Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko:Short Stories 02

The (Former) God Woman and the Space Girl

Note: This is a short story that was published a few months after the final volumes of the series, only in electronic format.

---

When I was a child, I was like an alien. It was because I was far too exceptional. I learned the existence of the word “prodigy” at an age when I could still count on both hands, and I accepted it immediately, thinking, “Ah, that is indeed what I am.”

At the time, the only people who would have disagreed were those who were envious of me.

I was able to perform perfectly in everything I did. Academics, arts, athletics. If I ran a little around the field during lunch break, I would break Japan records, and essays I wrote during class while humming to myself would win prizes, though I never knew when they had been entered into competitions. I won so many awards that I even appeared on a special television programme as a genius elementary school student. Even there, I demonstrated my brilliance, so there was no need for any script.

Whether or not every day was truly fun was another matter altogether, but I had the impression that everything around me was in an uproar, which ultimately felt like I was being rushed.

When playing with children my own age, I found it too much of a hassle to go out of my way to hold myself back, so I kept my social interactions moderate and spent most of my time reading books. I could understand even the most difficult adult literature, and I was able to naturally learn foreign languages. Back then, if I had truly attempted to fly, I might have been able to soar all the way to the edge of the universe.

I possessed all manner of talents, or rather, if I were to guess, I possessed the talent of a “god”.

I lacked the very concept of whether something was possible or impossible. I held a position from which I could observe and manipulate things from the outside.

I certainly possessed the talent to exist in that state.

And as a year passed since I, as a human being, had fully bloomed, my trajectory became so extraordinarily brilliant that, rather than being proud of me, my parents gradually began to find me unsettling. A flower that stays in bloom all year round tends to look suspicious.

To add to that, perhaps the fact that I was far too perfect for an elementary school student only served to increase that sense of suspicion.

Both of my parents ran their own private internal medicine clinic, and they took pride in not being superior to anyone else. It must have been difficult for them to feel a connection to me, as if two Earthlings had somehow been blessed with an alien child. In fact, neither my face nor my hair resembled either of them. Perhaps because of that, the neighbours rumoured that I might have been sired by another father, and I once saw my parents fighting over it. It was a rather intense quarrel, and even for someone like me, who was supposed to possess god-like talent, it was the first time I found myself completely powerless to do anything.

As if echoing my parents, those around me began to look at me as if I were a creature from another planet. Praise became withheld, and some even began to pry into my motives. In other words, they wondered what sort of circumstances allowed me to manifest such inhuman talent and whether it was something I had deliberately manufactured.

I had become a subject of suspicion. The people around me were growing, too, becoming a little wiser with each passing day.

Just when I had grown weary of those gazes, as if sensing the atmosphere, my god-like talent began to fade. I wished it had instead just vanished completely all at once. It simply began to dim in a half-hearted manner.

Every record became a barrier, victory awards receded into the distance, and I was denied the chance to view the world from the outside.

By the time I reached junior high school, my god-like side had gone completely dormant. Or rather, it had been buried.

By the time I realised I had merely been precocious in every field, I found myself surrounded by nothing but aliens. Every single one of them was overflowing with a level of talent that was difficult for me to comprehend, and they were all out there achieving greatness. Having simply been in a place where the top performers of each field gathered as an extension of my past glory, I was soon cast out from that circle. It wasn’t that my plating had peeled away. I had merely been selling fruit that was already fully grown by claiming, “It hasn’t even ripened yet!” In other words, a fraud.

All that remained with me were the certificates and trophies that filled my room and this brilliant brain of mine.

I still took pride in the fact that my intellect, at least, was superior, but everything else had settled into being below average, having fallen into decline.

As for myself, I was now working as an ordinary clerk in a dull Japanese confectionery shop.

“Komaki-san, be careful; the fire is dangerous.”

I startled as someone spoke to me from the side. The world “was born” before me, much like a soap bubble bursting. Though I thought I had been wide awake, what I had been seeing was not reality but merely something inside my own mind. I hurriedly turned off the heat under the pot. The simmering liquid had started to smell slightly burnt.

I glanced at the part-time worker, who looked at a loss for words and offered a forced, polite smile to mask her awkwardness. I gave her a wry smile in return and stirred the contents of the pot. It was rare for me to make a mistake like this.

From the perspective of the person I used to be back when I was an alien, it was unthinkable.

The month of May. It was a day with crisp, pleasant sunlight, yet it felt somewhat chilly. The wind was strong, and on the way here, the sound of leaves rustling against one another sounded like falling rain. As the wild wind lashed against my cheeks, they grew cold as if dampened, and the weather had shifted from a climate where short sleeves were fine until yesterday to one where long sleeves were now necessary. During weather like this, I felt grateful that my work was indoors.

I chose this workplace somewhat at random, and when I was asked during the interview what my special skills were, I answered, “I’m smart,” and got hired. Since I was smart, it was only natural. Incidentally, immediately afterwards, I was given the impossible task to “try to say something incredibly stupid”, which left me agonising for about three hours. Watching me, the store manager smiled and said:

“Don’t you think it’s a bit of a contradiction for a smart person to be unable to understand what’s stupid?”

After being completely refuted like that, I began to hold the store manager in high regard. Even though she was a strange person. And she never did any work.

By the way, when I prompted her to say something incredibly stupid, she beamed a full smile and said, “Meme-chin Kyurippuri☆.” I praised her, noting that it was indeed peak stupidity. A good thing I didn’t need to respect her.

