While thinking, 'I want to quit.'

It is 23:58 in the middle of the night. The day before the match.

In the dimly lit living room, with only a candle burning, I add mayonnaise to the seafood noodles placed on the scale. Exactly 20g. On top of that, I add 3g of Tabasco.

The TANITA scale is excellent. Even when vegetables washed in water are placed on it, or when it is swum through a water-logged sink, it never drowns. No matter how many dangerous situations I have put it through—having sent many scales to their graves—this one still gives me accurate readings today. While I could have treated it carefully based on the lessons learned from the ones I broke, I want to praise myself grandly for not giving up on my laziness, assuming that if there are fishermen who weigh wet tuna, there must be waterproof scales.

The trust I have in this scale is not just about its exterior. Inside, it contains Eneloop batteries from the world-renowned Panasonic. I have raised it into a scale with a noble sense of independence, so I don't need to buy new batteries even when they run out, and I am no longer ashamed to take it anywhere. No matter where I take it for an away game, or in which country I compete.

When someone says, 'Mayu-chan, the bathroom scale ran out of batteries too, do you have any spares?', I have replaced everything, absolutely everything, with Eneloops. Now I will never again experience the despair of a midnight without spare batteries. It is the ultimate strategy for a boxer's wife who continues to weigh her husband 24 hours a day.

Whenever people say, 'You are such a dedicated wife,' or 'It must be tough being an athlete's wife... you're truly amazing,' my husband replies, 'That's right, she does everything for me, and I'm truly grateful; she's amazing.' I smile beside him while chanting in my heart for him to stop. I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No. Everything is wrong. The truth is, there are moments when I often think I want to quit being a boxer's wife. That is why I turned every battery in the house into an Eneloop. I have been with him for 13 years since his amateur days, and we got married when he became the Japanese champion. It has been 7 years since we married.

The world calls me a 'devoted wife.'

I measure carbohydrate intake and feed my husband well-balanced meals with carefully calculated calories. No one knows about my escape, where I pretend to go grocery shopping but run to McDonald's and stuff three hamburgers into my mouth. That is also why I am measuring my own amount of mayonnaise with the same scale I was just using to measure my husband's food, because I squeezed too much mayonnaise and couldn't stop my weight from increasing.

People ask, 'You eat things like chicken tenderloin, right? In the end, you only eat bean sprouts, don't you?' or 'Is it true you only drink water?' If I could finish the weight loss process by eating chicken tenderloin and bean sprouts and drinking water, that would be fine. Actually, that might have been easier and saved me from falling into such troublesome emotions.

I had always felt guilty about those feelings, but when I earned the qualification of Athlete Food Meister, I met many other women in the same position. Soccer, baseball, fencing, American football. Keirin and swimming.

What they share is not 'glorious success,' but always the 'gritty struggles that cannot be told to anyone.'

To me, these senior wives always seem like perfect wives. With no textbooks or role models, we had no choice but to grope for our own original ways of fighting, seeking answers that were neither right nor wrong. But they have always been looking at themselves while struggling. Even so, there are many wives who see their husbands retire without ever finding the answer.

Those seniors were always giving me something. It was the fact that they were far too 'human' rather than 'perfect wives.' The fact that the athletes themselves were also 'human,' as if to resist that, sometimes made us suffer. Knowing that such loneliness could be shared was my true salvation.

I wonder if there is anyone who can keep working hard and keep burning forever. There are types who, once motivated, move around immediately, then collapse as if burned out, and take ten times longer to recover on the sofa. That is exactly who I am. Managing weight and tickets before a match is a hassle, so I shared a spreadsheet with my husband and built functions so that the ticket types, quantities, and amounts are automatically calculated. That sounds good, but to make things easier for me, I even bribed my friend, Miss Function, with a Frappuccino to help with the difficult functions. While I was lying on the sofa, Miss Function even sent me words of comfort, saying, 'You're always working hard, you're great, leave it to me.' Even though I spent 20 times longer on the sofa that week than usual.

I have made it this far with the sole intention of making my hardships easier, but even so, when my husband's results don't go well, I always remember everything up to this point.

That is why I have realized my true feelings.

It is not that I am afraid of my husband losing; I am afraid of the regret toward myself that surges after he loses. Running to McDonald's, squeezing mayonnaise, and screaming that I want to quit, the fear of the 'end that will come someday' makes me feel damp on the night before the match. I really want to quit; will my husband be able to win tomorrow?

And I also realize that being able to experience such emotions is actually a luxury. My husband is at an age where his athletic life is nearing its end, and he is feeling lonely on the verge of retirement. Perhaps what I really wanted to quit was not the position of a boxer's wife, but the act of playing the role of a proper wife.

The more I run alongside him, the more I seek perfection, and my lifespan is definitely wearing thin. My insides cannot be recharged like an Eneloop. My lifespan is probably about 75 years. I have definitely aged since my 20s when I started supporting him, and the supply of energy has slowed down. But the more mayonnaise I squeeze onto my seafood noodles, the longer I will probably live, just a little bit. While carrying the poison and love of being 'human.'

This role, where I cannot decide on retirement myself, will eventually end easily.

I slurp up the cup noodles that have been sitting for three minutes.

'Sorry, Mayu-chan, could you stop slurping your noodles? My stomach is growling in sync with that sound.'
The sounds from the living room drift into the bedroom.

It's hateful and fleeting. I still want to keep this night warm. Perhaps I am not the 'dedicated wife' that society talks about.

Even so, I think I will continue to cherish the warmth of the cup noodles I slurp alone in the dark kitchen from here on out.