Spring arrived late that year.
It wasn't the calendar's fault. The plum trees still bloomed when they were supposed to. The stores still put out pastel decorations and limited-edition snacks. The air gradually shifted from knife-cold to jacket-cold.
But for Mirai, spring was not a date.
Spring was a boy.
And he had taken his time becoming real.
A year after the night he arrived, Haru stood in the living room, both hands clamped onto the edge of the low table, wobbling like a tiny, determined old man.
His socks were half falling off. His hair stuck up in the back like he'd wrestled the blanket and won. His cheeks were round and soft, holding the color of sleep and milk and something new.
"Careful," Mirai said automatically, hovering just behind him.
He looked over his shoulder at her, face lighting up with a smile that had only a few teeth but all the power in the world.
"Ma," he said, proud.
The first time he'd said it, she'd cried so hard she'd startled him into crying too.
Now, the word still found a place in her chest and sat there, warm and heavy.
"Don't charm me," she said, tapping his back lightly. "You still fall down every third step."
He ignored her, attention already drifting to the plastic cup on the table. His fingers reached, chubby and insistent.
The distance between his hand and the cup was less than his patience.
He let go of the table with one hand.
Mirai's heart jumped into her throat.
"Slowly," she murmured, as if the word might change gravity.
He managed to push the cup toward himself. It tipped and rolled off the table, bouncing once on the carpet and landing harmlessly.
Haru blinked, then looked at her again.
"Tah!" he announced, as if he'd accomplished something profound.
"Yes, yes, you're very strong," she said, exhaling.
She picked up the cup and set it aside before he decided it belonged in his mouth.
The clock on the wall read 9:17 a.m.
She had been awake since 5:40.
She'd slept from 1:00 to 3:00, then again from 3:30 to 5:40. Before that, she had vague memories of rocking, humming, whispering: It's okay, go back to sleep, I'm right here.
Her body ached with that particular tiredness that didn't come from doing one big thing, but from doing a hundred small ones without stopping.
But her mind was clearer than it had been in those first weeks.
There was a rhythm now.
Not easy. Not gentle. But knowable.
Haru pulled himself along the table, hand over hand, until he reached the far side and dropped onto his padded bottom with a soft thump.
He didn't cry.
That, she thought, was one of the biggest changes of this year.
He had learned the distance between "fell" and "hurt." So had she.
He clapped his hands, pleased with himself, then reached both arms toward her.
"Up," he demanded, language still more intention than word.
She scooped him up, his weight settling against her chest like something that had always belonged there.
"You're getting heavy," she complained half-heartedly. "You were much easier when you were just a heartbeat and a stomach ache."
He babbled into her shoulder, small hand patting her collarbone.
She smelled of baby soap, dried sweat, and the faint scent of miso that lived in the kitchen walls.
He smelled like morning.
Her uniform still hung in the closet.
It hadn't moved in months, except for that one time when she took it out and pressed the fabric between her fingers, expecting it to mean something.
It had felt like cloth.
The school had processed her leave.
After the hospital scare and the doctor's note, the meeting with the vice-principal and counselor had shifted from supporting a pregnant student to supporting a student on medical leave.
"For now, focus on you and the baby," the counselor had said. "When you're ready, we'll discuss your options."
She'd said it like something adults said to comfort each other.
Now, almost a year later, Mirai had a neat folder of those options.
Correspondence high school.
External exams.
Part-time attendance when Haru was older.
None of them were as simple as "go back to class like nothing happened." None of them were impossible either.
A notebook lay open on the low table, slightly away from Haru's curious hands. Pages filled with practice problems, vocabulary, essays she wrote between naps. Sometimes her writing formed straight lines. Sometimes the letters drifted where her focus had broken in the middle of a sentence to pick up a toy, wipe a face, soothe a cry.
She had stopped comparing her timeline to everyone else's.
Most days.
On bad days—when the apartment felt too small, when Haru refused to sleep, when she scrolled through pictures of ex-classmates in uniforms at graduation or in posts about university entrance exams—jealousy still nudged.
Why do they get to be only students?
The thought came, bitter and sharp.