That store manager… wasn’t here. Looking around the kitchen, her absence suggested she was likely slacking off. Come to think of it, I felt like she had been talking this morning about how “Meme-tan’s hair grew too long! Gyaa, my hair is stuck between the chair and my butt, and it’s pulling, giepiii!” so she might have gone out to get a haircut. I once remarked, “Aren’t you the type who can make your hair grow or shrink at will with just your willpower?” but she ignored me with a pleasant smile.

I was a little envious of that person’s ears. To be able to let things you don’t want to hear simply drift past, without ever having to cover them.

“…Hmm, no good. It smells burnt. It’s a shame, but I’ll have to start over.”

I had been making zenzai because I felt a sudden craving for something sweet, but the azuki beans and everything else in the small pot had burnt badly. Giving up, I emptied the contents of the pot and began washing it to remove the burnt residue. Though this was a Japanese confectionery shop, it wasn’t a place where sweets were actually made. I was the only one using the kitchen.

Red and white manju, funeral manju. And commemorative sweets for school entrance ceremonies. Since this was a shop that made its living by selling Japanese confectionery used for such ceremonies and life events, customers rarely visited the storefront. Perhaps only local elderly residents would stop by to buy a small gift for when they went somewhere. Furthermore, those sweets were simply sold exactly as they arrived from the factory, and no cooking of any kind took place inside the shop.

There was a kitchen, a refrigerator, and cooking utensils in the back, sufficient only for the bare minimum, but since they were there, I decided to make use of them. However, perhaps because I had never tried baking back when I was a child, back when I was a god, my skills were well below average. For someone like me, who was now nothing more than dregs, that was the best I could do.

Truly, when did I, who had once been quite alien, become so trapped by gravity that I could no longer do anything?

Was this what it meant to become an adult? In a sense that went beyond mere age.

“…I suppose that is fine, in its own way.”

After my fall, it had infuriated me how visibly disappointed my parents were. “Which am I supposed to be?” I asked.

Once I finished the washing up, I left the kitchen and went out to the shop, not so much for a change of pace as anything else. Even though I knew no one was there, the sensor would chime whenever a customer arrived.

I stood before the showcase, where samples of Japanese sweets were arranged. Even though I had polished the glass just this morning, it was already beginning to fog. When I instinctively wiped it with my finger, I only ended up adding my own fingerprint to the mess. Good grief.

Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on the showcase and propped up my chin. Since I took pride in possessing a brain far superior to that of the average person, it was only natural that my head felt heavy. It wasn’t that my head was large or anything. I had heard once that a human head could weigh as much as a bowling ball, after all. So, it definitely wasn’t a matter of size.

Still, if I were truly that intelligent, I would feel as though there might be other, more worthwhile things for me to be doing. Perhaps something involving going to university and pursuing research… something like that. I couldn’t think of anything else off the top of my head, but, well, you know, just various things.

Perhaps my brain cells were out of sorts today, because no words would come. Usually, my thoughts drifted through a much more diverse, serene, profound, and luminous landscape.

But I wondered to what normalcy I was even comparing this to. I couldn’t help but feel that I knew many more words back when I was much younger, during the era when I still wore a randoseru. Back then, I could easily understand the languages of any country, as well as mathematical formulas. Now, I even fail at making zenzai.

It occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t very smart after all. No, no, that couldn’t be right.

A person who had once shared a moment with the divine must possess the potential to become a god.

In that case, it shouldn’t be all bad. Probably. Whether I was trying to comfort myself or making excuses, I remained trapped in a somewhat difficult viewpoint when the shop door slid open with a “whoosh”.

“Oh, a customer?” I thought, hurriedly lifting my chin from my hand and straightening my back, only to be met by a beam of light flying straight at me.

For a moment, I was dazzled, as if the light blue of watercolour paint had been splashed directly into my eyes.

“Whoosh.”

The girl who entered, mimicking the sound of the automatic door, was blatantly bizarre. Her hair and her eyes were so far removed from my own worldview that they seemed deviant, as if implicitly signalling that she existed outside the boundaries of things.

Light blue.

Indeed, her hair was dyed a light blue even more lustrous than watercolour paint, and particles emanating from it drifted through the air.

A girl bearing a colour I had never once seen on Earth stepped into the shop with complete nonchalance.

My eyes widened as I thought, “Something incredible just came.” As I stared with eyes wide open, she shone so brilliantly that I grew worried the particles might drift into my eyes and cause pain. Are you a lightbulb or something?

She wore a red school randoseru, typical of an elementary school student. The randoseru was covered in scratches, looking almost like a boy’s, and I wondered if her personality was as rough as the bag’s intricate, worn appearance suggested. She turned her head from side to side as if searching for something. Unable to find it, she came trotting toward me, leaving me still standing there in a daze. As she ran past, a trail of light blue particles lingered in her wake.

Aside from my talent, I didn’t look like an alien, but she was blatantly of non-Earth origin.

She stretched her body upward, as if standing on her tiptoes, and raised a hand toward me.

“Hi there!”

“H-hi there.”

Somehow, our voices coincided.

Her voice left an impression of a series of short notes, and it was high-pitched. It sounded like a metal cylinder being constantly scraped by a rod.

“Is my mother here?”

“Huh? My mother… err.”

My mother was alive and well, but that probably wasn’t what she meant. Since the girl working here was a teenager, it would likely require an unimaginable miracle to claim her as her daughter. In that case, there was only one person who could fit the description.

I was just about to say that the person in question had skipped work and gone somewhere else when…

“It’s Meme-tan’s Eri-tan.”

“Whoa, you just popped up out of nowhere.”

