HOT NOVEL UPDATES



Hint: To Play after pausing the player, use this button

4

And thus the night grows late at the Hikigaya household.

The cold wind of midwinter blasted against the windows, loudly rattling the glass in the living room. I pushed myself up from where I was sprawled in the kotatsu to get a look outside. The night had gotten quite late, and all that lay among the pitch-black were the scattered lights of streetlamps.

Our parents had told us they had some issues to deal with at work coming up to the end of the fiscal year, so they would be coming home at late o’clock. It was just me and Komachi in the house. I hadn’t had the time to talk face-to-face with her lately, either. There wasn’t much time left until the day of her tests. That night, as usual, she was cooped up in her room, doubtlessly studying hard for her entrance exams.

The cold wind was whooshing again. Though the heat was on low in the living room where I was, the cold air radiated from the window.

Oh, I wonder if Komachi feels cold…, I thought, looking over to the wall adjoining her room, but I couldn’t hear any sounds from over there. It was late. She’d be asleep around now.

Guess I’ll go to bed soon, too, I thought, but unable to resist the comfort of the kotatsu, I collapsed again and rolled over. I must have kicked the cat in the process, as there was some restless stirring, and then the family cat, Kamakura, crawled out. He shot me a grumpy look.

Oh, s-sorry…, I silently apologized.

Kamakura snorted, then started grooming himself with his tongue. Once he was done, his ears stuck straight up, and his face turned to the door.

Then there was a rattle as the door slid open, and Komachi, wearing my hand-me-down tracksuit, lumbered in.

“What’s up. You’re still awake?” I asked.

“I nodded off at a weird time, and now I’m super-awake…,” she said, looking at me with her big round eyes.

Ahhh, I know that feeling. That thing where you come home and collapse on the sofa or in the kotatsu, and then you pass out, and then you can’t sleep at night.

Sometimes those naps will be effective, but the time of year is what it is. The period before an exam will inevitably destroy your lifestyle rhythm.

“Even if you’re not sleepy, go to bed,” I told her. “Or you’ll have a bad time tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Komachi’s hungry, so once I’ve eaten something.” Komachi rotated her shoulders, then headed off into the kitchen.

Once there, she let out a tiny cry of distress. What could it be? I wondered, and when I wiggled out of the kotatsu to take a peek, she was gazing at the fridge vacantly.

…Ahhh, crap. That reminds me—Mom asked me to go shopping just a while ago. She’d called me on the phone so randomly, I’d wondered what the heck was going on. And then I’d been so busy with the production of the free magazine, I’d completely forgotten about shopping. And I’d just thrown together whatever for myself…so I got the feeling we didn’t have much left in the way of ingredients. Komachi was moaning as she gazed at the empty fridge.

I’m sorry, Big Bro forgot to go shopping… Oh no, at this rate, Komachi will starve because of me!

“…I’ve got no choice. I’ll make something for you,” I said, tapping Komachi’s shoulder.

But she turned around and shook her head. “Huh…? It’s fine.”

“Hey, no need to be polite.”

“No, it really is fine. I mean, like, seriously don’t, please. Komachi doesn’t want to get sick,” she rattled off quickly as she waved her hands aggressively.

She didn’t even have the decency to play it off as a joke… But when I do cook, she does basically eat it. What a kind girl she is! But she should be careful how she talks!

“I’m kind of hungry, too. I’m cooking anyway. So it won’t be out of my way, really.” Prodding at her back, I went to stand at the kitchen counter.

Komachi nodded reluctantly. “Well, if you insist…,” she said, but she seemed uneasy about what I would do, restlessly following me around as I fished through the cupboards and fridge, almost monitoring me.

I found eggs, milk and chikuwa in the fridge, then dug up some instant ramen and canned corned beef from the shelf. This’d be enough.

When I lined these ingredients up in a proud array on the counter, Komachi popped her face out from behind me. “If I eat something like that at this hour, Komachi’ll get fat…”

“It’s all right, it’s all right! Any Komachi is cute.”

“Eugh. You should think before you speak…”

While Komachi was busy grumbling, I filled a pot with water and set it on the stove. The trick here is to make the amount of water about 70 percent of what it normally would be. I started frying up the corned beef and the chikuwa.

Komachi came up to my side, closely examining each of these ingredients. “…Wait, Bro, you’ve been eating stuff besides this, right?”

“When Mom cooks, I eat normal food. Though I forgot to shop today, so, well, this is more or less what I made.”

“There’s no vegetables…”

“Dude cooking doesn’t come with nutrition. The cow eats vegetables. It’s fine.”

“The cow probably eats nothing but grains… You’re hopeless…” Komachi trailed off, and then she opened up a shelf, stretching as hard as she could to reach to the back. “We do have some seaweed. And then we could rehydrate this wakame… Guess I’ll open a can of corn, too.”

“Ohhh, that’s pretty fancy…” I watched Komachi, impressed, as she briskly arranged some toppings, before I reached out to the carton of milk.

When Komachi noticed that, she grabbed my hand in a claw. Her expression was weirdly serious. “Bro, what are you doing with the milk? I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it’s scaring me, so stop.”

“You don’t? This makes it pseudo-tonkotsu-style,” I said, tipping the milk into the pot.


