Episode 36 — A Picture of the Future
Watching a clever person work through a problem close-up was a first for me. Shion moves her fingers across the notebook with the same fluid dexterity she brings to the piano, setting down solutions without a wasted motion. Refined, precise, nothing superfluous.
There was one thing that wasn’t refined, and that was the handwriting. Shion’s characters were a scramble — to put it without diplomatic cushioning: illegible. Not a word of it decipherable at a glance. The mystery of the purikura decoration had just been retroactively solved: the erratic lettering wasn’t unfamiliarity with the pen, it was simply Shion.
And even that flaw somehow read as an extension of genius. If anything, my own needlessly tidy handwriting felt embarrassing by comparison — the legacy of a neighbourhood calligraphy class I’d attended as a small child producing characters that could reasonably be called well-formed, which somehow felt like just one more piece of evidence of my ordinary mediocrity.
I was suffering under this inexplicable inferiority complex when:
“Uta, that’s wrong there.”
Shion pressed closer and pointed it out, while still working through her own problem. The breadth of attention that requires was genuinely impressive.
And with each of those corrections, the warmth and scent of Shion intensifying beside me — my heart reacted without fail, which meant my study momentum was rather poor. There is also a theory that this is simply my baseline ability, but setting that aside.
“Wait — where’s wrong this time?”
When I asked, Shion answered with complete seriousness:
“Problem two. Think of it like pulling the numbers apart and then squeezing them back together at the end.”
Said that, considered her tutorial responsibilities fulfilled, and returned immediately to her own work.
Shion’s second flaw: she is catastrophically bad at explaining things.
I know I probably shouldn’t be thinking that when someone is tutoring me — but even so, Shion’s instruction was spectacularly abstract. In that way too, she was constitutionally a genius.
The sustained proximity of a genius’s thinking was starting to make my head feel close to bursting, so I stood up quietly.
“Going to the bathroom.”
No particular urgency — but at moments like this, walking a little, changing the scene, resetting the head is the right approach. I do the same when stuck on a piece of fiction.
Shion nodded, with an expression that seemed, if I wasn’t imagining it, a little forlorn. I told myself that was definitely self-consciousness on my part, and headed to the bathroom.
Even so, her expression lingered — so I came back quickly, rinsed my hands, and returned.
Shion looked up from her notebook as I came back in, and her expression eased — or so it seemed. The thought of that small shift of expression tickling my heartbeat, I settled back beside her — and Shion, in a sweetly clinging way, leaned her weight into me, and then whispered, close to my ear:
“I like this room. Because the loneliness ends quickly.”
Said in a soft, hushed voice. Being told like set off something strange in me. I disguised it with a question:
“What do you mean?”
“Because no matter where you are, I can see you. I know where you are. Even if we’re apart and I feel lonely — you come back right away. That’s wonderful, I think. Being in the same space as you, always.”
It’s true that this room is perhaps a little cramped for two people — and Shion’s house is, if anything, rather too large for two. This closeness must feel fresh to her. That Shion is someone who feels loneliness easily — all of it made perfect sense together. And having made that sense of it, I desperately tried to stop myself from interpreting what she’d just said as feeling directed at me. An immodest reading on my part.
“Thank you. It’s a small place, but I’m glad you like it.”
I answered with performed composure. And then:
“Yes. I do like it. When I grow up — I want to live in a room like this. With you, Uta.”
Added at the end, as if it were the most important part. Shion wrote my name into her picture of the future — and I was genuinely close to coming apart.
“Th — that would be nice… by the way, why did you suggest the study session all of a sudden? You looked like you’d have no trouble with the tests anyway.”
A topic change so abrupt it was almost criminal — but I had no other means of protecting my own heart.
As if reproaching my dishonesty, Shion pressed her lips into a pout, puffed her cheeks, and bumped her shoulder against mine. Even that childlike assault was adorable and a direct hit to the heart, and I wished she’d stop.
But my wishes didn’t reach her. Shion kept producing words too wide in their margins, one after another.
“Because I’d be in trouble if you failed and ended up in supplementary classes…”
“Wh — why would that trouble you?”
“Uta really is mean sometimes…”
Shion murmured it sulkily — and then, unusually, said it with something like embarrassment:
“I’d decided I wanted to spend lots of time with you over summer break. So supplementary classes would be a problem.”
On those words, everything I’d managed to learn today nearly flew out of my head entirely, and I held on desperately.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t retain any of the study material. And yet the colour that had spread across Shion’s cheeks right before me — that seemed as though it would stay burned into my eyes, impossible to forget. Which was a problem.
The title: A Picture of the Future references a 1989 Japanese pop ballad by Dreams Come True; it imagines a shared life with a partner in specific, domestic detail. As Shion imagines here: When I grow up, I want to live in a room like this. With you, Uta.