From that day on, as far as Satsuki was concerned, she didn’t have a mother.
When she told her father she wanted to go to cram school, he readily gave her money for classes and meals. He’d stayed away from home as much as possible for a long time and probably felt guilty about leaving his daughter by herself with a mother like that.
A lot of Satsuki’s friends went to the same cram school, so she never felt lonely. She’d stay at diners until ten at night, and in the mornings, she’d leave the house without a glance at the breakfast that had been set out on the table. Day after day, after day.
When she did come home, Satsuki and her mother didn’t even greet each other anymore. The only things in the house were her mother’s repetitive “Oh, why me, why me?” and Satsuki’s silence, colder than ice.
Now that she thought about it, that was when her mother had started to go strange. Before long, the entire neighborhood was avoiding her, and even her relatives didn’t want anything to do with her. She just sat there all day long, staring at the TV with hollow eyes.
One morning, Satsuki was about to walk straight through the kitchen as usual when her mother’s mumbled voice stopped her in her tracks.
“Oh, why me, why me? Why am I all alone?” the woman murmured, her eyes still on the TV.
The next instant, words tumbled from Satsuki’s lips.
“If you don’t like it, why don’t you die?”
It was what Satsuki had always wanted to say to her.
If she hated it so much, she should just die already.
Her mother’s head swiveled toward her, and the sight of her face made Satsuki gulp. She hadn’t really looked at her mother in a long time, and the woman was just skin and bones. It was as if she hadn’t eaten for days.
“Will you hang yourself with me, then?”
Ignoring the question, Satsuki ran out of the house.
When she got home after cram school that day, her mother was standing in the dark kitchen in a daze. Or at least Satsuki thought she was standing— As soon as she turned the lights on, she realized her mother was hanging from the ceiling by a rope.
Dishes covered with plastic wrap sat on the table, and a supermarket flyer lay on top of them. There was a message for Satsuki scrawled on it:
Someday you’ll end up like this, too.
Even before she called an ambulance, Satsuki tore up the flyer and threw it away.
She didn’t really want to make the call. She wanted to ignore the corpse and run out of the house. If the woman hadn’t been dead already, she would have strangled her personally.
Two years later…
When Satsuki told Junya about her mother’s death, he’d nodded, looking vaguely troubled. “I think I get why you’d be so scared.”
“Scared? You’re sure you don’t mean ‘mad’ or ‘full of hate’?”
“All those things are probably true. I’m mad, too, and I hate my parents, and I’m scared. It feels like if I don’t shut the fact that they exist out of my mind, I’ll end up like them someday.”
Junya hadn’t been blessed with good parents, either.
He had a burn scar on his back from when he was little. He’d said his father had gotten angry with him for being “naughty” and had held a hot iron up against his skin.
“Still, once I manage to forget my parents entirely, you’ll be the first family I’ve ever had, Satsuki.” The carefree smile Junya had given her then made him look very young.
Stupid, trusting Junya.
She’d thought they’d manage to find happiness together, but then…
“Actually, I think I want to turn down that job offer and go to grad school instead,” Junya had told her, a serious look on his face. It was the spring of their last year in college.
It was pretty common for outstanding seminar students to let their advising professors talk them into going to graduate school. However, it felt like Junya saw his father in the middle-aged professor and seemed to be intoxicated by the fact that the man needed him.
“I know we promised to get married, but do you think you could wait a little longer?”
Satsuki couldn’t refuse. “All right. I’ll be cheering you on.”
“Thanks, Satsuki. That’s what I thought you’d say.”
Oh, why me, why me?
She thought she heard her mother murmuring away somewhere. It was almost as if she were whispering, If this keeps going, you’re going to end up unhappy.
And then…
“Listen, Satsuki? Would you be interested if I set you up with someone?”
Not long afterward, her teacher at the popular cooking school she was attending made her a very attractive offer.
“I have a nephew who works for a major design agency, and I thought I could introduce you two, if you didn’t mind. See, here’s a picture.”
In the photo she held out, Ryousuke, the man who would become Satsuki’s husband, wore a brilliant smile. He seemed full of confidence that he’d live his whole life on the winning team and that unhappiness would forever be a foreign concept to him.
“I know I’m a doting aunt, but he’s pretty handsome, isn’t he? His salary’s not bad, either. He’s still young, but he’s been made art director, and he’s worked on the design for a famous advertisement. I’m sure you’ve seen it; they’ve made TV commercials of it lately, too.”
The jingle her teacher hummed belonged to a major corporation that even Satsuki had heard of. She also knew that this woman—who was a popular culinary scientist as well as a cooking school teacher—came from a wealthy, distinguished family. By extension, this nephew of hers probably did as well.
“Goodness, I’m sorry. I forgot to ask you the most important question: Are you seeing anyone right now, Satsuki?”
“No. I’m not.”
She didn’t regret that answer.
However, if she broke up with Junya now, people would get the wrong idea. They’d think she was a fickle woman blinded by the other man’s job title and income. They’d sympathize with poor, abandoned Junya, and it would damage her reputation. Ryousuke, her new fiancé, might even end up hearing about it.
And so…
Framing Junya for domestic violence had been her only option, really.
Sure enough, even when Junya knew Satsuki had betrayed him, he’d never blamed her for it. Not only that, but as she’d attracted people’s mistrust with her insistent claims of abuse that had never happened, Junya himself kept defending her, all alone.
“Satsuki’s not like that,” he’d said. “There has to be some sort of reason.”
Even though there wasn’t. Of course there wasn’t.
After all, Satsuki’s motive for getting close to Junya in the first place had been sheer self-interest. She’d opened up to him about her mother’s death because she’d thought she could win his sympathy and compassion that way.