Subaru shook his head lightly to dispel the lingering fog of sleep as grating laughter assaulted his ears. He prided himself on being the type who snapped awake immediately upon natural awakening, but being roused by external factors was a different story altogether.
Rubbing his eyelids against a faint, throbbing pain — like insufficient blood was making its way to his brain — and casually craning his neck, his familiar room came into view.
Bookshelves crammed to bursting with manga and light novels, discarded jeans and track pants strewn across the floor — a room utterly strewn about. The study desk he hadn't used for its proper purpose in ages was buried under half-read books, and the antiquated television-and-video-console combo dedicated solely to gaming gave off a peculiar air of nostalgia.
Cracking the bones in his neck atop his futon — long since degraded into a permanent bed from which he rarely rose — Subaru felt a strange sense of unease about the perfectly ordinary scenery before him. Why, exactly, was his chest so restless?
"Hey, hey, ignoring me like that is gonna make a grown man cry, y'know? The morning air's so nice and fresh — just go with the flow and spring out of bed with a bang!"
"You want me to greet the morning like I just took a diving press? Don't say ridiculous things. Besides, I think my bones are creaking, so I'm just gonna sink back into sleep like this."
He responded irritably to the voice that had been waiting for him to wake, then flopped back down onto the futon. The person standing right beside the futon, facing Subaru's turned back in a clear declaration of no room for negotiation, whined in a drawn-out, disgruntled tone: "Rebellion phase! It's a rebellion phase! I always knew it would come, but I didn't expect it to hit this morning! I should've skipped the breakfast prep and spent more time preparing for a proper dialogue with my son. Damn it, I hate my own helplessness...!"
"Saying that while grabbing my foot — hey, wha— ow! Owww!"
"All right, I've decided. Today, I'm gonna spend the whole day talking things through with you. First up: physical language! Four, four! C'mon, joint locks from a waking state really pack a punch!"
With his leg twisted into a four-position lock, Kenichi had rolled to the opposite side from Subaru and now had the leverage to wrench Subaru's knee and shin with painful precision. As Subaru groaned under the irresistible pain, Kenichi let out that same exasperating, life-is-great laugh: "C'mon, what's wrong, what's wrong? You've gotten so big and grown, training every single day, and yet you're struggling against one middle-aged guy — don't you find that embarrassing? Ahahaha — ah, wait, ow! Owwww!"
"You idiot! Picking a four-position as your surprise attack — you really have gotten old, Dad! One little flip and the damage bounces right back on you. Teaching me that move came back to bite you — ah, wait, no flipping, no flipping — ow! Ow ow!"
Two fully grown men tumbled about, legs intertwined, rolling back and forth as attacker and defender swapped positions with each rotation. Every time, the one screaming in pain alternated between victim and perpetrator. Their wild thrashing sent books tumbling off the desk and toppled the game console that had been propped upright.
In the midst of this pre-dawn scuffle — less a parent-child fight and more playful roughhousing — a languid voice and an off-beat knock pierced through into the room, freezing both of them mid-attack: "— Hey, you two. Mom's getting hungry, so I'd really like to have breakfast now."
Standing at the doorway was a woman who gave off a vague, hazy aura — bad-tempered eyes surveying the scene. At first glance, the sharpness of her gaze radiated considerable displeasure, but Subaru knew from seventeen years of experience that, in truth, she wasn't thinking anything particular at all behind it.
The bad eyes that instantly gave away their family resemblance — this was Naoko Natsuki, Subaru's mother.
At his wife's appearance, Kenichi stuck out his tongue, yelped "Whoops!", and sprang to his feet: "Sorry, sorry. I just got too caught up in bonding with Suba. If anything, I should've just eaten first."
"— ? But it's a morning when the whole family can eat together — why would you go ahead without us? Isn't it better when we all sit down and eat together?"
Kenichi's words had been considerate, but Naoko simply tilted her head with a question mark floating above her. There was no sarcasm in it, no hidden edge — she had said exactly what she genuinely thought, pure and simple.
Looking down at his wife, Kenichi nodded firmly several times: "You're right, you're right! That's my wife, always so on the ball. Breakfast really does taste better when everyone eats together!"
"I don't think the taste really changes whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner? Plus, if we all eat at once, the dishes get done in one go."
"Ah — the dishes. Sorry about that. I just got carried away for a second there."
