CH 6

Saki cried herself to sleep, and I put her down on her futon so as not to wake her.

In the morning, they were a little far apart, like we weren’t sleeping together.

No, of course, we had the same room, or rather, only one room, and it seemed that Mika, who was now me, and her, slept on separate futons with a little space between us.

“Oh, we cried together…”

It was like fate. I suddenly had a child, and Saki, who lost her parents.

As I was putting the quilt over her sleeping little body, I noticed that she was wearing some very nice looking clothes.

It was made of a soft white fabric with long sleeves on top and pants on the bottom, and the cloth was embroidered with small flowers in various colours.

I was wondering about the date, and it seemed to be Saturday, April 10ᵗʰ, 2024, so it wasn’t like I was transported into some weird era or something.

I think I died before this, which meant I was living in the future as a different person.

I looked up the clothes Saki was wearing on my phone and found that they were made by a famous brand of children’s clothing.

“If she was buying her such nice clothes, she should have bought her at least a single toy…”

I was beyond angry and even disgusted with Mika, who had been a substitute parent for Saki, but there was no point in complaining about someone I would never see again.

No, I’ll probably continue to spit venom every time I learn the untenable truth…

“All right, let’s make some lunch!”

Trying to change my mood, I headed for the kitchen.

I couldn’t remember what my name was in my previous life, but somehow I remembered that I lived alone and that I was the one who cooked all the time.

Maybe it was left to me by the godless old man to raise my child.

“What should I have? Hmm, we had Western food in the morning, let’s have Japanese food.”

I took the ingredients out of the refrigerator and started to cook.

1The menu consisted of white rice, miso soup with wakame seaweed and tofu, grilled ginger with cabbage, and simmered hijiki and green pepper for nutritional balance.

After a while, Saki-chan woke up from the smell and looked at me curiously from her futon.

“What are you doing?”

Oh, Saki talked to me herself!

I didn’t know if I was the only one who felt happy about that, but wasn’t this a step forward in our parent-child relationship?

“I’m making lunch.”

“Lunch? Don’t you have to chill it?”

“…….”

Her point was, don’t you heat your lunch in the microwave? I guessed that was what it meant, but I didn’t know how to respond to this.

I thought it would be quicker to show her, so I plated the cooked food on the dishes in the kitchen.

I was glad to see that there were children’s bowls and everything, but why does this mean that rice = lunch?

(I guess Mika didn’t cook until now…)

“Would you mind stepping aside for a moment so I can fold the futon?”

I gently asked Saki-chan, who was still tilting her head and making a strange face, to move to the side.

Thinking that it was a mistake not to dry the futon in the morning, I folded it together with the futon I was sleeping on, since it had been left lying on the floor.

As I set up the low, square table against the wall and brought in the food, Saki-chan smiled happily as if to say, “Wow!”

Seeing this, I could feel my heart warming up as well.

“Let’s eat. Itadakimasu.”

“Let’s eat. What’s this?”

“It’s hijiki and green pepper stew.”

“Aww…”

“You don’t like it?”

“…….”

I looked at Saki-chan, who turned over silently without saying anything, and somehow I guessed that she thought I would be angry with her if she was honest.

But I didn’t want to yell at her for that, and I thought that eating should be a fun thing to do.

So I’ll need to follow up with Saki in a proper way so that she doesn’t feel awkward.

“It’s okay, I…”

“I?”

“…I don’t like green peppers either.”

I felt like I had lost something important, but if I thought of it in first person like I used to in sales when I was an office worker, I would be fine.

It shouldn’t even matter what I look like now, and I don’t want Saki to start talking about me, so yeah! This is education… education!

“You don’t like hijiki?”

“No, I don’t like hijiki either.”

“So why did you make it?”

“They say it’s good for you, but it tastes bad.”

“Bad.”

Saki-chan was also trying her best to bring the green bell pepper to her mouth, probably because I was eating it while saying that.

“It’s bitter.”

“Bitter.”

Saki-chan and I laughed and chuckled together, making bitter faces every time we ate the green pepper and hijiki.

“Bitter—!”

After this, I gently patted Saki’s head and gave her lots of praise for her hard work in finishing her meal.

If you leave her, she would eat it, and that was fine, but she should be able to get recognized for her efforts.

And so the two of us finished our lunch happily.

[ A/N – Thanks to everyone’s support, we made it to the top 5 in the Human Drama genre and placed 4th.

It may not be reflected yet, but I was able to surpass more than 100 novels.

Thank you very much for all the ratings and buzzes. ]