“Meh,” I summed her up. It wasn’t that I was let down by the lack of conversation. No, it was just my honest assessment of her as a person. I banged my head against the wall; it was pointless to even try being positive. Words couldn’t describe how bad this morning was going, so I sighed yet again. I finally changed into my uniform and rushed out of my room, without checking my bag. Passing through the living room, I felt my hair with my hand to make sure the bed head wasn’t too bad. The living room was actually the only proper room in our apartment. My mother had already left, but the gossamery woman was sleeping on the futon, with the duvet drawn up to her chin. Even her face was thin, and with her eyes closed, she looked very fragile. If you put her in a coffin, nobody would doubt she was dead. Was it okay for me to go to school and leave her alone in our apartment? She was my mother’s friend, but to me, she was a stranger. I didn’t want her to go into my room, and it bothered me to imagine her rummaging through our fridge while I was out. It also annoyed me that she got to enjoy a nap while I was in such a rush. Did she not have a job? Not that waking her up would make anything better. In the end, I decided to ignore her. I just downed a glass of water and went out, locking the door after me. Quickly getting on the move seemed to be the best way to distract myself from the situation at home, so I walked fast, swinging my arms. I ran down the stairs and saw the girl, standing idly to the side. She was gently swaying her head to and fro, looking bored. Annoyed, I quickly walked past her, but I heard her following me, so I turned. I couldn’t read her face. “………” She must have sensed I wanted her to leave me alone. “I don’t know the way from here. Thought I’d go with you.” “Ah, that’s why you waited…” That made sense. “Lucky we go to the same school,” she said flatly. I knew she didn’t mean it. We started walking—not side by side, obviously. She followed a few steps after me. Feeling her gaze on my back was maddening. I wouldn’t even get to walk to school in peace now. Although, had I ever felt peaceful walking to school? Maybe it’d be less frustrating if I was next to her. But then I’d be expected to chat, and I didn’t know what to say. I decided to just deal with the awkwardness and stay up front. The reason it was so awkward was probably that we hadn’t defined what we were to each other. But was there any point in trying? It’d been a while since I’d last gone to school with someone. First time since I’d started high school, to be precise. And it wasn’t fun. My heart wasn’t skipping. I was irritated. The girl wasn’t touching me, but she was like a weight dangling from my arm. I could almost feel myself leaning to one side because of it. And once I got home from school, that feeling would still be there. The world was already darker, even though it was early in the morning. I wished the girl was staying in the living room instead of my room, but Mom would argue there wasn’t much space there, either. And I couldn’t argue with that—the slim lady was already taking up that area. My mother shouldn’t have brought these people to our apartment in the first place. That was a fact. “You know the way from the main road, right?” I said without turning. “Yeah, sure,” she muttered back. Why had I even asked her? It wasn’t like I could just run off and leave her—that’d be weird. And running would just leave me tired and still awkward. I had to keep walking with her, all the way to school, while her gaze crawled over my skin like one of those knobbly back massagers. We left the dim streets of the high-rise residential district where the morning sunshine couldn’t penetrate, coming out onto the main road. The apartment buildings across the road were way better than the measly one I lived in. You could tell from the number of windows and stories. Four stories all filled with apartments. Suddenly getting a roommate wouldn’t be a problem if I lived in a place like that—we probably wouldn’t even see each other much. Why did she have to come to us? “We just kinda dropped into your life,” she said, as if reading my mind. “We must be in the way.” I turned to look at her. Our eyes met. I struggled to hold her gaze, but the dark glimmer in her eyes made me want to look away. I was surprised to learn she did have some self-awareness after being so nonchalant about the whole thing. “Yeah,” I said firmly, but then I felt bad. “No, I mean… I don’t really get what’s going on.” It was like being in a surreal dream. Normally, you’d wake up by the time your mind was clear enough to recognize it was in a dream, but not now. This was a dream I might never wake up from. “I bet. But it’s just for a month or so.” “A month?” “We usually get kicked out around then. The