Although I am a bride

Even after her mother died of illness, Emma lived with her father in the forests of southern Chiba. Her father worked transporting orchids that bloomed in the spring to Yokohama across the sea, while she was a yoga instructor and yoga model, with videos of her posted on video sites.
The father and daughter operated a guesthouse in a land even further south than this southern part of Chiba. They hosted guests who came to the festivals held four times a year in that land throughout the four seasons. Her father intended to renovate the guesthouse and spend the rest of his life there once he reached the age to retire from his job.
Emma was about to turn thirty-seven. She was unmarried. She had become disgusted with men who approached her with ulterior motives, and was on the verge of developing androphobia. On her way back from a yoga model shoot at a studio in Tokyo, she was followed by a stranger and grabbed at a three-way intersection. She shouted for help and dashed into a nearby private house. She had them call the police, but the culprit was never found.
When summer came, Emma would travel even further south from southern Chiba, staying at the guesthouse they managed herself, enjoying swimming in the ocean and the festivals. During the Obon season, she would always stand on the cape and gaze at the horizon of the Pacific Ocean.
Emma believed in spirits called "marebito." The catalyst for this went back to when she was polishing a charcoal brazier with her father before Obon, and a shovel placed nearby rotated. The tip of the rotated shovel pointed toward the curtains, and when she looked that way, the glass door, which should have been closed and locked, was open. The hem of the curtain flipped up, and a turtle came in.
When she contacted the local government office and had them examine the turtle, it was a type of sea turtle, but Emma's house was kilometers away from the sea, it wasn't a straight path, and considering the traffic conditions, it was hard to imagine it had walked from the sea. She asked the neighbors, but they all replied that they had no idea. The turtle was released into the southern sea.
Emma thought it might be some kind of spirit, not necessarily her mother's. Since then, she learned about "marebito" through reading and decided to live believing in them. Every year, marebito come from beyond the sky above the horizon. And then they return. Seeing them both come and go became a ritual Emma decided upon.
Mom, I'll try a little harder, okay.
Emma would mutter that whenever something happened. While that "a little harder" was stretched out again and again, she lived with her father.
However,
It was sudden. Emma, who had only ever ended up having to turn down marriage proposals, got a boyfriend. He was a man of the same age she met at the guesthouse further south. He lived in the same city as Emma, and the two hit it off immediately. Extraordinary circumstances like this tend to build momentum.
Amidst the extraordinary, talk of marriage also began. However, Emma was worried about her father. When she confided this problem, the man said that he would just become an adopted son-in-law. It doesn't matter at all, of course it doesn't matter. He said that as if it were natural.
The problem lay elsewhere. The man was born and raised Catholic, and that was the one thing he could not compromise on, "swearing to God." While the fact that divorce was not permitted was fine, Emma, who believed in marebito, was perplexed by Catholicism. Her father didn't seem to mind, though.
Do Catholicism and marebito not contradict each other? Emma thought. If they contradicted each other, it seemed as if the relationship between the two lovers also contradicted itself. What one believes is absolute is not absolute for others and can be trivial. Such things happen. While she was thinking, the man himself began to seem not absolute to her.
Once that happened, Emma's love cooled quickly. Even if the extraordinary cools, the ordinary does not. Or rather, the ordinary is what is cool to begin with, and she reached the decision to have an ordinary marriage based on the reason of raising children. In the morning, at the dining table, she told her father about it.
Are you marrying for money? her father said.
Why would you say that? It's for the child I'll have.
See, just as I thought. Her father smiled bitterly.
Are you trying to put me in a bad mood from the morning like that?
It's fine, but didn't you say you wanted a love marriage?
Then let me ask, were you in love with Mom until she died?
I was, and not just as life partners, either.
I didn't know that! ...With what kind of person?
With my own wife, obviously.
That's rare, so rare I didn't even notice.
Rare things are hard to find, which is why they are rare, but Emma thought right then and there this morning that she was exhausted from being desperate to find a lover for the sake of marriage. First an ordinary marriage, then love; she thought about it while finishing her breakfast.
She went to work at the yoga studio in front of the station again today. She carried many orchids with flowers into the studio. With the help of some of the students, she paid attention to the scenery inside the studio and how it would look on camera during the shoot, taking time to arrange the flowers.
The space, where only functionality had been emphasized, became glamorous. If there are any left over, I'll send these leftover flowers to him, Emma thought. Although, that's only if there are any left over.