Even if Emiko was to try to speak from Mayumi’s view right now, it wouldn’t get through to Mizuki. She would probably understand one day when she was in her mother’s shoes, but they couldn’t help the fact that no matter how much everyone might tell her that parents are supposed to worry about their kids, and that having someone worry about you was a good thing, she wouldn’t get it right now. Adults might want to speak from their own experiences, but most things wouldn’t click until a child actually got to that age.
“Hey, Grandma…” Mizuki suddenly began, tone wheedling.
“Hm?”
“Am I still in my ‘rebellious phase’?”
“I don’t think you’re rebelling against your mother, just saying that you want to do what you want to do,” Emiko said gently, getting a nod back from her granddaughter.
“That’s right. Mom blames everything I do on me being in my rebellious phase. That ticks me off. Can you ask Mom when I’ve ever rebelled against her, and if it’s really so bad for me to state my opinion?”
Asking wouldn’t get the point across. If anything, it was more likely to deepen the fissure between the two. If someone had no intention of accepting criticism, nothing would get through to them. It might have been frustrating to watch, but Emiko couldn’t join Mizuki in blaming her mother.
Borrowing the book, she headed back to her own room. The suspenseful drama she’d left going on the TV had ended and been replaced with tomorrow’s weather forecast. Turning it off, Emiko put on her reading glasses and opened the book.
“So this was written by someone named Sayaka-san…”
The prose began after a chapter title of Day 1, with the strange theme of “Medama Curry.” It told the tale of the author waking up early and her struggle attempting to cook something she wasn’t used to.
Medama curry was made by dicing toasted bread and topping it with curry from a pouch, cheese, and quail eggs before toasting it all. Apparently, it was named that because the two little eggs lined up next to each other looked like eyes.
The author didn’t know how long to cook it for and kept on peeking into the cloudy toaster oven over and over. The scent of spice spreading around the room softened her nerves, and she grabbed the searing-hot dish with her bare hands, burning herself. In that moment, she felt loneliness from the fact that she had no one to get angry at, and no matter how hot it was or how much it hurt, no one would laugh at or worry about her.
The author was jealous of the garden table set with two chairs that the apartment across the way from them had on their veranda, and Emiko couldn’t help but laugh at how the author ate her breakfast while imagining the streets of Paris.
The author worried about tiny things and daydreamed, and reading it was like peeking into her brain itself, giving Emiko the sensation that she was actually experiencing the everyday life inside the book. The prose was strangely charming.
“It’s so cute how interesting it is.”
A smile rose to Emiko’s face naturally. The author had an abundance of sensitivities; her point of view was novel.
Did Emiko have any friends who thought like her? She brought up the faces of each one in her mind. When they saw each other in the street, they’d talk about their health and their families. They would go shopping, get meals ready, watch TV, and sleep. When you lived a similar life to someone, you could empathize with a lot of things, but that was it.
If you escaped the boring days where you just repeated the same things over and over again, instead of living alert to lots of things, then she was sure everyday would seem like it was shining.
Turning the pages, Emiko closed the book. What if she wrote down her impressions and put them inside, like the ones Mizuki showed her? She pulled a notepad out of the drawer, and she tried writing out her love for Medama Curry. Writing it down properly was hard, even if it ended up short. An hour passed before she realized it. But when she thought about how the author must have worried while writing it, then even that time felt precious.
Emiko suddenly remembered the garden table set she had stored away. Leaving her room, she silently snuck downstairs. Her husband had bought it when he was still healthy, dreaming of life where they’d utilize their veranda and garden. It had been winter then, and after using it to freeze while they drank tea two or three times, she’d forgotten about it completely.
Opening the storage closet under the stairs, she saw that it had ended up overflowing with Mizuki’s things. She stepped in the spaces between objects, heading further inside. Behind a winter coat that never got used anymore was a folded table and some chairs.
“See, it really was in here.”
Feeling nostalgic, she went to pull it out, only for…
“What are you doing in here at this hour, Mom?” Miyuki asked suspiciously, peeking inside the closet.
Putting her book in her bag, Emiko left the house two hours earlier than usual. She’d taken the same route to walk to and from the supermarket for the past ten years for her health, but today, she decided she’d try going a different way.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve walked around here. I always go straight for the highway, whether I’m walking or driving,” she mused to herself.
Feeling the wintery chill in the blowing wind, she slowly strolled toward her destination. The road was thin, and the sidewalk was only just big enough for one person to walk on, so she had to pay attention to not only cars but bicycles too. Accidents where people got badly hurt by falling into the irrigation channels along the roads was a common occurrence here.