Volume 5 Interlude

One hand holding a convenience store bag, the other gripping a brand new key.

I open the front door and step inside.

"I'm home."

My voice, a little louder than necessary, receives no answer.

There is no one in this house, so it's only natural that there is no reply, yet to me that very absence feels pleasant. Because of that, I deliberately say "I'm home" out loud once more.

As expected, there is still no reply.

This house without a family, which I moved into in order to attend university, is something I had long desired and have finally obtained. When I was still in high school, I lived in a house where saying "I'm home" received no answer even though people were present, and although I had accepted that reality, every time I directed those words toward a house that held people yet returned no voice, it felt as though pieces of myself were being shaved away.

Happy memories with my parents.

Happy memories with my older sister.

Each time I said "I'm home" to a house that contained people but gave no reply, the happy version of myself was gradually scraped away.

But this new house contains nothing that erodes me.

I never imagined that saying "I'm home" in a house where no one lives could feel this wonderful, this good. From the bottom of my heart, I truly feel that moving here was the right choice. Since I moved in, I have already said "I'm home" many times, yet I still want to say it again and again. I want to savor completely the fact that there is no one here.

However, in about one more hour, after two o'clock, this house with no one in it will become a house where Miyagi is.

And that is even more pleasing to me than having moved into a house without family. I have been looking forward to today, the day Miyagi moves in.

"I'm home."

Without growing tired of it, I murmur the words softly once again and take off my shoes. The entrance is narrower than the house where I lived with my family, but to me it feels just right. I walk down the short hallway and enter the shared dining kitchen. I put the cider and barley tea I bought at the convenience store into the refrigerator. Then I place the sandwich and orange juice on the table and set my bag down beside them. I sit down in a chair just like that and look around the dining kitchen. The furniture and appliances placed in this shared space were all chosen by me using the money our parents gave us, balancing price, design, and compromise, and I think they are not bad at all. I really wanted to choose them together with Miyagi, but she left everything to me with a message saying, "I'll leave it to Sendai-san."

Well, that is very much like Miyagi.

I eat the sandwich I just bought.

I'm not particularly hungry, but I force a slightly late lunch into my stomach. After finishing, and while drinking the orange juice, my phone rings. I take it out of my bag.

The screen shows Umina's name. When I check the message, it reads, "Can I come stay over in the summer?"

Ever since I moved here, Umina has sent me many messages like this.

She wants to come play at the new house, or she wants to meet during the May holidays, and things along those lines.

The messages piling up on my phone are trying to connect the high school version of me from the past with the present me, but they fail to move my heart. Even so, they are not something I can treat coldly enough to sever the relationship completely. So when replying to my high school friends, I summon back the high school version of myself.

"Roommate will be here too, so it might be difficult."

I send a safe, noncommittal reply and place the phone back on the table.

What I want is not messages from Umina. Nor is it the occasional message from Mariko. What I want is contact from Miyagi, who has hardly sent me any messages at all since we graduated from high school.

But that wish does not reach her.

Of course it doesn't.

She is not the kind of person who contacts me without a specific reason.

I slump forward and rest against the table.

Speaking of contacting someone without any particular reason, there was exactly one message from my older sister.

I let out a sigh.

It was nothing more than a meaningless question asking whether the move was finished, so I simply replied, "It's done."

Our communication is practically nonexistent, so I have no idea why she even bothered to send a message, and I have no desire to find out.

I straighten up and finish the orange juice.

I throw away the trash on the table and, to overwrite those dull memories, I pull up Miyagi's name on my phone.

"Should I come pick you up after all?"

I had already asked the same thing before and been refused, but I send the message again anyway. Naturally, unlike with Umina or Mariko, no reply comes immediately. After waiting five minutes, then ten, the curt message, "I can come by myself," appears on the screen. It's not an amusing reply, but it is very Miyagi, and I can tell myself that receiving any reply at all is enough.

"I guess I have no choice but to wait."

I place the phone on the table and stand up.

My room and Miyagi's room.

The two rooms are next to each other, their doors standing within my line of sight.

Miyagi said, "The person who moves in first can choose the room," so I chose first, and the remaining room became Miyagi's. That said, since both rooms are the same size, there was no real significance to the choice. It was simply a way to distinguish between my room and Miyagi's room.

I open the door to my room.

Inside the unfamiliar room are unfamiliar pieces of furniture.

A small bookshelf and a chest of drawers.

A bed and bedding that look cheaper than what I used before.

Everything is simple, but the bed is something I bought with money I saved myself. For the four years until I graduate from university, it has already been decided that my parents will continue to support me. I'm not living entirely on my own earnings, so I haven't completely severed my ties with them.

That is why, at the very least,

I wanted the thing I sleep on to be something I obtained with my own hands.

I will never return to the house where my family lives.

This is also a way of renewing that resolve, and I feel that if the place where I sleep truly belongs to me, then I can remain myself.

I slowly turn in a full circle within the room and sit down on the bed.

What meets my eyes is not only the new things I bought, but also old things I brought from home. Books, clothes, the mirror, and so on were all carried over from the old house. However, one important thing is missing, the piggy bank that was supposed to hold one million yen.

That was something I bought in my first year of high school and kept in my room all that time, yet it does not exist in this room.

Because that piggy bank had no opening, and I had to cut it open with a can opener to use the money for this room’s contract, the moment I opened it, it ceased to be a piggy bank. For that reason, I didn't bring it with me.

But in its place, my roommate will soon come to this house.

"It feels unreal."

On the day of the contract, and again on graduation day, I handed an envelope to Miyagi.

Even then, I didn't truly believe that Miyagi would choose to become my roommate. What I did was far too forceful, and it would not have been strange at all if she had refused.

I stand up and walk around the room once more.

