My Happy Marriage (LN) - Volume 8 - Chapter 2.0

First Vignette Coffer

My Sister-in-Law Is Too Cute

Oh goodness, she’s just so cute.

That thought came to Hazuki Kudou’s mind whenever she saw her future sister-in-law, Miyo.

“Hello, Miyo.”

“G-good day, Hazuki.”

One sunny late summer’s day near the Obon Festival. With the harsh rays of the sun scorching down on the world, Hazuki had arrived in an automobile, like always, to visit the house of her younger brother Kiyoka.

Miyo was standing at the door, her overly skinny arms overflowing with many different packages.

…Gifts of some kind?

The packages included boxes that were wrapped in paper with designs of many colors, paper bags from famous shops, baskets decorated with ribbons, and so much more.

At first glance, it was clear to see they were gifts for someone, and there were even more in addition to the ones in Miyo’s hands, piled up in a mountain that dominated the entryway.

Hazuki didn’t know the circumstances at play, but it appeared that Miyo and Yurie were in the midst of diligently bringing them all inside.

“Wow, look at all those gifts. I’ll help out.”

“Thank you very much. I appreciate it…”

Miyo looked happy as she softened her slightly sweaty face.

Hazuki joined in, and with the three of them at work, they quickly moved the daunting pile of gifts into the parlor in a few trips.

However, now the parlor was overtaken by them all.

While the packages may have been exciting to look at with their array of colors and shapes, they left no room for anyone to maneuver through, and when Hazuki considered the amount of cleanup that would come with unwrapping them, they seemed a bother.

Such an incredible number of gifts. As she was carrying them, Hazuki wondered why they were there.

“There is a lot of them… These must be get-well presents for Kiyoka, right?” Hazuki asked as she cooled herself with a folding fan, letting out an exhausted sigh, to which Miyo nodded with a wince.

“Yes, that’s right. It’s been one after another these past few days.”

“It really has been nonstop.”

Yurie nodded her head next to Miyo.

“A real bother, isn’t it?”

Just a week ago, Kiyoka had fallen during a mission at the Burial Grounds, losing consciousness for several days before waking up.

Being in an unconscious state—in other words, being in a long sleep—may not have sounded like something to worry much about. However, it meant one would be unable to eat, drink, or move.

Even Kiyoka, a man with the sturdy body of a Gift-user and exceptional stamina, hadn’t been able to get through it unscathed.

While unconscious, Kiyoka had rapidly lost bodily strength and had built up a lot of fatigue, and from this, the doctor determined he would have been in grave danger had he awoken just a bit later. Naturally, he had been given strict orders to rest and recuperate.

As such, he was still bedbound, not yet fully recovered.

Well, there’s not much anybody could have done about that.

An accident while out on a mission was an unavoidable risk. No one was to blame. However…

How exactly had news of his condition gotten out there in the first place? She found it unacceptable how these people who claimed to be close with Kiyoka had started sending him get-well gifts in droves after hearing some half-true gossip about him taking time off work because of an injury.

“There are letters and cards with the presents, too. I asked Kiyoka about it and started sorting them by how important they are, but…I simply can’t keep up.”

Miyo slumped, seemingly at a terrible loss.

Who wouldn’t have been? Even someone who wasn’t as unaccustomed to social decorum as Miyo would have had an impossible time trying to sort such large number of gifts.

Honestly, I can’t believe they would put Miyo through so much trouble.

Hazuki’s irritation grew at the people ostentatiously sending all these get-well gifts. She couldn’t overlook this situation.

“I’ll help out, too. I know which families we have associations with, and I have a general idea of who my brother has connections with through work as well.”

“Ms. Hazuki…! Thank you very much. That would be such a big help.”

With teary eyes, Miyo bowed over and over her again to express her thanks, looking deeply moved by the offer. It almost seemed like she was overdoing it.

But it did make Hazuki happy to see her sister-in-law had turned to her for help.

“Well then, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Yes.”

Together with Miyo and Yurie, Hazuki set about unboxing the enormous pile of gifts.

As they stripped the wrapping off one present after another, they all realized something. While the outside packaging for the get-well gifts themselves were multitudinous, the contents themselves were surprisingly similar.

“Honestly, more snacks? Who would make a sick man eat all this?” Hazuki murmured in annoyance, and Miyo also stopped her hands for a moment and spoke up, bewildered.

“More fruits here, as well… No one could ever eat this much.”

“There are plenty of bouquets, too. What are we supposed to do with them?” Yurie added, and the three women heaved a collective sigh.

Cookies and chocolates. Sweet buns and sweet bean jellies.

The treats were all either rare, imported goods or products from famous shops, but there were just too many for them to be happy about. As the exact same items cropped up again and again, they got sick of it all.

