“You have become very confident.”
“I'm married to a man who argues with pancakes. Someone has to make sensible decisions.”
He laughed.
For the first time, the project felt less like a memorial to the people Kenji had lost and more like a living commitment to the people who still needed help.
It would not bring Aiko and Hana back.
Nothing could.
But perhaps the love that had inspired their dream could still become something useful.
Chapter Ten: When the World Had an Opinion
As Yuki and Kenji settled into married life, the story of their relationship began spreading online.
A photograph from their small wedding appeared on social media. Someone shared it with a mocking caption. Another person reposted it, claiming that Yuki must be interested in Kenji's money.
Within days, strangers who knew nothing about them were debating their marriage as though it were a public competition.
Some people called Yuki a gold digger.
Others praised Kenji as a legend.
A few offered genuine support, saying that relationships did not always follow conventional patterns. Others insisted that the age difference was automatically proof of manipulation.
Yuki read more of the comments than she should have.
One person wrote that no twenty-six-year-old could possibly love a seventy-year-old man without some hidden motive.
Another suggested that Kenji must be wealthy, despite the fact that neither his lifestyle nor his modest home suggested anything extraordinary.
A third person claimed that Yuki would inevitably regret her decision.
At first, she felt compelled to answer.
She drafted long responses explaining how they had met, what she admired about Kenji, and why she believed their relationship deserved to be judged on its actual behavior rather than assumptions.
But each time she finished a response, she realized that the people she wanted to convince were unlikely to change their minds.
She deleted the drafts.
When she told Kenji about the comments, he shrugged.
“People are entitled to their opinions,” he said.
“They're talking about us as if they know us.”
“They don't.”
“Doesn't that bother you?”
“Of course it does. I simply refuse to give every stranger a permanent room in my head. The rent would be impossible.”
Yuki laughed.
Then he grew serious.
“Some people may have legitimate concerns about our age difference. We should not dismiss every question simply because it makes us uncomfortable. But strangers insulting you is not the same as someone who loves you asking whether you're safe.”
Yuki considered that.
She realized she had been treating all criticism as one thing. Yet there was a difference between concern offered in good faith and judgment offered for entertainment.
Her friend, for example, still worried about her.
They met for lunch a few days later.
“I still think you moved too quickly,” her friend admitted. “Ten days is not enough time to know everything about someone.”
Yuki did not argue.
“You're right that I couldn't know everything.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Yuki thought for a moment.
“Because I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time. And because I wanted to give it a chance. That doesn't mean I think the decision was risk-free.”
Her friend looked at her.
“Are you happy?”
Yuki smiled.
“Most days, yes. And when I'm not, I can tell him. We argue. We talk. We try again.”
Her friend was silent.
“I don't need you to pretend there are no risks,” Yuki continued. “I just need you to understand that I'm not staying because I'm afraid of being alone or because I think I owe him something. I'm staying because I want to be here.”
Her friend finally reached across the table and took her hand.
“I still worry about you.”
“I know.”
“I'm probably going to keep worrying.”
“Then at least try to do it quietly.”
They both laughed.
Their disagreement did not disappear completely. It did not have to.
Yuki had begun to understand that love and friendship were not always about reaching immediate agreement. Sometimes they were about allowing someone to make a different choice while remaining available if that person needed help.
That understanding made her feel more secure than any argument she could have won online.
Chapter Eleven: Love, Lemonade, and the Ordinary Days
Months passed.
The dramatic intensity of the beginning slowly gave way to the routines of ordinary life.
Yuki started a blog called Love, Lemonade & Kenji.
At first, she wrote only for herself. She described the small moments that made her happy: Kenji's increasingly ambitious gardening experiments, their Friday pancake nights, and his habit of pausing television programs to explain the historical background of something that had appeared on screen for three seconds.
She wrote about the first time they tried to cook a complicated meal together.
Kenji insisted that his knowledge of chemistry made him an excellent candidate for kitchen leadership. Yuki pointed out that cooking involved more than understanding how substances reacted under heat.
The result was a slightly burnt dinner and an argument over whether the smoke detector was being unnecessarily dramatic.
She wrote about their attempts to grow tomatoes, which produced an impressive number of leaves but very little fruit.
Kenji blamed the weather.
Yuki blamed the tomatoes.