one shot

“Get a child already”

That was my father’s favorite phrase.

Born to a house where women were only seen as tools to birth children, I was already in my twenties. I was standing on the crossroads of life.

At my fingertips were close to fifty photos of different men. They were the marriage partner candidates my father had prepared.

Those who took the initiative and volunteered because they wanted his company, and those that were recommended to strengthen our ties with other companies. There were various reasons, but I was to marry one and build up a child.

That was my reason for existence in this house.

I don’t think I can love another.

I wonder how everyone believes in something so shapeless as love. It was only a marvel to me.

That I couldn’t do something any standard person could must be because I was a person who was never properly loved.

I put a break on the countless answerless questions I held since my birth and stared down at the photos around me.

That I chose him was truly a coincidence.

The largest reason I chose him was because his photo was at the very bottom of the stack. The order of the close-to-fifty photos was decided by how much profit each person could bring to the company. Since he was at the very bottom of the stack, he was practically pointless to my father’s company. As revenge against my father, I took his photo in hand.

He of the photo was a plain man you could find anywhere. A man whose only real trait came from the diligent air given off by the glasses on his face. When it was a photo to hand to a potential marriage partner, he wasn’t smiling at all. More than that, it even looked as if he were glaring. Angrily.

His unflattering bearing held a contrarily favorable impression.

Looking at the profile on the back of the photo, I was even more certain I would settle with that person.

His history indicated, after graduating a second-rate college, he entered a mid-tier company you could find anywhere, and his years in service to it would total five this year.

And for such a man, the reason for his candidacy was to save his grandfather’s company, he wrote. My mind went strange.

“What a fool.”

By the time I noticed it, I had leaked those words.

Going out of his way to marry a woman he didn’t love to save someone else. He must have been unbelievably softhearted, and kind passed salvation.

‘I can’t think I’ll love you, but if you’re alright with me.’

Those words he let out the first time we met. I couldn’t forget my father’s face the moment he said it. Scowling, with his shoulders perked up, as he scattered shouts at me to give up on that man.

It was so amusing I couldn’t help myself. That alone made me glad I chose him.

And we were married.

When our marriage was still young, he said this to me.

“I may kill you and take all the money you’re to inherit for myself. Even so, are you alright with me?”

I thought he was a man to say interesting things. If he was really planning such a thing, he’d keep quiet and carry it out, but for some reason, he sought my consent.

At the very point he said it, I was sure he wouldn’t kill me, but for some reason, his eyes were serious, and I laughed without restrained.

And I thought up a game.

“That’s fine. It’s only a matter if I can get you to fall before that, right”

I thought it would be interesting if he fell for me for real.

Though I doubted I would love him either, I could act in love as much as I wanted. On the other hand, with how blatantly it seemed he hated me, he was likely bad at lying.

Then to act out a happy couple, I knew it would be necessary to make him fall.

‘A game to make him fall.’

When I thought of it like that, this married life for the sole purpose of having a child began to feel fun to me. How strange.

“Shall I make it seem I took a trip myself, and kill you? It seems I’ll succeed almost 40% of the time.”

An overseas trip I had been planning from before the marriage. On the day before, he said that.

I had no idea what forty percent was supposed to mean, but it seems he was thinking about killing me again. And once more, he confessed it to me. What a strange man.

I answered whatever felt appropriate, and the day came to a close. Early the next day, I took a large bag and descended from my second-floor bedroom to the living room. And I was surprised by who I found there.

“Morning.”

“… Good morning.”

He who had become my husband a few weeks ago was there, his appearance in order. I was so surprised I was at a loss for words. He gave a dangerous scowl, and asked, “Won’t you be late?”

By his urgings, I headed for the parlor, and turned back.

“… See you later?”

“Hm.”

The reason my line became a question was because I couldn’t determine whether he had woken up early to see me off or not.

He simply nodded and didn’t reciprocate my words of parting, but the words I heard before closing the door slackened my face.

“Take care.”

That was all it was. But it was an important thing to me.

From before I gained awareness, I didn’t have a mother. Even when she had married into a house like mine, she had died promptly after having me, so my family was my father alone. That man of work, my father, rarely returned home, and the times we ate breakfast or dinner together were few enough to count.

But even so, to the time I rose to high school, I was alright with that. Living alongside the house’s helper I got along well with wasn’t bad, and she who was around the age of my grandmother doted on me quite a bit.

It was a relation built on the money invested into her employment contract, but at that age, I didn’t feel too strongly about that, and I depended on the fatherless ‘family’ given to me.

In the spring of my first high school year. She passed away.

Father said he would hire another helper around the house, but I declined. Because to me, she was family and a position that could never be replaced.

But even so, father went and hired one. I brushed them aside, but in my doing so, my father had forcefully changed my cognizance of her as, ‘family’ to mere ‘helper’ and I had lost the ‘family’ I had within me.

And my life alone began.

It was a house large enough for it to be painful. I took food alone, prepared alone, and went to school.

There was no one to see me off or back, and my father who’d occasionally returned wouldn’t hold up a proper conversation.

If I were to die just like this, would anyone even notice I was no longer there?

That question even floated up, and floated out.

Without giving me a motivation to kill myself, mind you.

Like that, I gradually grew used to being ‘alone’.

‘Take care.’

The first words for my well-being I’d heard in a while.

What’s more, the one who said them were my loveless husband from a few weeks ago, and the one who threatened to kill me just the other day.

I felt it amusing to the depths of my heart, and filled with a pleasant feeling.

Unable to contain it, I laughed through the taxi I’d called, and remembering his sour face as he saw me off, my head was filled with thoughts of nothing but how to make him fall.