There were also gifts of apples, peaches, and other fruits.

While these were welcome treats in moderation, there were far too many here for anyone to consume.

The same was true for the flowers. There was a limit to how many bouquets they could decorate the house with. The place would be a flower shop if they set them all up.

“Thank goodness some people just sent get-well letters.”

Miyo and Yurie both nodded at Hazuki’s comment.

“Oh, this one looks practical, though.”

Hazuki then noticed that the present she had opened while they were talking contained a hand towel.

It was rather fashionable, decorated with a flower and ripple pattern. More importantly, the gift wouldn’t pose any issues, as it wouldn’t spoil or take up too much space, even if they received many more of them.

Hazuki was so fed up with all the food items that the towel seemed exceptionally thoughtful in comparison.

She checked to see who it was from.

“…Ah, it’s from the Ookaitos. I’m not surprised; perhaps military men are accustomed to sending get-well wishes.”

A bitter taste spread in her mouth as she read out the name of the family.

Her ex-husband’s gift instilled Hazuki with slightly complicated feelings. While the wounds of her heart had already healed, she still couldn’t forget the unpleasant things that had happened in that house.

Even so, she almost felt proud that Ookaito had been so considerate.

Unaware of the circumstances, Miyo blinked her eyes and cocked her head.

“Mister Ookaito… He’s Mr. Kudou’s boss, isn’t he?”

“Yup, that’s him.”

“They have a very important relationship, then… Now that I think about it, a lot of his military acquaintances just sent get-well letters.”

Now that Miyo had pointed it out, Hazuki realized she was right. Hazuki was impressed that Miyo had picked up on this subtle detail while giving her own thoughts on the matter.

“They must know that sending items like this is a bother for the recipient. Most soldiers have probably been hospitalized from injuries before or have a close work colleague who experienced the same thing.”

“That makes sense…”

Hazuki and company chitchatted away, opening present after present all the while.

They separated the foodstuffs, flowers, and other gifts to ensure they knew who the senders were.

Despite the sheer volume of gifts, they gradually chipped away at the unwrapping until the end was almost in sight.

Along the way, Miyo’s hands came to an abrupt, unnatural stop.

Finding this curious, Hazuki glanced what she held in her hands, but it wasn’t anything especially unusual. Just a box covered in half-torn wrapping paper.

“What’s wrong, Miyo?”

“…”

Hazuki looked at Miyo, who was silent and stiff.

When Hazuki looked closer at the partially opened package, she saw there was a small card with a brief message attached to it.

There must have been something quite serious written on it.

While Hazuki was sure no one would send outright disparaging remarks to someone who was infirm, it was possible that one or two cards contained strong words. Or perhaps the penmanship was too idiosyncratic for Miyo to read.

Hazuki timidly peered down at the card, feeling a bit tense.

“This is from…”

The sender of the card was one Yuriko Yagi.

Yagi… The Yagis? Hmmm. Oh, they’re the ones who’ve been on a bit of an upswing since their business has taken off. So then, their daughter would be…

Hazuki searched her memories, and an image of the person gradually came to mind.

“I—I know this woman,” Miyo mumbled. “…She’s very, very pretty, isn’t she?”

“She really is.”

“I’ve heard…people have even given her a nickname. The Fragrant Lily.”

Hazuki remembered hearing the same thing.

Yuriko was one or two years younger than Miyo. Thanks to her considerably attractive features and highly social personality, there were a great many anecdotes about suitors trying to court her.

She was rather famous in high society, which explained why the stories about her had reached even Miyo’s ears.

However.

“Were our families ever more than friendly with each other?”

Nothing came to mind for Hazuki. The Yagi family weren’t Gift-users, nor were they connected to the military. There shouldn’t have been anything linking them and the Kudous. In which case, that meant…

“If it was sent under Ms. Yuriko’s name, then that would have to mean that she and Kiyoka must be personally acquainted in some—”

Now she’d done it. Hazuki quickly shut her lips. A careless slip of the tongue.

“…”

“Wh-what did the card say, then?”

Hazuki stared at the contents of the card that Miyo, who had fallen silent, held in her hand. Then she froze just as Miyo had.

Mister Kiyoka Kudou. The dance we shared together at a prior party felt like a waking dream. It is sure to be a lifelong memory of mine. When you have fully recovered, I hope you will invite me to dance again. Yuriko Yagi.

Hazuki read the card once more, dumbfounded, before putting her head in her hands. What in the world was Yuriko doing sending this?! Hazuki barely managed to hold back her urge to shout.

…Yuriko’s engaged, right?! Just what are the Yagis teaching her over there?!

A lack of common sense couldn’t explain something this flagrant. She couldn’t believe a betrothed woman would be sending this to someone with a fiancée of his own.

