Episode 9: Why Do You Laugh When You Talk About Things Like That?
Nearly a week had passed since Yuno moved in.
One evening, after dinner, when we’d just finished clearing away the dishes —
“Oh, that’s right. I had some money left over today, so I bought pudding. It was on sale.”
Yuno peeled off the discount sticker and held out a pudding cup and a spoon.
That little ehehe laugh, drooping eyes crinkling — she looked like a child showing off a drawing she’d made for the first time.
I don’t usually eat things like this. If I’m going to have something sweet, I’d rather go somewhere proper. Cheap pudding on sale isn’t really to my taste, if I’m honest.
But looking at that guileless expression, I couldn’t say no. I took the spoon and the pudding, and we sat down across from each other and opened the lids.
“Hey, big sis — are you seeing anyone?”
A question entirely out of nowhere.
I’d just taken the first bite of pudding when Yuno came out with it.
“If I were, I don’t think I’d be letting a freeloader move in.”
“Fair point. That’s true, yeah.”
I said it like I was throwing the words away, and Yuno laughed softly.
“Have you never been with anyone?”
“Excuse me? Why are you asking like that’s the assumption?”
“So you have been with someone?”
“I have, but…”
“A man? A woman?”
A small pause. Then, quietly:
“…A woman.”
For as long as I could remember, it had always been other girls who made my heart race — for some reason, always women.
I’d dimly started to understand that I was someone who could only fall for women around the end of high school. But I was frightened, and couldn’t bring myself to say anything, and every feeling ended as unrequited love.
Ended — or rather, I’d ended them myself. Forced a lid down over all of it.
After I started working, I went to the kind of place where you meet people like that for the first time, and found a girlfriend.
She said she was bi — that she fell for men too.
Her smile was lovely, she was kind, and being with her was fun. I was happy.
But I had my work too. After I started the company it kept growing, and that was more exciting than anything, and I was absorbed in it.
I’d wanted to treasure both — time with her, and the work.
But I started turning down her invitations on days off more and more often, using work as the reason.
Maybe I’d grown complacent — taken it for granted that she’d never leave, whatever the reason.
Then one day, out of nowhere: I’ve fallen for someone else. Please let me go.
After that, I couldn’t reach her.
A few months later I found out from social media that she’d gotten married.
The photos showed her smiling, holding a baby, alongside a man who must have been her husband.
I found myself telling Yuno all of this, piece by piece.
…I’d managed to keep it sealed away with the busyness of work, and now Yuno had gone and dragged it all back up, one thing pulling the next.
My hand on the spoon had stopped moving.
“That was three years ago. And that’s been it since.”
I could hear my own voice going stiff.
“I’ve had enough. I understand now that love is just noise. I have my work. I can support myself. So I’ve decided — I’m going to live alone. From here on.”
I let out a small sigh and said it like I was cutting something off.
Yuno listened without saying a word. Moving her spoon through the pudding slowly, watching me in silence.
“What about you?”
The silence was starting to feel like pity, and it made me uncomfortable, so I asked before I thought better of it.
Maybe partly because something she’d said at dinner a few days ago had been nagging at me.
“Me?”
“That thing you mentioned. About being on your own since middle school. What was that about?”
“Oh…”
“Not that you have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
Yuno was quiet for a while, then began to speak, halting.
“My parents divorced when I was little. I lived with just mum in an apartment for a long time, but from around middle school she hardly ever came home anymore. She’d just leave money.”
Yuno took a bite of pudding, then continued.
“When she finally did come back, she suddenly said, there’s a new man and we’re going to live here, so move out — and that was that, I was out.”
“…How old were you?”
“Mm, sixteen I think.”
Sixteen. Still a child.
“Well, at first mum was still giving me money. It got difficult when the payments stopped.”
Yuno scratched her cheek lightly and went on with a loose, airy laugh.
“So when I ran out of money and didn’t know what to do, someone found me in the park and took me in. That was… a relief. But I’d been alone so long, that once I wasn’t alone anymore, I became terrified of being alone again at night.”
She kept talking, one thing after another, not checking my reaction.
“If I kissed someone, slept with them — I felt needed. And as long as someone needed me, I didn’t have to live on my own.”
“But it never lasts long. Once they get bored of me, that’s goodbye. And then I’d wait for the next person to pick me up.”
She took a small mouthful from the spoon, then murmured almost to herself.
“I think I came all this way without really understanding what it means to like someone. It was always just… as long as I’m not thrown away. As long as I’m not alone. Just that.”
A brief pause, and then she started talking again with the same easy laugh, her gaze drifting slightly.
“The last woman — looks like she’d found someone else she liked, and while I was out she started letting them into the apartment.”
“I popped out to do some shopping, came home, and walked right in on the two of them kissing.”
“…Was that the night with the rain?”
“Yeah. I had nowhere to go home to and the rain had started and I didn’t know what to do — and then big sis picked me up. That was lucky.”
Yuno had been smiling the whole time she talked. Calmly.
As though she were telling a funny story about someone else entirely.
“Hey. I’ve been thinking this for a while.”
I’d said it before I realized.
“Why do you laugh when you talk about things like that?”
“Eh…?”
“It’s wrong, isn’t it. None of that was your fault. You don’t have to force yourself to smile.”
Yuno’s eyes went wide. She stared at me with a startled expression, unmoving.
Her brown eyes seemed to tremble, just for a moment.
I’d gone too far, I thought. Said too much. I had no idea how to be kind at a moment like this. I genuinely didn’t know.
Yuno stayed frozen for a while, then quietly closed her eyes and turned her face toward the wall.
She stretched once, let out a soft breath, and murmured:
“…But I suppose so. Big sis has given up on love, hasn’t she.”
“Eh…”
The sudden change of subject left me slightly wrong-footed.
“— Hey, big sis?”
Yuno propped her right cheek on her hand, tilting her face to one side.
Those startlingly large eyes shifted slightly upward, looking straight at me.
The directness of that gaze — piercing, unwavering — sent a shiver through me without warning, and my heart gave one great leap.
Then, in a quiet voice, she said:
“If I said don’t throw me away — what would you do?”
— Eh?
My heart gave another heavy thud.
Yuno’s large pupils were vacant, lightless. The corners of her mouth were faintly lifted, but her expression held no warmth at all. A face like a sculpture carved from ice.
That face — the one that should have been artless and sweet — looked in that instant like an entirely different creature.
Thud. Thud. My heart kept hammering. The hand holding the spoon trembled faintly; a cold sweat prickled slowly through.
No words came.
All I could do was stare back.
How long did we stay like that.
“Ah… eh…”
Just as my voice finally returned —
“Ahaha.”
Yuno’s drooping eyes crinkled, cheeks lifting. The cold blankness of a moment ago dissolved like mist, and her natural smile was back.
“Just kidding, just kidding. Sorry for saying something awkward. I’ll find a job and move out soon.”
“Eh…”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure not to be a burden on big sis.”
Yuno said it with a gentle expression and a soft laugh. She pushed back her chair, stood up, and carried the empty pudding cup lightly over to the sink.
“Anyway. Going to borrow the shower.”
She called it out in a bright voice and pattered off to the bathroom.
Left alone in the living room.
Still holding my cup, I couldn’t move for a while.
My heart was still pounding — loud and heavy, hammering through my whole body.
— End of Chapter One —