Chapter 27

I’d been so used to sitting in dark rooms without switching on the light that I still sometimes reflexively hunched, shirking the brightness in well-lit places. It was very clear to see how resigned I was. There had been a time when I’d assumed I wasn’t allowed to exist where there was light, but there I was, sitting with my knees on the floor in a bright, sweltering-hot room, daydreaming. There, I was allowed to simply do nothing, so I sat quietly enjoying that… I was in a good place—the thought made me so happy, I swayed side to side with my arms around my knees. It was like finally reaching calm waters after swimming through rough seas… At least, that was how I imagined it. I’d never been anywhere near the sea myself. Hoshi stuck her head into the room and stared at me. “You’ve got nothing to do, right? Come help me with cleaning.” She motioned with her hand for me to come with her. It was true I had nothing to do. I pushed myself off the floor and stood up. I wasn’t left alone to enjoy doing nothing, but I was only asked to help out instead of getting beaten up. Here in this house, I was asked to do things, not forbidden from doing anything. A nice change. The apartment wasn’t big, so it didn’t take long for a team of two to clean it. Sometimes, my mother would randomly decide to join in, too. With four people, it did feel a bit cramped, but life was peaceful. To me, that was magical. I couldn’t believe nobody was hitting me or yelling at me when I was cleaning. I was allowed to help. Hoshi and her mom were unlike any other people I’d ever lived with. When my sister, who had still been Chiki then, had told me there were good people in the world, I’d thought she was just saying it, but it wasn’t just a lie. I had to move my sister’s bag when tidying up. I didn’t know what was inside, as I wouldn’t open someone else’s bag, but I worried about my sister being without it. It had been five days, and I hadn’t heard from her. …Should I bring it back to her? But how? I didn’t know where she lived. Why was there still so much I didn’t know about my sister? But my mother should know the address. If she hadn’t forgotten. “…She probably forgot.” I put the bag back in the corner of the room and resumed cleaning. I didn’t want anyone to touch the bag. Only I could, because it was my sister’s. I finished cleaning and tugged at my sweat-soaked T-shirt to get it unstuck from my body. Hoshi came over to me again. “You’re free?” “Um… I am now, yeah.” Was I ever not free? I studied sometimes, but…well, all students did. I never had anything planned, though, apart from when my sister wanted to see me. When I wasn’t meeting her, I had nothing but free time on my hands, like that day. “Will you come with me to the supermarket?” Hoshi wanted me to help her carry the shopping. I paused to consider whether I could say no to that, listening to the chirping of cicadas. I was a freeloader, so I shouldn’t be lazy. “…Okay.” I had a feeling my sister wasn’t going to come anyway. I had better chances of running into her if I went outside. Maybe it wasn’t very likely, but my first meeting with Shiho had been the unlikeliest thing ever, and it’d happened. I left the apartment with Hoshi, hoping against the odds. My mother had gone out earlier, probably not for any particular reason—just to kill time. She might have been the most carefree person I knew. How could she afford to be so carefree, though, when she didn’t have money or even a home? Like my mother, I also didn’t have anything to my name, but there was nothing carefree about me. “You like summer?” Hoshi asked me when we were passing by a large, two-story parking lot. I turned my head side to side, thinking about summer, heat that made the air shimmer, cloudy skies, and strong sunshine that made your skin feel wet. “Never thought about it.” “Ah, okay.” “I’ll think about it now.” Everything that made up summer was right there around us while we strolled to the store. The heat surrounding us—that was summer. Walking outside was like being submerged in a big puddle that was warmer than your body. Did I like it or not? I walked on, thinking very hard about my relationship with summer and feeling it especially around my shoulders. I hummed and groaned, trying to figure out if I enjoyed being clammy from sweat. “Dunno.” There was good sweat and bad sweat. It was hard to tell which one this was. But was that what Hoshi meant? If it was some sort of philosophical question, then it totally went over my head. That sort of talk was alien to me. Hoshi let out a short sigh. “Damn, it’s hot…” She scratched her head and added, “Me, I keep switching between liking and hating it.” She shot me a meaningful look. “Must be a lot of work, keeping up with how you’re feeling about it.” “What can I do?” We were skimming on the surface, avoiding going deeper into the topic. I wasn’t interested in probing the matter, and Hoshi was scared to talk openly with me about what was going through her head. Even I could understand as much, based on what I knew about Hoshi—that she was in love with me… But was she, still? I think I wasn’t really nice to her. I didn’t have my sister’s gentle character. I wasn’t a nice girl, so what did Hoshi like about me? “I wonder which one you’ll end up with…,” Hoshi muttered. There was pain in her voice and a grim look in her eyes. At the supermarket, I obediently followed Hoshi, feeling like a fruit that’d fallen off the display and was rolling around on the floor. I looked around the aisles trying to spot my mother, but she must have gone somewhere else that day. My guess was the library. Was there another person as unchangeable as my mother? Encounters with other people didn’t influence her at all—while I was totally different now. I’d lived with my mother my whole life, but she didn’t make much of an impression on me. I didn’t know if she was strong or weak. I felt like I owed her, but only vaguely. I watched from the side as Hoshi bagged the groceries. If it were me packing them, I’d put them in the bags in any order, but Hoshi seemed to have a system. She kept checking what was left before deciding what to put in the bags next. I watched her, trying to work out her system, but I couldn’t. I had nothing else to do. Hoshi noticed and looked up at me. “What?” she asked. “I was wondering why you put some things in before the others.” She cocked her head at me, then looked at the vegetable she was holding. “Ah,” she muttered, catching on. “Well, it’s like this. You put in things like milk first on the sides to make a sort of frame, then other things that won’t get squished, and soft items go on the top… That’s basically it.”