Whether she had come from the back or not, the store manager, who had been crouching at my feet without me noticing, gave a rather vague introduction. The first thing I noticed as she stood up was that her hair had been trimmed shorter than it was this morning. She must have gone to the hair salon, after all.

“Hi, Eri-chan! Welcome back!”

The store manager spread her arms wide as if she were about to embrace the girl, showing her full enthusiasm for the welcome. Her lips were already puckered as if she were prepared to plant a kiss on her daughter. Ugh, her profile was creepy.

“Ah, Mum. You were here?”

Her daughter, Eri-chan, brightened with a sudden smile. She had asked “Is she here?”, only to immediately follow up with “You were here?”

It seemed the store manager’s habit of slacking off was well-known even to her own daughter. Or perhaps she simply had no intention of hiding it.

“Fu fu fu, I felt your presence, Eri-chan, and just had to come running back.”

She lied with a smug look, claiming it was mere coincidence. But the fact that it didn’t sound much like a lie was exactly what I expected from her.

“So, Erio, what brings you here?”

The store manager tilted her head slightly, resting her index finger against her cheek as if to emphasise her cuteness.

I wondered if this woman even cared that her daughter’s hair and eyes were so far beyond that of an ordinary human. Then again, she herself was far too removed from the typical people in their thirties that I knew. She was a restless person, bouncing all over the place every day like a rubber ball. After all, if she sat in the same spot for even five minutes, she would start complaining, “Meme-tan is bored.” She was quite literally a child. Her appearance was unnervingly youthful, too. I suppose since the mother herself was quite a formidable youkai, there was no reason to be surprised if her daughter was an alien… Right?

“Um, well… there’s something I wanted to ask you, Mum.”

“Ho ho, you want to ask Meme-chin? You can ask me anything; as long as it’s not about studying. Not to brag, but Meme-chin already forgot how to calculate the volume of a cylinder and everything.”

“Good grief,” I muttered, exasperated as I listened from beside them… What was it again? As smart as I may be, I had also forgotten.

Surely, I forgot it because it was unnecessary. As expected of me, I’m so brilliant. Probably.

“So, which of these sweets do you like the best?”

Her daughter pointed at the contents of the showcase one after another. As I looked down at her, warning her not to touch because she would leave fingerprints, the store manager peered into the showcase, saying, “Let’s see,” and proceeded to touch the glass with her sticky fingers.

Judging by that lack of restraint, she was the culprit. I shot her a cold look, but it had no effect at all.

“If it’s among these, I suppose it’s the mitarashi dango, since I’m an adult.”

What kind of criteria was that? What would she choose if she were a child?

“Hmmmm. Mitarashi, huh?… hmmm… yeah, yeah.”

Her daughter nodded to herself. Occasionally, her brow furrowed, and her expression became one of agony. The store manager watched over her with a smile, staring on in silence. I looked down at her daughter from a perspective that was entirely different from the store manager’s.

When I was in elementary school, I’m sure that’s exactly how unusual I must have appeared to everyone around me.

Eventually, as if having reached some sort of understanding, her daughter looked up at the store manager with a smile.

“Alright, I get it. Well then, farewell!”

Her daughter waved her hand vigorously with great energy.

“Oh, are you leaving already? I’m worried some scent-obsessed guy might start panting over Eri-tan, so Meme-chin will escort you all the way home, gugh!”

I grabbed the store manager’s hair to stop her as she attempted to dash off. Hey, wait a minute.

“You were planning on heading home just like that, weren’t you?”

“You saw right through me, part-timer-chan.”

“I told you, I’m not a part-timer! Do you still not remember my name?”

The woman in her thirties thrashed about, making excited, high-pitched noises like a monkey trying to escape from a zoo. Who on earth was this person, not to mention her daughter? I felt as though I might faint at the realisation that such an unconventional parent and child were in my immediate vicinity. After watching the store manager and me for a moment, the daughter readjusted her randoseru and beamed a smile.

“Okay, see you later, Mom! Fnuyaaa!”

The moment she stepped out of the store, the girl bolted away at full speed. She seemed to have boundless energy. In a sense, her mother was just as energetic. Perhaps having given up on running away, the mother stopped her thrashing, though she did mutter, “Ugh, Eri-chin is just so cute, I can’t help but worry,” in a display of pure, unabashed parental doting.

When I released my grip on her hair, the store manager pouted and said, “And I just had it cut, too.” What a child.

Setting that aside, I looked down at my finger, which was covered in sticky residue, and muttered my impressions.

“Your daughter is quite something.”

When I left it vague as to what I meant by “quite something”, she beamed with a full, bright smile, as if she had interpreted it exactly how she wanted.

“Right?! Isn’t she just the cutest? You’re going to want her!”

“I really don’t.”

“What?! Anyone who doesn’t want Eri-tan isn’t even a living creature! Pfff!”

“Pfff”? Hey, think about your age. And if I’m not a living creature, then that little pout of yours won’t work on me either.

“By the way, what’s with her hair? Is it natural?”

I was about to say that kids these days were quite advanced, dyeing their hair at such a young age. But I fell silent because the store manager’s expression turned somewhat serious. With a distant look in her eyes, she spoke softly.

“It seems she took strongly after her father.”

“Heh? Does this mean your husband is a foreigner?”

“I wonder? Rather than a different country, he might be from a different planet altogether.”

The store manager chuckled, answering as if joking. I hadn’t even known until now that she was married. Given her usual attitude, I had privately assumed she was the type of person no one would want to marry, but perhaps this was simply what men in this world preferred. I silently accepted this, thinking, “I see, so that’s why I’m not popular.” Gods were meant to be worshipped, not loved. Probably.

