Chapter 1: Clods of Earth Await the Snow

Of all the countless memories I would make with Kai, this day was where it all began.

No matter how hard I tried to shift the blame, I could never find an answer that satisfied me.

So perhaps that day existed solely for Kai and me to meet.

Gripping the steering wheel, I was still stewing over how I had lost my temper when someone teased me about being an overprotective parent. Even though we were on close terms, being made fun of when I was in such a rush made me react more sharply than I intended. The entire drive home, I kept replaying the scene in my head, analyzing it over and over.

But as I did, I found myself making convenient excuses—Did I really get angry, or did I just speak a little firmly...?—so I forced myself to stop thinking about it. Going any further down that road was utterly pointless.

I could just apologize when I got to work tomorrow. It was as simple as that.

Right now, I need to focus on my daughter.

The traffic light changed, and the car at the front of the line finally began creeping forward. Glancing out of the corner of my eye at the crowd of foreign tourists pouring off a bus and flooding the sidewalk, I eased the car ahead.

Ever since I was a child, I had a strange fondness for the trails the wipers left across the windshield.

The late-September drizzle had held steady since yesterday. Neither rushing nor pausing, the rain tapped out a quiet, monotone rhythm. With the gloom and cooler temperatures, perhaps it made it easier for my daughter to sleep.

She had been suffering from a feverish cold for the past two days, keeping her home from school. Naturally, as a parent, I couldn't stop worrying about her even while at work, so I decided to head home much earlier than usual today. People might think, She's already in middle school, but even if she was an eighth grader, to a parent, she was still just a child.

That was precisely what my coworker had pointed out—and feeling that loop of regret start to spin again, I shook my head and focused on the road.

After making a quick detour to pick up some groceries, I arrived home. I opened the garage and parked in my usual spot. My husband walked to work with our dog, and now that we rarely took long family trips together, the car had essentially become mine. Making sure not to leave the grocery bag behind, I looped it over my wrist and headed for the front door.

Unlocking the door and stepping inside, I was met with dim silence. The darkened hallway felt lonely. Wondering if she might be asleep, I treaded softly as I slid open the door to her room and peeked inside. Catching the movement through the crack, she looked up from where she was lying down, our eyes meeting.

"I'm home. Were you asleep?"

"I was dozing off, but the sound of the key woke me up."

As I crouched by her side, she greeted me with a "Welcome home," followed by a weak chuckle.

"What's so funny?"

"Just thinking... the only time you ever come home early is when I'm sick."

"In that case, staying out late every night would probably be better for your health."

That was pretty much how things were in reality, so I had nothing but gratitude for my husband.

"How's your fever? Did you take your temperature?"

"I took it right before noon. It was around thirty-seven degrees, so I'm doing a lot better than yesterday."

Yesterday she had complained of a sore throat and could barely manage the energy to speak, so hearing her chat normally was a relief. In her closed room, the lingering heat of late summer pressed in, weakly stirred by an oscillating fan on low. While debating whether to ask if she felt too hot or too cold, my arm shifted, and the rustle of the grocery bag jogged my memory.

"Hold on just a minute."

Stepping out of the room, I headed to the kitchen. As I transferred what I had bought on the way home into a bowl, my reflection caught faintly in the ventilation window, and I absentmindedly pinched a strand of my hair.

When had I stopped feeling out of place seeing myself with black hair in the mirror? The only people left in my life who knew my original hair color were my husband and my parents. Feeling a fleeting pang of sentimentality, I finished preparing and returned to my daughter's room.

I held out a yellow bowl filled with canned mandarin oranges and sweet syrup.

"You always want this whenever you come down with a fever."

At her age, I worried she might push back against being treated like a child, but seeing her face break into an honest smile set me at ease.

"Mama... Sitting up is too much work. Feed me~"

"I can, but are you sure about that?"

Still tucked beneath her futon, her eyes sparkled with playful excitement, the tip of her nose slightly flushed. Wondering if this was truly a good idea, I scooped up an orange slice with some syrup and brought the spoon to her mouth.

She craned her neck to snap it up—or at least, she tried.

"Bleh-cough!"

"See what happens?"

Anyone could have guessed what would happen trying to swallow syrup and fruit while lying completely flat. Sure enough, syrup dribbled out the corner of her mouth, making an absolute mess of her face, and on top of that, she choked on it.

After wiping down her face and pillow, I handed her the spoon and bowl.

"Don't be lazy. Sit up and eat properly."

"Okaaay."

With her mouth and cheeks still sticky, she reluctantly sat up. It seemed her temperature and strength were both recovering nicely. My husband had stayed home to look after her yesterday, messaging me in deep worry when her fever wouldn't go down. Naturally, I had been worried sick as well. Leaving it all to him two days in a row felt unfair, and I couldn't concentrate anyway, which was why I took off early today.

"Do you think you can manage dinner tonight?"

"Mmm... 'The patient would benefit from something easy to digest.'"

"What a precise diagnosis. Well, if your appetite is back... though it's not like I'm the one cooking."

It wasn't that I couldn't cook, but according to my husband, it was a matter of division of labor, and according to my daughter, Mom's food lacked depth. On top of that, she claimed my seasoning was too bland. Yet whenever I deliberately tried to make it richer, the flavors always ended up clashing. I had never managed to get the hang of proper seasoning. Fourteen years had passed since getting married, all while telling myself I would learn from my husband one day.

Right then, the doorbell chimed, announcing a visitor. My daughter and I exchanged a glance.

"That can't be Dad, right?"

"Too early for him, I think."

Wondering who it could possibly be on a rainy day like this, I went to answer it. Deliveries were all scheduled for the weekend, so I ruled that out. But as I checked the intercom display without thinking much of it, the image on the screen caught my breath in my throat.

A sudden jolt struck dead center in my chest, leaving me bewildered. My pupils shrank before my brain could even process what was happening.

A petite middle school girl was standing there, twirling her umbrella round and round.

Amid that ordinary scene, what startled me was a color I could never have anticipated.

Yellow-green eyes.

Luminous, alien eyes that seemed to repel the intensifying rain stared straight at me through the camera. Even though she had no way of knowing it, our gazes locked entirely, catching me completely off guard.

Piecing together who this visitor must be, I finally collected myself. Letting out a breath of relief, I answered.

"Hello, who is it?"

"I'm in Amamiya-san's class. I came to drop off the handouts while she was out."

Like raindrops touching down only to vanish into the ground, her voice was faint and ephemeral.

"Oh... thank you. Just a moment, please."

I stepped away from the intercom.

Her face didn't match any of the friends my daughter had ever brought home.

A petite young girl wearing the same uniform as my daughter's school. Going by appearance alone, she seemed honest enough, but having my daughter confirm it was probably best. When I walked back into her room, she was just finishing off the mandarin syrup, her eyes narrowed in bliss. Just in time for what, exactly?

"Someone from your class came by to deliver your school handouts."

"Hmm... I wonder who."

"If you can walk, could you come take a look?"

"I'm fine," she said, setting the yellow bowl aside and slowly rising to her feet. Her gait was steady, reassuring me that she truly was on the mend.

Bringing her over to the intercom, she peered at the screen and instantly named the visitor.

"It's Chitaira-san."

So she really was a classmate after all.

"Chitaira..."

And that name rang a bell for me too. If I remembered correctly, it belonged to the family living in an absurdly massive estate nearby. An estate so enormous you could line up several of our houses inside it... Not that I had ever had anything to do with them beyond gazing at it from afar. I had always thought of them as people from an entirely different social stratum, but was she their daughter?

"I'm sorry for keeping you waiting in the rain. I'll be right out to get them."

"Okay."

On the screen, her posture and gaze remained motionless. Standing straight against the earth, she looked like a natural part of the rain itself.

"Should I go get them?"

"What are you talking about? It's pouring out there."

"Back to bed with you," I said, nudging her shoulder. Perhaps tired of lying around for two whole days, she gave an unhappy groan, but I chuckled softly and shooed her back into her room. At this rate, she would probably be able to return to school tomorrow.

Slipping into a pair of easy slide sandals at the entryway, I figured it wouldn't take more than a second to grab the papers, so I stepped outside without an umbrella. The sound of the rain had grown heavier than when I first got home, and though I instantly regretted not grabbing an umbrella, her gaze remained fixed straight upon me. Unable to turn back, I walked toward my daughter's classmate. Even in the gloom of the rainy afternoon, beneath an umbrella as black as the night sky, no matter how hard the rain fell, the vivid color of her eyes stood out so strikingly that it pulled me forward.

"Hello."

Having stopped spinning her umbrella, the young girl spoke softly, yet her voice carried clearly across the drumming rain.

"Hello there..."

Raindrops dripping from the motionless umbrella fell in a ceaseless stream, like flavorless tears.

Her pale skin looked as though she had hidden away from the entire sweltering summer. Petite even when compared to my daughter of the same age, our eye levels differed by at least twenty centimeters. Her youthful features made her middle school uniform feel like something she was trying too hard to grow into, and her thin lips were visibly chapped. Her hair, brushing against her collarbones, was slightly uneven in a way that caught my eye—as if cut by an amateur's hand. Could she have cut that walnut-colored hair herself?

And beyond those somewhat unkempt bangs were those eyes.

A pair of glossy, yellow-green orbs, vivid as Muscat grapes, stared up at me intently.

"Um..."

"I'm Kai. Chitaira Kai."

If I had to give my entirely subjective impression of this girl...

She was a breathtaking beauty who stole both your words and your gaze.

"Kai..."

My thoughts momentarily lost their shape, and I parroted the name back to her.

"Written like this."

She drew a character in the air with her index finger. Reading the strokes, it was kai—meaning a lump or mass.

It felt like an ill-fitting name for such a fragile, petite girl.

Yet more than her name, it was her eyes.

When our eyes met, an ache like thorny briars pricked at my heart, followed by an inexplicable floating sensation.

Why did a feeling akin to déjà vu mingle with the whirlwind of emotions those eyes stir within me? Perhaps we had passed each other in town before. As I tried to recall where it had begun, Kai stretched onto her tiptoes, raising her umbrella to shelter me as well. While it was a sweet gesture, the tips of the ribs came close enough to graze my forehead, giving me a slight fright.

"You're tall."

"Oh... ah, maybe so."

I could hardly tell her she was just unusually small. I hadn't measured myself since college, but I was around one hundred sixty-five centimeters, while this girl couldn't have even reached one-fifty. No... even one hundred forty looked questionable, though perhaps that was underestimating her a bit too much.

Though I intended to head back inside right away, I took the umbrella from Kai and held it over us myself.

Kai stared at her now-empty hand for a beat before remembering her errand, holding out the bundle she had been clutching.

"Here are the school handouts and stuff."

