Fast-forward, then, to Kuzuha’s welcome party at her first job. She had found herself an administrative role at a local company.
“There’s something foxlike about this one,” said the department head at this new company, his reddened face glistening, as Kuzuha refilled his empty glass. He made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was sizing Kuzuha up, ogling her with his moist eyes. It was the first time Kuzuha had been looked at in that way. She sensed, with a feeling close to wonderment, that she had entered a new phase of her life, and vowed to remember this moment forever.
The welcome party was being held in a tatami room they’d rented out for the occasion, on the first floor of a small Japanese restaurant. The long, narrow space was filled with sounds: sounds of men, sounds of women, sounds of tableware. Kuzuha felt astonished that a group of fully grown adults could produce such an almighty racket, but she took care not to let her astonishment show.
“Yes, I’m often told that,” Kuzuha said with a cheerful smile. Encouraged, the department head placed his hand on Kuzuha’s stockinged knee. Kuzuha felt nothing—neither pleasure nor discomfort. She found it genuinely bizarre that he would want to touch her that much, but that was it. Huh, she thought to herself, interesting.
The fox was good at work. Office life was just as she thought it would be. She had no complaints whatsoever with the simple tasks she was required to perform, which included making photocopies and tea. As always, Kuzuha could easily spot shortcuts and made few wasted movements. She could set cantankerous office machines right in no time, and her boss complimented her on her tea-making abilities. She also had a forte for spotting mistakes in documents written by her male colleagues. It was such a profoundly unexceptional sort of place that there wasn’t any competition between female employees over impressing the high-earning male staff, and Kuzuha’s excellence didn’t seem to bother them. Her competence was hurled into her bosses’ mouths along with their afternoon sweets, washed down with their tea, then promptly forgotten about.
Around the same time that the Glico-Morinaga scandal was making headlines, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law came into force. Ostensibly, the law set out to “secure equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women within the field of employment,” but in reality, it was a bunch of empty promises. A few of the female employees complained about it in the staff kitchen or the locker rooms, but Kuzuha only thought, Well, there you have it. After all, she was a girl. For some reason, Kuzuha found the sound of the word girl most pleasant. Yep, she liked to say to herself, I’m a girl. I’m just a girl, after all.
When she saw men struggling with their work, Kuzuha would sometimes be overcome by pity, and would long to step in to help them. I could do that in a flash, Kuzuha would think. How unfair society was! Male employees had to pretend to be capable of doing things they couldn’t do, while female employees had to pretend to be incapable of doing things they actually could do. Over the years, how many women had seen their talents magically disappear in that way? How many men had seen talents they didn’t possess magically summoned into existence? Kuzuha let such thoughts float through her mind. Then she figured that this stuff didn’t really have anything to do with her, and she promptly forgot all about it.
One winter’s night in a lonely corner of the office, when most of the other employees had gone home, Kuzuha brought a cup of tea to Mr. Abe, the company’s least competent worker, who was always getting in trouble for some mistake he’d made. His paper-strewn desk was a total shambles, and his suit was riddled with creases. Why does this man have to strive like this when he’s so clearly incapable? Kuzuha wondered. I could’ve done this in five minutes.
“Looks like you’re having a hard time of it, Mr. Abe,” she said with genuine sympathy. He really was a poor soul.
Abe looked down at the cup of white, cloudy liquid that Kuzuha placed on his desk, and an expression of astonishment spread across his simple, benign face.
“W-what is this?”
“It’s kuzu-yu. Ground arrowroot and hot water. It’ll warm your body.”
A plume of steam floated up between the two of them.
After marrying Mr. Abe in her mid-twenties, Kuzuha left the company and not long afterward gave birth to a baby boy. She did not veer off the shortcut that she had chosen for herself.
Mr. Abe may have been hopeless at his job, but as a permanent employee of the company he had a stable salary, and, above all, he was a kindhearted man. Kuzuha found it touching to see him trying so desperately to appear manly, doing all he could to conceal from her his exhaustion and his frustration. Poor soul! Kuzuha, for her part, always did her best to reward her husband for his hard work, and as a couple they got on well. Getting on well with one’s husband was a part of the shortcut she had mapped out, so it came extremely naturally to her.
Kuzuha had no complaints with her new life. She found the child-rearing, the housework, and other matters of home economics a piece of cake. In no time at all, her son was in high school and Kuzuha’s work-load dropped off substantially. Both her husband and her son were truly good sorts. Good genes, Kuzuha figured. They were considerate, and on Mother’s Day each year, they would present her with a bouquet of red carnations. Huh, Kuzuha would think to herself every year, interesting.
Throughout her life, Kuzuha had always had the feeling that she was just pretending to
