I’m Kana. I live with my husband, Masato, and our three children—Yuma (13), Rei (10), and Takuto (7). We’re a lively, happy family, and I often think how lucky I am to have married him. But one day, everything changed. My mother-in-law was diagnosed with a serious illness, and when my in-laws came over to explain her condition, they told us something shocking: Masato, whom I’d always believed to be an only child, actually had an older brother who’d been shut in at home for over twenty years. I couldn’t process what I was hearing.
Both my in-laws and my husband insisted, “Don’t worry, this won’t cause you any trouble.” But if that were true, why tell me now? I realized they must have decided to come clean because, with his mother’s illness, they didn’t know what the future would bring—and wanted to avoid potential conflict later.
Still, this was something I should have been told before we got married. More than that, it was something I had a right to know. That day, we didn’t discuss it any further. After sixteen years of marriage, being told such a secret so suddenly left me with no idea what to do or how to feel.