Volume 3 Prologue

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Translated by Lecarm, Edited by Wubda

♦

Mama and papa died when I was five years old.

Right when I was starting to be aware of my surroundings, when I started to recognize my papa as my papa and my mama as my mama, the two of them went to heaven.

They had died in a traffic accident, or so they told me.

Apparently, they had both died instantly.

I was only five years old at the time, and I found out because everyone was talking about it.

To be honest… I didn’t even understand what they were saying.

When they told me that papa and mama were dead, I didn’t understand it well.

It didn’t make any sense to me.

Even now that I’m fifteen years old, it’s still complicated, so there was no way for a five year old me to understand it at the time.

Henceforth, during both the ceremony and the dinner that followed, I was just sitting in silence, without spilling a single tear.

The adults around me called me a ‘well-mannered girl’, but that didn’t mean I was. I simply didn’t know what to do, so I simply sat there motionless.

I couldn’t keep up with the situation at all.

Well, actually just a bit.

Somehow, even though I was a five year old girl, I could understand some of the atmosphere surrounding me.

I realized that… it was a sad moment.

The adults at the funeral were spoiling me and repeated “poor girl” over and over, which made me understand the situation.

Oh, I get it.

I’m a poor girl.

Regardless of my opinion, they made me understand.

They forcefully made me understand that.

And during the dinner… My uncles and aunts started to argue about who would take care of me. Without mincing their words, thinking that a five year old girl wouldn’t understand a thing.

But… they were right. I truly didn’t understand well what the conversation was about… But even a little girl could understand it somehow.

I was a hindrance.

I was a nuisance.

Countless dark thoughts filled my hearts… I had a hard time breathing… I wanted to cover my ears, close my eyes and disappear…

“—I’ll take care of this girl.”

And then, in the middle of all this chaos, the person who saved me appeared.

Ayako Katsuragi.

Mama’s little sister… My aunt.

The person I now call ‘mom’.

That’s how mom picked me up and then a year went by.

Well… Even if I say “picked me up,” she was actually the one who moved into my house, where I used to live with my parents, so it didn’t feel as if I had been picked up, but that’s not really important.

Anyways… It’s been a year since I started to live with my mother.

“Hey, Taku-nii.”

During the afternoon on a free day.

At the living room of my house.

That day, Taku-nii came over to play.

Mom had to stay in her room for a while to work on an urgent matter, so Taku-nii came to watch over me.

This… happened pretty often.

Taku-nii often played with me.

I had a lot of fun, but now that I think about it… It may not be that fun for him. It’s unlikely for an average boy to find it fun to play with a girl five years younger than him.

He surely wanted to play with his school friends or play in his own home.

But Taku-nii never complained a single time and happily played with me all the time.

“What’s wrong, Miu-chan?” Asked an eleven year old Taku-nii.

In his hands there was an unfinished beaded ring.

Today we were playing at making fake jewelry with beads.

“Uhm.” Began to say six year old me.

Continuing to thread the beads, I asked:

“Is Miu a ‘poor girl’?”

Taku-nii’s face tensed up.

“…Why do you say that?”

“Yesterday, at kindergarten, Haruto-kun and Ma-chan said that to me. ‘Miu has no papa or mama, what a poor girl’.”

Within a month, all the neighbors and parents from kindergarten knew about what happened to my parents.

The incident was shocking, which is why it spread so rapidly.

And if you add a beautiful story like ‘The deceased mother’s sister started to take care and is raising the daughter’, it would be quite the big gossip.

Well, I was lucky, I should say.

There were so many people with common sense around me that they didn’t try to make fun of or libel me openly… But when the rumors started to spread, they couldn’t stop them anymore.

Before I had realized, the rumors spread from the adults to the kids and my classmates found out about my parents.

“The teacher scolded them right away. She said that they couldn’t say that. Haruto-kun and Ma-chan apologized to me… But Miu didn’t understand anything.”

It wasn’t as if I blamed them or anything.

Haruto-kun and Ma-chan didn’t have ill intentions obviously.

They simply felt bad for the death of my parents and thought I was a poor girl.

I think it really was just a case of childhood innocence.

But… at the time I didn’t understand that.

The meaning of what they said and the reason why the teacher got angry.

“Is Miu a ‘poor girl’ because her papa and mama died?”

