Unknown Woman
There was no novelty in the fact that the only person living in our house was me.
My father had died, and my mother was serving time in prison. So only I should have been the one living here.
Even the sudden woman's voice didn't surprise me much.
“I didn't hear any sound of the door opening. When did you get here?”
I wasn't a stranger. I didn't remember exactly when it had been.
It had just been one of those days when I skipped lunch because I was tired of eating, collapsed, called 119, and the woman had brought me to the hospital.
Then she had said she was fine and gone off to work, probably having told me the house password in a half-conscious state.
So she had slipped in without a sound and was treating me so gently now.
And the way she was staring at me without glancing anywhere else made me think she might be a good person after all.
Any passerby would assume it was a girl living alone without parents. If I had had bad intentions, I could have acted on them long ago.
The woman only looked at me. She didn't reach out or turn toward somewhere else.
“You're back now. Uh, I heard a bang. Maybe that's why you couldn't hear.”
I knew the basic etiquette of making eye contact when talking to people.
But after I became a girl, that had gotten hard.
People would look down at me with pitying eyes and slap me senseless because of something I did. When I was bleeding from my eye, they had hesitated before hitting me for a while.
They had probably told me to stop looking up with one remaining eye.
……Anyway, the person who said those things was dead now.
For that reason, it was hard to look at people.
So my gaze naturally stayed on the woman's chest.
Thanks to that, I couldn't see her face at all.
I could only think that the white shirt looked great on her, that she had a neat business suit and long black stockings underneath, that she looked like a woman who worked a proper job.
After I became a woman, the version of me I was now probably couldn't be any more.
It was bitter, but the unbridgeable gap made even jealousy impossible.
It was just that such a woman had shown interest in me that I felt grateful.
“Is that so?”
“That's right. I came rushing in because I thought you had fallen again. I'm glad there's no injury.”
“Thank you.”
She was speaking so gently. Had she come in after I got up?
Or had she just been pretending not to see me making a fool of myself while I was down?
Whichever it was, the concern felt so warm to someone who had been abandoned even by family.
I looked away from her gaze, lowered my head, and my eyes landed on the ramen in my hand.
“N-no. Why don't you have this instead?”
“I'm fine. I already ate. But you don't eat anything except ramen? Every time I see you, it looks like you're only eating ramen. I'm worried.”
“……I'm fine. Ramen is delicious. And if you don't drink the broth, it's a health food.”
That was correct. It was on YouTube and the doctor had explained it directly.
Even though I was only eating ramen, I was fine.
Better than eating with family and getting smacked on the head with a spoon when I got bored or taking a hit from a tossed container lid.
At least when I ate ramen in the room, no one touched me.
“Hmm, alright. Then eat it nicely. Don't mind me.”
She had probably noticed that I stiffened a little every time she came closer.
The woman kept a constant distance from me and stood in the dusty living room.
It felt strange to leave her there and go into the room alone.
Normally, if people saw it, they would have told me to go home because I was an illegal intruder.
After all, she had taken me to the hospital once.
And today she had come into the house, probably because she was worried about me.
She deserved a cup of coffee or tea at least.
Reaching up to the shelf to look for it had been hard for me.
Climbing onto the chair was easy, but standing on it and balancing with just one leg was difficult.
“T-there's dust everywhere because it's not cleaned up…… Come out here. Just standing would be hard. Sit somewhere comfortable.”
So I had said that much out of courtesy.
“Alright. Eating alone must be lonely. Would you like me to keep you company?”
Alone. I hadn't felt that loneliness even though I lived by myself.
But I didn't want to push away the warmth that had come after so long.
“Yes, there's only one chair in the room. I'll bring the one from the dining table.”
So I turned around.
Moving a heavy object was still hard, but I had enough strength to drag it a little.
While I was at it, I thought I might do some revenge on the floor when she wasn't looking.
But the woman didn't want to make me suffer, so she waved her hand and entered my room first.
“No, it's fine. If you're eating in the room, you can sit on the floor.”
“Sit on the bed.”
“Oh, is that okay?”
“Yes.”
Following her, I returned to my home with the still-warm ramen in my hand.
When I actually got there, the clothes scattered on the floor and the unmade blanket came into view, and my face heated up.
It was just because I lived alone. I would wash my clothes when I had nothing to wear.
The blanket didn't need to be made. No one was looking.
So the view of my room that I had been casually living in had suddenly become so embarrassing with another person here.
She had probably noticed that I was ashamed.
But the woman just smiled brightly and said,
“Ahaha. No-eul-ah, you should eat and then clean up. Right?”
I could have just ignored it and left.