Then Haru would shove a drool-soaked stuffed animal into her hand like an offering and say something that sounded roughly like "Ba!" and the bitterness would shift, not disappear, but soften into something more complex.
She had given up something she'd loved.
She had gotten something she hadn't known how to want.
Both could be true.
She'd stopped trying to choose only one.
The door unlocked with a familiar scrape of metal that had long since become part of the morning soundtrack.
"Monster, I'm home," Yuuto called.
Haru's head popped up.
He wriggled in her arms, half excited, half offended that anyone dared to call his mother by any name, even as a joke.
Mirai smiled despite herself.
"You're back early," she said.
He kicked off his shoes with one foot, a skill developed from a year of juggling work, errands, and what he called "uncle duty."
"My boss took pity on me," he said. "Or maybe he just wanted me out of the way. Hard to tell."
He stepped into the living room and Haru lit up, arms lunging forward like a small torpedo.
"Teh!" Haru shouted, his version of Tsu–to that hadn't quite mastered the consonants.
Yuuto's expression melted.
"Hey, Haru," he said, taking him from Mirai with practiced ease. "Did you bully your mom already today?"
Haru smacked his cheek affectionately.
Yuuto pretended to stagger.
"Oof. Strong," he said. "That's good. Use that energy for good, okay? Lifting toys. Not hitting people who don't deserve it."
Haru answered by grabbing his nose.
Mirai watched them, a familiar ache tightening behind her ribs—not painful, but deep.
At some point in the last year, the sight of her brother holding her son had stopped looking strange.
It had become something like a fixed point in a world that still shifted too much.
"How was the shift?" she asked, reaching for the bag he'd slung over his shoulder.
"Long," he said. "Some guy tried to use an expired coupon and argued with me for ten minutes about 'principles.'"
"What did you say?" she asked.
"That my principle is not losing my job," he replied. "I'm very consistent."
She laughed quietly.
He looked at the open notebook on the table.
"You got some studying done?" he asked.
"A bit," she said. "He took a nap. I'm not sure if either of us deserved it, but we took it."
"That's how naps work," Yuuto said. "They're rarely deserved."
Haru babbled something, waving one arm.
"He agrees," Yuuto interpreted.
Mirai watched the way her son leaned into her brother, small fingers twisting in the fabric of his shirt, as if it were the most natural string in his world.
She thought of the boy who had walked away, of the way his absence had once felt like a wound.
A year later, that absence was still a scar. It would probably always be.
But it was no longer the defining line of her life.
The defining lines were here—on this worn-out couch, on the floor where Haru's toys lay scattered, at the small table where her textbooks shared space with baby wipes.
Reality had won over imagination, in the best and hardest way.
Kana arrived in the afternoon, carrying a convenience store bag and an air of comfortable chaos.
"I brought offerings," she said, stepping inside. "Snacks for you, juice for me, and a book he will probably try to eat."
Haru stared at her from where he sat on the floor, gripping a block with both hands.
He knew her now.
She wasn't family, but she wasn't stranger. She lived in that middle space his brain seemed to recognize as safe.
Mirai took the bag.
"You know you don't have to keep bringing things," she said.
"I know," Kana replied. "And yet."
She dropped onto the floor next to Haru, cross-legged, not caring that the carpet was probably sprinkled with crumbs only visible at toddler height.
"Hey, Haru," she said. "It's your aunt-who-is-not-technically-your-aunt-but-still-better-than-most-relatives."
Haru blinked at her, then held up his block like a trophy.
"Ba!" he declared.
"You're not wrong," Kana said. "Block. Big achievement."
She took it and handed it back, starting the primitive version of fetch that all adults eventually learned was toddler communication for Please do this one hundred times in a row or I will be personally betrayed.
"How's school?" Mirai asked, sitting opposite them.
Kana made a face.
"Graduated," she said. "Remember? I sent you the picture of me in that ridiculous uniform they made us wear for the ceremony."
"I meant… after that," Mirai said. "You've been… busy."
It wasn't an accusation. Just an observation.
"Busy pretending I know what I'm doing with my life," Kana said. "It's a full-time performance."
She leaned back on her hands.
