With two more days until Halloween, our teacher gave us all printouts titled CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS.
They were requesting students to pick up trash on the morning after Halloween. It was bad enough that crowds filled the streets every year. Now they wanted us to pick up after them?
Come to think of it, I’d talked to Yomiuri about Halloween around a week ago. She’d suggested I come to work in costume and said I might look cute in cat ears. For just a minute, I’d thought about it.
I’d never tried to make my armor “cute.” Being “cute” and being “stylish” were similar, but they weren’t the same. I’d never wanted anyone in particular to think I was cute before, so I’d never really thought about it.
Well… I was happy when Mom said I was cute, but only when I was in elementary school. Children that age don’t really understand what “cute” means. I would’ve been just as happy to be called “cool” or “pretty.” Children are more concerned about having their parent’s approval than the meaning of the words they say.
My father was a different matter. He always got upset when I wore dresses my mom picked out and people called me cute.
The more people praised me for my appearance or my grades, the less approving he was.
“You’re going to hurt me like she does.”
How could I possibly like being called cute after he’d cursed me with words like that?
Even so, I spent time dressing myself and learning how to use makeup. I didn’t want to be vulnerable when I was aiming to live on my own. I didn’t do it to attract attention. And yet…
“Saki!”
I looked up at the sound of Maaya’s voice.
I saw our teacher leave the classroom; I’d been lost in thought for all of homeroom. As the teacher left, Maaya came up to my seat.
“Maaya. Class is going to start at any minute,” I said.
“Hee-hee! Trick or treat! Candy, please!”
“Okay, okay. You can play a trick on me, but I’m not giving you candy.”
Maaya fluttered her eyelashes and then flashed me a wry smile. “Then I’ll have you put on a maid outfit with cat ears and make you sing a teen idol number at karaoke.”
“I’m not doing any of that, either.”
It sounds less like she’s playing a trick on me and more like she wants to use me to play tricks on someone else.
“Jokes aside, Halloween is on a Saturday this year, right?” said Maaya.
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, I’m thinking of having a karaoke party with everyone in class.”
“Oh, sorry, I have work.”
“Which is more important to you, friendship or work?”
“Work.”
You couldn’t compare things like that. Besides, I couldn’t skip out on my job.
“I should have assumed,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, then. Have fun at work, and I’ll tell everyone you can’t make it this time.”
“Who is everyone?”
“The whole class. Saki, you put in a lot of effort during the cultural festival.”
“Oh…right.” It was better than playing waitress on the day of.
“You did all the work behind the scenes without a single complaint. Everyone’s grateful.”
“There’s no need. I just did what I could.”
I had no idea until she mentioned it.
Did that mean everyone wanted to play waitress? Were they really that excited to put on those silly outfits and say, “Welcome home, meowster”?
…You have got to be kidding.
Oh yeah, that friend of Asamura’s… Maru, was it? He said something about visiting all the themed cafés at the festival. I wonder if he managed to do it. Do boys really think maid outfits are cute? Would Asamura have said I looked cute if I’d put one on?
“You’re thinking about Asamura again, aren’t you?” said Maaya, interrupting my thoughts.
“Huh?! What are you talking about?”
She grinned and returned to her desk.
That girl scares me lately. It’s as if she can read my mind.
I didn’t have work, so I headed straight home after school. I was studying when I remembered that Asamura was at prep school that day.
I knew he’d made a female friend there, and I wondered if she sat next to him in class.
For some reason, I suddenly wanted to see him. After all, that girl got to see him the whole time they were in class…
Ugh, I’m such a disgrace.
It was rude of me to think such things, even though I had a pretty good idea of why he was studying so hard at his prep school.
We’d made a deal that I would cook in exchange for him finding me a high-paying part-time job. I didn’t intend to keep holding him to that promise, but considering Asamura’s personality, I doubted he felt the same way.
Knowing him, he was almost certainly trying to offer me something to match the daily meals I was cooking. I knew right away when he increased the number of courses he was taking at prep school after summer break—that it must be part of his future plan to pay me back in good faith.
As a matter of fact, his grades were clearly improving. He might have made a female friend in class, but his results proved he wasn’t just playing around.
I understood that, but my heart was still troubled.
I opened the messaging app on my phone and sent him a text asking if he wanted to go to the supermarket with me after class to pick up a few things for the next day.
I worried that he would think it was weird for me to suddenly suggest something like that. I normally managed to whip up a meal with whatever we had at home, so it might seem strange for me to suggest going shopping so late in the evening.
But he soon replied, letting me know what time his classes ended and saying he’d meet me at his prep school.
I breathed a sigh of relief and put my headphones back on. A gentle sound mixed with ambient noise immediately flowed into my eardrums. I surrendered my mind to the lofi hip-hop and slowly regained my focus.
I psyched myself up and set the timer on my phone for twenty-five minutes.
Slowly, I began to focus on the notebook in front of me, ejecting the clutter from my mind and letting it float up and away as though I were sinking to the bottom of the sea. Even the music in my ears gradually faded into the distance…
My alarm went off just as I was solving problem number seven, and the loud noise broke my concentration. Okay, it was time for a break. I reset the timer for five minutes and stretched.
I’d been trying a new way to improve my concentration called the Pomodoro technique. It called for twenty-five-minute bursts of concentration interrupted by five-minute breaks.
At first, I was worried that twenty-five minutes would be too short a time to focus properly and that I wouldn’t get anything done. But once I tried it, I realized it was plenty of time to get absorbed in a task.
They say humans can only give their all once they set a deadline. Repeatedly setting short timers was supposed to allow a person to operate as if they were continuously approaching a deadline.
Of course, the amount of time someone can focus varies from person to person, but for now, this was working for me, and I was thinking of sharing the method with Asamura. Then again, he might say I was increasing the amount he owed me.
After one more cycle of focus and break, it was time to prepare dinner.
I stopped working and went to the kitchen, carrying only my English vocabulary notepad.
The only person besides me who would be home at dinnertime today was my stepfather. Asamura would be out late at prep school, and Mom wasn’t eating at home this evening.