“…Still, though.”

I narrowed my eyes at the light blue particles that still lingered in the shop. I wondered if such a person even should exist. Since the world was vast, perhaps there was a race somewhere on Earth that scattered luminous dust like scales from a wing. However, if such people were ever discovered, I suspected the world would simply hail them as gods.

That brilliance was that impressive. It was enough to potentially overturn our very values. Furthermore, one could not overlook the fact that the girl was a beautiful maiden who was every bit as radiant as that light. I had often been told during my elementary school years that it was unfair, and I couldn’t help but imagine that she, too, was subject to the envy and jealousy of those around her. It was perhaps the fate of those who were too excellent. Seeing her felt somewhat like looking at my old self, which made me a little worried.

As I was lost in these thoughts with a serious expression…

“Mwah.”

“…What is it?”

I felt my cheek being sucked. It was the store manager. As she pulled away, there was a soft, wet sound. It was disheartening to feel the store manager’s saliva clinging to my cheek with a faint chill, and it made me realise that another person’s lips were unexpectedly warm.

A landslide of things I wanted to say surged within me, but I struggled with which one to start with.

“Since I failed to get a kiss from Eri-chan, I decided to release all this leftover affection elsewhere.”

“I’m going to sue you for sexual harassment.”

“Goodness, kids these days are always so eager to use foreign loanwords.”

As my cheek was being sucked, I thought to myself that Eri-chan’s name was a foreign loanword to begin with.

“While you’re here, you can act spoilt and treat Meme-chin like your big sister.”

“…Aren’t you supposed to be a mother? How brazen,” I muttered with a half-smile.

There was a woman who said that God was an alien who went fishing. She was a classmate from middle school.

She wasn’t particularly into religion. Rather, she had apparently been influenced by a single painting, which led her to adopt such a philosophy. To be honest, it made no sense to me, and from my perspective, she was just a strange woman.

Since I possessed the talent of a god, I could say for certain. I certainly never went fishing.

If I had been doing it back then, I’m sure I could have even caught a whale.

…Even now, I wondered what that had all been about. It was a concentration of abilities far too improbable to be mere coincidence, clearly existing on a different plane from the world around it. Looking back now, that past felt almost like a dream.

I wondered if, perhaps, the manifestation of my talents had simply been unbalanced. I felt that humans, in a sense, had talents that blossomed one by one as they reached certain ages. I thought that perhaps, quite suddenly, a talent for writing novels or an ability for visualising paintings might emerge. I laughed at the thought.

In my case, the talents that were supposed to appear with the passing years had all become concentrated in a single place. Whether it was some mistake or a prank by the gods, I had likely compressed nearly a lifetime’s worth of talent into a single burst, burning through it all as an omnipotent being in a short span of time. All that remained was what I was now: the leftover scraps of a god.

On the way home from the confectionery shop, I felt a moderate sense of melancholy beneath the leaves that continued to rustle like a heavy downpour.

That sound gradually coalesced into a single word, raining down upon me.

An auditory hallucination, asking whether I wanted that talent once more.

It was the physical manifestation of my own inner voice.

And so, I answered that question in this way. Of course, because I was clever.

If it meant I would become able to make sweets well, then that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Now, the next day. Following on from yesterday, the store manager’s daughter came again. Since it was around three in the afternoon, I supposed it was what one calls after-school hours. Carrying her red randoseru on her back, she seemed slightly out of breath, as if she had been running. As it turned out, it was not some minor cold or illness, for her eyes and hair were dyed light blue again today. No matter how many times I saw it, that colour before my eyes made her seem less human. She was almost an alien.

“Hi there!”

“H-Hi there.”

I had grown somewhat used to it. As usual, the girl was darting her eyes around the shop. Particles were being scattered throughout the store.

I found myself daydreaming that if I could just polish the shop with her hair, the walls and floors would shine eternally.

“Is my mother here?”

“Hmm…” I turned around and peeked into the kitchen. She wasn’t there. Since the part-timer wasn’t working today either, the place was deserted.

“Looks like she ran away.”

“Alright!”

The girl pumped her fist in victory. I had no idea what she was celebrating. But I caught myself playing along, shouting, “Alright!” as well.

“I knew she wouldn’t be here.”

“You certainly understand your mother well… anyway, did you need something?”

The girl shook her head with such pure innocence. Hmm, what an adorable gesture. I surmised that she was likely popular with the boys at school but shunned by the girls. Still, I sensed that the boys’ popularity was probably a different thing entirely from being truly loved. From the perspective of an elementary schooler, she likely just found herself drawn to “beautiful things”.

“I came here because I have something to ask you, Onee-san.”

“Eh, me?”

Being called Onee-san made me involuntarily recall the store manager yesterday. And the sensation of her lips. I wasn’t happy about it.

“Yeah, exactly. Onee-san, can you make sweets?”

“Sweets, you say?”

“Specifically, a batch of mitarashi dango! Something like that.”

“Hey, hey,” I replied, raising my fingers. I wondered if my eyes were being affected by those particles, as my nails also seemed to be stained with a light blue hue. Oh no, even my complexion was gradually turning light blue. It was frightening.

“Dango? I can make them; it’s easy.”

“Ooh, you’re the Onee-san-who-can-do-anything type.”

She started clapping. It didn’t feel bad, but it was so exaggerated that it made me feel embarrassed. It was particularly itchy to have someone with that appearance praising the person I had become. It felt as if the me from back then was praising someone else.

“By the way, this is one of the top three things my mother loves to hear every day.”

What on earth was that woman teaching a child? I felt a slight hesitation to ask about the other two.

