• WATTYS 2022 WINNER •
When Iris Monet married millionaire Jared Darling, she had only one rule - that he could cheat on her with anyone except the household staff. This arrangement of theirs would have gone on quite happily if she hadn't caught him...
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T H R E E Y E A R S L A T E R
"AKAI."
No response.
"Akai." If anything, the grip around me grows even tighter. I sigh.
Resting both hands on the keyboard, I say reproachfully, "How do you expect me to find a job if you're going to spend the entire time distracting me?"
The back of my ear tingles deliciously as Akai nuzzles even closer. "Don't leave me," he mumbles.
"We agreed on this," I remind him. "Chihiro's starting upper school in a month and one of us needs to go with her to the city. I'm definitely not sane enough to stay here and talk with geese all day long – no offense, Gacho."
Gacho barely looks up from where she's sleeping. A fortnight ago, Akai bought a dog basket for Inu's puppies – except Gacho saw it first and decided then and there that it was her new bed. With her round body snuggled perfectly in the hollow of the wicker, and beady eyes that never seem to fully close, the message she sends is clear: touch one twig of this basket and I'll kill you. A statement every member of the household instinctively respected.
"We'll dump her in boarding school," says Akai. "She's thirteen, she's should learn how to be independent."
"Not when it's barely been six months since Fumiko passed." I keep my tone gentle. "I want to keep an eye on her. It'll make both of us less worried."
It's like a bunny, the way he keeps burying his nose in the crook of my neck. "I know." A heartfelt sigh. "Just wishful thinking."
We stay like that for a while in comfortable silence. My eyes fall on a framed photograph on the wall of Akai's bedroom. On first glance, it looks familiar: it has the same layout, same poses, and same people who once headlined an article in a newspaper – an article about a company heir, an article read on a mobile in a café three years ago. But it doesn't take long before you realise there's something distinctly incongruous, for in a sea of black hair and black eyes there's a pair of green eyes peeking out from beneath a head of balayage blonde.
I remember that day well. Fumiko had not left the house in more than three months, but for this occasion she pulled her body together and insisted. We could all see her effort: the slight grimace behind every laugh, the way her breathing quickened too easily, and how she didn't stay more than five minutes on her feet. None of us told her what the doctor said, about how much time she had left, but I think she knew anyway. It was hard not to know, considering how we were tiptoeing on eggshells around her by then.
And she made it clear. She wanted none of that for that day. Not when the weather was perfect and the sun was not too hot and for the first time in a hundred days she could feel grass beneath her feet.
Not when Akai and I were getting married.
"The only tears allowed," she said, in that soft voice I knew so well, "are happy tears."