longest was two months and a week.” “Ah, really?” What more should I say to that? My Japanese textbooks hadn’t taught me anything useful for conversations like this. She was used to it, then. To living like that. And she kept going to school… It hadn’t crossed my mind before that kids my age might be in this situation. In the end, we walked the entire way with me at the front and her at the back. I discovered focusing on some point in the distance helped me forget the presence of the girl behind me a little. When we got to school, she went to a classroom closer to the entrance than mine. I was relieved she wasn’t in my class, but then again, I would’ve remembered her if she was. I’m not that oblivious. She was in the same year as me, though. I’d thought she might be younger, but she was just small for her age. She’d gone ahead to her classroom without saying a word to me, but from that day on, we’d be walking to and from school together. We were sharing a room, but I didn’t want to acknowledge the reality out loud. She was a problem that gave me no clear angle of attack. A spherical problem. Unable to do anything about it, I was tormented by constant anxiety. Even when I sat down at my desk in my own classroom, the feeling remained like stale sweat I couldn’t wash off. Around me, everyone was going on with their day as normal. I had to overcome my inertia, or I’d drown in the bustle. I rested my chin in my hand and faced the problem I wanted to run away from. Me. And her. I didn’t know what she thought of me, and at the moment, I didn’t care. It was my feelings I had to sort out. I took my time thinking about it, and I arrived at the conclusion that the girl was nothing more than an inconvenience to me. After classes ended for the day, I picked up my bag with both hands and froze in my seat, wondering what to do. “Did you crash?” A friend poked my shoulder. I jerkily turned my head, pretending to be a robot as a new worry nagged at me. Normally, I might hang out with my friends for a while before going home, but that didn’t seem like an option now. What options did I have? Getting back first might be the best one. I didn’t like the idea of returning to an apartment where someone else was already waiting. I got up from the chair, vaguely realizing first didn’t sound quite right. I quickly said bye to my friends and hurried out of the classroom. I glanced sideways at the girl’s classroom on my way out of the school building, but I couldn’t see if she was there or not. I headed straight back home. Crossing a pedestrian bridge, I noticed the sun was still high above the city. It was nowhere near evening yet. The days had gotten pretty long. When June ended, every July day would make my room progressively more uncomfortable. Every summer was like that, but it was going to be worse this time around with that small alien body sharing my space. What a suffocating prospect. The building where I lived was small, with only four apartments. It was no bigger than the neighboring single-family houses. In fact, you might mistake it for a single-family house if it wasn’t for the number of mailboxes. The houses at the front had so many trees that it blocked light from reaching our building. There was a staircase that looked like an afterthought; it’d been added later, once the building had already been put in use, and it was too narrow for two people to pass each other. There was no janitor or any fancy security features like automatically locking doors. I went up the stairs, which used to be white before layers of grime had turned them gray, and got my key out when I reached the farthest door. Normally, I’d open the door and walk in absentmindedly, but this time, I peered in carefully at the footwear in the entrance hall. There was an unfamiliar pair of shoes on the left side. Judging from the size, it belonged to the girl. How had she gotten in? Only my mom and I had the keys. I took my shoes off, leaving them so far from the girl’s that I wouldn’t have to see them next time I put mine on. I walked through the short hallway with big steps, passing by the sink to cautiously enter the living room. The gossamery woman was gone, her futon folded, the room tidy. I lifted the edge of the curtain as if I was afraid she might be hiding there. But she had completely vanished, like a ghost. I wasn’t so naive as to allow myself to believe the whole thing had just been a dream, but it did feel like one—one that refused to end. I wanted to get off this emotional roller coaster. I wondered how long it’d take for me to get used to not having my own room anymore. I stood in the middle of the living room, listening. It was quiet, and I couldn’t hear or feel anyone. I cautiously went to open the door to my room. The girl was crouching in the same corner of