[Serialized Novel] Rebooting "Me"! ~Mom's Re-learning Community~ 01: The Napoleon of the Sandbox.

<Synopsis>
Have you been called by your own "name" lately?
Once, I worked with passion and stood on my own two feet. But after giving birth, I was cut off from society, and before I knew it, I had become a transparent symbol known as "[Child's Name]'s Mom," the protagonist Rin.
While busy with unpaid housework and childcare, she encounters the words of Umeko Tsuda, a great woman from 120 years ago.
"Learning is the strongest weapon to save yourself."
The community she started with friends who shared the same loneliness eventually grew into a major movement that even moved the local government. This is a thrilling ensemble drama about women who break out of the cage of their roles and [Reboot] their lives.
A rift with her husband, the vanity of social media, the cold walls of society. I offer you an overwhelming catharsis that awaits you after overcoming it all.

"The Blue Bucket Alliance has just collapsed with a loud crash—"

Two o'clock in the afternoon at the park. I stared at the battlefield known as the sandbox, continuing a play-by-play in my mind.
A Napoleon (estimated age three) wearing a red hat is mercilessly crushing the sandcastle my daughter had been diligently guarding with a kick.

Normally, I should be stepping in for a brilliant ceasefire negotiation like a cool military strategist from history. But I—Rin Kiritani—had not a millimeter of energy left for that.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! Hina, no, you broke the castle. Let's make it again."

What came out of my mouth was neither a strategist's plan nor a Napoleon quote. It was the worn-out, frayed cliché of a "mom."

I forced my facial muscles to move to give the other mom a polite smile.

"No, no, my Napo... oh, I'm sorry about Yuta. He's such a wild child."

"It's fine, being energetic is the best thing."

While thinking in my heart, "That was clearly an act of aggression," I stared blankly at my daughter's sand-covered socks.

Three years ago.
I lived surrounded by history books and documents as an editor for a small publishing house.
Reading difficult papers, arguing with university professors all night, and writing careful sentences like drawing a single line. That was my pride.

But what about now?
Let me recall the words I spoke today.

"Look, a doggy."
"Let's eat, munch munch."
"It's time for nap-nap."

My vocabulary regressed steadily in line with the growth of a three-year-old.
The "passionate thoughts of the Meiji Restoration patriots" and the "words of our predecessors who wished for women's independence" that once filled my brain seem to have been washed away by information on diaper sales and baby food menus, disappearing into some distant galaxy.

"Rin, you're always so calm. It's like you've achieved enlightenment or something."

Erika Ichinose, a mom friend sitting next to me, said without taking her eyes off her smartphone screen.
She is the central figure among the moms in this park. Today, too, she has beautifully curled hair and a new bag from a famous brand. On social media, she always posts a picture-perfect "daily life of a happy mom."

"Huh? Do you think so?"

"Yeah, totally. Just yesterday, I had a huge fight with my husband just because he didn't buy me a cake. Have you already graduated from those kinds of 'pleasures as a woman,' Rin?"

She probably didn't mean any harm. But behind those words, I could see a subconscious sense of superiority: "I am more fulfilled as a woman and as a mom."

...It's not so much that I've graduated, it's just that I've got my hands full with Hina right now.

You're missing out! Now that you've finally become a 'mom,' you have to enjoy it more. We're in the 'privileged class' now, where we don't have to think about our careers or any of that difficult stuff anymore.

Privileged class.
The words weighed on my chest, cold and heavy.

Erika is smiling. The other moms around us are nodding in agreement, saying, 'Erika is so right.' But beneath those smiles, are they truly satisfied with 'not having to think about anything'?

I stared at the plastic shovel stuck in the sandbox.
My fingers used to hold fountain pens, capturing the warmth of people who moved history onto paper. Now, my fingers exist only to be covered in sand, mud, and dish soap bubbles.

The hardest part isn't the physical exhaustion.
It's the quiet despair of watching the 'intellectual me' be rendered invisible by society, thanks to the verbal violence of being told I 'don't need to think about difficult things.'

While my husband, Shingo, is praised at his company as a 'project leader,' I am at home, alone with a toddler who doesn't understand my words, repeating 'obvious' tasks that no one praises me for.
I make meals that no one says are 'delicious,' and I clean without being thanked.
Even though I am doing a demanding, irreplaceable job twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, the world classifies me as 'someone who isn't working' or 'someone who doesn't need to try anymore.'

