It was an ordinary day, 

A day when the sun rose as usual. 

The morning air was filled with the chirping of Japanese white-eye birds outside my small window. 

Getting out of bed was a struggle, my body heavy and unwilling to move. 

I opened the rice cooker, but with no appetite I closed it again. 

The familiar stillness of the house felt suffocating. 

It was a monotonous, exhausting day. 

For a moment I considered staying inside, but the thought of being suffocated by boredom made me shake my head. 

I took a warm bath. 

Even though it was summer and I hated wasting boiler oil, I couldn’t bring myself to wash with cold water. 

As I got older, sleep became harder to come by. Tossing and turning through the night left my body damp and sticky in the morning. To make matters worse, despite frequent bathing, my ageing body seemed to be giving off an unpleasant odour far too quickly. 

The realisation that I smelled bad was a shock I could hardly describe. It wasn’t the familiar, fresh scent of the southern sea breeze I’d known all my life. 

And so, almost out of habit, as a ritual, or perhaps as a form of atonement, I washed myself carefully. 

The body that had once been lean and flexible in my youth had gradually become old and heavy, like a worn sandbag. 

Yet, it was the body I had lived with for seventy years—a precious part of who I was. 

Seventy years. 

I could hardly believe I had lived for so long. 

The moments that once seemed to drag me forward with frustratingly slow steps have now passed without a trace, as if they had never been there. Time has disappeared so completely that I cannot even see its shadow. 

I stepped out of the bathroom, dried off and got dressed. The old, worn clothes I always wore – washed every day, but still carrying my scent – wrapped around me like a second skin. 

When was the last time I bought new clothes? Or had I ever even owned any? 

I briefly glanced at the box on top of the wardrobe before quickly looking away. 

Standing in front of the mirror, I studied my face—familiar, yet somehow foreign—and quickly fixed my now snow-white hair. That’s when my phone rang. 

Ah, a phone call! How long had it been since someone called me? 

I couldn’t remember where I had left my phone, and for a moment, a wave of confusion clouded my mind. I forced myself to concentrate and scanned the room. 

Luckily, the phone was tucked inside my old handbag. 

I rushed over, dug through the bag, and found the phone. 

Could it be my daughter? 

But the name on the screen wasn’t hers – it was my granddaughter.