my room as she had been last evening, looking at her textbook, which was spread open on the floor. She was wearing an old shirt—probably her loungewear. The top buttons were undone, offering a free view of the girl’s breasts when she leaned forward. I looked away, although I wasn’t really sure why. She raised her head, noticing me. The movement was both childlike and graceful. Her long hair shifted, exposing her face—like clouds parting to reveal a sunny sky. “You’re back.” I was beginning to get used to her bluntness, at least. She was physically attractive, but she had an off-puttingly apathetic attitude and way of speaking. I could totally see why she’d been getting kicked out from wherever else she’d been staying. She looked at me briefly, as if waiting for a response, but when she got none, she went back to reading her textbook. For a serious student, she wasn’t displaying any motivation. “So you’re studying?” I asked. “Yeah.” “Why?” I had to ask. It was weird how she’d open her textbook whenever she had the chance—it was like she was a whole different species from the other high schoolers I knew. “Why? To get smart, that’s why,” she said indifferently, turning a page. “I’m too dumb to think of any other way.” I didn’t hear a shred of sarcasm or self-mockery in this brief explanation. It was like showing any emotion in front of me was too much trouble for her. “Ah, okay… Good luck, I guess.” “Thanks.” Her short reply made it absolutely clear she didn’t give a damn what I thought. I set my school bag in my room and left. Like I was running away. Like the room was hers now. Pathetic. What was it with her, seriously? She wasn’t nice at all. Just seeing her put me in a bad mood. I expressed my feelings unambiguously through a heavy sigh. Then I put my hands on my hips and closed my eyes, willing myself to change my perspective. The girl had to study after coming back from school, and I had things to do myself. First, I needed to clean the house. That was pretty much my job entirely. I couldn’t hope for much help from my mother. If I wanted a slightly more pleasant home environment, it was on me to create it. I wanted to get changed, but it was too embarrassing with the girl in my room… Wait, why should I be embarrassed? Hesitant—that was the word. Probably. In any case, I decided against going back to my room to change my clothes and started by tying back my hair. Lifting it from my neck felt like dusting myself off, releasing built-up heat. I went to get the vacuum cleaner, which was sitting next to the TV, when I heard the door open. I turned. The girl stuck her head into the living room, and the way she was leaning made her hair cascade down like a waterfall. She looked at me, then at the vacuum cleaner, then at me again. “I could clean our room if you’re cool with that,” she said. “Huh?” I was confused by the dissonance between her offer and her not-really-friendly voice. Also by the length of her sentence. “I’ll do my best not to touch any of your stuff,” she added. “Um… Okay then, I guess?” I concluded, scratching my sides. The girl nodded slightly and went back to our room. “This is stressing me out!” I confessed to the floor. I didn’t mind Mom; we’d always been living together, after all. But having someone else in our apartment, walking around—my skin was literally crawling at this point. And now the new girl was acting like a member of the household. I didn’t know what to make of it or how to react. “Got a dustcloth I could use?” “Erk!” I was staring at the floor, so I hadn’t seen her approaching me. She was right next to me, looking straight at me—it wasn’t a big deal, but somehow, my face started acting up. I couldn’t check in a mirror, but there was this weird tension in each part of my face. As if there was a thin wall of light between me and the girl, and I was pressed up against it. “Dustcloth?” She repeated her request like a toddler. My brain wasn’t working, but my body went over to grab it for her. “Thanks,” she said perfunctorily, then disappeared back into my room. A few beats later, another kind of anxiety assaulted me, and I felt a bizarre sensation like my cheeks were being pulled downward. Something was moving around the base of my right middle finger. I looked at it, and of course, there was nothing, but the nagging, crawling feeling persisted. Strangely, instead of sinking, my heart leaped up to new heights, exploring a territory beyond my control. It was incredibly unsteady, but it also felt buoyant. What is up with that girl? I thought with an emotion similar but subtly different from before. The good thing about vacuuming was that it focused my mind on the floor instead of thinking. Recently, whenever I had nothing to occupy me, my mind would start to wander. It’d started a while back, well before