“You’re gonna be busy, since you’re a shelf owner now. So I thought it’d be good if I could cook.”
“Huh? Just because I’m a shelf owner now doesn’t mean that I’ll be taking care of the store or anything, so you don’t have to worry about it. You’ve already got so many things you need to do yourself, Mizuki.” Mayumi had asked her mother to tell her daughter to study too.
“But you’ve been so busy these past few days. Trying to do stuff like carefully picking out what books you’re gonna stock takes a long time, doesn’t it? And you wanna make a book or something yourself someday, right?”
“You’re right.”
“Wha, seriously?” Mizuki yelped, eyes wide. The two looked at each other, then began to laugh.
Exactly what part of this girl was incapable of thinking about anyone but herself? What had changed in her, to make her unable to enjoy a family vacation? Every year, she got a little taller, a little more interested in fashion, and longed a little more for the city. She might have changed, but Mizuki was still Mizuki. At her core, she hadn’t changed a bit.
“Anyway, the reason I want to cook is for your sake.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s for Mom’s sake too, but…” As soon as she mentioned her mother, her smile disappeared. “Mom, she’s…” she started, looking down at her feet. “Hasn’t she been super tired lately? She’s always cranky and always sighing. I hate it more when she sighs at me than when she gets mad at me. Ever since her job changed, she’s been working overtime a lot more often, and she even works on her days off.”
“She said that there’s a lot she needs to remember. That it’s tough at the beginning.”
“I’m thinking it might be my fault too. If I wasn’t here, then she wouldn’t have to be cranky all the time.”
Her words pierced Emiko’s heart. Maybe this was one of the reasons Mizuki wanted to go to university in Tokyo.
“But, I mean, I can’t leave home right now anyway. So I thought at least I could do something for Mom’s sake. You’re gonna be getting busier now, but you’ll help me out today at least, right?”
“Of course.”
When Emiko said that, Mizuki gave her a bashful smile, saying, “Thank goodness. She’s always looking like a demon when she’s complaining that I do nothing but read, so I figured I could get back at her by learning something useful from a book. Great idea, huh?”
“She might be shocked silent before she can be happy about it,” Emiko said with a chuckle. “So, what are you making?”
“Something mega simple that has to taste good. I’ve gotta get it perfectly prepared before Mom gets home,” Mizuki said, picking up her pace.
After getting most of the preparations for supper out of the way, Mizuki went back to her room to study until Mayumi got home. As Emiko was washing the cooking utensils, she heard the sound of the key in the front door turning. Mayumi was home.
“Huh? You guys haven’t eaten yet?” she asked when she peeked into the living room, eyes wide as she looked at the table all set.
“It seemed she wasn’t that hungry, so she’s doing her homework first,” Emiko explained.
“Wow, that doesn’t happen often.”
It wasn’t good to lie, but Emiko told herself that it was for the sake of making Mayumi happy.
“Oh yes. You know that shelf owner business I mentioned a few days ago? I ended up signing the contract instead of Mizuki.”
“What, you did?”
Emiko told her all about the shelf owner she’d just met that day who bound her own books, that they were going to have a public reading, and that she was going to try making her own book, and Mayumi looked at her with a baffled expression.
“What’s up with you, Mom?”
“I just suddenly felt like I should try something new.”
“Aren’t you just getting scammed? Like, someone you make friends with there could make you buy something super expensive or something.”
“At the very least, the store’s owner and the other shelf owner I met today weren’t the sort of people to do that. They both have their own aspirations.”
Despite Emiko’s reply, Mayumi’s tone just got harsher, saying that her mother didn’t know how to be skeptical. That people would use classes or people who’d moved home to start businesses to sell beauty or health products, and once they’d gotten friendly with someone, they would sell them insurance or get them to invest in fraud.
When her mother just nodded along, impressed that people would even consider doing all of those things, Mayumi slapped a hand to her forehead and sighed. It was clear from her frown that she was trying to hold back her quiet anger.
“I’m not talking about other people here, Mom. Just cool your head for a minute. You only just heard about this shelf owner business after Mizuki came back from her trip. Before that, you hadn’t been reading at all. You watched TV instead because you said your eyes were getting tired. No matter how you look at it, this is all too strange.”
For the first time in her life, Emiko felt like she understood how Mizuki felt. More than the feeling that living in Tokyo clicked for her, more than her ideas, feelings, and curiosity, her mother was prioritizing safety, and it felt like she was nipping everything off at the bud.
This was the part of Mayumi that Mizuki hated. Emiko had thought she understood, but she hadn’t. The person telling her to “think hard about it” didn’t know a thing about what they were talking about and made no attempts to understand it. That was why their words were shallow. Seeing her past self in Mayumi, Emiko smiled wryly.