Haha To Kodomobeya Oji-san No 1--- Nenkan No Nari... | TRUSTED × 2027 |

“Which?”

“Have you applied anywhere?” she’d ask, standing in the doorway as if the room had a force field.

“Saving it.”

Mio came home for New Year’s. She was twenty-three now, sharp-banged, and carried a leather laptop bag that cost more than Kenji’s severance package. Haha to Kodomobeya Oji-san no 1--- Nenkan no Nari...

“The rocket ship still works, huh?”

April — The Arrival

“Are you moving out?”

“You need to make dinner tonight,” she said.

The stars glowed on.

“I still do that,” Mio said quietly. “When work is hard. Or when I miss home. I sit in the dark and wait for the station.” “Which

“When your father lost his job in ’98,” she said, not looking up, “he stayed in this same room. Only back then it was my sewing room. He cried for three days. Then he made soup.”

“Kenji. Come.”

“Temporarily.”

“I used to have nightmares,” she said. “Remember? You’d come in and sit on the top bunk with me until I fell asleep.”

“You told me that nightmares are just trains passing through a dark tunnel. You said, ‘Don’t fight the train. Just sit in the car and wait for the station.’”