“Ah, you were talking about the cleanup? Sorry, I guess I got overly worked up by my lonesome.”
Kenichi said a rather nice line, but Nahoko’s statement bluntly shot it down. Nahoko looked curious as the blow sent her husband’s shoulders sinking. Then she looked in Subaru’s direction and said, “You’re coming for breakfast, too, Subaru. Your mom worked hard for your sake today, after all.”
To this, she added a thin smile, which only those close to her understood meant she was in a very good mood indeed.
2
“Whoa, this is amazin’, Subaru. It’s a super-special course. It’s like a green forest.”
Thus spoke Kenichi, gone from half-naked to clothed, as he went down to the first floor with Subaru. Standing by his father, who wore comically eye-catching glasses, Subaru gazed at the dining table and sighed.
“I’m straight-up grateful. Mm, I seriously feel that way…but what’s up, Mom? Why is my plate the only one with a big pile of green peas plopped on top of it?”
Just as Kenichi had pointed out, before Subaru’s spot on the dining table was a special course, a large heaping pile of green peas. Incidentally, Subaru really didn’t like green peas. He was bad with green vegetables in general, but especially these.
“Hey now, you’re always saying how you hate green peas, aren’t you, Subaru? It’s not good to be picky about your food, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to make you eat lots and put that whole business to rest.”
“So you relied on a memory you’d eventually forget anyway and decided to correct my likes and dislikes. But what do you mean, this opportunity…? Is today some kind of special day or something?”
“Heh, you’re so naive, Subaru. The day that is today…no, any day, any hour is precious time that will never return again in your life, so today may not be special, but it’s special in its own way…”
“You can, um, stop now.”
When Kenichi wedged himself into the conversation, throwing him for a bit of a loop, Subaru sat down with resignation on his face. Then the first thing he did was push the plate packed with green peas away from him.
“Anyway, I’ll accept the feelings you felt for me on their own merit…but I’ll pass on the green peas. I’m not eating these things even if it’s Armageddon.”
“Sheesh, that kind of like-and-dislike stuff will be a big hindrance to life down the road. Ah, Mom, there’s some tomato in my salad. I hate tomato, so give me something else to eat.”
“That’s my father for you, damn it…the first part of what he says has nothing to do with the second.”
The husband passed the tomato in his salad on to his wife, stealing the boiled egg from her salad in turn. Such trades between husband and wife were always occurring in the Natsuki residence. Glancing sidelong at that, Subaru pressed his hands together over everything on the menu except the green peas, which that morning consisted of tofu, miso soup, and honey toast heavy on the honey.
“I think you’re always doing this, but why the eclectic Japanese-style food?”
“Mom used seaweed as an ingredient in the miso soup. I like strawberry jam on my toast, too.”
The reply was not an answer, nor was it consistent with that day’s menu. If he pointed that out, Nahoko would no doubt simply give him a mystified look. Accordingly, Subaru didn’t trouble himself with pointing it out.
“Mm, this miso soup… That’s Mom for you. You’ve gotten better at this behind my back, haven’t you?”
“You can tell? Actually, I recorded a thirty-minute cooking channel video yesterday over lunchtime.”
“No way she watched it.”
Kenichi’s statement felt strongly appropriate to the moment, and Nahoko’s reply felt incongruous with equal strength.
Furthermore, if Nahoko’s statement were dragged in line with the truth, it would likely go from her having recorded the show to her having only recorded it, most likely never to consider it again.
“Setting that aside, what are you gonna do about this plate of green peas? I tried to pass it to Daddy, Daddy passed it to Mom, and Mom passed it to me, and we’ve been going around in circles…”
“But Mom hates green peas. I hate even looking at them.”
“And you were trying to overcome me being picky?!”
“Ah, don’t misunderstand me, it’s not just green peas that Mom hates, it’s all food that’s little and round like that. It feels icky to put them in my mouth.”
“That’s not a misunderstanding, then—if anything it just sounds even fishier than before!”
