I Always Had a Feeling

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Kozue had been panicking for the past month.

How should she approach him?

Where should she look?

How should she act?

She grew despondent, and her blood was boiling—but not from hatred, which was far too simple a word for what she was feeling. This was a buildup of various emotions. Kozue felt as if she had a bunch of poisons in her gut that a Bunsen burner was slowly bringing to a boil.

But you’d never know that from looking at her. Kozue had to act normal, although she’d forgotten what a normal expression looked like.

Oh, right. Sunglasses. I’ll just put on my sunglasses. That way, he can’t see my eyes when I look at him, thought Kozue. That’s it. I’ll just look at him through some sunglasses!

She formed circles with her fingers, which she held in front of her eyes like a pair of glasses. She looked left and right, then broke into a toothy smile just like she did when greeting the neighbors.

Kozue then peered into the hand mirror lying on her desk and stared at her reflection. She did a lot of things while she was alone in her room. It was a childhood habit that stuck with her even now at age twenty-eight. She would talk to herself, do impersonations…

“You moron!”

…and secretly call people names. Sometimes, her gestures were meaningless. She would even karate chop the air…

“Hiiiyah!”

…and add sound effects like she was cutting someone down. Somehow, that always left her feeling refreshed. No one in her family knew she did any of this.

When she read a book and tears started to well in her eyes, curiosity would occasionally get the best of her.

I wonder what my face looks like when I’m crying.

Then she’d gaze into her hand mirror, staring hard at each tear escaping the corners of her eyes. She would even forget about whatever had happened in the book she was reading and start crying again because of how pathetic she looked.

Sometimes, the tears flowed when she listened to tapes on her cassette player. Kozue was the kind of woman who would lean against her bookcase on her knees and wipe her tears, wondering, Do I look pretty right now? Is my stomach sticking out? while looking down at her belly and sucking it in, then squeezing her rolls.

If only I wasn’t like this…

She was still doing the same things at age twenty-eight that she’d done in middle school. Kozue did a lot of different things when she was alone, but she acted totally normal whenever she was in public or with her family (her family being her mother and sister, since her father had passed away three years ago). She worked hard to come across as a well-rounded young woman, and she felt she’d been pulling it off somehow.

That is, until one month ago.

“Kozue, I’m getting married,” her younger sister, Midori, had suddenly announced at the dinner table. That was when Kozue’s life came crashing down, to put it dramatically.

Midori was twenty-six and worked as a designer for a line of high-end women’s clothing at a department store in Osaka. She used to talk about her dreams of spinsterhood and having her own store, which she was going to call Haute Couture Midori.

That was where she differed from Kozue, who went to a run-of-the-mill junior college and ended up not finding work until an acquaintance of her father got her a job as an office clerk for a company that sold fountain pens. It was a small, family-friendly enterprise, and although it was a pleasant job, the pay left much to be desired. Several young men worked there as well, but they were usually out all day meeting clients. For the most part, Kozue was left alone in the office with the elderly accounting manager and another man, who seemed to be a department head. Nonetheless, she’d been at this job for seven or eight years already.

I want to get married one day, Kozue thought as the years went on. I’m still a kid at heart, though.

She figured she knew exactly who she was. She liked the idea of getting married but had never really acted on it. That might be cause for concern to some parents, but Kozue’s father had passed away, and her mother was now working part-time, so the days simply continued to pass idly by. And yet the thought kept vaguely surfacing:

I’m definitely gonna get married one day.

Her mother was never especially strict about these things, but marriage was a major milestone, so as inexperienced as Kozue was, that seemed like the natural course of action to her. She figured her real life was going to start when she got married, which was why she never expected to be working at this small company for another seven or eight years.

But still, Kozue didn’t feel like she’d been single for all that long. In her mind, only two or three years had passed since she’d graduated college. There was never a shortage of young men at her workplace, yet for some reason, they seemed to be getting younger by the year. And when she talked to them about the most recent trends, like music or movies…

“Man, that’s so old. That was popular, like, four or five years ago.”

…they turned out to be not so recent, after all.

Hmm… Guess I am getting old, Kozue thought. I’m twenty-eight now.

That made her ponder things more seriously. But whenever she tried to get serious, her mind ended up high in the clouds, gently floating skyward like a balloon whose string had been cut.

She would look at wedding dresses featured in fashion magazines and daydream.

“I like the frilly collar on this one and the sleeves on that one.”