the girl and her mother had turned up at our home. Sitting in my small room, I’d think about my life from then on, and a vague sense of anxiety would creep in. Once I graduated high school, I wanted to move out—not just from the apartment but from the whole town. I couldn’t think of what I’d do after that, but every day, the urge to leave grew stronger. Come to think of it, I’d never been outside town. As luck would have it, both times my schools had organized trips outside town—first in elementary, and then in junior high school—I’d gotten sick right before the trip and had to stay home. After two coincidences, I started to fear I’d never get out of this town. So much for the vacuum giving me some peace. My thoughts had been kicked into high gear by the new factor in my life, and they wouldn’t stay still. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that factor open the living room door again. She was barefoot. I couldn’t stop looking at her toes. She’d finished cleaning, I guessed. The edge of the dustcloth she was holding dangled at the upper periphery of my vision. Of course, I had known it wouldn’t take long to go over my tiny room. The girl was watching me; I could acutely feel her gaze. I braced myself and looked up at her. To my surprise, when our eyes met, she seemed thrown somehow. She began to fold and unfold the dustcloth. “I’ll clean the shower next,” she announced rigidly. “Oh, okay.” “Where do you keep the scrubbers? And soap?” “Um, by the sink…” “Got it.” Having checked in with me, she walked off to the shower room. Had she offered to do more chores because she’d seen I still wasn’t finished with mine? Was she the sort of person who did that…? I didn’t know anything about her, so I shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions about her motivations. Maybe I should be glad she’d taken the initiative with the cleaning. And I was glad, but that didn’t help my mood. I didn’t want to find any positives in her. What if I gave in and accepted her? We didn’t have a bathtub. Apparently, that lowered the rent. We did have a shower room and a separate sink, so it wasn’t really much of an inconvenience. Not having to clean a bathtub was a plus, too. In winter I’d get the craving to soak in a warm bath, but I could overcome that by just forgetting about it. I could put up with most things that way—letting go of my own wants like how you deflate a balloon. I carried on with the vacuuming, disturbed by the nearby noises not generated by me. When had I last felt so bothered by another person? Normally, I did the cleaning in silence, except for when I muttered to myself every now and again. I guessed the sounds of another person in the apartment were knocking me out of my rhythm. Anyhow, I finished vacuuming and mopped the floor, and then the girl returned. Her bare feet and shirt were wet, and she had this steamed look about her. She must have wrung out the cleaning rag in the sink, washed her hands, and used her shirt to dry them since there was no hand towel. I’d have given her a towel if she’d asked. “I’m finished.” “All right… Good job? Um, I mean…” Before I could finish, she went back to my room. I didn’t really want to talk to her, and it was clear she’d done her bit to help out, but I felt like she’d left me hanging. I wanted something more…but what? Would something more make things better? I was all scrambled and couldn’t understand myself. Anyway, I shrugged it off and went back to cleaning. Or at least, my body was doing the cleaning while my mind was elsewhere. By the time I finished, the sun was packing its last rays away for the day. I let my hair down and sat at the living room table. I didn’t go to my room, because it was already occupied…but it was my room, wasn’t it? I drew my knees up to my chin and scratched them. Why had I ended up the outcast? I couldn’t bring myself to enter my own room. It was like scorching hot air was blowing out of it through the gap between the door and the wall less than three steps away from me. No, this was weird. It wasn’t right. And that meant I had to do something about it. Deciding to follow my sense of right and wrong, I stood up gingerly and headed to my room. When I slid the door open, there was that unnecessary tension in my wrists and ankles. I thought I heard them crack as I moved. The girl was reading her textbook again. She was sitting in the same position as before, except that she was facing the wall this time. From where I was standing in the doorway, I just saw her rounded back. Without taking my eyes off her, I sat down diagonally opposite her. I was worried she might turn and our eyes would meet, but to my relief, that didn’t happen. So far, so good. As soon as I sat down in my room, I felt the suffocatingly sweltering air on my cheeks. So