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

My design office is on the second floor of a building facing the intersection at the entrance to a residential neighbourhood. The space was formerly a solicitor’s office, and traces of that past life are still visible here and there. There are no high-rise buildings in this area, as it happens, buildings can only go up to four storeys, I believe.
The office has no car park, but there’s a church nearby whose grounds we use instead. I was told the arrangement was settled because the director and the church caretaker are friends. The caretaker is a gentle old woman, and when we occasionally cross paths she gives me vegetables from her garden.
The short walk from the car to the office feels heavy today. After what happened yesterday, going in to apologise to my colleague is hardly going to put a spring in my step. I don’t think it needs to be as serious as I’m making it, but I’ve always been bad with anything that risks conflict between people. …Am I really that bad at it, I wonder, and I look back on the past, and laugh at myself a little, and climb the stairs.
…So.
I’m sitting quietly in my usual place, staring down a design brief I’ve been commissioned to work on.
The colleague I snapped at yesterday is, naturally, here in the same room, getting on with her work just as she always does. Trying to work while keeping an eye out for the right moment to apologise makes even the chair feel uncomfortable. But I hem and haw and drag my feet. I ran into her first thing this morning and greeted her in my usual way, so maybe that counts as putting it to rest, smoothing it over… no, that’s probably not good enough, I fret. I decided to apologise at lunch after all, and gave up on the morning, turning my attention back to work.
Then, a few minutes before the lunch break, my colleague gets up from her seat with her phone in hand.
I abandoned what I was doing and stood up quickly.
“Ah, excuse me—”
I lurched forward a little as I called out, and she looked mildly startled at the urgency.
“Um… about yesterday—” I’m sorry for getting angry. For a moment I consider rephrasing — it sounds like something a primary schooler would say. “I’m sorry for getting angry.” Nothing better came to me.
“Pardon?”
She’s thrown off by the sudden apology.
“Did I… do something… I did something… um…”
Her eyes dart around, searching for what she might have done.
“Oh!”
That was the look of someone who had finally remembered. It seemed she hadn’t been bothered at all, I felt rather deflated. In contrast to my own reaction, she turned to me with a smile as easy and unclouded as ever.
“Is your daughter feeling better?”
“She is, thank you. She went to school today.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Well, I’m sorry again…”
And with that, my colleague gave a small bow and left the office to get lunch. Just like that.
She had taken it far more lightly than I’d expected, and I returned to my seat without quite feeling the weight lift. Still, one thing off my shoulders, that much was true. There was plenty more I was still carrying, but I had adapted to that weight well enough to mistake this small relief for something larger.
Mother, wife — everything I carry to hold together the family that forms the foundation of who I am now, that is the substance of gravity in my life. I came to understand that growing up, becoming an adult, means getting used to that weight and learning to carry more. If I were to irresponsibly throw down everything pressing into my shoulders… what would that feel like. What would freedom and lightness bring me. Would I soar through an unconstrained sky, or would I tremble with the loneliness of someone left behind on an island with no shore in sight.
“Amamiya-san, aren’t you eating?”
The director looks up from a tonkatsu delivery flyer.
“I’ll finish up to a good stopping point first.”
“Is that so. Shall I add your order?”
“Oh, yes, the katsu-toji rice bowl for me.”
The lunch-only specials were engraved in my memory by now, no need to look at the flyer.
“If you’re ordering I can get the set meal too.”
There was a minimum order amount, and the director’s face brightened. I glanced at her from behind my monitor, then turned back to my screen, trying to pull the design together.
“…Why… did I choose this colour?”
If the client asked me that, how would I answer. An idle question to no one in particular, going nowhere.
In the draft layout — a vivid yellow-green that hadn’t been there until yesterday was shining through.

---

By the time I was starting to pack up to leave, the short hand of the clock was hanging its head. I felt a certain kinship with it, matching as it did my mood and the angle of my own neck. I find real satisfaction in the work itself, but that’s one thing, and the relief of being released from it is quite another, and I let myself enjoy that feeling. I said goodbye to the director, who was still at her desk, and left the office.
The old staircase fixed to the outside wall has steps worn to a uniform darkness, as if the night had been polished into them, and even now I take it carefully on the way down. Gripping the handrail, descending in parallel with the dark, I let out a breath.
I look toward a distant light, the kind that guides you through darkness. A little way from the office there’s a bar that kept the exterior of an old bank building. Before my daughter was born, my husband and I used to go a few times. The food and snacks were good, and even my husband, who has opinions about these things, was satisfied. People from the office apparently drink there sometimes, but I haven’t joined them since we started our family. I sometimes worry whether people quietly think of me as unsociable. They might wonder what exactly I’m coming to the office for.
To work, obviously.
I turn my back on that light and make my way to the church, set a little way into the residential streets. I don’t follow any particular faith myself, but a church grounds always carries its own particular solemnity. No one is watching, but I bow to the main building — is main building the right way to put it? — before getting into the car. Before starting the engine I sent my husband a message to say I was on my way home.
Welcome back.
It’s early.
What do you think tonight’s dinner is?
Curry.
Why do you always say curry when you don’t know?
Because it’s delicious, that’s why.
I drove home thinking about curry, which would not be appearing on the table tonight. Whether the church had helped, I couldn’t say, but I caught almost no red lights. Not the least bit constructive, but perhaps that’s exactly the right level of thought for the commute home.
I pulled the car into the garage, and when I switched off the headlights something inside me switched off too, and my mood lifted. The relief of having made it through another weekday loosened the tension in me, and a wave of drowsiness washed over my heart. I resisted the pull of the quiet dark inside the car and got out, bag in hand.
I thought about ringing the bell and having someone let me in, but I’d already taken out the key without thinking as I walked, so I unlocked the front door myself. Already vague, my mind not quite working.
I stepped inside and the lights came on automatically to welcome me. As if civilisation had driven out the night, the house was bright and full of life. Voices, movement. My home is here.
Though — among the familiar shoes in the entrance of my home, there was a pair I didn’t recognise. I wondered absently whose they were as I took off my own shoes and lined them up beside them.
“I’m home.”
My daughter’s room on the ground floor was lively, so before heading to the living room where my husband would likely be, my feet carried me there instead. Partly to check whether a friend had come over — I looked in through the door, and had to consciously hold my expression steady, my cheeks tightening on their own.
“Oh, welcome back.”
My daughter looked up from behind the desk to greet me. Which was fine, except —