Deflated by his mother’s impactful statement, Subaru grudgingly pushed the plate of green peas Kenichi’s way.
“Well, it’s the husband’s place to take responsibility for the wife, so I’ll leave it to Daddy to reap the fruits of defeat.”
“Hey, don’t make me feel all lonely here, Subaru. We’re family getting along like few do these days, right? In other words, if Mom hates it, Daddy hates it, too.”
“Man, I really feel for this forest of green, nobody’s happy with it!”
In the end, Kenichi made a face like a mischievous brat as he said, “Guess we’ll have to plop ’em into pilaf until they’re all gone. Heh-heh-heh…” And thus, how to dispose of them was settled. No longer having to solo the green peas, Subaru readily promised to cooperate in their disposal. For her part, Nahoko declared, “I hate even looking at them,” completely rejecting them in every way.
In the end, it became a competition between the two men to dispose of the green peas, and the family breakfast finally came to an end.
“It was a feast.”
“Oh, it was nothing special. OK, let’s wash all the dinnerware in the sink, then it’s a race to school to help with digestion, Subaru!”
“I keep telling you, give it up with this cliché rushing-me-off-to-school routine. I’m gonna sleep till noon.”
As the dinnerware was piled into the sink, Kenichi made the offer with a glint of his teeth, leaving Subaru to listlessly shake his head. Then, as he watched both parents head off, Subaru scratched his head as he went toward his bedroom—then his feet stopped.
“—Ugnh!”
A throbbing pain ran across his temples, making Subaru strongly rub his head and eyes. The light flashing on the backs of his eyelids made him blink, and he felt like he could hear something hot smoldering inside his chest.
—Something was off. Something about that morning was odd.
“Subaru?”
From the back of his head, the halted Subaru felt the gazes of his parents. Subaru knew just what emotions were infused into his father’s gaze, his mother’s gaze, the gazes of both his parents.
He didn’t turn around. He silenced his head, practically fleeing—no, literally fleeing to his own room.
“What? Why, why am I getting these weird feelings like this…?”
Touching a hand to his own breast, Subaru sensed his rapid heartbeats, and even fear. Practically crumbling, he knelt on top of the futon, focusing his restless mind on the clock mounted on the wall.
The time was eight AM—school started at eight thirty, and it was a twenty-minute jog from home. If he changed clothes, he could just make it without being late.
“”
But Subaru made no sign of changing clothes as he stared at the movement of the clock from atop the futon.
Gradually, the second hand notched forward, and the minute hand moved to ten—crossing the deadline. From then on, he would not make it in time for school to begin. However he might struggle, that was absolute.
“…So it can’t be helped. Yeah, it can’t be helped.”
Perhaps, if there’d been just a little more time until he could harden his resolve, he might have made it to school. But reality had imposed its time limit on Subaru to an exceptional extent.
He’d gone beyond it. Therefore, no more would the choice press upon him that day. And yet—
“…Usually, this would calm me down, wouldn’t it? Wha
t gives…?”
His breath was ragged, his heart rate wouldn’t settle, and Subaru desperately tried to suppress the shaking of his body.
This was the time for his daily ritual of fear to come to a close. Even though he knew that the same fear would come every day at the same hour, that day’s had exceeded all bounds.
That morning, no one would censure Subaru any longer. No one would hurry him, or back him into a corner.
Whether to go to school—the time that tiny question would cause such powerful pain to Subaru had come to an end.
It had been several months since he had rejected school and become a delinquent. Though this had given root to a powerful sense of inferiority and self-revulsion, he became relieved every time he confirmed that the time to go to school had passed. This was something Subaru had repeated many times over.
Thus, the palpable sense of relief should have been well ingrained in Subaru’s flesh. And yet…
“What is it, today of all days…?”
The sense of guilt and self-hatred, the clinging sense of unpleasantness…they just wouldn’t vanish.
He didn’t know where the sense of nervousness plucking at his chest was coming from. Without understanding how to set his breathing straight, Subaru agonized on top of the futon, smeared in disagreeable sweat.