“So, Onee-san-who-can-do-anything.”

“I’m Komaki.”

“Then, Komaki-san, please teach me how to make dango!”

The girl made her request while holding out her palm, as if begging for something. Perhaps it was a habit of hers to stand on her tiptoes when she spoke to people, as she remained on her toes just like yesterday. Teach? Aah, teach?

“Dango? You want to make some?”

“Yeah. You know, I was thinking of making dango for Mom’s birthday next month!”

“Heh?…”

I let out a breath, sounding somewhat impressed. This child was truly devoted to her mother. I wondered when it had been since I last celebrated my own mother’s birthday. Perhaps it was during that period when I was viewed with such creepiness. Ah, even now, the thought of it made me angry.

I was completely estranged from my parents, but I had no regrets. A reconciliation was unlikely to ever happen, either.

“But why ask me? I think even your mother would know something like that.”

“Because if I ask Mum, the whole plan will get leaked. And when I stand in the kitchen, she gets super worried. She won’t even let me hold a knife!”

The girl crossed her short arms and muttered as if she were in a predicament. Well, you didn’t exactly need a knife to make dango, though.

“Ah, I think I understand.”

Judging by how things were yesterday, it seemed as though she was being spoilt to death at home. I grumbled internally behind a smile, thinking I should probably spoil the employees’ wages too, and tilted my head, wondering what to do. I averted my eyes from that pure, innocent gaze and found myself agonising over the situation, realising there was no real reason to refuse, given that customers rarely visited.

To be honest, the girl’s appearance could only be described as “perfect”. Because of that, my true intention was to avoid interacting with her too much. I had a somewhat bitter past regarding perfection, after all. However, I simply couldn’t think of a way to turn her down without hurting her feelings. It felt as though I was gradually losing my wits lately.

As if to mask or perhaps mock that flaw in my thinking, I began to mumble under my breath.

“If I make a good impression on the store manager’s daughter here, maybe the store manager will take a better liking to me, *mumble-mumble*.”

“Oh, quite a schemer. You really are an Onee-san-who-can-do-anything.”

“Save that for your mother’s birthday. Well then, are you ready to practise now?”

“You bet!”

The girl raised her hand with great energy. Then, I rotated the display case and guided her toward the kitchen. She placed her randoseru on the chair where the store manager usually sat and then proceeded to wash her hands. I watched closely, worried that the colour might wash off her fingernails, but of course, that wasn’t the case. I felt both relieved and disappointed. This child was, quite literally, full of the unknown in every single aspect, and anxiety and curiosity coexisted within her.

“They’re all clean!”

She showed off her washed hands to me. I felt like she hadn’t washed them thoroughly enough, but I chose not to mention it. Since they looked so clean, I decided to interpret it as her being able to maintain cleanliness even without being a neat freak. I couldn’t help but look at her with envy, thinking that she probably wouldn’t even need much makeup even when she grew up.

“I’m all ready to go, Master!”

“Master, huh? Teacher would have been better; but… well, whatever.”

By making requests like that, she wasn’t much different from the store manager. I wondered what kind of adult she was going to become.

Then again, I wasn’t even sure if I had become an adult myself.

I prepared the risen rice flour and glutinous rice flour. After that, I gathered soy sauce, sugar, and other ingredients for the sauce. Well, even though it was a Japanese sweets shop, there weren’t any particularly special ingredients. After all, there would be no point in teaching recipes that couldn’t be made at home.

“Alright, then, let’s get started!”

I announced the start of the cooking, singing “ten-te-ke-te-ke-ke” in a completely half-hearted manner. The young girl in short sleeves rolled up her soft upper arms before giving me a casual, “Hi there.” I nodded.

“First, pour hot water into the joushinko and shiratamako respectively, and knead them.”

“Hi there.”

That was her only response to everything. I gave a wry smile at her elementary-school-level vocabulary as I added the flour and hot water to the bowl. Since the kitchen counter was a bit too high for her, it seemed she had no choice but to cook while standing on her tiptoes.

While the sight was heartwarming, it also felt awkward, as if I were forcing a creature of such obvious, perfect beauty to overexert herself. It felt somewhat eerie. I was surely being seen in that same light, too.

“Ah… you’re just on your way home from school, aren’t you?”

Since I was bad at staying silent, I tried to strike up some small talk while she worked. However, perhaps because opportunities to converse with elementary schoolers were so rare, I couldn’t quite grasp the right attitude to adopt. It was a side effect of spending my own elementary school years doing nothing but reading books. While her hands moved busily, the girl responded with a bright smile and a cheerful, “Hi there!” I wondered if “Hi there!” was the only spontaneous response that child possessed.

Everything becomes C (hi there).

“Is school fun?”

I evaluated myself objectively, thinking how awkward that sounded. It felt like that sensation of interacting with a relative’s child. It was tough.

“Hmm, not really. Kashiwagi keeps messing with me, so it’s kind of a pain.”

“Kashiwagi? A boy?” Was she already living in a rom-com at her age?

“Nope, a girl. She’s always playing pranks on me, so I’m gonna beat her to a pulp.”

She flexed her arm with a huff, trying to show off her strength. Beat to a pulp. I honestly couldn’t picture it.

The wrestling matches she engaged in seemed as though they would scatter particles with every movement, appearing something truly divine.

“Hmm. I see. That girl is just jealous because you’re so cute.”

I understood that feeling. After all, even at this age, I still felt inferior to the girl beside me.

“Is that so? I personally think my mother is cuter, though.”

“No, definitely not.”