Yesterday, when I opened social media for the first time in a while, I saw the news that a former colleague had won a major award. She was standing in the place I had once aimed for.
I started to type 'congratulations,' but my fingers stopped.
The face in the mirror had dark circles from lack of sleep, and there was a stain of baby food on my clothes that I didn't even know when I'd gotten.
Afraid that I, in this state, might enter her field of vision while she was shining so brightly, I quietly closed the screen.

When did I become so 'miserable'?

I look at the tired backs of the moms sitting around the sandbox.
They, too, must have once been someone's lover, a star at their workplace, or 'someone' called by their own name.
Now, here, that has been overwritten by labels like 'Hina-chan's mom' or 'Yuta-kun's mom.'
Not being called by your name is the same as not existing as a person.

'I am still here.'

I swallowed those words, which had reached the back of my throat, along with the sand.
Even if I screamed, who would hear me?

'Just like Erika said, isn't that what happiness is?'

That kind of silent peer pressure fills the air of the park.

In the evening, at the supermarket checkout, I was dealt another blow.
Hina was fussing, grabbing a snack by the register and refusing to let go. An elderly man waiting behind us clicked his tongue softly.

'This is why people with kids are... You should educate them properly.'

As I bowed my head and apologized, I was crying on the inside.
I have been educated. I went to graduate school and studied as hard as I could.
But right now, I felt like I didn't even have the right to talk back to these unreasonable words. I have to hold up the shield of being a 'mother,' strip away my own dignity, and just keep apologizing.

After returning home and finishing putting the kids to bed, I was alone in the dark kitchen.
Only the low hum of the refrigerator echoed, as if confirming my loneliness.
On the table was a plastic bottle of sparkling water my husband had left half-drunk.
In the sink, a pile of dishes that needed to be washed.

'...I can't take it anymore.'

What spilled out was a voice so small it was pathetic.
In that moment, as if drawn to it, I dragged that cardboard box out from the back of the closet.
The dust-covered box I just couldn't bring myself to throw away when we moved.

At the very bottom was a notebook with a thick leather cover.
As I stroked the cover, the cold sensation of the leather jolted my dormant brain awake.

“Umeko Tsuda—A Record of Her Solitude and Rebirth”

As I flipped through the pages, my own handwriting danced before me. These were my words from a time when I was much sharper and overflowing with confidence than I am now.

Among them, there was one passage that stood out, circled more prominently than the rest.

“Learning is not just for oneself, but for society. And it is the only weapon for a woman to stand on her own two feet.”

The moment I opened the notebook and saw that passage, my vision blurred.
I felt frustrated.
Frustrated with myself for hiding this notebook for so long.
Frustrated with myself for using the excuse of "being a mom" to justify my inaction.

Umeko lived in a much harsher era than I do now.

“Women don't need education.”
“Getting married and becoming a housewife is the only path to happiness.”

It was an era overflowing with such curse-like words, far more than today.
Even so, she did not abandon her "learning."
Not to save herself, but to hand a "weapon" to women across Japan who were suffering just as she was.

“Umeko-san... I want a weapon, too.”

Knowledge is not an accessory to decorate myself.
It is a sharp sword to cut myself free from this sandbox, from this confined room.
The pain I am feeling is not selfishness.
It is a legitimate hunger as a human being to "live better."
Because it is never too late to start something.

I opened the laptop that had been on the dining table.
The pale blue light illuminated the dark room.

My heart was pounding so loudly I could hear it in my ears.
My fingertips were still trembling. But this was not a tremor of "fear."
It was the tremor of a "premonition" that a new life was about to be born within me.

I stared at the screen.
My name, which had become transparent, hidden behind the role of "Mom."
I had to take action to reclaim it.
Just as Umeko once started the "Joshi Eigaku Juku" (now Tsuda University) with only a few students.

“I will reboot myself”

In the quiet of the kitchen late at night, I whispered those words.
I felt as if Umeko Tsuda was whispering from beyond the old notebook in a dignified voice, "Start it in your own name."

(Continues to Episode 2: The Expert with a 0 Yen Hourly Wage.)