Dissolve into the Morning Glow

This isn't a memory; it's a curse.

I think she's such a selfish woman, but I have my own experiences that resonate with this.

That day I cast the curse.

The day I wished that he would remember me in every aspect of his daily life.

It was during those few days when he decided to leave me and move out of the house.

I took care of everything, from serving his meals to handling all the household chores we had divided up while living together.

Though, even when we divided them, he almost never did any housework himself.

Even though he was the one who decided to leave, I packed his bags for him since he wouldn't even do that.

I even packed his allergy medicine for his hay fever into a box, carefully labeling the medicines with notes like "for when your stomach hurts" or "for when you have a headache."

That wasn't for his sake, but for mine.

On the night he left, I immediately received a message from him.

"I was impressed."

After finishing his move, he had bought a convenience store bento for dinner, but there were no chopsticks included.

When he opened the cardboard box ostentatiously labeled "Kitchen Supplies" in my handwriting, he found chopsticks and spoons neatly packed inside.

But that wasn't for him.

It was because I wished that every time he saw the tableware or a convenience store bento, he would remember me.

This is not a wish, but a curse.

A woman's curse, so incredibly selfish.

This book was packed with so many curses like that.

Living in the countryside, I don't know the Okinawan restaurant in Meidaimae, the Enoshima I took photos of with a disposable camera, or the Koenji I wandered through while drinking.

And yet, even the things I don't know felt as vivid as if they were my own.

It's too vivid, it's exhausting.

It almost makes me hallucinate that the name 'Masahiko Katsuse' was actually my own.

Just like this, a hole shaped like her continues to gape wide open right in the center of his heart.

Her craftiness

'She was a person who could act based on her own judgment rather than society's evaluation.'

I felt that this single sentence captured it.

He, too, had fallen under her curse.

When I call that dignified moment wrapped in the silence before dawn the 'magic hour,' I feel a slight sense of languor.

It's as if the back of my body is being pulled into the dark night, and my shadow is bleeding into the darkness.

Even though the scenery that comes to mind is bright, I wonder if feeling this way is the fault of the curse.

The disadvantages of a curse

However, these numerous curses had one major drawback.

That is, the person who cast the curse is cursed in the same way.

Talk about strangling yourself.

When the curse is cast, one doesn't even know that drawback exists.

That song he said he liked, the scent he wore—I, who was supposed to have cast the curse, remember that day filled with both kindness and hatred every time I see the medicine.

When will I stop remembering that?

The composed, cunning cuteness that only a married person can pull off is played back in my mind like Hiromi Nagasaku in 'Don't Laugh at My Romance,' making the craftiness feel not at all unpleasant.

And yet, she never shows her impatience or anxiety throughout the story, smiling brightly and unrepentantly as if she were at the center of an antlion's pit.

But in truth, I know that she, too, is under a curse.

She remembers him.

"Maybe it'd be more fun to drink with me, lol?"

She must remember even that single line, word for word.

When she sits at the table with her husband, she probably goes out of her way to pour herself a drink.

And at that moment, looking at the can, she remembers him.

The park at night where she slipped away from the winner's drinking party, the moon she looked up at, his profile, and the feelings she felt—she remembers them all in a chain.

Including the fact that the curse began with her.

Reading "The Dawn Young People," many must have suddenly realized the curse that had been cast upon them.

A curse left behind in the depths of the night's darkness, something everyone remembers.

We have no choice but to keep walking through the present, illuminated by a dazzling light that pushes that darkness away.

Until the day comes when the curse dissolves into the morning glow.