I waved my flour-covered hands dismissively. That right there is what you call brainwashing, little lady. It was true that a certain segment, a very small segment of connoisseurs, might recognise that behaviour, those words, and everything else as part of a lovely creature, but I wouldn’t recommend developing a taste for such eccentricities at her age. One’s values should be forged while the iron is still hot.

Setting that aside, she finished mixing the dango ingredients.

“Did you mix it well?”

“It’s messy.”

She held up her hands, which had turned pure white instead of the bowl. Well, fine.

“Next, we knead the combined flour… generally, you knead it until it reaches the consistency of an earlobe.”

“An earlobe? But mine and my mother’s have different softness. Mommy’s is super soft.”

“Ah, I get that… but your earlobe will be fine.”

I kneaded while imagining the store manager’s earlobe. I had a feeling the dango wouldn’t turn out tasty. Moreover, once I imagined that face, it lingered indefinitely. Was that woman a curse? Cursing her right back, I continued to knead the dough. Glancing sideways, I saw her daughter playing with the dough, seemingly free of any distractions.

“Squish, squish.”

“You’re working hard.”

“Hey there.”

Ah, her response had changed slightly. I became a little curious to see just how many variations she had.

“You really love your mum, don’t you?”

I used to love mine, too. But if my mother were like that person… I wondered how I would feel now.

“It’s-a-se-cret.”

“…What is that annoying way of replying that you obviously learned that from somewhere else?”

“Mum’s top three most used words.”

She held up three fingers. This child was being influenced by that woman far too much. Was she going to turn out like her in the future? I couldn’t believe it. Because, paradoxically, that would mean acknowledging that the woman had once been like this. Had she, too, once released indigo, somewhat dark and cold particles?

“Are the dango ready?”

“It turned into a giant earlobe.”

It certainly had the shape of a lima bean, rather than being round. I wondered exactly how she had kneaded it.

“That’s fine, I suppose. All that’s left is to boil this, and once the dumplings float to the surface, they’ll be done.”

“Eh? That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Isn’t there more artisanal stuff to do?”

“Skewering them? Ah, and make the sauce, but that’s easy too.”

Since the proportions were quite haphazard, it likely wouldn’t achieve a secret, legendary flavour, but it was more than sufficient for something being given to that mother of hers.

In the first place, if this girl was the one making them, she would probably eat them even if they were slathered in mustard.

“What? That was easy.”

The girl let out a smug, “Uhehe,” as her cheeks relaxed with pride. I just hoped the store manager wouldn’t step in to stop her, warning that using a stove at home was too dangerous. I prepared the pot, brought the water to a boil, and tossed in the dumplings that the girl and I had made.

“Master, that was awesome!”

“No, no, haha.”

As particles drifted from her, I whispered to myself that she was incredible, no matter what she was doing. I wondered if anything more space-like than this girl could ever be discovered beyond the Earth. It was a contradictory thought.

The girl seemed to be waiting for the dango to finish cooking, swaying gently from side to side beside me, but perhaps she grew bored in less than a minute, because she suddenly slumped onto the floor. Then, she began doing push-ups. Hey, hey, what’s with her all of a sudden?

“What are you doing?”

“It’s training. Since I didn’t do any secret training yesterday, I decided to do a little bit now.”

“Training?”

I speculated from the perspective of an elementary schooler, wondering if she was planning to launch some kind of special move. However, I was completely wrong.

“Step one of becoming an astronaut. Build up physical strength.”

With those words, she began moving her body up and down in rhythmic, small movements. I chose to turn a blind eye to the eccentricity of her suddenly starting push-ups under the guise of building stamina and focused instead on what she actually said. Space, huh?

“An astronaut… Ah, so that’s your dream for the future?”

It was that kind of elementary school dream, the kind that rarely comes true. She nodded “Yes” while continuing her push-ups.

“Ah, oops, it’s not a secret anymore. Please pretend you didn’t hear that.”

“I don’t mind, but was there really a need to keep it a secret?”

“I have to keep it a secret so that other people don’t do the astronaut training too.”

It was a heartwarming, yet incredibly petty, way of thinking. I mean, I wasn’t planning on aiming for that anyway. I had no idea how she even arrived at that logic.

“Push-ups… space… and… something…”

As she performed push-ups to the tune of an improvised song, her face was distorted with heavy, huffing breaths, yet she still managed to maintain the appearance of a beautiful girl. Surely, God must have taken a great liking to such a design.

“An astronaut, huh… Do you like space?”

It wasn’t anything unusual for this town. In fact, I had once admired astronauts myself. However, I was satisfied with merely launching plastic bottle rockets, and my interest had vanished along with my talent.

“It’s not just that I like it; it’s my dream. It’s what I super long for.”

“Super, huh?”

“I’m confident that I’m the number one person on Earth seeking the stars.”

“Well, at least your confidence is currently the best on Earth.”

I gave a wry smile. It had been a long time since I had possessed that kind of confidence. I mean, look at me, I was far too humble now.

At best, I was just someone who happened to be smart. Though, lately, things had gone downhill quite a bit.

In contrast, this girl didn’t even know how to make dango, and she was struggling just to finish her push-ups. How jealous I was.

The nature of her inner talent was different from mine. In other words, her appearance was merely one part of a talent that had blossomed steadily as she grew older. I thought to myself with a hint of self-derision that it was so unfair.

“Are you smart?”

I ventured a sudden, incredibly foolish question. The girl, who had stood up after finishing her push-ups, turned her face toward me with a puzzled “Hmm?” There was some white powder on her cheek, so when I wiped it away with my finger, she gave a quick bow and said, “Hi there.”

