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My family was, perhaps, a little different from what people generally mean when they say "family." I remember thinking that as a small child.
——Will you be working tomorrow too?
——Yes. So be a good girl and listen to the sitter, okay?
My parents were the sort of people for whom work was, above all else, their reason for living. They left for the office before I was even awake in the mornings, and came home around the time I was going to sleep at night. Or — it was not unusual for them not to come home at all. Business trips, client dinners, a packed work schedule: I was told this over and over, so many times. I never thought it was something special. If anything, it was just normal.
But I wasn't lonely. There were always babysitters and housekeepers coming and going through our home. My parents worked hard. Because of that, they poured a lot of money into my life. They respected my independence — a forward-thinking approach for the times — and invested freely in my lessons and studies. I had nothing but gratitude for that. It was only that the presence of "parents" wasn't part of it.
Whatever I wanted, I could generally have. If I told them I wanted to go somewhere, they'd send me off with more travel money than I needed and some change left over. On my birthday, they remembered to give me a gift. At Christmas, there was chicken and cake waiting in the refrigerator.
In form, it had the shape of what a family should be.
It was only that the thing that should have been at the center of all that — was simply, hollowly, absent.
It wasn't that I'd never wanted my parents to be there. I just didn't know how to say so. And I didn't know what would change, even if I said it to someone.
So I think I'd been misunderstanding all along. That this was normal. That this was how it was. That this was the "right kind of family." Alone in an empty living room, listening to the sound of the television, I believed it.
"So... the idea of going out with someone... I'd never really thought about it."
Inside a luxurious café on the top floor of a department store, I mumbled the words with some difficulty.
Soft afternoon light filtered through the windows and settled on the tabletop. The steam rising from my cup seemed to drift unusually slowly.
The woman seated across from me — Dream Journey, my former charge — didn't interrupt. She simply listened, quietly.
"......I'm sorry."
What came next was that entirely predictable phrase.
"I'm happy — about your feelings. I really am."
"......Is that so."
"It's cowardly to use my parents as an excuse to turn you down... I know that. But I don't want to make them out to be the bad guys. They did let me do basically whatever I wanted, after all. They even let me aim to become a trainer."
That her confession made me happy — that part wasn't a lie. If anything, the idea that someone like her could direct her feelings so squarely at someone like me felt faintly unreal, even a little frightening.
"This is my own problem, more than anything. Even if we were together — I don't think I could give you the same amount of love you'd give me, Journey."
"Is it because your model for 'family'... is your parents?"
"Yes. At the very least, the 'family' you know and the 'family' I know are different things. I might end up making you anxious. I might make you angry — make you feel 'this isn't what I signed up for.' I don't want to be any more of a disappointment to you than I already am, when you were brave enough to confess to me."
What came to mind was Christmas during Dream Journey's junior year of the Twinkle Series. The day her family threw a party to celebrate her debut — just for her.
A great Christmas tree. Tin ornaments Dream Journey had made herself, as gifts for her family. Her family, spending that holy night in easy, affectionate company. I had looked at that scene and thought freshly: that is what "an ideal family" must mean. And I had been struck anew by how thin the bond between myself and my parents was by comparison. The memory was still vivid.
My fingertips against the cup — I noticed they were faintly cold. It should have been warm, but somehow I couldn't feel it.
"And besides — I myself probably don't... understand it very well. That sort of thing."
"......"
"Falling for someone. Loving a partner. Beyond that is family, isn't it? I understand it in my head, but... I can't picture it."
Not every partner ends up married and starting a family — but that's what being in a relationship means, I'd learned from dramas and shojo manga. Saying it aloud was the first time its outline actually surfaced for me. Something that had always been vague took on a little shape.
Falling for Dream Journey. Going out with her. Getting married. Her beside me as a matter of course.
That kind of future was, no matter how hard I tried, impossible for me to imagine.
"It's not that I dislike you, Journey. I think you're irreplaceable to me. I have since you were my charge."
