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Okarun had told himself a hundred times how it would feel. The day Momo returned to normal, no longer trapped in that tiny body, he would run to her, scoop her into his arms, and hug her like he hadn't in weeks. He thought it would be a happy day.
And at first, it was. For about five minutes.
When he saw her walking behind Seiko, passing through the torii with sunlight dancing across her auburn hair, his heart stopped, then started beating so fast it nearly burst out of his chest. She was back. And she was okay.
His legs moved before he could think, sprinting, stumbling.
"Momo!" he shouted, his voice breaking with relief, with joy, with love dammed up and finally breaking loose. He was ready to drown her in kisses, to clutch her until she scolded him for squeezing too hard.
She didn't run to him.
Instead, she did something he couldn't picture even in his worst nightmares.
She froze. Took a single step back. Her eyes, those same eyes he loved so much, looked at him like he was a stranger.
"Who are you?" Momo asked flatly, her gaze narrowing with suspicion and distance. Nothing he recognized.
His mouth dried. "W-What?" was all he could manage to say before he noticed Seiko's look full of pity.
"She doesn't remember anything," the woman explained grimly. "Not you. Not anyone. Just me."
Okarun looked back at Momo with a question in his eyes, his chest tightening. "W-What do you mean she doesn't-? Momo, it's me." His voice cracked with creeping fear.
"What do you think you're doing, calling me by my first name?" she snapped at him with a sharpness he hadn't heard in years.
His world tilted. He reached for her anyway, words spilling in panic. "We're married, Momo. We have-"
"Mommy!"
The small, bright cry cut through him like a razor. Okarun knew what was coming before he even turned, but he couldn't move to stop it. Tiny bare feet pattered across the shrine grounds with the speed of a small motorbike, and Keito flung herself against Momo's leg with all the reckless love of a three-year-old.
She wrapped her arms tight, looking up with a radiant, excited smile. "Mommy, you're back!"
Momo blinked down at the little body clinging to her leg as if she were examining an animal at the zoo. Confusion flared across her features, honest and awful. Her arms hung by her sides. She did not open them. She did not bend for a kiss to the top of Keito's head or to fix her glasses. She didn't whisper the silly nickname they had come up with before Keito was even born.
Okarun watched his daughter - their daughter - press closer and receive nothing but blank, bewildered eyes. He felt something inside him break and then break again, his heart shattering into a trillion little pieces like glass dropped from a great height.
"Mommy?" the little girl repeated, voice small now.
Momo politely crouched and brushed a crumb off Keito's cheek, her touch gentle but detached, like she was tidying up someone else's child. "What's your name?" she asked, as if asking was the same thing as knowing.
"Keito," the girl answered brightly, certain this was a game. Her answer didn't unlock anything, but she didn't notice. She only beamed and hurried to fill the silence. She babbled about the bug she'd found the other day, about a new song she'd learned, about how she and Daddy made pancakes shaped like stars.
Momo listened, smiling with the polite smile adults give children they don't yet understand. There was no memory in it. No light returning to the eyes. No flicker that said I know you, you're mine.
Okarun couldn't bear it. His throat closed, hot with tears he couldn't let either of them see. He turned sharply and headed back to the house, his shoulders trembling as he fought the sob crawling to get out.
In the following days, Okarun tried everything he could think of to bring Momo back. Not her body this time, but her soul.
The first night, he cooked. He and Seiko worked side by side in the kitchen, chopping and frying. They set up a small feast - rice balls, takoyaki, katsudon with an extra egg, and enough crab legs to feed a family twice their size. Okarun lined the dishes neatly across the low table, hands trembling with hope.
When Momo sat down, Okarun leaned forward, watching her every breath. She reached for the takoyaki, took one bite and blinked, pausing as if the taste brushed against something buried deep.
"It's... good," she said politely. Her voice was kind, but distant, like she was thanking a stranger hosting her for dinner, not a husband. No flicker of recognition followed.
That night, after she'd gone to bed, Okarun washed every dish in silence. When he was done, he sat in the dark kitchen with his face buried in his hands, listening to the wind whistling outside. Memories unspooled in his head with cinematic cruelty: Their first accidental kiss in the school courtyard, the love confession, the shock when they found out Momo was pregnant, Keito's birth and first word, their wedding. Each one flashed like a slide from a projector and then turned to ash because none of it existed for her anymore.
