I’m Mitsuki, and I live with my husband, Shigeru, our seventh-grade daughter, Yuna, and our fourth-grade son, Itsuki. Shigeru and I have been married for 15 years. While he focused on work, I took care of the house and the kids, and we lived a peaceful life together, each doing our part. But one day, Shigeru suddenly told me, “From now on, I only want us to get along as parents to our children.” The reason? I had gained about 30 kilograms after having our kids. But my weight gain came from years of handling the housework and childcare mostly on my own, along with all the stress that came with it. I was deeply disappointed that after 15 years of marriage, Shigeru still had the nerve to criticize my appearance without even realizing what I had been through. But then Mariko, a senior coworker at my part-time job, made me see things from a different perspective. “Maybe this isn’t really about your weight. Could it be that you’ve been ignoring how your husband feels?” Her words caught me completely off guard…
Mariko’s words were a real wake-up call for me. If Shigeru wanted me to lose weight, then I just had to do it. I immediately signed up for a gym and even hired a personal trainer. This would fix everything! Shigeru would be thrilled to see how motivated I was, and before long, he’d be amazed by the new, slimmer me. Everything would be fine between us again… or so I thought. Feeling confident, I apologized to him. But his reaction wasn’t what I expected. Huh? He didn’t seem very happy at all… What was he thinking? Just when I thought I’d finally found a way to make things right, I realized I still had no idea where our relationship was headed, and the uncertainty left me feeling more anxious than ever.