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There’s a Japanese fairy tale called The Red Oni Who Cried.

The titular oni kidnaps a village child, but ends up so exasperated by the child’s selfish and bratty behavior that he forgoes a ransom and just asks the village to take the child back, and even offers to pay them for the trouble… Wait, was that The Red Oni Who Cried, or a different one? Anyways, there’s a fairytale out there somewhere about that. Maybe it’s a nice bedtime story for a kid, but not for someone versed in the real world. If a victim of kidnapping behaves a little too uncontrollably, then they will inevitably cause trouble for their kidnapper, but there’s a last resort planned for what comes after that trouble. Things don’t just end there.

I let myself get all up in arms over how hungry I was (even though I really wasn’t all that hungry), but never stopped to think about what that might do to U. There was no need to get so angry just because she announced her own departure… Okay, in my defense, I wasn’t angry as much as confused.

But behind all that, U‘s reaction clearly told me she hadn’t ever considered me getting hungry in her kidnapping. Was it possible that she would have just left me there without offering the slightest food or drink to me forever? Maybe not, since she claimed she would “take responsibility” for me. Surely that meant something to her.

…But at the same time, I had to wonder. A fourth-year elementary schooler would be what, nine or ten years old? Was she old enough to properly understand the value of life? Was she even old enough to have a class pet?

For all I knew, she could still be at the age where she assumed that living things would just keep on living forever of their own accord. Maybe that was why she was so surprised. Maybe she had never expected me to get hungry…

But if that was true, I couldn’t just take it sitting down. At the same time, what was I supposed to do? Hang on until I reached my absolute limits? Give up right then and just make a phone call? Given that she had gone away to school or somewhere, the house was empty, and I had the perfect chance to make a call if I wanted.

In fact, resolving the situation while U was gone was arguably the most peaceable resolution possible. There would be aftermath, but at least there wouldn’t be a whole show at the scene of the crime. I definitely didn’t want to see something like a police officer forcing a knife-wielding U down on the ground.

…I gave it some thought, and ultimately decided to go until I couldn’t take it any more. I had at least half a day before U would get home, so there was plenty of time to change my mind. I decided to put off the call, though that might have just been more calculation on my part. I try to avoid any immediate conflict, but I don’t do much at all to avoid conflict that I can’t see right in front of me. That’s still a bad habit of mine.

Bad habits aside, I had no way of knowing what the best choice forward was, and despite all my pretense at thinking the situation through, there was probably a point where I had already stopped thinking altogether.

You read that right, I had already gotten tired of thinking.

I was forced to accept that greater amounts of time were slipping by as I did little more than idly stare into the distance.