Ayumu Genno suggested that Hina Mizuno stay at his place. He wasn’t just being polite. He genuinely meant it. So even if Hina refused out of pride or something like that, he wouldn’t give up until she agreed.

“Mm, then I’ll be in your care, Ayumu-kun.”

Ayumu had never expected Hina to agree so directly. Her cheeks were bright red, though. She was probably just embarrassed. Even if he let her stay at his place tonight, that still wasn’t a real solution. She couldn’t keep living there forever. Besides, the two-bedroom, one-living-room, one-bath apartment he shared with his mother was only barely enough for two people. Adding a third wasn’t very realistic. So his plan was simple. First, get Hina out of the internet café. Then tonight, find a way to ask why she’d run away from home and sort out the details. After that, he could figure out a proper solution based on her actual situation. Of course, he had considered the worst-case scenario too—letting Hina stay at his place long-term. But for that, he’d still need Genno Eina’s opinion.

Hina didn’t have much with her. Just a few clothes and some daily necessities, by the look of it. Everything fit into a medium-sized suitcase. Then she took Ayumu to the front desk to check out of the private booth, where they ran into the staff member who had opened the door with the key earlier.

After being shouted down by Kameda, the front desk clerk had been badly shaken. Those guys had looked like trouble no matter how he saw it. He’d been hesitating over whether to call the police, but he was also afraid of retaliation. Now that he saw the girl looked fine, and was even checking out with a smile, he finally let out a sigh of relief. Hina wasn’t that petty, and she wasn’t going to hold a grudge against him either. For her right now, she was probably happy. Happy enough to forget the extra misfortune in her life.

On the way back, Ayumu took the suitcase from Hina’s hand on his own initiative. It had only been a casual act of courtesy, but it raised her affection for him again without him even realizing it.

Under the moonlight, Hina kept secretly glancing at Ayumu’s profile. She thought he was handsome, could cook, was considerate, gentle, and always made people feel safe. He was probably as close to perfect as a boy could get. But if that was the case, how had someone like him once been such a notorious delinquent?

“Ayumu-kun...” Hina started, then stopped.

“What is it? Something wrong?” Ayumu asked in confusion.

“You... why did you become a delinquent before?”

Hina hesitated a little, but in the end, she still asked. Ayumu froze for a moment after hearing the question. He suddenly realized that he’d been in this body for over a week already, yet he had never properly looked back on how he had become a delinquent in the first place.

He deliberately searched through the relevant memories and found that the reason actually wasn’t that complicated. It was just stupid. But he didn’t answer Hina right away. Instead, he used the chance to hear something from her that he wanted to know.

“Then why did you run away from home and choose to live in an internet café? Answer my question, and I’ll answer yours,” Ayumu said evenly.

He deliberately made it sound light, almost like a joke, trying his best not to touch Hina’s sensitive nerves. If he had asked that before today, it definitely would’ve made the sensitive Hina upset, maybe even angry. But now, Hina felt that no matter what Ayumu wanted to know, she would tell him everything.

“Ever since I was little, my father has hated that I was a girl. He always denied me—denied my existence, denied everything I did. And because of that, he often hit and kicked me.”

The moment she finished that first sentence, Ayumu knew this was going to be a heavy story. Son preference— even in the twenty-first century, it still wasn’t rare. In Japan, where women’s social status was low, it was especially common. But a father who actually laid hands on his own daughter like Hina’s did—that was already far beyond the line.

“What about your mother?” Ayumu asked.

“My father has a violent temper. If my mother dared to step in and plead for me, she’d get beaten together with me. Over time, she chose to ignore it.”

Good lord. Ayumu understood now. Hina’s father was a violent lunatic, and both Hina and her mother were victims of domestic abuse.

“Then why didn’t your mother take you and run? Like... get a divorce?” Ayumu asked carefully.

“Because my mother is a housewife who can’t do anything. If she divorced that man, she probably wouldn’t even be able to support me...”

Hina tried to look like she didn’t care at all, but the slight tremble in her voice gave her away. Ayumu understood that problem deeply. His own mother, Genno Eina, was a single mother. How hard that life was couldn’t be summed up in just a few words. And at the root of it all was still the low status of women in Japanese society.

In Japan, the proportion of married women who became housewives had long stayed close to fifty percent. It had dropped somewhat in recent years, but compared to other countries, the number was still absurdly high. Of the women who weren’t housewives, most mainly worked part-time. Only a very small portion had formal labor contracts. Since many Japanese employment contracts were based on lifetime employment, a lot of companies avoided signing women in the first place. And even when there were exceptions, what women gave and what they got often didn’t match. In a society like that, where economic power was held in men’s hands, how could women’s status possibly be taken seriously?

That was why, in Japan, even though domestic violence was legally recognized as a crime and the punishment could be quite severe, many women still wouldn’t call the police after suffering abuse. Instead, they chose to swallow it in silence. For housewives, divorce meant losing all financial support and having to struggle just to survive. In the eyes of many housewives, if suffering was unavoidable either way, then it was better to endure for now and keep the peace.

Ayumu recalled a Japanese drama Zhang Chufan had watched back in high school—We Married as a Job. It was about a girl with a graduate degree who still couldn’t find work, and in the end entered a “marriage contract” with a salaryman, treating housework as her profession. Then, through living together, the two gradually came to understand the true meaning of love. On the surface, it looked like a romantic comedy. But underneath, it also revealed the bloody social reality of how low women’s status was in Japan. That was why Ayumu truly admired Genno Eina for raising him all by herself.