At this sudden, strange question, I stared into her eyes as though I might be able to see through her skull. But I still could not do magic, and I could not see into her head, no matter how hard I tried.
“E-eight?”
“Wrong. The correct answer was twenty-four. You see? No one can magically look into someone else’s heart. That’s why humans have the power of thought. You want to know things about your friends, but you don’t understand the feeling of wanting to cut your own arm. In that case, you have to think about it, about what she might be thinking. Then, you’ll come to know it, little by little.”
“Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.”
“You really are a clever girl.”
Skank-san praised me, but it felt a bit wrong. She was the one who was really clever, giving me such a straightforward answer. I watched her casual motions. She really was exactly how I hoped I could be in the future—the beautiful and clever Skank-san, sipping coffee. If only I could write stories like Minami-san and bake sweets like Granny too, then I would be the perfect adult. I wouldn’t even have to do magic.
Naturally, I could not beat the sharp and wonderful Skank-san in Othello today, either.
“Good luck with your observation day,” she said as I departed.
“Of course! I’ll show them all my smarts,” I replied, leaving the building and walking home beneath the setting sun.
As I walked along the riverside embankment with Miss Bobtail, who was still in high spirits from her milk, I thought of the rapidly approaching happiness presentation and decided to consult the evening sun. There was a chance that what Skank-san had said about thought might be a big hint.
I reached the stairs down from the embankment. I was walking thoughtlessly, so it took me a while to notice the boy approaching me.
“Oh, Kiriyuu-kun! Salutations,” I called out.
“K-Koyanagi-san!” he replied, hiding behind the adult he was walking with.
Miss Bobtail hid behind me as well. I smiled, thinking how funny it was to meet so many acquaintances here, and realized something else fortunate: I had the answer to a question that had been plaguing me for some time.
“Good afternoon,” said the man who was walking with Kiriyuu.
It was the man who I had come across a few times recently in the park at the bottom of the hill. Indeed, although I’d had no luck remembering who he was before, I realized that he was Kiriyuu-kun’s father. I had seen him once at a sports meet, but that single encounter was not enough to fully remember him. I suddenly felt wonderful, as though something that had been stopping up my throat was finally removed.
“Good afternoon!”
I returned his greeting cheerfully. Kiyiruu-kun still hid behind his father. I really wished that he would stop. He made it seem like I was picking on him.
Kiriyuu’s father was not wearing his horribly depressed face today. I’m sure he had all sorts of moods, just as I did, but today he was in good spirits. It was wonderful to see. The two of us conversed about all sorts of trivial things.
“I’ll see you at observation day, then.”
With those words of parting, the Kiriyuus and I went our separate ways. Other than one small “S-see you later,” Kiriyuu-kun himself said nothing.
“Despite how he is, that boy draws wonderful pictures,” I told my little friend later.
Miss Bobtail merely tilted her head, mewling dubiously. She probably had no interest in human boys.
When I returned home and said farewell to my friend, I was greeted by a strange sight. Not only had my mother gotten home before me, but she had already finished making dinner. On top of this, it was all food that I loved. I began to wonder if I had somehow gotten the date of my own birthday wrong.
I loved my mother’s cooking. She was a busy person, so we usually had to buy our ingredients at the neighborhood supermarket, but the food she made was exceptional.
I happily ate up my favorite dishes, but partway through I realized something strange. My mother was just watching me eat, not touching her own food. I wondered if she was merely embarrassed at how I was stuffing my face, but that was not the case.
I looked at her. She looked back at me with a very serious expression and said my name. I got a very bad feeling from this. Adults only ever made serious faces when they had something unpleasant to say. It was different from Hitomi-sensei’s serious expression. I had seen such a look on the face of a scarier teacher, demanding to know who had broken a window, and on my father’s face when he forgot my birthday. Sometimes they made faces like that in the hopes of surprising you with some happy news instead, but such times were incredibly rare.
How wonderful it would be if my mother was putting on an act to surprise me! However, I knew that that was not the case when she began by saying “I’m sorry.”
She told me that both she and my father would have to travel somewhere far away for business soon, and so even though they really wanted to go, even though they’d been looking forward to it, and were incredibly disappointed, they would not be able to attend class observation day.
For a second when she finished speaking, it felt as though the whole room went dark. In that darkness, I felt the pit of my stomach drop. Although my lips were pressed into a pout, I probably still could have eaten my Hamburg steak. But I did not. With that momentary darkened mood, all the feelings of excitement I had been storing up within me exploded like a coiled spring.
“But you said you would come!”
She already knew how loud I was, and so this did not surprise her. What did surprise her was that I was angry, something that had not happened in a long time.
Although I say “a long time,” in truth I had been feeling this way for a while.
“Always! You’re always breaking your promises! Father too!”
“I’m really sorry, but we have to go.”
“Why do you always choose work? Why?!”
My mother explained the reason that her work was so important, very simply, so that even I could understand. However, that was not what I was asking. I realized that my mother didn’t understand me at all, and there was nothing to be done about that. Still, she could have at least tried to think about it, like Skank-san had said.
And so, even though I should have known better, I said something that I absolutely should not have said.
“Then I wish I’d been born into a family with a mother and father who didn’t have such important jobs!”
I could tell right away that I had hurt her. However, she was the same as me, and could not stop herself.
“There’s nothing we can do about it!” she shouted.
I went straight to my room without taking another bite and crawled under the covers. Although I hadn’t eaten all my dinner, I was not hungry.
I said that life was like a goat, but perhaps it was more like an alien, I thought. I knew for the first time that my stomach was not just full of stories and happiness, but also sadness and despair.
Still, it turned out that I was hungry after all, and late that night, after my parents had gone to bed, I snuck into the kitchen and ate some bread.
I could not eat a single bite of the breakfast my mother prepared for me the next morning.