Then, in his sixth year with the company.
The young woman he met at a client company he was sent to as an emergency pinch-hitter when his superior, who was in charge of the job, ended up being hospitalized due to a sudden illness.
The girl, who still had traces of immaturity, was in her second year with the company and seemed to attend the meeting as someone in charge of miscellaneous tasks, but for some reason, there was something in her that attracted me to her from our first meeting.
She was by no means a beauty.
Her characteristics were her black hair and slender figure, and although she was fair-skinned, she had a slender face, one with double-folded eyes, a small nose and mouth.
Unassuming and inconspicuous, she was a very plain and quiet type of woman.
Yuu had never had much experience with women before, but at that moment, he persistently pursued her.
After the third meeting, he secretly obtained her contact information.
When he asked her out on a date after work from time to time, she never refused, so it increased his confidence.
He got closer to her little by little, and on Friday night, on the way home after drinking together, he received an OK reply from her on his courtship.
Two months later, he had his first kiss with her on the way home from a date at a famous amusement park at her request.
However, as there was also the fact that Yuu himself had no experience other than in the sex industry, things did not lead to sexual intercourse.
Even so, a little over a year since they started dating.
When Yuu was 29 years old and she was 25 years old, they got married.
Looking back, for Yuu, that was probably the peak period of his life.
The reason why she did not agree to have sex with him even though he often asked her out.
It was because she was someone who followed the idea of wishing to keep her chastity until marriage, which was rare nowadays.
Yuu, who had thought that it was normal for a woman in her mid-twenties to be non-virgin, was delighted.
For most men, being a woman's first partner was something they longed for.
However, having been a virgin until that age, she also had a very negative view of sexual intercourse.
In addition to the trauma of the considerable pain she experienced on their bridal night, it was difficult for Yuu, who had zero experience with amateurs, to give pleasure to her mind and body.
As a result, their nighttime marital life ending being very poor could only be described as an inevitability.
His wife was still in her mid-twenties.
Respecting his wife's desire to continue working, contraception became the norm during the few times they had sex.
There was no need to rush.
From what he had heard from a married senior employee, having a child would add a tremendous sum to their expenses.
Besides, their new house was a rented apartment, but owning their own house, whether it be a detached house or a condominium, would be ideal.
In order to achieve it, they would like to save as much money as possible while both of them were still able to work.
Neither of the husband and the wife had any fancy hobbies, so by the time the wife turned 30, they should be able to save up a good amount of money.
The Yuu of that time had no doubt in his belief that a future with a chaste wife and a cute child, surrounded by modest happiness, was waiting for him.
Third year of their marriage.
Saying, 「I'm getting busy with work」, his wife started coming home late and acting distant from him.
She also began to reject him at night, saying that she was tired.
When Yuu could not stand it any longer and pressed his wife before the vacations, he ended up being bluntly told off by his wife who became emotional, 「I don't want to!」
When she further added, 「You are a man, so if you want to do it so badly, why don't you relieve it by yourself?」, he was at a loss for words.
Even so, Yuu, who loved his wife, respected her wishes rather than becoming emotional right then and there.
Eventually, at the same time as when he came to realize that his wife, who started wearing clothes he had never seen before and going out alone during her day off, had lost her affection for him, he began to suspect that she was cheating on him.
Though, Yuu, who deep down wished to believe his wife, was unable to even question her and, after thoroughly mulling over it, decided to take a wait and see stance for the time being.
What crushed Yuu's hopes was the few words coldly said by his wife when she came home on a certain evening.
「Please divorce me.」
At the same time, he had a green-colored piece of paper presented to him.
Spread in front of him was an official divorce registration paper with the wife's column having been filled out and sealed.
His wife readily admitted that she had been unfaithful.
She did not reveal the name of the person with whom she was having an affair, but with an exuberant expression he had never seen on her face, she told him that she had awakened to true love with someone she had met through her work after the marriage.
In the event of divorce, the side who was at fault would be obliged to pay alimony, but his wife was reluctant to admit that the fault was hers.
Ultimately, Yuu was devastated by the words she said in the end, 「Actually, I never really wanted to marry someone like you」.
He realized that he would no longer be able to win his wife's heart back, but, even so, he was determined to make the right and wrong clear.
Relying on his connections, he managed to get a lawyer, and a month later, after somehow managing to receive alimony, the divorce was finalized.
His wife had already moved out of the apartment and they were living separately.
The account to which his wife's salary was deposited had been reduced considerably, perhaps because she had spent it on her affair with her partner, or perhaps because she had spent it to support him, so the amount he received was lower than the market price, but Yuu's heart was wearing out as it dragged on longer, so he had no wish to demand any more than that.
The year after the divorce, the company decided to do a drastic restructuring as their performance deteriorated due to the prolonged publishing recession, and although Yuu did not lose his job, he was transferred to an associated company.
As the industry remained the same, their financial situation being severe was the same everywhere, and in spite of him receiving no raise in his salary, his work hours alone increased.
After less than two years, the new company went bankrupt as the president ran away in the night.
In his mid-thirties, Yuu ended up having to do job hunting in order to find new employment.
Since he was in a position where he could no longer afford to ask for too much, he went to all the job interviews he could find, but none of them were willing to hire him, as he had no useful qualifications or specialties worth mentioning.
Three months passed as he looked for a job while receiving unemployment insurance.
In the end, the employment he was accepted into was care worker, a new type of 3K job, which always had a shortage of workers.
It was a job as a nursing assistant at a senior citizen's home in the northern part of Tokyo.
The pay was much lower, but the work was hard and the hours were also long. As he surmised that the reason why there was a gap between the job description he had been told beforehand and in practice was also due to the labor shortage in this industry, he ended up getting convinced of the blackness of the job.
Even so, he could not afford to quit, and after continuously working for nearly five years, he had ended up becoming accustomed to being yelled at by the younger workers as well as the elderly.
It could be said that his emotion had gone numb.
He had come to the conclusion that this was a job you could not keep on doing while maintaining a sane mind.
Having been able to find a new employment, he also started to look for a marriage the following year.
His parent had not said anything to him in particular since the divorce, but he was in his mid-thirties, so it was still too soon for him to give up on marriage.