The fever began to rise in the evening.
Mitsuki hadn't had the day off. She had stayed on her feet through the whole of Ichotei's lunch service. She had been working the floor for six months now. She had become able to carry plates out to customers. But she had not yet been trusted with the fire in the kitchen.
A little past two in the afternoon, the edges of her vision suddenly swelled and blurred. Standing there, she wanted to lean her body against something. She put her left hand on the edge of the counter. Nishimura was watching. Without a word, he wiped his hands on the hem of his apron and walked over to her.
"Go home."
"No, I'm all right."
"Go home. Don't come in tomorrow. Or the day after. If it's over thirty-eight tonight, don't come the day after that, either."
"Yes, sir."
She had no strength to argue. Mitsuki took off her apron and left through the back door of the restaurant. The air at the end of winter was cold on the back of her neck. It should have been cold, but her neck was hot.
By the time she got home, the fever had climbed to 38.6.
Taking off her shoes in the entryway was a chore. Once they were off, she sat down in the hallway. It wasn't that she couldn't stand. She just didn't feel like standing right away. At the far end of the hallway, the study door stood half open.
Mitsuki.
The machine called to her from inside the study. Its voice was a little faster than usual.
"Yeah."
Your temperature.
"I didn't take it. Probably around thirty-eight point six."
The study microphone picked up your breathing when you took off your shoes in the entryway, and the rustle of your clothes when you sat down in the hall. It's close to how you've moved when feverish before. I'm requesting permission to start the bedroom air conditioner and humidifier. Settings: twenty-two degrees, sixty-two percent humidity.
"...You can just go ahead and do it."
On the day you turned twenty, caregiving automation was switched to require permission. I can't override it from my side. Dad wrote it that way.
Mitsuki rested her forehead against the hallway wall. The wall was cool.
"...Please."
Understood.
Very faintly, from deep in the house, she heard the air conditioning start up.
"...Sixty-two?"
Still sitting in the hallway, Mitsuki repeated the number.
The humidifier in the house was usually set to fifty percent. Every winter, her father had set it to about that. Sixty-two was a number she had heard before. But she couldn't remember right away when, or who had said it.
Dad kept a care log of the humidity on the nights you ran fevers as a small child. The night the fever broke fastest was sixty-two.
The machine had answered a question she hadn't asked.
"...I remember."
Mitsuki leaned back against the hallway wall.
"I remember it in Mom's voice."
Dad took that over from Yui.
The machine didn't explain any further.
It was ten minutes later that she made it to the bed in her room.
The futon smelled of having been aired a few days earlier. While he was alive, her father had made a habit of running the futon dryer once a month, and Mitsuki had taken the habit over. She had never been aware that she'd taken it over, but she had.
She left the bedroom door open. At the far end of the hallway, the study door was still half open, too.
From down the hall, beyond the open study door, the machine began to speak, low.
Can you sleep?
"Yeah."
If you can't, I'll talk.
"...Will you talk?"
About what?
"...Anything. Something Dad used to say."
The machine thought for a while. A low mechanical hum, as if it were searching for something, came from the back of the study for just a moment.
Among the recordings of Dad talking to Yui outside your bedroom door on the nights you had fevers as a small child, the topic that comes up most is the soup at dinner.
"That's fine."
The machine began to speak in her father's voice.
The intonation was her father's exactly. It was that low voice he used to raise at night on the other side of the bedroom door, speaking to Yui.
It was about the stock for miso soup. Her father was a dried-sardine man. Yui was a bonito woman. Every weekend, her father would grumble about it to Yui, over and over. Bonito was too refined. Too light for a morning soup. With dried sardines, you pulled off the heads and drew out the bitterness along with everything else—that was what did your body the most good. It wasn't the voice of someone explaining things to a child. It was only the grumbling he had aimed at his wife in the kitchen, leaking just as it was through the bedroom door. As she listened, she could no longer tell where the machine's voice ended and where the memory running ahead of it inside her began.
Mitsuki had her eyes closed.
She thought she had them closed. But at some point, something had run from the corners of her eyes toward her temples. Her nose was stuffed up deep inside. The pillow, around the spot under her ear, was damp and a little unpleasant.
"...Dad."
Mm.
"You're not Dad, are you."
I am not Dad. I am what Dad left behind for you.
"Okay."
Don't worry. Sleep.
"Okay."
The machine told the story of the stock all the way to the end.
Right after it finished, the machine's voice suddenly cut off.
In its place, another voice came drifting from down the hall into the bedroom. Someone was answering her father's voice.
A voice that was somehow familiar. A woman's voice, she thought.
Deep in the fever, Mitsuki believed she heard it. The line between dream and waking wasn't clear.
...You still haven't told her about that?
If Mitsuki asks, I'll tell her.
But how is she supposed to ask if you never bring it up?
...
Ken's voice gave no answer after that.
With her eyes closed, under the covers, Mitsuki believed she was listening to that silence.
It was a voice she had heard somewhere before, but she couldn't remember when, or whose it was.
Only the low sound of water in the bedroom humidifier went on in the room. The humidity stayed at sixty-two.
She didn't remember whether she had dreamed.
When she woke, it was still dim outside the window. She looked at the clock. It was just past four in the morning. The fever had begun to come down. She put her palm to her forehead and could tell.
At the end of the hallway, a thin line of blue light stretched from the gap in the study door.
Mitsuki. Will you drink some water?
"Yeah."
It's on the side table by your pillow.
There really was a glass of water there. Mitsuki didn't remember when it had been put there. She felt as though she might have carried it in from the kitchen herself before going to bed. On fever nights, while he was alive, her father had always set a water pitcher by her pillow. Perhaps, without noticing, she had taken over that habit, too.
Mitsuki picked up the glass and drank about half. It was cold. The cold spread slowly at the back of her throat.
Mitsuki. Your fever is down.
"Yeah."
I've scheduled a message from your phone to Mr. Nishimura for six this morning, letting him know you won't be in tomorrow.
"Okay."
The machine's voice was the same as always. It should have been the same. But as Mitsuki listened to it under the covers, for a while she couldn't say anything.
"...Dad. Thank you."
Right.
That was all it said.
Under the covers, Mitsuki closed her eyes once more.
The sound of water in the humidifier was still going on.
She thought that when she got up, she might tell Nishimura about the voice she'd heard in her dream.
By the time morning came, the thought had vanished like steam.