I’m never gonna meet any young guys at this job. Too many old men. I’ve gotta do something, Kozue thought time after time, but that was nothing more than a fantasy. Diligent as she was, Kozue got up every morning and headed to work as if her fate was set in stone. The company was located in Shinsaibashi on the south side of Osaka, so working in such a lively part of the city was enough to make Kozue happy. And whenever she saw a good-looking guy, she would naturally imagine their marriage and everything that followed. Yet the thought of talking to any of them never once crossed her mind.

Even if her relatives moved on—even if she lost touch with them—even if there were two spinsters in the family, no one would bother to set Kozue up with a man.

Kozue’s mother didn’t seem to have the energy to worry about Kozue getting married anymore, either. She’d already used half her husband’s retirement money to remodel the house.

“I’ll just rent out the second floor. Between that and my pension, I should be able to manage on my own.”

She was focused on her own post-retirement stability, when Kozue and Midori would be out of the nest. Their mother was optimistic in that sense, convinced that both of them would get married by then. Perhaps Kozue thought along the same lines.

She was childlike in nature, which might explain why people always thought she was younger. That was her only redeeming feature. Men never approached her, maybe because she lacked sex appeal.

Kozue had a round forehead and full, pale cheeks. Below her small, downturned eyes were thin lips and a tiny nose. Her thick neck was also very pale, and her hands were still dimpled. She was plump in every sense of the word. The elderly accounting manager at her job would tell her she was beautiful, but Kozue always thought she looked like one of those otafuku masks—in other words, very plain. But she was used to her looks, and there wasn’t any part of her that she hated. Kozue was proud of her smooth, glowing skin and liked it very much, but if there was one thing she could change, she’d have higher-set eyes. She looked at herself in her hand mirror and decided she might as well get double-eyelid surgery. Kozue thought she could get it over and done with if she just went to a plastic surgeon, but she lacked the determination to follow through on it. However, Kozue never felt that was a bad thing.

I’d be even prettier if I got the surgery, though…

She continued to simply daydream about the procedure. She knew she needed to do more than that, but the idea got wedged in the back of her mind along with her dreams of plastic surgery and marriage.

Nonetheless, Kozue wanted to devote herself to someone she loved, and that desire grew stronger each year. Perhaps she should’ve never dreamed so big and instead made the same decision that Midori had:

“I’ll never get married. I live for my job.”

However, Kozue lacked any real goals or passions. All she had was the hope of one day getting married.

Midori, meanwhile, graduated from high school, then attended a vocational school for dressmaking and even studied in Tokyo. By the time she returned home two years later, she’d become much more stylish and beautiful. She started working in the high fashion industry at a department store in Osaka and polished her skills further. Kozue was convinced that Midori would maintain her vow to never marry, but then all of a sudden, Midori turned her back on her own principle and announced her engagement.

Their mother had been in the bath and not at the table with them.

“Did you tell Mom?” Kozue asked.

“Yeah. I mean, why not?”

Midori’s skin was supple and lightly tanned. Being in her line of business meant she was always watching her figure, so she was extremely fit. Her hair was styled in a perfectly straight bob, and her eyes were glistening.

“You don’t want people calling us the Spinster Sisters, right? So I figured at least one of us should get married.”

“Yeah, makes sense. What’s this guy like?”

“Just your average white-collar worker. He’s a friend of a friend. We went mountain climbing together.”

Now that she mentioned it, Midori did enjoy mountain climbing and often went whenever she had a day off. Kozue, on the other hand, hated walking in general.

“You sure love climbing mountains…”

And she never even toyed with the idea of doing the same.

Kozue liked to cook, so she often packed Midori a lunch before she went to work. Whenever Midori would say, “I’m going to take the first train to work today,” Kozue would reply, “Awesome,” and get up at four in the morning to cheerfully put some food together. She never felt that cooking for her sister was a burden. If anything, devoting herself to someone else was Kozue’s hobby. That was how much she liked helping people. Ever since their mother started working, Kozue had taken over a lot of the household chores. She used the plates and small bowls she got from her monthly subscription, which she paid for herself, to try out various different recipes because she believed it would come in handy whenever she married.

I’m gonna use this one day in my new home, she thought while cooking and arranging dishes as if this were some sort of rehearsal. Kozue tended to live in her own fantasy world, which was why she never felt any urgency to get hitched.

