I sometimes think my family is a factory where everyone is assigned a role at birth. Emi, my younger sister, is the one who complains and demands. I am the one who cooks, cleans, and silently absorbs. And my mother—ah, my mother—she is the one who sings.
Not beautifully, not even competently. But sing she does.
Morning
The alarm clock had not yet rung when I heard her voice drifting from the kitchen: a thin, wavering tune from some old radio song, accompanied by the clatter of pots. I rose reluctantly, washed my face, and stepped into the narrow hall.
There she stood: apron crooked, hair tied back hastily, lips stretched in a smile that could rival a cracked porcelain mask. Her voice was hopelessly out of tune, but her conviction was frightening.
"Good morning, Kado!" she said, as though greeting a soldier back from war.
"…Morning," I muttered.
"Eat quick, you'll be late!"
Her singing resumed as she poured miso soup into bowls. To wake up each day to this chaotic orchestra—it is not exactly hell, but it is no paradise either.
School Hours (Interrupted Thoughts)
All day at school, while pretending to take notes, I thought of her. My classmates likely imagine that I sit in silence because I am too intelligent or too aloof to bother with them. The truth is far simpler: I am always rehearsing in my head how to exist in that apartment with my family without breaking apart.
There is something humiliating about being seventeen, taller than most adults, and yet living under the roof of a woman who cannot sing in key and a sister who cannot live without shouting. Sometimes I wonder if this is the real reason my classmates avoid me: perhaps the smell of my household shame clings to me like smoke.
After School
When I returned home, the door was unlocked. I entered to find my mother napping on the sofa, apron still on, television blaring some ridiculous daytime drama.
Her mouth hung open. She snored softly.
For a long moment, I stood there in the doorway, staring. She looked vulnerable, almost childlike. I could see traces of the young woman she must once have been—before the exhaustion, before father disappeared, before the burden of two children carved hollows beneath her eyes.
I carried her blanket from the chair and draped it gently over her.
"Oi, nii-san, I'm starving!" Emi's voice shrieked from her room.
Of course. Even in moments of quiet tenderness, reality intrudes. I tied on the apron and began chopping onions.
Dinner
At the table, my mother chewed slowly, humming between bites."You know, Kadokawa," she said, "your teacher called. Said you're… 'quiet.'"
The way she said it—stretching the word until it snapped—made me flinch.
"Yes," I replied.
"Why don't you talk more? You've got such a serious face. People might think you're angry."
Emi burst out laughing. "He always looks angry!"
I wanted to protest, to say: No, you don't understand. I am not angry, I am drowning. I am trying so hard not to spill over. But instead, I looked down at my rice and said nothing.
Silence is safer.
Night
Later, after washing the dishes and sending Emi to bed, I sat by the window in my room. My mother's singing drifted again from the kitchen, faint but insistent, like the chirping of a bird that refuses to acknowledge winter.
For a moment, I envied her. To be so unaware of one's own weakness—to sing without shame, even off-key—that is a kind of freedom.
Meanwhile, I, who notice everything, cannot even smile correctly.
I leaned back against the wall, whispering to myself:"Perhaps she is stronger than me, after all."
And the thought both comforted and unsettled me.