Volume 5, Chapter 1: I became Yuzu, Part 1

“Your memory must be muddled……? Yuzu, do you not remember us?”

“Kotone, you’re being too loud. You’re going to upset the poor girl.”

“Well, Yuzu remembers some things, but it seems like she’s forgotten things too. When she reads picture books or watches movies that we watched together, she might have all of these memories mixed up because of the heat, and can’t distinguish reality from fiction.”

“This…… is it not curable?”

“The doctor said that it should settle over time……”

“Yuzu’s body is rather delicate, so don’t try to forcibly remind her. You might make her even more damaged and cause her to run a fever again.”

“Understood……”

“I understand, Father.”

…… I heard that conversation coming from the living room.

Father, Mother, and my elder brother and sister were talking.

… If you don’t want me to hear, you guys should really lower your voices…

“……Fuu…”

I was thinking of heading from the top of the stairs to the bottom, the living room, but when I heard my family’s voices, I sighed and turned back towards my room where I had been sleeping up until a while ago.

The room was far away and quiet. Although it was only two stories, I think that it is quite a big house, having six rooms on the second floor… what is this house?

Still, I felt like it was far away as I was tiny.

I was a little girl whose height only reached the doorknob, a 5-year-old girl……

“Yuzu,” apparently.

Was my memory cloudy……? I certainly didn’t know what my name was until it was said, but it felt like the mixed memories were really real as well… did I ever see a movie like that?

Still, I certainly remembered more things whenever I looked at the inside of the house or met with the family. But, not all of it. There were a lot of things that I didn’t remember despite being shown a picture.

I wonder if I could live a decent life like this.

Yesterday, after I cried in that room, I didn’t remember that that girl was my “Onee-chan” and I was attended to by my Father and Mother who had come back from their work in a panic, before being taken to the university hospital.

So when the doctor said that my memory was going to be this way, I was like ‘mmhmm I see’ but my parents were rather dismayed.

Well, I’m still about 5 years old, so if I live normally in the future, all the memories that I’ve jumbled up will become filled with new memories…… if I am an ordinary 5 year old.

Even though I said this myself, but I don’t think that this was naive because of the strange memories.

In the fragmented, cloudy, memories, a black-haired me was wearing a uniform and attending junior high, and then I was golden-haired and in a European-style castle.

Because of that I could act like an adult and keep myself quiet, and while wondering if something was wrong, I was forced to go straight to bed.

Because of that, I am very busy now. But until I settled down for them, both the picture books and the TV of the room were sealed from me.

And so, since I couldn’t sleep since I was feverish, I went downstairs and heard my family talking about that.

Well, it’s nice to return to my room, but there’s really nothing to do. I’m not allowed to sleep on the adults’ bed.

For the time being, I decided to take a look at myself in the full-length mirror that was in my room. I don’t remember my face that well, either.

“……Ah, so that’s my face.”

When I looked at myself in the mirror, there was a black-haired girl in a thin pink negligee.

I don’t remember, but I thought to myself that I looked pretty… If one looked at themselves in the mirror and felt uncomfortable, they’d only feel anxiety about life in the future, after all.

I wasn’t very worried, because my onee-chan was cute too, but my face was actually quite good for a young child… it’s just a bit… unnatural.

And there’s that too… As a rich person, it seems that being a beautiful wife and mother and a groom have been arranged for.

But my eyes are droopy… Onee-chan resembled mother and looked ordinary, but I looked like a dead grandma with slightly droopy eyes.

When I looked at myself I looked sleepy. Indeed, if anyone saw me, they’d definitely say I should go to bed as soon as possible.

Well, it’s alright. Because my hair was shiny black and glossy, I looked like an adorable little lady.

“Ah ah ah, Yuzu, it’s no good if you don’t go to bed.”

While I was thinking about that, my onee-chan came into my room saw me in front of the mirror and called out loudly to me.

“Kotone…… Onee-chan?”

As I spoke out her name with almost no confidence, Kotone-onee-chan looked lonely for a moment… but then immediately smiled and lifted me up. It was unexpectedly powerful.

“That’s right, it’s Kotone-onee-chan~. Let’s go to bed, Yuzu.”

“……But, I’m not sleepy.”

“Oh well…… but only one picture book, okay.”

Togaki Kotone. My older sister. A third year student attending junior high. 14 years old. She’s got quite the age gap with me.

As you can plainly tell, onee-chan is very kind to me. It seems that it was caused by her lonely childhood, because both father and mother have been busy with their jobs and couldn’t be home much.

There were domestic helpers, but because they weren’t live-in helpers they returned home in the evenings.

Because she was often with her elder brother who was two years older than her alone in this large house, the two of them were very pleased that the number of family members had increased, and a sister with a great age gap, regardless of day or night I was beloved. …… so it seemed.

I’m sorry, but I don’t know for sure because my memory is hazy. Still it is pretty easy to imagine from the current state of affairs.

“Yuzu, I brought you pudding.”

When Kotone onee-chan put away the picture book, another person came into the room to pacify me with pudding.

Togaki Ohba. My onii-chan. A second-year in a private high school. 16 years old.

Errr…… why didn’t you knock? This is a girl’s room, onii-chan.

A five-year-old child really has no privacy.

“Aah, onii-chan, I was going to bring that over later to Yuzu.”

“Well, it’s alright for anyone to do it. Didn’t Kotone buy it?”

“So give me half, and give Yuzu half to eat.”

It was decided that I would eat it before I knew it.

Pudding…… I felt like it had been a long time. Of course, there is no child that hates pudding, so I was very pleased to get it.

Now that I mention it, when I got up, I was given an un-tasty sports drink and tasteless rice gruel but my hunger hasn’t abated at all. I didn’t notice it, but am I really ill?

“Here, Yuzu, say ah~”

“…a, Ah~n”

I was a little embarrassed. It’s because I don’t have the mental age of a five year old or as a younger sister, so even if it’s onii-chan, it’s embarrassing to have a boy that age take care of me.

But I’ll take it.

“……”

“Is it delicious?”

“……Y-yes.”

…… Oh no. What’s this… I can’t taste it?

I thought that my sense of taste had become strange because of my fever, but my fever is already fading, and I can taste the eggs, milk, and sugar properly.

I wonder what I should say……… From the pudding, I could feel the “richness” and “umami” of the egg and the milk. Perhaps the porridge that the helper made was also supposed to be delicious…… Maybe I did something bad by not finishing it and leaving it.

“Would you like to eat ice cream next?”

“If you eat only cold things you’ll ruin your stomach. Onee-chan will make you a hotcake.”

“No! It’s okay. I’m sleepy now that I ate.”

I shook my head at onee-chan’s cheerful proposal. I’m sorry, but any more of this ascetic behavior is impossible for me.

Maybe ice-cream would be a soft sugared ice, but hotcake sounds like it’ll be nothing but the taste of burnt flour.

It seems… I am strange.

I know things and understand things that I shouldn’t. I don’t get hungry. I can’t taste food.

As I laid down on the fancy bed to rest, Kotone onee-chan laid with me until I fell asleep, but she smelled like a very sweet fruit……

I felt for some reason like she was very ‘delicious’………

Author’s Notes:

Next time, let’s head outside.