Episode 60 — Streetlight

“Shi…?”

The murmur released by my mother dissolved into the late-summer evening light.

Oh no. Of all people — my mother was the one person I didn’t want seeing me with Shion.

Pushing back against the reality in front of me, I asked blankly:

“Mum, your work…?”

My mother’s work doesn’t have a specific title like teacher or pharmacist. Stocking shelves at a supermarket, picking orders in a warehouse. She selects from the enormous range of jobs and conditions presented by the temp agency and goes wherever it sends her each time. That means she can choose how much she works and when — which is to say, if she doesn’t hold herself back, she can work without limit.

And so, gradually, my mother has worn herself to nothing. To protect our life together.

“Today finished early, so… I thought I’d rest a little before the night shift…”

My mother answered in a small, trailing voice. Her expression always anxious, as if frightened of something. Fine wrinkles prominent on her face, hair carelessly kept and streaked with grey, an extreme stoop, limbs thin as twigs. All of it gave precise, faithful expression to the price paid for a life lived beyond its limits.

And the one kept alive at the cost of all those things my mother has given — is me. Her life, her time, her money, her health, her dreams — all of it converted into something as worthless and small as me. Being converted still, in the continuous present tense.

Given so much to be kept alive, raised by it — and I can give nothing back.

“I see.”

I nodded curtly. My mother’s gaze drifted, lost, with nowhere to land.

I find this mother of mine difficult. I find exchanging words with her difficult. Because every time I take in her exhausted expression, every time I touch the worn-out parts of her, it thrusts the fact at me — that I took those things from her. Because I feel with fresh force the immaturity of an existence kept alive at the cost of my mother’s entire life, and yet able to give nothing back. For that reason, somewhere along the way I began avoiding my mother. I’m still avoiding her now.

In the awkward silence, a crow called somewhere in the distance. The cacophony of a construction site swallowed that sound. Rows of old apartment buildings, exhaust fumes faintly stinging my nose. The town where I grew up, the town where my mother and I have kept missing each other, wraps around us like something clinging. The streetlights standing in rows blinked repeatedly, as if foretelling the darkness to come.

As if in answer to that, my mother let her gaze drift through the air and asked:

“Is the girl beside you a friend…?”
“She is, but it’s nothing to do with you.”

The words came out barbed, before I could stop them. This is exactly why — why I didn’t want my mother of all people to see me with Shion. Because I knew I’d react like this.

While my mother works herself to exhaustion and lets go of her beauty — I have been looking at nothing but Shion’s beauty. Worse, leaving it in words, in the very world of fiction that my mother had to give up. I had been trying not to look that fact in the face. And even having noticed that guilt, there was no way I could let go of my days with Shion — so I had known I would have no choice but to convert that guilt into irritation or something else ugly and hurl it at her. I hadn’t wanted to show Shion that ugly self of mine.

And that worst-case scenario is spread out before me now.

“I — I’m sorry…”

My mother, faced with her daughter’s unreasonable reaction, neither scolds nor argues back — she simply shrinks. I feel fresh irritation at that, and my self-disgust deepens. I can look at neither my mother’s face nor Shion’s, and sink into thoughts that are a mixture of self-loathing and self-pity.

Oh. Why would anyone spend the whole of their life raising something as hopeless as me. Why would anyone choose that life.

Why am I drawing breath so easily, as if I have every right to be here.

The scarlet of the evening sky is gradually being swallowed by darkness. If only it would swallow me along with it. If I disappeared, my mother could live a somewhat better life. Maybe she might even be able to remarry. Oh, truly. If only I weren’t here, it wouldn’t have come to this…

Sinking into those thoughts — suddenly, as if cutting through the darkness, the flickering streetlight came on. And a soft, sweet warmth touched my hand. The hand was squeezed tight.

And then a transparent voice rang out, quietly:

“Are you Uta’s mother?”