I’ve been married to Masato for sixteen years, and together with our three kids—Yuma in middle school, Rei in fifth grade, and Taku in second—we had a lively, happy life.
Then one day, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with a serious illness. That’s when Masato told me he had an older brother who’d been shut away from the world for more than twenty years. His parents and Masato had hidden it from me all along, deceiving me with practiced ease. When I called my mother-in-law to ask what we should do next, she blew up at me—as if she were the victim in all this.
Finding out about his brother was a real shock. It shattered the trust we’d built over sixteen years of marriage. Still, marriage isn’t something you can just walk away from overnight—especially when you have children. What I really wanted to know was how we were going to move forward.
But neither Masato nor his parents wanted to talk about “what’s next.” I suppose they still can’t face the reality that his brother hasn’t changed, and so they can’t imagine a future beyond that. I just couldn’t see myself staying on a ship that was already sinking.