It was a trip of a few days, and to be completely honest, the most fun I had was choosing the souvenir to give him.

And in regards to my return, his first words were as follows.

“The probability I will love you half a year later is 0.001%, it seems.”

“I see.”

Meaning it will take more than half a year. That was my only impression. I already knew half a year wouldn’t be enough to nab that man, so I wasn’t particularly surprised at it, and I merely drank it down as him stating a fact.

It did seem he was discontent at my attitude, and a little irritated, “I was sure you didn’t hate me.” He declared.

It seems he wanted to knock me speechless.

I’m sure he wanted to see my bitter face and hatred. And he thought his sour stomach filled with the thought he had been ‘bought’ would subside some by that.

But from the start, I didn’t have the slightest intent to move as he wished, and he wasn’t the type of man to fall for a woman who moved however he wanted.

“… Could I ask how you plan on killing me next?”

When I said that challengingly, he let out a wimpy voice. He likely never thought it would come to that.

“You want to be killed?”

“If possible, I want to be loved.”

Those were without a doubt my true feelings.

Before my eyes, he flipped the switch on his glasses-shaped PC, and carried out a future prediction. The characters I could see spelled out, ‘The probability I can kill my wife without being found out’.

I see, so that’s what he was looking into, I accepted.

So that’s where the ‘forty percent’ he came out with before the trip meant.

After the end of a fierce clash. I handed him the souvenir I had put several hours into choosing. I could tell from looking at him that he treasured those glasses, so in the end, I chose to play safe and buy him a glasses case.

A black, leather-coated case. On the bottom, I had carved in his initials myself. The only one of its kind in the world, if you called it that, perhaps that was the case, but by appearance alone, it was a glasses case you could find anywhere.

And he tossed it into the trash with good momentum.

It was a shock. A greater shock than I anticipated. It was an act by someone I didn’t think anything of, so I didn’t have to pay mind to it, but I bit my lip a bit, and kept silent. He hurriedly returned to his room, but for the hour that followed, I was glued to the spot.

That was how our newly-wedded life had started out, but by the time I had noticed it, half a year had gone by.

I continued on with my ‘game to make him fall’, and it seems he was still checking that probability every day without fail.

“Today was quite a treat. 17%.”

As he reported it every morning, at the start I doubted his motives, but to be blunt, I was already used to it.

In short, this was a conversation starter. And so I would always make use of it as one.

“You’re up two percent from yesterday. Good for you. A good thing happened to me today too. Look, those perfectly dashi-rolled eggs. You like them, don’t you?”

“… You’re not wrong, but there are times I find myself afraid of you.”

“Oh my, why’s that?”

“I wonder why.”

Giving a sudden smile, he took his seat, and after preparing his breakfast, we ate together. That was the usual flow.

Every morning, every meal, I would diligently make what he liked. It wasn’t that I was thinking to grab him by the stomach, but between a woman who made what you liked, and one who didn’t the former was overwhelmingly more likable, I thought.

His likes and dislikes were easy to see through. Unable to lie, whenever he liked something, the corners of his mouth would rise, and when he didn’t a wrinkle would visit his brow.

“Is it good? Nicely done, right?”

“Well…”

It seems today’s breakfast was to his tastes.

And just like that, a year went by.

In that period, my father began pestering me about whether I had a child yet. Even if he asked that, we slept in separate rooms, and he didn’t show any signs of doing anything like that, so what’s impossible was impossible. If I had a child, it would be the second coming.

When I told my father that, I was yelled at again. He heatedly went on about how a woman’s happiness lay in leaving a child in the world, but at present, it wasn’t hard to imagine he just wanted a successor, given his age.

“Don’t call me again.”

With those words I hung up, and faithful to them, he barged into the house next. It was a holiday, and he had barged in when that man was home, so I was more panicked than you could believe.

My father demanded from him the meaning behind all of it. Because I had ended up leaking the fact that the separate rooms was his idea over the phone.

“I have no intent to embrace her. I do not love her, and I doubt she feels she wants to be embraced by me either. A woman’s purpose isn’t a tool to have children. If that’s the reason you married her to me, then you are the one who made the wrong choice. So let me divorce her at once, and please marry her off to someone she properly loves.”

Those words shut both me and father up.

Father returned as if running from the spot, and I put out some coffee.

“Thank you.”

“I don’t understand your thanks.”

“You did that with me in mind, didn’t you?”

“I… just wanted a divorce.”

Saying that sulkily, he sipped the coffee.

He really was a kind person. It seems the individual himself hadn’t realized it, but those truly were words sticking up for me.

I opened my mouth to bring forth more gratitude. But the words coming from me were extremely twisted on the way out.

“Oh, are you really fine with that? If we divorce, you can’t kill me, and a large sum of money will be distancing itself from you.”

“… That’s right. I wouldn’t want that.”

“Could I hear your next plan?”

“If I tell you, then you’d move so as not to be killed, wouldn’t you?”

“As your wife, I have the resolve to accept anything from you. I’d like you not to underestimate me.”

“Even if this were a knife?”

He touched the coffee cup against my chest and grinned with just his lips. I stole the cup from his hands and downed its contents.

“Even if this were filled with poison.”

When I said that with a smile, he burst into laughter. Within this lifestyle, wasn’t that the first time I saw a real smile from him? I thought. And with his lips alone still in a leisurely smile, he held up a finger.

“Then could I order another coffee? Without the poison, if you will.”

“I’ve never even thought to feed you poison, dear.”

When I said that and assented, he reverted back to his usual expressionless state. That felt somewhat lonely, so I decided I would definitely make him laugh again sometime.

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