That was probably true. The time I'd spent with her was one of the few memories of "being with someone" I had — and every one of them remained vivid.
"But... because of that, I don't want it to end up in some strange shape."
The blurry distance we had now felt less likely to break. You deserve someone better than me, someone more loving — so why don't we just agree to forget this conversation happened. I managed to say it at last. Those were the closest words I had right now for what I was feeling.
"I don't think I can face you properly until I know what an ideal family actually is."
I exhaled quietly. When I finally finished and looked up, my gaze met Dream Journey's with a soft click. She brought a hand to her lips and lowered her eyes just slightly. The chain of the glasses she always wore slid smoothly across her shoulder. Then she spoke, in her usual calm, composed voice.
"......I understand the gist of what you're saying. It is, indeed, nothing less than a wall you'd have to face eventually — even if you looked away from it now."
A quiet, steady voice, without the slightest tremor.
"And — I apologize."
"Hm?"
"Without realizing it, I may have caused you discomfort."
"No — no, no. I never once felt uncomfortable about it!"
Hearing Dream Journey's family's warm, close-knit stories had never made me feel unpleasant, never made me jealous. If anything, her household had been so loving it seemed too good to be real, and I'd been the one gushing and squealing beside her in delight.
"So you don't mean that you're unable to see me as a romantic prospect."
"Well, I mean, I said earlier too — it's not like I dislike you or anything like that......"
"I see. Then — won't you come and live with me?"
"......Pardon?"
An absurdly dazed sound slipped out of me.
——What did she just say?
"Yes, as I said."
Dream Journey continued in exactly the same tone as always.
"Just as you said: you have no clear image of what 'family' means. In that case, you need an opportunity to learn it. Until you know it, your next stage won't come."
The words were delivered as if she were drawing up a training schedule.
"By living with me — someone who does know what an ideal family looks like — you'll be able to learn what a typical family is."
"Uh, uh, uhh."
That Christmas scene floated suddenly to the surface of my mind. Warm light. Laughter. Seats set for someone, and words exchanged as naturally as breathing. And here, in front of me, was the person who held all of that as a matter of course. Unable to contain my confusion, I said so — and she tilted her head in a small, puzzled way.
"Why did the conversation go there."
"......? Given the flow of what we were just discussing, I would have thought this a natural conclusion......"
"No, no, no. We were just in the middle of you getting turned down, weren't we?"
"Yes."
"So why are we suddenly talking about moving in together."
"It's not a bad proposition, is it?"
After saying so, Dream Journey leaned forward just slightly. The movement was so natural I almost didn't notice. A shadow fell gently across my hand where it rested on the table.
By the time I looked down wondering what was happening, it was already too late. White, slender fingertips slid smoothly — as if to leave me with no way out — and slowly came to rest on my hand.
"......!"
My shoulder gave a little jump. The moment I tried to pull back, I was caught. A sensation of fingers threading carefully, deliberately, into the gaps between my own. As if they'd always known that was where they belonged — no hesitation at all.
"J-Journey......?"
"Hmm......"
My flustered voice came out strangely dry. But she paid it no mind, only quietly, quietly wrapping my hand in hers.
Squeeze. Just once, pressure, as if making certain. Then the fingertips moved slightly.
Tracing.
Smoothing.
The knuckles of our entwined fingers, slowly rubbing against one another.
"Have you ever held someone's hand?"
"I-I have. With... friends and things."
"My, my."
We have quite a mountain of homework to cover, then — Dream Journey let out a soft, wry smile. Her thumb stroked slowly up the back of my hand. With every pass, it was as if only that spot grew absurdly sensitive.
"If you say you don't know the forms of love——"
Dream Journey looked straight at me.
"Then I shall give you guidance."
"......Guidance."
"Of course, I won't force you."
That much was added, as if for form's sake.
"But as a means of resolving the 'I don't understand' you spoke of — don't you think this would be the most efficient method?"
The coffee in the cup had gone completely cold by now. Like the temperature in my fingertips, it had no sense of reality.
The only thing that was clear was one single thing.
