Period 6

Episode 6 starts off with The Blue Scorpions team in the locker room and the team manager, Saeko, asks to speak with Halu privately.  She tells him that there was a phone call from a lady to the company who had seen their interview on television and requests to contact Halu.  And she claims to be his mother …

Halu looks shocked and when he gets back to the dressing room, Yamato calls for the team to assemble and Halu looks as if he’s miles away and and Halu asks Tomo to take over the pre-match “prep talk”. And Halu looks distracted…

After the match, the team goes to Face Off bar together with the 3 girls.  The Green Monsters team is there and Makoto says that they are here to ask The Blue Scorpions to lose.  Amongst them was Yamamoto Reishi 山本玲志 (played by Yamashita Tetsudai 山下徹大), who plays in the same center position as Halu and according to Tomo, he is the son of the team owner.  Upon hearing that he is rich, Yuri looks interested.  Yamamoto talks in a disrespectful and arrogant manner and even ridicules the fans of The Blue Scorpions team.  Halu keeps quiet most of the time.  Later, Yamamoto plays a game of guessing which hand the coin is in.  Tomo says right and Halu says left at almost the same time.  Halu is correct and Yamamoto asks Halu to guess again.  Halu thinks for a while and shrugs off with a “I don’t know..” Makoto plays the same game with Yamamoto and Yamamoto picks the correct hand every time.  Yamamoto then reveals their motive for coming to the bar - to see if Hyoudou-coach was there.  Seems that the Green monsters are interested in Hyoudou-coach.

Aki and Halu leaves the bar, and Aki keeps on chiding Halu for not saying and doing anything to retaliate against the humiliation and Halu jokes with her again, making her angry.  Halu then tells her that he was thinking about something else.  Halu tells her that he received a phone call from his mother who was now living in Sendai and will be visiting him tomorrow.  Halu looks obviously nervous about the prospect of meeting his mother and asks Aki to accompany him.  Yet he insists that he is not nervous.  When they reach Aki’s house, he tells Aki to forget it and that he will go alone but Aki reassures him that she will accompany him, because she is interested in seeing what his mother is like since she has heard that she was very pretty.

Hyoudou-coach meets Youko and gives her a present for her new job.  He seems to hope that Youko would help to mediate between him and Halu’s relationship.  He tells Youko that he told Halu the same thing he is telling her now and that he wouldn’t go back to the past with her.  Youko asks him what his reason for coming back is and he apologizes and tells her that she is not the reason …

Aki and Halu are also at a coffee house, waiting for his mother.  Halu is facing the window and Aki keeps pointing out middle-aged women to him but they were not her.  His mother is late and they wonder if she knows the way there.  Halu appears really nervous and orders numerous glasses of water.  As he turns his head to ask the waiter for more water, he sees his mother, Chieko 千恵子 (played by Matsusaka Keiko 松坂慶子) standing there.  She really is very pretty.  At that moment, a thousand thoughts seem to invade Halu’s mind even as his face remains emotionless. 

After meeting at the coffee house, Halu catches up with his mother while Aki returns home to do her laundry.  At the laundry place, Aki and Yamato had a chat and Yamato asks Aki how Halu reacted.  Yamato wonders if he would bear any resentment towards her.  Aki says she had thought so too and he seemed really nervous at first but upon seeing her, he behaved more like a boy meeting his sweetheart for the first time.  Yamato comments that since Halu’s mother left him when he was in kindergarten, his feelings had probably stopped at that point in time and now that he found his mother again, he was looking for the affections that escaped him when he was a child.  Both agrees that he was like a boy who has not been weaned yet.

It was so sweet, seeing Halu and Chieko shopping together.  She guys a winter scarf for Halu and he buys her a pair of gloves in return.  Later, they have dinner together.  She tells him that she had called his brother, Akira, but Akira refused to forgive her and rejected seeing her.  [I really couldn’t believe that Halu could have such a forgiving nature.]  When she asked if he still hated her, he shook his head and reassured her.  [Even though he shook his head, somehow I feel that there is some resentment in him, but he didn’t want to bring that up again and he is really really hoping to start afresh with the mother he has been wanting all these years.]

Aki accompanies Chieko to a training session and tells her about Halu appearing on television even though he hates it.  Most likely, he was hoping that somehow his mother would see him and come look for him.  Aki tells her that it was the first time she has seen such Halu so happy and it was so unlike him.  Aki is very happy until Chieko tells her the reason she came to look up Halu for.  She needed money for her shop back in Sendai.  But she hopes that Aki will bring up the request to Halu instead...

