The Husband Who Became a God, and I Who Drink the Poison Dry

On that day at seventeen when I was forced to change seats, I never could have imagined that in the distant future, I would be in the deep mountains with the popular kid who sat next to me.

* * * * *

On a weekday afternoon when autumn, which had finally arrived, was packing its bags.
My husband and I were deep in the mountains, all alone. There wasn't another soul around.

The mountain parka that had just had its turn to shine wasn't keeping the winter's arrival at bay, and I was shivering in small tremors, hugging my body to keep warm.

Feeling our way through how to spend time alone together

My husband has one day off during the week and one day off on the weekend.

So, after both of our children started preschool, we suddenly had "time for just the two of us."

We couldn't leave our children with our parents to go out, so we didn't know what to do with that time, which hadn't existed at all for the previous six years.
And so, we have been building it up, feeling our way through it little by little.

The reason we didn't know what to do with it is because of our personalities.
Everything about us is the exact opposite.

I am an introvert, my husband is an extrovert.
I am addicted to the printed word, my husband only watches videos.
I have too many things I want to do, my husband likes to lounge around sleeping...

They say couples grow to look alike, but our appearances are completely different, too.

I'm petite and look like Gachapin, while my husband is somewhat tall and is said to look like a tougher, more muscular version of Kenichi Matsuyama.
(When he was young and thin, several people told him he looked like "L" from the movie version, so it seems safe to say he looks like Kenichi Matsuyama for now.)

The first time we spoke was during English class.
Our British teacher, seeing me scribbling away in my notebook and my husband dozing off, said, "You two should be together," and forced us to switch seats and become partners.
That was when we were seventeen.

Standing in positions as far apart as Orihime and Hikoboshi, even now, having spent nearly half our lives together, we are still slowly making our way across the Milky Way.
Sometimes getting our feet tangled in the swift current, we are slowly closing the distance between us.

( #WhatAreYouTalkingAbout )

One of the things we found by trial and error that we could enjoy together in that way was going out to 'Instagrammable spots.' ( #ItCanOnlyBeSaidThatSomethingIsWrong )

My husband's wish from a year ago

'Shall we go to Unpenji?'

A year ago, my husband suddenly said this.
I was surprised and looked at my husband's profile while he was driving. We were already in the car. The destination was supposed to be Chichibugahama, wasn't it...?

Unpenji is a place located on the border between Kagawa and Tokushima.
There used to be a ski resort there, but now it is famous as an Instagrammable spot with a 'Swing in the Sky.'

My husband said he wanted to see the autumn leaves there.
I, who had no interest in emotional things and had actually been repeatedly rejected whenever I suggested going to see autumn leaves or hydrangeas, was surprised by my husband's transformation.

My husband rarely says things like 'I want to do this,' so the desire to respect his wishes welled up within me.
However, it was physically impossible.

That morning, too, no matter how many times I shook him to wake him up, he wouldn't get up, and it was already before noon. Considering that I had to pick up the children by 2:00 PM, I didn't think we could make it to Unpenji.

The reason is that Unpenji isn't finished once you arrive at the parking lot. You have to take a ropeway from there. If there isn't a ropeway at the right time, it will take a considerable amount of time.

My husband persisted in trying to change our destination several times, but eventually gave up.
We went to Chichibugahama, ate galettes at a stylish cafe, and took a walk along the shoreline.

Chichibugahama is also called the Uyuni Salt Lake of Kagawa, and depending on the time of day and how you take the picture, you can capture beautiful photos where the sky and the sea seem to merge.
It is a popular spot where hundreds of people flock on weekend evenings, but since many lovely shops have been built, it is also fun to go while it is still bright.

Why Instagrammable spots? The question arose.

My husband doesn't even use LINE, let alone Instagram.
He is a rare character who doesn't even use LINE, which even my father in his 80s uses. He deleted the app entirely because he found group chats annoying.

We communicate via SMS, and since it lacks stickers, it's inconvenient, so we use photos of our cat as stickers instead.

So, he has nowhere to post them, no one to send them to, and he doesn't even like photography (though it's annoying how good he is at it), so he only takes photos a few times a year.
In fact, even when we went to photogenic spots, he would take one or two photos, or sometimes none at all.

It seemed that as he aged, he simply became more interested in sightseeing and nature.

In the end, we gave up on going to Unpenji Temple.
Before we knew it, the autumn foliage season had ended.

So, I suggested we go see the autumn leaves as a way to get revenge for last year.

Unfortunately, we had already taken the kids to Unpenji Temple in the winter, so I searched and found a place called "Mikado Gorge," which is also located near the border between Tokushima and Kagawa.

What I thought about while alone with him deep in the mountains

After I woke up early, sent the kids off, and finished the dishes and laundry, my husband finally got up and started getting ready.
Although there were troubles, like me feeling anxious that we wouldn't make it in time, the navigation system leading us down winding mountain roads, and seeing a "Sound Horn" sign for the first time, we managed to arrive.

It's quite deep in the mountains, but it's surprisingly convenient because you can walk down from the roadside station parking lot. I was looking forward to the roadside station, which had a restaurant, a shop, and even a hot spring, but it was closed that day.

We bought warm canned roasted tea from a vending machine to use as hand warmers and headed down toward the gorge.

I carried my heavy mirrorless camera and kept going as far as I could.

When I suddenly looked back, my husband had stopped and was engrossed in his smartphone, apparently because it was time for a smartphone game event.
At times like this, I feel a distance from my husband.

