Window

*Contains shocking content. If you are sensitive to such things, I do not recommend reading this.

"I was in trouble back then because I didn't know the water was shut off for repairs, and I had already taken a dump."
Tsuji picked up a Pon-de-Ring at Mister Donut and began to speak earnestly. It seemed to be a story from his college days.
We happened to run into each other at a convenience store on the way home from work and decided to grab some tea. Between the convenience store and Mister Donut, there was a real estate agency, a dry cleaner, and a boutique that looked like it was from the Showa era. As I walked past, I wondered if anyone actually bought clothes at such a boutique these days, but I could see a madam inside receiving service.

"Water shutoff? But wouldn't there be an announcement beforehand?"
"It was posted on the apartment's bulletin board. I only realized it after the water stopped." Tsuji added sugar to his coffee, stirred it, and said earnestly again, "If you don't check the bulletin board properly, you'll lose out quite a bit."
"It's no use checking it properly after the fact, is it?"
"Yeah. That's why you have to check it properly before it happens. Once the water stops running, checking it because you think something is wrong really isn't very helpful."
He was saying something obvious with a smug, condescending look.
"How long was the water shut off in total?"
"It seemed to be quite a while. It was water pipe replacement work, so it didn't end that quickly."
"That must have been inconvenient."
"It was inconvenient. Because I couldn't flush the toilet."
Tsuji took a bite of his donut and sipped his coffee. "And just my luck, I had produced a truly magnificent dump, so I was really in trouble."
"So what did you do?"
"What could I do? I had no choice but to leave it as it was."
"That's gross."
"On top of that, you suddenly decided to come over, so I was really panicking."
"Huh?"
"You know how we'd be on the phone and you'd say, 'I'm coming over now,' right?"
"That happened a few times, I suppose."
"One of those times was this time. This was the one time I was truly panicked. After all, if you had found my dump, there's no doubt you would have spread it all over the club."
"Yeah, I definitely would have spread it around."
A pretty good insight.
Then Tsuji put his donut on the plate and looked straight at me.

"So, before you arrived, I hurriedly grabbed the dump with newspaper and threw it out the window."

He then stared at a point on the ceiling with a grimace. I thought he looked like a major villain confessing to past crimes.
"...Are you serious..."
"Yeah. I threw it out the window."
"Grabbed it with newspaper, you said?"
"I couldn't exactly grab it with my bare hands, could I?"
"..."
"I was uneasy the whole time, wondering if the smell would blow back in."
"..."
"Smell is just particles floating in the air, you know. Luckily it didn't smell, but even so, there must have been a trace amount of my dump particles around the window of the room at that time. So, without knowing it, you were breathing in my dump particles. Heh heh heh."
"Are you serious, don't mess with me, heh heh heh."
I didn't care about the donut anymore.

Prologue