Chapter 269: Part of the Tower Bottom
"Is this Mr. Akai's home?"

“Isn’t it a little too small?”

".Um."

Although Rinka Hiiragi knew that this answer was a little impolite, she nodded subconsciously when she saw the cramped living room that could be seen from the entrance, and only reacted a little later.

"I'm sorry! Akai-sensei, I don't mean to dislike you at all."

"You are telling the truth. It's nothing. Come in and sit down. I'll pour you a cup of tea."

Rinka Hiiragi nodded slightly in agreement, took off her little leather shoes, and stepped onto the floor with her little feet wearing little white socks. Her eyes kept looking around Akai Muko's home.

Wheat-colored tatami, square black wood chandelier, a kotatsu coffee table in the middle of the living room, and the LCD TV on the left has been used for a long time and looks like it was from the millennium.
And on the right side, there are two tablets for worship.

When Rinka Hiiragi saw the tablet above her, she put her hands together before sitting down, and quickly bowed to the two people in the photo, saying "Excuse me" in a low voice.

"Here, barley tea, this is all we have at home right now."

"Thank you," Hiiragi Rinka took the teacup and looked at her, "Teacher Akai has lived here for a long time, right?"

"Strictly speaking, this is my grandfather's house. My grandfather passed it on to my mother, and she has lived in it until now." Akai Muzi sat down opposite her.

".Has Akai-sensei ever thought about moving out?"

"Why would I move out? Besides, my mom and I are nostalgic. We want to live in a better place, but we can't bear to leave."

Akai Muzi looked at everything in the house and said, "The best situation would be to spend money to renovate this place."

As she spoke, she lowered her head, pinched the teacup, and muttered to herself, "It's just that this family has never changed. There has never been any motivation to transform, so I have always wanted to muddle through."

Hiiragi Rinka noticed this.

After doing homework for a while, Akai Muzi came back after buying groceries. Hiiragi Rinka immediately put down her homework and offered to cook.

"You can do it?"

"I usually cook on Saturdays and weekends at home, so it's no problem."

It was nearly seven o'clock when they finished their meal. Rinka Hiiragi felt a little embarrassed being taken care of by Akai Kiko. She made her bed and peeled fruit for her. Every time she said she wanted to do it herself, but Akai Kiko always refused her as a "guest".

"Muzi! Muzi! Are there any guests?"

Hearing someone calling Teacher Muzi, Rinka Hiiragi quickly saw an auntie coming in.

She immediately stood up and greeted him.

"Who is this?"

"My name is Hiiragi Rinka, and I'm a student of Mr. Akai. I came here to stay with you for two days."

Akai Muzi then explained it clearly to Akai Shiori.

After Akai Shiori understood, she smiled and said:

"Then welcome, welcome Hiiragi-san."

"Ok!"

Rinka Hiiragi stayed at Akai Muko's place for a day.

In the past, Rinka Hiiragi and Muko Akai didn’t have much contact. At most, she had been guided by him in the club and had some brief exchanges.

But after spending these two days together, Rinka Hiiragi found that Teacher Akai was a very easy person to get along with. He was not as serious as she usually was in school, but rather very easy-going.

But Rinka Hiiragi also noticed that Mr. Akai was not in a good mood yesterday and today.

Maybe it’s because of substitute teaching?

When Hiiragi Rinka was doing her homework this evening, Akai Muzi suddenly went out to answer a phone call. After coming back, Hiiragi Rinka saw that Mr. Akai frowned and asked what happened.

"Your teacher Fujii has a high fever."

"what?"

"He originally thought it wasn't serious, so he took some cold medicine and rested at home. But his fever turned into a high fever, and he's still in the hospital receiving an IV drip."

"Is Mr. Fujii okay?"

"It's probably fine."

"Akai-sensei, do you want to go see Fujii-sensei?"

In response, Akai Muzi just smiled and said, "What am I going to do?"

"After all, Akai-sensei and Fujii-sensei were high school classmates and seemed to have a very good relationship in everyone's eyes."

"Well, maybe it's a good relationship, but he doesn't need me right now."

"."

Hiiragi Rinka was a little afraid to speak.

After spending more than a day together, she could vaguely feel something from Teacher Akai.

Because Teacher Akai sometimes daydreams.

Akai Shiori returned home, and after the three of them had dinner and washed up, Hiiragi Rinka went back to her room to rest.

She didn't know how long she had slept, but she vaguely wanted to get up to go to the bathroom. When she got up and was about to open the door, she heard a conversation in the living room.

It seems to be Akai-sensei and her mother.

What are you still discussing so late?
Rinka Hiiragi curiously peeked through the crack in the door and found a few bottles of beer on the coffee table.

