Finding My Voice（6）　　　　　　　　　　　The Path We Walked【5】

Before long, I became pregnant. My husband and I rejoiced together over this news. I felt as though something in me had been rewarded. At the same time, however, I felt anxiety—the worry of whether both mother and child would remain healthy until delivery. It was probably the most natural kind of anxiety felt by many expectant mothers.

I did not harbor any special pessimism about childbirth. My heart was filled with such happiness that there was simply no room for me to feel that kind of anxiety. I felt more happiness in the presence of this new life than I had in getting married.

Yet now, looking back, I recall that I had already felt a small sense of incongruity at the very beginning of our married life.

On the morning after our wedding, as I wondered if he was truly the right person to walk through life with, a sudden wave of anxiety washed over me. When I looked at his face that morning, for some reason, he felt like a complete stranger, distant and removed.

On the night of the wedding, I had expected to spend a romantic time together like a young maiden. But perhaps he was simply exhausted; he said, "I'm tired today," and fell fast asleep, snoring in the bed of our lovely cottage.

At that moment, I felt an indescribable loneliness. Yet, rather than dwelling on my own loneliness, I chose to be considerate of his fatigue.

Before we married, my husband had been a very kind person.

He took me to all sorts of restaurants for dinner and lunch. We enjoyed dates at hidden gem restaurants in Sapporo and places serving authentic, stylish Western cuisine. We went for drives and visited a shrine together for the first New Year's visit of the year—we were just like any ordinary couple in love.

Back then, I never felt that his actions were self-centered. He gave me a lovely necklace and a bouquet of roses. I felt cherished.

And it wasn't simply because he gave me things. It was the little acts of consideration, like the way he casually reached out to steady my hand when we walked on snowy paths. It was in each of those small gestures that I found happiness.

However, I remembered a time when I had consulted a male friend about my husband. My memory is a bit hazy now, and I can't remember what actually happened or what I consulted him about, but I recalled something that male friend had said.

That male friend was a student at a very prestigious university. I met him abroad. We were attending a language school overseas and were placed in the same class. Thinking back on that time fills me with a strange feeling. I suppose my belief in my own abilities was stronger back then than it is now.

At the language school, they gave tests to measure students' language proficiency and placed them in corresponding classes. I was assigned to a certain class. However, after attending a few classes there, I felt I belonged in a class that taught more advanced material. So, I requested a meeting with the principal and ended up moving into the top-level class. That was where I met my male friend, a graduate of a national university.

He was good at studying, but he never bragged about it. He often talked about his family. When I heard him talk about his younger sister, I could tell how dearly he loved her. His family seemed full of affection and mutual respect.

I felt that he had been raised with love in a healthy family. He was considerate of others, yet he would also offer strict words for the sake of another person's growth. I was able to trust him. Even though he was much younger than me, I thought he was someone who had a strong sense of his own core.

This might have been my misunderstanding, but there was a time when he hinted at his affection for me. We were alone together in a room. He lived with his roommates, but they were all out.

I didn't take his confession seriously. For some reason, at that moment, I felt that I wasn't worthy of dating someone so healthy, and that I didn't want to infect him with the kind of poison I carried inside. I felt that I would only make someone unhappy. Now, I understand what that meant: I believe I felt that my own dependency would end up eroding him.

Even after returning to Japan, our correspondence continued. He stayed in the Kansai region, while I lived in Hokkaido. It was difficult to meet in person, but we kept in touch through New Year's cards and emails.

When I consulted him about my husband, he sent me a message that read: "◯◯-ko probably won't end up marrying that guy..." At that time, I realized he was telling me that my husband wasn't cut out for marriage. My husband was the first person I had ever dated. I had thought that if I broke up with him, no one else would ever want to be with me.

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First Story: Finding My Voice（１）　　　　　　　Introduction｜Cristal
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