much for stubbornly trying to assert myself in my territory—I already wanted to get out. But the girl might think I was running away like a coward, and even if I wanted to escape, there wasn’t anywhere to hide in the small apartment. “It’s hot in here…” It was horrible in that stuffy room, especially since cleaning had already warmed me up. I reached toward the fan with my foot and pressed the switch on. I wanted it to face only me, but it began turning left and right, and I couldn’t be bothered to get up and change the mode. Whatever, I thought, letting the artificial breeze brush against my skin and hair. The girl didn’t turn. Was it a sign of confidence or just sluggishness? In any case, I got the impression she would keep ignoring me. What should I do, then? Approach her first? Strangely, I wasn’t particularly reluctant to try that. I wasn’t unsociable—in fact, I usually had a good time socializing. But this girl had moved into my room out of the blue. The shock had paralyzed me for a while, but it was time I recovered. I pressed my hands to my ears in the hopes the ringing would stop, shut my eyes, and focused on my breathing until the waves of anxiety subsided and my eyelids stopped feeling impossibly heavy. When I opened my eyes again, I felt lighter. I returned my attention to the girl sitting by the opposite wall. What should I talk to her about? School? Everyday stuff? Interests? I wouldn’t even know where to start with that last option. Talking to a girl my age about school would be too dull. Everyday stuff was complicated by the fact that she was living in my home, and just thinking about the future made me dizzy. I shot down every single idea. Great. The drawing board was empty again. “Hey, listen,” I found myself saying, my voice like a droplet breaking the surface of water. The girl quickly turned toward me. “Let’s decide which areas we use,” I suggested, avoiding her eyes. I extended my foot, measuring out half of the room. “This side’s mine; that side’s yours.” The room was ridiculously tiny, and there wasn’t much space to lie down, but dividing it widthwise made more sense. If we split it between us lengthwise, just changing the way we were sitting would mean trespassing into the other’s area. Also, we’d be sleeping too close to each other. The girl looked down at where my foot was pointing. “’Kay,” she said stiffly. She raised her head and fixed me in the gaze of her glum eyes. Was she glaring at me, or was it a nearsighted squint? “Cool…” We definitely had to establish several other rules. For example, since we were sharing the room, we shouldn’t use scents the other didn’t like. And what about laundry? Should we keep our dirty clothes separate or pile them together? Should we take turns with cleaning? To live together with some degree of comfort, we had to build a secure framework of rules around us. I couldn’t escape from the reality of her being in my room, so even though thinking about it made me dizzy, I had to accept and shape this reality. There was another important thing I had to ask the girl about. “Where’s your mom? Does she have a job? ’Cause she doesn’t look like it,” I said. I’ll admit I was being rude. The girl shifted her gaze in a way that told me my question had made her somewhat uncomfortable. “My mom… Don’t worry about her. She probably went out to a supermarket or a convenience store.” “Why?” “She says it’s fun looking at what they have.” The girl closed her eyes, as if something was on her mind but she didn’t want to tell me. What was it? “She’s easily entertained,” I said unenthusiastically, biting back anything more critical than that. “I guess,” the girl replied dully, as if she wanted to end the conversation already. She was making no effort to talk to me, and that was getting on my nerves. “Is she going to come back, though?” I tried again. “Probably.” “So it’ll be four of us.” “Huh?” “For dinner.” I couldn’t cook only for myself and my mother. I mean, I could, but leaving the girl and her mom with nothing… I wasn’t heartless. I wasn’t happy about this arrangement, but that didn’t mean I’d leave our uninvited guests hungry. “That’s something to think about,” I said. “I’ll need to adjust the amounts.” “You cook?” “Nothing fancy, but yeah.” “Huh.” She looked at me with unashamed curiosity and crept up to me on all fours, narrowing her eyes. The nearsighted theory was getting more and more plausible. Never mind her eyes, though. What I was looking at, even though I didn’t want to—sorry, no, that might not be completely true, but I couldn’t help it—was the swaying of her breasts as she moved. They really were big, and the loose shirt she was wearing made it all too easy to steal a peek. “Wh-what are you doing…?” I couldn’t point it out to her, or she’d think I was a perv. From her point