In fact, as would be normal, I was totally jealous.
Truly, I was.
Just how many brothers in the world could be so dearly loved as to be woken up like that every morning? -- although in this case, perhaps the one I was jealous of was not Araragi-kun himself, but Karen-chan and Tsukihi-chan who could see his sleeping face every day.
Oh, I was so totally jealous.
Truly, I was.
Well, to speak of how I, Hanekawa Tsubasa, woke up; like Araragi-kun and his sisters, I would be woken up every morning by Rumba.
Rumba was, of course, not the name of the Hanekawa family's cat, nor my strikingly-named little sister Hanekawa Rumba, but a run-of-the-mill iRobot automatic vacuum cleaner, or in model number, a Rumba 577.
It's set on a timer to automatically start working at six every morning, and when said smart vacuum cleaner bumped into and pushed against my head, I wake up.
How refreshing.
Be that as it might, like all vacuum cleaners the Rumba made quite a lot of noise as it cleaned, so by the time it crawled down the hallway and gotten close to me, I had actually already woken up -- and yet, the fact that I would continue to lay in bed until my head was being pushed, waiting with my eyes closed for the bump, was perhaps because I longed for the sensation of 'being woken up by someone', or simply 'being woken up' itself.
Like Sleeping Beauty, poetically speaking.
Well, not that anything would be poetic with the other party being a vacuum cleaner.
Sleeping Beauty -- that was quite something, coming from myself.
Even with regards to the Rumba, seeing as there was someone sleeping in the hallway as it cleaned there, it's probably a nuisance to it as well.
Yes, I sleep in the hallway.
I sleep in a futon laid out in the second-floor hallway of a detached house.
I had once thought that this was something normal and quite obvious, but apparently that was not the case. As such, ever since losing a friend with whom I talked to about this when I still had not known the truth, I haven't talked about this in a particularly open manner.
Not that I particularly wanted my own bed after such a long time.
It had become natural.
I didn't want things that were natural to change.
It's not as though I'd ever childishly thought of wanting my own room, and when I talked about this to the classmate I became friends with, Senjougahara-san, figuring she would be fine hearing it,
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
was what she had said.
"My house doesn't even have a hallway to begin with."
From the perspective of a girl who lived with her parent in a one-room apartment, this might seem like the worries of the ostentatious, and I wasn't worrying in the first place.
Well.
Perhaps that's wrong.
I imagine that perhaps I did not want to make this house 'the place I belong to'. It's something like the opposite of an animal's marking -- perhaps I wanted to keep my distance from the house.
I didn't want any trace of myself to be left in this house.
None if at all possible.
Perhaps that was why.
...Putting aside why I must make conjectures and suppositions about my own heart, or why I could only ever say 'perhaps'.
"Well, no matter what I want, in a few more months it won't matter, so I shouldn't give it too much thought."
Speaking to myself, I folded up my futon.
I didn't have any problems getting up in the morning.
Or rather, I didn't quite understand this sensation of being 'half-asleep'.
The on- and off-states of my consciousness were probably more distinct that they needed to be.
If only I could just sleep when I felt sleepy.
Sometimes I would think that.
"It's probably because I'm out of sync with other people with sensations like that. Araragi-kun tells me that a lot. 'The things you do that you think are natural are simply miracles to me' and such -- but it's going too far to call them miracles."
My soliloquy continued.
I wouldn't do it outside, but I couldn't help but frequently talk to myself when at home. If I didn't, I felt like I would forget how to speak.
I wasn't sure what to make of this.
Just as I wasn't sure what to think of Araragi-kun coming up during said soliloquy and of myself then naturally breaking into a smile.
Storing the futon in a closet, I went to the bathroom to wash my face.
After that, I put on my contacts.
Back when I had been wearing glasses, putting a lens directly onto the eyes seemed so horrifying that I didn't even want to think about it, so of course, when I first started, I was so scared that I wanted to put the lens on with my eye closed (metaphorically speaking) but it was nothing special once I got used to it.
