The Code Was Her Birthday
Before I knew it, a full year had passed since I slipped out of that house. I had assumed independence would settle my mind, but it turned out not to be quite like that. Personal time had swollen until it overflowed, and yet the things I had longed for back when I was busy, once I actually had the leisure to enjoy them, did not feel especially appealing.
I tried starting games the way I had in my prime, only to find I was already too old for anything competitive, and too unwilling to learn. RPGs and console games, for their part, left me nothing but tired, and none of the fun.
I thought I might get into anime or comics again, but something was off. I was sure I used to watch that sort of thing with real delight when I was young. These days the popular ones were entertaining enough, and still I could not sink into them. Sitting there watching only made me feel worn out, the same as everything else.
In the end, all that extra time amounted to staring blankly at shorts and the like until I drifted off, then dragging myself out the door for work. That was the whole of the life I managed to live.
If hobbies held no pleasure, I figured I might as well try self-improvement. I could not manage that either.
Whether it was simply that learning anything new remained exhausting no matter what, the English book I had bought with such resolve still sat on the shelf, nearly new. I had signed up for a gym for three months, too, and every week I would steel myself—just one day, starting today—only to jog a little and come straight home. That was the usual pattern.
Looking only at the results, I had probably lived with more solidity and more fire back when I was getting worn down by the mother of my child and still going in to work. Well. People are like that.
If I am honest, the money I received when we split the assets had been considerable.
I had even thought of reading the room at the company, quitting at a decent moment, and trying a few months of unemployment.
Seeing the state I was in, that would almost certainly have been a real disaster.
Judging by how I already spent my weekends, I would have become a genuine shut-in rotting in a corner of my room.
Anyway, today was a weekend I had not had in a while.
I had decided that this one, at least, I would spend on something even a little enjoyable. A walkthrough playing on the screen, a game people said was popular lately already purchased, and the whole day set aside for it.
And on that day, the bell of my apartment—the one that absolutely must not ring—suddenly rang.
Ding-dong.
Obviously, there was no one who had any reason to come here. Coworkers, the few friends left from school—I had told them only that I was living on my own, more or less, and never once told anyone exactly where.
A district office clerk doing a resident registration check? Someone from a church?
All sorts of possibilities crossed my mind, but whoever it was, they were not people I needed to see face to face. It was the weekend anyway. If I simply did not go out, they would knock a few times, give up, and move on.
Thinking that, I sat back down in front of the computer.
Then something unexpected happened.
From the front door came a soft click, and then the sound of buttons being pressed.
Could it be someone who knew the code?
No. That could not be it. More likely some drunk who had the unit number wrong and had opened the wrong keypad.
I sat in front of the computer again, not paying it much mind.
And in that moment—
Diriring.
A familiar chime, and with it the sound of the front door opening. At the same time I felt someone step inside.
A burglar?
No. Even a burglar—could anyone crack a keypad that easily? And if they had that kind of skill, why rob a place where a man lived alone with nothing worth taking? They would hit a proper house.
Every kind of thought rose up, and none of them felt real.
I glanced around for anything that might serve as a weapon. There was nothing.
Then the person who had come in from the entryway walked all the way into the room.
I saw who it was, and let out a sigh of relief.
Right. Of course nothing out of a novel was going to happen.
"It's been a while, Jia."
"It has. It's been a while, Dad. Have you been well?"
Standing there was Jia, my one and only daughter.
How she had managed to punch in the code to my place was astonishing, but still.
"Dad's fine. Getting by."
I said it while looking around.
No matter how generously I judged it, this was not a room anyone could call clean. If I was being precise, the honest word was filthy. On top of that, I myself must have looked like a beggar. It had been three days since I last shaved. I had showered the day before, but I had not bothered to wash up this morning before coming out. The heat was good enough that I was in a stretched-out T-shirt and shorts, collar and waistband both gone slack.
"Sorry, Jia. If I'd known you were coming, I would have at least cleaned."
"It's fine. I'm the one who showed up without a word."
Jia did not seem to care much about any of it. If anything, her expression looked faintly pleased. I could not understand what there was to be pleased about, but at least I did not appear so unpleasant that it spoiled her mood, and that was a relief. Lately I had been feeling, in earnest, that I had become a full-blown middle-aged man. Even so, I had hoped that in front of my daughter I would at least not be the unpleasant kind.
