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

She stops. The note decays into silence.

“I don’t have a mother anymore. So I’ll have to be my own.”

Her mother’s fox is gone. Buried.

“You’ll miss my cooking one day,” her mother would say, half-joking.

On her desk lies a half-empty cup of tea, now stone cold, and a single piece of paper. It’s a form—a school permission slip for the upcoming cultural festival. The line marked Parent/Guardian Signature is painfully blank. Seta Ichika - I Don-t Have A Mother Anymore- So...

She wipes her face with the back of her hand and looks at the blank permission slip.

The title appears:

She picks up a pen. Her hand is steady.

Then, for the first time in three weeks, Ichika cries. Not the wracking sobs of the funeral. Not the numb tears of the days after. But quiet tears—the kind that come when you finally admit that a door has closed, but you’ve just noticed another one, slightly ajar, on the other side of the room. She stops

“So…”