He'd been looking so pleased with himself, only to deflate as her offhand remark popped the bubble. Naoko regarded her slumped husband with mild puzzlement, then looked down at Subaru, still lying on his back: "Come on, Subaru, let's eat breakfast too. Mom worked extra hard today, all for your sake."
She smiled — a faint, cheerful smile that only someone close to her would recognize.
※※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ — Rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he reluctantly descended to the first-floor dining table, Subaru felt his hazy consciousness snap fully awake under the force of sheer shock.
"Mom. You said you worked hard for me, but..."
"Yep. Mom worked really hard for Subaru. Getting everything ready from the morning was so much effort."
She puffed her chest with a satisfied hum, radiating unmistakable pride. He didn't even need to study her expression to sense that there wasn't a shred of guilt behind it, and Subaru let out a heavy sigh.
At the destination of that sigh, Kenichi — who had made his way via the bathroom to the dining table — spotted the plate and let out an "Oh!" of genuine admiration: "That's incredible, Subaru. Your plate is like a special menu. It's a green forest."
"Thanks for the concise summary. Yeah, it really is. ...What's the deal with this? Why is my plate the only one piled high with green peas?"
At Kenichi's observation, Subaru pointed at the plate that sat before his usual spot at the table — the one dish radiating an utterly alien aura among the spread. The green peas were piled so high, as if in vendetta against a mortal enemy, that the other ingredients were either buried beneath them or simply absent. Either way, all he could see was green peas. Incidentally, Subaru hated green peas: "See, you said you hated green peas one time, remember? I thought it's not good to be so picky. So I figured, why not take this opportunity to have you eat a bunch and get over it!"
"You're trying to fix my likes and dislikes based on a memory you can't even be sure of. And what do you mean 'this opportunity'... it's not like today is anything special, is it?"
"Heh, how naive, Subaru. Listen — any day, any time, the present moment right here right now can only be experienced in this very place. You might think another day just like it is going to come along, but in doing so, you're missing countless moments that are nothing but 'this one'—"
"Oh, spare me that stuff right now."
Subaru shoved Kenichi aside as the man had been dancing his way into the conversation, and with a deep sigh, made his way to his seat. Then, sliding the pea-laden plate away from himself: "Anyway, I'll gratefully accept the sentiment behind it, but I'll pass on the peas themselves. I don't want to fill my stomach with something I hate first thing in the morning."
"There you go again, saying that. Well, what if there were nothing left to eat in the whole world except green peas? You'd eat them then, wouldn't you?"
"If the world got to that point, I'd die of malnutrition before long — eating a few peas wouldn't make a difference. So I absolutely will not eat them."
He met her sophistry with his own, folding his arms and puffing out his chest: "Even if Armageddon itself came crashing down, I will never, ever eat green peas."
"Jeez, being so picky like that just makes your life worse. Oh, Mom — there are tomatoes in my salad, and I hate them, so eat them for me."
"Truly my father... masterfully contradicting yourself within the span of a single sentence."
Kenichi pushed his tomatoes over to his mother's side of the salad with one hand, then seized her boiled egg in exchange — the wife offering no complaint. An unspoken understanding between a married couple, forged through years of routine. Watching this exchange from the side, Subaru put his hands together before the breakfast that was decidedly not green peas — steaming miso soup, and honey toast loaded generously with honey: "I always wonder — why this Japanese-Western fusion?"
"Mom likes wakame in her miso soup, and honey on her bread."
Not an answer. But pressing the point was already too much trouble. He could see plainly that if he did, Naoko would just tilt her head with that same puzzled expression.
Subaru said a small "Itadakimasu" and brought the miso soup to his lips. Kenichi and Naoko took their own seats across from him, sitting side by side. The two of them also put their hands together, said "Itadakimasu," and in perfect unison, began with the same motion — slurping the miso soup first. No one noticed it, but their pattern was completely identical among the three of them.
"Mm, this miso soup... Mom, you've been secretly improving your skills, haven't you?"
"You can tell? I actually recorded yesterday's noon thirty-minute cooking show."
So what.
Subaru's cheek twitched at Naoko's nonsensical reply and Kenichi's casual topic-setting. Moreover, Naoko's statement was so precisely aligned with the facts that, having said she "recorded" it, she had almost certainly done nothing more than record it. She probably never watched it. And besides: "Dad's been home since this morning, so the miso soup and the toast were obviously Dad's work."