"Thank you."

I took the papers, which had been wrapped in a plastic bag to keep them dry. Then, as if having gained an excuse to stand under the umbrella, Kai stepped closer to me. From right beside me, she looked up, her eyes possessing a bottomless mix of awe and beauty that seemed capable of swallowing even the falling rain.

What trick of my mind was producing this sensation, like nonexistent floodwaters rising all the way to my throat? Even the drumming of rain against the umbrella sounded distant, and my feet remained pinned to the ground as though sewn to my shadow.

Then, Kai's lips parted.

"Amamiya's mom is seriously super pretty."

Her tone shifted completely, as though she were mimicking someone else. That would have been fine, but to mimic them, she opened her eyes wide and gaped her mouth, which was a little unsettling. Like a recorded message finishing playback, she reverted to her original gentle smile the second she finished speaking.

"A kid in our class said that, so I wondered what kind of person you were, but you really are gorgeous. It surprised me."

Hearing such blunt praise made heat rush to my cheeks despite my age.

"Well, thank you...?"

Against my flushed skin, the coolness of the rain felt ironically pleasant.

As if a spell had finally broken, I handed back the umbrella. Kai hoisted it over her shoulder once more, cloaking herself in the night, and turned to leave.

Seared indelibly into my heart were two glowing yellow-green stars.

Even as I felt my unwashed makeup and damp bangs coming undone in the rain and clinging to my face, my eyes remained captivated.

Disappearing into the distance as though soaking up the rain just like her name suggested...

...I stood there in the pouring rain, like a fool without an umbrella, watching her go.

My daughter caught a cold, I left from work early, and a classmate came by to deliver her school handouts.

Yes, that was all it was.

Yet that was all it took to forge a turning point in my life.

Just crossing paths with a single, innocent girl who knew nothing at all.

That was how Kai and I met.

"Mama... Can I get a good-morning kiss?"

"Later, later."

"Morning's gonna be over soon"

During the hectic rush of getting ready in the morning, my husband pleaded for a kiss before briskly bustling away. He didn't have time to dillydally either, so this was hardly the moment for romantic sparks. And yet...

"...Honestly."

Setting down what I was holding, I stepped out of the room. Went after him. Found him.

Approached.

"Here."

"What?"

What do you mean 'what'? I leaned in close, and when he finally realized what I was doing, his eyes lit up with dramatic excitement. "Oho~!"

"Quickly, before I put my makeup on."

"That's what I love about you."

What is that even supposed to mean? While pondering that question, we shared a brief, gentle kiss. Even at our age, kissing my husband still felt special... or rather, it always required a bit of mental preparation.

Or perhaps that was just the nature of kissing. Not that I had any intention of kissing anyone else.

Pulling away, I instinctively crossed my arms, stiffening slightly.

"I know I'm the one who did it, but considering how old we are, isn't this a little embarrassing?"

"Not particularly."

"I'm just relieved you feel at least a little shame."

Taking it as a joke, my husband chuckled heartily. Though I had been serious.

"Well... you've always been cute whenever you get bashful."

"And there's nothing cute about you watching me with that amused grin."

Even when I shot him a reproachful glare, he paid it no mind at all, casually draping an arm around my shoulders.

"Isn't it sad if love loses its spark just because you get older?"

"Part of me thinks you might have a point, but another part is tilting its head thinking, Aren't those two completely different things?"

The aggressive, feverish passion of craving the other person had simply matured into something calm and steady. That was one way of looking at it. When we were young—seventeen or eighteen years ago, to be exact—romance had been the center of our world. We were convinced that holding hands and bridging the gap between us was the greatest fulfillment imaginable. In all seriousness, I believed and acted as if this was the once-in-a-lifetime romance of my existence. Looking back now, we were so reckless it seemed almost dangerous. Running full tilt across the bridge before us without checking our footing—it was only thanks to pure luck that reckless youth worked out. For all we knew, it could have collapsed at any second, sweeping us away into the freezing river below.

Then again, if someone argued that expecting prudence from a passion that was already ablaze was utter nonsense, I couldn't really disagree.

"Aren't you sentimental?"

"I'm pretty sure you're using that word wrong."

"Well, I still want to kiss you plenty. To me, you don't look a day over your late... twenties... and a total beauty at that."

"...Even in my twenties, it'd still be embarrassing."

If he placed my bare face without makeup on the ragged edge of my twenties, well, I supposed I should accept the compliment with grace. If that was the verdict through the rose-tinted lens of a husband, then in reality... I gave a dry smile. While I accepted that I was aging normally, a twinge of melancholy lingered. Very few people, I imagined, lived their lives picturing the day they would become an old grandmother.

"As for you... I'd say you've put on some weight since then."

"That's only because your cooking is so delicious."

"I hardly ever cook, though."

"Whenever you do, it must be packed with about a hundred thousand calories' worth of love."

"That would kill you."

"And our kisses must be worth about fifty thousand, I reckon."

When he leaned in for another kiss, I grabbed him by the chin.

"We're done for today. Go burn off that estimated fifty thousand calories at work."

"Treating it like a chore on a checklist hurts, you know."

"From now on, kisses are strictly reserved for when it's just the two of us, when our daughter isn't awake, and inside the house. Got it?"

"That's a lot of conditions!"

"Gives you more of a sense of accomplishment, doesn't it?"

"You think...? Well, maybe."

Seeing him actually buy into that, I breathed a sigh of relief.

But then, a sudden realization struck him.

"Wait, you said 'just the two of us,' but what about Maron?"

"She's family, so of course she counts."

"I'm doomed~!"

Thanks to Maron, our pet dog, who followed him everywhere like a shadow, our morning romance had come to an abrupt full stop.

And maron and roman did sound somewhat alike—romance. Not that it meant anything.

If I had to put it into words, I was high-strung, while my husband was an incurable optimist. People often said opposites attract, but was that really true? Couldn't it simply be that because they never intersected, they remained at polar extremes? When we first started dating, I used to agonize over thoughts like that. But watching my husband now as he scrambled to get ready, a tender warmth softened my lips, making me realize such worries were completely groundless.

I quickly set to work on the mountain of morning preparations I had temporarily put aside.

Just an ordinary morning scene. A moment that came easily, filling my chest with crisp, refreshing air.

The design firm where I work occupies the second floor of a building facing the intersection at the entrance to a residential neighborhood. It used to be a law office, and remnants of that former life are still scattered throughout the space. You won't find any high-rises around here, in any case; if I remember right, local ordinances don't permit anything over four stories tall.

Our office doesn't have its own parking, but there is a church nearby that lets us use its grounds instead. I hear our director and the church's caretaker are friends, so an arrangement was already in place. The caretaker is a gentle elderly woman who sometimes shares fresh vegetables with me when our paths cross.

Stepping out of the car, even the short walk to the office felt heavy today. After what happened yesterday, I was heading in, intending to apologize to my coworker, so there was no way my steps could be light. It wasn't anything serious enough to warrant getting worked up over, but anything that might breed conflict with others has always made me uneasy. ...Is it really just conflict that makes me uneasy? Thinking back on my past, I let out a self-deprecating scoff and climbed the stairs.

...And so.

I sat meekly in my chair as usual, locked in a staring contest with the design I had been assigned.

The coworker I had snapped at so nastily yesterday was naturally in the exact same room, hard at work today. Even as I worked while constantly scouting for an opening to apologize, my chair felt agonizingly uncomfortable. Still... I dragged my feet. Since I had greeted them as casually as ever when our paths crossed this morning, maybe that was enough to let bygones be bygones, to sweep it under the rug...? No, that's definitely not good enough, I fretted. Deciding I would apologize during the lunch break after all, I gave up on this morning and focused on my work.

Then, just a few minutes before the lunch hour arrived, my coworker stood up from their desk with smartphone in hand.

Tossing my work aside for the moment, I scrambled to my feet as well.

"Ah, excuse me!"

Calling out as I practically lunged forward, my sudden momentum took my coworker a bit by surprise.

"Um... about yesterday—" I'm sorry for getting mad. That sounded like an apology from an elementary schooler, so I briefly considered changing it. "I'm sorry I got mad." But I couldn't think of anything better.

"Huh?"

My coworker blinked, visibly taken aback by my sudden apology.

"Did I... do, um... did something happen...?"

Their eyes darted frantically about, searching their memory for any clue.

"Oh!"

They finally remembered. Apparently, it hadn't bothered them in the slightest, which completely took the wind out of my sails. In stark contrast to my deflation, my coworker smiled with effortless normalcy.

"Is your daughter feeling better?"

"Yes, thank you. She was well enough to head to school today."

"Well, that's a relief!"

"Yeah, truly..."

With that, my coworker gave a polite little nod and breezed out of the office to grab lunch. Just like that.

Their reaction had been so light that the sheer lack of friction left me feeling numbly detached as I returned to my desk. At any rate, one weight had undeniably been lifted from my shoulders. I was still saddled with plenty of others, yet I had adapted so thoroughly to the strain that I could fool myself into believing I was truly at ease.

Mother. Wife. The responsibilities I shouldered to sustain the family that served as the foundation of my life were the very elements of that gravity. I had learned that growing up—becoming an adult—meant growing accustomed to that weight, gradually expanding the load one could bear. If I were to irresponsibly fling aside the burdens digging into my shoulders... what kind of feeling would that bring? What would freedom and weightlessness offer me? Would I soar through the boundless sky, or would I tremble in the desolate loneliness of someone marooned on an empty island?

"Aren't you having lunch, Amamiya-san?"

Our director spoke up, looking over a flyer for a tonkatsu delivery service.

"I'll eat once I finish up to a good stopping point."

"Oh? Should I order something for you while I'm at it?"

"Ah, in that case... I'll take the katsutoji don."

I knew the budget lunch specials by heart without even needing to look at the flyer.

"If you're ordering too, that means I can get the lunch special as well."

Since the delivery required a minimum order amount, the director's face softened into a smile. Glancing at her over the top of my monitor, I turned back to the screen to pull my design together.

"...Why did you choose this color?"

If the client were to ask me that, what would I say? My detached internal questions spun in idle circles.

On the mock-up, a vivid splash of yellow-green shone through—a color that hadn't been there yesterday.

Just like every other day, by the time I began packing up to leave, the hour hand on the clock was drooping toward the bottom. It matched both my mood and the slump of my head so perfectly that I felt a strange sense of kinship. While I found my work fulfilling, that was that and this was this—I still basked in the sweet taste of freedom. Saying my farewells to the director, who was still lingering behind, I stepped out of the office.

The old staircase affixed to the building's exterior wall was uniformly pitch-black underfoot, as though the night itself had been polished smooth, so even now I always descended with caution. Gripping the handrail, I made my way down parallel to the darkness and exhaled a breath.