Now that he thought back, something had been off from the moment he’d awoken that morning.
His father, Kenichi, hatching schemes like that to wake Subaru up was a daily fact of life. Once Subaru stopped going to school, becoming a good-for-nothing in name and fact, his father’s approach toward him hadn’t changed from before.
And yet, the physical contact, the conversing, the holds from his father, now hurt for a different reason.
Even if his mother, Nahoko, had all kinds of harebrained ideas that strayed from the mark, with those that misfired, like the one that morning, far more common than those that did not, she’d always put Subaru first—always, for seventeen years.
Even so, his mother’s gaze that morning had instilled a sense of loneliness and thoughts of self-reproach well beyond the norm.
Everything was the same as usual, not a thing out of place. And yet, he’d sensed something off about his parents, and about himself.
“The heck. What the heck, what happened? Yesterday wasn’t anything spec— Ugh!”
When he thought back to the day before in search of the cause of that morning’s change in tone, fireworks scattered inside his head. The pain interrupted his thought process, feeling strangely as if it was preventing Subaru’s attempt to touch on his own memory. To prove whether it was so, Subaru would have to challenge the sea of his memory once more—and this he did not do.
There was no special reason for the odd pain that morning. That day, his feelings of guilt had simply decided to assert themselves as pain. Probably he had been unable to look either of his parents straight in the eye because—
“Subaru, can I come in for juuust a bit?”
A voice came through the door, but the door opened before he could reply. When he let out a heavy breath and turned his head toward it, Kenichi was moonwalking his way into his own son’s room. Subaru spontaneously smacked his forehead.
“…Coming in before I answer kind of defeats the point of asking me, doesn’t it?”
“Hey, now. With the hard bonds tying me and you, father and son, together, that’s not really nece— Er, it kind of is! Sorry, I wasn’t considering that you’re in puberty. I’ll come again after you’ve taken care of things.”
“Don’t go back to form and lob weirdly realistic conclusions out like that! I wasn’t even doing anything!”
When a crack was evident in the chain between father and son, he made a show of consideration. When Subaru spoke with a ragged voice, Kenichi went “Reaaally?” with a suspicious air and entered the room once more. Then he sat on the futon and crossed his arms in Subaru’s direction.
“Well, it’s fine. We’ll leave what just happened as a secret shared by the two of us alone.”
“There’s nothing that needs to be a secret! Just be honest, sheesh! All you’re doing is assaulting me before I get back to sleep again!”
“I get it, I get it— So, then. Let’s get to the point. Actually, Subaru, I took time off from work today. Surprised?”
“…Yeah, I figured that. Daddy’s not at the house on a Monday morning very often. And?”
“Don’t be hasty jumping to conclusions. A father-son conversation is like boxing. The jab comes first.”
Kenichi’s laid-back smile and demeanor made Subaru feel like he was just drawing out the conversation. He was dancing around the main issue, using words and gestures to make light of things and giving himself and his opponent time to harden their resolve. This was a kind of habit in interpersonal relations Subaru knew well.
It was not simply because the apple did not fall far from the tree—there was a separate reason, one steeped in incorrigible idiocy.
“—Ow!!”
The instant he embraced that sentiment, a sharp pain ran through Subaru’s head once more. He began to vaguely suspect just what was causing the pain. But Subaru averted his gaze from Kenichi as he said, “…And? Now that you’ve landed the jab, what’s Daddy’s right-handed punch, your conversation topic, gonna be?”
“Yes, let’s see. Subaru, do you have a girl you like?”
“What is this, middle school?!!”
“Ohh, that overreaction is like making a confession, don’t ya know?”
“What gives with you saying that with that smug look on your face? Exasperated sighs of lament don’t mean anything, you know.”
He’d meant to paper over the sentiment, but that blow had been an unexpected one. But, as a matter of fact, the assertion was off the mark, because Subaru didn’t have any interest in such things at that time. He had neither the interest nor a belief that he ought to have one.