Hi there. It was a form of Japanese that certainly couldn’t be called smart, yet the phrasing had a strangely pleasant ring to it.

“Heh heh, I actually got a perfect score on my last math test, you know.”

Ah, that boastful face, the way she closed her eyes slightly and pushed her nose forward. It was the spitting image of her mother. They were definitely mother and child.

“Fu fu fu, not to brag, but I got a hundred on mine too.”

In those days, I only ever got perfect scores, and exams felt utterly trivial. When I looked at the test papers, the answers seemed to show through the page. The exams were such chores that I felt like crying out, “This is cheating!”

I wondered to myself how many points my current life was worth. Unfortunately, the answers no longer revealed themselves through the surface.

“What? Well, I can, uuuh, jump over the level-five vaulting box.”

“You can’t win if we compete. I was practically a god when I was a kid.”

My name was still listed among the Japanese national records even now. Though, the child standing before me possessed a certain mysticism, as if she might perform a miracle and produce a world record herself. The girl let out a low, frustrated groan as her words failed her. I had won.

“Well, I’m not that amazing anymore. I guess I lost my sense of balance and used up all my fuel in one go.”

“Uh, but you’re amazing, Master. You can even make dango.”

“But now you’ve learned how to make them, too. That makes you even more wonderful.”

When someone perfect praised me, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were being sarcastic. Well, it was inevitable. Because of that, I never offered praise to those around me. That only served to breed resentment and leave me isolated.

“You’re just… so perfect.”

“Perfect? No, not at all. That’s why I’m out in the park every day playing secret training’.”

“I didn’t mean that… Ah, I’m getting stupider by the year. My vocabulary is vanishing.”

I let my true, unpolished self emerge, as if a fantasy were dissolving. She was smart enough to catch on to that much.

All I could say was that this girl’s perfection would likely continue for a long time to come.

Unlike me, who achieved perfection for only a fleeting moment, only to lose it immediately afterwards.

An airplane that ascended into space via a ballistic flight, however, was never destined to remain in a weightless world for long. Come to think of it, I remembered seeing news about a project like that once, involving wealthy participants. I wondered what those people had gained when they returned to Earth.

As for me now, I didn’t know how to respond to the ceiling-like thing that was always there whenever I looked up.

“Oh, they’re floating up. It’s finished!”

“Whoa, the earlobe dango are floating.”

Perhaps moved by the sight, the girl poked at the dumplings in the pot with her finger. The dumplings sank just a little bit, bobbing up and down. My life had been devoid of any such rising and falling, but today, I felt as though something was truly, if only slightly, afloat.

Feeling like a god during a momentary resurrection. All thanks to this girl. She was just far too omnipotent.

“Lastly, we’ll make the sauce. You mix water, sugar, and soy sauce. Alright, repeat.”

“Misashi!”

“Sound like a failed version of Musashi, but as long as you can remember it, I guess it’s fine.”

I placed the ingredients into a heat-resistant container, stirred them vigorously, and covered it with plastic wrap. I heated it in the microwave for just over a minute. After that, I added potato starch dissolved in water and heated it for another twenty seconds. Finally, I stirred it one last time, and it was done.

“That’s how you make the sauce. Did you memorise it?”

“Misashi!”

“Hey, you haven’t made any progress at all.”

I felt a bit anxious, but once I drizzled the sauce over the dango I had removed from the pot, they were finished. The broad bean-shaped dango and the regular round ones sat together on the plate. Being served alongside the food of a child who radiated a divine brilliance made me feel small and out of place. Yet, at the same time, I felt a sense of triumph. Perhaps this was, for the first time in a long while, a moment where I was superior to another. I mocked myself, thinking that even a god wasn’t all that impressive.

Even the records I set weren’t much of a feat compared to an adult’s. Even for a god, the world in which they remained omnipotent was limited by a child’s perspective, and it was a little small. It was only now that I realised such a thing.

“Uhohoi, dango, uhohoi… I wonder if Mum will be happy.”

“If you tell her you made them yourself, I think her reaction would be even more beyond imagination.”

She might fire a beam from her mouth or grow to a massive size and destroy a castle.

I looked down at the finished dango, and then at the girl, who was clearly in high spirits.

“You know…”

“Yes, Master!”

It came out as something resembling a derisive snicker. Accepting the fact that I was smiling, I opened my mouth.

“I am the kind of person who can understand your feelings, just a little bit.”

“Hmm?”

Because of that, I felt like offering her a bit of advice. Even if it was just some useless scrap of wisdom.

“I think that even after you become a middle school student, you’ll probably still be bullied by other girls.”

“I won’t be bullied. If anything, I’ll just knock them all down one by one.”

She thrust her clenched fist forward with a “hyah! hyah!” I wasn’t referring to that kind of physical response, though.

“It’s just… because you stand out, you know… but, well… Just do your best! Yeah!”

My support, coming from someone as genuinely dim-witted as myself, was incredibly blunt and unhelpful.

I wondered when I had become smart enough to make such an incredibly stupid remark.

The girl picked up a dumpling. I panicked, wondering where her comment on my advice had gone. Munching away on my dumpling, she swallowed and praised it so enthusiastically it felt as if a triumphant sound effect should have played along with her “Delicious!”

“Since it’s my Master’s teaching, I’ll take it to heart. But for me working super hard is a given. Because I can’t become an astronaut if I don’t. I live to make my dreams come true.”

As the light-blue-haired girl spoke of her dreams, her eyes blinked with a brilliance more precious than anything else on Earth.

