24

I may have escaped from the closet, but my confinement still continued. The front door was tightly locked, after all… not that I couldn’t have undone any window or door lock from the inside.

I wondered what to do with myself as I left the bathroom. Nothing in particular came to mind, so I considered just making myself scarce. I had finally washed my hands from the stickiness that had remained on them for the last half-day, and although I couldn’t find my shoes in the shoe box, I wasn’t so delicate that I would die from walking barefoot for a little while.

If the bathroom clock was to be trusted, it was 10 AM. U was an elementary schooler, so she might only have half-days, but even in that case, I had about 2 hours before she would get back. That gave me plenty of margin.

Margin? Margin? Who was I to start thinking that I had space to maneuver? Evidently the me from a decade ago thought as long as he didn’t actively have a knife to his throat, he was completely 100 percent safe.

No wonder I got stuck so deep in that mess.

I was practically walking in quicksand, already sunk down to my knees, but as long as I could breathe, even if I was in up to my throat, I just figured everything was A-OK.

I guess that’s what it means to be young.

My general personality and temperament are very much the same as ten years ago, but as I’ve mentioned several times now, I have only become more and more stubborn as the years go by. I may be a working adult, but I wouldn’t say I’ve become a part of society. I feel like I’ve become less and less capable of fulfilling certain relational roles in my life.

All that said, if I found myself now in the exact position I was in a decade ago, I’d probably give up and leave the U family home. My perseverance (that’s a really nice word for it) would have ended there. Maybe I would’ve left a note for U or something (probably not, actually), but the second I made it out of that closet without causing any notable damage, I’d be gone.

But there are few things as terrifying as youth. As much as I was horrified about U‘s immaturity as an elementary schooler, I feel even more horrified at how dangerously I acted as a 20-year-old. But, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I don’t think judging my past from a future perspective as all that constructive. I’m sure when I turn 40, no matter what duties I may have to this fleeting life, I’ll look back on publicizing my trauma as risky and foolish behavior.

Back to the point, I had decided I wouldn’t yet leave U‘s house. I was so carefree as to be happy about finding myself a bathroom, and I ended up deluding myself into thinking things were getting more comfortable.

I started getting a bit bolder at that point, too. Since I had already used the restroom, I considered using their bath. I hadn’t cleaned myself in two whole days, not since getting kidnapped. I wasn’t exactly a fair maiden trying to maintain appearances, and I could’ve put up with it longer, but I think it’s only natural to want to clean yourself.

I decided not to, though. There’s a big difference between borrowing the restroom and borrowing the bath. I don’t know if it was my common sense or my conscience, but I told myself that using the bath without the homeowner’s permission was a no-go. I don’t really know what I was basing that on, but I think it’s fair to say that’s an intuitive rule.

I guess you could say it was a difference in urgency.

I considered that maybe if I were an adolescent girl I would have used the bath anyway as a matter of “priority”…

I then decided to head into the kitchen. It wasn’t that I was trying to escape that thought or anything. I was just hungry and thirsty, arguably more so than my desire to take a bath.

The kitchen would guarantee me a water source, and perhaps something to snack on. I may not have been allowed to use the bath, but surely I wouldn’t be overstepping by using the kitchen. I suppose it would be theft in the eyes of the law, but my hunger constituted an emergency situation.

The house was pretty big, but it was still a private residence, so I assumed the kitchen would connect to the living room. I walked down the hallway (carefully on tiptoes, just in case) and looked for a door that would take me to the living room.

The function of any door tends to be fairly obvious at a glance. Much like how the closet door was pretty feeble since it was a closet door, doors have characteristics. They’re made by humans with a certain design and purpose, and to that end are probably more reliable than blood type fortune telling.

This is less about bragging and more about making a point, but I found the living room door on my first guess. Granted, at the time I didn’t have the luxury of being proud of myself. I was too caught up in shock once I saw what was behind the door.

The place was a pigsty.

Maybe it wasn’t to the point where you would think a thief had broken in and ransacked the place, but there definitely wasn’t anyone in the habit of cleaning it.

