Tsuma Ni Damatte Sokubaikai Ni Ikun Ja Nakatta ... -

I walked in the door. My wife was folding laundry. She looked at my empty hands (I left the bags in the garage). She looked at my guilty face.

The silence that followed was heavier than the shrimp lamp. I confessed everything. The lies. The drive. The robot vacuum that won’t stop trying to climb the wall.

Five hundred yen. That’s less than a convenience store onigiri.

I think I’ll keep her. And the lamp.

She didn’t yell. Worse—she sighed. That long, tired sigh of a woman who has married a man-child. Then she asked: “Did you at least get me anything?”

Last Sunday, it happened. A local electronics surplus sale. The kind of place where “unclaimed luggage,” “overstock from bankrupt factories,” and “slightly cursed robots” go to die. A flyer appeared in my social media feed at 2 AM. I was weak. I was foolish. And most damning of all—I decided not to tell my wife. I told her I was going for a “morning walk” to clear my head. She smiled, handed me a water bottle, and said, “Don’t buy anything stupid.”

I kissed her forehead, lied straight through my teeth, and drove 45 minutes to a convention center that smelled of regret and old dust. Tsuma ni Damatte Sokubaikai ni Ikun ja Nakatta ...

Just don’t tell her I’m going back next month. Next time, buy two mystery bags. One for you. One for her.

“Very… walk-like,” I said.

I told myself: Just looking. Just browsing. I am a responsible adult. Then I saw it. I walked in the door

The moment I walked in, I knew I was in trouble. Rows of tables. Blinking LEDs. A man selling “mystery boxes” of cables (none of which had the right connector). Another man with a table full of rice cookers that only sing in Cantonese.

But she did smile when the shrimp lamp arrived on the coffee table.

I hadn’t.