Toyota smiled in satisfaction. “You keep at it. If anyone comes for your ass, I’ve got you.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your plans after graduation. You still planning to...?”
“No change there. I’m taking Suzuka and getting the hell outta there.”
Toyota smiled the way he always did. It felt so good to see a working-class smile for a change. At least here, I was normal.
“Better start saving.”
As I stared at his smile, so different from the Nishikawas’, I wondered why life was so unfair.
Since I’d started working for the Nishikawa son, my finances had taken a sharp turn for the better. I’d held the funeral, I’d bought a plot in the cemetery, I’d paid off my mother’s medical debt, and I still had money left over.
Every payday, my life improved. I’d started having dinner at his place, I’d begun choosing my lunch not based on price but on nutritional value, and occasionally, I even experienced the urban legend known as breakfast. I got new bedding for the first time since I was little, and I fixed up the kitchen and bathroom.
It had been a while since I could live without worrying what I would eat the next day. Having improved my nutrition and my living conditions, I slept deeper than ever. I slept less in class too.
My days were endlessly peaceful.
Things were going so impossibly well, it scared me.
Even after six months, he wasn’t showing any signs of pulling the rug from under me. He gave me my paycheck as usual, and my going to college was still on the table. I went to school like a good student, and I was taken to the Nishikawa residence like it was cram school. Masudzuki-san drove me home, and I slept. I went to my mother’s grave every month on the day of her death. My father’s whereabouts remained unknown, and I had no desire to change that.
I regularly got my copy of the contract to keep. I started thinking they might start forming a nice stack at this rate.
Eventually, it was the fall of my final year in high school. I somehow got a B on my mock exams, and my teachers praised me for the first time ever.
This must have been what a normal high school life looked like. I still couldn’t wrap my head around this being my life now. I’d never gotten as much as a whiff of it until recently.
Was this okay?
This must have been the privilege known as happiness, and it was undeniably mine, thanks to him. It showed no signs of going anywhere either.
What if I just kept going like this?
Did I deserve to be this happy?
I couldn’t help thinking of my friend that didn’t get to have it so easy.
“Kadzuki-san was really pleased,” Masudzuki-san said, gripping the steering wheel, sounding very pleased with herself.
Going along with my employer’s whims, I always ended up getting home around 10 p.m. Masudzuki-san drove me back even that late in the day. Out of concern, I once asked what her daughter was doing at this time. She told me that after driving us to the Nishikawa residence from my school, she went home for a bit, had dinner with Chisato, put her to bed, and came back. She was also allowed to drive Chisato to and from day care during her work hours, which was unconventional but certainly helped to make it a good workplace.
“I heard you got a B?”
“It was a fluke. It’s not enough to pass the entrance exams.”
“Kasumi-san also praised you. She said she couldn’t have imagined you’d improve so much when you first arrived.”
We were alone in the car. At some point in the past few months, we’d started talking the entire drive home. She was friendly, and I liked her. She was very open about talking about her own life.
Him, the Nishikawa family, the people they employed—they were all good people to an upsetting degree.
“I’m getting paid to get into college after all. It’s part of the job.”
“But you’re enjoying it a little, aren’t you?”
“I guess I am.”
I found myself smiling before I could help it, and I quickly changed my expression.
I had never found studying fun until recently. Both homework and my classes felt like a huge waste of time that I’d much rather spend with my mom or working. Now that the former wasn’t an option and the latter wasn’t a necessity, and my schoolwork was beginning to make sense, I’d come to enjoy it a little.
I had never even intended to go to college.
“And what would you like to do in college, Fumihiro-san?”
That was a valid question now that it was beginning to look like a realistic consideration for the near future. It was like I had found myself in some parallel universe.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what it’s like. I don’t know anyone who’s gone.”
“I can relate. Kasumi-san talks about her experiences a lot, and it sounds like a lot of work but with many fun aspects. If Chisato wants to go when she’s older, I want to give her that opportunity. So once you’re in college, tell me all about it, all right?”
Six months. A year. Going to college. Now I knew what to expect from my future, but a sense of unease lingered within me. I was only on this path because of him—because I happened to be the target of his whims.
It never had to be me.
Studying next to him, having dinner together, going to college, sitting here in this car with Masudzuki-san...
The car stopped in front of the stairs to my wooden apartment building.
“See you tomorrow!” Masudzuki-san called. I turned around and waved goodbye.
The rusty stairs and the creaky door didn’t bother me nearly as much as they used to. I displayed my mom’s mortuary tablet on a small shelf in my larger room.
Having already eaten at the Nishikawa residence, I only reviewed my notes before going to bed. I dove into my freshly aired-out and fluffed-up futon. Technically, what I did was no different from what I used to do before I met him, but it felt like a whole new world.
I wished Toyota could have this too.
We were in the car when I said, “Nishikawa, I need to ask you something.”
Having walked in the hot, humid summer weather, my skin was cold from the sudden blast of air conditioning in the car.