The Beautiful Kuudere Woman Who Always Reads Books While Standing Next to Me at the Laundromat Turns Out to Be the Vice President of One of Our Clients
It was late Friday night, or rather, early Saturday morning.
Exhausted from a week of intense work, I dragged my body, which was completely drained of energy, to the door of my usual laundromat.
This week had been a critical phase of the project, and I had been taking taxis home every day.
With my exhausted mind, I could think of only one thing. Just tossing this mountain of laundry into the machine and staring blankly at the spinning drum until it finished drying. That was the only solace allowed to me at that moment.
There was no one else in the store. In the silence, the washing machine began to spin with a low rumble. I sank deeply into my usual seat at the back. I didn’t even have the energy to open the mystery novel I had brought with me.
(…I guess she won’t come tonight…maybe she’s already done.)
I thought vaguely about Tsukishima san. She must be in the same, or even worse, harsh situation as me. She might not have the luxury of coming to do laundry in the middle of the night.
Just as I was about to give up,
I heard the familiar sound of the automatic door opening.
Standing there was Tsukishima san, who, like me, had dark circles under her eyes, and her vibrant pink hair seemed to have lost some of its luster.
The moment I saw her, a strange sense of relief spread through my frayed heart.
“…Good evening, Tsukishima san.”
I managed to squeeze out the words, and she, too, weakly raised her hand toward me.
“Hmm…good work. …Were you working until this late hour?”
“Well, yeah. You too, Tsukishima san.”
“Me too, I guess. …This week was a bit hectic with the product release.”
She said that and then sat down next to me, as if drawn by gravity, with a thud. We both sighed deeply without saying a word.
There was no energy left for conversation.
We just sat side by side, silently staring blankly at the laundry spinning in front of us. It felt like time had stopped. Or maybe it was just that our exhausted brains were ticking extremely slowly.
How long did we sit like that?
I couldn’t resist the overwhelming sleepiness that was welling up inside me.
“Fwuaaah…”
My mouth opened wide on its own, regardless of my will. Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes.
“…I’m sorry.”
I apologized to her in a small voice. Then, after a moment’s pause.
“…Fwuaaah…”
Tsukishima also let out a small, cat-like yawn she couldn’t hold back. She hurriedly covered her mouth with her small hands.
That utterly defenseless, adorable gesture softened my exhausted heart just a little.
“Haha…sorry. I caught your yawn.”
When I said that and laughed, she replied while rubbing her sleepy eyes.
“…It’s nothing…it’s just a default synchronization protocol built into the brains of highly empathetic humans. It’s triggered by an old API called mirror neurons. It’s unavoidable.”
“Synchronization protocol, huh… So, my ‘sleepy’ signal flew to Tsukishima san like Wi-Fi?”
“…Something like that. My brain just automatically received it and executed the same process. …Ah, no good. My eyelids can’t resist gravity…”
She said that and yawned again. Then I received it and yawned too.
We looked at each other and smiled.
We fell silent again.
But this silence was clearly different from the previous one, which had been merely due to fatigue.
Our mutual feelings of sleepiness were connected through an invisible network, synchronizing in a strange yet peaceful sense of unity.
We were simply sitting next to each other.
We were simply rubbing our sleepy eyes in the same way.
And yet, that alone made our hearts grow warm.
The loneliness of being cut off from the world when working overtime alone.
That feeling melted away as if it had never existed, simply because she was sitting next to me.
Tsukishima yawned again. I didn’t feel like yawning myself.
Glancing sideways at Tsukishima, I saw her puffing out her cheeks in frustration.
“The connection is unstable. Wireless is no match for a wired connection.”
Tsukishima san said that and placed her hand over mine. Then, without trying to hide her wide-open mouth, she yawned again.
“…Fwuaa…”
“Fwu…did you do that on purpose? You don’t have to force yourself.”
“I wonder if Tsukishima san prefers it when people catch her mood.”
“Well, maybe. Not many people can decrypt my thoughts, which are encrypted with a complicated algorithm.”
“…..So, basically, you’re too lazy to deal with people?”
“Fufu…..that’s a perfect decryption. Exactly.”
Tsukishima san answered in a soft voice. There was no one else in the late-night coin laundry.
Tsukishima san leaned her body against my shoulder.
“The character for ‘person’ has just been created.”
Immediately after Tsukishima san said that, the two of us simultaneously imitated Kinpachi sensei’s voice, saying, “The character for ‘person’ is…”
“Haha…that’s a higher level than our synchronized yawning.”
Tsukishima san laughed while leaning against me, and the vibration directly transmitted to my body.
“Haha ! That’s true.”
“I guess there must have been a model for the kanji for ‘person’ too, thousands of years ago.”
“Maybe.”
“Why did that person stand with their legs apart? If they had stood straight, there would have been fewer strokes.”
“Are those two legs !?”
“Are they not?”
“I thought they were hands and arms…”
“Ah…that’s right. That’s right. If it’s two legs, there are no arms.”
“Well…you could interpret it as standing with legs spread and arms crossed.”
“If that’s the pose, what were the ancient people doing?”
“That’s a good point…”
“It’s definitely this situation. There’s no need for nonsense like one person forcing themselves to support the other. If you look at us from the front, we’re two people taking a nap, right?”
“What if one of them was sleeping alone?”
“No. Katakana.”
“Self-reliant…”
“For convenience’s sake.”
As the two of us were engaged in trivial small talk, a loud electronic sound rang out. No, since we were both speaking in quiet voices, our sense of volume must have been off.
It was the buzzer signaling the end of the laundry cycle. At the sound, we both jumped and shook our shoulders simultaneously.
“…It’s done, I guess.”
“…Yeah. It’s done.”
We stood up in slow motion, each taking out our laundry and tossing it into the basket. Even that movement felt somehow synchronized.
“…Somehow, I feel much more tired than usual today…”
After finishing getting ready to leave, I muttered that as we headed toward the store exit.
“…But I’m glad Tsukishima san was here.”
At my honest words, Tsukishima stopped and turned to look at me. With sleepy, dreamy eyes, she smiled gently.
“…Me too. Let’s write more letters again.”
“People?”
“No, 69.”
“What are you talking about !?”
“Fufu…just kidding.”
As we stepped out of the coin laundry, the cool, pre-dawn air gently cooled our heated heads.
Without a word, we both yawned again at the same time. Then, we looked at each other and smiled softly.
“Well, see you later.”
“Yeah. See you.”
Exchanging those brief words, we parted ways, each heading home.
Maigetsu