One day when Midori came home late after going out for some drinks, Kozue decided to make her some ochazuke. The next moment, she was struck with an idea. She warmed up some rice in the microwave, gently scooped it into a bowl, salted it, and gave it a dash of powdered green tea. Now it was green tea ochazuke. She then placed a few lightly salted cucumbers on top. There was nothing like having this year’s high-quality green tea from Uji over tender rice mixed with shiso. And when you added a cup of fragrant hojicha to the mix…

“Kozue, this is seriously delicious. You always make the best food, and I’m not saying that just to be nice,” Midori had told her with the biggest smile. That alone was enough to make Kozue happy. It didn’t take much for her to be content in life: a face powder that left her skin feeling smooth, wearing new shoes outside on a sunny day, or getting complimented on her green tea ochazuke.

“I’m kinda worried, since I can’t cook like you.”

“Don’t let it bother you. You’re busy with work. Let me handle things around the house.”

That was when Midori said, “Kozue, I’m getting married.”

“Whoa, really? I had no idea.”

The phrase getting married caused Kozue’s heart to begin violently racing, even though she wasn’t the bride-to-be. It was hard to believe that this was happening to someone close to her.

“Yeah, I was hesitant, to be honest. And I felt kind of guilty getting married before you. But he said he was fine with me still working after we got hitched.”

“Who’s ‘he’?”

“My partner.”

Midori apparently referred to her fiancé as her “partner,” which was a little ambiguous at times but had a friendly ring to it. Hearing the word partner was the final blow, stunning Kozue into complete silence.

Kozue didn’t quite feel jealous or inferior—she was just shocked. Marriage, something she dreamed about every day, suddenly struck her like lightning. And it wasn’t just anyone’s marriage. This was her sister.

“Are you mad?” Midori asked while gripping the knees of her cotton pants.

“Why would I be? This is wonderful news.”

“I’ll bring my partner over next time. He’s a good guy.”

Kozue wanted to know where she found this “good guy.” She and her sister were relatively close, but they didn’t spend as much time together as they used to before Midori left for Tokyo. Midori was very mature for her age, almost as if she were the older sister. Just like Kozue hid the fact that she fantasized about marriage every day, Midori didn’t go into detail about her private life, either. They’d created some distance between them, which was probably why they didn’t fight anymore despite living together. Midori knew her sister was a dreamer and found it somewhat uncomfortable, which Kozue was well aware of. Whether she knew it or not, Kozue depended on Midori.

Twenty-six-year-old Midori was much more sophisticated than her older sister. But when it came to personal taste, Kozue had to have it her way. She loved frilly fabrics and poufy dresses. Midori’s professional side would take over and she’d be on the verge of critiquing her sister’s outfit. It was times like this when Kozue chose not to heed an expert’s opinion.

“No, this is perfect,” Kozue would claim, taking a firm stand in her fluffy blouse and pleated skirt, ready to go out on the town. She wanted tons of pretty, whimsical clothes, regardless of how cheap they were. Midori, on the other hand, had just a few high-quality articles of clothing. Kozue only needed to see something once to fall in love and immediately buy it and put it on, even if it was way too tight. It bothered Midori so much that she would undo the stitches and sew the piece back together without Kozue’s permission.

Midori designed clothes that sold for five to six thousand yen each (three thousand for the cheapest stuff). One day, she made an offhanded comment about Kozue’s dress.

“Geez, that fabric is paper-thin,” she said with a laugh. She didn’t mean to be rude, though. She was just a bit shocked that there was actually someone out there who would buy such a whimsical dress. That was her way of showing interest in what her sister was wearing. Nevertheless, Kozue was devastated.

“This dress is fine. There’s nothing wrong with it,” Kozue insisted, annoyed. After that, she refused to let anyone insult the things she liked anymore. She felt like she was being mocked. Maybe part of the reason was that Midori had career goals she was steadily achieving, which gave Kozue an inferiority complex.

This may not look stylish to a pro, but I like it, Kozue insisted. Just because she’s my little sister doesn’t mean we have to like all the same things.

She was probably being defensive in an unconscious effort to maintain her dignity—the dignity of someone who was extremely sensitive.

“You’re right, Kozue. That looks good on you. Cutesy dresses like that actually suit you really well,” Midori admitted. “Different strokes for different folks.”

Midori was sharp like that. She knew when to back down, even if she didn’t necessarily agree. Kozue thought Midori was just humoring her, but it nonetheless made her feel instantly better.

