Episode 25 — Finally Under the Same Sky

The train sways. In time with it, the book-shaped strap on Shion’s phone sways too. Inside my bag, my phone carries its matching musical note strap.

That fact, hitting me belatedly, produces a ticklish warmth. A book and a musical note — as if we’d exchanged each other’s emblems.

Of course, Shion has no way of knowing I write novels, so it must have been coincidence.

I use that thought to desperately soothe my fluttering heartbeat.

And then, try as I might to look away from the thing insistently flickering in my field of vision — the source of the light sparkling and glittering in the reflected sun — I find I can’t ignore it. And in the end I ask Shion, beside me, who seems somehow in higher spirits than usual:

“Um — Shion.”
“What is it?”
“That — the thing stuck on the back of your phone — is that from the other day…?”
“Yeah, the purikura we took together.”

Indeed: Shion’s phone was entirely unprotected, no case to speak of, in its natural-born state — and across the back of that phone, a glittering printed sticker had been applied. Thoroughly, comprehensively applied. Applied to a degree that made it clear that removing it cleanly would be quite impossible.

And yet Shion seemed utterly unbothered by the irreversibility — if anything she was gazing at it with evident delight.

“I think that’s meant to go inside a case or something, not stuck directly on…”

Even my far-too-late observation was met without a flinch.

“Is it? But this is what makes me happiest.”

She expresses her happiness in a straight line, untroubled.

I’m caught between the feeling of well, if Shion’s happy, that’s fine and the awareness that it isn’t quite that simple. Unable to bear the tension, I venture, carefully:

“Why that photo?”

Because Shion, of all the photos available, had stuck the very last one — the hugging purikura — to her phone.

Just seeing that photo vividly recalled the sensation and embarrassment of the moment, and it was extremely bad for my heart. Already having my heartbeat disrupted by Shion’s every move — if constant visible embarrassment was to be added permanently to my field of vision, no number of hearts would be sufficient.

That pressing concern was the source of the question. Shion answered with matter-of-fact calm, as if it were nothing:

“I realised something recently.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“That I like hugging you, Uta.”
“…Huh?”
“You’re not just warm in your words — your body temperature is warm too. Hugging you makes me feel safe. I learned for the first time that warmth makes you feel safe. So I’m glad to have a memory like that somewhere I can see it any time.”

As she said it, Shion stroked the purikura stuck to her phone. As if cherishing it.

That alone was enough to make my spine prickle, as though my heart had been stroked directly. Breathing became difficult.

“That’s — good.”

I managed to murmur only that, with everything I had. Words had long since evaporated entirely.

But that alone wasn’t enough to stop Shion.

“It’s all right.”
“What?”
“Because there are photos other than the hug one too.”

Said like a small child showing something to their mother — with a certain pride about it — Shion turned the phone screen toward me.

“I made it so I can see photos other than the hug one too.”

What appeared in my field of vision, alongside those words, was: the purikura of Shion making a perfect peace sign and me failing to make one — set as the lock screen of Shion’s phone.

And on closer inspection, rather than having imported the data, she’d just photographed the sticker print directly. Setting aside the moment of finding that endearing in its clumsiness — this was no time for that.

“Th-that might not be all right either.”

Primarily my heart.

I was wilting, my fighting spirit entirely dissolved, when Shion tilted her head with a look of puzzlement. Even that gesture was adorable and genuinely terrifying. That she could stir someone’s heart this relentlessly, with so little variation in expression — I began to suspect that angels and devils might actually share the same face.

Of course, my suffering had no way of reaching Shion. Words are the only channel through which feelings can be transmitted. And Shion exercises that right, given to all of us, as naturally as breathing.

“I’m all right now. Because I can see our memories somewhere within reach, any time I want — even during the days I couldn’t see you, however hard the lessons were, I was able to stay all right.”

While I was still absorbing the force of those words arriving one after another — the train was slowing. The station where we part, almost here.

Like a period placed at the end of a sentence, Shion said:

“Having a friend is good, isn’t it. Because you’re not lonely.”