The Backside of the Mansion

I was looking down at the overgrown backyard from the third floor of my apartment building. As usual, the lady of the mansion was tending to it. Sunlight was hitting the balcony on this side, while the backside of the mansion remained in shadow. There was a gabled shed behind the mansion, and I had learned from overhearing the couple's conversation while walking nearby that it was their custom to decorate it for Halloween and Christmas and have meals inside.

The housewife fought with her husband in the mansion every day. Their loud arguing could be heard all the way to my apartment. I had heard from a man at the real estate agency that the couple had a child, but that the child had graduated from university and was living elsewhere. The real estate agent also told me that the constant fighting might be because, with the child gone, they were finding it difficult to communicate. He was a talkative real estate agent; I had no idea what he might say about me.

Although the couple in the mansion fought constantly, they seemed to cherish the holidays they spent in the shed, and on those days, they would spend their time laughing instead of fighting. However, while I often saw the wife going in and out of the shed, I had never once seen the husband enter or leave it. All I knew about the husband inside the shed was his voice. Even that, when I listened closely, sounded like a narrow-range audio output from a speaker, which had bothered me for some time.

The couple from the mansion went into that shed during Obon as well. The outdoor air conditioning unit was spinning vigorously. Unusually, the sound of an argument started coming from inside the shed. Looking down, I saw the wife come out holding a wine bottle, shouting something, picking some herbs with one hand, and then returning to the shed. The sound of the argument actually sounded more like they were having fun. Perhaps she was going to soak the herbs in alcohol. That might be it. Maybe she was going to use them for food; that could be it too.

When I went to the real estate agency for some business and mentioned the master of the mansion, I was told that he had been hospitalized for illness for the past six months. That meant, whose voice was coming from that shed? Was the wife talking to her hospitalized husband via a terminal or something? When I said that the voice coming from the shed was husky, the real estate agent replied, "Husky? Did it sound like that?"

I imagined the housewife spending holidays in the shed, chatting with a man other than her hospitalized husband. After thinking it was suspicious, I reconsidered and thought it wasn't suspicious at all. Their child-rearing days were over. Perhaps their true life had finally begun.

Then, what about the argumentative voices heard from the mansion... but even if the declining birthrate were solved, it is easy to imagine in this day and age that couples would simply face other problems. That is precisely why we live in an era where the birthrate continues to decline. There is nothing suspicious about hearing a man's voice other than the husband's coming from the mansion while the husband is hospitalized. For the first time in a while, I brought a chair out to the balcony and spent some time there, sipping a drink.