Blessed by Night-Chapter 467: We’ll Be Back

Sei, Malachi, and Bianca poked their heads into Kenji's room after returning from their confrontation with Ayuka and the Prime Minister.

The old man didn't lift his head when they entered. There was a large chance he might not have heard them enter at all.

"You're up.... And it looks like you've had some visitors." Sei glanced at the lap full of surprisingly detailed drawings Kenji had yet to take his eyes off of.

Sei went to her father's side to remove his IV line.

As the needle was freed from his arm, Kenji finally looked up at her with a pair of tired eyes.

"...Your children are quite the pair. Though I suppose when they have a mother as kind as you, it was an inevitability for them to turn out as well as they did."

Sei was caught off guard by this remark, but clearly not unhappy.

She looked towards her loved ones in the doorway and smiled earnestly at them.

"...It's a team effort. We do what we can around here."

Kenji followed his daughter's gaze.

His daughter's lifestyle and the people she had chosen to be with would not have been his first pick for her.

But when he saw how at peace and fulfilled she was, he had no complaints about the decisions she made. Even if it felt too modern and western for him to understand...

"I should get Sato, he was pretty worried about you, and-"

"Your brother has just left. He… explained the circumstances behind my arrival here."

Sei temporarily clammed up.

All of the mental preparation she had done before this moment was now worth nothing.

"About that... umm-"

"I have to find her." Kenji attempted to rise from his hospital bed.

"What? No, Dad, you can't! The Prime Minister said-"

"Do not mention that man to me right now!" Kenji snapped. "Look at what a mockery he has turned me into! Look at what he has done to our country, our family! There must be action!"

"If you try and storm that man's building, he will kill you! It's not worth it just for that woman!"

"That woman is your mother!"

"She is not!" Sei found herself becoming red-faced. "She made her choice already, and it wasn't me, and it wasn't you, or Sato! It was status! As long as she can live in comfort, she doesn't care about anything else!"

Kenji didn't need to be told that. He already knew what kind of woman his ex-wife was.

Ayuka was a woman who was always climbing. It was one of the features he admired about her in the early days of their courtship.

He just never believed that he would be something else that she stepped over on her way towards the top.

Kenji became a visible shell of himself.

Sei was a little relieved that her father no longer seemed to be on the verge of doing something drastic, but concerned over how depressed he seemed to have become.

Gathering her courage, Sei placed her hand on her father's shoulder.

"I want you to come with us, Dad. You and Sato. We'll find a place for you, and all of the people who supported you."

"In America?" Kenji looked up, his eyes bloodshot. "I haven't worked and clawed and fought my entire life just to sponge off my child in an entirely different country."

"Then don't think of it as sponging off me. Think of it as us getting the opportunity to make up for lost time." Sei hugged her father from behind.

It was clear the act had taken Kenji by surprise.

"Besides... it'll be good for you to join our colorful cast of in-laws."

In the doorway, Malachi and Bianca seemed to take offense to that remark. They raised their hands to voice their objections.

""What makes our parents colorful??""

Sei couldn't believe they had to ask.

"Malachi, your mom likes to use her powers to peep on us in private moments, and your ghost parents like jumping at me through the floor and scaring me.

Bianca, your dad sends nothing but memes and pictures of meat to the family group chat, and every time he comes over, he brings something smoked and delicious, and I gain weight."

Malachi and Bianca slowly put their hands down.

They looked Sei up and down silently.

'At least the weight's going to the right places...'

'Amen to that.'

The two exchanged a small fistbump behind their backs.

Something that did not at all escape Sei's notice.

'I can very clearly hear you both.'

' 'We know.' '

Kenji didn't know if he was convinced. Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at Malachi and Bianca.

They were strangers. Young Americans had nothing in common with.

Would they actually want him to stay here? And there were several other people in the house to consider as well, making him closer to refusing than accepting.

And there was still the matter of his unfinished business here... he didn't know if he was willing to just walk away and let things go as they were.

"It's not forever, Dad. One day we'll get an opportunity to make things right, and we're going to continue to make sure everyone here is taken care of, but right now... we need to leave." Sei begged. "Please." 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Perhaps it was the morphine. Or maybe it was the near-death experience.

It could even have been the fact that Kenji had spent twenty years apart from his daughter already.

But whatever the reason was, it was enough to wear Kenji down.

"Okay..."

-

The cold vastness of space was as awe-inspiring as it was boring.

It was all universal constants that occurred in slightly different, but familiar patterns as far as the eye could see.

But there was soon to be a change due to a single figure, flying through the cosmos with the assistance of no other vessel but their own body.

After months of travelling, the figure hovered above her destination, a bright blue marble teaming with life.

The woman held up her hand and pulled out a shining stone just to be sure.

An intensifying glow let her know that this was the place she had been searching for, and at last, her journey was almost at an end.

'Wait for me, Granddaughter. I will bring you home soon.'