Now, I guess I should send him one last message.
She thought about it for a moment and then swiftly tapped out a text on her phone:
I’ve had enough of your shit. Goodbye.
She saved it as a draft – she would fire off that message once she was safely back home in her own apartment – and then she boarded the train that had slid into the platform.
Koto’en Station
Misa swayed on the train, with the resolute intention of firing off the message saved on her phone tucked away inside her bag.
There were a few available seats dotted around, but standing suited her current mood.
‘That good-for-nothing. Have you thought about getting rid of him? For all he puts you through.’
It didn’t even take a year for him to make me into a perfectly devoted housewife …
He doesn’t give a second thought to hitting me during a fight. If I move in with him …
My mother would be so sad if she knew that my boyfriend hits me.
In a moment of decisiveness, she had composed her breakup message, but it only took another moment for Misa to start wavering.
She had intended to take advantage of Katsuya’s absence to retrieve her things from his apartment, and then to retreat to her own place …
But he’s nice when he’s in a decent mood, and he has other good qualities …
Plus he’s pretty good-looking.
Her friends were always green with envy whenever she displayed photos of the two of them on her phone. ‘Your boyfriend is soo cute! Misa, you’re so lucky!’ they’d say. It was something Misa had taken pride in, and it pained her to think of losing that cachet.
This too made her feel ashamed, that she’d falter over such a thing.
As she idly watched the residential scene pass before her eyes, the train slowed to a stop at the next station, Koto’en.
Koto’en is the nearest station to a well-known private university in Kansai, which means that, regardless of whether it is a weekday, weekend or holiday, many of the passengers here seem to be students.
The group of female college students who got on each had a lacrosse stick propped on their shoulder – maybe they were on their way to a scrimmage? A young guy, with kind of a punk style, the drone from his headphones audible, had his nose buried in a daunting-looking textbook.
This university was leagues above the women’s college where Misa went, and of course the one Katsuya attended didn’t even rate.
Among the passengers who boarded were also a number of high-school girls in uniform; they must have had Saturday classes. They were laughing boisterously. They seemed utterly carefree, without a thought for the future that lay ahead of them.
I used to be like them, not so many years ago, Misa thought. The sound of their cheerful, light-hearted laughter made her a little jealous.
The high-school girls occupied the empty space near Misa, grabbing onto the hanging straps and chattering away exuberantly.
‘Hey, Et-chan, so your boyfriend is like super older, huh?’
Misa’s ears automatically pricked up at this cheeky comment – how much of an age difference made him ‘super older’, she wondered? The girl who appeared to be Et-chan, who also seemed a bit more grown up than the others, waved her hand to deflect the comment. ‘No, he isn’t!’
Et-chan went on to explain: ‘He’s only two years out of university. He has an early birthday so he’s young for his school year – he’s a mere five years older than me.’
The fact that, at her age, she considered a gap of five years ‘mere’ showed she was one of the more mature ones among her friendship group.
‘What? I can’t imagine dating a guy with a real job!? I mean, if he was older but still in school, I’d get that.’ The girl who said this was elbowed by one of the others.
‘Yeah, but now that we’re seniors, we’re the oldest. And if we don’t go on to college, there’s not much chance of going out with an upperclassman.’
‘Huh, guess you’re right. But is it fun to be with a working guy?’
‘Yeah, but …’ Et-chan tilted her head. ‘It seems like you’ve all got the wrong idea. A guy can still be clueless, even if he has a job. My boyfriend definitely falls into that category.’
One of the girls gasped in disbelief. ‘Aren’t older guys supposed to be dependable and have their shit together?’
From Misa’s perspective, this girl seemed like the type who entertained a certain fantasy about older guys, though Misa was one to talk, since she herself was not quite an adult yet either.
‘No way! At least not my boyfriend! I mean, he just recently started living on his own, and he calls me in the middle of the night, crying for help!’
‘Eh? What happened?!’
This girl, Et-chan, was quite the storyteller. All of her friends were hanging on her every word – and Misa was too. In what kind of scenario does a grown man call up his high-school-age girlfriend in the middle of the night to beg for help?
‘So I was like, “What’s the matter?” and he goes, “I can’t get the iron to work.”’
Her captive audience squealed with laughter. The surrounding passengers began to shoot annoyed looks in the girls’ direction but they seemed completely unbothered – in fact they didn’t even seem to notice – and even Misa was tempted to break into a smile.
‘Now, I have to admit that my mom does all the ironing for me and the only time I’ve ever done it is in home economics class. Plus, my boyfriend hasn’t even told me what it is he’s trying to iron. He’s already like, “What temperature should I set it at? And what does it mean by ‘steam’?” He’s way ahead of himself!’
‘So true!’
‘Then I asked him what he wanted to iron and he said, “A shirt.” But there are all different kinds of shirts. So I get out my home economics textbook and I ask him what material it is and he’s like, “Huh? How am I supposed to know that?!” I tell him it’s written on the label and he goes, “What label?”’
The girls erupted into more squeals and high-pitched laughter. Misa’s shoulders quivered with a suppressed giggle. The looks from the other passengers in their car grew sterner – but rather than give them the side-eye, thought Misa, they’d be better off listening to the conversation and having a laugh.
‘There’s no use being angry and he’s about to lose it so I tell him to look for a little cloth tag that should be attached inside the collar or along one of the side seams. He finally finds it but then …’
Wait for it … Misa thought as she continued to eavesdrop. Here comes the punchline …
The finish to Et-chan’s story was a cracker.
‘He says he can’t read the kanji! This is a grown man who went through university!?’
‘What an idiot!’
Et-chan’s friends were brutal in their assessment as they howled and chortled and their laughter gave cover to Misa’s audible giggle.
‘And then …’
There’s more?!
‘So I ask him to describe what the characters look like over the phone. He goes, “Part of it is the character for ‘thread’.”’
‘That must be the radical!’ said one girl.
‘How are you supposed to figure it out from just that?’ said another.
These girls were all cramming for their entrance exams that year, so their questions were merciless as they gasped with laughter.
‘Well, I know how clueless he is so I take pity on him. I ask him patiently, “There must be something else next to the character for ‘thread’, right? What does that look like?” and he says, “It’s like the character for ‘moon’.”’
‘He must mean the character for “silk”!’
‘Though he still missed the part that’s above the character for “moon”!’