Chapter 115: June 12th (Saturday) — Ayase Saki
On a sunny Saturday morning in June, I stood at the entrance of our flat to see off my Mom and Stepdad, Taichi-san.
They were setting out on a trip to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.
Seeing Mom's smile light up in the early summer sunlight as she stood next to him made me feel genuinely happy for her.
She'd raised me all on her own after her previous marriage fell to pieces. And, she was the one person in the world I most wished happiness for. I truly believed she deserved it.
When she told me she wanted to remarry a year ago, I didn't oppose it, thinking that if she chose him, it must be the right choice. A year on, that thought surfaced again.
She really did find a good match for her in my Stepdad. I can see that in the way he acts. He always says he trusts us kids, but as soon as they planned this trip together, he was a worried mess about leaving us at home by ourselves. It'd likely even look a little embarrassing from the outside.
There was probably a small part of him that liked to show off, but he wasn't nearly as prideful—in a bad way—as my biological father. My biological father always seemed so obsessed with maintaining his image as a man and husband, never wanting us to see him in an unflattering light at home. That's probably why he resented Mom after his company failed and she became the family's main breadwinner. He was just that kind of touchy guy, I guess.
But my Stepdad was different. He's the kind of strong person who's okay with letting other people see his weak side. That might've been the most important thing for Mom. It's something I could never copy myself, as I'd feel anxious if I didn't have my armor on to protect myself from the society around me. Deep down, I think Mom isn't so different from me, so it must be a blindingly beautiful thing in her eyes.
"C'mon, Taichi-san. If we don't leave soon, we'll get stuck in traffic."
At Mom's urging, my Stepdad finally got a move on.
Someone might think Mom was the more responsible one from listening to their conversation. But, in reality, my Mom can be a bit of a scatterbrain at unexpected times. It was just a one-night, two-day trip, but traveling with her might be more tiring than it appears to be.
Good luck, Stepdad.
After saying goodbye to them, Asamura-kun and I finally went back inside the flat.
***
Jolted by the sound of the alarm, I looked up. The clock read 12 pm.
I closed both the reference and exercise books in front of me and headed to the kitchen.
Asamura-kun had already left for work, so I'd be having lunch on my lonesome. It hadn't been long since breakfast, and I'd just been sat studying all morning, so I wasn't really that hungry.
"Leftovers from breakfast should be enough," I muttered to myself as I whipped up the meal.
It's not that I dislike cooking; I actually quite enjoy it. But, it kind of feels like a pain when I'm just cooking for myself. Cooking's more fun when you have someone to share the food with.
After finishing my food and washing the dishes, I planned to return to my studies—when I suddenly froze.
"It's annoying me…"
I was staring at the living room floor. When did we last clean it? Once I started thinking about it, I couldn't get it out of my head.
We didn't have a schedule for cleaning. Everyone cleaned their own rooms—that was a given. But the issue was the communal spaces. We had an unspoken rule that whoever noticed the mess first would clean it up (except when we did a big cleanup). Thankfully, neither Asamura-kun nor my Stepdad were messy people, so there were rarely things left on the floor. So, I'd often just give it a quick once over with the floor wiper. I couldn't remember the last time I used a vacuum cleaner.
"Can't be helped. Guess I've gotta do it."
Telling myself this was a break from studying, I decided to clean the kitchen and living room. Since a thorough cleaning would take more time than I had, I decided to just do some vacuuming. Otherwise, I might end up wasting the whole day cleaning.
First, I started with some simple tidying up. I did say my family members weren't the types to leave things on the floor, but you could still find some things scattered about if you looked closely enough. Like the remotes for the TV, streaming service, air-con, and ceiling light… There were so many.
…It'd be easier if all of these were combined into one remote.
Now that I think about it, wasn't there a device that could control all household electronics at once? The voice operated one. Maybe I should ask Asamura-kun about it when I get the chance.
I collected all the remotes and put them in a remote holder on the table. I thought it'd feel a bit lonely to clean in silence, so I decided to put on some random TV program as background noise before I got started. I thought about streaming a movie, but there wasn't anything in particular I wanted to watch. Plus, if I put on something interesting I might get distracted. So, I just opted to turn on regular TV and let whatever was on run.
I brought the vacuum cleaner over and was about to turn it on when I caught a glimpse of the show on TV.
It looked like an afternoon program targeted at housewives. After the host said something, a caption popped up: 『Special Feature on Affairs.』
My eyes were drawn to the screen. I had never really watched daytime TV before, so I didn't know they aired stuff like this.
Some TV celeb with a weird bow tie and suit combo started talking with a serious look on his face.
He started with a lead-in: The wife was at home, devotedly supporting her husband by doing household chores. And yet, the husband cheated on her. Why?