I glanced toward a distant light that seemed to guide the way through the gloom. A short distance from the office, there was a bar housed inside a converted old bank. Before my daughter was born, my husband and I used to go there from time to time. The appetizers and dishes were delicious, earning the stamp of approval from even my husband, who was rather picky about food. Apparently, the office staff drank there on occasion as well, but once I had a family, I never tagged along. Every now and then, I worried they might talk behind my back about how antisocial I was—wondering what on earth I even came to the office for.

To do my job, obviously.

Turning my back on that warm glow, I headed toward the church situated just inside the residential district. While I wasn't a follower of any particular faith, the church grounds carried a distinct, solemn air. Though no one was watching, I gave a small bow toward the sanctuary—or was "sanctuary" the right term?—before climbing into my car. Before driving off, I messaged my husband to let him know I was heading home.

『Welcome home.』

『A bit early for that, I haven't even left.』

『Guess what dinner is tonight?』

『Curry.』

『Why do you always guess curry whenever you don't know?』

Why? Because it's delicious, that's why.

I drove home thinking of curry that certainly wouldn't be on the dining table tonight. I couldn't say whether some divine blessing had rubbed off on me, but I barely caught a single red light. It wasn't constructive thinking by any stretch, but perhaps that was all one needed on the commute back from work.

Pulling the car into the garage and switching off the headlights, my mood lightened as if my own internal switch had been flipped off along with them. Relief at having navigated the workweek safely untangled my tension, and a wave of drowsiness washed over my heart. Resisting the temptation to sink right into the quiet darkness of the cabin, I gathered my things and stepped out of the car.

I considered ringing the doorbell to let someone let me in, but I'd already fished out my house keys on autopilot, so I figured I might as well unlock the front door myself. My head was already growing fuzzy, my brain refusing to fire on all cylinders.

The moment I took a step inside, the automated lights flickered on to welcome me. As if modern civilization had banished the night, the interior was brightly lit and brimming with vitality. Voices murmured; footsteps rustled. My home was right here.

And yet, an unfamiliar pair of shoes sat at the entryway of the place I called home. Wondering whose they could be, I slipped off my shoes and set them neatly alongside.

"I'm home."

Since lively chatter drifted from my daughter's room on the first floor, my feet carried me there first rather than to the living room where my husband was likely waiting. Peeking inside to see if she had a friend visiting, the muscles in my cheeks instinctively tightened as I fought to school my expression.

"Ah, welcome back!"

From across the desk, my daughter tilted her head and greeted me. Which was all well and good, except...

"Welcome home."

"...I'm back. And welcome to you, too."

My daughter's friend who had shown up on our doorstep yesterday was inside our house today.

Turning to look up at me, her eyes held that same otherworldly, alien light. Even viewed in a well-lit room rather than the rainy gloom, there was an unmingled, standalone quality to them that pierced straight into my consciousness.

"Oh, this is Chitaira-san."

"The girl from yesterday, right?"

"Yep! When I thanked her in class for bringing my handouts, she asked if I'd help tutor her in exchange."

"Tutoring?"

"I'm, like, suuuper dumb, so if someone doesn't teach widdle ol' me, I can't keep up at aaaall."

"..."

Her voice dripped with an irritating, cloying sweetness, as if the cadence alone was meant to demonstrate just how "super stupid" she was.

Her grating demeanor rubbed me the wrong way, but keeping my annoyance off my face, I glanced at the clock in the room. It was already creeping past eight in the evening. Hardly an hour when a middle schooler should be hanging around someone else's home without a compelling reason.

"Even so, it's getting awfully late, isn't it?"

"You're right. Guess I should be going."

Chitaira Kai tucked her study materials into her bag and stood up, thanking my daughter for today.

"Don't mention it! Though I didn't really teach you anything. Honestly, it felt more like you were teaching me."

"Just your imagination."

Casually waving it off, Kai slipped past me as I stood in the doorway. She's walking through the night streets alone? Starting now?

Rather than simply seeing her off, the moment a sensible proposition crossed my mind...

For some reason, I simultaneously felt like I had made a terrible mistake.

"Chitaira-san."

There was a slight pause after I called her name before she stopped and turned around.

"Yes?"

Turning around in the hallway where the room's light fell faint, Chitaira Kai had let all expression drain from her face, her skin blending seamlessly into the pale, dusky air. There was a striking symmetry to her features that left me at a loss for words, evocative of gazing upon a cluster of blue flowers blooming in the dark.

This middle school girl possessed an aura capable of overwhelming me on presence alone. Though perhaps I was the only one who felt that way. The fist I had instinctively clenched drew my attention to the keys in my palm.

Had the car keys I'd forgotten to put away somehow foreseen the future?

"It's late. I'll drive you home."

"Are you sure?"

Without offering a polite "No, that's all right," she simply asked back as if testing my resolve.

Is it really all right? I found myself asking myself. It was just a ride home—what was I so apprehensive about?

"...It's dangerous outside at this hour."

Tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear, I spoke, and Chitaira Kai readily accepted the offer. "Well then, if you don't mind." I had pegged her as the kind of girl who would flatly refuse with a 'don't bother,' so it took me by surprise.

Honestly, if she had turned me down twice, I was fully planning to say goodbye and see her out.

I turned back to give my daughter a heads-up.

"Go ahead and eat dinner with your father without me."

"Aww, but I wanna wait for you."

"It's probably going to take a while."

Yes, as far as I knew, the Chitaira home was quite a distance from here. If she were to walk, the night would only deepen into an hour even less suitable for a junior high student. ...Why had a girl living so far away been the one to deliver handouts to my daughter in the first place? It wasn't as though my daughter lacked other friends. Not to toot my own horn, but she had a bright personality and a thriving social circle. In that regard, I figured she took after my husband's finest traits. As for me... due to certain circumstances, my own school days had been rather barren of friends.

Setting that aside, I poked my head into the living room to let my husband know. He was busy playing with our dog, Maron.

"I'm going to drive our daughter's friend home. It's getting late."

"Oh, really? Sounds rough, Mama. Safe travels! And welcome home, by the way."

"Mm, good to be home."

Throughout our exchange, Maron remained glued to my husband's side. Par for the course.

Having passed along the message, I returned to the front door to find Chitaira Kai already waiting, shod in those unfamiliar shoes. Perhaps partly because the entryway sat a step down from the corridor, she looked even tinier. She resembled a fifth grader swimming in a school uniform.

Slipping back into the shoes I had only just taken off, I forced my switched-off internal engine back on through sheer willpower. You can't let your guard down when you're behind the wheel. I had to bite back the urge to groan about how exhausted I was.

"I'm sorry. Right when you were about to spend quality time with your family."

Once we reached the garage, she offered that surprisingly considerate remark. But was the fact that it felt entirely skin-deep a flaw in my own character? Or was it thanks to Chitaira Kai's voice, which seemed to dissolve into nothing before any deep emotion could ever be scooped from it? "Don't worry about it," I replied, glancing up at the night sky before opening the car door.

What was that pang of heartache that always struck whenever I looked up at nighttime clouds? A frantic sense of being left behind, coupled with an unfamiliar nostalgia even while standing in my own hometown. Perhaps something handed down through blood was crying out to me.

Tonight, those clouds drifted across the sky, occasionally obscuring the moon in a hazy veil.

"Clouds over the moon."

Looking up at the sky just as I was, Chitaira Kai murmured.

"Isn't that the saying?"

"...On an exam, that would be a textbook answer."

TL Note: The phrase “Tsuki ni murakumo” (月に叢雲) references the proverb “Tsuki ni murakumo, hana ni kaze” (clouds veil the moon, winds scatter the flowers), an idiom meaning that perfection and good fortune are invariably met with obstacles or bad luck.

She hardly seemed like a girl who genuinely needed my daughter to tutor her.

Watching the moonlight vanish entirely behind the clouds, the two of us got into the car. I had virtually no memory of ever letting anyone outside my family ride in this vehicle. Before pulling out, I lifted my gaze and our eyes met in the rearview mirror; my suppressed turmoil came perilously close to erupting beyond all control.

Enveloped in the gloom of the back seat, those eyes stood out even more vividly, shining through the dark.

As if born from a ghost story, they gently parted the shadows, casting a faint, eerie glow.

"Onee-san."

"...Are you talking to me?"

I faltered, unused to being addressed like that.

"I couldn't think of anything else to call you."

"Wouldn't Amamiya-san be fine?"

"Then that would overlap with my friend."

Would it really be such a problem if they overlapped? I almost tilted my head in confusion. Regardless, I put the car in gear and drove forward.

"Well, whatever works for you."

"Then for now, I'll stick with Onee-san."

Her fussing over such trivial specifics drew a wry smile from me.

"Your eyes look like they'd rather call me 'Obaa-san,' though."

"Not at all."

"Well, I am an Obaa-san, to be fair."

As we pulled away from the house, the car's engine gave a shudder of apparent discontent. That slight rumble—almost like a protest against after-hours overtime—quickly smoothed out, and I felt grateful that the car had settled back into its role just as I had switched myself back on.

"So... an Obaa-san, huh..."

"Did you say something?"

"You seem really smart, Onee-san."

We definitely weren't talking about that. I had clearly caught the "Ba" in "Obaa-san."

"I like refined beauties."

Though our eyes were not meeting, a spark of yellow-green flickered in my chest.

It took some time to watch that glimmer fade away.

Receiving such unreserved praise only unsettled me. A refined beauty? Even my husband never put it so bluntly.

"...Thanks."

It was difficult to gauge just what degree of warmth to inject into my response. Honestly speaking, your daughter's friend was pretty much a total stranger.

Yet only now did it occur to me: I had been driving under the assumption that she lived in that grand manor without ever actually asking. What if she belonged to another household that merely shared the same surname? After merging onto the main thoroughfare, I finally decided to confirm.

"Your house... is it that Chitaira—"

"The pointlessly massive house, yes. Do you know the way?"

"I know where it is, but..."

Having never driven there from my home, I could hardly claim to know the precise route. We might end up taking a bit of a detour. The night traffic on the main avenue was even denser than during the day, slowing our progress to a crawl. The tourist-oriented shops lining the street were shuttering for the night one after another, adding a touch of desolation to the scenery.

"It's this late—doesn't anyone from your family try to contact you?"

"I don't have a phone."

"Oh... That's unusual nowadays."

Given how prominent the family was, perhaps they had strict philosophies about upbringing?

"Besides..."

Chitaira Kai started to say something more, only to hold her tongue halfway through.

"Besides...?"

Our eyes remained locked through the rearview mirror. As my heart fluttered with unease, I waited in silence, until—

"There are a lot of people in that house, but none of them are family."

