my name, and my blessing to follow his own path. The property and family business are entrusted to the care of my elder brother Hiroshi, to maintain tradition."
There was a pause. A shift in breath. And then—
"That doesn't sound right," Haruki said, his voice trembling more with disbelief than anger. "He told me... he told me everything would go to me."
"Your father honored tradition," Hiroshi replied coldly. "He knew the inn belonged to the family, not to childish dreams of apps and computers."
"But this isn't what he wanted—" Haruki began, rising to his feet.
Tomiko said nothing.
She didn't raise her eyes. Didn't squeeze his hand. Didn't fight.
That silence was colder than any betrayal.
Later, Takeshi cornered him near the garden steps. The cousins stared at each other under the weeping plum tree where they once traded comic books and bad jokes.
"You don't belong here, Haruki," Takeshi said softly, almost kindly. "You're better off chasing your fantasies in Tokyo."
Haruki didn't respond. He just watched the pond beside them, where a single koi circled slowly, unaware that its world had already begun to shrink.
That night, he packed his bag. One backpack. A change of clothes. His laptop. No goodbye.
He left the Saitō ryokan at midnight, the moon high and unsympathetic above him. As he walked down the gravel path to the station, the wind carried the scent of incense and plum blossoms—reminding him what he'd lost.
But buried deep beneath the grief, something else stirred.
Resolve.