The next day, he tried words instead of food. He sat with her on the tatami, their knees nearly touching, and told her stories about the life they'd shared. He told her about the first time they met Turbo Granny and the Serpoians, which led to them gaining powers. He told her about the battles they fought shoulder-to-shoulder against both aliens and ghosts, leading to them meeting the craziest and kindest people in their lives, but also almost losing each other. He told her about the little things they did together, dates, arguments, and how they finally admitted they were in love with each other. He told her about the day Keito was born, the tiny fist curling around his finger, the way Momo had looked at him through exhaustion and pride.
He wanted to believe that memory could be coaxed back with time, with patience, with storytelling and photos and the things you say over and over until they become true again.
He wanted to believe a thousand impossible things.
Momo spent hours wandering the house after that, moving slowly from frame to frame. Childish crayon drawings and photographs lined the walls and shelves - snapshots from festivals, messy selfies with hair out of place, Keito's baby pictures. A thousand tiny proofs of a life she didn't recognize.
Sometimes she would stop in front of the mirror by the entryway, studying the reflection of herself in this home she didn't remember. She smiled at Keito when the little girl tugged at her skirt, and she even crouched to brush her daughter's hair one morning, but the warmth in her smile was learned, not remembered.
The picture she always returned to was their wedding photo.
She stood before it often, tracing her fingers over the glass, brows furrowed, lips parting as if a word or memory would rise. But it never came.
She stared at the picture of herself, radiant in a white dress, eyes alight with joy, Okarun standing next to her with Keito in his arms, and whispered, "I look so happy."
But when she turned away, there was only frustration in her eyes. Frustration and guilt.
Okarun stood in the doorway, hearing the words, feeling them crush him under their weight. He tried to think of what to do. He reached for the wedding ring on his finger, twisting it as if it were a key he could use to unlock her heart, and for a moment, he almost believed that if he slid it onto her finger again, it would undo whatever had been stolen. That the circle of metal would mean what it used to mean.
How do you make someone love a person they don't remember falling in love with? How do you rebuild five years of life that had been lost?
By the third night, Okarun couldn't bear sleeping in their bed.
Momo had lain stiff and silent the first two nights, back turned, her breaths steady but restless. Every time he reached out into the dark, he stopped himself inches away from her, feeling the gulf between them like an open wound.
So he dragged an old futon into Keito's room and laid it on the floor next to her small bed.
He told Momo it was to give her space, but the truth was that Keito needed him more. She cried herself awake, asking over and over why Mommy didn't tuck her in, why Mommy didn't sing their bedtime song.
"Why doesn't Mommy hug me?" she whispered once, her voice muffled against Okarun's chest.
He smoothed her inky black hair, kissed her temple, and clung to her like she was the only proof left that the life he remembered had been real. His hands trembled with the effort of holding her steady, of keeping his own sorrow from spilling over onto her tiny shoulders.
"She's just... tired. She will hug you soon. I promise," he lied with the gentlest voice he could manage, even if the words burned his throat, because what else could he give her?
He held her through the night, rocking her until sleep took her again. He lay awake after, staring at the ceiling where glow-in-the-dark stars peeled at the edges but still shone faintly in the dark. He remembered sticking them up with Momo, laughing as Keito tried to hand them pieces of tape with sticky fingers. That memory lived only in him now, glowing faintly like those stars.
His eyes burned, but he swallowed the tears. He couldn't let them fall. Not here. Not with his daughter's breath rising and falling so peacefully beside him. How do you explain to a child that her mother is here but gone at the same time? That the body is warm, the voice is gentle, but the memories, the love, are locked behind a door no one can find the key to?
He pressed his face into the blanket, his chest aching, and realized, he had no answer. Only the silence of the night, the faint hum of the wind outside, and the soft glow of stars that weren't real but still pretended to shine.
And yet, beneath the ache, he held on to a thread of stubborn hope. Someday, maybe tomorrow or maybe years from now, she would remember. The smile, the song, the love they had built together. Until that day came, he would stay by her side, no matter how long it took.
Even if he had to make her fall in love with him all over again.