Monday Dawned
Monday dawned.
Bzz, buuuzz…
I flipped over fast and stretched out a hand to kill the morning alarm.
"…Hah."
Having rolled over so abruptly, fatigue climbed my spine in one unbroken line from the small of my back all the way up to my neck, and I let out a long sigh.
Six in the morning.
I had set the alarm like this on purpose, trying to ease myself into a working-day rhythm ahead of time, because I already knew how brutal it would be to wake at this hour on the actual first day back.
…So it really starts again.
Having to get up on a fixed schedule after so long made the weight of it feel brand-new. It was a completely different kind of pressure from the alarms I had set for formula feeds.
I checked that Luca was still sleeping soundly beside me, then took a hot shower, and only then did my head start to clear a little.
"……"
Ah, honestly…
I do not want to go to work.
Still, the gray mood did not last long.
After a good breakfast, I sat out on the terrace with the baby in the full wash of morning sun, and it became almost impossible to feel unhappy.
How lucky was I, really, to eat good food, wear good clothes, and spend my days in a beautiful place with a child I loved?
If I wanted to keep this life, I would have to say thank you to the company and show up for work.
"…Luca, starting tomorrow Daddy has to go to the office and work."
"Appa…"
"Our Luca can stay with the daycare teachers while Daddy works, right?"
"Ehh…"
"You'll stay with Teddy, okay?"
I pressed the teddy bear with the big sky-blue ribbon into Luca's arms and made my earnest request.
"Ahh…"
The child looked up at me with a bright little smile, and I planted a loud kiss on his forehead.
…Maybe I should bake cookies for the daycare teachers I would meet for the first time tomorrow.
And while I was at it, it seemed only right to show some gratitude to the colleagues who had covered my share of the work while I was gone.
Hardly anyone sat at a desk all day without snacking, so I figured they would all appreciate it.
With that decided, I took Luca and headed for the neighborhood supermarket.
The next morning before dawn.
Bzz, buuuzz…
Tap.
"…Hoooo."
Monday had arrived.
"……"
…Good grief. It had been a very long time since I last felt this violently opposed to going to work. Usually I just got up without thinking much about it and timed myself to leave after breakfast.
But then I looked at Luca, sleeping with both arms flung wide in a victory pose, and steeled myself.
After I showered and came out into the living room, the sweet scent of the cookies I had spent all of yesterday baking like a one-man cookie factory filled the air.
I pulled out the bundle of little paper bags Luca and I had bought at the neighborhood store the day before.
Happy Monday!
Let's Do This!
Work Harder!
Cheerful slogans… or rather, the kind of slogans you look at when you want to feel cheerful. I portioned the overnight-cooled cookies into the kraft-paper bags, and they actually looked pretty sharp.
Thirty bags with two cookies each went into a box, which I stowed in the undercarriage of the stroller.
I found something decent to wear and combed my hair. I dressed Luca in a newly made outfit and tugged a hat firmly over his head in case he got cold.
When everything was ready, I straightened my back.
"All right! Luca! Time for work!"
"Appa!"
Official start time was eight sharp, but with a stop at the daycare and a stroller to manage on the bus, I left the house with plenty of margin.
One small mercy was that a direct bus ran from Old Town to the office, and if traffic cooperated I could be there in fifteen minutes.
I rode a still-quiet bus and arrived at the company at seven thirty.
Looking up at the building after so long, it felt utterly unfamiliar. I had only been away three months.
"……"
Ah. Even if I hated coming, I shouldn't show it. This was the place that paid my salary, after all…
And even as a junior employee on something closer to a contract than a permanent post, being a full staff member at a company of some size still carried real advantages.
First among them: the ability to take formal parental leave like this, and the in-house daycare operated as an employee benefit where I could leave my child.
I pushed the stroller quickly inside to escape the sharp, cutting wind.
I exchanged a nod of greeting with the security guard I hadn't seen in ages, then wheeled the stroller toward the daycare—a place I had never once imagined I would actually visit in my entire career.
"Hello. I'm the one who called last week—Luca is here."
"Yes, welcome! You're early!"
The first daycare teacher I met was a young, energetic man with a thoroughly good-natured face.
The person who had answered the phone had been a woman, so I had assumed the staff would all be women. Maybe I was the one with the bias.
Either way, watching him lift the baby from the stroller with easy competence and trade little eye-smiles with him put me considerably at ease.
"Um, I mentioned this on the phone as well… the baby is almost four months old now, and he can roll over just fine, but he still can't roll back the other way…"
"Yes, children at this age are all like that. Don't worry, Dad."
"Ah… right."
On paper I still wasn't his father, but I didn't bother correcting him.
Still… I really looked like a dad?
It was a little embarrassing, and a little proud, all at once.
Even while we exchanged a few simple notes about the baby, I kept half an eye on Luca in the teacher's arms—but luckily he didn't cry.
