That night, Yume didn't come down. Usually, a little after midnight, a light would come on at the far end of the living room. Hesitant footsteps would come down the stairs. But that night, there was nothing.
Instead, I only heard sounds from upstairs. A dull thud, like something tossed onto the floor. Then a hushed silence.
Something's happened, I thought.
But upstairs is the residents' space. Not a place for a man like me to go. All I could do was keep the fire going in the kitchen and wait.
I stopped making the dashi and waited for a while. Eventually, footsteps came down the stairs. Much heavier than usual.
Yume collapsed onto the living room sofa. Clutching her phone, not even looking at the screen, she just stared into space. She wasn't wearing her glasses. Her eyes were bright red.
"...Ms. Odagiri."
When I spoke, she looked at me and then said weakly, "I didn't make it."
"Didn't make what?"
"The contest. The school one. I entered, but I got cut in the first round."
Yume showed me her phone. On the screen was a list of the entries, and her own work among them.
"And on top of that, this too."
When she swiped the screen, numbers from her social media came up.
"My followers are going down. They've been dropping this whole time lately. Even when I post, nobody likes anything. ...I guess nobody's looking at me."
Her voice was trembling.
"I didn't make the contest, and my followers are going down. I really don't have anything, do I."
I knelt on the floor near the sofa and asked to look, just for a moment, at the screen of the phone she was holding.
"Is this the piece you entered?"
"...Yeah. Not that I want to look at it anymore."
It was a single photo of an outfit. Clothes Yume had designed and sewn herself. She'd put them on a mannequin and photographed them.
I looked at it closely. Not just glancing at it. The way I used to—checking, one thing at a time, what kind of person the thing in front of me would put at ease, and how.
The shape of the clothes. The way the fabric fell. How the background was framed. And—the colors.
To be honest, the seams were still uneven in places. On technique alone, there were probably plenty of people who were better. But that wasn't what caught my eye.
I didn't bother prefacing it with "Hold on a second." I just said what I saw, as it was.
"The colors here."
"Huh?"
"The outer fabric and the lining. This combination of muted blue and unbleached white."
Yume dropped her eyes to the screen.
"These are colors that put tired people at ease."
She looked up.
"They're not flashy. They don't grab your attention. But you could look at them forever. It's the kind of color combination that lets someone who's come home worn out from work let their shoulders drop."
"...How do you even know that?"
"Some color combinations make people tense, and some help them relax. You chose the second kind. And with a pretty delicate touch."
I pointed to one spot on the screen.
"Especially here—you're showing just a little of the lining. Not all of it, just enough that you catch a glimpse when it moves. If you did that on purpose—then you're someone who understands where people find their ease."
Yume stared at me blankly.
"Mister, do you... actually mean that? It's not just to make me feel better?"
"If I were comforting you, I'd say it differently."
I wondered if I'd said a bit too much, but I went on anyway.