Hotaka sleeps very well, not waking until late the next morning. Stiff and sore, he’s glad it’s Sunday; no school, no demands. He rolls over and almost goes back to sleep, but remembers an important task he has to perform.

He pulls on a yukata and slippers, leaves his room and walks along the rōka, the narrow hallway around the outside of the house, warmed by the late winter sun.

Hotaka’s home is a traditional Japanese-style house. His father always threatened to modernise the place in Western style, but his mother resisted. She loves the timeless style of the rooms with their tatami floors and sliding fusuma doors of wood and paper set around a sheltered internal garden.

‘Besides,’ she once declared, ‘the house is full of ancestral spirits. To modernise would disrupt them. The place would become unlivable, untethered spirits wandering everywhere.’

Hotaka was not convinced that his mother believed this. He reckoned her talk of lost spirits was only to annoy his father. Whatever the case, Hotaka’s father never again raised the idea, settling on the Tokyo apartment for his dose of modernity.

Hotaka comes to a small room, removes his slippers, slides open the door and enters.

‘Ojīsan, honourable grandfather.’

He speaks quietly as he crosses the tatami floor in socks to stand before the butsudan, the household shrine. The cabinet, about the size of a large wardrobe, has a sombre beauty. Made of black lacquered wood and gilt, it is inlaid with carvings of human and animal figures in gold and mother-of-pearl. On one panel a monk surveys a mountain scene. A crane flies across another. A lion stalks its prey on a third.

Hotaka bows low when he reaches the butsudan, then sinks to his knees onto a zabuton, a flat cushion. He flinches, unsure which part of his body hurts most, and gazes up at the shrine.

A statue of the Kannon Bodhisattva – Goddess of Mercy – gazes back from the highest part of the shrine. Lower down a photograph of his grandfather looks out at him. On each side of the cabinet stand several ihai, ancestral spirit tablets of shiny black wood with gold inscriptions. Hotaka’s mother has already laid the usual offerings that morning – flowers, a small bowl of rice, some tea and fruit. Hotaka lights a candle on the platform in front of him, and then a stick of incense, placing it before his grandfather’s spirit tablet.

‘Forgive me for disturbing you, Jīchan. But I have very good news.’ Hotaka grins. ‘Remember the team I told you of, the guys that play dirty? I said we’d be slaughtered. In fact we did the slaughtering! Beat them two-one. And who do you think scored the winning goal? That’s right, Jīchan.’

Hotaka stares at the photograph – struck as usual by the gentle eyes of the old man – and a mist of sadness wafts over him. It’s almost three years since his grandfather was taken by the tsunami, yet barely a day passes when Hotaka does not think of him. He misses him terribly.

Hotaka’s earliest memories are of perching on his grandfather’s knee listening to stories; there were so many. Then came the sailing. From very early on Grandpa took him sailing in his beautiful sabani boat. They fished far out to sea, feeling the ocean heave beneath them. Closer to shore they collected nori from the seaweed frames, or simply skimmed across the bay on a happy breeze. The old man loved the sea and everything about it. Everything.

Perhaps he loved it too much, Hotaka thinks as he gazes at the photograph. He wipes a tear from his face, and makes himself smile for his grandfather.

‘They say the cheers could be heard as far as Rikuzentakata when I scored that goal. All I heard was a loud throbbing in my head as I passed out. Like I said, they play dirty. But I didn’t let them get to me. I took your advice: play the game, not the man, be honourable always. And it paid off.’

Hotaka resists the urge to punch the air.

‘I’m told it was a beautiful goal, Jīchan, catching the keeper right off guard. You would have loved it. I so wish you could have seen…’

A thought flashes through Hotaka’s mind. Maybe his grandfather did see the goal. Maybe he was there, at the game, watching. They say that those we love never really leave our side, he thinks, that their shadows are always near. Takeshi was there.

‘Sorry for blabbing on.’ Hotaka presses down on his hands, flinching as he rises. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’ He takes the small hammer from the butsudan and strikes a bell. Then he extinguishes the candle, stands, bows, and slowly backs away.

As he walks back along the rōka he decides that he’ll spend the remainder of the day resting and recovering. He’ll sleep all he can.