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Taiyou no Ie

Author: TAAMO

Chapters: 71

Taiyou no Ie starts off more like a mild psychological manga. The main character, Motomiya Mao, sometimes called “Magyo”, grew up in a household as a single child, both of her parents constantly working and leaving her home alone. She comes back home early one day, and catches her mom walking into the house with a man she’s never seen before. Not long after, her parents get a divorce, and she decides to stay at the house with her father, rather than follow her mother, in order to not leave her neighbors behind.

Mao’s neighbors, the Nakamuras, are a family of five consisting of the two parents (whose first names are never specified), the older brother Hiro, the middle son Daiki, and the youngest sister Hina. Hiro is 14 and in middle school, Daiki and Mao are in primary school, and Hina is 4, putting ten years in between her and her oldest sibling. Mao spends most nights in the Nakamura household, eating dinner with them. But suddenly, the two parents pass away in a car accident on their way home with a present for Hina. Daiki and Hina are both sent off to two different unspecified aunts, but Hiro stays behind to to protect the house they lived in, a house he asked his parents to move into, and something he knows his parents poured all their savings into. 

Present day, Mao (17), who writes a mobile novel called Taiyou no Ie, or the House of the Sun, feels as isolated from her dad as ever with her new step-mom and step-sister, Yui around. Leaving the house where she feels like she doesn’t belong and buying a convenience store bento to eat outside the shrine she frequents when she’s feeling down, she runs into Hiro (24), whom, upon seeing that she feels unwelcome in her own home, offers her a room at his house to live. Unannounced, she heads over to his house and spends the night. The next day, in an attempt to make up with her dad, he makes it very clear that if she wants to spend so much time at the Nakamura household, she should just live there forever, and he will send monthly living expenses to Hiro; this pushes away Mao, leaving her heart broken, and thus she begins her life living in the Nakamura household.

Over the next year, Mao learns to do household chores such as cooking and cleaning, gets confessed to by the most popular guy in her grade who her best friend has a crush on, and learns from Hiro that his dream is to bring Daiki and Hina back to this house someday to live with him. However, his dream so far has been unattainable. Daiki has very clearly expressed his desire to never return top him, and Hina almost never responds to his messages in the first place. With Mao’s help, Hiro is able to bring Daiki back to the house, after he stays for a short visit during a school break. When he goes back to his aunt’s house and he tells her he just suddenly wished to go back, she reads through his lies and knows that the real reason he wants to back is because he fell in love - unbeknownst to her, this girl is Mao. And so, Daiki moves back into the household.

At this time, around winter, Mao has already confessed her feelings of love towards Hiro, but seeing him act so uncomfortable, she plays it off as a joke, hiding her feelings deep in her heart. She has also met her number one fan of her novel in real life, who unfortunately is not only a coworker of Hiro, but she has pretended to be the author of the novel in front of him because she wanted to get his attention after she learned that he read the novel, too; Mao is at a crossroads when she learns this coworker, Sugimoto Ai, loves Hiro, too.

There are a lot of love triangles so far. Daiki loves Mao, but so does the popular classmate, Oda. However, Mao’s friend Chii likes Oda. But Mao only likes Hiro, the most dense man on the planet, who is only focused on getting Hina home. And to make it even harder for our main character, Hiro’s coworker Ai is pretending to be the author of Mao’s novel in order to get Hiro’s attention. At one point, it’s hard to keep up; until people start confessing and get rejected. Mao rejects Oda, but then Oda rejects Chii. However, neither give up. Further along the line, Mao rejects Daiki, and Hiro rejects his coworker Ai. Chii then confesses once more, and Oda accepts her confession. 

Now, Mao is trying her best to stop running away from her father and move back into her own house. She slowly but surely begins staying a few days at a time every so often, and she gets along swimmingly with her new mom and little sister. The Nakamura and Motomiya households decide to go on a trip together to Sendai, where Hina lives. The aunt that Hina lives with makes a sudden impact on her unintentionally; Hina sees an old toy cooking set, remembering her parents, and subtly informing the reader that the reason Hina doesn’t want to go back to the house is because she feels responsible for the death of her parents. Her aunt announces she is pregnant, and Hina asks if she’s okay with having the baby at such an old age, because she could die. Expecting the aunt to not be okay with this, Hina is shocked when her aunt tells her she doesn’t mind risking her life to watch her child grow up. This strikes a chord in Hina, and she realizes all she’s ever done is push people away. She calls Hiro to let him know she wants to go on the trip as well.

