Hikikomori and the Rental Sister: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

know how it got this way. It’s embarrassing.”
    “You aren’t alone, Mrs. Tessler.”
    Silke stares into her teacup. “Are you sure about that?” she says.
    She is so young, barely thirty, Megumi guesses, thirty to her own twenty-two. They are silent for a time. Silke reaches for her teacup but then puts her hands on her lap. “He was such a nice guy. An amazing guy. If he wasn’t, I’d have never . . . everything was fine, really, we were happy . . . I just don’t want you to think he’s a bad guy. He’s not a bad guy.”
    “I’m sure he’s wonderful,” Megumi says. Silke gives her an odd look. Megumi knows her words don’t always come out right. She considers them for a moment before trying again. “The fact that you’re here right now proves he’s a good guy,” she says, and the odd look disappears.
    “But to be honest, Me-g—”
    “Megumi.”
    “Megumi. To be honest, I don’t know who’s behind that door. Is he still . . . see, that’s the thing: I need to know who’s in there. At this point I can’t just stay living like this, but—maybe this sounds crazy—but I can’t just leave yet, either.”
    “It’s not crazy.”
    “Not that I’m blameless, I’m not saying that, but . . . do you understand? And not that he’s perfect, but I can’t just abandon him, not until I know who’s in there. And even then, I don’t know, because . . . how did I let things go so far? It’s scary how good you get at covering it up. Lies, excuses . . . until it’s completely natural and you don’t even think you’re lying anymore.”
    “I understand, trust me I do. I’ve been there. But you’re doing the right thing.”
    Again Silke presses her mouth into a smile. Megumi notices that for the first time Silke is looking at her in the comparative way women look at other women. There is silence for a time, and they both take long drinks of tea.
    “What is it, exactly, that you would do?” Silke asks.
    “Very simple. You give me a key, I go to your home, I go to his room, I spend time with him.” On such a biting day, nobody deserves to be sent away without hope. One visit, that’s all. She’ll go to him once, and if anything isn’t right, she’ll never go back. It’s too cold to promise anything less.
    “Spend time?” She shifts in her seat.
    “Talk. I talk to him. And listen.”
    “What if he doesn’t want to talk to you? He hardly ever talks.”
    “They want to live in their room forever and be left alone. They don’t want me coming around, but that doesn’t matter, because I won’t stop coming.” It could be a lie, but it’s a lie she needs to hear.
    “How often?”
    “Maybe once or twice a week at first. All depends on how he responds.”
    “Does it work?”
    Before the teacup reaches her lips she sets it down. “All I can say is that after three years in his room, not much else is going to work. Not if you want things back to normal. The way they were.” Silke’s eyes are big and round and sad, like two spent stars, their final flicker before going dark and inert forever. Those two spent stars start crying. She expects Silke’s crying to grow into sobbing, bawling even, but quiet tears are all she has left, no energy for anything more. “You want him back,” she says, wearing a gentle expression. “You want to see him and you want your life back, it’s natural. But he’s been in there for so long, your husband probably doesn’t know how to come out of his room. So long that he’s not sure if he knows how to live out here anymore.”
    From the desk drawer she takes a stationery set. For a few minutes she writes, then folds the paper and seals it inside an envelope. “Give him this,” she says.
    That night she has a hard time falling asleep. She lies on the floor on her futon, searching through the darkness for the web of cracks in the plaster ceiling, all the time seeing the image of Silke Tessler’s green eyes glittering with tears. She thinks of Thomas