Mika stands in the barn at 4:47 a.m., pitchfork in hand, moonlight cutting silver bars through the gaps in the wooden walls.
Everyone else is still asleep. This is her time: the hour when the village is quiet enough for the thoughts she usually drowns out with work to finally speak.
She is forty-nine years old and, for the first time in her adult life, terrified of being happy.
It doesn't make sense.
She has everything she was supposed to want:
- A man who wakes up reaching for her, not rolling away.
- A woman (Sayuri) who kisses the dirt from her knuckles like it's sacred.
- A baby girl who grabs her finger with a tiny fist and laughs like the sun lives in her mouth.
- A bed that is never cold.
- A body that is worshipped instead of ignored.
And yet, some mornings the old voice creeps in.
You don't deserve this.
You stayed too long with a man who forgot your name.
You let yourself turn into a workhorse because it hurt less than admitting you were lonely.
Strong women don't get saved; they save themselves.
Who are you to be soft now? Who are you to be wanted?
Mika digs the pitchfork into the straw harder than necessary.
She remembers the night Hiroshi saw her bent over and getting fucked like an animal in heat.
She remembers waiting for the shame.
It never came.
Only relief so sharp it felt like dying and being reborn in the same breath.
She is still afraid that one day Kai will look at her callused hands, her stretch-marked belly, her thighs that could crack walnuts, and decide the fantasy is over.
She is afraid Sayuri will wake up and remember she once had magazine covers and spotlights and realize a farmer's wife is a downgrade.
But then she remembers other things.
She remembers the first time Sayuri fell asleep with her head on Mika's breast after they made love, whispering, "You make me feel safe," like it was a revelation.
She remembers Kai tracing the scar on her hip from the thresher accident twenty years ago and saying, "This is where you fought for your life. I kiss it because I'm grateful you won."
She remembers Haru's first word being something that sounded suspiciously like "Mika-mama."
And the fear shrinks a little.
Mika sets the pitchfork aside, leans against the rough wooden wall, and closes her eyes.
She is not the same woman who once cried into her pillow because her husband forgot their anniversary for the eighth year in a row.
She is not the same woman who masturbated in the shower with the detachable head because it was the only orgasm she'd had in months.
She is the woman who can carry a 50 kg bag of rice on each shoulder and still have energy left to ride Kai until he begs.
She is the woman who taught Sayuri how to milk a cow and then watched her cry from laughing when the cow swatted her with its tail.
She is the woman who stood in the pouring rain the day her old life drove away and felt the water wash twenty-eight years of invisibility off her skin.
Mika opens her eyes and looks at her hands: rough, scarred, strong.
Hands that have birthed three children, buried a marriage, and now get to hold a new family every single night.
She smiles: small, fierce, certain.
I stayed too long in a graveyard, she tells herself.
That doesn't mean I don't get to live in the garden now.
The sky outside is turning the color of ripe persimmons.
Soon the house will wake. Sayuri will pad into the kitchen in one of Kai's shirts, hair tousled, reaching for coffee and a good-morning kiss. Kai will stumble in shirtless, yawning, and wrap arms around both of them like it's the most natural thing in the world. Haru will demand to be picked up and smeared with whatever Mika is cooking.
And Mika will let herself be held.
Let herself be soft.
Let herself be happy.
Because strength isn't just enduring anymore.
Sometimes strength is allowing yourself to be loved so fiercely that the past has no choice but to stay dead.
Mika picks up the pitchfork again, squares her shoulders, and walks out into the dawn.
The fields are waiting.
Her family is waiting.
And for the first time in her entire life, Mika is exactly where she belongs.
To be continued…