[Short Story, Two-Part Conclusion] Meruru Tachibana's Melancholy, Part 1
Meruru Tachibana is feeling melancholy. When she woke up to her alarm at 6:30 AM, there was a LINE message from her male friend, just like always.
The LINE message was quite long, and eight of them had arrived, written to the point where you had to scroll to read them. The content was about that friend's recent heartbreak. "How am I supposed to go on living?" the message concluded. Honestly, Meruru Tachibana thought, I don't know!
The sender of the LINE messages is still a university student. Unlike you, I'm a working adult, I'm busy, and I have to keep my spirits up from the morning. I don't have time to wallow in heartbreak.
It's been like this almost every day for nearly three months now. I suppose it would be easy enough to just say, 'This is annoying, please stop,' but there is a reason Meruru can't do that. If I cut this friend off, I will lose my connection to that person entirely. And losing my connection to that person feels like being trapped forever in this rural town, cut off from both my hometown and Tokyo. I find myself thinking, 'Am I going to spend the rest of my life in this town?' Instead of telling her friend it was annoying, Meruru Tachibana opened the refrigerator. She took out a new box of Chocoballs.
In the refrigerator in Meruru's apartment, where she lives alone, boxes of Chocoballs are lined up to a pathological degree. Half of the neatly arranged Chocoballs have had their cellophane removed, the contents partially eaten, and dates written on the boxes in permanent marker. The other half are still unopened. Meruru opened the unopened box she had taken out, grabbed a few roughly, and tossed them into her mouth. "Alright, let's do this. Let's do our best!" Meruru slapped her cheeks and began preparing breakfast.
She squeezed mayonnaise around the edge of a slice of whole-wheat bread, dropped a raw egg in the center, toasted it, and in the meantime, made a soup with chicken, tomatoes, carrots, and beans.
I can't spend much time on breakfast, but if I don't eat a solid meal, I won't have the stamina to last. I ate while glancing at the morning news, then got dressed. It's already August. I have a feeling the sun will be blazing down again today. Meruru hurriedly put on a light blue striped sleeveless dress, slipped on white sandals, and headed out. She hesitated, but chose a black parasol. Even if it doesn't match her outfit, preventing sunburn is the top priority. The company where Meruru works is two stations away from her home. It is a branch office of 'Water Rescue,' a company that handles water-related repairs, familiar from the 'Water Trouble 039' commercials.
The company has uniforms, so she changed hurriedly in the locker room. Just as she finished changing, went up the outside stairs, and was about to reach the office entrance, the button on Meruru's skirt popped off with force. "Huh? Did I gain weight? Did I gain weight? Or was it metal fatigue?" Meruru couldn't hide her agitation. "It's not metal fatigue. Because it's not metal, you know," said Yumeko Nakajo, a senior colleague, calling out from behind. Despite the name 'Yumeko,' she is a very level-headed person. Senior colleague Yumeko patted Meruru's shoulder as if to comfort her, then went on ahead.
Meruru had no choice but to hold her skirt up as she entered the office, opened her desk drawer, and took out a double clip used for holding documents together. She twisted her body and managed to clip the button area on her left side.
She hid the clip with her vest. She took out the box of Chocoballs she had stashed in her pocket and tossed a few into her mouth. I'm having bad luck, Meruru thought. When she has bad luck or feels frustrated, she makes it a habit to eat Chocoballs.
The thought that the skirt button popping off might be due to eating too many Chocoballs has not yet crossed Meruru's mind. Meruru's main job is handling phone calls from people in trouble with their water, writing reports on the responses, and creating invoices after repairs.
She creates invoices based on the reports from the field staff. When it's busy, it's incredibly busy, and when it's slow, it's incredibly slow. Right now, Meruru is slow. She is cutting up paper that failed to copy into quarters with scissors to use as memo pads. As a working adult, you have to look like you're working even when you're not busy.
After working as a company employee for six years, you learn how to kill time in your own way.
While cutting paper with scissors, she steals a glance at her colleague, Sakina-chan, being scolded by Chief Koide. Or rather, it's closer to flirting. Chief Koide loves airheaded, clumsy girls like Sakina-chan. "How do you calculate 178,500,000 yen for replacing a water faucet and a toilet fixture? Don't you think that's strange? The way you made the mistake is so off the charts, I don't even know what to say." Chief Koide is laughing. Sakina-chan is laughing along with him. "I'm sorry. I did think it was a bit strange, though." "If you thought it was strange, you should have checked it again, shouldn't you? You just brought it to me like that?" "Yes. Just because." Meruru doesn't have any special feelings for Chief Koide, but it's annoying to see them flirting right in front of her.
Meruru basically never makes mistakes. She has never been pointed out for calculation errors or typos. That's why she doesn't flirt with Chief Koide. Meruru took out her box of Chocoballs again and chewed on a few.
(To be continued tomorrow)