That should have been what Akai-sensei drank. Akai-sensei also drank it on the first night she came.

It seems that Akai-sensei likes drinking beer very much.

"Don't go."

"Muzi, why don't you go? The other party finally found time to meet you."

"If you don't go, you won't go."

"Even if you young people can sit down and have some coffee?"

Akai Muzi sighed, "No."

"Muzi, I'm not saying anything bad to you, but you're almost thirty years old! Do you know what thirty means to a woman? You won't be able to get married in the future, and no one will want you."

"I wouldn't go even if I were forty."

Akai Shiori said earnestly, "You are forty years old, how can you still go! Listen to your mother, okay? Look at you, you basically didn't drink before, but now you have to drink a little every night, do you think this is good?"

"." Akagi Muzi took another sip of wine and remained silent.

"Or do you think it's good to live alone?

"Is it okay to just sit in the room and stare at the sky stupidly every day?

"Don't say now that you don't care and you don't want to get married. When you grow up, you will do everything alone! After I die, you won't even have anyone to talk to!

"Your mother is an experienced person, she knows that life alone is not easy!
"In this life, there is always something to look forward to! When your father ran away, I placed everything on you. Although life was poor and hard, you were with me every day when I went home, so I didn't have to find a place to end my life.

"And Muzi, what do you have now? You have nothing!"

".Then I'll just go to the orphanage and adopt a child."

"You kid, you're drunk, right? How can you adopt a child if you're not married?"

"."

Akai Muzi was silent again, and then interrupted her mother who was still nagging, and said calmly, "Okay, Mom, you know me."

After hearing this, Akai Shiori no longer had the energy to continue persuading.

She understood her daughter's character.

"So, Muzi, do you plan to stay like this forever? Live in this shabby room forever?" ".I. plan to go out and get some fresh air."

"Going out again? Never mind, that's fine. Where are you going this time?"

“Let’s go to Shikoku Island.”

"What are you going to do in Shikoku Island? Who do you know there?"

"Nothing, I don't know anyone, I just want to find an unfamiliar place to open a flower shop or something."

"What about Otaru?"

".I don't think he will come back."

The more Akai Shiori listened, the more heartbroken she became.

This daughter is really tying her own hands and feet for the sake of "love".

"Then before you go, can you first meet the person your mother promised you to meet, just to have a meal together?"

"Um"

"Promised?!"

"Ah."

Rinka Hiiragi heard all these words through the crack in the door and noticed the gloomy expression on Teacher Akai's face.

It obviously had nothing to do with her, but seeing the teacher like this made her feel depressed.

On the third day, Mr. Akai continued to teach Mr. Fujii's class.

Rinka Hiiragi could see that Teacher Akai was very tired at the podium, and looked like she might faint at any time, but she still insisted on finishing the lesson.

After school in the afternoon, Rinka Hiiragi went back to Akai Muko's house alone and did her homework until about seven o'clock. She stood beside the bed and sighed. Suddenly, from the direction of the setting sun, she saw Teacher Akai walking home alone on the street.

Akai Muzi came to the street outside her house, but she did not go upstairs. She just sat on the old stairs, looking towards the sunset.
The back figure looks very lonely.

Rinka Hiiragi was really worried, so she pushed the door open and went out. She soon saw the back of Akai Muko sitting on the stairs.

She approached cautiously.

".That Akai-sensei?"

"Hmm? Rinka, come here," Akai Muzi patted the seat next to her, "Sit down."

Hiiragi Rinka sat down obediently along her school uniform skirt.

She looked at Akai Muko's profile and suddenly saw that she was smiling.

"Akai-sensei?"

"Does Rinka know what I did just now?"

".No, not sure."

"Just now I listened to my mother's advice and went on a blind date and had dinner with the other party."

"Did it go well?"

"It went very smoothly. Or rather, it went too smoothly. We met, confirmed our identities, had dinner, and left naturally. It was over."

"."

"Rinka, you are sixteen, right?"

"Ah."

"Have you ever thought about getting married?"

Hiiragi Rinka's face turned slightly red in the sunset light, "I have thought about it."

Akai Muzi smiled and asked her, "When did you think about it?"

"When I read comics, because the male protagonist is very handsome and treats the female protagonist very well, I wonder if I will have a husband like him in the future."

“What a cute idea.”

"Very strange, right?"

"Strange? This is normal. Don't all little girls think this way?"

Hiiragi Rinka stared at the teacher's profile and asked curiously, "What about you, teacher? Have you ever thought about this before?"

"Me? Of course. Of course I have, but compared to the fantasies of most little girls, I am luckier and have a reality that is close to a fairy tale. Rinka, do you want to hear it?"

