Episode 4 — A Sound Without a Name

Great update as always! A piano duet — how lovely. Your writing feels like it’s cut straight from reality, the sense of being there is so vivid, and every time I read it I think: I love this. Your novel makes me feel like I can keep going!

I read Otonashi-san’s comment from yesterday over again as I walk the corridor of the old building. Getting too excited about reader feedback doesn’t feel very cool, I know — but happy is happy, and there’s nothing I can do about it. The fact that something I thought was beautiful, a scene I felt was worth capturing, actually reached someone — that leaves a warmth in my chest I can’t argue with.

She is so beautiful that words genuinely cannot do her justice, and I’m still wrestling with that — the frustration of it, the sense of my own inadequacy — but if even a fragment of it has come through to Otonashi-san, that’s more than enough.

Come to think of it — she has remained she all this time, which I find I rather like, actually; it fits the enigmatic atmosphere around her — but I still haven’t asked her name. I introduced myself, unilaterally, and was essentially ignored, and that was that.

What kind of name does she have, I wonder. I can’t begin to guess — but whatever it is, I know I’ll think it’s wonderful.

From the grounds, the calls of sports clubs. From the main building, the individual practice of the wind ensemble. From the gym, the squeak of shoes on the floor. The old building, wrapped in a stillness that throws into relief every strand of somebody else’s youth. I crossed to the far end, aimed at a single sound, and opened the music room door.

She was there again today. Sitting at the piano, looking at her phone screen. She noticed me and, flustered, hid the phone quickly — placed it face-down on the music stand and came toward me. Even that small flurried motion, my brain filed away as something beautiful, and my heart was loud and inconvenient about it.

“You came again today.”

Her voice, clear as a bell, set my eardrums trembling. A voice is impossible to convey faithfully in writing — I thought, not for the first time, what an inadequate world I inhabit. I envied her, just slightly, for being able to communicate everything through sound.

“I came.”
“Why?”

She tilted her head. Why? Why indeed. To write? No — that’s the wrong order. I didn’t come here to write. I came because I want to preserve her beauty, want to preserve the feelings that stir in me when I’m near it — and because of that, I write.

When I work through it carefully, pare it back piece by piece, there is only one thing left.

“Because I wanted to see you.”

The words fell out quietly, and then — my heart began to race. Embarrassment and something like regret surged up from somewhere deep inside, colouring my cheeks. I looked away from her, the very person I’d wanted so much to see. I couldn’t meet the beam of those violet-indigo eyes straight on.

My heart was too loud for the sounds from the grounds or the gym to reach me.

And yet her voice — only hers — slipped through clearly.

“…Is that so.”

A brief, mild response. My heart lurched into freefall — but then there was more.

“What was your name again?”
“Ogawa Uta. But—”
“Right…”

She repeated the same soft reply, fell quiet, as if turning something over in her mind, and then:

“I’m Kanzaki Shion.”

The name she offered so quietly — it was unmistakably hers. I looked at those violet-indigo eyes before me, my heart burning up in their beam, and knew it: yes, that’s her name.

“…It’s a beautiful name.”

My hopelessly ordinary comment made her drop her gaze, and she murmured, with a trace of sadness:

“I don’t like it. This name. For the sound to have a bond with violet — something like that. It feels like a curse.”¹

A curse. Kanzaki-san’s words landed heavily. Whatever pain lay behind them, it was something I could never fully reach — but I wanted to try. Even a little, I wanted to be alongside it.

So I offered a small piece of myself.

“I understand that feeling. My name — 詩, uta — it’s the character for ‘poem,’ read as a song. My mother got too deep into literature. Feeling like your way of living has been decided for you before you began — that kind of breathlessness — I know something of it, I think…”

Probably a far smaller, far more ordinary version of whatever burden Kanzaki-san carries. I was just starting to feel embarrassed by the mismatch when:

“Thank you. But I think it’s lovely. Uta as a name.”

And with that, Kanzaki-san smiled softly. Even her smile was composed and beautiful — and the small crinkle at the corners of her eyes, that little yielding — it was dear.

My own name, which I’d always found irksome. Hearing Kanzaki-san say that was enough to make me feel differently about it. I’d wanted to offer comfort, and I was the one who received it.

I was still trying to absorb everything Kanzaki-san had given me, still searching for words, when she took one step toward me. The glow of those eyes, the pale translucent skin, the lustrous silver hair, the faint sweet scent of her — all of it set my heart clamouring.

Layering her words over my heartbeat, she whispered:

“From now on, I’ll play piano for you. So watch me. Listen to my sound.”

Her name ‘Shion (紫音)’ is, literally, violet sound. 紫 (shi / murasaki) means “violet / purple,” and 音 (on / ne) means “sound.” Both girls are named for the very thing they’re trying to escape: Uta for poetry, Shion for music. ↩