"Well, well! What a keen observation, my son. To have picked up on that... You're trying to shake me with the contradiction in my words, then slam down the evidence, aren't you?"
"You've been really into that old game lately! Not that it isn't a classic!"
He'd probably taken the game console right off Subaru's desk, Subaru figured. It'd be perfect for killing time on a commute, but the image of a grown middle-aged man leaning forward with a game console on the train, completely absorbed — just imagining it made Subaru's back itch with secondhand embarrassment.
As they chatted, Subaru chewed through the sweet toast and then, almost as an afterthought: "Not that it's not late to bring this up, but Dad, why are you so underdressed? It is getting warmer, but running in nothing but long johns is pretty extreme, no matter how you slice it."
"You're wearing long johns too, you know! And besides, Dad's like that — he got up a little early and got his energy up, so he was out in the yard doing dry towel rubbing and all that."
"Doesn't dry towel rubbing actually need to be done in colder weather to be effective?"
"Stuff like that is all about motivation. You're never gonna reach your destination if you obsess over pointless details like that before you even start running. Mom, tell him something!"
"That's right, Subaru. And besides, it may not have been cold, but I was watching Dad do his dry towel rubbing with a very cold look in my eyes."
"What!? My wife isn't backing me up!?"
"Huh... I did back you up. I told him it was cold."
"That's not backing me up, that's twisting the knife!"
Kenichi rattled his chair, making no effort to hide his complaints. Naoko, watching her husband, remarked with an oddly tangential reaction: "I feel like there's dust kicking up. I'll have to clean later."
Watching both his parents, Subaru murmured quietly to himself as he continued eating his breakfast, eyes half-lowered. Meanwhile, the plate of peas that had been removed from Subaru's spot had been pushed toward Kenichi, who in turn shoved them toward Naoko, who sent them right back to Subaru — a pointless cycle that continued without end.
"Incidentally, this is completely the 'nobody eats it' pattern, isn't it? What are you gonna do with this mountain of peas? Mom, you eat them — take responsibility."
"But Mom hates green peas too..."
"After spending all that time trying to get other people to overcome their dislikes, you say that!?"
"Oh, but don't get me wrong. What Mom doesn't like isn't just green peas — it's, like, small round things in general. They feel gross in your mouth."
"I'm not misunderstanding anything, and if anything, you've only made me trust you less!"
Come to think of it, he'd never once seen his mother eat beans. Subaru pushed the plate toward Kenichi again: "Then the wife's responsibility falls on the husband. Dad, you eat them."
"Don't say such sad things, Subaru. We're one of those rare, close-knit families these days, right? Which means if you and Mom hate something, I hate it too."
"Nobody's happiness came out of that considerate gesture, did it? This green plate of doom!"
The peas, untouched by any mouth. In the end, Kenichi made the call with a mischievous grin: "Guess I'll throw them into a pilaf or something. Pea pilaf assault until they're gone — heh heh heh."
Subaru accepted this — anything could be tolerated if the peas were hidden inside something — while Naoko stubbornly shook her head, declaring that she hated them no matter what they were mixed into. Ultimately, the two men were left to deal with it.
"Thanks for the meal."
"Yep, thanks for the food. Alright then — quick dishes, then let's race to school to work off the meal, Subaru!"
"I'm so tired of that smooth segue into making me go to school. For the record, I don't recall being raised as the kind of rowdy kid who'd start running right after eating."
Kenichi turned from the sink, where he'd been tossing dishes in, and flashed his teeth. Subaru shrugged, stood up from the table, and muttered under his breath that he was going back to sleep until noon. Scratching his head, he headed for his room upstairs — when suddenly his feet stopped.
"What... is this?"
A throbbing pain lanced through his temple. Subaru pressed lightly against his head and squeezed his eyes shut. Flashes of light flickered behind his eyelids, and he felt something hot searing the back of his throat.
Something was wrong. Something was wrong.
He turned around and looked at his parents' faces. Kenichi, whose invitation had been refused, was pouting with displeasure, while Naoko was wiping down the table with a cloth, watching Subaru with a somewhat lonely expression.
The gazes directed at him from his father and mother — becoming aware of the emotions behind them, Subaru's chest was wracked with an unbearable heat. Feeling his face flush, he hurriedly turned his back so they wouldn't see his expression, and fled — no, retreated into his room.
"What is this? Why... why am I feeling like this?"
