The Heat of Connection

Episode 3: The Clamour of the Olympics and the Shadow of the Fire Horse

"Hey Riku, look at this. According to this compatibility app, we're only a thirty-five percent match.

" Yui frowned slightly, her fingers sliding across her smartphone screen. On the display, cold digital fonts danced with the inorganic words: "

High probability of future breakup."

"It's really trending on social media right now. It's an algorithm that analyzes data to predict the traits of couples prone to fighting. It makes me a little anxious."

As Yui spoke, she stared at the intangible anxiety hidden within the "frictionless comfort" of the screen.

Riku quietly looked at the edge of his own thumbnail.

There, a tiny trace of the black coal soot—susu—he had touched in his grandfather’s study yesterday still remained, faint but stubborn.

In a smart daily life with no friction, only that tiny stain clung to Riku's skin as a tangible reality.

"My, my. Why let yourself be robbed of precious time by numbers with no substance?"

Right beside them, ninety-year-old Eiichi laughed merrily while facing his sleek, modern tablet.

He was currently engrossed in using AI to restore a black-and-white broadcast of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics torch relay, turning the historic fanfare into vibrant colors.

"Grandpa, you're really amazing at restoring videos with AI,"

Riku said in admiration. Eiichi pushed up his reading glasses and puffed out his chest proudly.

"Of course. I am simply stoking this cold machine with the heat of my own memories.

But really, this era has so much convenient 'noise' like algorithms and diagnostics. In my youth, we had 'noise' that was far more irrational and cold."

"What was it?" Yui asked curiously. Eiichi gently slid his tablet screen to display a monochrome clipping of a 1966 newspaper.

"Hinoeuma—the Year of the Fire Horse.
An ancient superstition that ruled society, claiming women born in that year were of fierce temperament and would shorten their husbands' lives."

"What? That's just a superstition.

There's zero scientific basis for that, right?" As Yui cried out in surprise, Eiichi nodded quietly.

"Ah, zero basis indeed.
But in 1966, that invisible, cold voice was so ruthless it dragged Japan's birthrate to an extreme low, tearing apart the futures of young couples.
The year I turned thirty and thought of marriage was right in the middle of that Hinoeuma storm."

As Eiichi's finger traced the tablet, the text on the screen dissolved slowly into the memories of the heat and clamour of 1966.

It was an era when the fanfare of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics still echoed in the streets, and Japan was bathed in the new wind of "modernization."

Yet, just beneath that glittering future, ancient patriarchal customs and cold, cruel gossip—the noise of society—remained deeply rooted.

"I met the woman who would become your grandmother, and I wished from the bottom of my heart to spend my life with her.
But she was born in the Year of the Fire Horse."

In the timeline of Eiichi's past.

Relatives and neighbors flocked to his mother, Kiyo, whispering cold warnings: "Stay away from that girl,"

"She will bring ruin to your household."

"Well, before marrying her, I was so clumsy I got rejected dozens of times at arranged marriage meetings—miai!"

Eiichi laughed loudly to hide his embarrassment. "It's true, Riku.

On his very first miai, your grandpa was so nervous he spilled the hot tea all over his own trousers, and the lady instantly rejected him for being clumsy.

He got dumped more than ten times after that!" As Riku's aunt walked into the room and laughingly exposed the truth, Eiichi's ears turned bright red.

"Hey, don't go telling them unnecessary things!"

But it was his strict mother, Kiyo, who quietly and powerfully pushed the back of that clumsy, human Eiichi.

Faced with fierce disapproval and cold stares from those around him, Eiichi had grown weak, wondering if he should give up, cradling his head before the stove.

Kiyo, now forty-eight, had a back that had grown slightly smaller, but her eyes still held the same dignified light of discipline—kiritsu—as in the old days.

Without a word, Kiyo brought out an old silk kimono from the chest of drawers, carefully preserved in a paulownia box.

It was a beautiful, tightly woven silk kimono that she had refused to let go of through postwar starvation and the blizzards of Aomori Port.

Kiyo placed the kimono gently before Eiichi and wrapped his rough, dirt-stained hand with her own warm palm.

"Eiichi, did the cold gossip—the noise of others—ever warm our bodies even once?

It was only the heat of the coal your father sent through Aomori's blizzards that kept us alive. From now on, it is your era.

Do not believe the cold, invisible words of outsiders. Believe only in the temperature of the hand of the one you love.

Sell this kimono, and buy a new sash for that girl."

Kiyo’s words were the essence of a boundless, gentle, and true love that had always lived beneath the discipline she used to raise Eiichi.

"Riku, Yui. At that moment, I chose to believe in the warmth of the silk and the touch of my mother’s hand, sweeping away all the noise around me.

I held your grandmother's hand tight and took my first independent step to build a new family.

I had never felt my own hands burn with such warmth as I did on that day." Eiichi narrowed his eyes with deep nostalgia, gently stroking his snow-white head.

A quiet silence descended upon the study.

Riku looked at Yui, who had been staring anxiously at the compatibility percentage on her screen.

A perfectly managed digital world, designed so they would never be hurt, never miss a connection.

Yet, within that frictionless smoothness, the living temperature of truly facing another human being had somehow been left behind.

Riku gently reached out and turned Yui’s smartphone face down.

He then quietly and firmly wrapped Yui’s bewildered hand with his own palm.

"Who cares about the numbers on an app? Look, our hands... they're already so warm."

Yui opened her eyes wide in surprise for a moment, but soon, she smiled happily at the undeniable warmth traveling from Riku's fingertips.

Behind their touchless daily lives of sliding fingers over glass, between their clasped palms, a tiny but eternal warmth had quietly begun to ignite.

The End of 'The Heat of Connection' - Episode 3

📖NextChapter:https://note.com/ttukumoo/n/nab53b3f6d97c
📖Previous Chapter:https://note.com/ttukumoo/n/nc16abf103ddd
🌐 Original Japaneseher:https://note.com/juicy_laelia8513/n/nd39eb9112ffe

"Thank you so much for reading to the very end!"💗