“Um, should I scatter salt, or place salt by my entrance way or something?”
“Huh? No, I think it would be pointless doing something like that. Besides, if there was something here now, and you piled salt by your entrance way, instead of it being unable to come and go, it would result in it being enclosed in your home. We shouldn’t do anything careless.”
“Huh, ah, is that so?”
He was surprised by his unexpectedly thorough reply. Since he had the image of someone who didn’t believe in the paranormal, he was a little shocked.
“Um, thank you for today. I’ll make some tea, so please have a seat.”
“Ah……right.”
Tatsumi frantically headed to the kitchen. He put the kettle full of water on the stove, and let out an almost inaudible sigh. There was no one hiding in his home like had worried about, nor did anything appear to be stolen. He was relieved by that. However, that meant the possibility that the discomfort he felt, the presence of something he sensed, the locations of his cookware changing, were all his imagination was high. He locked the door today as well, so in other words, it was just his own carelessness, which made him want to crawl into a hole.
—……even though I thought I was used to living alone, why am I starting to feel lonely now?
Actually, up until he started talking to Kusamakura, he had forgotten about the emotion of loneliness. Could it be he unconsciously made an excuse to invite Kusamakura to his home? Perhaps he wanted to have a more defined friendship outside of just acquaintances who exchanged words during their lunch breaks.
—I don’t know what I’d do if he thought this was just an excuse to invite him over……
Realizing he wasn’t able to clearly state it was just a misunderstanding, Tatsumi became more and more fl.u.s.tered.
That wasn’t it, that couldn’t be it, he repeated over and over again in his mind as he pulled out the tea pot from the cupboard and placed it next to the mug he took out earlier. He did so with such excessive force, they clashed. CLINK, it made a loud sound as expected.
“Are you all right?”
Kusamakura called out to him.
“I-I’m all right. Just a little……clumsy.”
As he tried to laugh it off, he put in an adequate amount of tea from the cherry bark tea caddy into the tea pot. Even though it was only something he did all the time, his hands were shaking, so the moment he dropped in the tea leaves, the teaspoon dropped into the sink.
—Aah, jeez……normally I wouldn’t make these sort of mistakes.
The kettle let out a sound to let him know the water was boiling as he panicked on the inside. He turned off the stove, and moved the hot water. Perhaps overly worked up by trying to make sure not to mess up this time, the hot water hit his left hand directly when he tried to check if there was enough water.
“Hot……!”