Chapter 1: The Weight of the Moriya Name

For some time, he had felt a little different from the rest of his family.

He had a younger brother and a younger sister, but they did not look much like him.

He did not resemble his parents either.

He had even wondered sometimes, ‘Maybe I am not this family’s child.’

His father’s younger sister, one of his aunts, had once said, “Every now and then, a pretty boy like Ryusei is born into the Moriya family, like some kind of mutation.”

“My friend asked how the older brother could be so much prettier than his younger sister,” his younger sister had once said with a pout.

Long lashes, large eyes with wide dark irises, a high nose, and a small face.

People generally called him “pretty,” but he had never known what to do with it.

As a child, he had been teased for looking like a girl.

Women liked him more than he wanted, without any effort on his part, and that caused misunderstandings with girlfriends.

None of his relationships had lasted long.

So he had come to see his looks the same way everyone else talked about them: as something that did not do him any good.

But his looks were not the only thing that stood between him and his family.

It was his parents’ attitude.

Both his father and mother had raised him with great care.

As if they were handling something fragile.

As if they were handling a precious object entrusted to them by someone else.

The Moriya family was said to have been a merchant house since before the Edo period.

Over more than four hundred years, they had run rice wholesalers, tea wholesalers, pharmacies, clothing shops, and other businesses.

Every one of those businesses had prospered, and they had built enormous wealth.

Inside the main house grounds stood a large storehouse that seemed to be a remnant of those days.

Moriya Ryusei was the eldest son of the Moriya main family.

Born as the eldest son of a wealthy house, he would normally have inherited the family business.

If that was why they had raised him so carefully, he could have understood.

But that was not it.

The Moriya family’s finances had deteriorated badly.

The Western-style restaurant started in his great-grandfather’s generation had prospered enough to open chain branches, but World War II destroyed it.

His great-grandfather’s health failed during the war, and he died.

His grandfather returned alive from the battlefield, but the family business he was supposed to inherit was gone.

Around then, the Moriya family’s decline began.

His grandfather started a new business with land as collateral.

Just as it was getting on track, the strain took its toll.

He collapsed from illness and died at the young age of forty-five.

Ryusei’s father, then a twenty-year-old college student, dropped out and took over the business.

He worked himself to the bone, and only around thirty did he finally manage to stabilize it.

At thirty-five, his father married his mother, who was ten years younger and had worked as his secretary, and Ryusei was born.

But just when it seemed peace had finally come to the Moriya family, when Ryusei was thirteen, his father died in a car accident.

Unfortunately, it happened right after they had taken out an additional bank loan to expand the business.

After his father’s sudden death, the company went bankrupt under a pile of debt.

The mortgaged land and his father’s insurance money barely offset the debts.

His mother, left without a job and with three children, had kept this house on her own.

From the outside, the Moriya main family mansion looked magnificent.

It was a Japanese-style house built in the Meiji era.

Long ago, branch family members would gather in large numbers for family events, and the house had been very lively.

Now only four people lived there.

His grandmother had passed away early, and his aunts visited only around the Mid-Autumn holiday and New Year’s.

The house felt unnecessarily large.

It was very hard to maintain, and because it was old, something was always breaking.

If the large garden was left alone, it turned into a jungle, and pruning the trees was not a job a beginner could handle.

They hired professionals twice a year, but even that was a considerable expense.

For a long time, his mother had barely kept that desperate household afloat with a small part-time salary and by dipping into the savings left after paying off the debts.

Now Ryusei’s income from his bank job helped, but keeping the house going had become truly difficult.

Every time Ryusei handed over his entire salary, his mother apologized again and again.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

But even through those hard times, she had sent him to university.

He had never minded giving her his whole paycheck.

His younger sister, four years younger, had started working two years ago and added a little money to the household.

Next year his younger brother would graduate from college, so things would get a little easier then.

“Once Minoru graduates, you won’t have to give me your whole salary anymore.”

His mother said that apologetically.

But considering the upkeep of this empty, sprawling mansion, Ryusei knew well that his brother’s graduation would not make things easier.

So Ryusei could not tell his mother what was worrying him now.

It was about his girlfriend.

They had been together for more than six months.

She was three years younger and worked at the same bank.

Ryusei loved her, and they were dating with marriage in mind.

Because of his looks, he had often been misunderstood as a player, so he had never seriously dated anyone with marriage in mind before.

Being mistaken for “rich” because of the house was another reason he had not been able to have a serious relationship.

But she, Sakikawa Mai, was different from the women he had met before.

She was very domestic and kind.

She did not dress up much, and being with her was genuinely enjoyable.

More than anything, he had told her about his family’s situation and said they could not have very extravagant dates.

She had not broken up with him.

So they had started dating, and he had decided to seriously consider marriage.

But still, he could clearly picture a future where she suffered.

Thinking about that, he still had not been able to tell her that he wanted to date with marriage in mind.

So he had never invited her home, nor introduced her to his family.

If his mother knew about her, she would be very troubled.

She might even say he should not give her his salary anymore.

When he thought about that, he did not know what to do, and the tangled thoughts pressed in on him.

That day, when he came home from work, his two aunts had come to visit.

“Oh, Aunts. What brings you both here together?”

“Oh, Ryusei, it’s been a while. You’re still pretty.”

The aunts smiled as soon as they saw Ryusei and said that.

“Don’t tease me.”

Ryusei’s face heated, and he tried to pass through the living room to his room, but his aunt called him back.

“We came today to talk about this house. So listen with us, Ryusei.”

Startled by his aunt’s sudden words, he wondered what was going on, but he sat down quietly beside his mother.

“So, what did you want to say about the house?”

Ryusei looked at his silent mother in confusion, then turned to the two aunts sitting across from them and spoke.

“After our father and older brother passed away, we can’t tell you how grateful we are that Yuuko has kept this house all this time. It’s not that we pretended not to see. As you know, the Moriya family is a family with tradition, and we felt it was not our place to interfere, so we could not say anything. But we looked into things in our own way and talked it over.”

The elder aunt, Naomi, began.

As if following her, the younger aunt, Yasumi, spoke too.

“The Moriya branch family doesn’t seem interested in the main family. They won’t provide the support needed to rebuild this house. Instead, they said we can do whatever we want with it.”

“What do you mean?”

When Ryusei asked again, the two aunts nodded.

“It means you’re free to sell this house.”

Ryusei looked at his mother in shock.

“That’s…”

“This old, empty house is hard enough just to maintain, isn’t it? Even if you put it up for sale, it might not sell, but the land alone has value. So I was thinking, why not tear down the house and sell half? You can live comfortably enough on the remaining half, can’t you? You could even build an ordinary house just for your family to live in.”

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