I’m Ai, 28 years old. I live with my husband, just the two of us. At work, whenever someone tries to dump extra responsibilities on me, I always manage to slip away. I’ve spent my whole life trying not to get taken advantage of—because I thought being the “nice, easy-to-use” type of person was foolish. I never wanted to end up like my mother.
But when I finally visited my family home after a long time, the old sushi restaurant had turned into a small, cozy eatery run by my mother. The same mother who always did whatever my father said…? That sight brought back a flood of childhood memories.
Back then, I didn’t know anything. When I grew up, I thought I’d work at the restaurant with my family—standing side by side with my two brothers, making sushi together. I believed we’d run the place happily, all of us together. It never even crossed my mind that I’d be the only one who wasn’t allowed. It felt like being told, “You’re not part of this family.” And the mother I thought would protect me… just walked away when my father scolded her in front of the storage shed. In the end, she always chose obedience to him over standing by me. I can still feel the despair of that moment, even now.