My Happy Marriage (LN) - Volume 8 - Chapter 2.1

Sweet, Sour

White, towering thunderheads hung in the deep blue sky on a hot and humid summer afternoon.

Outside the house, the cicadas were energetically crying in the sweltering heat.

“It’s so hot…”

Although it was slightly more tolerable indoors, where the rays of the sun could not penetrate, the heat seemed to cling to one’s body.

In her room, Miyo gazed at a textbook while cooling herself with a fan patterned after a morning glory and sighing in annoyance at the hot air that was sapping her strength.

Clearly, this summer was going to be hotter than usual.

I hope Kiyoka is okay.

Yesterday, he had been on night patrol, and he’d gotten home from his shift long after breakfast time.

Miyo thought he would rest until noon and have lunch from there, but instead, he holed himself up in his study and began handling some paperwork relating to the family.

She began to grow worried he wasn’t resting properly in this intense heat.

“Oh, I know!”

Remembering something, Miyo clapped her hands together.

It was just now two o’clock. The perfect timing.

Joyfully heading to the kitchen, she gazed into the tub filled with water she’d left in the sink.

“…Oh, good, they’re still cold.”

Floating in the icy water was a deep-bottomed vessel, and inside that were several glossy pieces of threadlike, translucent food.

It was tokoroten, jelly made from seaweed, that Yurie had bought for them.

Despite not being scheduled to work at the house that day, she had still come out all this way to bring it to them, explaining that she’d passed by a tokoroten hawker and couldn’t help herself.

The tokoroten, cooled in plenty of cold water, was the perfect snack for a hot afternoon, and it looked delicious.

If I remember correctly, Yurie said…

Miyo, not having eaten tokoroten very often, recalled what Yurie had instructed while she quickly prepared the dish, then headed to Kiyoka’s study.

“Kiyoka, may I come in?”

“Go ahead.”

When she called out in front of the room, she immediately got a response.

Miyo heaved a sigh of relief upon seeing that he had not grown so overworked he was on the verge of collapsing.

“What is it?”

When Kiyoka looked up from his desk and turned to face her, Miyo modestly held up the tray she was carrying.

“Um, I just thought that maybe…it might be a good idea to take a short break.”

Miyo’s hesitant proposal prompted Kiyoko to look between the top of his desk and the tray Miyo carried for a moment. He nodded. “Sounds good.”

Deciding that if he was taking a break, it would be better to be somewhere that felt a little cooler, the two of them walked side by side to a shaded spot of the veranda.

“Today’s afternoon snack is tokoroten. Yurie bought some for us.”

Miyo passed a chilled glass bowl to Kiyoka.

“It looks good… Did you flavor each bowl differently?” Kiyoka asked, comparing the contents of the bowl he was handed with the bowl Miyo had prepared for herself.

“Yes. Yurie taught me about this.”

Kiyoka’s was flavored with mustard and a mixture of soy sauce and vinegar, but Miyo’s had been covered in brown sugar syrup.

In the eastern part of the Empire, including the capital, the soy sauce and vinegar flavoring was the norm, but apparently, people in the western regions ate it sweetened with syrup or sugar.

Miyo had been in the mood for something sweet. Thus, she had tried flavoring each of theirs separately—brown sugar syrup for herself, and for Kiyoka, who was not particularly fond of sweets, soy sauce.

“Thank you for the food.”

The two of them each picked up a bowl and their chopsticks and slid the tokoroten noodles into their mouths.

The texture was a sublime mixture of soft and chewy, and Miyo felt like she could eat it forever.

“I can’t remember that last time I had tokoroten, but it’s tasty.”

“I agree! The sweeter version is yummy, too.”

Miyo couldn’t help but smile.

Even in the sweltering heat, this time spent enjoying the flavors of summer and the exchange of small talk was comforting.

Sweet and sour. The two of them were eating dishes with different flavors, yet strangely, Miyo felt like they were experiencing the same thing.

“Sorry, did I make you worry?” Kiyoka suddenly remarked.

He must have been thinking he’d made Miyo overly concerned for him, looking as busy as he did. However, to Miyo, that wasn’t important.

“That’s not it. I simply wanted to relax a bit together with you.”

She was, of course, concerned about Kiyoka overworking himself.

However, when she thought of how many more opportunities would come for them to eat tokoroten together on a hot summer day, it seemed all the more precious to her.

She’d found herself wanting to invite Kiyoka to share this ordinary snack and a brief, ordinary moment with her.

“I see.”

A relieved smile came to Kiyoka’s face, and Miyo replied with a gentle smile of her own.

The wind chimes hanging beneath the eaves let out an airy jingle.

The summer afternoon continued on, her body and mind feeling ever so slightly lighter and cooler.