Kazufumi Shiraishi

Some time in the near future, a report about the Earth population had forced most of the world to implement a ban on almost any reproductive and fertility treatments - no IVF, no surgical or non-surgical treatments even for curable cases. And in this future Japan, the government had gone a few steps further - not only a pregnancy has a higher priority to a marriage (so if you get pregnant by someone else, your divorce is almost automatic) but a pregnancy outside of a marriage is terminated by law. But as families are important in Japan, there are also the companions - androids who get the memories and bodies of a spouse (or a child, or a parent) who had died or moved on and which allow the bereaved (or left behind) person to spend another 10 years with their loved one.

Hayato and Yutori have their own issues which would make a baby unlikely. And yet they try. The story is told in two viewpoints - hers and his and before long, things just stop adding up. By the middle of the second chapter, it becomes clear that each of the them is actually telling us a different story - that the common story they appeared to narrate diverged somewhere along the lines and it is not just an unreliable narrator (or 2) that causes the incompatibilities. As the companions are introduced early on, the explanation is obvious - although it takes awhile for everything to snap into a single picture and the story even manages to surprise a reader here and there.

Despite its setting, the story is really a meditation on what family means and what is important in a relationship. It works better than I expected despite its somewhat convoluted structure and I enjoyed piecing the story together. And while some more depth may have added to the story, I found it touching and powerful even at this length.… (meer)