Chapter 3
A quiet dawn came over the Takasu household that made the commotion from the early morning seem like a dream.
After being attacked by the Palmtop Tiger, Ryuuji finally got back to sleep at five in the morning. With his growing body, the lack of sleep hit him hard, but his mouth opened wide into a robust yawn, and he willed himself from bed at his usual time. There were a lot of things he needed to get done.
Once he finished using the restroom and sink, he first needed to change Inko-chan’s food. Like usual, he began by checking whether she was awake. After she responded, he removed the cloth covering the birdcage. But then…
“Good morning Inko-ch—oh!”
He drew his head back in astonishment. Inko-chan was dead.
“B-but you just answered me! Inko-chan!”
“…Nn…nng, nn…”
Nope, she was alive. She’d sure looked dead, flopped over at the bottom of the birdcage, but apparently, she was just laying on her side. At Ryuuji’s call, she suddenly sprang up and cryptically fluffed her feathers until she bulged. She looked totally gross.
“Man, I don’t get you at all anymore.”
“Morning!”
He really wanted a cat or a dog, or some kind of pet that he could relate to. While he was in deep thought changing the food box, Inko-chan started to speak. “…Nk… nn… ng cha… nkochan… ngochan.”
Staring straight into Ryuuji’s eyes, Inko-chan was desperately trying to tell him something. It definitely had to be what she had practiced for years but had never once managed to say right. This time, you won’t mess it up, right? he thought.
“Are you finally going to say Inko-chan…? Can you finally say it?!”
Reflexively, Ryuuji became excited. He had front row seats to the birdcage before him. Inko-chan astutely snapped her wings open. Finally, finally the moment had—
“Dung-ko-chaan!”
“You idiot!” In resignation, Ryuuji flung the cloth they used at night back over the birdcage, then stalked out of the family room. He looked brutish, but his heart was calm. Something like this could never stir his emotions. With the backbone of a man, he composed himself, then opened the sliding door to check on Yasuko, who would be sleeping.
When he was falling asleep, he’d definitely heard the front door open, so he was sure she had come home, but…
“…This is terrible in its own way,” he groaned and rolled his eyes.
She was so drunk that she stunk up the room with the scent of alcohol, and for some reason, she was positioned as though she were about to do a somersault, butt sticking straight up as she slept. Thankfully, she had changed into a tracksuit. Even though she was his mother—no, precisely because she was his mother—this was too much. He tolerated her underwear showing, but this wasn’t anything a son ought to put up with. On top of that, she must have given up partway through taking off her makeup. Half her face was clean, and the other half was heavily made up, as though she were trying her best to impersonate Baron Ashura from Mazinger Z—only her version of him was in pain and had an anguished expression.
If he had to guess, she’d tactlessly taken off her makeup while sitting at the small table by the edge of the futon. Then, in the middle of that, she fell asleep and flopped face first onto the futon.
“You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck… Hey. Don’t sleep like that; it’ll take years off your life.”
“…Ryu…yuucha…n…n…chan…”
Not only was she in the same position as Inko-chan, she was talking like the bird, too.
He could feel the invisible bond between Yasuko and Inko-chan (their brainpower), as he gently lowered the bottom half of her body and straightened her out to sleep properly on the futon. Yasuko wanted her own bed, but with these sleeping habits, he knew he couldn’t ever let her buy one.
He rescued the melted ice cream from the plastic bag that had been thrown into the corner and quietly tiptoed out of the room. As he gently slid the door closed, he decided to put the melted ice cream into the freezer for the time being.
Then he peeked into the refrigerator to start preparations for breakfast and their bento boxes for lunch.
“Oh, that’s right.” Ryuuji viciously scrutinized the contents. He wasn’t mad—he had just been careless. He’d used up the eggs and bacon for the fried rice feast, which meant he didn’t have them for breakfast. He had also used up all the frozen food.
“…I could just have milk for breakfast. And for lunch, I’ll…make do. All I have that’d work as a side is taro anyway.”
Ryuuji still had to make rice, so he decided to do something he normally considered cutting corners, which was making takikomi gohan—a simple, seasoned rice—and some quick stewed taro.
He washed the rice, then—before putting in the water—poured in sake, soy sauce, and mirin to taste. He threw in kombu seaweed he had cut into pieces with scissors, boiled bamboo shoots, and the rest of a bottle of nametake. Once he filled it with water and flipped the switch on the rice cooker, that was it. All he had to do was wait for it to finish cooking.
