Chapter One: “The Clod of Earth Awaits the Snow” — Part One

Translator’s note

Kai’s full name, Chitaira Kai, written with the kanji 地平塊, means “clod of earth on flat ground” — or more evocatively, a lump of earth on the open plain. The chapter title “The Clod of Earth Awaits the Snow” is not a nature image but a name: it is Kai who waits. What she is waiting for, and what the snow represents, the story has yet to tell us.

Among the countless memories I had made with Kai — more than I could ever count — this day was the one that could only be called the origin.
No matter how far I searched for somewhere to lay the blame, I could find nothing that satisfied.
And so perhaps that day had simply been destined to be the day I and Kai met.

I was still gripping the steering wheel, still dragging behind me the fact that I had gotten angry when a colleague teased me about being overprotective. Even between people who knew each other well, having someone make a joke at you when you were already flustered — I had reacted too strongly. The whole way here I had been replaying that moment over and over, as if running an investigation.
While I was at it, I began gradually to think: had I really been that angry… maybe I’d just raised my voice a little… — finding, by degrees, a more self-serving place to land. I made an effort to stop thinking about it. There was nothing to be gained from going further.
I could apologise tomorrow, when I got to work. That was all there was to it.
More than that — right now, I needed to be thinking about my daughter.
The light changed, and I could see the car at the front of the queue finally beginning, slowly, to move. I glanced sideways at a wave of foreign tourists who had poured off a bus and filled the pavement, and eased the car forward.
I had always liked, for some reason I couldn’t explain, the arcing traces the windscreen wipers left behind. Since I was a child.
The grey weather that had settled in at the end of September had been holding since yesterday. The rain fell at its own pace — neither hurrying nor stopping — quietly, steadily, making its sound. The dim light and the slight drop in temperature: my daughter would probably find it easier to sleep like this.
My daughter had been home sick with a fever for two days. Of course I had worried even while I was at work — it was only natural — and today I had chosen to leave much earlier than usual. Someone might think: at her age, middle school already — but even if she was in her second year of middle school, to a parent, a child was always a child.
And that’s exactly what my colleague pointed out — the regret started going around in circles again. I shook it off and made myself focus on the road.
I took a slight detour, got the shopping done, and returned home. I opened the garage and parked in the usual spot. My husband walked to work with the dog; since the whole family had stopped going out together much, the car had effectively become mine. I hooked the supermarket bag over my hand so I wouldn’t forget it, and headed for the front door.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside. No sounds; dim. The darkened hallway felt quietly forlorn. My daughter might be sleeping — I kept my footsteps soft as I pushed open the bedroom door and looked in. In the narrow gap, my daughter stirred at the intrusion, and met my eyes from where she lay.
“I’m home. Were you asleep?”
“I was dozing, but the sound of the lock woke me up.”
I crouched beside her. “Welcome back,” my daughter said — and laughed.
“What is it?”
“Just — Mum always comes home early when I’m sick.”
“In that case, it might be better for your health if I came home late every night.”
In truth that was already how it was, so I really could only be grateful to my husband.
“Your temperature? Have you checked?”
“Before lunch — it was around 37, so it’s better than yesterday.”
Yesterday my daughter had been complaining about her throat and even talking seemed like an effort, so just hearing her speak normally was the first thing that put me at ease. In the closed room the lingering summer heat was slowly pressing in, the fan turning weakly, stirring the air in lazy loops. I was trying to decide whether to ask my daughter if she was too warm or too cold when my arm moved and the supermarket bag crinkled, and I remembered.
“Hold on.”
I stepped out of the room and went to the kitchen. I had stopped on the way home — now I transferred what I’d bought into a bowl, and for no particular reason caught sight of myself reflected faintly in the ventilation window, and reached up to touch a strand of my hair.
When had it stopped feeling strange to see black-haired me in a mirror. By now, the only people in my life who had known me in my original colour were my husband and my parents. Carrying that small, idle nostalgia with me, I finished getting things ready and returned to my daughter’s room.
I held out a yellow bowl straight away — tinned mandarin segments in syrup.
“Whenever you have a fever you always want this.”
I thought she might be at the age where being treated like a child would earn a protest — but my daughter’s face softened readily, and I felt relieved.
“Muuum, I can’t be bothered getting up, feed me~”
“I don’t mind, but are you sure?”
My daughter, still wrapped in her duvet, eyes bright with excitement and anticipation, nose slightly flushed. I wasn’t sure this was a good idea, but I scooped up a mandarin and some syrup with the spoon and held it out toward my daughter’s mouth.
My daughter stretched her neck forward eagerly — but.
“Bfuhhh.”
“There you go.”
It should have been fairly obvious what would happen if you tried to get a spoonful of mandarin and syrup into someone lying completely flat. Predictably, the syrup spilled from the corner of her mouth and her face was a mess. And she choked.
I wiped my daughter’s face and pillow, then handed over the spoon and bowl.
“Don’t be lazy. Sit up and eat.”
“Aye aye~”
My daughter, lips and cheeks damp, reluctantly pulled herself upright. Her temperature and her mood both seemed to have recovered considerably. Yesterday my husband had been the one looking after her, and he had messaged to say her fever wasn’t coming down — he’d been worried, and so had I. Two days in a row felt like too much to leave to him, and I hadn’t been able to settle anyway, so today I had left early.
“Do you think you’ll be able to eat something for dinner?”
“Hmm… I’d recommend something easy on the stomach.”
“What a precise diagnosis. If you think you can eat… though I won’t be the one making it.”
It wasn’t that I couldn’t cook, but my husband’s way of putting it was a matter of suitability, and my daughter’s way of putting it was something like Mum’s cooking tastes a bit thin. And more specifically, I’d been told my seasoning was too light. But when I consciously tried to make it stronger, the flavours came out discordant instead. That sense of balance — I had simply never acquired it. I had been telling myself ever since we married that I would have my husband teach me one day, and fourteen years had passed.
Then the doorbell sounded, announcing a visitor. I exchanged a look with my daughter.
“Not Dad, right?”
“Probably a bit early for him.”
Who on earth would come on a rainy day like this — I went to answer, mentally ruling out a delivery since I’d requested weekend slots for those, and glanced without particular expectation at what was showing on the intercom screen.
For a moment, my breath stopped.
Something struck the centre of my chest, and before I could make sense of what had hit me, my eyes had already contracted.