The thought that, starting today, I will be living together with Miyagi as roommates makes me restless.

I stop, turn around, and pace back and forth like an animal trapped in a cage before heading back to the dining kitchen.

Normally, I am never this unsettled.

Whenever it involves Miyagi, I stop being my usual self.

I look at the phone I left on the table.

There is still no message from Miyagi.

I turn around and look at the two doors standing side by side.

I approach Miyagi's room and knock on the door.

Naturally, there is no reply.

I quietly open the door and peer inside.

It feels stark and utterly empty.

This is Miyagi's room, yet no furniture or cardboard boxes have arrived, and it hasn't become hers yet.

"I wonder what Miyagi is going to bring."

I used to go to Miyagi's house once or twice a week, sometimes even more often, so I can recall the things that were in her room. But because I never asked her what she planned to bring from that room, I cannot picture what kind of space this room I am looking at now will eventually become.

Miyagi really is incredibly stingy.

She tells me nothing at all.

In that room there were manga and novels I read many times, as well as some I was looking forward to continuing. Yet she hasn't even told me whether those manga and novels will be lined up in this room or not.

Without stepping inside, I close the door.

Then I fix my gaze on the phone resting on the table.

The clock refuses to move forward.

Miyagi does not send messages like "I'll be there soon" or "just a little longer."

One minute feels unbearably long.

A single minute made up of only sixty seconds feels like a hundred, or even two hundred. It is as though someone has twisted the very concept of time itself. I know that no matter how much I pace around, time will not speed up. Even so, my feet move on their own, circling the dining-kitchen once, then settling me into a chair where I tap restlessly.

I have not seen Miyagi since graduation day.

Since then, I have waited for this day through countless days, so logically waiting another ten or twenty minutes shouldn't be a problem. Yet I feel unsettled, and some part of my body is always in motion. It is as if I can see time being stretched out before me, and I cannot remain still.

I stop my small, restless foot movements and look at my phone.

I search online for things that seem to be missing from this house and try to store them in my mind. But no matter how much I take in, it immediately spills out around my temples. After tapping my head, which retains none of what I see, and taking three deep breaths, my ears twitch slightly.

I think I heard the sound of the door opening, and I stand up.

As I head toward the entrance, the door to the dining-kitchen opens and Miyagi appears.

I sent her a key in advance, so I cannot complain that she entered without ringing the intercom. What I do want to complain about is that she did not do something as ordinary as letting me know she had arrived. Even though I know she is the type who does not contact people, I still cannot help thinking that a short message saying she had reached the station or was in front of the house would have been nice. But before I can complain, there is something I have to say first.

"Miyagi. Welcome home."

I smile at Miyagi, who is wearing a hoodie I have seen several times before and a pair of denim pants. She makes a puzzled expression.

"Welcome home? Not 'come in'?"

"This house is already Miyagi's house too, so 'welcome home' is the correct one."

On graduation day, the moment Miyagi chose the envelope instead of the pendant, this house became Miyagi's house as well. And on the day I moved in first, the words I would greet her with were decided to be "welcome home."

"......I'm home."

Even though I did not ask her to, Miyagi says the words that pair with "welcome home."

I am happy.

I am so happy that I want to shout "welcome home" out the window at the top of my lungs.

"I'm home" and "welcome home."

I think I have been waiting all this time for the day when these two would finally come together.

"Welcome home."

When I say it again, "I'm home" comes back once more. I tell Miyagi to put her luggage down and say, "I'll give you a tour of the rooms."

"It's not big enough to need a tour, is it?"

"That's true, but this kind of thing is about feelings, right?"

When I smile brightly, Miyagi sets her luggage on the floor and says in a flat voice, "If you want to give a tour, then go ahead."

She has never been particularly friendly, so it does not bother me.

The laundry area, the toilet, the bathroom.

I show her around the house, which is not especially spacious, and we return to the dining-kitchen.

"This is the dining-kitchen, and that concludes the tour of the shared spaces. Also, your room is over there. The one next to it is mine."

"......Thanks. I'll go put my luggage in my room."

"Wait. Do you want something to drink first? I have cider and barley tea."

"I don't need it."

I hear her curt reply, but I still do not want to let Miyagi go yet.

"It's been a while since we last saw each other, so shall we talk for a bit? How have you been?"

"I'm fine. You can tell just by looking, can't you?"

"Even things you can tell by looking, you still have to ask to make sure they're right, don't you?"

"Maybe that's true. ......And you, Sendai-san?"

"As you can see, I'm fine."

When I answer with a smile, the conversation ends there.

Suddenly the dining-kitchen grows quiet, and Miyagi tugs at the strings of her hoodie in a troubled manner, wrapping them around her fingers. This silence, after so long, isn't something I can let pass the way I used to. I tap the table lightly with my fingertips and look at Miyagi. She unwinds the hoodie strings from her fingers, turns her back to me, and says once more, "I'll go put my luggage down."

"I've been waiting for you this whole time, Miyagi."

I call out to her back as she walks away carrying her luggage.

"It hasn't been that long. It feels like graduation was just the other day."

Miyagi says this without turning around.

"Because I came here first, it felt long to me. Your moving luggage arrives at four, right?"

"Yeah."

"I see."

Those short words vanish quickly, and silence wraps around us again. As the air begins to stagnate, I speak in the brightest voice I can manage.

"Miyagi. I'm looking forward to living together starting today."

Miyagi, who had her back turned, turns around.

She furrows her brow, then immediately presses the crease with her finger and speaks in a small voice.

"......I'm looking forward to it too."

Miyagi disappears into her room.

An unfamiliar Miyagi in an unfamiliar room.

It doesn't seem like this new life will be easy, but from the bottom of my heart, I think it was good that what Miyagi chose on graduation day was the envelope.