Kazuma Sohma Quotes

Kazuma's grandfather was the previous cat, and Kazuma as a boy was ashamed of him, which is the guilt he has been paying off by raising Kyo. That history is why this is not a platitude when he says it. The dojo master is not promising that hope wins; he is saying that it recurs, on the same schedule as despair, and that the recurrence is the whole of what anyone gets. Set it against the way Kyo talks about the future, which is always a single someday when he will finally be worthy. Kazuma is quietly refusing the someday. There is no arrival, only the next return, and a man who has spent twenty years being the adult in a cursed family would know. The most reliable mentor in the series is the one who never claims the ending will be good, only that it will keep coming back around.

Every other parent in this series either erases a child, confines one, hands one over, or leaves. Momiji's mother chose to forget him. Yuki's gave him to Akito. Kyo's father blamed a small boy for his mother's death. Kazuma, who is not Kyo's father and keeps saying so, is the only adult who treats a child's decision as something to wait for rather than something to make on his behalf. The clause about pace is the one that carries it: he is not pretending Kyo is quick, and he is not pretending the delay bothers him. The cat is supposed to be confined after high school, and the question Kazuma is asking him to think about is whether to accept that. He gets his answer, eventually, and it is the one the whole series was built to reach. This is the sentence that gave Kyo permission to take that long.