"How did you find Dad's place? And how did you guess the code?"
"You wrote the address down when you sent me that package before. And the code—I wasn't sure, but I tried my birthday, and it worked. That's a bit much, Dad. It's the code to your home. Why would you set it to something that easy to figure out?"
"Unless the thief is you, nobody's going to figure it out. So what does it matter?"
"And who says I'm not a thief?"
I let out a dry laugh at the joke.
"Is there anything in Dad's place worth wanting? Take whatever you'd like."
Jia caught my hand as she answered.
"Then I'll take Dad."
"Except that."
I did not need her to spell out what she meant. It was said as a joke, and still, for reasons I could not quite name, the words sat wrong.
Watching her stand there, wide-eyed and unmoving, I decided this would not do.
"Sorry, Jia. Would you rest on the bed for a bit? While you do, Dad'll clean up a little and wash, then come back out."
"You don't have to go to all that trouble because of me."
"It's for me. I haven't even washed yet, and the room is a mess."
"Then you go wash. I'll tidy the room."
"I can't make a guest do that."
"Come on. Am I an ordinary guest? I'm your one and only daughter."
"Which is exactly why I can't. My beloved princess has come to visit."
I tossed the line out to match the mood, a little joke for her.
Jia looked thoroughly fed up.
"Dad, that just now sounded exactly like an ajusshi."
"…I am an ajusshi."
"Even if you are, you don't get to make ajusshi jokes. Think of the person who has to hear them."
"Was it that bad?"
"Yes. If you weren't my dad, I would have sworn at you."
"…All right. Sorry."
She seemed to mean it, so I did not push any further.
In the end I sat her on the bed, washed as fast as I could, and came back out. Once the grime on my face was gone, I felt a little more like myself.
When I stepped out, Jia was perched on the edge of the bed, fiddling with her phone. The things that had been strewn across the floor were stacked, after a fashion, on the desk—she must have put them away herself. It was hardly a proper cleaning, but even that much made the place look a little more like somewhere a person lived than it had when she first walked in.
"I said Dad would clean…"
"I barely did anything."
Somehow this was more embarrassing than being caught living so pathetically in the first place. I was a father, and the first time I had seen my daughter in ages, I had let her clean my room.
"So what brings you to Dad's place?"
"If I said I wanted to see your face after so long… you wouldn't believe me, would you?"
"I'd like it if that were the reason. But it's a long way from our place to your mom's. Not the kind of distance you come all this way for no reason."
"If a daughter misses her dad terribly, terribly much, it's not a distance she can't cross to see him."
She said it with a playful look. Anyone could tell it was not sincere. Even by subway, her house to here was two hours at least. Not impossible, but not a trip you made on a whim either.
"Then you could have just called."
"Wow, cold. You think talking face to face is the same as a phone call?"
"Well, no, but…"
"I'm kidding. The truth is, I came because of college. I got in, so I was looking around the area, and then it occurred to me your place was nearby, so I stopped by."
"College? Now that you mention it, it's already that time."
"Yes. I'm an adult now, Dad. I can buy cigarettes at a convenience store. I can drink at a bar."
"You are… a real adult. Our Jia. Still, don't smoke. And go easy on the drinking if you can. You're young, so there'll be times you overdo it, but…"
"There it is. I mention drinking and smoking and the nagging starts immediately. Okay, okay. I wasn't going to smoke anyway, and I tried drinking and it was completely not for me."
Only after I said it did I realize I had nagged her. Not that a kid in the thick of being twenty was going to listen to talk like that. Hearing myself say it felt strange, too.
So I really had gotten older. Fair enough. I was closing in on forty myself.
"If you're going to school around here, are you in a dorm? Or a place of your own? Home's much too far to commute from."
"Oh, right. That's actually part of the problem. If I'd gotten in on the first round, I probably could have had a dorm, but I came in off the waitlist, and by then the dorm application period was already over. So I looked into a room, and everything I saw today was either already taken or absolutely awful. Until I find a place, I think I'm going to have to commute, hard as that'll be."
"You call it a commute, but it's over two hours, isn't it? Once you add everything up, more like two and a half."
"Well, yeah."
She stopped there and looked at my face for a moment.
Then, a little more serious, she went on.
"That's partly why I came, actually."
"Hm?"
"Dad. Until I find a place of my own… can I stay here?"