The oven that had been sitting on the kitchen counter flew out in an instant, slammed heavily into the wall tiles opposite, then rolled to the floor.
Crash, clatter.
The tempered-glass door on the front of the oven shattered at once, and its black metal casing was badly deformed.
Saionji Mina’s eyes went wide.
Her mouth hung slightly open, and both hands were pressed to her chest.
By all common sense, she should have been afraid right now. She should have screamed. She should have denounced this man who had trespassed into her home and destroyed her property.
But she didn’t.
A shudder like an electric current shot from her tailbone straight to the crown of her head.
It was the ultimate pleasure of a desire for destruction being satisfied…
Smashing all these unpleasant things to pieces—this was a scene she had fantasized about countless times in that lifeless office, whenever she faced her superior’s fault-finding and unreasonable demands.
She had simply never dared to put it into action.
And now, someone had done it for her.
Exhilarating!
Absolutely exhilarating!
This rush was a hundred times stronger than the first sip of ice-cold beer at an izakaya.
But…
A piercing, high-frequency noise echoed through the cramped apartment, as if drilling into a person’s eardrums.
This smoke alarm really didn’t know how to read the room.
What need was there for something like this to exist?
Kiryu Kazusuke raised his head and stared at the white disk flashing with a red light. “It’s noisy, don’t you think?”
This cheap thing installed just to pass fire inspections was absurdly sensitive.
If it were any other time, Saionji Mina would probably have hurriedly found a stool to stand on and pressed the reset button, or grabbed a magazine and fanned like mad to disperse the smoke.
After all, sometimes even when the steam from boiling noodles got a little too thick, it would start shrieking.
Saionji Mina looked at his expressionless face, then glanced at the alarm that was still howling.
Was he going to keep going?
No?
Yes?
Of course yes!
And so, Saionji Mina did not go get a stool, nor did she look for a magazine. She simply nodded hard.
Kiryu Kazusuke wasted no words either.
He glanced left and right, then picked up a metal folding chair from the corner.
The muscles in his arm tensed, and his strength erupted in an instant.
Bang—
The metal back of the chair smashed hard into the alarm on the ceiling.
Its plastic casing burst apart at once, white fragments scattering like snowflakes.
The piercing alarm cut off abruptly.
Quiet. The world was quiet.
Saionji Mina felt her heart pounding violently in her chest.
Just a few minutes ago, she had still been fretting over how to deal with this broken oven, still panicking over whether the alarm would disturb the neighbors.
And now, none of that existed anymore.
Kiryu Kazusuke tossed the somewhat warped folding chair aside.
“Is there anything else that needs dealing with?”
His gaze swept around the room, finally landing on the CRT television that didn’t look all that old.
“Huh?”
Saionji Mina still hadn’t quite come back to her senses. When she followed Kiryu Kazusuke’s gaze and looked over, she was instantly startled.
“No! Not that!”
She hurriedly shook her head like a rattle-drum, and quickly put herself in front of the television.
She had spent more than half a month’s salary buying that. Although big widescreen TVs were all the rage now, she still had to rely on this to keep up with the new dramas currently popular on TV.
If that got smashed, she would cry herself to death. The kind where she really would die.
“There’s no need to trouble you, thank you very much!”
She hurriedly added this, afraid that if she was even a second too slow, her home would be reduced to ruins.
“Fine.”
Kiryu Kazusuke didn’t insist. After all, it wasn’t as if he was some violent maniac.
He glanced at the wall clock. It was about time.
There was still half an hour before he had to take over the night shift.
Although it wasn’t far from here to Gunma University Hospital, considering he still had to grab dinner on the way, time was already tight.
If he didn’t hurry, and the supervising physician caught him being late, a scolding would be unavoidable.
Kiryu Kazusuke turned and walked toward the entryway. “Since it’s fine now, clean up on your own.”
Saionji Mina looked at the mess all over the floor.
The smashed oven, the shattered alarm, and the blackened pizza remains scattered everywhere.
In the past, if she had seen a scene like this, she definitely would have broken down and thought herself useless, incapable of even making a meal properly.
But now, she only felt refreshed.
Admittedly, in Japan, disposing of this kind of discarded home appliance classified as “oversized garbage” was an extremely troublesome matter.
Not only did one have to call the ward office to schedule a collection time, one also had to go to a convenience store to buy an “oversized garbage disposal ticket” costing several hundred yen and stick it on, then carry the item downstairs to the designated spot on the morning of the specified date.
But so what?
It was worth it.
Saionji Mina hurriedly bowed. “Ah, okay… take care.”
Kiryu Kazusuke pulled open the door and walked out.
The cold wind in the corridor blew over, cooling his slightly heated mind a little.
He walked to the stairwell and was just about to head downstairs.
“Wait a moment.”
But Saionji Mina’s voice suddenly called out from behind him.
She had chased after him and stood in the doorway, both hands gripping the doorframe, most of her body still inside.
Clearly, she was still not very used to taking the initiative to call out to a strange man like this.
“Something else?”
Kiryu Kazusuke stopped and looked back.
Surely she didn’t want him to help deal with that smashed garbage, did she?
Or was she going to talk about compensation for the oven and the alarm?
Saionji Mina took a deep breath.
Although this doctor neighbor was only wearing an ordinary hoodie and looked perfectly ordinary, in that instant earlier, the sight of him kicking the oven flying had simply been unbelievably cool.
Ten thousand times better than those colleagues at City Hall who only knew how to lick their bosses’ shoes.
“Um…”
“My name is Saionji Mina. I’m twenty-four years old, unmarried, and I work in the Citizens’ Affairs Division at City Hall. I go to bed at eleven at night and get up at seven in the morning. My recent health checkup also showed that I’m completely normal.”
“That day…”
“And today, too. Thank you very much!”
After saying that, she bowed deeply.
If they still didn’t exchange names at a time like this, then they really would only be strangers who had passed each other by.
She didn’t want that.
In Maebashi, she had no friends at all. She had already been lonely for a very long time.
Kiryu Kazusuke looked at her.
She wasn’t asking him for help, nor was she asking for money. That was good.
A civil servant at City Hall—now that was a stable job. Though the pay wasn’t high, in an economic downturn like this, it was already an iron rice bowl many people envied.
“Kiryu Kazusuke.”
“Resident physician in the First Department of Surgery, Gunma University Hospital.”
After saying that, he said nothing more and turned, quickly making his way down the stairs.
Only after Kiryu Kazusuke’s figure had completely disappeared did Saionji Mina close the door.
She pressed her back tightly against it, both hands on her chest as she tried to soothe her heart, which was still thumping wildly.
“Doctor Kiryu…”
“Kiryu Kazusuke…”
She murmured the name softly.
How interesting.
When Saionji Mina looked back toward the kitchen, at the now-empty space on the counter, she suddenly found it much more pleasing to the eye.