This would be the first long separation since the day we met, and I had half-expected him to dissolve into tears the moment he was surrounded by unfamiliar faces in an unfamiliar place…
Watching him beam at every other teacher who caught his eye as they passed, I even felt a tiny stab of betrayal.
"He's never been apart from me for any real stretch of time… I was worried he'd cry a lot, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen."
Judging by how readily the teacher smiled and saw me off, this was something he heard fairly often on the job.
"Don't worry! Focus on your work, and stop by at lunch if you want to check on him. Hmm, Luca looks sleepy right now—would you like to lay him down before you go?"
"Yes."
I took the baby back from the teacher and carried him over to where the children's cots were. Besides Luca, two other babies were already there.
"Daddy will be back later."
I whispered a quiet goodbye to the child, who was already nodding off again, handed the teachers the cookies I had brought as gifts, entrusted Luca to them once more, and stepped out of the daycare.
At least the teacher seemed like a good person. That was one weight off my chest.
I left the stroller at the daycare, took the cookie tin, crossed the first floor, and stepped into the elevator up to the office.
"……"
What a strange feeling.
I felt like I had become a completely different person, and yet here I was clocking back into this place.
Floor 5.
The elevator doors opened onto a familiar corridor.
The pale fluorescent light unique to office hallways, the smell that still held every trace of the early-morning cleaners' work, the way the air itself seemed to hum…
…Ugh.
The building had looked so foreign from outside earlier, and yet the inside was this familiar. It was almost unsettling.
Three whole months away…
How could it already feel as if I had been here only yesterday? It was enough to give me goosebumps.
The one thing that had changed was that the little Christmas tree that had stood guard at the end of the hall when I left the office in December was gone, replaced by a basket of chocolates and candies.
I plucked a simply gold-wrapped chocolate from among the colorful wrappers and stepped into the office.
"…Ah."
A scene so familiar it hurt. Why did it feel exactly as if I had come to work only yesterday? The soft sound of surprise slipped out of me before I could stop it, and someone turned around.
"Hey, Jun! Man, that leave must have been good for you, huh?"
"Yes, hello."
A few people who had arrived even earlier than I had greeted me warmly, saying it had been too long.
After a quick round of hellos, I sat down at my desk for the first time in what felt like forever.
Booting up a computer after three months produced the same rattle and vibration as starting a car in deep winter, and I laughed under my breath at the sound.
As the monitor slowly came to life and a blue field of grass appeared, my fingers were already typing the password that had long since slipped out of conscious memory.
Then my brain briefly short-circuited at the familiar desktop, and my right hand, out of pure habit, clicked open the mail client.
…An inbox that looked like it would take a solid thirty minutes just to sort.
Ah…
Ahh…
Ten thirty in the morning.
"Ah, my coffee's gone cold again."
Greg at the next desk said it and gave my shoulder a couple of light pats.
Déjà vu.
I let one corner of my mouth lift in a smile, picked up my mug, and followed him to the pantry.
Mid-March office air was still cool, but compared to December it felt somehow a little drowsier.
We passed the half-empty chocolate basket, crossed the hall, and opened the sliding door at the far left end of the corridor.
"Dude, how do you come back after three months looking completely radiant? Seeing you in the office, you really look like a different person. I'm jealous."
Greg tipped the freshly brewed coffee pot over my mug and grinned.
"Well, other than Luca being downstairs, nothing much has changed."
I answered with a smile, but I knew it was a lie. The man who had stood in this spot three months ago and the man standing here now might as well have been two different people.
Starting with the most obvious thing—the outside—I had changed from head to toe.
The hair I had cut myself following a tutorial from a famous beauty channel looked like it had come from a salon, and the luxurious cashmere cardigan and well-made trousers fit so cleanly they might have been tailored.
I, who had always worn nothing but dark solid colors and the plainest ready-to-wear, looked surprisingly put-together even to my own eyes.
The office didn't require suits, so I had worn sneakers instead of dress shoes, but when I had time I was planning to turn my attention to leatherwork and make myself a pair of leather shoes and a leather crossbody bag for the commute.
Then the whole look would feel a little more finished.
"……"
It definitely wasn't because I had seen that second-floor neighbor's style and decided to get into leather. Absolutely not.
"Hey. Hello? Earth to Jun."
Greg waved a hand in front of my face.
"…Ah, sorry. Didn't sleep well."
I had only drifted off into thought for a moment, but I owed the person standing with me an excuse.
"First day back? Or the kid?"
"Ah, the kid too… honestly, ever since the move I still feel a little scrambled."
"Hmm, right… it's been, what, not even a full month?"
"Yeah. Just moving would have been chaotic enough, but after you left that day, I took a cake upstairs to introduce myself to the neighbors on the second floor—and do you know who I ran into?"
Normally I was the one who just listened while Greg talked, but today I was unusually chatty.
At home I was always talking to the baby, but since I still couldn't really have a conversation with Luca, it had been a while since I last talked to another adult like this.
We fell into a full gossip spiral and only made it back to our desks when it was nearly eleven.