26

I spent my time until U returned trying to sharpen my mind that had dulled from three days of confinement. I tried to really think about the situation I was in, and to figure out exactly what was going on in that house.

A vacant house. Parents who never came home. An empty fridge. A trashed living room. A strange child. And… a college student locked in a closet.

There are lots of stories about houses that look normal on the outside, but the further in you get, the more messed up you realize it actually is… I don’t know if that’s actually true to life, but there are certainly lots of stories about it. Even then, I think it’s rare to find a case as messed up as the one I was in.

Was the real, legitimate conclusion that U lived alone in the house? That it was a domain entirely under her control?

In shounen manga, it’s pretty typical for the protagonist’s parents to be away on overseas business trips or something of that caliber. Alternatively, they could be killed by an evil organization… at the very least, they have to be missing from the story. The reason being that if the protagonist has a parent acting as an absolute, grounded being involved in their life, then that complicates the portrayal of the protagonist’s heroic deeds. But this isn’t a story. It’s a retelling of reality, and U is not a protagonist. Besides, no matter how absurd a shounen manga would be, not even they would let a fourth-year elementary school girl live all on her own.

So where the heck were U‘s parents?

Then, I realized my slip-up. I should have looked around more than just the living room while I was outside of the closet. I could have figured out her parents’ jobs, their personalities, who they were… but my guilt over stealing a little girl’s food made me withdraw back into the closet.

I thought about going out again, but that wouldn’t work. There was a chance U would come home while I was out and about, which I definitely didn’t want to risk. Who knew what she might throw at me in that situation… Plus, when I thought about her coming home again with her school lunch as my “meal”, I felt like I needed to behave and wait for her… before realizing that those feelings were a stupid misconception.

But I could argue with myself all I wanted, and nothing would change.

Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow, after seeing U off to school, I’ll take the closet door off, get some water, and find out what’s going on in this house. I was starting to act more and more like a burglar, and the criminal and victim were dangerously close to swapping roles, but I just couldn’t leave the house without knowing anything any more. I waited for U to come home, offhandedly wondering how long she had been living alone, which I could never know without asking her.