Fuyou Aya does not have a father.
Her parents divorced when she was in the elementary grade and was then raised fatherless.
Her mother worked in an average company and also held an average position there, thus she was often late back home. To raise her precious daughter alone, she worked even harder than before. To let her go to a good school, to let her get good education, to buy good things for her.
To do all that, she had no choice but to work. From early morning, till late night. And that not painful for her either. For her precious daughter, Aya’s mother believed she could work as hard as possible.
But in doing that obviously, Aya had to spend much of her time alone. The discord between her parents. Quarrels everyday, harsh words, and the fact that they discord had a great effect on Aya’s mind and heart.
She even stopped talking much to her friends at school. ‘If I ended up fighting them, I’d lose even those friends’. As she started thinking like that, she started feeling fear of even trying to enter a circle of friends thinking she might anger them by saying something weird.
To speak simply, she shut herself away within herself.
Her mother did not realize that because she was looking more towards her daughter’s future than her present. And Aya had been a clever girl from childhood. She ended up thinking that ‘if I made mother worry, I’ll only cause more trouble’.
She met her childhood friends Amagi Souichi and Yayoi 2 years after her parents divorced when they ended up coincidentally living in the apartment next to Aya’s. The Amagis had moved here due to their father’s job circumstances.
One day, Aya ended up returning home earlier than her mother. But on that day she had forgotten her keys inside her own room. While sitting in front of her own apartment unable to enter, she met the Amagi siblings.
The boy known as Amagi Souichi doesn’t doubt people much. He could be called a naturally good person but from an adult’s point of view, his personality could be called dangerous. The place where Aya and Souichi lived was comparatively a safe place but it wasn’t like dangerous people didn’t live there. Souichi’s personality was dangerous enough that he might get easily lured with the temptation of candies by some suspicious person.
His sister Yayoi was better in that regards. From their parent’s point of view, they felt that the position of the brother and younger sister might actually be the opposite. But still though, Souichi was the older brother and Yayoi was the younger sister.
When Yayoi was in trouble, Souichi would be by her side. When she wanted something, the brother would always be the tolerant one. Whether it be sweets, or toys. If Yayoi could smile just by Souichi enduring instead, that was enough for Souichi. He was happy with that. Aya was a single child so she was always jealous of those two’s relationship. The reason why she was able to get close to the Amagi siblings so quickly was probably because she saw Souichi closely and could understand him.
On the day she forgot her keys as well, without any doubt, he invited Aya into his own room.
They ate sweets together, drank juice, played games. And after that got scolded somewhat by his parents, though he still doesn’t know why even now. That’s because he simply believes that if a person is in trouble he has to help that person.
Aya found that natural belief of his to be too dazzling. She didn’t have a father. Her mother wasn’t home most of the time either due to work. It was probably inevitable that she got close to the Amagi siblings.
Maybe because Souichi had a timid and soft hearted personality, Aya ended up developing a strong personality. By the time they were in the upper grades of elementary school, she started pulling Souichi around with Yayoi everywhere with her.
Souichi and Yayoi’s parents also found the children’s relationship to be a happy thing. Her friends in school also increased. After that, Aya became prettier than most of the girls her age. Not cuter but prettier. Maybe because her mother was also a beauty, she must have inherited it in her genes. But that didn’t mean that she gathered over attention.
Due to her parent’s divorce, Aya had become more sensitive towards the subtleties of human relationships. Avoiding anything that might make others hold jealousy towards her, she lived keeping her surroundings in check. It was an unconscious way to avoid getting herself hated by others but thanks to that, she was able to make a lot of friends.
Especially, the one who opened Aya’s heart was Souichi’s father. Maybe because she didn’t have a father, Aya might be overlapping Souichi’s father as [her own father] as well.
But, the one who didn’t like that relation was Aya’s mother. She worked hard for her daughter, earned a lot money for her only to see her daughter’s face. But the one her daughter smiled towards was not her but a neighbour who was practically a nobody.