Chapter 4: 10 YEARS AFTER

Translator: Soafp

About ten years after my coming-of-age ceremony, I received an invitation to a reunion from my alma mater.

However, by that time I was married and busy with the process, so I responded by circling the non-participant box and quickly erased it from my mind

My marriage partner was not Hirota, but someone I met through shared interests as adults, and I spent my days bustling around under her thumb, managing work, household chores, and childcare.

Among the friends I still keep in touch with, including Ichigaki, there are some who participated in the reunion, and I was a bit harsh on Hirota afterwards. Hirota seems to have added another X, and is currently working, doing housework, and raising children on her own. She was disappointed that I wasn’t at the class reunion, so she sent me her contact information through Ichigaki.

After receiving that note and thinking about it for a few days, I shredded it. Hirota’s contact information disappeared into a pile of papers, and there was no way to know about it anymore.

I am not living the continuation of that time; I have become an adult with my own family. Therefore, I am fully occupied with that, and I have to let go of the past in order to avoid being crushed by the weight of everyday life.

I don’t know what Hirota’s intentions were or why she passed me her contact information, but I think it’s okay that way. I am already overwhelmed with the wife and children in this house.

So, I decided to leave the bittersweet memories of Hirota as they were, closing them in the album of memories.

Thinking of a line I once heard somewhere, “Becoming an adult is a sad thing,” I respond to the voices of my children calling out to me.

End