"I got into that university I told you about," she added more quietly. "The one in the city. I start next month."
Mirai's chest tightened, but she smiled.
"That's… amazing," she said. "You did it."
"We did it," Kana corrected. "You tutored me more than once, remember?"
Mirai shook her head.
"I just lent you my notes," she said.
"Your notes were like cheat codes," Kana replied. "If I could major in 'copying Mirai's study habits,' I'd graduate top of the class."
There was a small silence.
Haru banged the block on the floor, satisfied with the noise.
"Are you… happy?" Mirai asked.
The question held no jealousy, only a kind of searching.
Kana considered.
"I'm… scared," she said. "And excited. And annoyed that I have to take a train that early in the morning. But yeah. I think… I will be. Maybe not every day. But enough."
She looked at Mirai.
"Are you?" she asked. "Happy?"
Mirai glanced at Haru, at the mess on the floor, at the half-finished page of practice questions on the table.
"I'm… tired," she said honestly. "And behind. And sometimes I look at my old uniform and feel like I abandoned a version of myself in that building."
She paused.
"But when he laughs and throws food in my hair for the seventeenth time," she added, "I feel something I don't have a word for yet."
"Love," Kana said.
"More annoying than love," Mirai replied.
"Love," Kana repeated.
Mirai's eyes softened.
"Maybe," she said.
Kana watched her friend for a moment.
"You know," she said quietly, "from where I'm sitting, you didn't ruin your life. You… turned it into something nobody taught us how to talk about."
Mirai swallowed.
"I still feel judged," she admitted. "Sometimes. When I take him out. People look at me and do quick math."
"People are bad at math," Kana said. "Especially moral math. They add years wrong, subtract context, multiply rumors, and divide themselves up until they feel better."
Mirai huffed a small laugh.
"Your metaphors have gotten worse," she said.
"I got into the humanities," Kana shot back. "Numbers fear me now."
Haru toppled forward onto his hands, then pushed himself back up, squealing at his own success.
Kana grinned.
"Look at him," she said. "Tiny chaos goblin."
He crawled toward Mirai, then changed direction halfway, drawn by a stray piece of paper on the table leg.
"Not that," she said, sliding it out of reach.
He scowled in the way only babies could, then forgave her instantly when she handed him something crinklier.
Kana folded her arms over her knees.
"Do you ever think," she asked, voice softer now, "about what would have happened if… you hadn't kept him?"
The question had hovered for a year, in different shapes.
Sometimes in the way adults said, "You made the brave choice," with admiration and discomfort mixed. Sometimes in the way others said, "If it were me…" and then trailed off with implications.
Mirai looked at Haru.
At the way his hair stuck to his forehead. At the wrinkle line where his ankle met his foot. At the concentration with which he tried to fit a round block into a triangle hole.
"I think…" she said slowly, "that I would still be carrying something heavy."
"Guilt?" Kana asked.
"Maybe," Mirai said. "Or… a question. Like a missing word in a sentence I'd have to keep reading for the rest of my life."
She traced a pattern on the carpet with her fingertip.
"If I'd ended it just to make other people more comfortable," she continued quietly, "I think… I would have broken in a different way."
She hesitated.
"I don't say that to judge anyone else," she added quickly. "People have different lives. Different reasons. Different fears. I just… know myself now. I wouldn't have forgiven… me."
Kana nodded slowly.
"And him?" she asked.
Mirai watched Haru shove the wrong block into the wrong hole with stubborn persistence.
"He didn't ask to be here," she said. "Didn't ask for the way he started. Didn't ask for the father he got. Didn't ask for the age I was. But he's here."
Her voice softened.
"And now that I've seen his face," she said, "I can't imagine… him not existing."
Kana's eyes shone faintly.
"You're allowed to love what scared you," she said. "And you're allowed to be scared of what you love. People forget that."
Mirai smiled, small but real.
"Is that from a book?" she asked.
"From my brain," Kana retorted. "Be impressed."
They sat there for a while longer, trading small stories—university orientation pamphlets, Haru's first fever, Mirai's late-night study attempts, old classroom gossip that now felt like rumors from another planet.
