Episode 37 — Mustang

The melancholy of classical music filling the car throws the loneliness into sharp relief.

“Having the study session at Uta’s place.”
“I’ll come and pick you up — tell Shiko-chan to wait where I dropped her off before.”

I turn over the LINE messages from Shion as I grip the wheel. We almost never exchange messages — Shion has always come straight home, and the location-sharing app I put on her phone as a precaution had never once traced a path beyond the commuter route.

But today was a little different. Whether it was Ogawa-san, or Shiko-chan being considerate — a message had come in from Shion, first in who knows how long. Doing my best to soothe my restless, unsettled heartbeat, I replied, and retraced the same road I’d taken when I dropped Shiko-chan off before.

I had the feeling that I’d be driving this road often, for a while. That presentiment settled over my chest.

And ahead of that presentiment — in a landscape I half-recognised — against the backdrop of the evening sky, Shion and Shiko-chan stood together.

Holding hands, companionably. From time to time, in a sweetly clinging way, Shion leaning against Shiko-chan. It looked like a newly-together couple, tentative and fresh — or like a fond parent and child. Come to think of it, had I ever held hands and walked with Shion? I was turning that over as I slowed the car.

In the end, all I could retrieve was the image of Shion’s pure white fingertips dancing across the keys. For a held-hand memory I had to go all the way back to the threadlike fingers of a nursing infant. I was recognising the thinness of our relationship as mother and daughter, belatedly and all at once, when the car came fully to a stop.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“…Yeah.”

Shion nodded and held Shiko-chan’s hand tight with a lingering reluctance, pressing closer. Shiko-chan’s cheeks were flushed crimson, an expression caught between troubled and not-unwilling. Something like a haze settled briefly over my chest at the sight of it. As if my child were being taken from me.

I pushed that excessive, paranoid thought away as hard as I could, and reminded myself of my mission: Shion has been given permission to go out once a week, and that doesn’t mean skipping even minimal self-practice. For the sake of Shion’s music.

As her mother, I’m the only one who can guide her. I have to hold firm.

“Shiko-chan — thank you too. For looking after Shion.”
“No, I didn’t really…”

Shiko-chan mumbled it, shy and flustered. The response had an endearing, age-appropriate awkwardness about it that brought a faint warmth to my chest. My gratitude toward Shiko-chan was genuine, no flattery or formality about it — and beyond that, as the first friend Shion had ever made, she was someone I found myself genuinely, warmly disposed toward.

Fumbling with what was probably a very maternal set of feelings — I said, equally clumsily:

“Right, Shion. Time to go.”

At my words, Shion embraced Shiko-chan with the fervour of someone parting for the last time. And then:

“See you tomorrow.”

Said in a soft, hushed voice. After that slightly difficult-to-watch exchange, she finally came over and got into the passenger seat.

I was getting into the driver’s seat when I caught myself bowing my head to Shiko-chan — her face dyed the same colour as the sky behind her. One beat late, she bowed back. That small exchange made my heart skip, absurdly, for someone my age. I disguised it by getting into the car.

◇◇◇

“Mum — is it okay if I play something?”
“What is it?”
“Can I put some music on?”
“Go ahead. Find it and play it.”

Still gripping the wheel, eyes straight ahead — though I answered while being quietly surprised, because Shion initiating any kind of conversation with me was unusual enough to count.

I briefly unlocked the fingerprint sensor and passed her my phone, so she wouldn’t distract me from driving.

“Thank you.”

With a dexterity appropriate for her generation, Shion navigated the phone more smoothly than I’d expected and returned it to where it had been.

What came through then was a spare intro, and a slightly rough male vocal. So far from anything I associated with Shion that the novelty of something other than classical filling the car made me ask:

“What’s this song?”

“Solanine,” Shion answered in a buoyant voice. “Uta sang it at karaoke the other day.”

She said it with the voice of someone holding a memory close and cherishing it. And as if in answer to that voice, the male vocalist sang about the tenderness of the everyday, its bittersweet ache, its endings. The lyrics were, indeed, somehow Shiko-chan — twisted in their individual words, and yet the place they arrived at rang through you directly. Even that quality felt like her.

“It’s a good song.”

The thought escaped me.

“Yes — a good song.”

Shion nodded, visibly pleased.

A voice I hadn’t heard in a long time. I found myself wanting more of it. As if tracing that wish, Shion went on. A brief pause, and then, gently offering her own heart:

“Um — you know… Uta’s singing is really good. She’s amazing.”
“Is that right.”
“She’s a little bad at studying. But that kind of clumsiness is — cute, I think.”
“…Right.”

Once she’d started she seemed unable to stop, as if she’d needed someone to hear it. With a slightly larger vocabulary of gesture than usual, a slightly livelier rhythm, Shion put her feelings about Shiko-chan into words.

I could give nothing back but inadequate replies. Even so, Shion’s words kept coming, and something in me relaxed.

Shion spoke about Shiko-chan with extraordinary tenderness.

“I love Uta’s words. Reading them, hearing them — they give me strength, they ring in my chest. That’s why I want to be together with her. And I want to deliver my sound — for Uta.”
“Is that right.”
“Yes!”

Still nothing but a flat response from me. Even so, Shion nodded, delighted.

And I too, it seemed, was glad. That Shion had shared these words, this feeling, with me.

Just as Shion had found the joy of music again through Shiko-chan’s existence, I too — through Shiko-chan — was finding a new joy in sound. My music has always been Shion, so that’s how it would naturally go.

Am I allowed to find that change dear? In the process of guiding Shion toward a sound worthy of the Kanzaki name — am I allowed to feel something as undeserved as a mother’s joy? Am I allowed to pick up, belatedly, the things I never looked at before?

As if to answer that question: softly, Shion whispered.

“Don’t tell Uta what I said just now, okay?”

That she’d shared a secret with me — I decided for now, even while not knowing what to do with the feeling, to hold it carefully.

Wrapped in an unfamiliar sound, the car raced through the evening streets.