A small, broken laugh escapes her. It’s the first laugh since October.
The title appears:
“I don’t have a mother anymore. So I’ll have to be my own.”
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. Seta Ichika - I Don-t Have A Mother Anymore- So...
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.
Optional Coda (if this were a musical or animated short):
She picks up a pen. Her hand is steady.
Her mother’s fox is gone. Buried.
The word hangs there. So. A bridge to nowhere.
“So… I have to play for myself now.” A small, broken laugh escapes her
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.
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.
“So…”
She wipes her face with the back of her hand and looks at the blank permission slip.
“You’ll miss my cooking one day,” her mother would say, half-joking.