There was stuff lying around on the floor where it had been taken out, and there was junk thrown everywhere, and not by me for once. The place looked a lot more like a slobby apartment owned by a single guy than the living room of a private residence, and it’s no exaggeration to say it was a disgusting sight.

Okay, maybe that is an exaggeration…

It was messy, but that doesn’t automatically make the place disgusting. I was probably just on edge as a captive. It’s like, being held captive in a private residence made it feel like I was playing house somehow, and it felt like a personal affront to find such a mess in a place that should have been clean. It wasn’t even an unusual level of messiness.

It’s not like the place was actually a pigsty.

Besides, where did I get off being upset at the state of someone else’s house? I was just being a busybody at that point. Sure, it was a surprise that a girl with such a well-bred look to her would have such a messy home, but it wasn’t breaking the law.

I kept telling myself that, but I couldn’t lie to myself, so I just averted my eyes as best I could while I worked my way towards the kitchen (it wasn’t so trashed that I couldn’t walk through it), heading to the sink for some tap water.

But then I noticed something off.

I probably shouldn’t have thoughts like that, but I guess I was just so entrenched in mystery novels at the time that it became second nature to notice insignificant details.

I noticed that the sink was perfectly dry.

At first, I didn’t even get what triggered that as strange in my mind, but then I traced a few events back in my head.

How was it possible for the sink to be dry when taking into account cooking and doing dishes? If it had been used earlier in the morning, and it was only 10 AM, then that was pretty quick for it to have fully dried. Unless it was actually typical for high-quality sinks to dry that fast? Maybe not, but just wiping it with a cloth would suffice for drying the sink.

But why would a household that tolerated such a messy living room be so finicky about keeping the sink dry? Not to mention, that would have to extend to all the silverware and dishes that appeared, for all intents and purposes, unused.

But as I tried to calm myself down, I realized that was only the tip of the iceberg.

The only person living in the house currently was the daughter, the fourth-year elementary schooler U. Did I really think she was keeping up with all the housework, like in some kind of anime? Was I really expecting her to make her own breakfast, then do all the dishes, and everything in between?

The mess in the living room was proof enough of her capabilities. Obviously, U had made that mess herself while her parents were away.

Looking back, my attempt at impromptu detective work was comical at best, because ultimately it just resolved in making it more difficult to drink water. I got all concerned that getting the sink wet would make it obvious that I used it… Of course, an elementary schooler probably wouldn’t have that level of observational skills, but I got in a terrible tizzy over it. Wiping the sink would have been an option if I got it wet, but then that got me worried about how I would dispose of the cloth or tissue I used. What if the cloth didn’t dry in time, or I ran out of tissue?

Still, I couldn’t bear my thirst with a sink right in front of me. I ended up opening the tap to just a slight trickle, squeezing my head under the faucet and making sure not to spill a single drop as I moistened my dry throat.

I’d heard somewhere that you could survive for two months on water alone, so I was pretty happy that I’d finally secured a water source. Not that I treated it much as a source… I really wanted to chug some more down, but I pushed back my impulsive desires.

The next item on the docket was food. I was already pretty hopeful on that front. I couldn’t afford to cook in my situation, but there had to have been food somewhere in that mess of a living room for the elementary schooler living in the house.

The lack of dish or sink usage indicated that whatever she was eating was instant cooking, the kind of stuff that only needed boiling water. With that in mind, I took a glance around the kitchen. The glance took some time, because it was kinda messy in there, though not on the level of the living room.

But I couldn’t find anything.

My previous sense of disgust began rising back up. Alarm bells went off in my head, telling me to drop it and just go back in the closet. I could just leave it at the conclusion that there was nothing convenient nearby.

But if I opened the fridge, I wouldn’t be able to take it back.

I didn’t react to any of the alarms in my head, and figured that if I hadn’t seen her go out for food, there had to be something in the fridge. I rationalized that elementary schoolers could still manage some simple cooking, if not to the extent in anime, completely contradicting all my earlier conclusions. But hey, frozen foods didn’t even require cooking. You just pop them in a microwave.

All that stuff ran through my head as I reached out for the fridge. Only to find it empty.