Her voice tinged with quiet resignation, Chitaira Kai made her confession.

"There's nothing in that house but rotten scumbags."

"Rot... ten...?"

It was such violently hostile phrasing, like abruptly hurling a ball of mud against a wall. Because her tone hadn't changed in the slightest, the sheer brutality of her word choice stood out like a suddenly brandished weapon.

It was an expression I had never once uttered, even in my own head.

"I don't think it's right to speak that way."

I had no choice but to play the sensible adult. What else could I possibly say when I knew nothing of her circumstances?

Perhaps her relationship with her family wasn't on good terms.

"It can't be helped when it's the truth. And I'm one of them, too."

Watching her through the rearview mirror, Chitaira Kai smiled with her eyes closed. In that face, those slender shoulders, those painfully frail legs, I could find neither rot nor depravity. She was so frail. One couldn't help but imagine a fragility so tender that touching her would require cradling her gently, lest she shatter to pieces. Not that I would ever touch her, of course.

"You'd be better off thinking of our household as having nothing to do with you, Onee-san. Nothing good ever comes from getting mixed up with us."

"...Even if you say that..."

I was driving toward that very house right now. Carrying a child from that household in my car. And to top it off, she was my daughter's friend.

It seemed impossible to remain completely uninvolved.

Yes, I had already gotten involved.

With the Chitairas. With Chitaira Kai.

Just as countless roads fed into this main thoroughfare, sweeping people along in their flow.

After driving a distance that would leave anyone utterly exhausted if they attempted it on a midnight stroll, the massive perimeter wall of the manor and the peak of its absurdly grandiose gate faintly came into view. "Right here is fine," Chitaira Kai requested, asking me to stop the car. Feeling a bit like a taxi driver, I pulled over to the curb. If she'd been someone I knew better, I might have teased her like an actual passenger: "Will this do for you, miss?"

"Thank you very much."

The faint movement of her lips produced a voice like light snowfall, melting away so quickly that I struggled to catch the sound.

"You're welcome. Next time, try to head home earlier..."

"Oh. Can I come over again?"

Chitaira Kai spoke in a tone of mild surprise, almost as if trying to pin me down to a promise. The way she made it sound as though I harbored some lingering hesitation was what actually gave me pause. It wasn't as if I had any strange feelings toward this girl.

Though that was a lie.

"As long as you're my daughter's friend, there shouldn't be any problem, should there?"

"Yes. We became friends yesterday."

"...Well, relationships aren't measured by time."

Some people cut ties over a single incident. And the reverse was just as true.

My husband and I had spent a long time together, but that duration alone was no guarantee.

Chitaira Kai lifted herself out of the passenger seat, crouching half-raised as she peered intently in my direction. Her gaze wasn't fixed on my face, but aimed deeper into the footwell. Specifically, at my legs.

"...What is it?"

I drew back my shoulders, asking in a wary tone.

"Stockings look really nice on someone with pretty legs, don't you think?"

"Huh?"

"It's erotic."

"...Excuse me?"

"Good night."

Reeling off only what she wanted to say in brisk succession, Chitaira Kai climbed out of the car and walked away.

She hadn't even given me a chance to say good night in return.

Stunned, I looked down at my own two legs resting politely in the driver's seat. I started to retrace Chitaira Kai's words in my mind, only to shake my head.

"What was that about?"

Where on earth did that vulgar remark come from out of the blue?

At that age... Yes, considering she was fourteen, being tossed about by a growing ego and changing body meant that acting on wild, torrential impulses wasn't entirely unnatural... probably. Most likely. My own daughter was the very definition of carefree, yet beneath the surface, the threads of adolescence were bound to be tangled in bizarre, complex knots... or so I imagined.

Chitaira Kai had her own share of things to deal with... no doubt.

Chitaira Kai. A petite silhouette walking toward the far side of that fortress-like wall. Lingering beneath the shadow of the building, she had an ephemeral fragility, as though she might be swallowed whole and vanish into thin air. Yet tucked away inside that frailty was something absolute.

Left alone, I found myself turning over those eyes—those very eyes—in my mind again and again.

Like intrusive images cutting between saved photographs, they rose to the surface of my memory, unbidden, time after time.

"...What unpleasant eyes."

Though spoken almost feigningly, it was a genuine truth from my heart. Those eyes cast a dark shadow over me.

Even when I rested my forehead against the steering wheel and looked down, I couldn't escape the afterimage burned in yellow-green. As if I had stared straight into the sun, those two stars refused to fade from my sight. I had never experienced anything like this before.

They were like a swamp of deep, viscous color, threatening to pull me under if I stared too long.

And in the depths beneath, as though I might recall something once submerged, anxiety, dread, and the unknown swirled in a dizzying eddy.

Those eyes could be a swamp, or they could be stars. Whether I looked up to the heavens or cast my eyes to the ground, their light never went out.

That overwhelming radiance was fate, and it was a natural enemy. ...Wait, fate? Even as I questioned such an exaggerated description, there were feelings I simply couldn't push away. A contradiction was taking shape within me—drawn in while trembling in fear. I stood bewildered, gazing deep into my heart at the strange coexistence of forces pulling together and tearing apart.

That color. That presence.

I couldn't deny the part of my heart that found them beautiful.

I yearned to peek at my own reflection in those eyes. Yet I was trying to look away.

I was terrified of confirming what kind of face I was making.

After that, Chitaira Kai began dropping by our house quite often... or so it seemed. My daughter would report it to me whenever she visited. Since she had always taken her leave by the time I returned home, we never crossed paths. It was part of my daughter's circle of friends, so it had nothing to do with me directly, yet hearing that she had come always left a slight prickle in my mind. I couldn't understand what bothered me so much about it.

Whenever Chitaira Kai came up in my daughter's dinner table chatter, a faint stir rattled my chest. Almost like a premonition—as if I were sensing something to come.

"Chitaira-san always skips PE class and disappears somewhere."

"Oh...?"

"Chitaira..."

My husband reacted to the name, pausing his chopsticks even though he didn't butt in.

"So the other day I asked her what she does, and she said she's just reading books in the library."

Didn't the homeroom teacher or the PE instructor have anything to say about that? Was it simply overlooked because an explanation had been provided beforehand, or perhaps...

Was there some reason why it was more convenient for Chitaira Kai not to participate in PE?

I turned it over in my head, but I couldn't conceive of what that reason could possibly be.

And then I tilted my head, wondering why on earth I had to spend so much time thinking about Chitaira Kai in the first place.

The day following that conversation was a Saturday morning, quietly overflowing with joy. A morning truly full of hope, where simply following the clouds drifting across the blue sky breathed a cool breeze into my spirit. By Sunday, the brilliance of that hope would start to cloud over, and once night fell, it would sink beyond the horizon just like the sun. Hope was such a fleeting thing.

After breakfast, my husband and I watered the garden plants and swept the front of the house. Living near the sea meant that buildings and greenery inevitably took a beating from the wind-borne sea spray. Weeks with particularly strong gusts were dreadful; hosing down the surfaces washed away sickening amounts of black, iron-laden dirt, making cleanup an ordeal.

"Still, seeing the plants out front perk up makes yours truly a happy man."

My husband seemed to find joy in everything, and I often felt there was much I ought to learn from him. Whether I was actually learning anything was another question entirely.

"If you could wash the car while you're at it, I'd be pretty happy too, you know."

"See, the thing about cars is, even when you wash them, it's hard to tell if they've perked up or not."

I couldn't tell right away with plants either, but perhaps my husband saw something I didn't.

I wiped down the car that virtually no one drove except me, peering at it from the front. ...Does it look happy?

"Once we're done, how about going on a date, Mama?"

"If you call taking a walk to the front of your workplace a date, sure."

Saturday wasn't a day off for my husband. As for me, I decided to take care of the grocery shopping while tagging along on his walk.

After letting our daughter know we were heading out—she was still puttering around the house in her pajamas—I joined my husband on the street out front. Maron tagged along right behind him, just like always. Whenever my husband left for work, Maron would follow him all the way to the onigiri shop, and when his shift ended, the two of them would walk back home together. Our pet dog had clearly found his place by my husband's side. Had I witnessed that before we married, I might have felt a twinge of jealousy toward Maron.

In front of the supermarket on the main avenue, where a red torii gate could be seen in the distance, my husband stood by with Maron.

Or rather, he was about to, but first headed toward the area beside the entrance as if he had one more thing to do.

"Let me push the shopping cart for just five seconds."

"Yes, yes."

Tucking his left hand away and pushing the cart with only his right, my husband gazed off into the distance with wistful eyes.

"Let's ride, Daigoro!"

"Where is DAIGORO?"

"In each and every one of our hearts..."

"Ah... So that's where you were, Daigoro..."

TL Note: A reference to the classic samurai series Lone Wolf and Cub. The main character wanders feudal Japan pushing his infant son, Daigoro, around in an armored wooden baby cart. Pushing any cart with one hand and dramatically yelling "Let's ride, Daigoro!" is a timeless dad joke in Japan.

Having achieved complete understanding, I left my husband and Maron behind to head into the supermarket on my own. I didn't particularly need them to wait for me, but since they were there, I gave a little wave. My husband waved back, but Maron merely stared at me with round, bead-like eyes.

"An unchanging classic, or... a complete lack of progress."

Years ago, he'd done the exact same thing in front of our daughter's stroller.

Glancing over the shopping list my husband had handed me before our walk, I placed the necessary items into my basket. Since my husband handled virtually all the cooking, tracking and restocking the refrigerator was left entirely up to him. He loved to cook, and both our daughter and I adored his meals, but with both of us working, I occasionally felt guilty that the division of household chores leaned so heavily on him. He always insisted that it was all good exercise and that he did it because he enjoyed it. He even claimed that I seemed to have more fun working than doing housework, so that made it all right. Wasn't he almost too wonderful of a person, husband of mine though he was?

After completing the shopping exactly according to the memo, I stepped outside to find my husband crouching down to Maron's eye level, looking up as I approached.

"Welcome back."

Was getting down to eye level with Maron like that the secret to being adored? Even so, it was all too easy to imagine that if I crouched down the same way, Maron would just blink blankly and stare up at me. He never barked at me or our daughter, but he didn't pay us much attention either.

"I'm back. Is Daigoro still in your heart?"

"Indeed. Maron and I were contemplating the demonic path of the underworld."

"You really love that stuff, don't you?"

I smiled at my husband's easily transparent obsession, stemming from the historical dramas he'd been watching lately. As if he couldn't wait for my husband to stand up, Maron kicked off the pavement with a brisk rhythm, frolicking with delight.

"Well, I am an easily influenced guy."