She’d gotten complacent living in an all-female household and being complimented on her food and clothing. The days kept on passing her by. Kozue’s family lived in bare-bones municipal housing built right after the Second World War. The city had sold these houses for a bargain around the time Kozue’s parents got married, so everyone on the block was fortunate enough to have their own property. Plus, being in the suburbs of Osaka was extremely convenient. The houses weren’t very big, but they’d all been rebuilt in the ’50s and ’60s and eventually added additional floors. Kozue’s house had been remodeled three times, and after her father passed away, they’d decided to add a second floor with two eight-square-meter rooms, one for each sister.

Kozue was comfortable with her tiny personal space because she believed that one day, she would get married and move out. The dream alone was enough to fulfill her year after year. There was a sliding door that divided her room and Midori’s, and sometimes, they opened it during hot summers and slept side by side. Kozue enjoyed this peaceful, cozy lifestyle, although perhaps Midori didn’t share the sentiment.

“Sis, can you not open my drawers whenever you feel like it?”

Midori had been smiling when she said that, but her tone was firm. Kozue shared a dresser with her mother on the first floor, and Midori had brought a dresser with her when she moved back from Tokyo and placed it against the wall. Kozue had opened one of the drawers.

“Sorry. I just wanted to borrow a pad.”

Kozue had seen Midori put menstrual pads in that drawer before, so she’d gone ahead and opened it.

“There’s plenty of pads downstairs in the bathroom,” Midori grumbled.

Kozue immediately shrank back whenever her sister got mad at her, but she could never retort with something like What’s your problem?! Instead, she always felt bad, like she’d messed up somehow. She knew very well that her sister was more mature than her, so she blamed herself entirely. She figured that if Midori was that angry, then she must have done something very wrong. And yet…

She didn’t have get that angry. All I did was open a stupid drawer.

Kozue didn’t keep a journal, but she had a feeling that Midori kept one of her own, not that she would ever sneak a peek. But one day, she secretly opened Midori’s dresser drawer when she wasn’t home. Folded inside were handkerchiefs and scarves, with a box of sanitary napkins in the back, and under that was a thin box she had never seen before. Kozue inspected it closely and pulled out the slim, rubber item inside.

Her inherent curiosity got the better of her, and she stared at the object. Is this what I think it is? She couldn’t help but feel it was much smaller and thinner than she’d imagined.

Kozue figured that maybe girls nowadays saw or even owned one of these starting in middle school.

Oh man. This is wild.

She immediately put the item away in a panic.

Kozue had read about these in magazines before, but this was her first time actually seeing one in person—one owned by someone she was close to, no less. She was getting worked up, so she went back to her room and started karate chopping the air.

“Hiiiyah!” she shouted, then added, “Phew, that thartled me…” and grabbed her hand mirror, wondering what kind of face she was making.

When Kozue was a child, she couldn’t pronounce startled correctly. Her father thought it was so cute and used to copy her. Soon, everyone in the family started saying “that thartled me” when they were in a good mood. Kozue hadn’t even thought about that old habit until it slipped off her tongue.

Kozue wondered if Midori ever got the chance to use this thing, and if she did, that made her way more of an adult than Kozue herself. While Kozue had read a lot on the subject, she had absolutely no experience to go along with it, so the whole thing was still somewhat shrouded in mystery. She could certainly imagine the heated passion involved, although she didn’t understand it enough to put it into words.

Kozue felt as if she were covered in a thick fog as she idly dreamed her life away. Perhaps karate chopping the air and shouting “Hiiiyah!” was her unconscious way of trying to get rid of that fog.

When Midori told her she was getting married, Kozue immediately remembered what she’d found in her sister’s drawer.

Guess people who get married are just on a different level, Kozue thought, as if that didn’t apply to her.

She knew nothing about Midori’s marriage—or even marriage in general, really—until it actually happened.

Midori introduced her fiancé to her mother first, at her mother’s workplace. That was very typical of Midori. Apparently, her fiancé was a year younger than her.

“He was so tall. Seemed to be in good shape, too. Looked a bit like a lumberjack, but still really sweet.” Their mother had apparently taken an interest in him.

“Hmm. A lumberjack, huh?” Kozue replied.

Then she started fantasizing about her mother setting her up with that young man. That was why Kozue had been so restless at the office. But it was all a mere fantasy, of course. Kozue felt as if her imagination was constantly slapping her in the face.