Although it is a valley that has been touched by human hands, there are no fences between the river and the path.

A tiny bit of river water had seeped out, creating a very shallow puddle on the flat rock of the path.
I stood on my tiptoes and hopped over it so my short boots wouldn't get wet, then continued on my way.

Autumn leaves were scattered, spinning around as they were carried away by the current.

I passed under the bridge and continued on, mindful of the footing, which had started to get a little worse.

Eventually, I arrived at a stream that looked like a small waterfall.

Beyond that, the water was a murky jade color, perhaps a bit deep, and I couldn't see the bottom.
I remembered reading that there was a legend of a giant snake living somewhere in the Mikado Valley, and that its depth was still unknown, which made me feel a little bit of awe.

My husband was no longer in sight.

The path ends there.
It seems you can go further beyond that from the upper path, but unfortunately, we had reached the time limit for our pickup.

My husband, who seemed to have finally finished his event, slowly headed toward me with a look of distaste at the water-logged area.

Suddenly, I remembered being surprised by a mom friend a while ago.

"Your husband has weekdays off, right? What do you do when he's off?"
"Hmm. Maybe go to karaoke or watch a movie."

My husband and I have very different hobbies.
The only things we have in common are karaoke and watching anime movies.
The mom friend's eyes widened in surprise.

"You guys must be incredibly close."

This time, I was the one who was surprised.
My husband and I often get angry at each other, so our daughter would chide us, saying, "You're always fighting."

We almost never have serious fights, but we often get angry at each other over trivial things. But come to think of it, I might never have gotten angry at anyone other than my family.

The Husband Who Became a God, and I Who Drink Down the Poison

It is not that my heart is never stirred.
On the contrary, I am more sensitive to things than most people, and my heart is always restless. It is painful, and it is sad.

Perhaps because I look weak, I have lived a life where I am often pelted with hurtful words.

But I would not show it; I would quietly swallow the poison thrown at me and feel as if I were being eroded from within, all by myself.

However, when I am with my husband, most things just pop right out of my mouth.
If I am pelted with poison, I throw it back, magnified three times over. Then he throws something back at me three times that size. That is how it feels.

We spit out the poison instead of letting it accumulate.
Perhaps that is why, after a while, we start talking to each other as if we had forgotten we were fighting. Sometimes, in the middle of a fight, we suddenly start talking about anime.

That is why there is very little that sinks to the bottom of my stomach like lead.

In contrast, while my husband throws logic and poison at me, he handles other people extremely well.

When he is pelted with poison, he does not just throw it back as is.
He dilutes it hundreds of times over, and while focusing on being considerate and not hurting the other person, he manages to talk back effectively.
His sense of balance is exquisitely skillful.

Recently, the cat we lived with for ten years passed away.
Whenever I have time on my hands, it has become a habit of mine to look back at old photos. (And sometimes I end up crying.)
Looking at one photo, I remembered something.

I think it was when I was in my early twenties. My husband and I went to a fireworks festival in Tokyo.

At that time, my husband was called a "god."
(#WhatIsThisAbout)

We were watching the fireworks from what you might call a free viewing area, just a place where you sit directly on the asphalt.

Even though everyone around us was sitting, there was one man standing and taking pictures. In all the photos of the fireworks I took, that person was in every single one of them.

I remember the people around us were quite noisy. The high school girls behind us kept making a fuss, saying "That's so annoying" and "What's his deal," but it seemed their voices were drowned out by the sound of the fireworks and did not reach the man's ears.

We were sitting right behind the man.
My husband quietly approached him while still in a crouched position and told him something.
It was at a volume that even I, sitting next to him, could barely hear.

He looked back in surprise and hurriedly crouched down. I think my husband managed to tell him without embarrassing him or rubbing him the wrong way.

“A god...”
“There is a god...”

I was startled by the voices I heard from right behind me.

“That guy is seriously a god.”

The two of them kept praising my husband.

The words of the teacher who brought us together suddenly come back to me.

That because we are uneven, we should be together. I thought, what is that supposed to mean? And honestly, at first, I was scared of my husband, who was the type to be sophisticated and have many friends, someone I had never even spoken to.

But perhaps I can throw poison back at my husband, and perhaps he doesn't have to be a god in front of me.
Perhaps there is something like trust that we have built up over many years there.

My husband doesn't have many things he wants to do, but if he has a few rare wishes, I support him with all my might so that I can fulfill them as much as possible.

Conversely, when I am thrown poison, and when it is too terrible, my husband steps in front of me.

That is perhaps why, even though we fight almost every day like this, it feels right to be together.

<Appendix> Couple's Report Card

Finally, I would like to introduce the "Couple's Report Card" that I wrote about on my blog a long time ago and was well-received.
On the blog, the fill-in-the-blank sheet was appreciated, but I thought that Noters might prefer writing in prose, so I prepared it in a question format.

I thought it might be nice to try answering these questions on this day every year.
There are 10 questions, but please feel free to write as much or as little as you like.

A Couple's Report Card to Look Back On for "Good Couple Day"

1. What was fun?

2. What made you happy?

3. What made you sad?

4. What made you angry?

5. What did you fight about?

6. What do you think you said too much of?

7. What did they do for you?

8. What did you do for them?

9. Were you both able to report, communicate, and consult with each other?

10. How would you rate this past year on a scale of 1 to 5?

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