——Dream Journey meant every word of it.
"......Does that mean — as lovers?"
"Yes."
The fingers that had been interlaced loosened just a little. I thought I'd been let go — but that thought lasted only an instant. This time, even deeper. They slid carefully between my fingers again, and our hands were clasped together once more. Palm flat against palm, fingers interlocked in alternation.
The so-called lover's grip.
"......!"
"And in time — as family, too."
"S-Something like that, you can't just suddenly say——"
"If you can't convince yourself, it's fine to treat this whole thing as though it never happened. This is merely a 'shared living arrangement for mutual understanding,' after all. For now, consider it a trial."
A shared living arrangement for mutual understanding. That was a new one. Somehow I couldn't shake the feeling I was being very skillfully maneuvered by Dream Journey.
But.
The chance to touch something I'd never understood.
She was holding it out to me right now — just for me.
"......"
No words would come. Neither agreement nor refusal.
All I could do was look back at her.
And so — through one thing and another, after that strange (imposed) arrangement was made — a few days later.
The sound of the intercom was far more real than I'd expected. I'd been warned it was coming, and yet when it actually rang, my heart gave a strange little jump. I crossed to the monitor a beat late, looked at the image displayed there, and drew a small breath.
My new lover (on a trial basis) — my former charge, Dream Journey — was there. She had a modest amount of luggage. She stood there, neatly, holding a travel bag decorated with gold fittings. Looking at the quantity of it, you might have thought she was off on a little trip — and yet what it actually signified was something else entirely.
I let out a small breath and opened the front door.
"......Come in."
"Excuse me."
The same as always — a polite, composed voice.
Even the way she lined up her shoes neatly when she stepped inside was somehow too perfectly arranged, and that very neatness made it all feel strangely real, which paradoxically unsettled me more.
"......You really came."
"Yes. That is the arrangement this time."
Said so naturally there was nothing left to say.
I led her to the living room, acutely aware of the presence behind me. This was my own home — and yet somehow the sense of someone being here was overwhelming. Why was that?
I came to a stop in front of the sofa and turned around.
"Um... just sit wherever——"
I started to say it and stopped. Had to stop. Because at some point Dream Journey had come to stand very close, and she was looking quietly up at me.
"......Journey?"
"......"
Dream Journey took one step forward. Just that — and her perfume drifted softly toward me.
"'I'm home.'"
"......Hm?"
"'I'm home.'"
......?
Her intent was unclear to me.
"This is my apartment, though......?"
"I'm well aware."
Still composed, she gave a nod.
"However — from now on, this will be a place we share, will it not? The greeting when one returns home is important."
"The greeting......? Oh! Right, 'welcome home'......?"
"Well done. But——"
As she spoke, she slowly reached out a hand.
"Properly speaking, it's the one waiting who initiates it... but since you're not yet accustomed, I'll go first this time."
"......What do you mean?"
"It's quite simple."
"When your partner comes home, you give them a welcome kiss."
"——Huh?"
Thinking stopped. ——What did she just say?
Before I could ask her to repeat herself, she slowly brought her face close to mine. It was so natural a movement that the option of stepping away didn't even surface in my mind.
"W-Wait, just a——mmph!?"
She made contact before I finished the word.
Only an instant. The way a small bird pecks at a berry. What landed on my lips was, astonishingly, over before it began.
"......Uh......ah......"
"Fufu...... Getting flustered over something this small. How adorable."
"......Is, is, is that actually a common custom?"
I found myself asking with undisguised suspicion. Being presented with the whole sequence just now as a foundational behavioral model was, somehow, not something I could fully accept.
"In our household, at least, it was a custom."
"Even by mouth!?"
"We are lovers, after all."
Dream Journey thought for a small moment, then answered as though nothing had happened. The way she said it was so natural, so utterly without hesitation — wait, is it actually me who's wrong here......?
"I... see."