She mentally reproached the head of the Yagi family, fuzzy though her recollection of him was, for a little while until—

Hazuki abruptly realized.

This was very bad news. Since Miyo was unacquainted with social decorum, she hadn’t built up an immunity to these sorts of situations. Hazuki had to explain things to her somehow.

“M-Miyo, um, so—”

“I understand. Kiyoka is a wonderful man, so it makes sense women aren’t going to leave him alone.”

“Miyo—”

“The relationship between the Kudous and Yagis must be maintained. I would never complain about this at all.”

“L-listen, dear, the thing is…”

Miyo rose to her feet and headed into the kitchen, the gift from Yuriko still in her hands.

Though Miyo had hidden the look on her face to prevent Hazuki from seeing it, she was acting out of character. Perhaps she was brooding quite heavily over the card.

“Hey, Yurie. Maybe we should go check to see how she’s doing…”

“I-indeed. I’ve never seen Miss Miyo like that, either.”

Hazuki and Yurie, eyebrows furrowed with concern, nodded to each other and tiptoed toward the kitchen.

Quietly peeking from the kitchen entrance to avoid making any sound, they saw Miyo cooking something like normal. There didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary, which put them at ease for a moment.

But what on earth about their previous conversation had prompted Miyo to suddenly start cooking?

The two women held their breath as they tried to get a better look to prevent Miyo from discovering them.

She’s simmering something in a pot? That’s what it looks like, at least…

The box containing the catalyst to it all—Yuriko’s get-well gift—was already empty. That meant Miyo must have been simmering its contents.

“…Miss Hazuki, do you smell that?”

“It’s a very unique scent…”

Hazuki and Yurie glanced at each other with strange looks on their faces.

Kiyoka woke up covered by his blanket.

At this point, his body must have largely recovered. However, the doctor had insisted that as long as Kiyoka was fainting during the day, he hadn’t truly recovered, so he’d been getting a lot of rest as ordered.

I’ve definitely gotten rusty by now…

Kiyoka sat up, moping. Just then, he heard a voice from outside his room.

“Are you awake, Kiyoka?”

“Yeah.”

“May I come in?”

“Go ahead.”

“Pardon me,” Miyo said, opening the sliding door and entering. She was holding a serving tray, and she had a mysterious look on her face that made her emotions impossible to read.

“Um, it may be a bit early, but lunch is around the corner, so would you like some of this?”

“Oh sure, I’ll have some.”

The pot must have contained rice porridge.

He had begun to long for proper, hearty food to get his strength back, but he simply had to put up with things for now.

Miyo kneeled down to place the tray beside his pillow and raised the lid of the pot. Kiyoka couldn’t stop from cocking his head.

“…Does something about this smell strange to you?”

“You think so?”

“Oh, no, it might just be my imagination, but…”

It resembled a perfectly normal bowl of steaming hot, pure white, rice porridge. There wasn’t anything particularly off about it; in fact, with its glistening sheen, it looked delicious.

However, there was something extraordinarily off about the smell that wafted into Kiyoka’s nostrils from the rising steam.

Poison… Obviously that’s not what it is, but…

It reminded him of the breakfast when he had only just met Miyo.

Had that very misunderstanding actually become reality only a few months later? No, no, at this point, she couldn’t possibly be poisoning him. He knew very well that Miyo wasn’t the type of girl to do something like that.

Kiyoka thought in circles, at a loss to what this off smell could be, but he finally gave up and picked up the spoon.

No matter how Miyo had prepared the food, eating it would pose no problem as long as she had used edible ingredients.

“I-I’ll get started, then…”

“Go ahead.”

The moment he scooped up the porridge and placed the spoon in his mouth…

Kiyoka cupped his hand over his lips and fell back in agony.

It was awful. Absolutely horrid.

On first bite, his impression was simply that it was a bit more bitter than usual, but after that, a strange fishiness and medicinal herb scent passed through his nose.

The source of the smell appeared to be a white vegetable that was mixed in with the porridge, and every time Kiyoka bit one, he was assaulted by a powerful stench.

And then there was the texture of the vegetable, which was like hardened soil. He could only describe it as extremely unpleasant.

“K-Kiyoka, are you all right?”

“W-water…”

“Here.”

Drinking the water in the glass in one gulp, Kiyoka expelled all the air inside his lungs, before finally settling down.

“Um, was the flavor…not to your liking?”

When Miyo asked Kiyoka this, a thought occurred to him.

Honestly, it was dreadful…but is it really okay for me to say that here now? Miyo is a skilled cook, and this is bound to have an effect on her self-confidence down the line. If I tell her it’s disgusting, it’ll end up hurting her again.