Her paternal aunt in Kyoto brought some wedding money over as a gift to congratulate Midori.

“Hey, Kozue. You must be jealous, huh? But your time will come. I’m sure you’ll find the perfect man for you, so don’t get jealous. Just be happy for your little sister.”

She was trying to cheer Kozue up, but what she said was still enough to annoy even someone as good-natured as Kozue.

“I never said I was jealous. How rude,” she replied.

This was what made her blood boil. It wasn’t hatred or envy. She felt all sorts of emotions, naturally: inferiority, despair, resentment, melancholy, gloom, and loneliness. But it wasn’t all negative feelings; she was also giddy and curious. It was like how a beautifully colored marble shone even brighter while mixed with dark-colored marbles. These emotions were like beautiful poisons bubbling in a flask. Kozue was anxious but enjoying the sensation. And then her aunt’s strange attempt at sympathy made Kozue feel like someone had lit a Bunsen burner, boiling the poisons inside her until BOOM! they exploded.

Kozue went to her room on the second floor.

“You moron!” she hissed while karate chopping the air. “Hiiiyah!”

Even her neighbors wouldn’t give her a break. Many of them had lived in the area for decades.

“Your sister’s getting married, I hear? I bet you’ll miss her when she moves out.”

All the marriage talk started to take over the conversation at home as well: who had introduced the couple, how Midori was going to make her own wedding dress because she didn’t want or like the rental dresses, how they were going to live in an apartment in southern Osaka, and when the two families were going to meet. Midori already had everything perfectly planned out. Their mother was indecisive (just like Kozue), so her only response was, “Oh, that’s nice.”

“We both paid for the apartment’s deposit with our savings, so we’re gonna be living paycheck to paycheck for a while. That’s why I’ll be taking some of the old dishes and spoons with me,” said Midori. “Doesn’t matter how many there are or if they don’t all match. It’s not like I can really cook anything special anyway. My partner’s a way better cook. He always cooks when we go to the mountains.”

“Oh, does he?”

An absurd scene popped into Kozue’s head of a giant lumberjack cooking in the kitchen, and her heart started racing as if he were cooking for her.

When she went to work, she would tell anyone she could, “My sister is getting married,” as if she herself had achieved a feat, but when someone told her, “You better hurry up and get married, too. You need to keep up with your sister,” she found herself annoyed, even though this was a consequence of her own actions. On the whole, however, Kozue was just half-annoyed; the other half was excited. She spent her days in bliss as if she were the one who was getting married. While her neighbors’, coworkers’, and aunt’s responses bothered her, there was something curious her mother said that really got her attention.

“Now that I think about it, I remember seeing a lot of mail from that Kawagoe guy.”

“Like letters? For Midori?”

“Yeah, there were times he was sending around three a week, even.”

“Seriously? I had no idea.”

In Kozue’s household, her mother was always the first to get home from work, so she would always be the first to check the mail. She would then place mail for her daughters in each of their rooms on the second floor, which was why Kozue had no idea her sister was getting so many letters.

She felt genuine envy when she first heard about the letters.

What’s so important that he needed to write three letters a week to say?

When she thought about it even more, Kozue became confused and disgusted. Midori started looking more and more like an intimidating grown-up woman, receiving all these correspondences from a man without saying a peep about it. Meanwhile, Midori continued to compliment Kozue.

“This food you cooked is seriously delicious.”

Then she started trying on the wedding dress she’d made. “It’s finished. What do you think?”

The simple white satin dress looked perfect on Midori’s tall, slim figure. It was a piece meant for mature, adult women, but Kozue still felt incredibly envious. Perhaps for a dreamer like her, actually seeing something in real life awakened her jealous impulses, unlike when that same something was still but an abstract idea. Nevertheless, Kozue wanted to maintain her dignity, so she’d never let anyone find that out. She was probably annoyed by what her aunt said because there was an element of truth to it.

Kozue wanted to wear her sunglasses because she wanted to hide how flustered she was.

“He’s coming over this Sunday,” Midori said, which only distressed Kozue even more. “You should check him out.”

She sounded as if she was talking about an object. She said she’d bring him over, have him meet Kozue, and then they’d have tea with their mother.

“Why not have him stay for dinner? I could cook something up,” Kozue fervently suggested. Just knowing that man was coming over made her giddy with excitement. Thinking about what to cook for him made her happy.

“Really? You’d do that for us?”

