Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida

Author:Atsuhiro Yoshida [Yoshida, Atsuhiro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2024-07-09T07:00:00+00:00

A RAIN OF FEATHERS

The hour hand reached 1:00 A.M.

“Oh, Eiko?” called a figure in front of the bathroom. Approaching carefully, Eiko was relieved to see that it was just Haruka—the only other girl in the group she could talk to openly.

Haruka was the oldest of the eleven, but—and Eiko meant this in a positive way—she didn’t come across as such. She was always polite to the others and was always the first to take the initiative whenever something came up that the other girls wanted to avoid.

Cleaning the bathroom was one such example. The task should have been assigned to each of them in turn, but somewhere along the line, Haruka had ended up taking over responsibility for it.

Eiko had assumed that the housemother was seeing to the cleaning around the dormitory, but after learning that the older woman was living with a long-term back and leg injury, Haruka had suggested that the girls should see to it themselves.

Eiko had learned all this around a fortnight ago, and ever since, she made a point of checking on the bathroom every now and then. Whenever she found Haruka cleaning alone, she stepped in with a helping hand.

“You don’t have to,” Haruka told her. “Besides, you have an early start tomorrow.”

“Why don’t we set up a roster for cleaning duties?” Eiko suggested.

“Because some of the girls will say they don’t use the bathtub. And it isn’t really fair to ask them to clean it if they weren’t the ones who used it.”

“I guess . . . ”

But at the same time, that didn’t mean Haruka had to carry this burden alone.

Then again, she seemed willing to take on that responsibility herself if it meant keeping the peace.

Haruka wasn’t very good at dealing with conflict, and it hurt her to the core whenever any of the girls quarreled.

But being responsible for cleaning the bathroom did have its own secret advantages. After scrubbing the filth from the bathtub and filling it with fresh hot water, she could enjoy a long relaxing soak without having to worry that the others had used it before her. And since she saw to the cleaning each and every night, she was easily entitled to that small reward.

“Do you think it’s okay?” Haruka asked her in private one night.

“Of course,” Eiko answered with not a little indignation. “No one has any right to complain. They’re always leaving such a mess.”

Though they all usually took great care with their appearance and manners, for some reason, they lacked a strong sense of hygiene in the bathroom.

This was due to the fact that many of the girls, not content with the showers in their bedrooms and wanting instead to soak in the large communal bathtub, were somewhat rough around the edges. Every day, the bathroom floor would be splattered with bubbles from various soaps and shampoos, while the room would be littered with empty conditioner packets and boxes of bath salts.

Of course, not everyone was responsible for this mess. At least some girls

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