Episode 33 — Studying

Walking the corridor toward the music room, I scroll back through the reactions to yesterday’s novel update. The post was late, so there were fewer responses than usual — but Otonashi-san had, as always, been first to comment.

“The lyrics of BELIEVE might be the heroine’s feelings, put into words.” A comment whose true meaning was a little difficult to reach.

Otonashi-san sends me that kind of cryptic comment from time to time. She seems to have become deeply invested in the heroine — occasionally she’ll articulate emotional states I hadn’t even consciously considered myself.

Come to think of it, I’ve been in contact with Otonashi-san for almost a year now. I know nothing personal about her — not the reasons behind her attachment to the heroine, not a single piece of individual information. I wonder what kind of person she actually is?

I was thinking about that, belatedly, when I arrived at the music room.

And when I opened the door, there was Shion — as naturally as breathing — seated before the piano with her characteristic pensive expression, scattering beauty around her as always.

The moment she looked up and found me, it brightened in an instant. Her lips parted softly, and a transparent voice rang out. That alone was enough to colour my world.

“Good morning.”
“It’s already evening, though.”
“But for me, the day begins when I see you, Uta.”

Saying that — cheeks faintly flushed — she smiled softly. That alone was enough to make my heart, not softly at all, leap violently.

Shion seems more expressive than she used to be. The thought that I might be the reason for that is enough to make my face burn, so I’d rather not go there. It’s already the beginning of summer — a season for sweating — without that on top of it.

I seem to have become more imaginative than I used to be. Whether my own expressions have become richer — I’m not sure. But sometimes, when I’m with Shion, I notice my mouth corners are higher than I’d expect them to be.

The thought of what my own face looks like in those moments is frightening. If I’m grinning like an idiot over Shion, I won’t know what to do with myself. I’ve lived my whole life as a lone wolf. I’ve continued my creative work as a principled writer who doesn’t get entangled with anyone.

And Shion has the power to grind that entire identity to dust.

Why she converts a beauty of that intensity into an expression of embarrassment in front of me — and hides it by beginning to play — remains a mystery I can’t solve.

◇◇◇

We wrapped up the music room session after about an hour, and now we’re on the train home, sitting side by side, swaying with the motion. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I feel like the distance between us has been getting closer by the day. Our shoulders are always touching. The moment any gap opens, Shion tilts herself toward me to fill it — and with that motion, her lustrous hair brushes me, a sweet scent grazes my nose. It’s terrible for my heart, and I wish she’d stop. I’ve never had close contact with anyone before, and I’m not used to that kind of proximity — it makes me restless, as if my heartbeat is being tickled directly, an unease I can’t settle.

That the unease comes from somewhere entirely opposite to discomfort — that ambivalence included — my involvement with Shion has brought me all manner of firsts, and if I tried to distil that torrent of feeling into a single word, it would be: unsettled.

Being carried somewhere by the train and yet going nowhere, sitting rigid against the things delivered by the defenceless beauty beside me — while, as if to laugh at my predicament, the carriage window showed the symbolic summer sky of blue and cumulonimbus clouds, drifting and flowing. End-of-term exams are coming, and then summer break, I thought — and because there was too little conversation, I said something along those lines.

“Finals are coming up soon.”
“Yes.”
“You’re busy with piano, but are you all right for studying?”
“I came third in my class in the mid-terms, so I think I’m fine.”
“Wow.”

A genuine sound escaped me, unrehearsed. Because the advanced track is one of the top five in the prefecture by exam score. Coming third there, while doing piano — that’s genius-level. She’s just straightforwardly too intelligent.

“Is it?”
“It really is. How do you manage to study that well with everything piano takes up?”

When I asked, Shion answered as though it were nothing.

“Class time was always the only time I could do anything except piano.”

That single sentence was enough to glimpse Shion’s unsparing primary and middle school years.

This is bad — I have a reckless urge to hold her. To stroke her head and murmur there, there.

Desperately suppressing that unseemly maternal instinct — Shion asked me something in return.

“How about you, Uta? Studying — how is it going?”
“…Modern Japanese, I’m top of my class.”

Shion’s eyes lit up at that.

“As expected of Uta. Every day… never mind. What about your other subjects?”
“Ah.”

A groan escaped before I could stop it. Shion caught it with alarming speed.

“Ah?”
“Well — sometimes I fail them, sometimes I don’t.”
“You’re not serious?”
“I am…”

I nodded, and Shion’s eyes went wide.

“You can actually fail things?”

A devastating blow. No room to argue.

In place of me, struck dumb, Shion spoke again.

“People who fail have supplementary classes over summer break, don’t they.”
“Oh — yeah. Probably…”

Nine times out of ten I’ll be among them — but I don’t pay enough attention in class to know the details, so I gave a vague answer.

“No…”

Shion murmured something small.

“Mm?”

I asked her to repeat it.

“So that Uta doesn’t fail. Next week — we’re having a study session.”

She said it in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Y — yes.”

Shion being this insistent was a first. Pressed by the sheer force of it, I found myself nodding before I knew what had happened.