Seta Ichika - I Don-t Have A Mother Anymore- So... -

And now the witness is gone.

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.

Ichika closes the cupboard.

The word hangs there. So. A bridge to nowhere.

She stops. The note decays into silence. Seta Ichika - I Don-t Have A Mother Anymore- So...

A late autumn evening. The sky above Tokyo is a bruised purple, fading to black. Seta Ichika sits alone in her room at the rooftop flat she once shared with her mother. The window is open a crack, letting in the cold air and the distant sound of a train.

She doesn’t plug in. She plays one note. Low. Long. A single, sustained vibration that travels through the wood, through her chest, through the cold floor of the apartment. And now the witness is gone

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.

A small, broken laugh escapes her. It’s the first laugh since October. Her mother used to cook nikujaga on cold nights

She looks around the room. Her mother’s shawl is still draped over the back of the chair by the window. A small ceramic fox—a souvenir from a trip to Inari Shrine when Ichika was seven—sits on the windowsill. Her mother had bought matching ones. Ichika’s fox has a tiny chip on its ear.