Halu comes to Aki’s house after dinner with Chieko and he apologizes for not inviting Aki along and Aki teases him that they are behaving like a couple.  Later, Aki suggests to Halu to not see Chieko anymore and Halu is puzzled.  Aki reasons that they might have different lifestyles now and also says that Chieko might have another boyfriend back home who might not be the man she left with in the past.  Upon hearing this, Halu flares up and asks why she is saying such things.  He gets angry and asks if Aki said anything to Chieko, because she had suddenly decided to go back to Sendai the next day.  He tells Aki to stop meddling and leaves her apartment.  Aki cries…

Next day, Halu picks Wataru up from his school as Youko had to work overtime and he babysits Wataru.  [Hm, I can really imagine Kimura-kun playing with his son just like the way he did with Wataru, if he had one.]  Wataru uses 2 plates and plays with Halu making him guess what he is.  Halu takes the plates from Wataru and places them on his chest and asks Wataru to guess and Wataru exclaims “Mommy’s breasts!” … [Oh dear, what a sukebe Halu is, just like Takkun ... Haha] It was so cute when he cooked yakisoba (fried noodles) for Wataru and asked if it was delicious.  And Wataru tells him “maybe”, to which Halu replies “must be”.  Youko returns home and senses that Halu is troubled.

Chika and Yuri are in a hair salon and while having their hair done, Yuri exclaims while reading one of the magazines.

Aki rushes out during lunch and withdraws money from her bank account for Chieko.  Halu drives Chieko to the train station and Chieko tells him to drop her off by the roadside, as she didn’t want to have to say sad goodbyes inside the station.  Chieko thanks Halu thinking that the money was from Halu.  Upon hearing about the money, Halu’s expression changes immediately from delight to iciness.  His voice is emotionless as he asks Chieko how much Aki gave her.  Chieko is shocked that Halu did not know about the money and when she tries to explain to him that she was really troubled but came to look for him because she loves him, it was apparent that Halu is upset and he tells Chieko to rush for her train.  As she leaves the car, Halu refuses to look her in the eye but when she walks away, Halu looks at her through the rearview mirror.  But apparently, Halu still wasn’t too troubled by the money matter as he rushed into the train station to chase after Chieko.  As he rushes up the staircase to the platform, Halu sees Chieko talking to a man who had come to fetch her.  And the look in Halu’s eyes says that that wasn’t the man his mom had left with many years ago.  Aki had known all along but couldn’t bring herself to tell him … The most heartrending moment was when Chieko spots Halu on the staircase and there was a moment of suspense as no one could guess what Halu would do next.  Instead of ranting at Chieko for lying to him, instead Halu waves the scarf on his neck, smiles at her and waves goodbye.  As the train leaves,  Halu leans against a pillar and there was immense sadness and disappointment in his eyes, but there were no tears.

Halu asks Aki to meet him at the training rink and he apologizes to her for losing his temper on her the previous evening.  He also returns her the 2,000,000 yen she gave to Chieko and teases Aki for being so generous. He tells Aki that he saw the man with Chieko and confirms that it was not the same man, and he then said goodbye to Chieko.  [The next scene shows the scarf that Chieko gave to Halu being tied onto the staircase railing at the train station …] There was so much sadness in his eyes as he told the story.  He then plays the left-or-right game with Aki.  Aki guesses the right hand and in them was a pair of keys.  It is a set of duplicate keys to his house and he gives them to Aki.  They then go to his house and he tells her that she is the first girl to ever step into his house.  As he suggests coffee, Aki tells him she is afraid and Halu reassures her that he is not going to do anything to her.  Aki tells him that is not what she was afraid of.  She is not sure if she will be a good mother when she gets married in future.  Halu reassures her that she will be a good one.  Actually she is worried for Halu and asks Halu if he had ever cried before. Aki couldn’t stop her own tears and tells Halu that although he always tries to be strong, she pities him and then she teases that she wants to practice mothering her son who would come crying to her. And that is what she would have done if she was his mother and she would have protected him. Upon hearing these, Halu couldn’t stop his tears which flowed for the first time.  Aki comforts him and hugs him and as he admits he really cried, he hugs her back fiercely.  As he looks up at her with his tear-soaked eyes, he really looked like a little boy who had fallen down and hurt his knees.  His eyes searches Aki’s and as he saw consent in them, he closes his eyes and kisses her…

At Face Off bar, Yuri shows Yamato the magazine that featured Aki’s boyfriend, Natsukawa Keisuke (夏川啓介).  Yuri says that he may be coming back to Aki …

The next morning, Aki tells Halu that she had a weird dream that they were characters in a game.  But perhaps the kid playing the game became sleepy, he reset the game and they were switched off even though they still wanted to be together and she didn’t get to hear what “Halu” was going to say.  Halu then asks Aki “such a simple dream? Wasn’t it something I’ve said before … Aki wo aishiteru (I love Aki)”.

- Surf, Feb 17 2004.