Episode 38: Cigarettes, the Night Sea, and the Girl Next Door
“Is there anywhere you’d like to go?”
Yuno’s twentieth birthday.
We’d finished breakfast, and the two of us had somehow managed to polish off the burnt chiffon cake between us. Washing the dishes, I asked, more or less idly.
Beside me, Yuno gave a small “hmm,” brow furrowing, eyes tilting up toward the ceiling.
The gesture had something childlike about it.
“The sea, maybe.”
“The sea?”
“Mm, the night sea. I kind of want to go for a night drive.”
Caught off guard, my hands stilled on their own.
I’d assumed a twenty-year-old girl would want somewhere flashier. Shopping, or Mousey Land, that kind of thing. But Yuno just looked up at me with round, blinking eyes, tilting her head, puzzled.
She really is out of step with the world, somehow.
It’s probably because of the environment she grew up in. Thinking that, something in my chest grew slowly, dully heavy.
＊＊＊
After dinner, we left the apartment together.
The moment I opened the door, the thick, humid weight of the summer night air clung to my skin. I opened the door of the black foreign car parked in the lot and got Yuno settled into the passenger seat.
Once we were on the highway, Tokyo’s night view streamed past, beyond the glass.
Glancing sideways, Yuno had her cheek propped on one hand, gazing absently out the window. The night lights traced her profile in something soft, and for a moment she looked almost like a painting.
After a while, I noticed her gaze had turned toward me.
“What.”
“Reina, your profile’s pretty.”
“What’s that, out of nowhere.”
“Can I kiss you?”
“Of course not. I’m driving.”
“Just on the cheek?”
“That’s not the issue here.”
That coaxing voice made something deep in my chest throb, slow.
Without saying anything, I slid my left hand off the wheel and laid it against Yuno’s. She immediately wrapped both hands around mine and squeezed back.
＊＊＊
We reached the sea.
At a nearby convenience store, I picked up a non-alcoholic beer for myself, and a cherry chu-hai for Yuno.
We stepped down onto the sand, plastic bags in hand, and there wasn’t a single light anywhere.
Only the sound of footsteps on sand and the waves echoed in the darkness. We sat down together on the beach.
Pssh. Pssh.
The two sounds of pull-tabs being opened rang small in the quiet night.
We tapped the cans together lightly, and each took a sip.
My eyes gradually adjusted, and Yuno’s expression beside me came into view.
Facing the sea, she was staring fixedly at the waterline. Her profile looked, somehow, like she was somewhere far away.
“…Was a place like this really alright? I mean, there’s shopping, all kinds of other things…”
“Hm? The supermarket? We went there today.”
Still blank-faced, Yuno turned toward me.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, and couldn’t help laughing. She really is out of step with the world. And that out-of-stepness, somehow, only made her dearer to me.
Yuno’s mouth lifted, faintly embarrassed, and then she turned her gaze back to the sea.
“I like the night sea.”
She said it, quiet, as if dissolving into the sound of the waves.
“True. The atmosphere’s nice.”
For a while, only the sound of the waves continued.
“…Did you come to the night sea with the last big sis?”
“Mm, not with the last one. I used to come here a lot with the one before that.”
I felt, somehow, relieved that this wasn’t a place tied to memories of Saeko.
Yuno hugged her knees and traced her fingers slowly through the sand. The motion of those fingers was strangely sensuous, and I couldn’t look away.
“…Watching the waves kind of makes you feel like you could get pulled in.”
“Is that right?”
Yuno kept staring at the waterline, and laughed, faintly, with just the corner of her mouth.
“I used to think about it almost every day. Wanting to disappear, quickly. Every time someone brought me to the night sea, I used to think — maybe the waves would just carry me off, like this.”
At that one line, my heart gave a dull, heavy thud.
She took a sip of the cherry chu-hai and slowly turned to face me. Her wet eyes caught the night light and seemed, for a moment, to flash. She tilted her head slightly, lashes lowering, and went on.
“Lately, I don’t really think that anymore. Probably thanks to you, Reina. Thank you.”
She narrowed her drooping eyes and laughed, easy, then turned her gaze slowly back to the sea.
That smile was so light. So natural. And exactly because of that, it terrified me.
It really did look like she might get carried off by the waves and disappear.
This girl — does she actually believe she could melt into the sea? That thought crossed my mind.
Imagining the apartment, empty, with Yuno gone — it became unbearably frightening, and I stayed silent and gripped her hand, hard.
Yuno said nothing. She only laced her fingers through mine and squeezed back.
＊＊＊
By the time the can of beer was about half gone —
I pulled a cigarette box from my bag, put one to my lips, and lit it. In the darkness, only a small orange light flickered to life with a faint hiss. Yuno, chin propped on her hand, watched closely and said:
“Hey, does cigarette taste good?”
“More or less.”
“Give me one?”
“You’re too young for that.”
“Come on. I’m twenty now, aren’t I?”
She pursed her lips and stared at me steadily. The face was strangely cute, and I gave in and held one out.
Yuno put the cigarette lightly between her lips, clicked the lighter a few times, and lit it. Pinching it between two fingers, she drew the smoke in quietly. Then exhaled, slow and thin.
She didn’t cough.
Against her transparent, fragile look, the gesture suited her, strangely well.
“Maybe I’ll start smoking too.”
She said it, eyes somewhere far away. The languid way she held the cigarette, the shape of her mouth as she let the smoke out — something about it was oddly refined, and I couldn’t look away.
That profile looked, somehow, like it resembled someone.
“You should stop. It’s bad for you.”
“Ehh.”
Yuno pursed her lips lightly. I went on, quiet.
“…You’re good at it. Smoking.”
“I had some before, you know.”
“…From the last big sis?”
Before I knew it, I’d said it out loud.
Something deep in my chest throbbed, sharp. At the edge of my mind, Saeko’s face flickered past.
“…Yeah.”
Yuno answered only that, exhaling smoke after a small pause.
So it really was — . My heart gave a dull, aching groan, and something like a blow to the back of the head ran through me.
Was an afterimage of Saeko floating in Yuno’s head right now? The two of them, side by side, laughing together.
Thinking that made me unbearably irritated.
I wanted to overwrite all of it. Repaint every part.
I drew the cigarette smoke deep into my lungs, pulled Yuno’s shoulder toward me, and kissed her. As if exhaling the smoke directly into her mouth, I forced her teeth apart and pushed my tongue in.
“…kehh.”
Yuno choked. Brow furrowing, coughing, pained.
“Ugh, that was bitter~”
Even so, Yuno stuck her tongue out and laughed, wry and small.
“…Sorry.”
What am I doing.
Jealous, again. Pathetic.
“No, it’s fine — it tasted like you, Reina, somehow.”
Yuno said it, laughing it off like a joke.
That, if anything, filled my chest with an unspeakable guilt. But a black feeling large enough to smother even that guilt was already churning through my whole body.
In the quiet sound of the waves, my heart kept throbbing, dull and aching, again and again.