Summary

In Chapter 26, Noriko was put on a minced diet because she had developed a tendency to choke. One night, Mitsuki received a call telling her that her mother was in the hospital with aspiration pneumonia. The doctor said that he was not sure if she would survive. On her way home later, Mitsuki remembered how she had not cut up Noriko’s sashimi from the night before very well and her mother had choked. Mitsuki learned that her mother had choked again at lunch. She had developed the fever and pneumonia that night. Mitsuki wondered if she was in a way responsible for her mother’s death.

Mitsuki looked up the disease on the Internet and learned that most cases of aspiration pneumonia started at night because the person could not cough while lying down. She felt that while she might have shortened...