At some point, Haru crawled into Kana's lap and fell asleep there, fingers still curled around a block.
"You've been chosen," Mirai whispered.
Kana's arms moved carefully around the small weight.
"I'll try not to drop him," she said.
"I'd drop you first," Mirai replied.
Kana smiled.
"I know," she said.
She saw him again once.
Not close. Not like at the station, with the weight of decision hanging between them.
It was a sunny day, almost too warm for spring. She was at the small park near their building with Haru and her mother. He was toddling, clinging to one of her fingers, legs still unsure but determined. Her mother sat on the bench, watching with the kind of half-smile that had become more frequent as the months passed.
"Look at you," her mother murmured. "You're really walking."
She wasn't sure which of them she meant.
Haru spotted a pigeon and shrieked with delight, trying to lunge toward it. She held him back gently.
"It can fly," she told him. "You can't. Yet."
He made a sound of outrage.
"Sorry," she said. "Gravity rules."
She was laughing when she saw him.
Across the park, near the vending machines, buying a drink with a friend. His hair was a little longer. His posture the same. There was a university emblem on his bag now.
He turned, half-listening to something his friend said, and his eyes brushed past her.
Then back.
For a second, they simply looked at each other.
Recognition flickered. Then something else.
His gaze dropped to Haru.
Haru, oblivious, was trying to convince the pigeon to come back by sheer volume.
Mirai watched her ex-boyfriend take in the toddler clinging to her hand. The small face. The wobbly legs. The way Haru leaned into her instinctively.
His face went pale.
His friend said something. He didn't answer.
They stood like that for two heartbeats.
His lips parted, as if a word might come.
Sorry.
Or maybe nothing.
Haru tugged her hand, demanding her attention again.
"Ma," he said impatiently. "Ma!"
Her son's voice pulled her back like a tether.
She blinked once, then looked away from the boy who had chosen his exit a long time ago.
"Let's go see the slide," she said to Haru, her voice calm. "It's more interesting than pigeons."
He immediately agreed, whether because of the word slide or because she had moved, and his world followed her, not the other way around.
She walked away.
She didn't look back.
If he called her name, the wind swallowed it.
If he didn't, that was fine too.
He had become, finally, what he should have been from the start—
not the center of her story.
Just someone she used to know, standing on the other side of a choice he didn't make.
That night, after Haru finally fell asleep—curled on his side, breathing softly, clutching the ear of a stuffed animal—Mirai sat at the table with her notebook open.
Yuuto was at the opposite end, textbooks spread out, highlighters scattered, a half-eaten onigiri next to his elbow.
"You're not working today?" she asked.
"Took the evening off," he said. "Boss said I'd start merging with the shelves if he kept scheduling me like that."
She smiled.
"I saw him today," she said, quietly.
Yuuto didn't need to ask who.
"Oh," he said. "Did he say anything?"
"No," she replied. "We just… saw each other. For a moment."
He watched her face.
"How did it feel?" he asked.
She thought about it.
"Strange," she said. "Like… seeing an old exam I once failed. It still stings. But it doesn't decide anything about what I'm doing now."
He nodded slowly.
"That's… good," he said.
She twirled her pen between her fingers.
"I used to think," she murmured, "that the worst part of this story would always be how he left. How everyone blamed me. How people talked."
She looked toward the bedroom, where Haru slept.
"Now," she said, "it feels like the worst part would have been if I had stayed alone in it."
Yuuto's jaw softened.
"You're not," he said.
"I know," she replied. "That's why I'm still here."
She wrote a single word at the top of the page: Future.
It looked vague and huge and slightly ridiculous on blank paper.
"What are you writing?" he asked.
"I don't know yet," she said. "Plans, maybe. Ideas. Things I want to try when he's older. Things I can do now."
"Like?" he pressed.
She chewed on the end of the pen.
"Finish high school," she said. "Eventually. In whatever way I can. Maybe take the external exams. Maybe apply to that correspondence course the counselor mentioned."
He nodded.
"That's one," he said. "What else?"
She hesitated.
"Maybe… work part-time someday," she said. "When he's in daycare or with Mom. Help more. Not just take."
Yuuto shook his head.