With that, a reenactment video began to play. A woman, presumably a housewife, appeared on the screen with the caption『Ako[1], Full-time Housewife, 27 years old』
[Ako (あ子) placeholder name similar to "John" or "Jane Doe" in English]
The video showed her busily doing the dishes, laundry, and cleaning, then sighing at the dining table after finishing everything. She muttered that she wanted a little more of a break, but shook her head and stood up. In her imagination, her husband was shown at work, organizing documents and working on a computer. The husband returned home, and when the wife took his suit jacket, she noticed lipstick on it.
Wait, would lipstick really end up there? Wouldn't it be more plausible if she smelled another woman's perfume? But maybe that's just nitpicking.
Some commentator or other gave his two cents, then the host turned to someone who was apparently an expert to get their take on it.
The expert said about sixty percent of cheating happens at work.
Huh? Do men and women really get that close at work? Just because they're doing the same job?
I found myself engrossed in the show, but then, shaking my head like the woman on TV, I stood up and turned the vacuum cleaner on. It was the latest cordless and quiet model, but it still made a fair bit of noise as the suction nozzle slid across the floor, as if licking it. It was enough to drown out the TV anyway.
The program moved on to another reenactment, this time a mother with a kid—No, I refuse to watch, I told myself. But the captions on the screen still caught my eye from time to time.
As I cleaned, I couldn't help but imagine myself in the shoes of the woman in the program, who found out her husband was cheating.
Asamura-kun had a part-time job. Part-time or not, it was still a job. So while I'm at home doing household chores, my beloved husband could be coming into more frequent contact with a female coworker, until eventually...
I killed that train of thought, wondering what had gotten into me.
I mean, Asamura-kun isn't even my fiancé or anything, and it's not like there's someone at work he's particularly close to…
Well, that's not entirely true. There's Yomiuri-san, a woman who looks like a beautiful Japanese doll. And, besides her, there are a few other female student part-timers too. Well, they're all older, and one of them is a grad student, so she's probably like a decade older than him. But age doesn't really matter in relationships. Asamura-kun is the chill type, so he's kind to everyone equally. That's one of the things I like about him.
So, why am I overthinking things then? There's a saying that where there's smoke, there's fire. But if I start suspecting a fire before I even see the smoke, isn't that just being emotionally unstable? This anxious feeling, like a fishbone stuck in my throat, must be a sign of my dependency on him. Probably. So adjusting our relationship slowly should eventually settle things down… I hope.
Anyway, why did I decide not to work the same shifts as him anymore? No, I do remember. I wanted to make sure I had time to study, and we were taking turns cooking. That was the reason, but I thought we decided to be closer together outside the house, so why does it feel like this?
Sigh.
I found myself zoning out, the vacuum cleaner moving back and forth over the same spot on the floor. I switched it off and returned it to its docking station, then turned off the TV too. I should study. I am a student preparing for entrance exams, after all.
I went back to my room and opened my study materials again. I was a bit behind on my study schedule because of the cleaning. I decided to quickly solve the problems up to the point I'd set for myself, then have a delicious snack. There should still be pudding in the fridge. Pudding… it kind of sounds like "affair" in Japanese[2]. Men at work tend to get closer to other women than their wives, huh?
No, it's not like that.
[Affair = furin (不倫)]
I put on my headphones and used the familiar beats of Lofi Hip Hop to drown out the distractions.
Outside the window, a thin crescent moon hung in the darkening sky.
***
When Asamura-kun got home, I was flipping through my vocabulary flashcards in the living room.
I had a rough idea of when he'd be back, so I was waiting in a place where I could tell as soon as he got home. Not that I'd ever admit it out loud, of course.
As I got up from the couch, I heard him say, "It was delicious."
Huh? I was only just about to start cooking dinner now. I tilted my head in confusion, until I spotted him washing something in the sink and realized he was talking about his bento.
"Really? Glad to hear it."
And I was genuinely pleased to hear it too, even if the bento hadn't been anything special. It was just the leftover side dishes from breakfast.
Asamura-kun interrupted my thoughts when he mentioned he'd make one for me tomorrow. It'd be his first time making one, wouldn't it? I was thinking about helping him, but he shot that down, saying it was his turn.
As I put the groceries he bought into the fridge, I noticed a few items I hadn't asked for, so I could kind of guess what would be inside the bento.
Just as Asamura-kun was done with the washing up and about to head to his room, I called out to him.
"You're gonna study now, right? I'll make you some coffee."
"Thanks. Should I grab your cup too, Saki?" he said, as he pulled some cups out of the cupboard.
I checked the clock and saw we still had some time before dinner.
"Yes please."
I sat and watched him pour hot water into the dripper. Drip, drip, drip. A slightly acidic scent of mocha wafted through the room as it dripped down into the container.