You could get used to anything.
Better yet, it took the burden off my nose and ears, so it's more comfortable than glasses.
It was simply that, thinking of what's to come in the following year, neither contacts nor glasses felt like they would be convenient companions, so now I had come to thinking I might as well bring myself to get a LASIK surgery done during my school hours.
Tidying myself up, I headed to the dining room.
There, the ones whom I should call Father and Mother were, as always, sitting at the same table and eating breakfast separately.
They did not even look at me when I entered the room.
I did not look at them, either.
Simply entering my field of vision did not mean seeing, if the eyes in my heart and mind would always avert its gaze. If it was difficult to see with the eyes, then it was simpler to not see.
Only the voice of the newscaster on TV, talking about the top news of today, resounded through the dining room.
Why was it, I wonder?
Why was it that I felt closer to this newscaster in some far-off place, than to the two in the same room as me?
Truly, I wonder.
I might as well say "good morning" to her.
Speaking of which, I wonder how many years it had been since I last said "good morning" in this house. I attempted to search through my memories, but I couldn't remember one single instance at all. I remembered saying it to the Rumba about five times (as aforementioned, I said it not while half-asleep, but it was very natural. That vacuum cleaner sometimes felt strangely alive in its movements.) but I really could not remember a single time I said it to the ones I should call my father and mother.
Not once.
Huh.
That's pretty shocking.
Previously, I told Araragi-kun something along the lines of, "I do plan on approaching my parents myself" but it would seem that was different from the truth. Well, it wasn't anything new for my words to be full of lies.
I was made of lies.
A far cry from truth -- that was I, Hanekawa Tsubasa.
Even my name was fake, after all.
Closing the door without making a sound, I headed not for the table but the kitchen first. I had to make breakfast, but I couldn't say that it wasn't because I wanted to postpone the moment when I would have to sit with those people for as long as I could.
It was futile, or rather, empty resistance.
You could forgive this level of resistance.
It had yet to become a coup d'etat.
In the kitchen of the house -- that is, the one I do not want to call 'my home' in my mind -- there was generally speaking a lot of cookware. There were three cutting boards and three kitchen knives. Milk pans and frying pans were three apiece as well. At any rate, there's three of everything. As for what this signified, yes, it would mean the three people living in this house all used their respective cookware.
There had been an episode when I talked to and lost a friend over this as well.
Having to redraw the hot water every time one of us takes a bath, doing the laundry individually; episodes like that are too numerous to mention, but it's strange.
I didn't think of these as unnatural at all, and no matter how many friends I lost over it -- I never felt the need to make the Hanekawa house like other homes because of this.
We more or less all leave the house at the same time, so we all 'happen to' gather when we eat breakfast, but it's similar to sharing a table with strangers at a cafeteria. there was no talk, and no one would do anything like incidentally making breakfast for the other two.
Choosing my own cookware, I began cooking.
Not that I plan on being elaborate enough in my cooking to deserve the term.
After making enough rice for one and preparing miso soup, fried eggs and fish, as well as a salad (I get told that I eat too much, but I'm the type who stuff myself full at breakfast) I split the meal into three parts and carried it to the table. Finally, I made one more round trip to make tea. I wouldn't have to make four and a half round trips if I had some help, but of course, there were no helping hands in this house. Not even the Rumba could help me that much.
Thinking how good it would be if Araragi-kun could help me, I reached the table.
"Thanks for the meal."
After putting my hands together and saying this, I took up my chopsticks.
I have never heard the other two saying something like that, but even if I never say "good morning" and "good night", I never leave out a "thanks for the meal" or "I'm done eating".
I never leave them out, especially since after the spring break.
After all, they were words meant for the animals and plants which had been alive before becoming foodstuff, which would become my flesh and blood.
They were lives which had been killed for my sake.
I would accept them with gratitude.
0 komentar: