Testtext
While showering, Maya had a habit of checking her own body. Jogging had been part of her daily routine, and she went to the gym regularly, so her overall shape hadn’t changed much. Even so, the curve of her waist was slowly fading, and her skin no longer had the youthful firmness it once did. Pinching the small fold of fat on her abdomen, she suddenly thought of Ayako—and felt a wave of loneliness.
Ayako had always been strangely fixated on Maya’s figure. It was Ayako’s constant nagging that had pushed her to start jogging and going to the gym in the first place.
It began around the time Maya changed jobs—from high-school teacher to office worker. “You’re getting a bit rounder, aren’t you?” Ayako would remark, just when Maya herself was starting to notice it. After Ayako became a fortune-teller, the comments grew more direct: You were born with natural beauty, you know. You have to keep a body that looks good in a fortune-teller’s costume! Annoying as those words were, Ayako often complimented her looks as well, so Maya had gone along quietly. Maybe she’d been perfectly conditioned—by a balance of whip and sugar.