He suddenly reached a moment of self-enlightenment as we walked. As if to encompass the very stroll we were taking, my husband added:

"Seeing you bustling away at work made me think I ought to do something besides living off rental income, after all."

"And that led to a onigiri shop?"

"From watching you, yeah."

How did looking at me connect to onigiri? Had my head taken on a triangular shape while I was working?

"I love how smart you are, so it would've been great if some of that rubbed off on me too."

When someone praised me so openly, it was hard to take it at face value.

If I acknowledged that I was smart, that in itself felt like the dumbest thing I could say.

...Refined. Intelligent. Having lived this long, I had some degree of self-awareness that my face tended to elicit those kinds of remarks. Personally, I found both claims rather doubtful.

Not once had I ever looked at my face in the mirror and sensed any trace of intellect.

"Am I really smart...?"

"You didn't make a single mistake on the supermarket errand today, did you?"

"I feel like that came full circle into an insult."

"Hey, I mess up from time to time," my husband said with a chuckle down at Maron, who was wandering around his feet. Since his bar for intelligence wasn't particularly high, I was relieved that I could at least meet his expectations.

Not that I never made mistakes myself.

"Oh, and of course, how gorgeous you are is top-tier too."

"Thank you. I'm looking forward to seeing how old I'll be when you finally stop saying that."

It wasn't that my husband lacked affection, but as was only natural, those moments of romantic communication had grown fewer compared to our younger days when we were head over heels in love. The days of whispering tender devotions and being recklessly infatuated with one another were in the distant past. Even if it was an inevitable part of growing older, looking up at the branches stretching from a great trunk as they began to wither was a lonely sight.

"Come on, that won't change even when you turn one hundred twenty."

"Am I going to live that long?"

"I'm dreaming of spending happy days with our family until Final Fantasy CL comes out!"

"I guess I'll have to go look for mermaid flesh, then..."

These lighthearted exchanges with my husband were comforting. Part of it was that it was my day off, but he was on his way to work right now; seeing how thoroughly cheerful he was filled me with quiet admiration for his spirit.

As we turned the corner by the bank and the railroad crossing came into view in the distance, I brought up a topic.

"Come to think of it, do you know the Chitairas?"

"Chit-oo-eera."

"Huh?"

I blinked in surprise at how remarkably smooth his lips and tongue rolled over the syllables.

"That's how you actually pronounce it. They just adapted it to sound Japanese."

"Is that so?"

My husband let out a guilty groan and averted his eyes.

"Sorry. I didn't think you'd actually believe me..."

"May I get mad at you?"

"Following proper protocol before getting angry is a true virtue of yours."

My husband scooped Maron up into his arms, vigorously rustling his fur before starting over.

"Of course I know them. You mean the folks with that mansion so big it deserves about ten 'stupids' in front of huge, right?"

"That's the one."

"Actually, ten might not even be enough."

"That much?"

"At dinner yesterday, I was really startled when our daughter brought up the Chitaira name."

"Apparently they're friends, and she comes over quite often—that Chitaira girl."

"Seriously?"

My husband's face twisted with a bitter grimace he rarely showed the family.

"You look like you hate the idea."

"It's not that I hate it, but... well, all sorts of rumors reach my ears about the Chit-oo-eeras."

His good nature merely kept him from outright saying he hated it, but his attitude made his disapproval unmistakable. And for a man as easygoing as my husband, that was exceptionally rare. Living in the same town, I had no idea what baggage the Chitaira name carried.

"What kind of rumors?"

"Mmm..."

My husband's mouth twisted, and as if chiming in, Maron let out a cute little growl in his arms—Grrr.

"It's hard to explain because it's the kind of thing you hesitate to even say out loud."

"You make it sound pretty scary."

"Calling them vulgar rumors would be putting it nicely. Half of it sounds doubtful—actually, the doubtful part definitely outweighs the rest. They're all things that seem utterly impossible in a modern, law-abiding society."

A sharp edge peeked through my husband's wry smile as he spoke. He gave off an air of refusing to even lay those rumors out between us. Without delving into specifics, my husband somehow managed to sum up his thoughts on that family:

"To put it simply, they're people you'd be far better off having nothing to do with, I suppose."

"Hmm..."

Because my husband spoke so roundabout out of consideration, his warning failed to ring any alarm bells for me at the time.

Experiencing the truth behind those rumors firsthand would come a little later, but in truth, I wished I could have spent my entire life in blissful ignorance. Yet from the very day Chitaira Kai stepped foot into our home, any such wish had undoubtedly become impossible to fulfill.

"Did you meet that friend of hers?"

"A bit. She came over to study the other day, remember?"

"I never really paid much attention to our daughter's friends. I'm usually making dinner, after all. How was she?"

"How was she...?"

Even if he asked me to appraise our daughter's friend like that, it was hard to put into words.

Through my eyes, Chitaira Kai was...

Simply a girl whose fathomless eyes threatened to steal my heart away.

"We didn't talk much, but she seemed quiet and calm... Just a normal kid, I think."

It was eerie how completely my throat and voice ignored the words etched into my mind.

"Normal, huh...?"

"Yeah. At least, she didn't seem like the kind of child who'd invite nasty rumors..."

The turmoil churning within me was so completely out of sync with my calm tone that it felt as if I were merely watching a stranger speak. My awareness stalled somewhere midway through my body. Whenever I tried to peer at whatever lurked in the back of my mind, my vision flashed stark white and spun wildly, threatening to make me lose my grip entirely. That jarring disconnect made me feel unbearably sick, so I took slow, deep breaths, careful not to let my husband notice. After repeating that several times, the outline from the hinge of my jaw down to my chin finally clicked back into alignment with my heart, and my first sensation was sheer relief at having caught up with myself.

What was that dissociation just now?

"It's... pretty tough for parents to say anything to their kids' friends, isn't it?"

My husband sighed right on cue, giving me the perfect chance to piggyback off his remark and check the connection between my brain and mouth.

"It really is."

It worked. All right. Let's not panic and just think about our daughter.

Our daughter was her own person. Even as her parents, we couldn't just casually butt into her personal relationships.

She didn't seem bothered by it in the least, but in a closed environment like a school, rumors like that were bound to fly around, leaving someone ostracized. It might be prejudice on my part, but Chitaira Kai herself hardly struck me as the type to navigate social circles with a sunny smile.

In the meantime, we crossed the railroad tracks, continued along the gentle slope, and arrived at my husband's workplace. The pure white of the flowers arranged in a vase on the outdoor table was dazzling, seeming to stand apart from the jumble of colors in the surrounding scenery.

According to him, this onigiri shop was his primary occupation. Originally, he had just been the landlord of the apartment building right behind it. The rental income alone had been a substantial contribution, but just as he'd mentioned earlier, seeing me had inspired him to take the plunge and run the onigiri shop as well. What on earth I had to do with onigiri was completely beyond me.

"Well then, have a good day at work."

"Will do—!"

Naturally, Marron couldn't come inside the shop, so once tied up outside, he headed for his usual spot. Except during the extremes of winter and summer, he would curl up quietly beside the outdoor chairs and sleep while waiting for my husband. While he showed affection to no one other than my husband, he was well-behaved and never barked, making him quite popular with passersbys.

Having finished our walk and shopping, I turned back toward home alone. Without someone to talk to, the way back felt a little longer than the way there. Perhaps that contrast was the very feeling of happiness—a thought that occurred to me precisely because I was on my own.

Crossing the railroad tracks once again, I emerged onto the main avenue and spotted a rickshaw rolling by. It was a familiar sight in this tourist town, and the blonde woman pulling it was just another fixture of the usual landscape. She was a friendly soul who called out to everyone without hesitation, and she had once even pitched a rickshaw date to me and my husband during one of our walks. After agonizing over whether to take the ride, my husband had ultimately declined, worrying that sitting still would bore Marron.

As the blonde woman and her rickshaw passed me, I watched the tips of her tied-back hair flutter in the breeze. My gaze drifted along with it, and as if guided forward by some unseen hand, my eyes caught sight of something that made a soft "Ah" slip past my lips.

"Ah."

The middle school girl crossing the pedestrian light just diagonally behind me let out the exact same reaction.

Speak of the devil, and a shadow will fall they say. Or something like that.

It was Chitaira Kai.

Having crossed the sidewalk, she walked straight toward me without once breaking eye contact. Why? With the wind visibly tossing her hair, Chitaira Kai came to a halt right in front of me. And then, she fixed me with those eyes.

People, town, scenery, sky, noise, school uniform.

Pupils that refused to blend into anything else, searing pure, primary colors into my soul.

Just like the white flowers in front of the shop, she stood in complete isolation from the rest of the world.

"Good morning."

First things first, I greeted her. But having just been talking about her and the rumors surrounding her household moments ago, I felt a slight twinge of awkwardness. I never imagined running into her—not on a day like this, at an hour like this, in a place like this.

Ever since learning of Chitaira Kai's existence, it felt like the frequency of running into her had skyrocketed... Or was that just my imagination?

The complete opposite of how you never run into old friends who have naturally drifted from your thoughts.

Perhaps the convergence of two people's vague awareness is what they call destiny. ...Wait, what even is destiny anyway?

"Good morning. ...Ah."

Chitaira Kai tapped a finger against her cheek, as if finally realizing something.

"I thought something felt off. You're not wearing a suit."

"Oh, well... yeah. It's Saturday, after all."

I answered while lightly pinching the fabric at my shoulder. Despite it being the weekend, she was dressed in her school uniform.

I could feel her shameless gaze sweeping over me. To the point where I hesitated, wondering if I should say something.

Before long, she muttered while looking down at the pavement.

"Your legs are much hotter in pantyhose, though."

"Huh?"

"That's just the honest opinion of a fourteen-year-old, so please don't take it to heart."

"No, stop saying things like that..."

I scolded her for the vulgar remark. It was beyond rude to say that right to my face. ...Come to think of it, she said something like that the other day too.

What was with this girl? Her true thoughts were entirely inscrutable, making it impossible to feel at ease around her.

"Are you..." While searching for something to say, a plausible reason struck me. "...headed to club activities, Chitaira-san?"

"Yes. I dedicate my youth to school clubs on a daily basis."

She answered so cheerfully without a second's hesitation that it reeked of an outright lie.

"I see... Well, good luck."

When I offered that safe response, Chitaira Kai walked away with a gentle smile that was unmistakably fake.

I stood there blankly watching her small back toddle away... Wait, hold on.

"Wait, hold on."

Chitaira Kai turned around at the sound of my voice. Her eyes seemed to ask if I needed something, but I had no real business with her.

And yet.

"Um, you're heading in the complete opposite direction of the school."

