….All alone?
Little Megumi standing beside the kitten’s box. Come rain or snow, she doesn’t move. She’s there – an angel, a guardian, a surrogate mother. And what’s more, she’s a symbol of innocence. Even Ryo, possessed by motives of vengeance and destructiveness in his heart, cannot stop for a moment to consider the contrast between himself and Megumi, and their circumstances. “I see…” he remarks quite profoundly.
Ryo treads softly in his shoes on this particular snowy morning in Yamanose. He hears the faint cry of a kitten from the nearby playground. “Huh?” he states out loud and stops for a second. His thoughts are interrupted, his quest is put on hold. He instinctively walks towards the shrine, and finds Megumi guarding a cardboard box. She’s standing directly in front of it, as if to hide an unpleasant truth. “You got a kitten in there?” Ryo asks.
She lowers her head in disgrace and stays silent a moment. “….You promise not to tell my mommy?” She pleads, and moves out of the way. It is indeed a kitten, grey with sparkling eyes and joyously radiating the freshness of new life. Seeing the kitten stirs something deep within him, something warm and fuzzy. “Is this your kitten?” Ryo inquires.
“Uh-uh,” Megumi responds. “But see, this kitty – she’s all alone!”
Ryo hesitates a moment. “…All alone?” he echoes.
“Yup. See, the other day when it rained…a car ran over her mommy!” Megumi exclaimed tearfully. “My big sister saw it – she said it was a big, black car!”
Pause. Slow motion. Ryo’s expression takes on a concerned, thoughtful frown. He doesn’t respond for about ten seconds. “….A black car?”
And then things were never the same. They couldn’t be, after what Ryo had seen and heard that morning. She was so tiny, but already an orphan! Ryo lost his father a few days ago, and had sworn revenge. His father’s killer was the driver of that black car which also ran over the kitten’s mother. It was an unspeakable horror – two consecutive murders by the same evildoer.
But the kitten could not blindly swear revenge. It could not kill in rage, or commit violence in response to such an injustice. She would never need to, so long as the love and compassion of a young girl who risked getting in trouble with her mommy persisted – and it always would. Ryo knew this as he watched her standing there in the cold. And in that moment, he felt a sort of connection with the kitten that he’d never felt before.