“…”

Taku-nii’s face was taken aback.

Now that I think about it… Yeah, I made a pretty difficult question and now I’m a bit sorry for that.

No, rather, a difficult and heavy question.

It wasn’t a question for an eleven year old boy.

As expected… Taku-nii put a face as if he was thinking about it quite hard.

“…Miu-chan,” he began to say. “The fact that your parents died… is very sad. Incredibly sad and terrible.” With a conflicted and doubtful face and voice, he kept his eyes firmly looking at me. “That’s why some people could call you a ‘poor girl’ for being in such a difficult situation. But… I don’t think you’re a ‘poor girl’.”

“After all,” he continued.

“Miu-chan… has Ayako mama.”

“…”

“You love Ayako mama, don’t you, Miu?”

“Yes, I love her!”

“Is it fun being around her?”

“Yes, it’s really fun!”

“That’s why you’re not a ‘poor girl’. A girl that lives with such a wonderful mother can’t be a ‘poor girl’, don’t you think?”

“That’s true…”

I don’t believe Taku-nii’s words were perfect at all.

He spoke with uncertainty in his voice, and his reasoning was a bit forced.

Somehow, it was weak and childish… And despite that.

“That’s good, then Miu is not a poor girl.”

His words had reached my heart.

His honesty had reached me, and six year old me felt relieved.

It wasn’t about the words themselves; I was just happy that he was looking straight at me and was so earnest.

“Miu is very happy now.” Being in a good mood, I started to talk. “Of course, it’s really sad that papa and mama died… But now aunt Ayako has become my mama and kindergarten is also fun… Besides, Taku-nii plays a lot with me too. Sometimes I feel a little sad, but I have fun more than that.”

“…I see.”

“I hope that mama and papa in heaven are happy that Miu is having fun.”

“Yes, they’re definitely happy. I’m sure of it.”

“I see. Then Miu will have a lot of fun from now on.” I said, nonchalantly, as a six year old girl should. “Ah, that’s right.”

I dropped the beaded ring and got up.

I grabbed something from the small drawer in the corner of the room.

“Ehehe, I wanted to show you this today.”

After saying that, I gave it to him… A drawing.

A small framed drawing.

“This… Did you draw this?”

“Yes.” I nodded happily.

Back then, I thought I had done a very good job and wanted to show off… But looking back at it… It was such a bad drawing that I’m embarrassed to even remember it.

Smiling faces with eyes and a mouth, the typical kindergarten kid drawing. The boy and the girl were weirdly aligned on the front, with the hands stretched weirdly and intertwined weirdly.

The reason he was able to understand who the kids on the drawing were, despite being drawn so poorly, obviously wasn’t because I managed to properly capture each other’s characteristics.

It was because the names ‘Taku-nii’ and ‘Miu’ were written in hiragana next to the boy and the girl. (TLN: Basic Japanese alphabet. It’s the standard for children to write everything in hiragana and evolve to kanji as they grow up.)

“Wow! You draw so well, Miu!” Taku-nii praised me with a smile.

At that moment, I felt immensely happy.

“Mama also praised me and said that it was a nice drawing. She also said that we had to decorate it and bought a frame. She also taught me how to write these characters, so I tried my best writing them!”

I pointed at the characters of ‘Miu’ and ‘Taku-nii’ in the drawing.

And also.

There was another phrase written in the drawing.

“When I grow up, I want to get married to Taku-nii.”

“Get married?”

“Yes.” With a big smile on my face, six year old me said it with no embarrassment at all.

To me, this drawing was like a tanzaku on Tanabata or a drawn vow with a wish… and at the same time, a love letter to express my feelings. (TLN: Tanabata is a festival that celebrates the meeting of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi. People celebrate it by writing a wish on tanzaku, a small piece of paper, and hanging them on bamboo.)

“When Miu grows up, I’ll marry Taku-nii!”

Miu Katsuragi.

Six years old.

A lot of things happened, but… Even though there were times in which people who didn’t know anything about me called me ‘poor girl’, I kept living happily with my new mother.

And also.

I really loved the boy next door who always came to play with me.

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Yo! Someone offered to PR for me on discord, so please give a warm welcome to Wubda. He’ll be in charge of Proofreading and Editing the chapters for me, so I can spend more time translating or working on other stuff. Also, long volume hype!