Then, with supernatural speed, he peeled the taro and threw it into a pot partway filled with boiled water. He washed the cutting board and knife, and by the time he cleaned up the sink drain, the boiling water had evaporated to show the tops of the taro he had thrown in. After eyeballing the amounts of zarame, mirin, sake, soy sauce, powdered broth, and mentsuyu to put in, all he had left to do was leave it alone. If he turned the heat to low to avoid burning the taro and waited until the broth only just finished boiling off, it would naturally turn into nikorogashi. He had never looked up the proper way of making the salty-sweet, potato-like dish, but it was always delicious when he made it like this.
It hadn’t even been thirty minutes since he woke up. He had tons of time left. Ryuuji poured the rest of the milk into a cup, turned on the TV, and sat down on a floor cushion.
He would have his brief breakfast while watching morning variety shows. Although his eyes and ears were absorbed in a report of the soccer match from the day before, he sat and unconsciously polished the dining table with a cloth until it sparkled.
His team seemed to have won; ignoring that he’d only had milk for breakfast, the morning was going pretty well. Though it would have been nicer if there had been bright sunlight coming in through the window, like in years past. He looked out the window from within the dim room and sighed. But then…
“Gah!”
He was startled by the sudden ringing of the phone. Something must have happened to one of their relatives for it to go off so early. In any case, he couldn’t disturb Yasuko (who, despite appearances, was the sole breadwinner) while she slept. He hurried to the receiver and picked it up.
“Yes, this is the Takasu—”
“YOU’RE LATE! What do you think you’re doing?!”
Without thinking, he hung up.
What do you think you’re doing? The words echoed in his mind, and he thought, I’m just going about my day, that’s what. With his mind blank from the unexpected scolding, he made the mistake of diligently answering the phone when it rang a second time.
“Yes, this is the Takasu—”
“You just hung up on me, didn’t you?! Do I need to come over there and go on a rampage again?”
Reflexively, he thought, That wouldn’t be good. His landlady hadn’t come to complain, but for a little while now, he’d heard the sound of a broom sweeping stormily outside the front entrance. His landlady was probably waiting to catch Ryuuji leaving the house to complain. He was marked.
Only one person came to mind who could make such wicked threats.
“Aisaka… Taiga… Tch.”
In other words, the ferocious and nefarious Palmtop Tiger.
“If you don’t want any trouble, hurry up and get over here! What’re you up to? Do you plan to break your vow that fast? I can’t think of a single reason why you’d think that’s a good idea.”
“Sheesh. By vow, you don’t mean…”
“You said you’d do anything I told you, like a dog, didn’t you? You swore, didn’t you? So hurry up! Get over here right now. Starting today, you’re coming to my house before school, every morning.”
“…Hold on, wait a second. That thing yesterday…y’know, that thing, right? When I said I’d help you, I meant that—that I’d give you advice about Kitamura, that’s what…”
“Tsk.” He heard the click of a tongue packed full of irritation coming from the other end of the line.
“You’re the one who said you’d do anything. Anyway, just come over. When I say I’m going to do something, I always do it. Though in this case, I’m not telling you what it is.”
It seemed like she was in a really bad mood. Her voice resonated with sinister tones, like the jeer of an oni bellowing from hell. It made Ryuuji’s eardrums quake. Saying anything to her over the phone when she was like this wouldn’t do any good.
“W-well… I guess I’ll come, but…I don’t know where your house—”
“Come to the window.”
“Huh? The window? If I can see your place from the window, that means—AHH!”
Phone in hand, he crossed the sadly small living room. From the shadows next to the window, he threw his head back in surprise at what he saw outside. From here, all that could be seen were the upper-class condos, but on the second floor, in a perfectly visible window…
“What’s with that weird pajama top?” said Aisaka Taiga. She was watching him through the condo’s window, a fashionable phone in one hand and a deadpan expression on her face.
“Uh, stop! Don’t look at me!” Ryuuji tried to cover up Yasuko’s “snuggly wuggly” heart-covered cardigan with both his hands. He had put it on because of the cold. His face turned into an ogre’s, but he wasn’t angry—he was embarrassed.
Her face distorted, too. She yanked her expensive-looking curtains shut. “I didn’t want to see it in the first place! Hurry up and come, you mutt!” Aisaka insisted. But Ryuuji still had some things to do.
“Just wait a second! I just need ten minutes!”
“What for?”
“The takikomi gohan I’m making for lunch isn’t done yet!”
“…”
Then, from the other side of the newly silent line, he heard the faint but intense sound of a rumbling stomach. It was so loud, he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard it.
“…D-do you want some, too?”
She kept quiet for a while, but eventually, the upper-class condo’s curtains opened by about ten centimeters. Still refusing to utter so much as a word, Aisaka nodded in response.
Yasuko, Inko, and now Aisaka.
It seemed the number of mouths Ryuuji was in charge of feeding had increased by one.