That night, the youngest resident in this house—Yume—sat in the shared kitchen in the middle of the night with her head in her hands over her assignment. I put the freshly made honey cheese toast on a plate and carried it to the living room. Yume was still slumped over. This time her forehead was pressed flat against the counter.
"Ms. Odagiri."
When she raised her head, I set the plate down gently in front of her.
"This was left over. If you'd like."
Yume looked at the plate. Then at me. Her brows drew tight.
"...I don't want it. It's not like I'm hungry or anything."
"I see. Then I'll just leave it here. If there's any left, I'll eat it tomorrow."
I nudged the plate toward her hands and started to head back to the kitchen. I had no intention of making her feel she owed me. It wasn't charity, either. It really was left over. So to make it easy for her to accept, saying that much was all I needed to do.
Her voice came from behind me.
"...What would you know, Mister?"
I stopped.
"Assignments, job hunting, stuff like that. You didn't have any of that back in your day, right? You have no idea how hard things are now."
When I turned around, Yume wasn't looking at me. She was glaring at the toast on the plate.
"No, I don't," I said honestly.
"I don't know how hard things are for you right now. And I don't want to pretend I do."
Yume lifted her face a little.
"But I do know that when you're hungry, everything feels that much worse. That much, I know."
There was no answer.
I went back to the kitchen and cleaned up the pot. Over the sound of running water, I heard a chair creak softly. Glancing back, I saw Yume had picked up the toast. She was holding it in both hands, as if cradling it.
It should still have been warm. The cross-section of melted cheese glistened under the light.
She took a bite. The cheese stretched out in strings. She wound it around her finger and brought it to her mouth. She licked the honey from her lips with the tip of her tongue. Then her shoulders moved slightly. As if she were holding something back.
"...Hot," she said quietly. Her voice was a little damp.
Apparently the toast wasn't the only hot thing. Something hot glinted a little at the rims of her eyes. But I kept that to myself.
Without a word, I kept washing up. The sound of water falling from the faucet filled the silence between us just right. You mustn't rush someone while they eat. You mustn't stare, either. You just need to be there. That's all it is.
After a while, the plate was empty.
"Thanks for the food," Yume muttered.
"It was good... not that I said that."
"Okay."
"I didn't say it, got it?"
"Okay."
She brought the plate over to the kitchen sink. When she tried to wash it herself, I took it from her, saying, "I'll get it." Right then, behind her glasses, Yume pouted just a little.
"...You could at least knock, you know."
"Sorry. From now on, I always will."
When I apologized so readily, Yume seemed to lose her fight and turned her face away.
"...Ugh, fine. Whatever."
The footsteps going up the stairs sounded a little lighter than usual, but that was probably just my imagination.
At my feet, Komugi had woken at some point and was sniffing around the empty plate.
"That wasn't for you."
Komugi let out a whine.
The night was still a little muggy.
After that, Yume started coming down to the shared kitchen late at night. With her assignments, supposedly. And she really did always spread out her tablet and fabric. But the time she actually spent working wasn't all that long.
I wasn't unfamiliar with the kind of silence that suddenly floods a room when you live alone in the middle of the night. That feeling when you stare at the ceiling of an empty room and start to think the world has forgotten you. She probably came down because she hated that.
When I was in the manager's room making dashi or prepping for the next morning, a light would come on at the far end of the living room. It had become a sort of signal. I'd pretend not to notice and keep an eye on the flame. The sound of her coming down was always a little hesitant.
That night too, a little after midnight, the light came on. When I peeked into the living room, Yume was resting her chin in her hand at the counter, staring absently at her phone. No tablet or fabric tonight.
"...Mister."
When she noticed me, she turned her screen face down.
"What age do you think is normal to start job hunting?"
It came out of nowhere. With the cotton towel still around my neck, I didn't pull out the chair next to her; I stood a little way off.
"I couldn't say. Things must be very different from my day."
"Kids in my class are already making moves, you know. Internships, portfolios."
Yume tapped the counter with the corner of her phone.
"I came into this school with zero experience. Everyone else could sew beautifully from the start, so by the time I got in, I was already behind."