He pressed his hand to his chest and caught his breath, startled by his own rapid heartbeat. Collapsing onto the futon, he surveyed his room with restless eyes.
It was his room, unchanged since he'd woken. No different from when he'd looked at it last night before sleeping. A room that had continued to stagnate, never once touched by change — for the longest time.
As if reflecting his own stagnation.
He glanced at the clock. It was almost eight o'clock in the morning. School started at eight-thirty, and from home it was about twenty minutes by bike. Not enough time.
But Subaru made no move to change, hugging his knees as he stared at the clock hands from atop his futon. The second hand crept forward, the minute hand moved ten quiet notches — and crossed the deadline.
— With this, once again, he wouldn't make it to school today.
"So, it can't be helped. Yeah, it can't be helped."
If there had been just a little more time before his resolve crumbled, he might have made it to school. But reality was cruel, and had just declared his time limit.
So now, today, he didn't have to face a choice. And yet — "...Normally, this should have calmed me down. What the hell is going on?"
His racing pulse wouldn't slow, and his ragged breathing showed no sign of settling.
Puzzled by his own body's malfunction, Subaru even feared the sound of his own chattering teeth.
— For Subaru, this time of morning was the most terrifying part of the day.
"Calm down, calm down... the time has passed. It's over. It's okay to be calm now. It's fine."
Clutching his trembling body, Subaru repeated his plea to himself.
The daily ritual of fear had reached its conclusion — even knowing that tomorrow morning would bring the exact same terror at the same time, he had at least survived today.
No one was rushing him. No one was pressing him. The only one driving his heart into a frenzy, the only one cornering him, was Subaru himself.
The agony of a single, simple choice: go to school.
Even after the long stretch of time since he'd refused to attend — since he'd become a truant — he couldn't escape the weakling who couldn't even bring himself to own it.
Enduring self-loathing and complexes while merely waiting for time to pass, then feeling released only once he'd confirmed the school hour had come and gone — the inertia of his days.
Because the suffering was daily and relentless, no one understood the relief of release more deeply than he did. And his weakness in clinging to it — the ugliness of always making excuses for why he had no choice.
He was supposed to have accepted all of that, and yet he endured this time — so why, today of all days — "Why today specifically..."
The guilt. The self-loathing. The clinging, nauseating unease — none of it would fade.
He didn't know the source of this itchy, desperate agitation, and Subaru broke into a cold sweat, barely able to breathe, writhing on his futon.
All he could see — burned into his mind from when he'd left the table — were his parents' faces.
Just like always. Same mannerisms, same conversation, same exchange, same betrayal, same laziness — that's how it was supposed to be.
And yet today, of all days, all those ordinary actions were making his chest ache unbearably.
— Looking back on it, something had been off from the moment he woke this morning.
His father, Kenichi, going to ridiculous lengths to antagonize Subaru upon waking — that was nothing new. Kenichi hadn't changed how he treated Subaru, the boy who had stopped going to school and become nothing more than a parasite, even after all this time. This morning's exchange was surely just an extension of the same routine that had been going on for seventeen years — and yet this morning, for some reason, his chest had hurt for an entirely different reason than the diving press.
His mother, Naoko, with her off-target, misguided concern — even though it was overwhelmingly useless more often than not, she always prioritized Subaru. Stuck at home all the time and a full-time housewife, Subaru and Naoko naturally shared much of the same hours together. And yet, as if entrusting everything to time itself, she watched over Subaru with those calm eyes. — At the dinner table, for some reason, he had been keenly aware of that gaze more often than usual.
And his current state — the fact that even after the school hour had passed, his restlessness and burning agitation hadn't subsided — was the most baffling thing of all.
"Something's wrong. Why? Did something happen? Yesterday, I think..."
He tried to review yesterday's activities, wondering what might have occurred between then and this morning — when a numbing sensation cut the thought short.
A sensation like sparks scattering behind his eyes, as if something was generating heat to prevent Subaru from reaching his memories. Eyes widening in alarm at this, Subaru tried once more to dive into the sea of his memory — then stopped. Even if he did, the answer would be the same.
Yesterday, the day before, and all the days before that, Subaru had spent them doing nothing.
This morning's chest pain — it hadn't happened because something special had occurred.
Today was simply one of those days when guilt and pain happened to hit him. The fact that he couldn't bring himself to look his parents in the eye was part of it, layered on top of it all.
"— Hey, can I talk to you for a sec, Subaru?"