"You're not 'just taking' now," he said. "You're doing the job none of us can—raising him from the inside out."
Her cheeks warmed.
"It doesn't feel like a job that shows up on resumes," she muttered.
He snorted.
"Maybe it should," he said. "Skills: can function on three hours of sleep, negotiate with irrational small humans, and still remember math formulas."
She smiled.
"And you?" she asked, turning the question back. "What's in your future?"
He leaned back, looking at the ceiling.
"Not sure," he said. "I still like working with people. Maybe managing something someday. A store. A café. A place that's… safe, you know? For kids like us to sit and not feel like mistakes."
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"And I want to keep studying a bit," he added. "Not for entrance exams necessarily. Just… to not let my brain rot."
She nodded.
"I think…" she said slowly, "that our futures got… messier than we planned."
"Yeah," he agreed. "But not… empty."
She underlined Future once, then started a list.
It was short. It would grow slowly, like everything else.
After a while, the apartment quieted.
Their parents had gone to bed. The TV was off. The city's distant noise softened to an occasional car passing, the hum of a train far away.
Mirai closed her notebook and stood.
"I'll check on him," she said.
She walked into the bedroom.
Haru slept with his mouth slightly open, hair a mess, one arm flung out as if he'd reached for someone and forgotten what for.
She stood there for a moment, just watching.
"You changed everything," she whispered. "Without even knowing."
She remembered the girl who had cried on the bathroom floor with a plastic stick in her hand. The one who had begged a boy to stay. The one who had been called your mistake by people who should have known better.
She remembered the Mirai who had locked herself in her room, who had thought, I've ruined everything. There's no way this becomes anything but a tragedy.
She wanted to reach back and touch that girl's shoulder.
Tell her:
You're right. Everything will change.
But not all of it will be ruin.
She leaned over and adjusted Haru's blanket.
"People say a single mistake can turn your life upside down," she murmured. "They're not wrong."
She thought of the nights of panic. The tears. The hospital. The nearly.
"But they forget to mention," she added, voice barely audible, "that the people around you decide whether you stay upside down or not."
Her parents, slowly letting go of shame to hold onto her instead.
Yuuto, working until his feet hurt and still making jokes.
Kana, standing in classrooms, in hallways, inside rumors with her arms folded and her words sharper than any gossip.
The nurse who didn't look away.
The teacher who refused to let her become a warning sign instead of a student.
She exhaled.
"I hope," she said to the sleeping boy, "that by the time you're old enough to make your own mistakes, this world will be a little kinder. That you won't run from someone who needs you. That you won't call their pain an inconvenience."
She brushed a fingertip gently over his tiny hand.
"You're innocent," she whispered. "You were innocent the day they tried to treat you like a problem instead of a person. You'll be innocent again, in different ways, as you grow. I'll fail you sometimes. But I won't abandon you."
Haru stirred, lashes fluttering, then settled again.
She straightened, wiping at the dampness at the corners of her eyes.
When she stepped back into the living room, Yuuto looked up.
"Sleeping?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Like nothing ever happened."
He smiled faintly.
"Must be nice," he said.
She sat down again, closer this time, their shoulders almost touching.
"It's strange," she said. "We went through… so much because of him. It feels like a decade. But it's just been… a little over a year."
"First years are always the longest," he said. "Of anything."
She rested her head briefly against his shoulder.
"Thank you," she murmured.
"For what?" he asked.
"For not letting me drown in what I did," she said. "For reminding me I'm more than one choice."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Thank you," he said back, surprising her.
"For what?" she echoed.
"For not giving up," he replied. "Even when it would've been so much easier—for you, for us—to… not continue."
She let the words sit between them.
Outside, spring was trying its best—pushing buds through branches, softening the air, coaxing people out of their coats.
Inside, in this small apartment, life had become something complicated and heavy and strangely, stubbornly beautiful.
It wasn't the life Mirai had planned.
But it was hers.
And as long as she could keep walking—even slowly, even with detours, even with days when she had to stop and rest—
she knew now that one mistake, no matter how loud,
didn't get to be the only thing written on the page.
— × —
Author's Note:
The Next Chapter Will Be The Epilogue.