Midori’s smile made her look like she was reading Kozue like a book, although perhaps that was Kozue’s negative skepticism at work.

Midori never spent the night at her fiancé’s place, but ever since she announced their engagement, she’d started coming home even later than usual. She returned in the middle of the night when Kozue was already asleep, using her spare key to get in before climbing to the second floor and heaving a sigh of relief.

“Phew…”

A strong, exotic odor filled the air, perhaps the smell of foreign liquor or perfume. Midori turned on her bedside lamp and started getting undressed. Kozue was usually the one to lay out the futons, since the closet was in her room. Midori was sloppily removing her clothes; maybe she was drunk. She pulled off her light-purple pantyhose and practically tossed them into Kozue’s room. The stench of perfume, liquor, and foreign cigarettes permeated the air, so potent it seemed like something that mature women exuded from their very pores. Midori exhaled again.

“Phew…!”

Kozue thought it sounded like Midori’s pantyhose had sighed.

Silence ensued, so she gently turned her head to see what was happening. Midori had tossed her suit and bra onto the floor and was fast asleep on her futon. She was wearing only the top half of her pajamas, as if she got annoyed and gave up putting on the rest. Her thin white cotton panties looked no different from a tiny bikini, and a shock of glossy hair conspicuously peeked through from underneath. Midori had her lower half splayed out across the futon. Her smooth, tanned legs looked muscular and athletic, and the tufts of hair that framed her groin were just as conspicuous as the rest of it. Midori and her pubic hair were similarly shameless. Kozue flinched as if she had been punched in the nose.

It was a stark reminder that she had nothing on an adult woman.

The weather that Sunday was sunny and hot, marking the first real day of summer. The beaches were open for swimming and mountains for climbing, although it rained on and off for the next few days or so.

Midori returned home with her fiancé Sunday night before it got dark. Kozue had cooked a seemingly random assortment of dishes. Egg foo young, salt-grilled sweetfish, pumpkin soup—it was a smorgasbord of Chinese, Japanese, and Western cuisines, and she worried how they might take it. She had high expectations for this fiancé, which was why she was doubting herself and thinking maybe she should have gone with something that had a little more punch to it. This was their first time hosting a young man for dinner, and the anxiety was making her head spin.

It was a little past six thirty, the agreed upon time, when Kozue heard Midori’s voice. She rushed out of the kitchen in a panic and sprinted straight for the bathroom in the back. They had turned a small yard into a bathroom when they remodeled the place, so the vanity was in the hall. Kozue hurriedly put on her makeup and ended up using far more face powder than usual. She felt like her lipstick was too deep a shade of red as well.

She grinned in the mirror out of habit to see how she would look smiling, but this time, her heart was pounding as she wondered how this Mr. Kawagoe—this partner—this lumberjack would see her.

“Over here?” came a man’s voice as the glass door to the hallway slid open. The bathroom was right next to the tub.

He honestly looked like an alien to her. He was tan and much taller than she’d expected. Kozue’s startled face as she stood in front of the vanity took him by surprise.

“Pardon me,” he said with a bow of his head. Kozue ran past him, escaping into the kitchen while smiling through her tears. After the man finished his business, he left the bathroom and went into the living room. Kozue heard him talking to their mother.

“Sis, will you come out already? You thartled me. Are you being shy or something?” Midori called before turning to the young man. “She’s a little shy,” she told him, smiling.

“She’s just like me, then. Glad I get to meet someone I can relate to,” he replied nonchalantly.

Kozue hadn’t noticed his masculine, chiseled features moments ago in the hallway. They perfectly matched his cheerful voice.

“Hurry up, Kozue. Come on, get over here, you silly goose,” Midori teased. Then their mother started chuckling. Kozue was far too embarrassed to come out now. She’d always been interested in men like this one, and she felt as if she had been waiting for someone like him her entire life. His young energy was phenomenal, as if he had brought life to this little old house. Blood rushed to Kozue’s dizzy head.

But this man was her sister’s fiancé.

Perhaps the dreamer Kozue would simply continue dreaming until she drew her last breath, never to meet such a man.

Kozue always had a feeling that would happen, and yet there was nothing she could do about it.

“You’re so funny, Sis. Hurry up and get over here.”

“Hmph,” Kozue mumbled weakly as she prepared to carry dinner into the living room.

This was just who she was. Maybe when she stepped foot into the living room, she’d ramble on and on, unable to stop herself from getting excited. She could even imagine herself doing that in a past life.