The voice came through the door even as Subaru, sick of the racing heartbeat that refused to calm even after reaching a conclusion, had begun to despair.
He looked toward the door. Kenichi was already half-sliding through, gliding into the room with smooth footwork that evoked the King of Pop. A polished entrance — except: "Shouldn't you wait for me to say it's okay before coming in? Otherwise what's the point of knocking?"
"Come on, between a parent and child bound by such an ironclad bond, there's no need for us to bicker over something as small as knocking... Actually, you're right. You are. A teenage boy locked up in his room — yeah, there are things a guy wants to do. Got it. I'll come back in about ten minutes."
"Don't jump to conclusions and then try to leave a respectful pause! It's fine, really!"
He raised his voice at the unnecessary concern, then inwardly felt relieved that it had masked his ragged breathing. Kenichi received Subaru's answer with a skeptical "Really now?" but reversed back into the room with a moonwalk.
Facing his son, who stared up at him with a flat gaze, he thrust a finger skyward and struck a pose: "Well then, Subaru. I think it's obvious, but actually, I'm off work today."
"Yeah, I noticed. When you're doing housework at this hour on a Monday morning, even I can pick up on it. So what about it?"
"Well, don't rush to conclusions. I just... had some things I wanted to talk about, so I figured I'd take this opportunity to get them all out at once, or something like that."
"Talk? Like how I should wash my own dishes after eating?"
"That too. I hate doing dishes. I like cooking, so the prep and the actual cooking are fun, but once it's done, I've got zero motivation."
Kenichi sagged dramatically, swaying back and forth. Subaru frowned at his father's increasingly over-the-top behavior, sensing somehow that the man was wrestling with something. Unable to get to the point, filling the time with deflecting banter so they could both steel themselves — it wasn't working well, but Subaru was the type to do something similar.
And that, naturally, was no coincidence.
"— Ow!"
The moment he thought that, a sharp pain again lanced through Subaru's head.
A pain like a needle driven into the inside of his temple. He felt a grinding sensation in his skull, as if bone were being shaved away. Hiding the expression of pain from view, Subaru lowered his face: "S-So? What does the motivationless Dad want to talk to me about?"
"Yeah, right. Subaru — is there a girl you like?"
"— Are you in middle school or something?!"
The offhand topic, meant to distract from the pain, was so absurdly off-target that it triggered an overreaction sharp enough to make him forget the pain entirely.
Looking at Subaru's flushed, angry cheeks, Kenichi waved both hands and exclaimed: "Such an overreaction! That's basically a confession that there IS a girl you like!"
"What the hell are you saying, looking so pleased with yourself. I'm too exasperated to even sigh."
In truth, it was a completely off-base remark.
He had no interest in girls he liked, or anything of the sort. He couldn't afford to, and he believed he shouldn't. Maybe he was just convincing himself, but still.
"Aww, that's no fun. I gave you advice when you were little, remember? I told you girls are weak to promises made years in advance, so you should just go around making ten-year promises to every halfway decent girl you find, setting all those flags, and by the time you hit your teens you'd have romantic routes left and right—"
"Innocent little me actually took that seriously and tried to make pinky promises with every girl I could find. They actually had to issue a pinky-promise ban in the area! The official reason was that a scary-faced child had been repeatedly trying to force little girls to swallow a thousand needles!"
"...I wish you'd inherited Dad's pretty-boy mask instead. Your short legs, Mom's eyes, Dad's energy, Mom's airheadedness — you really botched your stat allocation when you came out of the womb."
"Tell that to me back when I was still attached by the umbilical cord..."
They both sighed, brought down by a memory so painfully nostalgic that even the father and son's spirits sank in unison. Then, steering the conversation back from the tangent, Subaru said with a "So?": "Bottom line — what did you actually want to talk about? I've got an important mission ahead of me called a second and third nap, so if you've got business, please quietly vacate the premises after the beep sound and go chat with Mom instead."
"Don't kick me out with such a natural flow! And talking to Mom's not gonna get through to her anyway. That creature who is both my wife and your mother is the most oblivious woman on the planet. Which is what makes her cute, but still."
Kenichi's effortlessly romantic comment made Subaru grimace.
Before that grimacing Subaru, Kenichi hummed "Hmm" for a moment, gazed upward, then touched his nose with a mischievous expression: "Well, y'know. The weather's really nice — how about we go outside for a father-son chat? Keep it stylish."