Chapter 12 – Autumn (Part 4)
Autumn, Part 4
Novel Title: ツァイガルニクの恋の沼 (Zeigarnik’s Love Swamp)
Author：月村奎著 (Tsukimura Kei)
Illustrator：志水ゆき (Shimizu Yuki)
Translator: K (@kin0monogatari)
Protagonists: 市川春音 (Ichikawa Harune -MC) & 二ノ宮航輝 (Ninomiya Kouki -ML)
*Please read at universalnovel.com, the original site of translation. TQ*
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When Harune opened up the hoodie, there was a juice stain right in the middle of his chest.
“This is bad.”
He hurried to fill the sink with water and soaked it with bleach. Juice stains can be tricky, but would it come out?
While letting it soak, he opened his mail. Most of it was junk mail and bills. The largest envelope was a sample copy of an autumn/winter knitting book, featuring a few items Harune had made.
Flipping through it, he stopped at a page with one of his own creations—an understated crew neck, knit with two types of yarn that had different textures. It was one of Harune’s favourite pieces.
If the stain on the hoodie doesn’t come out, maybe he could offer this sweater as a replacement.
Harune had always thought giving a sweater as a gift was a bad idea due to past trauma, but as a thank-you for the prototype stool, and if he framed it as just another test piece, it wouldn’t come off the wrong way, would it?
He pictured Hinako’s face—an easygoing woman who made such beautiful pottery. If she really was Kouki’s girlfriend, his cupboards would probably soon be filled with her works.
Even if there was no place for Harune in Kouki’s life, could he at least carve out a small space, as tiny as a single sweater?
Harune pulled out the same yarn from his inventory and transferred it into a rattan basket.
Every time he pulled the yarn from the centre of a new skein, it gave him a small thrill of excitement.
He had already knit this pattern once, so his hands naturally remembered the tension. The previous one had been a size M for the book, but this time he chose the pattern for size LL and went up one needle size to start knitting.
After about thirty minutes, he finished the ribbing for the neck and went to check on the hoodie in the bathroom. Seeing the stain still there, he felt more exasperated than disappointed.
After spinning the hoodie in the dryer, he hung it to dry and returned to his knitting.
As his fingers moved, he became more and more focused. Harune loved the meditative state that knitting brought him, where he could concentrate solely on the rhythm his fingers made. While he enjoyed the noisy time spent creating with customers in the workshop, there was nothing like the irreplaceable solitude of knitting alone.
From time to time, he’d find himself imagining Kouki wearing the finished sweater, only to quickly shake that thought away.
This was nothing more than an apology for the ruined hoodie, a simple test piece. Don’t overthink it.
Pushing those unnecessary thoughts away, Harune kept knitting until late into the night.
***
The stool Kouki delivered, as promised, was well-received by the participants in the workshop.
“It’s surprising that it’s more comfortable without a backrest.”
“Even though it’s made of wood, it doesn’t hurt to sit on, and it’s easy to get up from.”
The stool became a conversation starter, proving to be quite useful.
Later, while stacking the chairs for cleaning in the closed store, Harune once again felt soothed by the soft texture of the wood. He marvelled at the power of something handmade from natural materials. Even the act of putting things away felt uplifting.
Surrounding yourself with things you love isn’t just about style or showing off.
The more you love something, the more you take care of it, and just touching it can give you energy. It made even the chore of tidying up enjoyable. This naturally led to a more mindful way of living, brightening his spirits.
As he tidied up, Harune recalled how he had ended up leaving his previous job.
He had enjoyed his work as a pattern maker. He’d been recognized for his knitting skills and design sense, and even entrusted with creating detailed accessories and prototypes. It had been fun and rewarding.
But the rise of fast fashion pushed him into working for a new, lower-priced brand, and that’s when a sense of helplessness began to set in.
It wasn’t a bad thing for trendy, stylish clothes to be accessible at affordable prices. Harune himself wore fast fashion daily and enjoyed its benefits.
However, as a creator, he was no longer able to invest in the fine details he cared about, and seeing his creations consumed and discarded in such a short time was heartbreaking.
It was around that time when Natsuno had told Harune she wanted to close down the Ichikawa Thread Shop.
Some colleagues had left to start their own brands, but Harune had neither the clear vision nor ambition for that. He just wanted to take his time savouring the vague things he loved, instead of being worn down by the constant pressure of trends. He didn’t have the desire to make something new; he simply wanted to drift among the things he enjoyed. Luckily, he had the chance to inherit an environment where he could do just that.
It might be a bit indulgent, relying on others like this, but Harune understood why his sister was worried about what he planned to do with the store in the rundown shopping district.
Still, he was glad he had come back. After spending about ten years in Tokyo, including his student days, he realised that life in this town suited him much better. The people who came to the craft store all loved making things by hand, and they searched for fabrics and yarn with a deep sense of attachment.
Honestly, ready-made clothes and knits were much cheaper, and there were plenty of fashionable options. But Harune admired people who took the time to make things by hand, and he wanted to turn the store into a place that would make that experience even more enjoyable for them.
He had remodelled part of the store to make it more inviting, not only for die-hard crafting fans but also for people who were unfamiliar with handmade work. This meant he had to reorganise some of the shelves holding old inventory. However, he didn’t want to discard a single item.
Instead, he combined discontinued yarns and shell buttons to create an original, retro pouch kit, which had been well received. As he sorted through the buttons to make more of those kits, Kouki showed up for the first time in five days.
“Hey, still working?”
Whenever Kouki entered, the store’s atmosphere always changed. His presence, as a large man out of place in the small craft store, made the already narrow space feel even more cramped. That was probably half of it. The other half was, no doubt, due to Harune’s own feelings—a mix of fluttering excitement and an odd sense of unease. The air in the store seemed to fizz like carbonated water, making Harune’s heart swell when he breathed it in.
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*Translator’s Note: I don’t knit, but I sew. So I understand the joy of solitude too. It always managed to calm me down. -K
Next update: 2026.06.18
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