“Keh, well, aren’t you boring. I laid it all out when you were little, didn’t I? Girls have a weakness for promises that happened years ago and situations like that, so go make some and set up some flags, damn it!”
“If I sincerely took that as truth, I’d have every girl in town pointing me out as a dishonest bastard. I already have too many sins to deal with…you trying to drive me down into a living hell?”
“…If only you’d inherited my gentle mask. You’ve got Mom’s I-don’t-give-a-damn look, plus Daddy’s short legs and bad jokes. Your status points are pretty low, huh?”
“I’ve been sayin’ that since I had a umbilical cord…”
The tension dropped between father and son as they bantered about their hardwired genetic situations. As the diversion ran its course, Subaru returned to “So?” once more and asked, “What was the issue at hand, anyway? After this, I have an important duty to fulfill: sleeping two to three more hours. So if what you want draws a total beeeep, then talk to Mom downstairs, okay?”
“Don’t brush me off all natural like that. Besides, this talk would just fly over Mom’s head. My wife and your mom is the worst woman at guessing in the whole world. That’s why I can’t let her out of my sight, but…”
The natural way he tossed out fond phrases bored Subaru, his adolescent son, to tears. When Subaru hung his head, Kenichi went “Hmm,” then twisted his neck a bit and smiled mischievously as he said, “Well, it happens to be nice weather out—how ’bout we dress up and have a little father-son talk outside?”
3
“Ohh, Ken. Not often I see you in the morning. They finally fired you, huh?”
“Don’t be stupid. Nothing’s getting done in that place without me. Felt bad to work so much that I’m stealing everyone else’s job, so I’ve gotta lay off once in a while.”
Kenichi lobbed his insult with a raise of his middle finger, smiling toward the owner of a nearby bakery as he passed on his bicycle. He proceeded to toss warm words the store owner’s way as the latter vanished around a bend, adding afterward, “Sheesh, every
one talks like I got fired just ’cause they see me taking a day off. Is it so bad I’m nurturing a loving family here? And if I was fired, I’d get a new job before I got busted.”
“…As a person you’re nurturing, I’m praying you don’t toss any heart-stopping surprises like that on me.”
Hands thrust into his tracksuit pockets, Subaru watched the conversation with the baker from a distance, with sinking shoulders. “Hey, hey,” went Kenichi at his son’s demeanor, adjusting the position of his highly conspicuous glasses as he said, “It’s bad enough in your own darned room, but there you are, making that suspicious face when I’ve dragged you out and the sun’s shining this bright on a nice crisp morning like this. You might get stopped by a cop like that.”
“If I got stopped by a cop, it’d be because Daddy dragged me out at a time like this!! I…said I didn’t wanna, but you twisted my arm anyway.”
“What are you sayin’? That foot dragging was just goin’ through the motions. You really love everything about Daddy, don’t ya, Subaru? Relax, I love you, too. Next after Mom, that is!”
Their stroll recommenced, and Kenichi’s feelings didn’t seem all that hurt as he gave Subaru a slap on his back. Subaru grimaced at the force of it, but that moment, his thoughts were stolen by an even greater ache in his breast.
After all, simply walking close to his father instilled so much pain, he felt like it would crush his chest.
“Don’t be all guarded like that. It’s not like I’m gonna talk about anything scary. It’s an actual legit father-son talk.”
“‘Legit father-son talk,’ eh?”
“Yep, legit father-son talk— Incidentally, Subaru, which would you rather have…a little brother or a little sister?”
“Being asked that at seventeen is nothing but scary!!”
He’d lost count of the unexpected blows, but this one left Subaru aghast, voice coarsened. Seeing his son like that, Kenichi went “I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” showing off his teeth with a smile.
“Well, Mom and I are certainly still on lovey-dovey terms, but at our age we really don’t wanna see more than one of you. So be happy. You’re monopolizing my and Mom’s love.”
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 10 Page 17