Graduation Album
Before opening the door, I was wearing two masks and a pair of dust-proof goggles. There’s no need to recount the side story of Hayashi giving me a dumbfounded look when she saw me like that.
Can’t be helped, you know.
I’m a pretty delicate guy, after all.
“Alright, Hayashi.”
“…Yeah.”
“Here we go, then.”
I turned the key Hayashi had been holding and opened the door.
For some reason, the room beyond the door seemed a little cleaner than before.
“…Huh?”
I took off the masks and goggles.
No sneezing. As expected, this room was definitely cleaner than the last time we were here.
Why, though?
Could it be that Hayashi had been coming here without me knowing and cleaning the place?
She’s the type to be surprisingly dutiful. Maybe that’s what happened.
I stole a quick glance at Hayashi’s face.
Hayashi, standing beside me, had a stunned expression. Apparently, this wasn’t her doing.
…If that’s the case, then.
“Maybe it was your ex’s parents.”
A room that their son had briefly relied on.
If they were sensible parents, it wouldn’t be strange for them to clean this place after their son’s mistake, carrying all sorts of feelings with them.
“…Do they hate me? His parents, I mean.”
“Scared?”
“Yeah, I’m scared. Of course I am.”
Hayashi gave a wry smile.
“But back then, that was the only way I could keep going.”
Her face looked more resolved than before.
“Now that I think about it, he always seemed happy when he talked about his mom.”
“…Huh.”
“She must’ve been a mom he was proud of. He’d always talk about her so cheerfully. …Come to think of it, you never talk about your parents, do you?”
“Don’t I?”
“Nope.”
“Well, you probably don’t care to know, right?”
“That’s not true. If anything, I want you to tell me more.”
“…His parents might come back here someday. Let’s finish up quick before we run into them.”
After that, we started rummaging through the room, chatting here and there.
The room had likely been cleaned by Hayashi’s ex’s parents, but it still had the same lived-in feel as last time.
Every now and then, Hayashi would cast a nostalgic, lonely look at the room where she’d spent a few months.
Still, she kept working diligently.
Since I wasn’t familiar with the layout of the place, I followed Hayashi’s lead and took on the heavy lifting.
That said, there wasn’t much of Hayashi’s stuff in a room she’d only lived in for a few months. She’d mentioned that most of the daily necessities had been provided by her ex, which made it feel even more sparse.
We looked around, but all we’d found so far were a few pieces of clothing.
“Here.”
After checking a few spots, Hayashi stopped in front of an inconspicuous storage space in the corner of the living room.
“…This is the last place, I think.”
“Can I open it?”
“Yeah.”
I opened the storage space’s door.
Inside was a small rack.
“Why’s there a rack in a place like this?”
Isn’t a rack usually placed in a corner of the room, where you can easily grab what you need?
It felt odd to have it tucked away in a storage space like this.
“It used to be properly set up at the edge of the living room, you know?”
“So why’d it get moved?”
“When we got a bigger TV, it was in the way, apparently.”
So they just moved it here, huh.
Now that I thought about it, the TV in the living room was probably about fifty inches—pretty big. If they originally had a smaller TV and shelf, a rack like this would’ve definitely been in the way.
“He moved it without telling me, while I was out. And then he wouldn’t tell me where he put it. When I got mad, he suddenly hit me.”
Hayashi’s matter-of-fact tone somehow made her seem all the more pained.
“It took me about three days to find this spot. He kept nagging me to do chores, so I didn’t have much time to look. At first, I thought he’d thrown it out.”
…I’d always thought I had no right to be angry at Hayashi’s ex since I’m an outsider, but right now, I couldn’t help feeling a surge of anger inside.
It took everything I had to keep that anger from spilling out.
“So, what’s in that rack?”
“…Well, it was basically my rack, but…”
Hayashi started rummaging through it.
“My health insurance booklet. Some paperwork from when I got my phone contract. University admission letter. Self-help books… Just a bunch of stuff that seems important but isn’t really.”
“What about that cardboard box down there?”
“Huh? What was in that again?”
Stopping Hayashi from trying to lift the heavy-looking box, I stepped in front of the rack and pulled it out.
“…Whoa.”
Inside the cardboard box Hayashi opened were a few hefty books.
One of them looked familiar to me.
“A graduation album, huh?”
“…Nostalgic, isn’t it?”
Elementary school. Middle school. High school.
Three graduation albums were tucked away in the box.
Beneath them were a few textbooks, probably from her high school days.
“So you kept the stuff you used in high school that still seemed useful in there?”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“Taking them with you?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Flipping through the high school album, Hayashi suddenly burst out laughing.
“I was so young!”
Still young now, aren’t you?
You’re not even twenty yet, you know.
I held back from pointing that out.
“…Oh!”
Stopping at a certain page, Hayashi started glancing back and forth between me and the album.
“What?”
“You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Mind your own business.”
“Ah!”
I snatched the album from Hayashi and stuffed it back into the box.
Hayashi pouted but soon resumed working.
In the end, we didn’t find anything else noteworthy, so we decided to head back with just the clothes and the cardboard box.
“…Guess there’s no reason to come back here anymore.”
I said.
“Yeah.”
“Be honest.”
“Huh?”
“If you’re feeling lonely, just say so.”
“…I’m not.”
“Don’t act tough.”
“I’m not acting tough.”
Hayashi gave a wry smile.
“After all, I’ve got you now.”
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