That absent little response came out of me involuntarily. Not that I'd accepted it. I hadn't — I really hadn't, but — that Christmas scene drifted unbidden through my head again. Warm. Calm. A space where everyone, as a matter of course, looked after one another. If you'd grown up in a place like that, you might naturally absorb things like this as "just how it is." That wasn't impossible.
"Well, if that's how it is... I'll do my best."
"......Trainer... you really are......"
"Something the matter?"
"No, nothing at all."
Behind Dream Journey's glasses, her eyes seemed to glint briefly with something. The expression was hidden in the instant it took her to push the bridge of her glasses up with one finger, and by the next moment the usual gentle light was back in its place.
"Ah, um... over here, then."
I gestured toward the living room for real this time.
"You've got luggage. Go ahead and put it down."
"Thank you."
She gave a straightforward nod and followed me. Something about the addition of a single extra set of footsteps changed the air, I thought. The living room I'd always known looked, just faintly, different.
I watched sidelong as she set her bag down near the sofa and stood there, still not quite settled, not quite knowing where to put myself. Perhaps this was what the beginning of living with someone felt like.
The sense of reality was still thin, but something had unmistakably begun to shift.
And then, what with one thing and what with another — I mean it, truly one thing and another —
"You're really fine with sharing with me? I did buy a separate futon for Journey, just in case......"
"I said there was no need. Families sleep in the same place."
"But in theory, we're on a lovers' arrangement......"
"Sooner or later, it would come to this."
Before I knew it, I was spending the night in the same bed. The room after the light went out was so quiet. And within that quiet, the single fact of a second person's presence was startlingly vivid.
"How was today?"
From beside me — a calm voice. A gentle question, like checking in at the end of the day.
"......Yeah. It was fun."
I thought for a moment, then answered honestly. The words came out more smoothly than even I'd expected.
"Though I was pretty surprised when you said we should take a bath together."
"Fufu, that one was a touch too far. But once you get used to this life, I expect the strangeness will fade."
"Will it, reallyyyy......?"
"Yes."
The certainty of it made me let out a small, involuntary laugh.
"......Though I can't help feeling like I'm being taught nothing but things convenient for Journey."
"My, my. It seems you've grown suspicious of me."
A teasing sort of voice. But in its depths there seemed to be just the faintest hint of something else.
"I am, to some degree, selecting what to teach you — for your benefit."
"I knew it."
I couldn't help speaking up. But strangely, there was no ill feeling about it. More than that — there was even a part of me that felt oddly at ease, being taught little by little the things I didn't know, in exactly this way.
"But I'm glad."
Dream Journey's voice softened just slightly.
"That you found today enjoyable."
A presence, barely perceptibly, drawing closer.
"It makes me feel that the choice to spend our time like this was not a wrong one."
"......Yeah."
A small nod.
Whether everything Dream Journey teaches me is correct — I don't know, and there's no way to know for certain.
——But.
Today, I had truly been having fun. That much was impossible to deny.
Without warning, a soft weight touched my head. A beat later I realized — it was Dream Journey's hand.
"......Is that also normal, for families?"
"Yes. My father and mother used to do it for me often. ......It brings back memories. I used to do it for Orfevre too."
Her fingertips slipped gently into my hair. Naturally, without hesitation. Tracing through, once. Then again — a little slower this time, smoothed from the crown all the way back.
"......And you?"
"Hmm?"
"Do you have any memory of someone doing this to you?"
The fingers kept moving — unhurried and gentle as before. With only the sensation of hair being combed settling into me with startling clarity, I shifted my gaze away and looked up at the ceiling. A pattern I should have known by heart blurred softly at its edges.
"......I'm not sure."
A murmur.
"Maybe they did when I was already asleep."
Even as I said it, I knew how vague it was. After living more than twenty-odd years, it was only natural to forget what happened when you were a small child. So not having it as a memory wasn't really strange. The only honest answer was: it's possible, as a probability.
"I don't remember anymore."
I added that honestly. Strangely, there was no loneliness in it. I'd always thought of it as simply how things were. Maybe that's cold of me, I thought — but if I inherited it from those particular parents, perhaps it was just genetics.