I ended up calling out to her on impulse. If she had club activities, she would normally be going to school. If she went to the same school as my daughter, she should have walked straight along this main avenue toward the stone torii gate, but she had been heading toward the train station.

"Ah, good point..."

Chitaira Kai pinched a strand of her hair, visibly exasperated by my observation.

"You really pay attention to the details..."

"Did you say something?"

"Club was canceled."

She stated that without an ounce of remorse. Even if she was just my daughter's friend, should I scold her as an adult?

"Why did you lie to me?"

"Because explaining why I'm in uniform on a Saturday was too much trouble..."

Chitaira Kai tilted her head as if wondering what to do with herself, then suddenly fixed her gaze on a single point.

"Would you like to get some soft-serve ice cream with me?"

With her eyes still fixed on the main avenue, she abruptly came out with something baffling.

"Soft-serve... Wait, what?"

As I struggled to make sense of it, Chitaira Kai's profile broke into a faint smile.

"I'm hitting on you."

"...Huh?"

Now I was even further from understanding.

"Sorry for making you cover the difference."

"It's fine, but..."

The Western-style confectionery shop on the main avenue that Kai led me to was a place I passed by every single day, yet had never once visited.

Was that why?

Why I had bought something called a pudding soft-serve ice cream and was sitting together with her on an outdoor bench?

"Soft-serve is surprisingly expensive, isn't it?"

"You only had two hundred yen on you, yet you still had the nerve to..."

I was about to say hit on me, but caught myself and looked away.

"Ask someone out without enough money?"

"I didn't go that far."

I adjusted the bag full of groceries resting beside me on the bench so it wouldn't fall.

Then, I turned my attention back to the pudding soft-serve.

The waffle cone was wrapped in a yellow paper sleeve, holding pale pudding-colored ice cream drizzled with caramel. A biscotti-like biscuit was stuck into the side, making me nod in mild admiration.

"I'll find a way to pay you back next time we meet."

"Don't worry about it. It's my treat."

Find a way to pay me back? ...It was only five hundred yen. What kind of allowance was she on? Her house was an estate so absurdly huge that repeating "stupidly big" ten times wouldn't even begin to cover it—or perhaps prestigious families like that were strictly frugal with money?

Part of the reason I had accepted her invitation was my curiosity about Chitaira Kai's household. My husband hadn't gone into specifics, but I remembered she herself mentioning once that the Chitaira family was full of nothing but inhuman monsters. The one common thread was that neither of them had a single positive thing to say. It sounded like a household entirely beyond my imagination.

Facing the main avenue, the only things in sight were cars and an eclectic mix of pedestrians passing to and fro.

"So, why are you wearing your uniform after all?"

I deliberately pressed her on what she'd claimed was too bothersome to explain. Chitaira Kai kept her eyes fixed on her ice cream and told another lie.

"I like uniforms."

"So you have no intention of telling me the truth."

"Fine, I'll tell you the real reason then. I don't have any other clothes."

She stated it with such complete deadpan delivery that at first, I couldn't wrap my head around just how bizarre that sounded.

"What do you mean?"

"They got burned. The clothes I wore back in elementary school still fit me, too."

"Burned...? Wait, who burned them?"

"Who knows?"

Chitaira Kai tilted her head evasively and took a lick of her ice cream.

"Sweet."

She muttered that simple observation about the soft-serve with a completely straight face.

"So deliiicious. Wheee-hee-hee."

Perhaps feeling obliged because I'd treated her, she put on a half-hearted, utterly hollow display of cheerfulness for my benefit. No, more importantly...

"...You're not joking, are you?"

"Huh...? Obviously I'm lying. How could something like that be true?"

Pinching the biscotti between her fingers, Chitaira Kai eyed me with genuine astonishment.

Looking into those eyes, my soul was shaken to its very core... or rather, setting that near-miss aside.

Hmph. A spark of anger flared up inside me. She had lied again.

"Fine. As soon as I finish this, I'm going home."

I began wolfing down my soft-serve. The chill started to sting my teeth. It was delicious, and each time the rich, refined sweetness slipped down my throat, my cheeks threatened to loosen into a smile, but I forced my expression taut.

"It's a waste if you don't savor it, you know."

"Be quiet."

Shoveling the ice cream into my mouth with single-minded focus, the freezing chill helped steady my nerves.

Deep down, I suspected that what she'd just said might not have been a lie at all. She had passed off the truth as a falsehood. Though if it wasn't a lie, it made even less sense. Burned... What did having your clothes burned even mean? Some kind of ritual? As harassment went, that was far too extreme. Who in the world would commit such an atrocity in the first place?

If it was someone in her household... her parents? Siblings? Whoever it was, it didn't fit my definition of family in the slightest. Of course, one person's definition wasn't necessarily the standard of the world. Even so, a family that burned someone's clothes... felt like something beyond what the vast majority of people could fathom. Peeking over at Kai, I took a bite of the cone. Mingled with the pleasantly melting ice cream, the contrasting textures made for a delightful, delicious treat.

Come to think of it, how long had it been since I last ate soft-serve out on the street?

"Young mom."

Kai suddenly tossed the words in my direction.

"What are you talking about?"

"I was thinking that sitting next to me, that's what you probably look like."

"...Well, I suppose being thought of as young isn't a bad thing."

"So miss, where do you live?"

"You already know where I live."

When she muttered, "Oh, right, I do," with an entirely straight face, a laugh slipped out before I could stop it.

Chatting and laughing over soft-serve with my daughter's friend... The sheer surrealness of this entire situation was beyond me.

"What's your name?"

Chitaira Kai asked while nibbling on the edge of her cone with her front teeth.

"Aren't you being a bit persistent with this pickup routine?"

"The person who raised me taught me to keep pressing forward until the corners of the other person's eyes start twitching."

"Whoever taught you has a pretty extreme idea of when to back off."

The phrase the person who raised me caught my attention. Could she be from a home without parents? Rather than clearing up, my questions about the bizarre Chitaira household and the girl living there snowballed, sweeping up my emotions in their wake. ...And yet, the middle school girl eating soft-serve right before my eyes was undeniably real. And this eighth-grader possessed eyes that were truly singular, unlike anything else in this world.

"Oh, by the way, my name is Chitaira Kai."

"I already know that."

She used her unsolicited introduction as bait to ask, And you?

It wasn't as if my name were something to hide or make a big fuss over, yet I felt a strange reluctance to give it to her so easily. There was an uncanny aura about her... or perhaps it was the way she seemed to be stepping right into my personal space.

With the precarious feeling of two celestial bodies anxiously watching the distance between them shrink, I let my name slip from my lips.

"Amamiya. Setsu."

"Setsu?"

"Written with the character for snow, but read Setsu."

Someone once told me it had an old-fashioned ring to it. I felt the same way myself.

"Yuki... Snow, huh."

Chitaira Kai murmured, turning her free hand palm up.

It was as if she were catching imaginary flakes of snow that weren't even falling.

"People probably misread it all the time, don't they?"

"...Pretty much."

That was all she had to say about my name, immediately dropping her gaze back to her ice cream.

"This soft-serve really is delicious."

"It is."

With Chitaira Kai's tiny mouth, it looked as though the ice cream would melt before she could finish it.

Having finished first, I found myself waiting beside her in silence for some reason while she finished hers. Without even understanding why I was waiting, buoyed by the lingering sweetness of the soft-serve, I was in a surprisingly good mood. It was rare to find the air along the busy main road refreshing, but right now... it felt delightfully cool.

The sense of lightness, as if I had set down my burdens even for a moment, felt wonderfully comforting.

Once we finished, a kind shop clerk came by to collect the paper wrappers. Wiping a smudge of melted soft-serve from my finger, I looked at Chitaira Kai. In the end, I hadn't been able to ask her directly about her family. The only thing I had learned was what that soft-serve tasted like.

Maybe the next time I went out with my family, we could all have some together.

"Well, see you later."

"Thank you very much, Yuki-san."

"Sure... Wait, what?"

I had intended to give a light parting nod, but the unexpected name tacked onto the end made my head snap right back up. Without correcting herself in the slightest, Chitaira Kai simply kept that faint smile on her lips and walked away toward the station.

She had deliberately misread my name, and she was smiling about it.

"Oh? Is that so? Really now."

With every syllable that left my mouth, I felt as though steam were whistling out of my ears. The twitch in the corner of my eye was surely my imagination. Reminding myself that she was only fourteen, I resolved to handle this like a mature adult.

"Rotten brat."

Promptly revoking the appraisal I had given my husband earlier, I decided to head home.

My husband said I was a smart person. He used to say that back in the day, too.

Looking back on his affection, there was never any falsehood in it. If so, then perhaps I really was an intelligent person. Perhaps that was what had attracted him to me. Perhaps that was what they called charm.

And if that was the kind of man he was, then if I were to become a complete fool, perhaps he would no longer see anything in me.

To find the answer to that question, I would still need a little more time.

Back home, as I was unpacking the groceries from the supermarket in the kitchen, my daughter came in to get some tea.

"Whoa, napa cabbage!"

"Did that really warrant getting so excited?" I asked.

"Sorry, I saw the napa cabbage and I just couldn't help myself."

In the strangest moments, I was reminded of just how thick her father's blood ran in her. She opened the fridge and heartily gulped down a glass of barley tea.

"Hmm..."

Just as she was about to walk away, my daughter abruptly spun around.

"Mom, you ate something on your way home, didn't you?"

I had the distinct illusion of a cold drop of sweat trickling down over my trembling eyelid.

"I smell something sweet."

"Huh... That's funny. Our dog is out for a walk right now."

Another creature with a razor-sharp nose had made an appearance. She leaned right up to my chest, sniffing away inquisitively.

"Maron Number Two, settle down," I said.

"This is... what kind of treat is this? Definitely not cookies. Hmm... pudding-ish?"

Was this girl undergoing police dog training at school or something? Resigning myself to defeat, I came clean.

"Just a little pudding soft-serve."

"Oh, from that shop on the avenue? Lucky!"

"I happened to walk past, and the craving just hit me."

For some reason, I ended up hiding the fact that I'd eaten it with her friend. No, my intention was simply to skip over it because explaining would only lead to a barrage of "Why were you together?" which sounded exhausting to deal with. Even so, it left an uncomfortable taste in my mouth, as if I were harboring some illicit secret. And if Chitaira Kai were to mention it at school after the weekend... A wave of lethargy washed over me just imagining how tedious that would be.

"You ought to get in the mood for it when I'm around!"

"Funny how the timing never seems to work out... Well, it's not quite the same, but do you want to go out for lunch instead?"

Treating my daughter's friend while giving my own daughter nothing felt... bizarre. I had made the offer purely to assuage that nagging prick of guilt, but she took it at face value. "Sounds great!" she cheered, her cheeks softening into a delighted smile.

"What do you feel like having? Decide before I finish putting these groceries away. And nothing too pricey, all right?"

"Hmm, today I'm feeling prime sirloin beef cutlet."

"Udon it is," I countered instantly.

"You could have at least pretended to agonize over it until you finished unpacking!"

Tucking the peeled shrimp into the freezer, I checked the clock. I might have declared udon, but...

There was a famous shop not far away, but being well-known in this tourist town carried serious weight. A line stretching down the street ten or twenty minutes before opening was par for the course, and on a weekend, even more so. The clock told me that opening time had already come and gone.

"Let's give up on udon."

"And here I was, already boiling the noodles in my head!" she groaned.

"Is Chinese okay?"

"XO sauce!"

TL Note: In the original Japanese, she shouts "Ekkusuo-jan!" (えっくすおーじゃん), a food pun with a double meaning:

XO sauce (XO醬): Jan (醬) is the kanji for savory Chinese sauces/pastes (as in doubanjiang or tianmianjiang).

Slang particle (-じゃん): A casual sentence-ender meaning "Right?!" or "Hell yeah!"

She is simultaneously naming a staple high-end Chinese condiment and hyping up the food choice.

Apparently, that meant she was on board. Whenever I managed to decipher my daughter's colorful slang, I couldn't help tilting my head, wondering how on earth I understood it. Her speech was full of expressions that existed nowhere in the dictionary I had spent a lifetime building. If interacting with my daughter was adding pages to that dictionary of life, then that was a wonderfully happy thing.

And with that, I left the house with my daughter. Heading back out onto the main avenue, we made our way toward the shopping district.

Passing in front of the greengrocer, we slipped around to the alley directly behind the pastry shop. Glancing at the name on the signboard framed by potted plants, I wondered if we'd be in luck today as we stepped inside. It wasn't a very large establishment, so lunch hours were often booked solid with reservations.

Fortunately, they still had tables available today, and we were guided to a seat in the back. As a rule, the restaurant offered three rotating lunch specials. The prices varied slightly depending on the main dish, but I opted for the salt-stir-fried squid while my daughter chose the chili shrimp. The tea brought over as we ordered carried the scent of jasmine. It was piping hot, but breathing in that soothing aroma felt wonderfully refreshing.

As we waited, my eyes softened into a warm, gentle gaze as I watched my daughter sitting across from me.

"Was it bad that I ordered the chili shrimp—the priciest thing on the lunch menu?" she asked.

"Very bad."

My shoulders shook with a laugh at the comically exaggerated shock on her face, her jaw dropping wide enough to make me worry she might dislocate it.

"I was just thinking about how much you've grown."

In my day-to-day mind, I still pictured her as a four- or five-year-old running up to cling to my legs, but looking at her like this now, fourteen was already nearly half an adult. Her childish features were fracturing, a mature young woman peeking out from beneath the surface. Overlapping the memory of that little girl who used to tackle me in a hug with the sight before me, something entirely different from a sigh slipped past my lips, completely emptying my lungs.

"No wonder I'm getting so old."

It felt like giving a gentle pat on the shoulder to my nearly forty-year-old self. Mingled within that gesture were a faint resignation toward aging, a quiet sigh, and a profound, grounding weight of reality. It wasn't a surging sensation like joy; rather, the passage of time I had walked through was seeping into my very bones. A sense of accomplishment—perhaps that was the closest phrase for it.

I wasn't quite at that age yet, and yet I felt like settling into old age and declaring my retirement from the world.

"You know, Mom, my friend told me the other day that you're super pretty."

"...Well, aren't I flattered," I mumbled.

I deflected the comment, doing my best not to let that familiar phrase stir up any ripples across my heart.

"I'm always thinking about how young you look, too."

"Thank you. Are you angling for a pudding soft-serve on the way back?"

"You're so young I keep catching myself thinking you're in my grade!"

"Oh, hush."

Trading pleasant banter with my daughter under the drowsy touch of the sunlight felt utterly comforting.

Before long, the mingled aromas of the main dishes, soup, and steaming white rice reached our table, richly whetting my appetite.

"Let's swap a little squid and shrimp."

"All right, all right."

We shared portions of our respective dishes onto each other's plates. Watching that innocent, straightforward trade...

If it were Chitaira Kai, she'd probably say it was shrimp with a deadpan face while casually dumping a vegetable onto my plate, I caught myself thinking.

The hand keeping time came to a heavy halt, bore witness to something, and then moved forward again as if nothing had happened.

Maintaining the pretense that it was advancing just as it always had, the hand continued to tick.

On that day, too, the rain was falling.

It must have been roughly a month after I first met Chitaira Kai.

Listening to the soft patter of rain against my car, I drove along the nighttime road. During this commute home, the sensation of the day's fatigue gradually cooling into a comfortable temperature against my skin wasn't unpleasant at all. To put it simply, the tension wound up tight at work was finally breathing a sigh of relief.

Turning over plans in my head for what to do between getting home, having dinner, and going to bed might have been the moment I felt truly free. In reality, by the time I took off my makeup, soaked in the bath, did my skincare routine, and finished the rest of the daily chores, exhaustion would hit so hard that I barely had any leisure time to speak of—yet my heart fluttered with anticipation all the same.

It was on an evening just like that, returning home as I always did, when it happened.

"Welcome home..."

Just as I went to unlock the front door, my daughter greeted me—an unusual occurrence in itself, made stranger by the hushed whisper of her voice.

"I'm home. What is it?" I asked.

"Come here for a second."

She beckoned to me from a low crouch. Tilting my head in confusion, I slipped off my shoes, hung up my car keys, and followed her. Peeking into the room where she led me, words momentarily caught in my throat.

Chitaira Kai was lying stretched out in my daughter's room.

"She looked completely exhausted all day at school today."

My daughter whispered the situation to me under her breath.

"She fell asleep while we were studying, so I gently, ever so gently rolled her onto her side and draped a towel blanket over her."

"I see..."

It was our first run-in under this roof since I had warned her to head home early. Looking down at the faint rise and fall of Chitaira Kai's shoulders, I glanced at my daughter, realizing we couldn't simply let her keep sleeping here. My daughter only offered a sheepish grin, and I immediately caught on to her plan—she'd intended for me to drive her friend home the moment I returned. Thinking there was no helping it, I stepped forward to wake her, but as if hypersensitively detecting the slight vibration and presence, Chitaira Kai's eyelids lifted.

The moment she awakened, she froze for a split second before her eyes went wide and she sprang upright. It was an uncanny, unnatural reaction—like a wild animal bounding back in sheer terror from something closing in uninvited, retreating all the way to the far wall in a single breath.

Staring wide open, her yellow-green eyes darted frantically from side to side. Her five fingers scraped wildly against the wall, digging in her nails as if scrambling for purchase. It was the spitting image of a cornered beast. As if she alone were not in a warm home, but panicking over having let her guard down in the middle of a perilous forest.

While we stood petrified by her extreme overreaction, Chitaira Kai's pupils finally settled, coming into focus.

"Ah..."

Noticing our stunned reactions, Chitaira Kai twisted her lips in visible discomfort. Glancing down at the kicked-aside towel blanket, she shut her eyes, clutching her left arm protectively against herself.

"I'm sorry... It seems I fell asleep."

"It's totally fine, seriously! Right, Mom?"

My daughter looked to me for backup. While I gave a vague "Well, yes..." in response, Chitaira Kai moved with startling swiftness.

"I'll head home right away," she said.

Practically crushing her scattered stationery and notebooks, she jammed them into her schoolbag and bolted from the room. "You don't need to rush—" my daughter called out, but Chitaira Kai didn't break her stride. My daughter's eyes turned up to me, silently begging for help.

"Hold on,"

Taking my daughter's cue, I called after Chitaira Kai. Hurrying away as if fleeing for her life, she halted and turned back timidly. Whether from panic or unbearable tension, sweat had broken out across her forehead.

Nowhere was there any trace of that smug composure she had used to tease me before.

"...It's late. I'll drive you home."

Grabbing the car keys I had only just put away, I told my husband I was going to drive our guest home, then headed back out to the garage. Hearing that her name was Chitaira Kai, whether out of curiosity or caution toward the surname, he had followed us to the entryway under the guise of seeing her off, openly observing her. At first, he had been visibly taken aback by the color of her eyes.

"Thank you for having me."

As Chitaira Kai bowed to him, my husband waved his hands with an awkward "No, no, not at all," his smile stiffening halfway. Exchanging a glance and a nod with him, I unlocked the car.

"Your husband came out to get a look at me because I'm a Chitaira, didn't he?"

Chitaira Kai remarked as she opened the car door. Since I could hardly confirm it, I kept my mouth shut.

We got in. That was fine, but unlike last time, out of the corner of my eye I saw Chitaira Kai climb into the passenger seat, and I struggled to keep my face neutral. Why sit next to me? A sense of discomfort prickled at me, but I couldn't think of a reason to object.

While getting ready to drive, I stole a glance at her. The sweat that had beaded on her brow had been wiped away, and on the surface, she seemed back to normal. It would be a lie to say her extreme reaction earlier hadn't bothered me, but it felt like territory I had no right intruding upon. To me, she was just my daughter's friend. Setting aside that bizarre attempt at hitting on me, anyway.

Pulling out of the garage, I gave a brief wave to my husband standing at the entryway, and to my daughter who had slipped out beside him at some point. Between the darkness of night and the rain clinging to the glass, I wasn't sure how well they could see me.

"Oh."

Just as we left the house and started down the road, Chitaira Kai suddenly let out a small gasp. But she didn't follow up on it, simply sitting still with her school bag clutched in her arms.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

"No..."

"Did you forget something?"

Guessing from her reaction, I pressed gently, and Chitaira Kai gave in.

"I forgot my umbrella."

"Ah..."

I recalled the jet-black umbrella she had held when she first visited our home. With that umbrella as her backdrop, Chitaira Kai's silhouette—cast in hues of deep, shadowy blue—evoked a dense, overgrown forest. Parting those tangled branches revealed those twin yellow-green orbs, murky as a swamp. That image was seared vividly into my memory, resurfacing at every turn.

Dark and ominous, yet strangely beckoning... I was drawn toward the ghastly beauty of that forest.

"I'll have my daughter bring it to school tomorrow."

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

It wasn't as though we had driven too far to turn back, but it was already too late an hour for a middle schooler to be out. For a while after that, neither of us spoke. The hum of the engine ran straight ahead along with the car, and whenever we stopped, the staccato drumming of rain took its place, pattering against my ears.

A glance to the side showed Chitaira Kai's eyelids drooping drowsily once more. Catching her head before it could nod off completely, she gave it a shake, rubbing her eyes as she straightened her posture. She could just sleep until we get there.

