Ex8-1. What I Need in Order to Love This World Completely

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/67/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

According to what I learned from an acquaintance, Mother currently lives in this shabby two-story apartment building.
It is about a twenty-minute walk from the station.
The distance, and the apparent age of the building, mean the rent ought to be reasonably cheap.
Turning over thoughts of Mother’s present life, I climbed the rusted stairs and made for room 203, two doors along.
I stood before the door, pressed a button that was oddly stiff, and rang the intercom.
The sound of someone moving inside came only after a slight delay.
Even a mother who abandoned me makes me a little nervous, when it has been so long.
She surely had no wish to see my face, but settling accounts does not allow for that.
The door opened with a rattle, and the air of the room spilled out in a muggy wave.
I could not help frowning at the vulgar smell of tobacco mixed with perfume.

“Ah… Who is it, at this hour.”

An irritated, rasping voice.
Whether she had just woken or not, Mother raked a hand through her unkempt brown hair and glared at me, a crease between her brows.
She looked more haggard than the woman in my memory. Was it the shadows under her eyes, or had she actually grown thinner?
The time was a little past four in the afternoon.
I had heard as much, but seeing that her days and nights were thoroughly reversed, it seemed to be true that she worked nights.
Even so, I thought she had slept too much—though with the shop where she worked closed temporarily because of the recent incidents, it could not be helped.

“…Who are you, really?”

For someone who looked so much like me, she did not at first realize who I was.
Then, as if a blurred field of vision were clearing, she stared at my face for a while and seemed at last to notice that I was her daughter.

“Wait. Don’t tell me you’re…”

Her eyes went wide with shock.
The last time we met I had still been eight, and I had still been human then, so I will be lenient this time, on the grounds that she noticed quickly.

“It has been a long time, Mother.”
“Ugh, it really is Chigusa. So Ryotaro can’t even keep a hold on his own kid… tch.”

The moment I bowed my head respectfully, I heard her click her tongue.
What a greeting.

“Haa… It’s been a while, Chigusa. So what do you want? If it’s money, you can see I can’t help you.”

Words as careless as if this were not a daughter she had not seen in eight years.
Even so, I did not change my expression.
I had known from the beginning that this would be the reaction.

“Does a daughter need a reason to visit her mother? I simply found myself missing you, that is all.”

Mother seemed to find me suspicious.
Indeed, if a daughter who had not come in eight years appeared suddenly, wariness was only natural.
And besides—she had surely heard that I had gone missing.

“Please don’t worry. I have already told Father.”
“…Haa. Just come in for now.”
“Yes. Excuse me.”

She was clearly not eager, but she invited me in.
I removed my shoes in the cramped entrance, passed down a hallway littered with bags of empty beer cans, and entered the living room, the source of the smell.
Garbage was scattered there as in the hall; the ashtray was heaped with butts.
The gaudy clothes she presumably used for work, on the other hand, hung on the wall in clean condition.
As I observed the room with interest, Mother spoke irritably.

“Could you not stare like that? And if you have business, sit down and talk already. When you’re done, you leave.”

Apparently she did not want me lingering.
That would not do. My purpose was to spend as much time with her as possible.

“I came intending to stay the night. Is that a bother?”
“Haaaah!? No way, no way. You can see that just by looking!”

“Just by looking” presumably meant that there was only one bed.
I moved to the bed, sat on the edge, and reached for the box beside the pillow.
The contents were condoms, about half gone.
Tissues had been placed beside them, most considerately.

“You usually use this with two people, don’t you?”

At my words, the muscles of Mother’s face twitched.

“So you’re saying two people can sleep here? Are you… actually serious?”
“I don’t mind. If I can spend time with you, Mother, nothing else matters.”

Mother looked at me with an expression full of disgust, a cold gaze as if she were looking at some unidentified creature.
I think the mother who had an affair, produced a child, and then foisted that daughter off on the father is far more unidentified.

“You needn’t look at me as if I were a monster. I am the child you gave birth to.”
“He’s the one who raised you.”
“But you are the only person I can call a parent. If I am rejected by the only mother I am related to by blood, whom am I supposed to rely on? Or will you tell me where my real father is?”

Each time I drove a fact home, Mother’s temper worsened by the moment.
Truly… truly this person dropped me into this rotten world and has not the slightest interest in me.
I already knew that, but considering it again, it is thoroughly selfish.

Mother, Chiaki Hinata, and Father, Ryotaro Hinata, are still carrying on a love affair with me as their pretext.
I will not, for the moment, call them Mother and Father.
Neither of them managed, to the end, to become parents. They remained an immature couple.

“…I can’t give you money, you know.” Continue reading →