Chapter Four: Wanted Man:

Ichiro has a wife. More correctly, Ichiro had a wife. The situation was rather hard to say. He lived happily with her for thirteen years. He and his wife met when they were teenagers at a summer festival. Even back then he had the appearance of a bad boy. Many of the people from his old village avoided him. His own mother didn’t have a high opinion of him. Because of this, Ichiro didn’t know how to be social around others. That all changed on one summer evening.

She stood up with all of her beauty in the crowd. He remembered every detail about her. The yukata she wore was the first thing to catch his eye. Ichiro had never seen such light blue and yellow before in his life. This girl wasn’t alone, however. As he expected, she was surrounded by her friends. The group looked so happy, smiling and laughing together. Young Ichiro shook his head to himself.

She won’t talk to me, he thought. However, Ichiro paused when he noticed her looking up at him. When their eyes met, he couldn’t move a single inch. What is this? She’s looking at me. Why? Do I have something on my face? The girl in the yellow and blue yukata walked up to him.

“Would you like to walk around with us?” she asked. Her friends gave her strange look. Ichiro pointed to his nose.

“Me?” he asked.

“Yes!” this beautiful girl said. Ichiro struggled to say something. One of her friends shook her head.

“Setsuko, are you crazy?” she whispered. “He looks scary.”

“I don’t think so,” Setsuko said. “He might be a nice guy.”

“Setsuko!” another one of her friends spoke up. Their leader ignored them and walked over to the outcast boy.

“So what do you say?” she asked. Ichiro shrugged his shoulders.

“Alright,” he said. Setsuko gave him a warm smile as she put her arm around his.

“Let’s go then,” she said. The girl led him down the walkway. Despite her friends looking down upon him, Ichiro ended up having a fun time that night. To his surprise, he and Setsuko hit it off rather well.

“Can I see you again?” he asked.

“Of course,” she told him with a smile. He blushed when he saw her face.

“Great!” he said aloud. From that night onwards, a relationship developed between them. They managed to write letters to each other every day. Her family couldn’t keep him away from the charming boy.

“He is no good for you,” her mother told Setsuko when she was seventeen. The daughter wouldn’t hear of it.

“Ichiro’s a good man,” she said. “He will be the man I marry.”

“You will not!” her father barked. Setsuko put her hands on her hips.

“I will and you can’t stop me!” she said back. Her father’s face burned bright red.

“If you walk out that door, it will never open for you again!” he hissed.

“That is fine with me,” Setsuko told him with ease. That night, she packed up her things and left her house for the last time. She and Ichiro eloped the next day. Not much is known about their ten-year marriage. They pretty much kept to their selves in their undisclosed village. He worked different odd jobs around their said village and sometimes in the town. Many people still couldn’t understand what she saw in Ichiro. Some even thought that something bad would happen in the long run.

On January seventh, 1850, Setsuko fell ill. Her husband couldn’t raise enough money to treat her in time. Yet, this is where it all takes a strange turn. Setsuko didn’t die of her illness. When neighbors with to check on her in that summer, they found her dead in her bed with a red line around her throat and Ichiro nowhere to be found. Because the circumstances of this set-up, everyone believed that he snapped and murdered his wife and fled. Automatically, they launched a man-hunt for Ichiro to bring him to justice, so to speak.

However, was it really just as simple as that? What reason would Ichiro have to kill his wife? Where exactly did he go? Elements of his wife’s death would push him and Kate down the paths of their fates.