Improbable Parent and Child Conversation
I, Kajikawa Hikaru has no dream for the future.
No goals. No talents. A useless human being who doesn't even have the backbones to work hard toward something.
I was never the independent type to begin with, but I think it was made worse ever since I started working in a factory after graduating high school.
Or rather, ever since my mother passed away.
My only family were my mother and grandparents.
My father apparently left this world not long after I was born. He was sick or something. I have absolutely no recollection of him so it must be right after I was born.
My mother had to work long hours due to that.
From early morning to late at night, every single day. I remember worrying over her health even as a little kid.
Due to our circumstance, my grandparents often took care of me and I was left feeling lonely all the time.
I spent a lot of my time alone whenever I wasn't playing with friends, I ended up consuming manga and games I bought with pocket money to stave off the loneliness.
Yet, mother always made sure to spare times for me amid her busy days.
She'd ask about very normal things like how I'm doing at school, how's my study, am I getting along with my friends, yet to me those were my most precious memories.
I could feel her love for me even during those brief times. She really was my mother.
I think the reason I kept cooking simple dishes since I was a little kid was my way to connect with my mother.
『You made this, Hikaru? Oh you're amazing』, 『This is delicious』, I wanted those praises, I went out of my way to learn cooking.
...That sounded kinda mothercon-ish, but that's just how much I cherished those times.
I'm sure you get it by now. I don't have a particularly uncommon past.
If there's one thing, it would be my single parent home situation, but it's not like that's especially rare.
I got brought up normally, grew up normally.
I do think my extra effort at fishing for my mother's praise is a bit gross.
I remember how troubled I was when I got asked about my future aspiration in high school.
I didn't have anything in mind.
I had no ideal image of the future me.
I enrolled at a high school with a high employment rate, graduated and went straight to working at a nearby factory.
Looking back, I should have been more picky about my employment. As it turned out, that place was a sweatshop.
My mother was delighted and gave me a word of encouragement when I got the job offer.
『Working is only a beginning. What's important is to give your best toward what you aspire to be, what you wish to do.』, I could recall it like it was yesterday.
After all, mother got caught up in a traffic accident the following day and passed away just like that.
I felt like I had a hole opened in my chest after her funeral.
Where 'Happiness' has slipped out of and nothing can fill it.
Parting with one's parents is an eventuality.
Overcoming the grief to move forward is life. I know I'm stating the obvious.
But that was apparently too early for someone with little life experience like me, I could no longer give it my all.
I did work enough to sustain my life, but I was completely spent just clearing my quota, I couldn't muster up more.
It might have been fatigue from all the unpaid overtimes and working off hours, but I also just didn't have a clear goal on what I want to do or become.
I didn't care if my boss praises or reprimands me as long they pay me.
There was no particularly sad or major events after my mother's passing.
I just didn't have any reason to die. It was whatever to me. A dull colorless life of a man called Kajikawa Hikaru.
<TLN: Catch the latest updates and edits at Sousetsuka .com >
As I was crying my eyes out for a while, a brown short haired woman sat next to me, smiling all the while without saying anything.
『Kajikawa Yui』, my mother.
We gazed at the reliefs on the walls for a while.
This is a reunion between parent and child, seven years in the making. She's a shapeshifted fake though.
"This place is so pretty. It's like a palace made of jewels, even the walls and ceiling are sparkly."
"It, really is."
"...Have you calmed down? Good grief, you're too old to go waah-waah like that... Pft, ahahahaha!"
"Cut me some slack..."
Mother laughed with her usual lively voice, unchanged from the past.
That alone almost make me burst into tear again, but I bore through. Don't cry, me.
"Aren't you this Floor's Boss? Don't you have to fight me?"
"Oh it's fine, the final form isn't meant to get in combat."
"So what do you take that form for."
"I'll be frank, I'm supposed to persuade you to stop going ahead. You know how dangerous Floor 21 is, right?"
"Heard it's a breeding ground of bugs."
"It is. The flow of time is completely out of whack there, you might even end up like Urashima Tarou. So like it's been hundreds of years by the time you returned."
"That's scary alright."
"You might also come across people hundreds of years from the future, find yourself somewhere with alien physics or something something... Why do I know about all this again?"
It's probably due to that noise earlier.
It's easy to guess that noise also contained surplus information besides my mother's.
...Just what was that anyway, I wonder.
"So it's like, the place ahead is a no entry danger zone. If you want to keep going you have to first beat the person you love. Oh, that's nasty~."
"...You're that person in question though."
"Sure am. But it really is dangerous ahead. I'm saying this for your own good, go back."
Mother urged me with a lonesome look.
I'd love nothing more than going back myself.
"No can do. Sorry but I have my own circumstances too."
"I repeat... Go home, now. That place is not somewhere you step in for fun."
Mother warned me with the same face she used to reprimand the little me in the past.
"Isn't the girl earlier waiting for you? Are you fine with dying and leaving her behind?"
"Alma and everybody else will die if I don't move forward. I can't afford to turn back."
She looked shocked with her eyes wide open at my word.
...Rather, how does she know about Alma?
Mother looked down like she was thinking about something before lifting her face and speaking.
"Hikaru."
I hadn't had my name called by mother for a long time.
My chest feels stuffy just from that... Maybe I really am a mothercon.
"...What is it?"
"Let's have a talk."
She sat down on the floor.
She then tapped the spot next to her, urging me to sit there.
"Will you tell me everything that happened so far?"
"Everything... Where do I even begin?"
"Let's see, it can be anything you feel like telling me. It doesn't have to be all of it if you don't feel like it, I just want to hear how you've been doing."
"Well, I don't have any interesting story though."
"Oh that's one big fat lie. Then, let's start with your descent into lolicon, shall we?"
"Bfft!!?"
Cough cough! I choked!
W-what is she even going on about!? When the heck did I become a lolicon!
"I mean, you look like you're in mid 20s right, and that girlfriend of yours earlier is 16, am I wrong? I won't comment on your taste on girls, but that's quite an age gap."
"S-she's not my girlfriend! Heck, why do you know about Alma anyway!?"
"Nn, I still have memory from the time I shapeshifted into that girl earlier, you see~."
"...Wha?"
"She asked you 『What do you think of me, Hikaru?』, and you told her, 『You're my most special someone, Alma』, right? Dear me~ Get a room you two~."
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!"
I let out a wail as I hit my head on the floor.
I wanna die! Of all memories, why that one dammit!!
Your confession is like the top class secret you want to keep away from your parents!
What's up with her anyway.
I've never felt this plucked out. In all kinds of ways.
"Hey so, don't you have more? You have more interesting stories for me, right?"
Get off my back already!
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