of view, having another girl see her boobs wasn’t an issue. “Being impressed by you,” she said simply. I couldn’t think of a reason why she’d choose that particular lie, so she must’ve meant it. “Me, I can’t cook,” she said. “Ah…” I hesitated and shut my mouth without adding, “Figures.” The girl crept back away from me. It was over—whatever “it” was. “Agh…” It was chilling that the girl had such an effect on me within a certain radius. Get a grip. Of course I was in charge of cooking in this household—you couldn’t hope for much from my scatterbrained mother. If I didn’t have to worry about this, my opinion of her would drastically improve, I thought, getting up. I’d talked to the girl about two different subjects, so I felt like I’d made a good effort. I left the room feeling proud of myself—or that’s how I wanted to remember it, at least. Outside my room, I sighed deeply again. The girl came out after me, the textbook in her hand. I shot her a puzzled look, but she just sat down in the living room and went back to her reading. Hmm… I guessed she wanted to show me she was available to help if I needed it, although I didn’t. Well, I didn’t mind her sitting there. At least she wasn’t hovering. I’d be cooking for four… I thought about the expense. “I wonder if her mom’s chipping in for the cost…,” I muttered to myself. The girl overheard me. “No, I paid.” Surprised, I turned to look at her. “You did?” I looked her up and down a bit rudely—where did she get the money from? “You can’t really count on her for that stuff normally,” she added matter-of-factly, without changing her expression. It sounded to me like she wasn’t even disappointed by her mom because she’d never expected anything of her to begin with. I could see why. The gossamery woman had undependable written all over her. “Normally…?” What did her mom do in extraordinary situations, then? If you asked me, she seemed hard to predict. Imagining different scenarios with that flighty lady, I opened the fridge door. My mother turned a blind eye to any housework that needed to be done. I didn’t hold it against her—I could imagine how difficult it’d been for her when I was little and she’d had to work, look after me, and look after the house as well. Besides, I thought of doing the chores myself as preparation for when I moved out and started living on my own. I wasn’t entirely happy with this state of affairs, though, since it made it hard to find time for hanging out with friends. “It’s ready.” I placed a trivet on the table and rested the frying pan full of food on top of it. Now that dinner was done, I put my hands on my hips and gazed out the window. The sky was darkening. “My mom won’t be back till late,” I said with the intention of finding out in a roundabout way when we were going to eat. She looked to the side, thinking. “No idea when mine will get back.” Abandoning her textbook, she came over to sit at the table. So she didn’t want to wait for our parents. I had worried we might not have enough pairs of chopsticks, but it turned out the girl and her mother had brought their own. We had spare rice bowls—cheap ones we’d bought in case the ones we normally used broke. I scooped rice into one of those and set it in front of the girl. She nodded slightly, looking unsure of herself. I didn’t know myself how to respond. It had been ages since the last time I’d had a classmate over for a meal. I don’t think I’d invited anyone to my place after finishing elementary school. The girl lifted the lid off the pan to peek inside. “Wow.” She sounded quite appreciative. I’d made a pork-and-cabbage stir-fry. When I’d been putting the ingredients in, I’d thought it might be too much, but I’d gone ahead and cooked it all anyway. I used to cook for two, but it’d be four now, probably. It wasn’t as simple as doubling the amounts—I’d have to learn by trial and error how to adjust the seasoning. Besides the pork, I’d also served two side dishes I’d prepared in advance—carrot salad and boiled broccoli in a sauce. I’d been carefully rationing the black soybeans, but we were out. There’d still been some left last night, so I could guess who the culprit was. I wouldn’t say anything to her, but it did upset me. “Thanks for making the food,” the girl said, pressing her hands together in an automatic gesture. She picked up the chopsticks and stared at the steaming bowl of rice for a moment before clumsily picking it up. Her eyes darted from the frying pan to the side dishes, which were in plastic containers. She made a little noise of appreciation. Maybe this was too rich for her? She pinched a little of the stir-fry with the chopsticks and brought the food to her mouth. She chewed it carefully, clacking her chopsticks. “Hey, I can eat this.” “That’s all you have to say…?” Not that I wanted her to