If anything, it was incorrect for him to even complain about the flavor when she had made it out of concern for Kiyoka’s constitution.

Reaching his conclusion, Kiyoka gulped and mustered all the strength he could to smooth things over.

“E-er, no, I wouldn’t say that… I-it certainly tastes like it’ll be good for my body.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to eat it?”

“Y-yeah, I can eat it. I’ll eat it.”

Kiyoka’s lips twitched, and with a slightly trembling hand, he took the spoon and ate another bite of the porridge.

D-disgusting…! But I have to finish it all because of what I said.

Ever so slowly, he drank water to thin the taste of each bite he took and continued moving his spoon to his mouth. When he gulped down his fourth bite, Miyo revealed the outrageous truth to him.

“Oh, I’m so glad. I included one of the food items that was sent to you as a get-well gift.”

“…A get-well gift? From who?”

“A woman by the name of Yuriko Yagi.”

Yuriko Yagi, Yuriko Yagi…

The woman did not immediately spring to mind. After over a minute of deep thought, he finally arrived at a face.

Oh, her…

He remembered her as an extraordinarily beautiful woman.

However, she was also the type of woman Kiyoka had difficulty dealing with, and he’d only responded to her persistent invitations to dance together once, without having any further interaction beyond that.

“…What was this food item called?”

“Apparently, it’s an ingredient that has been used for a long time in foreign countries. It’s even used in Chinese medicine. As for the name…it was too difficult for me to read, but its appearance was similar to ginger root.”

Don’t just throw in some ingredient you don’t even know the name of! As this scream echoed inside his mind, a foreboding feeling came over Kiyoka.

“Apparently it’s supposed to energize you as soon as you eat it. Her note said it will ‘boost your vigor.’”

“Hrack!”

“M-Mr. Kudou?”

Unbelievable.

Well, sure, perhaps this vegetable would have given a weakened person an energy boost. But if Kiyoka was to hazard a guess, that mostly likely wasn’t this ingredient’s primary use…

He felt the urge to lambast Yuriko Yagi straight to her face for having sent him such an outrageous item.

A cold sweat beading on him, Kiyoka put down the spoon and moved the pot and tray very far away.

He must have eaten plenty by now. He was still technically sick. It wouldn’t be strange for him to leave some food on his plate. Not at all.

“…Sorry, but I’m full.”

“O-oh, I see…”

Guilt welled up in him as he looked at Miyo’s face.

Kiyoka understood. She hadn’t made this porridge to be mean. She was always giving everything she had for him. Even this time, she’d acted on nothing but good intentions.

He did everything he could to choose his words graciously, so as to not hurt Miyo’s feelings.

“…Also, you should only use medicinal ingredients after consulting a specialist on how much to use at once. It could cause a much stronger effect than expected.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay, you don’t need to apologize. It made me happy that you were so considerate.”

Upon seeing Miyo’s tiny nod, Kiyoka at last untensed his shoulders. The situation had made him more exhausted than any battle against Grotesqueries.

Regardless, he swore that as soon as he got better, he would have to air his grievances with the Yagis.

Watching the whole scene from the hallway with Yurie, Hazuki tried desperately to contain her laughter.

Th-that was too funny!

Naturally, it was inexcusable for Yuriko Yagi to send such a strange item, and this wasn’t a problem that should be dismissed with a chuckle. And she did feel sorry for Kiyoka.

“That was quite the spectacle, wasn’t it…? Hee-hee.”

Seeing Miyo unperturbed and Kiyoka hopelessly flustered—the complete opposite of the norm—was quite entertaining and amusing.

On that point alone, perhaps Hazuki should be giving high praise to the Fragrant Lily.

But still…

Though Hazuki had almost never thought of her younger brother as being cute, when he was with Miyo, he would seem quite endearing every now and then.

Since he’d been burdened with so many responsibilities from a young age, he had never behaved much like a child at home, and his reserved nature only became more prominent as he matured.

But now, this obstinate and unsociable sourpuss had grown so very expressive and had become so desperate to be considerate to his fiancée. In that regard…

Miyo really is outstanding.

At that moment, another thing clicked for Hazuki.

Miyo’s reaction when she’d looked at Yuriko Yagi’s card.

It had been as if all her emotions had vanished; she’d neither been despondent nor confused.

This surely suggested Miyo was stifling her emotions. In other words, it was evidence that she’d had a reaction that was intense enough to warrant suppressing.

Miyo probably wasn’t aware of this. Unfortunately, she still hadn’t matured enough to be able to pick up and on such subtleties.

However… Hazuki did get the feeling that Miyo and Kiyoka would get closer sooner rather than later.

She smiled, holding back an urge to shout, “My sister-in-law is just too cute!”