Listening to my five-year-old daughter’s cute, slightly slurred singing voice was my greatest happiness.

#nana56b


Synopsis

I run a small bicycle shop in a shopping district along the coast. It’s a shop I inherited from my late father.

When my daughter Nanami was two years old, she was living with my ex-wife, but after a bitter dispute, I won custody.

Nanami would sit on the round stool out front and always hum a tune.

Upstairs in the shop, she would tuck into the clumsily shaped rice balls I’d made without a single complaint.

The nori would always peel away from the edges, and grains of rice would scatter onto the tatami mats.

Even so, Nanami would tell me, “Daddy’s rice balls are delicious.”

I wasn’t very good at tying her hair, but I still wanted to make her look as girly as possible,

so I once secretly asked a woman in the neighborhood to teach me how.

By the window upstairs, surrounded by the scent of the sea and the gentle sound of the waves, Nanami would fall asleep with her head resting on my arm.

In those happy moments, I forgot all my pain.

No matter how trivial the thing, just hearing Nanami’s voice was enough to save me.

In the corner of the shop, there’s a bicycle hanging on the wall.

I fixed up the rusty, secondhand bike, repainted it, and replaced only the bell with a brand-new one.

On the day I finished assembling it, Nanami’s eyes sparkled, and she asked softly, “Is this for me?”

“Yes, it is,” I replied, and she jumped up and down with joy.

“Are we going to wear yukata to the Hamakaze Festival?” she asked.

The Hamakaze Festival is a modest, once-a-year Bon dance held in this small town,

where the recorded vocals of the old “Hamakaze Ondo” song ride the sea breeze and reach every corner of the shopping district.

Nanami was trying her hardest to memorize that song somehow.

Listening to the cute, stuttering singing voice of my five-year-old daughter in the grease-stained shop was my greatest happiness.

Then one day, while I was working, I turned around to find Nanami had slipped off her chair and was curled up on the dirt floor.

No matter how I called out to her or tried to lift her up, she never opened her eyes again.

In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, I kept holding her tiny hand the whole time.

That hand was still warm.

But there was no strength left in it at all.

In the white hospital hallway, I just stood there, frozen.

When the doctor shook his head, I felt as if the floor beneath my feet had suddenly vanished.

Later, the doctor told me that the immediate cause of death was a heart attack.

On the day of the funeral, Nanami’s cheeks looked exactly the same as they did when she was asleep.

Even then, a sense of disbelief still weighed heavily on my chest, and no tears came.

It was because I felt as if Nanami might open her eyes at any moment, say “Daddy,” and sit up.

But Nanami never opened her eyes.

If there is a God, why did He suddenly stop the life of such a small child?

I simply could not understand it.

Some time has passed…