"Can you call me when dinner's ready?"
"Sure."
Coffee in hand, Asamura-kun headed to his room. I watched him leave, then got back to preparing dinner.
When it was all ready to go, I called out to him.
He looked at the dishes lined up on the table and commented on how delicious they looked.
We swapped stories about our day as we ate. That's when he mentioned a new part-timer had started working at the bookstore.
"A new part-timer?"
In a relaxed voice, Asamura-kun said Yomiuri-senpai couldn't work as much because she was job hunting, so the manager planned to hire another student part-timer. Yeah, I think he did say something along those lines.
"Yeah. She's a first year high school student. Kozono Erina, I think."
I wasn't familiar with the name "Kozono," and mistakenly pictured it with strange kanji in my head. But I found out it meant 'a small garden' after Asamura-kun explained it to me.
"So, I'm supposed to show the new girl the ropes."
Oh, that's right, it was Asamura-kun who trained me when I started working there too. He's surprisingly good at teaching, so it makes sense that he'd be the one doing it.
"You're working the same shift I did tomorrow, aren't you, Saki?"
Every time he used my name, Saki, my heart skipped a beat. I nodded, trying not to let my feelings show on my face.
"You might be the one training her tomorrow then."
"That's... fine. But that means you'll be spending all your shifts with her for a while..."
A cute new girl. Wait, did he say she was cute? So, Asamura Yuuta will be taking care of this Kozono girl non-stop for a while?
Or rather, my brother will be...
"I'm jealous."
Those words left my lips before I could catch them. Unfortunately, I guess I'd let slip how I was feeling to Asamura-kun.
"Huh?"
"Sorry. It's just jealousy. But, given the circumstances, it can't be helped, can it?"
Besides, I'm "Saki," not "Ayase-san." Kozono is "Kozono-san," so it's not like I should worry about it…
So why am I feeling like this? Like clouds have covered the sun or something.
The serious face of that TV celeb wearing a bow tie flashed in my mind. A sound effect played and a large banner dropped down behind him reading,『60% of affairs happen at work!』
Women at work have more chances to get close to men than housewives stuck at home doing chores!
No, no, stop that.
"It might've had a bad influence on me," I blurted out.
Asamura-kun looked confused. I told him about the wide show I'd watched while cleaning.
When I mentioned the special feature on cheating, Asamura-kun shook his head, looking a bit uncomfortable.
I told him how the show—with its uncertain sources—suggested workplace intimacy could lead to infidelity. And watching it might've made me feel anxious when a girl showed up who'd be spending more time with him than I would. Probably.
He just patiently listened to my concerns, as irrational as they were, and even said it was good we talked about it. He also said he didn't look at juniors that way, and promised he didn't have those kinds of intentions. My brother, Asamura Yuuta, promised.
"If you say so, Yuuta-niisan, I believe you."
Honestly, I was relieved.
Asamura Yuuta and Ayase Saki are… lovers. But also brother and sister. In my heart, I told myself over and over that we have to maintain an appropriate distance and make the right decisions.
I took my turn in the bath after I finished eating. As I soaked in the tub, I tried to rid my mind of the disconcerting thought, "A younger female coworker is close to him at work." Stop thinking about it, just stop. Think about something else. Oh, like the sports festival this coming Tuesday.
Class Rep had invited me. But unlike last year, I chose volleyball, a team game. I'd always avoided it, thinking it wasn't really my thing. In tennis, no matter how bad I played, the only person who'd be embarrassed was me. In volleyball, though, a mistake could affect other people. I just couldn't handle that.
And yet, both Class Rep and Satou-san (I still can't call her "Ryo-chin" like everyone else) never got angry or looked annoyed—no matter how many mistakes I made.
In volleyball, the goal is to make sure the ball doesn't fall on your side of the court, and to return it to the opponent's side within three touches. It might've been second nature for a pro to connect those touches, but it's pretty tricky for newbies. That said, getting the hang of that and returning the ball made me really happy.
If someone makes a mistake, someone else covers for it. And when we all try hard together to keep the ball in play, everyone is happy. That sense of collective joy was new to me. I found myself getting a little hooked on the depth and fun of team sports.
I touched my arm and legs muscles as they soaked in the warm water. It might've just been my imagination, but they felt firmer, more toned, than usual. Is it because of my training? Or maybe it was the surprisingly physical work at the bookstore.
"The bookstore..."
I won't be on the same shifts as Asamura-kun for a while. And all that time, Asamura Yuuta, or Yuuta-niisan I should say, will be with that junior girl. Closer to her than he is to me.
As his sister, I shouldn't be bothered by it. But as his lover... Maybe it's natural to feel jealous.
So, when it comes to "Yuuta-niisan" and "Saki", how should I feel?
The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel