I couldn’t quite settle down.
Sitting at the kotatsu with my legs tucked in, I checked the clock in the living room. Two hours until dinner.

It was the house I had grown up in, and yet ten years away had made it feel strangely unfamiliar — like stepping into a place that only resembled my memory of it.

My younger sister, who had bought a small house nearby a couple of years ago, had her first baby last month. My nephew.
I hadn’t planned on visiting today, but when I casually mentioned the news to my girlfriend, she said — as if it were obvious — “So you’ll go home soon, right?”
Only then did it occur to me that this might be what people normally do.

Seeing my nephew for the first time didn’t spark anything in particular. Just someone else’s baby. Nothing more, nothing less.
Out of courtesy, I made a silly face and tried to entertain him. He didn’t react. He wasn’t interested in me either.
Maybe that meant we got along.

“Do you want to try bathing him? Only if you want to,” my sister asked, sliding open the paper door and peeking in.

“Not that I don’t want to… I’m just a little scared,” I said.
She left without a word. Our little ritual, completed on cue.

Then a thought drifted in.
A bath.

It seemed like a good way to pass the time until dinner, but they were probably about to bathe the baby. Which meant the bathroom was off-limits.

After some hesitation, I remembered the old public bathhouse I used to visit as a kid.
Back when my father still lived with us, he liked sento and would take me along.

I looked into the kitchen, where my mother was quietly preparing dinner.

“Hey, do you remember Hinode-yu, past the shopping street? Is it still there?”

She turned with a dish towel in her hand. “The shopping street?”

“No… I mean the bathhouse.”

“Oh, Hinode-yu. That takes me back.”

That takes me back usually means it’s gone, I thought.

“Why? Something about Hinode-yu?”

“If it were still open, I thought I might go. But I guess it’s probably gone by now…”

“Oh? Well, be careful.”

Be careful?
So it is still around?

“It’s still there?”
“You’re going, aren’t you?”
“Well… if it is.”
“…”
“So it’s still there?”
“Who knows.”

Talking to my mother always irritated me in this very specific way — and oddly enough, the fact that nothing had changed gave me a faint sense of comfort.
She looked smaller now, this woman who raised my sister and me alone after my father left.
If she was still herself, that was enough.

Then, with the triumphant tone of someone unveiling a brilliant idea no one had ever considered, she suddenly said:

“Oh! If you’re going to the shopping street, get those dorayaki for me. What were they called again…?”

“Buneidō?”

“Yes!”

I almost asked Is that place still open too? but stopped myself. Humans learn.

Still slightly irritated, I said, “Probably not,” and left the room.