My mother lost my father at an early age and raised me and my younger brother on her own. It was two years ago that my mother was diagnosed with an illness. It happened just after I had passed the entrance exam for a university in Tokyo and had begun living alone. "You're hired. I'll help you in any way I can, so please ask me anything." Unable to give up on my dream of going to university, I started a part-time job. The man who treated me kindly, even though I was a shy person, was... a man with a wife and children.