Instantly, Komachi shrieked. “I told you to stoppp!”

“What? Like, this is what makes it good.”

Ignoring Komachi’s sniffling, I finished off the meal without a hitch. I dropped in the eggs, let it boil for a bit, then split the ramen into bowls. I dumped the fried corned beef and chikuwa in. Then you top it with the seaweed and corn…and voilà!

Komachi was just standing there motionless with her brow knitted, so I pushed her along toward the kotatsu. Proudly setting down the two bowls before us, I handed her chopsticks and a ceramic spoon. “There.”

Komachi timidly brought her chopsticks to her mouth. And then the tension in her cheeks softened. “…Oh. It’s surprisingly good,” she murmured, and after that, blowing on the noodles and soup to cool it, she slurped it up. Relieved by her surprisingly positive reaction, I started eating, too.

Since neither of us could take it too hot, we didn’t eat that fast. As we leisurely and slowly enjoyed our meal, Komachi muttered as if she’d suddenly remembered, “Your cooking is just as bad as always… It brings me back.” She was looking down at her bowl, a gentle smile on her lips.

Way back, when Komachi was in elementary school, on occasional days like this when our parents were late coming home, the two of us had cooked and eaten together. I’d only been able to do dude cooking like this back then, too, but despite that, Komachi had never complained… Wait, she had complained. A lot… But nevertheless, she’d eaten it. The memory was very nostalgic, and also embarrassing.

“Rude. It’s way better than last time. I mean, there’s been a lot of progress in instant ramen.”

“True. And you haven’t made any!” Komachi fired back, then snickered before she continued, “But you know, you should learn to make something a bit more legitimate.”

“Well, that is an important skill for a househusband, huh?”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen. I mean in university or when you get a job, you’ll eventually leave home, right? Then you have to cook for yourself!”

“Uh, I don’t plan to ever leave home…”

Komachi shot me a cold glare. “Get out.”

“O-okay…” Do you hate me? I thought, examining her expression.

But she cleared her throat, sneaking her gaze away, and then with a blush on her cheeks, glancing up at me, she said in the most endearing tone, “Well, if you just can’t cook no matter what, then Komachi wouldn’t mind veeery occasionally putting on the wife hat and going to cook for you… Oh, that was worth a lot of points, in Komachi terms!”

“The assumption that you’re kicking me out of the house scores low, though…”

Our conversation about meaningless things continued until our ramen dinner was finished.

“Thanks for the meal,” Komachi said with a polite bow of her head, before letting out a sigh of satisfaction and plopping straight down on her side.

“Yeah, you’re welcome. All right, then get back to your room and go to bed already,” I said to her, since it seemed like she’d fall asleep right there in the kotatsu.

Komachi responded with vague groan but then gasped as if something had just occurred to her, jerking up into a sitting position. “I wanna eat something sweet!”

“There isn’t anything.” I couldn’t offer her anything besides my sweet face, my sweet words, and my sweetly naive ideas.

Of course that wasn’t enough for her, and Komachi hopped to her feet. “Then how about we go to the convenience store?”

“A girl shouldn’t be going out alone at this hour.”

“It’s fine if I’m not alone, right?” She slid her hand toward mine.

…Well, I guess I’ll be a proper big brother for once.

The stars were beautiful that night. The wind was blowing hard, and the air was clear. The moon, stars, streetlamps, and the lines of lights from houses illuminated the nighttime streets.

Nobody was out and about but us, and Komachi’s voice rang out into the quiet. “Yeeeks, it’s freezing! Brr! It’s so coooold!”

“Yeah, it really is cold…”

As the both of us were shivering at the sudden drop in temperature, Komachi smacked into my back. Then her hand slid around to take my arm. “…Yeah. It’s warm like this, and it’s also worth a lot of Komachi points,” she declared, looking up at my face.

It was hard to walk and embarrassing like this, and I was getting sick of her attempts at point scoring, so I reached out to her head to peel her off.

But then Komachi murmured, “There’s not much time until exams…and once that’s over, it’s graduation… Then a new school, huh?”

Her expression contained none of her earlier glee. She was just gazing with melancholy at the streetlights that dotted the dark night. Seeing the anxiety in her eyes, I stopped my efforts to peel her off.

“Komachi.”

She looked up. “Hmm? What, Bro?”

I dropped my hand on her head, then scrubbed it around. “I’ll be waiting at high school.”

“…Uh-huh.” Maybe it was just the weight of my hand, but Komachi’s face turned down. But there was strength in her soft voice.

The city at night was so quiet it was scary. We couldn’t be sure of the ground at our feet, and the wind was cuttingly cold. I couldn’t know when this long winter night would turn to dawn, but the time was clearly moving onward. Though the sky above was dark, the spring constellations would come to twinkle there again.

The seasons change, as do the connections between people in endless flux. Would someone new come to that clubroom, too? Maybe so, maybe not. And then in less than a year, I would leave it.

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? Eventually, I will also have my final look at this night sky, too.

So then, for the moment, with the warmth at my side…

…I will look up at the starry sky and walk.



Share This :


COMMENTS

No Comments Yet

Post a new comment

Register or Login