I could sense her fierce determination never to let her guard down in front of anyone.

"Did you... stay up late last night?" I asked.

My failure to come up with a decent topic made me acutely aware of the age gap between us.

"...I was watching funny videos the whole time."

Leaning against the window, Chitaira Kai answered without meeting my eyes.

Her tone made no effort to disguise that it was an outright lie.

"What kind do you watch?"

"Just videos of animals living peaceful, idyllic lives."

"Huh..."

No matter what she said, there was no grasping the truth in her voice. Like light snowflakes falling onto a shoulder, the moment you touched them, they melted away, leaving nothing behind. Combined with Chitaira Kai's frail, precarious slender frame, everything about her felt like an illusion.

"You like animals, then?"

"As long as they're not aggressive."

The edge in Chitaira Kai's voice as she answered struck me as far more aggressive than any animal.

That guarded panic when she woke up... had that been the reaction of someone terrified of being attacked?

...Attacked by whom?

"Your eyes..."

Voice slipping before I could stop myself, I abruptly cut off my thoughts. Chitaira Kai tracked my reaction with her gaze, yet didn't press the matter. Instead, as if in retaliation, she called me by a name that wasn't mine.

"Yuki-san."

"...Someone's calling you, Yuki-saaan."

"Yuuuki-san."

She seemed to find it amusing, repeating the name over and over, while I ignored every single one and kept my focus on driving.

Just like before, I brought the car to a stop where the gate to Chitaira Kai's house came into view. As if lying in wait for the engine to idle, the downpour intensified, pounding against the chassis and windshield. The house, Chitaira Kai, and the rain.

Perhaps some strange twist of fate tied them together.

"Thank you very much."

"Yeah..."

Unlike Chitaira Kai's airy, delicate voice, mine splashed back like a slushy, mud-caked snowball. The muffled reply was thick with hesitation, bordering on lingering reluctance.

What should I do? My hesitation leaned half a step forward.

There was something I had wanted to ask for a while now. About what those alien, exotic eyes brought upon her.

If my presumptuous empathy was justified... no, even if it were, what would I gain from asking? Did I simply want to know that someone bearing such conspicuous traits suffered the same fate... to know, and find some twisted solace in it? To convince myself I wasn't the only one?

It was an inquiry that forced me to look back on my own past.

"...Those eyes of yours. Don't people... at school and elsewhere... say things to you?"

When would I regret this?

Regret asking that question.

Keeping my head slightly lowered, I shifted my eyes to gauge her reaction.

Chitaira Kai offered no verbal answer. Instead, as if realizing something, she leaned forward toward me.

"Wait, what are you—?"

"Your eyes... or is it your hair?"

Her probing words and piercing gaze squeezed my chest so tight I caught my breath, as if a hand had reached inside and pressed against my bare heart.

Grasping her implication, I realized too late that I had asked something I never should have.

"Don't touch me."

Even as I swung my hand to brush her off, Chitaira Kai's fingers swiftly reached out to snag me.

She touched the hair I meticulously cared for every single day with such casual familiarity. It brought back nothing but painful memories.

"Since you're so concerned about that kind of thing, I figured you must have gone through it yourself."

She had hit the nail right on the head. This girl was no fool after all.

She saw right through the world.

When I seized both of Chitaira Kai's wrists, her hands instantly lost all momentum. Her wrists were so slender they made me think of bird bones. Even pinned, those frail hands hadn't surrendered. She was resisting, trying to shake me off. But the moment I applied the slightest bit of strength, her defiance was snuffed out.

She was overwhelmingly fragile. Wholly distinct from her intimidating stare, the disparity in physical strength was exactly as her appearance suggested.

Confronted by that stark, undeniable physical dynamic, a sudden shiver ran down my spine.

I couldn't tell what sort of emotion had surged through me, but it came accompanied by a sensation akin to a chill.

"Which one are you hiding? Or is it both?"

Chitaira Kai asked with absolute certainty. A straight, uncompromising bridge stretched between her and me, one where deception stood no chance. A direct path built for running headlong, leaving nowhere to erect a barrier.

This was my blunder, the price of asking such a careless question. I had no choice but to accept it meekly and lay myself bare.

"...My hair."

Though she wasn't touching it, her gaze gave me the illusion that she was sweeping my hair aside, sending a tremor running down the nape of my neck.

"Huh."

Chitaira Kai's face was too close. With both hands still pinned, she stretched her neck forward like a dog straining against its chain. Fascinated, she scrutinized my hair at point-blank range; even as I tried to pull back from her insolence, there was nowhere to retreat in the cramped car. Chitaira Kai—two green stars slicing across the night sky—loomed ever closer.

And an instant before colliding with me, a voice spilled from her lips, gleaming like the dying brilliance of a collapsing star.

"You really have such a pretty face."

"...Huh?"

"Even though you're an old lady."

"Excuse me?"

While dull to praise, I reacted instantly to insults. So you finally said what you really think, you little brat! I prepared to snap back at her, but the words died in my throat.

The mouth I had parted was sealed shut, and my indignation swung wildly at empty air before dissipating completely.

"..."

A giant yellow-green star grazed the surface of the earth, leaving behind only wind and shock as it pulled away.

"I won't touch you anymore, so could you let go of my hands?"

"...Okay."

I released her wrists as told. Chitaira Kai drew her leaning body back and lightly touched a finger to her lips. In the corner of my vision, jagged, screeching lines violently crisscrossed, etching a flurry of frantic Xs.

To describe it in purely physical terms: our lips had touched. No label was necessary. I didn't want one.

I refused to connect the dots.

Gripping the steering wheel, I faced forward.

Having borne silent witness to the entire scene, the windshield wipers dutifully continued to sweep away the rain.

"I'm sorry. I got a little too close."

It was an apology completely devoid of any sincerity whatsoever.

"Right."

"Yes."

"Be more careful next time."

"There's a next time?"

"No, there isn't."

My voice came out flat and mechanical, as if squeezed from a rigid mold.

Why was I so shaken in the first place? ...No, that much was surely normal.

Anyone would be shaken if someone suddenly pressed their lips against theirs. That was just the proper biological reaction of a human being. So there was nothing wrong with that part. Probably. And what made it worse was that she was a stranger's stranger's stranger's stranger's stranger's stranger... of a girl.

We shared no connection whatsoever. She was a complete, utter stranger.

"Just so we're clear, what you just did was a crime."

I nearly started driving with Chitaira Kai still inside. Somehow, I managed to exhale and force the tension from my shoulders.

As if she had tossed her own heartbeat over to me when our lips met, my chest thudded violently enough for the both of us.

"What kind of crime is it?"

"...A sex crime."

Surely that applied even between the same sex.

"Isn't it an affair?"

"An affair...? No… surely not."

"Is it not?"

"No... definitely not."

Calling it an affair made it sound as though I had been a willing participant, so of course it wasn't that.

Yet hearing the word affair undeniably made my panic spike... No, that wasn't it at all.

"Since it's your first offense, let's both just forget it happened."

I made sure to maintain the composure of an adult. My passenger was a child, fourteen years old, the same age as my daughter.

I had to demonstrate the dignity of someone twenty-four years ahead in life.

"It's nothing worth remembering anyway."

My palms, glued tightly to the steering wheel, were slick with sweat, feeling increasingly disgusting.

"Um."

"What?"

"Only your lips have been moving for a while now. Are you okay?"

"Ah, no wonder my eyes felt so dry."

I blinked furiously, fluttering my eyelids in rapid succession. A fallen eyelash seemed to have stuck to the corner of my eye, leaving an irritating sensation that refused to go away. But when Chitaira Kai's fingers reached out and deftly plucked it away as if sensing it, my shoulders jerked in shock and I recoiled, smacking the back of my head hard against the window glass.

My vision spun from the impact.

Watching me with unmistakable satisfaction, Chitaira Kai's lips parted, baring her teeth.

The flash of white teeth revealed by her parting lips seemed to bite into the darkness, carving out a pale crescent moon.

"I hope you can forget it."

I had never encountered a devil before.

Yet surely, one would possess just such an intoxicating whisper.

Just before pulling the car door shut, that was how Chitaira Kai had smiled.

I projected myself onto the rhythmic sweep of the wipers repelling the rain from the windshield. I tracked that steady, mechanical motion, trying to coax my ragged breathing and my ordinary daily rhythm back to normal. Right, left. Forcing my heart to return to moving only within its prescribed, orderly bounds.

All alone, like a lost dog that had forgotten the way home, unable to go anywhere.

I endured the passing moments, so frozen that if I forgot to breathe, I might have simply died right there.

"...I dropped her off," I muttered.

The wiper swept right. I tracked it with my eyes.

"I have to go home."

It swept left. Even without following it, I could finally look straight ahead.

By mimicking that simple motion in my mind, I was finally able to pull away. Turning the car around to put my back to Chitaira Kai and her house—both long since vanished from sight—I set off down the road.

There was no need to overthink it. This sort of thing happened all the time. Did it, though?

It was an ordinary occurrence—nothing more than a fourteen-year-old girl kissing someone with a bit of childish mischief.

As if that ever happened.

At the very least, I had never once kissed my own daughter now that she was fourteen.

Even as the car sped along, whenever my tightly pressed lips grazed against each other—

As if desperately anchoring sensations that would otherwise scatter to the winds, they replayed through my mind in relentless succession.

Ignoring the internal voice screaming at me to stop, the tactile memory of Chitaira Kai's thin lips replayed over and over.

At point-blank range, close enough to feel as though my heart was being pressed directly in a grip, what had dwelled within Chitaira Kai's eyes?

Complete and utter rapture.

The melting softness in those eyes made me certain beyond a doubt: it hadn't been an accident, but entirely deliberate. And...

What, then, had dwelled within my own eyes as they met hers at a distance of practically zero?

Pulling the car over, barely halfway through the drive home, I averted my eyes from the road ahead as though conceding defeat.

"What is with that girl...?" I muttered.

Resting my forehead against the steering wheel, anguish trickled down my chin like sweat.

Kisses are meant for just the two of us, without our daughter around, inside our home.

For some reason, the conditions I had set for myself suddenly floated to the surface of my mind.

This is the story of my loss.

All because I met a girl whose eyes burned themselves into me forever at first sight: Chitaira Kai.

So many things, truly.

Looking only forward, I would cast every last one away.

ToC

Kaori TL

[ENG] A Happily Married Woman Who Becomes Completely Obsessed With Her Daughter's Friend Volume 1 Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Clods of Earth Await the Snow

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[ENG] A Happily Married Woman Who Becomes Completely Obsessed With Her Daughter's Friend Volume 1 Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Clods of Earth Await the Snow

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