Chapter 24: The Miyazaki Mother and Daughter

Urawa, Urawa Municipal Hospital.

Miyazaki Yū clutched her schoolbag, head down, quickening her pace, trying to hurry through the hallway.
But unfortunately, a sharp-eyed nurse still spotted her.

“Miss Miyazaki!” the nurse, who was getting on in years, called out.

“Tachikawa-san,” Miyazaki forced herself to stop, her voice trembling.

“Miss Miyazaki, this is your mother’s bill for this month.”
Nurse Tachikawa handed a piece of paper to Miyazaki.

Miyazaki looked at the thin bill as if it were a piece of red-hot charcoal, completely afraid to take it.
She could only bite her lip and plead with her head down, “Tachikawa-san, my mother’s condition hasn’t stabilized yet, she can’t be discharged for now.
Could you please give us a couple more days?
I’m begging you…”

Nurse Tachikawa knew about the girl’s family situation.
She sighed softly and said, “I’m just giving you the bill, not rushing you to leave the hospital.
Don’t worry, as long as the beds aren’t tight and there’s no pressure from above, I won’t kick your mother out.”

“Thank you, thank you…”

Miyazaki bowed repeatedly.

Nurse Tachikawa quickly stopped her and added, “I’ve already tried to reduce the fees as much as possible for you.
However, it would be best if your family could pay off some of the outstanding balance as soon as possible, so we have something to report.”

“I’ll get my wages from my part-time job next week.
I’ll pay the hospital first thing then,” Miyazaki promised.

“Alright then.”

Nurse Tachikawa handed the bill to Miyazaki again.

With slightly trembling fingers, Miyazaki took the bill from Nurse Tachikawa’s hand.

Not daring to even look at the amount on the bill, Miyazaki closed her eyes, stuffed the paper into her schoolbag, and then turned and walked away as if fleeing.

Arriving at the door of the hospital room, Miyazaki stopped again.
She bit her lip, took a deep breath, and forced a smile onto her face before pushing the door open.

“Mom!”

Miyazaki walked briskly to a hospital bed, holding the reply letter from the FEEL YOUNG editor and showing it to her mother with a happy expression.

“My work passed the magazine’s review!
They’re going to publish it in the next issue.”

“Really?”
On the bed, Miyazaki’s mother, Mika, was genuinely happy for her daughter’s success.
“That’s wonderful!”

“Yeah,” Miyazaki counted on her fingers, calculating.
“The editor said my manuscript fee would be twenty thousand yen per page.
I calculated it; one chapter with over twenty pages can earn more than four hundred thousand yen.
If I can also draw two color pages, I can earn an extra ten thousand yen for each of those pages.
In that case, my monthly income would be, would be, would be…
Um, anyway, it’s more than I earned frying tempura!”

Watching her daughter earnestly calculating the money, Mika’s heart was filled with both warmth and pain.

Mika was once a children’s art teacher.
Miyazaki’s talent for drawing was inspired and taught by Mika from a young age.
Mika also knew her daughter once had a dream of becoming a painter.
Yet now, that former dream was being used by her daughter as a means to earn money, just like her other jobs as a waitress, handing out flyers, and frying tempura…

However, Mika couldn’t bring herself to say a single word of blame, because her daughter’s current situation was all her fault.

“Oh, no, I still have to give some of the money to Seiko and Saori,” Miyazaki said, though with a pained expression.

“Are they your friends?
Did they help you?”

“Yeah, even though they’re bad people, Seiko is the scriptwriter for Usagi Drop, and Saori was my manga assistant for a few days.
They should get a share of the manuscript fee.”

“How can you call your own friends bad people?”

Mika said with a smile.
She had heard Miyazaki mention Seiko and Saori several times.
Although she had never met them, as a mother, Mika was very grateful to them in her heart.
Ever since she had fallen ill, Mika hadn’t seen a smile on her daughter’s face for a long time, until she heard those two names from her daughter’s mouth more than two years ago.

“But they are bad people!”

Miyazaki really wanted to tell her mother that not only were those two bad, they were trying to lead her astray too!

But Miyazaki was too embarrassed to say it out loud, because after she learned to do certain bad things with those two bad people, she herself felt a tiny bit of pleasure…

Mhm!

Absolutely just a tiny bit!

As Miyazaki was talking with her mother, a chaotic noise suddenly came from the hallway outside.

“Another one?
Is it a knife wound too?”

“No, this one’s a gunshot wound…”

“Heavens! They’re even using guns now?
There’s a bed available in this ward over here.”

“What’s so strange about using guns?
Didn’t you see what happened a few days ago?”

“What happened a few days ago?”

“A few days ago, right at the entrance of this hospital, someone ran over and killed a dozen people with a car.”

“Hiss, that many…”

“…”

Miyazaki overheard a few sentences and roughly knew what was happening outside.

The rumors were getting more and more outrageous.
Miyazaki had heard Seiko and Saori mention it during their chats.
Of the eight people hit by the car at the Urawa Hospital entrance that day, only the boss of the Esumi-gumi had died on the spot.
Two others died later after failing to be resuscitated.
She didn’t know how the rumor had spread, but now it had become that over a dozen people were killed.

However, she had indeed heard that the Yakuza in Urawa City were in the midst of a huge brawl recently, with people being killed or injured every day.
Seiko and Saori’s families were high-ranking members of the Yamagami-gumi.
Miyazaki was worried for them, but besides sharing some of her manuscript fee, she didn’t know what else she could do to help.

“It seems quite chaotic in Urawa lately.
Wounded people are being sent to the hospital every day…” Mika also said with a frown.

Miyazaki didn’t want her mother to worry about unnecessary things.
Hearing this, she quickly changed the subject.
“Mom, do you want to see the Usagi Drop I drew?”

“Of course.”

Mika smiled.

Miyazaki took a stack of manuscript pages from her schoolbag, climbed onto the hospital bed, and leaned against her mother, flipping through them together.

After nightfall, Miyazaki didn’t go home, but slept on her mother’s hospital bed for the night.

Late at night, Mika opened her eyes.
After confirming that her daughter was asleep, she struggled to turn over, picked up Miyazaki’s schoolbag, and fumbled inside.
Then she found the bill that Miyazaki had haphazardly stuffed in.

Although Miyazaki had tried her best to hide it, she really had no talent for anything other than drawing.
Mika could see at a glance that her daughter had something weighing on her mind.
Considering how long she had been in the hospital this time, some answers were already obvious.

Under the dim light filtering in from the hallway, she clearly saw the long string of numbers at the bottom of the bill.
Mika felt as if her heart was being squeezed tight.

Sigh…

Mika put the bill back, sighed softly, and reached out to stroke her daughter’s hair.

Sometimes, she felt that her being alive was just a burden to her daughter.
But Mika also worried that if she chose to leave, it would bring her daughter even greater pain.
So, she had no choice but to keep on living…