She wasn't the type to complain about a dusty living room.
But since she said it, she knew my room was where I mainly stayed.
So she was saying it even though she knew I was embarrassed.
It was a gentle word without malice that I missed.
So I readily agreed.
“I'll do it over there.”
It wasn't right away. First I would finish the ramen, play a few games, then turn off the game when my focus started to slip and the team luck went to hell, and clean up.
“Huh. Over there. You should call me unnie. And if you do that when I leave, I'll leave you alone again. Let's clean up while I stay.”
“……Yes, unnie.”
But the woman knew me too well.
Probably because I had promised to clean up last time but the room was like this.
So I called the woman I didn't even know a face to unnie and willingly accepted it.
Even though I still wasn't accepting that I was a woman.
The woman sat on my bed and crossed her legs.
Thanks to that, her face was lower too, so I had nowhere else to look.
I lowered my head and moved to the spot where I stayed for more than ten hours a day.
Slurp. Slurp. Slowly slurp the ramen so it wouldn't spill, and I sat in front of the monitor with the match-cancel penalty time ticking away.
Then I started eating the ramen while watching the woman.
Slurp. The hot and salty ramen entering my mouth made my slightly less aching belly feel a little less.
I had felt a little embarrassed talking to her and drinking the noodles.
But the recipe painstakingly created by the masters was still enough to satisfy even my mouth, even if the noodles were a bit soupy.
On the contrary, the noodles made it easier to chew and swallow.
While I was chewing the soupy noodles, I felt her gaze and felt a little awkward.
How long had it been since I ate with someone?
Of course the woman wasn't holding a spoon right now either.
The last time I ate with someone, it hadn't been a particularly good memory either.
Even though I hadn't seen her face, it felt warm that someone was watching me without malice.
But at the same time it made me a little self-conscious.
I wasn't some pet after all.
I glanced at the woman, wanting to throw a little tantrum.
Since I couldn't even see her face, I could only look at her legs, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything.
In the end, I didn't say a word until I finished the ramen and drank up the broth.
When I added one more layer to the tower of empty ramen containers piled beside the keyboard out of habit,
“You don't even think about cleaning this up? Wow, it's already over ten layers. At least it hasn't been cleaned for three or four days.”
A playful scolding came from the woman.
……It was only once or twice a day for meals. At least ten days had passed, so maybe it was better not to say anything.
“I'll clean it.”
Instead, I followed what the woman had promised and carried the piled-up ramen containers to the living room.
Even though I cleaned sometimes.
I never put the trash bag in the room.
Originally I separated the trash in the back of the kitchen where the washing machine and odds and ends were, but
because my father would get drunk and come home and my mother would lock me there.
Because I remembered hearing my father yelling in there, it was a place I didn't want to go to.
The trash bag was easy to throw away at any time, so it was in front of the entrance.
Even that had only ramen containers inside.
I put the ramen containers there and lightly crushed them to reduce the volume.
If I did it well, I could fit about ten more.
I tied the bag lightly and headed to the kitchen.
Earlier I had said that as long as you didn't drink the broth, ramen was a health food, but that was because of the sodium.
Modern people ate too salty and took in too much sodium, so doctors told people to throw away the broth, but
I, well, since I only ate ramen, it was fine to eat that much.
And if I drank the broth, there was no food waste.
But throwing away the broth didn't change the saltiness, so I needed to rinse my throat with tap water.
After that, I put the clothes scattered around the room into the washing machine and started it.
The clothes kept dust from settling on the floor at all.
Thanks to that, when I vacuumed only the desk, the cleaning was done.
Ah, moving this much after a long time was tiring.
Even though I forced it, I felt a little refreshing and refreshed.
So I slumped powerlessly in the chair, thinking I would reward myself with a game for doing a constructive thing for the first time in a while.
“No-eul-ah. Is that cleaning? You should run the vacuum and wipe the floor.”
“I did everything. I wiped the floor with the clothes for laundry. There shouldn't be any dust left.”
“Sigh, yeah. That counts as cleaning. But if you're done cleaning, you should shower. When was the last time you showered?”
“I did it the day before yesterday……”
“No-eul-ah. No matter how pretty you are, even if you don't shower, you only smell, but you still have to shower every day. Understand?”
The woman didn't let me rest and imposed an even bigger trial.
It was something I didn't want to do, but I knew it was all for me, so I couldn't refuse.
“……Yes, I understand.”
While I was showering, the woman sat with her legs crossed in my room as if she wouldn't leave.
In the end, I walked to the bathroom with heavy footsteps.
Ah, with only one foot, it was a little lighter step.