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Chapter 231
Miyagi is not enough — 231
Translated by KaiesV
Edited by KaiesV
Slowing down.
True to my word, I finished my part-time job and arrives home late for dinner.
Naturally, I don’t rub Miyagi in the common space.
I turn on the lights and air conditioner, and call out twice to the door, which I also slammed before leaving the house.
「Miyagi, I’m home. I’m going to make dinner, so wait for me.」
Miyagi will not appear anyway.
Without waiting for an answer, I go back to my room and leave my coat and bag. I open the refrigerator and am relieved to find that the fried rice I made for lunch is gone. I wouldn’t collapse from skipping a meal for a day, but it’s better to eat than not to eat.
I checked the rice cooker and found that the rice was not cooked as expected.
After filling a pot with water and putting it on the fire, I prepare pasta and take vegetables out of the refrigerator to make a salad. Deciding to use a retort for the sauce, chop the cabbage, cut up the tomatoes, and add salt to the boiling water. I put the pasta in the pot and set the timer, then turned around when I felt a gaze.
I don’t know when she came out of her room, but my eyes meet Miyagi’s.
「It’s not done yet, and you can stay in your room. I’ll call you when it’s done.」
When I call out to Miyagi, who is standing in front of the room, she averts her gaze.
「I’ll just wait here.」
「If you’re going to wait, sit down.」
I don’t know what she is thinking, but Miyagi doesn’t reply. But I’d rather have Miyagi in the same space whether standing or sitting, so I turn my back to her and warm up the meat sauce.
After a while, I hear a rattling sound of a chair moving, and I think Miyagi is like a stray cat after all. If I get too close to her, she runs away, but she sometimes approaches me on a whim.
I am sure that there is no such thing as a proper distance between me and Miyagi.
Every distance is correct and incorrect.
So Miyagi, who was a lump of bedding hiding from me before I went to my part-time job, is now looking at me so much that it hurts to feel her eyes on my back. I think it is too fickle, but Miyagi is not Miyagi that is not fickle.
I put some cabbage and tomatoes on my plate, then turn around.
「Miyagi, what are you doing?」
「It’s nothing.」
With a curt voice, Miyagi’s gaze falls on the table.
I still think it’s a whim.
I wonder if I should say something else to her when she stops looking at me, and then the timer rings. I stop the electronic beeping that continues to hurry me, drain the pasta into a colander, place it on a plate, and pour the meat sauce over it.
「Sorry for making you wait.」
Place the pasta and salad on the table and pass the fork.
「Thank you. Itadakimasu.」
Miyagi says in a flat voice and wraps the pasta around his fork. Then she takes a bite or two without speaking.
Watching Miyagi, who was nothing but a lump of bedding during the day, sitting quietly in a chair eating pasta, the words “successfully fed” come to mind and she looks more and more like a stray cat.
The dry clinking sound of forks and plates is the only sound in the conversation-free common space.
The pasta, which had been made in large portions, was rapidly diminishing, and half of it was gone in no time at all.
Still, I think Miyagi is not a good pasta eater.
The amount of pasta wrapped around the fork is too much or too little. I never get tired of watching her munching large chunks of pasta or eating too little pasta with a look of not having enough.
If I tell Miyagi that she is cute, she will get angry, and if I tell her that she is frankly a bad eater, she will get angry. But I think it might be okay to call her cute because she get angry either way, but I swallow the words that are about to go down my throat because today, if I make her angry, she might go back to her room. There will be more chances to say pretty down the road, so it’s better not to say anything unnecessary now.
「Is it delicious?」
I throw out words that are bland and likely to get a response.
「Delicious.」
Miyagi responds without looking at me.
「What were you going to do with the dinner if I didn’t come home?」
This time, when I asked a question that I wasn’t sure would get an answer, Miyagi’s hand, which had been wrapping the pasta around the fork, stopped.
The sound the fork and plate had been making disappeared, and the common space suddenly became quiet. There was a brief pause, and then Miyagi looked at my face, which she had not wanted to look at.
「…You told me you were coming back.」
Miyagi makes a gruff voice.
「I don’t want you to starve to death. The pasta, was it enough?」
「Yes.」
Miyagi’s hand moved from where it had been resting to take a bite of the pasta wrapped around her fork. But perhaps a bite was too much for her, she munched on the pasta.
「Come visit me at the cafe again.」
As Miyagi gulps down her pasta, I say something I hadn’t intended to say.
「It’s boring to go alone.」
「A friend of mine wants to meet you, Miyagi.」
「…A friend of yours?」
I hear a slightly low voice.
「A college friend of mine who introduced me to part-time work. We’re working part-time together now.」
Mio, who has been more interested and eager to meet my roommate than necessary since she saw Miyagi’s picture, has been asking me to bring Miyagi to the café since before today, if not today.
I thought it would be troublesome if I let them meet, and I tried to keep quiet about it to Miyagi, but it was impossible. Even when I was working part-time, I would miss Miyagi, and when I saw her face, I couldn’t help but tell her to come visit me.
「Is that so.」
Miyagi says in a tone that may or may not interest her.
「Anytime you feel like it, come on over. Oh, but I’m off on New Year’s Day. Oh, right, you want to go to Hatsumode together?」
I watch the pasta disappear from my plate and ask what I wanted to ask as if it were nothing.
「As I said at Christmas, I won’t go.」
I remember well how she told me she didn’t want to go on her first visit to the temple.
But it wasn’t exactly on Christmas, but was said on Christmas Eve at my house in Utsunomiya.
「It’s fine, let’s go.」
「Why do you go to Hatsumode? It’s just cold.」
「What for? To visit a shrine, right? If you want to pray a fortune, you can do so.」
「What do you want to pray for, Sendai-san?」
When asked, I recalled the wishes I had prayed for in past New Year’s visits.
From childish wishes to be like my sister, to tests, examinations, and friendships.
I have asked God for many things, but the more important things didn’t seem to come true. But if it had come true, I wouldn’t be here as Miyagi’s roommate, so maybe it’s a good thing it didn’t.
「Do you have none, Miyagi?」
「I don’t have any, and I don’t have a custom of going to Hatsumode.」
「Then, why don’t we both take our time?」
「Sendai-san, why don’t you go to Hatsumode?」
「There’s no way I would go there alone.」
I don’t have any attachment to Hatsumode, and if it’s not an excuse to go out with Miyagi, then there’s no point in sticking to Hatsumode. I don’t care how I spend the first day of January, as long as Miyagi stays close to me.
「Do whatever you like.」
Miyagi said plainly and wrapped the remaining pasta around her fork.