Ichika gets up and walks to the small kitchen. She opens the cupboard and stares at the row of instant ramen cups. Her mother used to cook nikujaga on cold nights. The smell of simmering soy sauce and beef would fill the whole apartment. Ichika hated the carrots. She would pick them out and leave them on the side of her bowl. Her mother would always sigh and eat them herself.
A small, broken laugh escapes her. It’s the first laugh since October.
And now the witness is gone.
She hasn’t cried in three weeks. That, she thinks, is the strangest part. The crying stopped, but the absence didn’t fill in. It hollowed out.
She picks up a pen. Her hand is steady.
She wipes her face with the back of her hand and looks at the blank permission slip.
She returns to the bass. This was her mother’s idea, years ago. Not the bass specifically, but the music. The late nights practicing. The small, proud smile when Ichika finally nailed a difficult riff. Her mother never understood the songs—they were too loud, too fast, too young—but she understood the effort. Seta Ichika - I Don-t Have A Mother Anymore- So...
She says it out loud to test the weight of it. The sentence lands on the tatami mat like a stone dropped into deep water—no splash, just a dull thud.
She stops. The note decays into silence. Ichika gets up and walks to the small kitchen
Optional Coda (if this were a musical or animated short):
Ichika’s fingers hover over the strings of her bass guitar. They don’t press down. They just hover, trembling slightly. The instrument is not plugged into an amp. In the silence, the only sound is the hum of the city below. The smell of simmering soy sauce and beef
