Polly Barton

“One day, out of the blue, they just became too much. The faces of people who thought nothing of making endless demands, of being constantly given things. The way they sat at the table simply waiting to be served, not lifting a finger. Their certainty that they would be taken care of, without even having to try. I began, in an instant, to hate them. I couldn't be bothered to buy seasonal ingredients, prepare them, cook, choose the plates, serve up the food, then clear away the dishes and wash up for people like that. When I stopped being in touch, when I stopped doing the housework and the cooking, they panicked. Some of them became hyper-suspicious and their behavior took on a stalkerish air. Some of them, after returning to life alone, began neglecting themselves, and suffered physically as a result. Like babies, all of them, whose mother had ceased looking after them. It's odd, isn't it? Once I had found their incompetence, their reliance on me adorable. I believed, up until that point, that I liked pleasing them. Yet I suddenly saw that it was always just me, working away frenziedly, all alone."
Rika didn't fail to notice the slightest change in Kajii's expression, the note of sorrow that went sliding across her peach-hued face.
"Don't get the wrong idea. I like serving men and giving them pleasure. Women who don't don't deserve the name. But being with just one man, a changeable woman like me gets bored."
"And yet you haven't given up looking for a marriage partner?"
"It's just that I haven't met the right person yet."
"I feel like what you're saying isn't---"
"Cooking is enjoyable, but the moment it becomes a duty, it grows boring. The same is true of sex, and fashion, and beauty. When you're forced to do something, it becomes a chore, and the pleasure disappears."
Rick's body felt heavy. She knew this was important, and yet she couldn't bring herself to ask a question.
"The kind of wife that the men on those sites are looking for is, at base, a woman with no sense of life about her. Their ideal partner would be a kind of ghost."
It wasn't at all hot in the room, and yet Rika's armpits were slick with lukewarm sweat. Even the gap between her sleeves and her wrists felt clammy.
"The quickest way for a modern Japanese woman to gain the love of a man is to become corpse-like. The kind of men who want those women dead are dead themselves. Indeed, it's because they're dead that they're so terrified of anyone with a sense of life about them. If those men hadn't met me, if I hadn't rejected them, they'd quite probably have died anyway. They were never really here to begin with.”
― Polly Barton, Butter