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

On the final morning, Kenji woke early. He made tea for Haruko without being asked. He washed the teacup. He swept the children’s room floor.

“Kenji. Come.”

That evening, Haruko served daikon soup again. This time, it was perfect. Clear broth, just the right salt, the radish soft as mercy.

Kenji stood alone in the room. He looked at the bunk bed. The lower mattress for the failed salaryman. The upper bunk for the child who’d become wiser than him. Haha to Kodomobeya Oji-san no 1--- Nenkan no Nari...

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.

The sliding door to the children’s room hadn’t been opened in three years. Not since the youngest daughter, Mio, left for university in Tokyo. Now it was a museum of plastic pencil boards, faded Pokémon posters, and a bunk bed that sighed with dust.

He reached into the room, turned off the light, and whispered to the empty bunk bed: On the final morning, Kenji woke early

“It matters because Mom is using her pension to buy your wasabi peas.”

“Three places.”

“This is… smaller than I remember,” he said, ducking under the doorframe. He swept the children’s room floor

“Then don’t point at it.”

Kenji laughed—a hollow, surprised sound. “A fallow field? I’m a 48-year-old man sleeping in a room with a rocket-ship wallpaper border.”

“Temporarily.”