She spoke of an envy for the far reaches of the sky, an envy that seemed far too vast, yet was something one could carry appropriately, if it were her.

“…Ah, talking to you makes me feel kind of itchy.”

“Huh? What is? I’m itchy?”

I scratched my nose. I wanted to say that she would never truly understand my heart.

No, rather, that was how it should be.

“It feels like I’m teaching a god something important, even though I’m just a piece of leftover trash… How laughable.”

“What, I am a god? No way!”

The girl laughed it off, seemingly quite pleased with herself. Then, she put one of the handmade dango into her mouth. As soon as she bit down, her face contorted into a grimace. I wondered if the outcome didn’t turn good.

“…Next year, I think I’ll just buy your dango, Master.”

The girl muttered under her breath. I believed it was the person who made them that was more important than the taste, though.

I popped another of the dumplings I had made into my mouth, then ran toward her randoseru, announcing, “Off to my secret training!” The girl closed the distance to the chair in just two large strides and gripped her randoseru tightly. I followed behind her, tracing the trail of particles left in her wake. Those particles, drifting smoothly against my skin, created an illusion that lifted me toward the sky for a fleeting moment… making my footing feel dizzy and unstable.

The girl, however, kept her feet firmly planted, merely pushing off the ground. She was preparing to leap someday.

“Hi there,” she said, bowing respectfully as if performing a formal bow before a martial arts match.

“Thanks for the dango, Master. Now I’m going to make Mum cry her eyes out.”

“Sounds more like you’re going to make her go ‘bueh-bueh’.”

“Hi there.”

“…That greeting of yours is certainly convenient.”

The young girl carried her randoseru on her back and ran off with great energy without a moment’s hesitation.

I watched her go, leaving her smudgy fingerprints all over the display case. I saw my own image reflected in her, a girl who believed that simply running like that made her faster than anyone else in all of Japan. Yet, the reflection failed to fully align, and her shadow dissolved into the sunlight. Pushing away from the showcase, I returned to the kitchen and took several deep breaths.

I put one of the earlobe dango the girl had made into my mouth and chewed repeatedly. The dough was probably overkneaded, because the texture was a bit tough.

“Maybe I should have made them like the store manager’s earlobes instead.”

I gave a bitter smile, feeling a sense of longing for that imperfection. I, too, had wanted to grow in a natural, steady way. Not by destroying every stair and levelling the landscape just to make the peak as flat as the plain.

Though, there was no point in dwelling on it. Besides, the version of me who acted as a god back then probably wasn’t as omnipotent as I had thought.

I possessed the talent of a god, but I had never honed it.

I did not hold onto a dream, like that girl did.

My cheeks, scorched by the afterglow of the past, felt hot and were as warm as if they were shedding tears.

After scratching the nape of my neck, I called out without looking back.

“Instead of hiding, why don’t you come out?”

“Oh my, you noticed me.”

“…ugh…ugh…ugh…”

“What shocked you so much that you look like you’re about to faint, shop attendant-chan?”

“I-I just didn’t think you were actually here…”

The store manager was there. She had slipped in from the back door. I couldn’t believe it. Sometimes, when I was bored, I would mutter lines like that to myself just to act cool, but this was the first time someone had actually appeared.

She was a creature that existed entirely beyond my expectations. I felt like I could perhaps certify her as a type of minor deity.

“I thought you had run away, but you came back?”

“I smelt Eri-tan’s scent, so I came back subconsciously.”

That’s not your subconscious. Your overflowing love for your daughter is crossing a line, it’s just creepy.

“Meme-tan’s radar is working perfectly again today!”

She released an aura of pure eccentricity, boasting as if she were performing something superhuman. It felt so real that I looked away to avoid picking up her frequency. I felt a wave of shame as I replayed every word she had said, wondering where she had been eavesdropping on my conversation with my daughter. Was this what it meant to become an adult? To learn the meaning of shame?

Summoning my resolve, I turned my eyes back to the store manager, only to find that she had stood by my side without me noticing. She picked up one of the dango I had made and popped it into her mouth. Her cheeks moved up and down so vigorously that I found myself wondering if her face wasn’t actually softer than the dango itself. I stood there, utterly speechless, wondering what kind of creature this was.

Once she had finished swallowing the dango, the store manager gave me a thumbs-up, “Alright!” as if she were mimicking her daughter from moments before.

“You’ve got quite good at making sweets, Komaki-chan.”

“…Hi there.”

I see.

Improving oneself from the inside out and then reaching for the world outside wasn’t such a bad idea.

Whenever I looked up, there was always something like a wall, trapping us in.

However, I decided that this time, I would break through it and begin each day anew, striving to draw closer to the divine.

I would follow the natural course of my talent, now that I had reached this age.

“…So, yeah, that’s how things went.”

Sitting on a bench outside the candy store, the woman continued to laugh brightly as she spoke, then took several long gulps of her cola. Regarding her personal anecdote, there was something I had to say first.

There was one thing that I fundamentally could not understand. It wasn’t about Erio, who was inside the shop spinning around expressionlessly while scattering particles as she wrote in something resembling a journal. Nor was it the mystery of why she was acting so nonchalant while wearing a shiratama dango mascot costume that looked vaguely familiar from somewhere. Setting aside the fact that a handwritten flyer reading “Let’s eat mitarashi dango” was stuck to her stomach, and ignoring the suspicion that this whole story might just be a fabrication intended to promote the dango, I prepared to ask my question:

“…Excuse me if I sound terribly rude, but who might you be?”

At the very least, I had absolutely no acquaintance with her.

The town was peaceful again today.

And lately, my neighbour had been a little bit noisy.