Chapter 15 – Miina’s Past

The past Miina spoke of was pretty brutal.

Her life completely changed when she was in the third grade of elementary school. Up until then, Miina had been raised in a happy home environment. She was loved by a kind father and mother. However, that peaceful life was actually a sham.

To her shock, her father had been cheating on them behind their backs. The warm kindness her father showed in front of his family was a lie. His ugly true nature hidden beneath that fake affection came to light. It plunged Miina and her mother into despair.

“It’s obvious, but my mom divorced that shitty dad of mine. I was so shocked when I found out he’d been having an affair with another woman behind our backs since I was in kindergarten. I wonder how many times I threw up in the toilet?”

“I see… If it’s too painful, you don’t have to say any more.”

Perhaps not wanting to bring down the mood, she confessed her heavy past in her usual tone. Paradoxically, that made it all the more painful to watch. Shinta considerately told her she didn’t have to force herself to talk. She shook her head side to side, indicating her refusal.

“No, since I was the one who said I’d talk, let me speak until the end. Besides, I’m in the mood to just let it all out and get it off my chest.”

Saying that, Miina began to tell the rest of her story.

Their life after the divorce was supposed to be sustained by alimony and child support paid by her cheating ex-father. Naturally, the world isn’t so forgiving that they could survive on that alone. Her mother, who had lived as a full-time housewife up until then, went out to work a part-time job. Even so, their livelihood was quite difficult.

Life after her father vanished was excruciatingly hard. That wasn’t at all because they lived frugally. It was just unbearable to watch her mother working herself to the bone. Her mother began apologizing to her daughter a lot.

“I’m sorry for making you suffer when you did nothing wrong.”

Miina didn’t actually have any complaints about their modest lifestyle. Rather, wanting to help her mother, she had even offered to get a part-time job herself to help make ends meet. Her mother didn’t allow it. She told Miina she shouldn’t sacrifice her precious time.

“Even when I tried to go out and get a part-time job, my mom just shook her head. I bet she didn’t want to burden her daughter with cleaning up the mess made by her and that shitty dad.”

“Sounds like a kind mother.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. But you know, from my perspective, if things were really that tough, I wish she had talked to me about it. If she had…”

At that point, Miina clamped her mouth shut. Her expression completely changed. Her face showed not only sadness but also a hint of anger, causing Shinta to look at her dubiously.

“It’s only going to get less funny from here on out, so brace yourself…”

With that preface, she continued recounting her past.

Miina and her mother had been living a hand-to-mouth existence for a while. Starting one day, a change appeared in their lifestyle. For example, the meals served at the dinner table became a little more extravagant. Her mother bought her a new smartphone to replace the one that had broken and been left as-is since the divorce with her father. She started giving her a small monthly allowance.

You couldn’t call it some massive luxury by any means. Still, considering their living environment up until then, it was an obvious change. Naturally, Miina also asked her mother why this change had occurred.

“My mom said she found a part-time job with a good hourly wage, but I just couldn’t shake this feeling that something was off. Still, it wasn’t like our standard of living had skyrocketed all at once. It just went back to roughly how it was before the divorce, so I purposely didn’t pry too deeply.”

However, Miina would soon learn the truth. The catalyst for that was when she went to a video rental store.

After school ended, Miina had headed there to rent a popular movie that was the talk of the town at the time. While wandering around the store for a bit, Miina spotted a certain person.

“Whoa… I can’t believe I’m running into him in a place like this~.”

The person at the end of her gaze was a boy from her class. They weren’t particularly close, but he was an acquaintance she spoke to reasonably often. If she had merely spotted a classmate, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But Miina, who had visited this rental store many times, knew.

The area he was gazing at was the adult section, lined with R-rated titles. Well, as a middle school boy in puberty, you couldn’t blame him for developing an interest in such things. Figuring it would be too cruel to call out to him here, she pretended not to notice. She observed him for a while, until the boy eventually returned the title he was holding to the shelf and hurriedly left the area.

“I wonder what kind of stuff he was looking at~?”

After her classmate left, Miina was somewhat curious about the title he had been looking at. She pulled it off the shelf. At this moment, Miina would regret the action born of her own curiosity so much she could die.

“Eh… eh…?”

Seeing the actress pictured on the cover, Miina’s thoughts ground to a halt. The sight reflected in her field of vision was suddenly so unbelievable that it lacked any sense of reality.

“Ahaha… What is this? It’s just a coincidence that they look alike, right?”

Because… the person pictured on that cover was the spitting image of her own mother…