praise my cooking, but her aloof comment rubbed me the wrong way. “I’d never eaten anything cooked by a kid in school before. I was kinda suspicious.” “‘Suspicious,’ huh…” That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Now that the food had passed her test, she was stuffing her cheeks, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her lips. Every little movement was so pretty. I didn’t know why, but her lips had a magnetic effect. She finished chewing what was in her mouth, swallowed, and peered at the table. “Actually, this is a first,” she said. “No one’s ever made food for me at the other houses we stayed at.” “No way.” “So thanks.” Not one for effusive shows of gratitude, she went back to her meal. Despite her graceful appearance, her way of eating wasn’t very refined once she got going. She brought to mind a wild animal, keen to devour every last bit of food placed in front of it. You can tell a lot about a person’s upbringing by how they talk, their attitude, and their manners, and this girl had clearly never had a proper home environment. What had she eaten to grow up so small? Yet she was so pretty, she’d have made my head turn if I’d first met her at school… How had I missed her? Was I that narrow-sighted? “It’s cool that you can cook. Really cool,” she repeated in between bites. I wished she’d compliment the taste, but praise was praise. What should I say back to her, though? Later that evening, my mother returned together with the girl’s mom—she must’ve tracked her down somewhere. She reheated the rest of the food and had her dinner together with the woman. My mom’s voice was lively, so she was enjoying the meal. I was almost falling asleep in my room, hoping the adults would at least wash the dishes after they were done. Drowsiness desensitized me to the other presence in my room and made me calm. The girl was sitting in front of her textbook as usual—she really had a lot of patience for studying. I’d never known another student as committed as her. I thought about how weird it was to have this diligent learner in my room, and I couldn’t help chuckling sleepily in a good-natured way. I’d finished my house chores and didn’t feel like studying, so I had nothing left to do for the day. Having this free time felt intoxicating. “Listen,” the girl said suddenly. At once, I turned my head to look at her straight. She was sitting facing me, her loose hair ruffling in the wind from the fan. “Yeah? What’s up?” “Starting tomorrow, I’ll do the cleaning.” “You will?” My eyes swam as my sleepy brain processed this unexpected offer. “I can’t cook, so my job will be cleaning. That okay?” “Uh, sure.” “Cool.” She didn’t exactly smile, but her expression softened somehow. Or maybe I had just imagined it. We were barely exchanging more than a few words, but I felt as if we were tiptoeing closer to each other. Again, that might be wishful thinking, but so what? I rested my wrists on my bent knees and gazed at the ceiling, flapping my hands up and down and considering this whole cohabiting business. The girl had snapped me awake when I’d been about to doze off, but strangely, I was still in a good mood. I heard my phone chiming—another thing to boost my mood. But the chiming suddenly stopped while I was fumbling for my phone. Then I caught the sight of the girl moving and realized I’d made a mistake—it wasn’t my phone that had been chiming it was hers. She frowned, typing a reply, and when she was finished, she stood up, took out some makeup and other grooming items (including a comb) from her bag, which was stuffed in the corner, and walked out of the room, cradling the items with care. What was she up to? She wasn’t going out, surely? She didn’t put on makeup for school, so what was the occasion? I checked the time; it was too late to be going out. Another thing struck me as odd. The girl dressed simply in the house and didn’t do much to her hair, but the makeup she had was expensive. Even the comb was pricey; I could tell at a glance. It didn’t seem to suit her style. Was it a present from someone? My mind shook off the last remnants of sleepiness, preoccupied with theorizing about who could be giving her such high-end gifts. Having put her makeup on, the girl came back to the room and began taking off her house clothes. My presence didn’t seem to put her off from stripping down to her undies. I wanted to protest, but then again, why did it bother me? The girl rifled carefully through her clothes—and she didn’t have many—to pick out an outfit. I could guess what sort of person she was going out to meet. After getting dressed up, she packed her bag. In went the phone, the wallet, the textbook, and pens, and she walked to the door in hurried steps. Hold on, why was she taking the textbook with her?
Chapter 4
32 min read