Volume 2, Chapter 2: Helena is troubled.
Just after lunch rush hour ended, the sound of shattered ceramic bounced off the walls of the café.
“I’m so sorry!”
When she was cleaning up a table after a customer, Helena had dropped a plate. She apologized to the customers around her.
That was the third dish today. After cleaning up the broken pieces, Helena went to a place the customers couldn’t see and sighed.
Watching her, Risa furrowed her eyebrows in concern. However, the café was very busy today, so there was no time to chat.
Afterwards, Helena pulled herself together, and the café closed without any further complications.
“Helena, are you okay? You seem a little different than usual today… are you feeling unwell?”
After the store closed, Risa cleaned up most of the kitchen. She went to the hall where Helena was and asked.
“Miss Risa…I’m so sorry. I broke three dishes today…”
“That’s fine. Ah, not that it’s good to break them, but… well, did something happen?”
Helena stopped folding napkins and looked straight at Risa.
“Miss Risa, do you have some time after this? I’d like to ask your advice about something.”
Risa agreed and went to the kitchen to tell Zeke she would leave early today.
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The second floor of the café used to be living quarters for the couple who previously owned the store, but it was used as resting space for staff and storage now.
There was a large table in the middle of the old living room, to which Risa and Helena walked towards. They sat down across from each other.
Helena was seventeen years old. Although she was already an adult in this world, she was still a minor in Risa’s previous world. Risa felt uncomfortable giving a minor alcohol, and anyways, it seemed better to be sober when they were going to talk about something serious. She made some relaxing tea.
Then she asked Helena.
“So, what’s wrong?”
Helena took the cup, but didn’t drink it, instead swirling the tea around in the cup. She sighed, put the cup down, and looked up.
“Miss Risa, have you ever thought about marriage?”
“Heh?”
Risa was so shocked to hear marriage come from the mouth of Helena, who was six years younger than her, that she couldn’t help but squeak in surprise.
“Marriage…I mean, well, of course I would like to be married some time in the future, but that’s something that requires a partner before discussion even happens…do you want to marry, Helena?”
Risa answered vaguely with another question, but Helena’s face remained dark as a raincloud. Risa worried that she might have said the wrong thing.
“Uhm, I don’t know about Miss Risa’s world, but most girls get married once they come of age here. Rather, this is a little difficult to say, but…single women your age are few and far in between, Miss Risa.”
“Right after they come of age…what, you mean they marry at sixteen?! Isn’t that a bit early?!”
“It’s most common to get engaged at sixteen, and then marry some time between eighteen and twenty.”
“…It’s true that you could get legally married at sixteen in my previous world, but…”
“Ah, really?”
“Yes, but that was very very rare. Most people get married in their twenties. People were getting married later and later, so there were more and more newlyweds in their thirties.”
“Wow…”
“So Helena, you also want to get married, then?”
“Yes. Specifically, I have someone I want to marry.”
“What! Helena, you had a boyfriend?!”
“Yes, it hasn’t been going well with him recently, though.”
“Is that why you were acting so strangely today?”
“Yes. It’s actually already over with him to be precise. I couldn’t really accept why we couldn’t keep trying…I felt really bad, and a lot of thoughts started swirling around in my head…”
Risa, who had no idea that Helena had a partner like that, wavered in her shock. But what good was the advisor to the advisee if they wavered? She calmed down by downing the whole cup of her now cooled tea.
“Regardless of whether you were thinking about marrying him, I feel like there is always some form of regret when you break up with your boyfriend.”
“I know that, but…”
According to Helena, they began dating around the time Chester Bakery was about to go bankrupt. When Helena was troubled about her family business, he always tried to cheer her up.
Risa felt a little guilty about this, as Café Omusubi was one of the reasons why Chester Bakery almost went bankrupt. Judging from Helena’s tone, however, she didn’t seem to hate the café anymore, so Risa felt relieved.
Even when Helena began to work at the store, their dating had been going smoothly. When Chester Bakery got back on its feet and was bustling with business as before, he was happy for her.
However, their relationship changed with a certain event. As the eldest son, he said to Helena, “I need to continue the family business, so of course you’ll marry into my family, right?”
Helena was surprised at how matter-of-factly he said it, and couldn’t help but ask “Why?” Taken aback by her unexpected reply, he grew furious and they argued over it.
Although he was the eldest son, Helena was also the single daughter of Chester Bakery. He didn’t think about her position as the sole successor, which infuriated Helena.
However, Helena was destroyed by the harsh words he spoke in anger.
If only Chester Bakery had gone out of business…
After watching her father try his best to keep the bakery, passed down for generations, afloat, Helena was unable to forgive those words.
Not only that, she felt betrayed by the person who had been so close to her and had cared so much on the outside, when he really thought such things in his heart.
He also knew that he screwed up. He tried to take it back by saying those weren’t his real feelings, but ever since then things had been awkward. They finally broke up yesterday.
“Father couldn’t stand seeing us like that, so he said I didn’t have to continue the family business if I didn’t want to. Of course, I would be happy if my future husband would continue our business, but I don’t want to marry someone I don’t even like, just because they are willing to do so.”
“I see, so that’s how it is…”
Holding back her tears, Helena finished speaking. Her body language expressed all of her complex feelings—regret, anxiety, fury, and simple despair.
“Thinking back on it, if I had chosen my words more carefully when he came to propose, he might not have said such harsh words. It’s too late to think about all of this, though.”
Helena laughed helplessly.
If his family wasn’t a business. If Helena wasn’t the only daughter. If, like he said, Chester Bakery went out of business back then…
It was pointless to think about all of the what ifs, but Helena couldn’t help but think about the possible futures with him.
Although she was hurt by his words, she didn’t hate him . When Helena was in pain, there was no doubt that he had supported her, and it was likely that his joy when the bakery returned to business was very much real.
“You can’t always get what you want, huh.”
Helena murmured sadly. She downed the cold tea in one go and sighed again.
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