While on the trip, in the hot springs with Mao and her step-mom, Hina confesses that she “killed her parents”. In the moment, Mao had no idea how to respond, and she left feeling distraught. The next day, while waiting for the subway, the step-mom tells Mao’s father about what Hina said, and that Mao has been depressed since. Surprisingly, Mao’s father understands Hina’s train of thought. So far, everyone has been comparing Mao and Hina together, because they both hide their feelings and keep to their close circle; but Mao’s father realizes Hina is a reflection of himself. She created something to loather - herself - so she wouldn’t become swallowed in sadness. Mao’s father outwardly seems to hate Mao, seeing his ex-wife in her eyes, but in reality Mao’s father hates himself for not being able to stop either of them from leaving him. Mao’s father walks over to Hina and tells her that her parents would be devastated if they knew she blamed herself. He even goes on to tell her he was jealous of their perfect family that always got along. 

“Listen, Hina-chan. A child’s selfishness is a parent’s happiness.”

Mao’s father then tells Hina something her own parents never did; The “Hi” in her name is supposed to represent the sun, because she used to always be so bright and cheerful. Without her at that house, it could never go back to being as bright and cheery as it was before. Hina admits she doesn’t even know how to smile anymore; she lives in fear that Hiro and Daiki will blame her for the accident; that when they are nice to her, she feels guilty; but she does admit that she truly wishes to return home.

Afterwards, the two families drive past a festival, and stop to take a quick look. After everyone divides into groups, Mao and her father are the only two left. Nervously, Mao follows her father around the festival, where he teaches her how to do target shooting, and she teaches him how to catch goldfish. In the moment, Mao thanks her father for talking to Hina. He becomes annoyed, saying the Nakamura family is always more important to her. When Mao tries to apologize, her father tells her that she just cast him aside, like her mother did. Only then does Mao realize what she has truly done. Mao’s father interrupts her stuttering apology to admit that he pushed her out, and was only running away; he would understand if Mao hated him. Mao admits she felt the same way when her step mom and step sister “took him away”. They both silently realize their similar foolishness, and as the rest of the group finds them and approaches them, Mao’s father asks Mao to come back home.

So finally, Mao is back home. But the story isn’t over yet. Mao tries to confess to Hiro, but he stops her and tells her he will be the one to confess. They set a date to meet, and Mao anxiously awaits the day.

On the day of, while Mao is leaving her house, she is speechless when she runs into her birth mother, who is hanging out outside of her house. Mao cancels the date, and goes out to chat with her birth mother. Mao continues to meet with her mother a couple more times, where her mother tells her that she wants Mao to move back with her, because she is now alone, and she has been saving money for it. Everyone around Mao can tell something is amiss, but she won’t tell anyone what’s wrong. Before the “final meeting” with her mom, Mao tells Chii about meeting her mother, admitting that she wants to stay behind, but she knows what it’s like to be lonely, and doesn’t want her mother to be lonely. Chii says she doesn’t know what she would choose, but she supports whatever decision Mao makes. Mao also brings it up with her stepmother but in the form of a hypothetical question. Her stepmother shares her honest opinion, stating that when HER mother, Mao’s grandmother, found out they were both bringing kids from different marriages, she was completely against them getting together. In the end, she chose Mao’s father over her own mother. Before she left, her mother gave her a lunch box to eat on the train, signifying that she didn’t accept the decision, but no matter what happens, she will always be her daughter; that they would be family even if they were apart.

Meanwhile, Ai, still feeling guilty about not having confessed that she is not the author, rereads the novel from beginning to the present one last time. In doing so, she realizes that this novel is a love letter, and what she has done is more terrible than she thought. Hating herself for having stolen something so precious, she meets back up with Mao after a long time. Mao goes into the meeting expecting Ai to confess that she still has feelings for Hiro, or that they started dating since she has been avoiding him to meet up with her birth mother. Ai tells Mao that she has finally gotten the courage to tell Hiro that she is not the author of the novel, but she is also curious why she never ratted her out. Mao admits that she just wanted to be friends with Ai, and didn’t want to ruin their relationship, which takes Ai by surprise. They part with both hoping they can meet back up again and restart as friends one day.

Mao meets up with her birth mother, who tells Mao that she will definitely be happy moving in with her, and all the preparation she has done. Mao buts off her tangent to tell her mom that she is not going to move in with her, but she will always be thinking of her, always. Mao’s birth mother admits she didn’t expect Mao to decline her offer, and tells her she’s grown up into a fine young woman. They hug for a final time and depart.

When Mao comes home, her stepmother is surprised to see her return, implicating that she knew the hypothetical question was meant to confuse her, and she also expected Mao to leave with her mother. With a smile on her face, Mao’s stepmother serves out dinner to the whole family, painting a beautiful picture of a complete family, one that Mao has always wanted.

Hiro, in the meanwhile, is at work, clocking in over-time because they lost a lot of data and will probably be working all night along with his division. While leaving to get a snack, he runs into Ai in the hallway, where she admits she is not the author, but does not tell him who the author really is. She tells Hiro that if he reads the novel once more, he will understand everything. After a long night of work, at six AM, Hiro’s curiosity gets the better of him, and he begins re-reading the novel. Doing so, he realizes a few things. One, two of the characters names in the novel, Takashi and Kaoru, are the names of two characters in a historical drama Mito Koumon, a series Mao likes to watch. Second, he sees there is also a character in Mito Koumon named Croquette, which is also the name Mao gave to the Shiba Inu Hiro bought near the beginning of the manga. And lastly, the authors pen name, Kuukai (which he has been misreading as Sorami until Ai corrects him during her “author” confession), is the name of a buddhist monk from the Houkai period, whose given name was Saeki “Mao”.

While at school, Daiki overhears Mao telling Chii that Hiro hasn’t replied to her message, which only her knows that is because he worked all night. Daiki sets up a surprise meeting for the both of them and tells Mao to go walk Croquette, since Hiro and himself would both be working late. Mao heads there straight after school. However, Daiki meets Hiro at Daiki’s work, a historical bar that Hiro’s work friends frequent. Daiki, annoyed that Hiro “ruined it”, convinces Hiro’s boss to let him leave, ordering the confused Hiro to return home. Doing as he is told, he finds Mao has accidentally fallen asleep on the couch. Mao wakes up and screams, scared by Hiro’s sudden appearance. Mao finally tells Hiro about her real mom appearing, and tells him that she decided not to go with her. Catching her off-guard, Hiro tells her that Ai had him re-read Kuukai’s novel. In the middle of trying to confess, he falls asleep, so Mao puts a blanket over him and returns home.

Over text, Hiro asks Mao out on a date, which she accepts. Her stepmom helps her decide that they should go ice skating together. After ice skating, while out eating, Hiro wonders what his life would’ve been like if he never invited Mao to stay at his house; Mao wonders what Hiro was going to say before he fell asleep the other day at his house, and if he even remembers they had a conversation. They later head out into the streets, and Hiro suggests they ride the ferris wheel. Hiro thanks Mao, saying if it wasn’t for her, Daiki and Hina never would have come home. He is also happy to find out that she is the author of the novel, and finally confesses his love. Mao reciprocates his feelings, taking back the lie she told when she first confessed so long ago, but then played off as a joke. They share a heart-warming kiss at the top of the ferris wheel.

There is a time-skip to the beginning of Mao and Daiki’s final year in high school. After school, the two head home, where Hina has finally moved in after so long. Hiro shows them all the new six-person table he bought for the house, and they all reminisce about the past. All four of them visit the Nakamura parent’s grave. Mao tells the parents that Hiro’s dream came true, and Daiki and Hina both have moved back into the house together. She also admits her failures to them, about how she relied on Hiro too much and had lost her place for too long to the point where she didn’t even know the point of her existence. She says its all thanks to Hiro that everything came together, and she owes her life to him, so she wants to, from now own, protect him. Daiki and Hina go off together, and Hiro offers Mao to visit the shrine she used to frequent. Mao tells him that he always saved her, so since his dream has now come true, it’s her turn to protect him, as thanks. Hiro says his dream hasn’t actually come true, though; since what he really wants is a family. After beating around the bush and Mao not getting the picture, Hiro “proposes” to Mao, saying he wants to become a family with her, some day. The two head home, and throw Hina a welcome home party, celebrating the rebirth of the Nakamura family.

In the afterwards, they also give love to Ai, and they show Hina and Daiki making a bet to see who can get a significant other the fastest by this time next year. The also show a little girl in a big house hear the front gate open, and rush to the front door to welcome someone we can’t see home. Since the little girl has very long hair, and Mao has very short hair as a child, is it most likely Mao and Hiro’s daughter, letting the readers infer that they did eventually get married and start a family.

THE END