"Ok!"

Akai Muzi cleared her throat and began to tell her past from the beginning.

Her father left when she was young and she and her mother had to depend on each other. She even had to work illegally to supplement the family income. She talked about her high school days.

After hearing this, Rinka Hiiragi felt that Akai-sensei had a very difficult childhood.

How could a mother who is seriously ill rely on a teenage girl working illegally to support her?
I don't know how much tired Mr. Akai had eaten before.
Akai Muzi suddenly smiled at Hiiragi Rinka when she said this, "Let me tell you something that I haven't told Ah Shu yet. Didn't I say before that when I worked illegally, didn't I always smell like fish?"

"Ah."

"At that time, my family didn't have the money to send me to a good school, so I went to an ordinary national junior high school. You should have heard your parents say that for a good student, a national junior high school in a small city is definitely not a good place to go, because the education here is free, so the people there are also mixed. When I was in junior high school, I was often bullied by my classmates because I smelled too much fishy.

"You've heard of things like lost shoes and more trash in the bookcase. I've heard of all that. But the one that left the deepest impression on me was the nickname 'Fish Girl' that my classmates gave me.
"One time when I was going home after school, I ran into my classmates and found that they were all smiling at me. I didn't know what was going on. But after noticing their gazes, I realized that someone had put a note on the back of my schoolbag, which read: Fish girl! Stinky! Get out of school!
"Every classmate who saw me laughed at me, and no one was willing to give me a hint. Afterwards, I found the person who posted the note and beat him up. Although I won, my life in school remained the same.

“No one wants to approach me, and no one wants to talk to me.”

When Akai Muzi said this, her tone became more and more melancholy, and she looked up at the fiery red sky.

“.Until I entered high school and met this guy named Shu.

"I don't know if you can understand this feeling, Rinka. Your life is gray and everything is gray. You can't see the colors or the sunshine. You can only see the beauty in others.

"And one day, suddenly a beam of light shone in.

"He comes to you and warms your face, your eyes, your heart, your hands
"You see how he moves forward, you see how he overcomes obstacles.

"You see how he faced the same situation and turned the tide to achieve what he wanted.
"That was the first time you truly felt something called 'hope' in him.

"I seem to see him every day when I go to school, and I seem to run into him every day after school. Every time I go to the club, I always look around to see if he is there, and how I should talk to him.
"And what about him? He is different from those people. He doesn't look down on you. He always smiles at you, a warm smile. He is also very patient every time he talks to you, and gives you his unique insights seriously.
"My feelings towards him are exactly like those of the heroines in those girls' comics that you read, Rinka. I am deeply obsessed with him."

Akai Muzi paused for a second.

"Later, like the heroine in the girls' comics, I successfully dated him.

"This period of time is really the happiest time in my life. I look forward to every day's training, every morning, and every evening. We climb mountains together, camp together, lie on the grass together and count the stars. We think about the future and discuss going to the city together to fight and get a piece of world that belongs to 'us'. Rinka, it's really beautiful, isn't it?"

Hiiragi Rinka listened very carefully and nodded slightly: "Yes."

"But the reality is, I'm not the heroine of a girl's comic after all. We belong to the same club. I'm the clarinetist and he's the saxophone player of the brass section. He joined the club later than me, and when he became the club leader, I was still standing still.

“The saddest thing in life is to watch the people around you grow up, while you are unable to do anything and stay where you are.

"So I started training day and night, trying every way to improve myself, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never beat him.
"And what about him? He has become the club president, and his exam scores are always first or second. The whole school knows about him.

"With my grades, I can't match him at all. He is destined to go to a prestigious university, and I can only go to an ordinary school.
"It doesn't matter what other people say about you being 'not good enough'. But what if you care about it yourself?

"When you care about yourself, you will find that the gap between you and him is getting bigger and bigger.
“I simply cannot accept this reality.

"The goal of 'working together' that I had longed for and hoped for the most has become a dream that is simply out of reach.

"He has been unilaterally accommodating me and feeling sorry for me. I can't give him anything and can't do anything for him.

"So I made the most wrong decision of my life at that time - to go to the United States for further studies. I hope that one day I can appear in front of him as an image that makes his eyes light up, rather than a 'fish girl' who does everything mediocre and needs him to take care of everything."

The more Akai Muzi spoke, the deeper the smile on her face became. She picked up the beer she bought on the way and took a sip.

"In the end, I was still defeated by reality. There are always opponents in this world that I can never catch up with no matter how hard I try, whether it's Ash or Ella whom I met in the United States. This world is like a pyramid. If there is a top, there must be a bottom, and I have always been part of the bottom."

(End of this chapter)