"Short of King Frederick's experiment... how did you manage not to lose your way, in that kind of environment?"
"Because they let me do things freely, in their own way. That's how I got to meet you."
"......!"
For just an instant, Dream Journey's eyes wavered. Whether it was surprise or something else — before I could determine which, I was already moving, without thinking. Her slender, pale, warm hand. Against those fingertips, I leaned my cheek, softly, rubbing my head against them.
"......"
Journey blinked once. But her expression immediately softened into a gentle smile.
"......Fufu."
A small, quiet laugh in the back of her throat.
Kind fingers traced my cheek.
"You really are innocent, aren't you."
The voice was soft, endlessly calm. The hand against my cheek shifted its angle slowly and tilted my face upward.
"......? Wai——"
"Innocent, unknowing——"
A fingertip traced along my cheekbone.
"You don't know what it means to be wary of someone."
Eyes behind their glasses, fixed steadily on me.
Calm, like a still sky. But what lay beneath — that, I had known for a long time.
"And precisely because of that — you're dangerous."
A finger slid to my chin. With only the faintest pressure, the angle of my face was fixed in place.
"You'll reach out your hand to anyone, smile at anyone... and I expect you'd touch anyone in just the same way."
Saying it quietly, her thumb made contact with the corner of my lips. My body gave an involuntary twist.
"......What else would you call that but love."
Only that one word came out in a slightly lower register.
"People — you more than you realize — are creatures of deep desire. Once they step inside, they want to uncover everything, possess it all."
Slowly, the fingers drew back. But not completely — they didn't leave my cheek, only opened a little space between us.
"......That includes me."
There the words stopped. I felt as if I should say something, but I didn't know what. Whatever had been taking shape in my throat — every version of it fell apart halfway, still formless.
Only the sensation left on my cheek remained strangely clear.
"......Journey."
At the sound of her name, she blinked once. That was all — and whatever heat had been there a moment before receded quietly, as though the air had only shifted the smallest amount, as though nothing had happened at all.
"My apologies."
She slowly withdrew her hand, then reached for her glasses. Removing them with a practiced gesture, her gaze — unfiltered now, without the lens — fell on me for just an instant.
Those eyes were still, as always.
And yet they seemed to hold something.
"Good night."
A voice that held its listener with the greatest possible care.
Then came a small click, and the lamp on the bedside table went dark. The field of vision went dim all at once, and every outline that had been visible dissolved into vagueness.
"......Good night."
A beat late, I returned it. In the dark, only voices felt somehow closer than they'd been. No conversation followed. Neither of us said anything more, and only time flowed quietly onward.
I couldn't bring myself to roll over. I simply lay on my back, staring up in the direction where the ceiling must have been. I couldn't see it — and yet only the color of Dream Journey's eyes from a moment ago floated there, softly.
——Was this the right thing?
The thought drifted through me without warning. It had all come so naturally, so smoothly, and here I was. There had been any number of moments when I could have refused — and I'd let every single one of them pass, and now here she was beside me.
Everything she says always sounds right. Logical, consistent, impossible to fully deny.
But whether it actually is right——.
Accepting it without knowing — that frightened me, just slightly.
——Even so......
Through the sheets, a faint warmth. The rhythm of breathing. The real, tangible sense of someone being there within reach. All of it sank slowly into some place deep in my chest.
"......"
It was only now, in this moment, that I realized I'd never known what it was to spend the same time in the same place with another person. A quiet that was dense, not like the quiet of being alone. A silence that was full, not empty. That this could be such a calm and gentle thing — I had never even imagined it.
Which was precisely why releasing it felt like a waste.
Whether this choice was right.
That — I probably wouldn't know right away.
But——just a little longer. Just this little bit further, I wanted to see what lay ahead. The moment I thought that, the answer was probably already half decided.
I closed my eyes slowly.
In the darkness, as if to confirm the presence beside me. My thoughts trailed off partway through, unresolved, and no answer came.
Even so — without question, I had——
Come to know the comfort of this warmth.