Episode 39 — Summer Sky

The pre-exam buzz of the classroom. Usually I find that kind of noise grating — but right now it doesn’t reach me at all. My own heart is keeping pace with it, just as loud. My chest was full of nerves.

I’d never been this nervous over a mere exam before. Until now, it didn’t matter how well or how badly I did — there were no consequences. But now there’s Shion. Shion, who is looking forward to our summer break. That alone is enough to make my heart pound like this, that alone weighs on me as pressure.

And yet here I am, wound tight over a single set of school exams — what must Shion feel before a competition? I feel, afresh, the magnitude of what she carries. I studied for just over a week, and I’m already worried about whether that effort will pay off, whether I’ve wasted the time she gave me. She has spent most of her life on this, been drilled under her mother’s constant supervision, and at the end of all that faces a competition — what kind of weight must that be.

I can’t come close to measuring it. And yet someone carrying something that immense wants to spend time with me. If something as small and simple as my own effort can make Shion glad — then there’s nothing to do but try. I don’t want to see Shion’s sad face. I want, deeply, to see her smile.

Shion is strange. She keeps bringing forward-facing things into a life that has only ever moved in reverse. The desire to face forward — it arises naturally, without effort. I’m captivated, bewitched by that magic. And even this narrowing of my whole world down to a single point — I find I can call it dear.

By the time I noticed, the nerves had converted themselves into something positive. As if timing it to that exact moment, the teacher’s voice rang through the classroom from the podium.

“Five minutes to the exam — please take your seats. Only mechanical pencils, spare lead, and erasers on your desks.”

At that command, the classroom went instantly quiet. The noise that usually refuses to settle coming to a dead stop — and I was struck by how genuinely significant the end-of-term exams are for my classmates too.

Even so — nothing compared to the piano competitions Shion enters. And someone carrying something that large has placed their hope in me.

I held Shion’s existence like a talisman, pressing it close. And let the heartbeats carved into the silence carry me through to the start.

When the clock’s hand reached its mark:

“Now distributing the papers. Do not open the question sheet or pick up your pen until the chime sounds.”

The answer sheets came forward, passed from person to person. For a moment it seemed to take a beat longer than usual — I had the faint sense of being briefly looked at — but probably that was imagining things. I almost never make eye contact with anyone, so the truth of it was lost.

Though, come to think of it — with Shion, I can meet eyes without any trouble. Strange, that. I was turning over that image of glittering violet-indigo eyes for no particular reason when —

the chime sounded.

“First period — mathematics — begin.”

And the exam started.

◇◇◇

The scrape of pencil on paper, the hum of the air conditioning. Even the faint voice of an election campaign car drifted in from somewhere outside.

All those sounds rising from the silence — and into them, I sank into the equations on the question sheet. One by one, tracing what I’d learned, filling in the answers.

Pull the numbers apart and squeeze them back together at the end.

Shion’s words, from some days ago, rang through my chest. I think I understand now, in some dim way, what Shion was reaching for. That alone was enough to make me feel: it’s all right.

◇◇◇

Heart bouncing, I walked the covered walkway toward the old building. Would Shion be there? We hadn’t exchanged messages — we didn’t even have a way to reach each other — so I had no way of knowing. No specific promise had been made. Even so, I was certain she was there.

Treading on that groundless certainty, I crossed the walkway.

Reached the door. One breath — and stepped into the music room.

“Uta — !”

Shion, catching sight of me, came running from the piano with unmistakable momentum. Like a puppy, somehow. Adorable. I was thinking this at my leisure when Shion reached me, slightly out of breath, and asked:

“How was the test — ?”

The words, and the eyes looking straight at me, carried the resonance of a prayer.

I met those eyes directly, and nodded. I felt, again, how much it meant that Shion directed something that large toward me.

And that I’d been able to meet it.

“It was all right. No failing marks.”

I said it with a smile. And then:

“Yes!”

With that word, Shion took my hand. Fingers winding together like dancing across keys. Swinging our joined hands like a child, back and forth.

“Thank you. It’s because of you, Shion.”
“No — it’s because Uta is amazing — !”

Shion’s voice, brimming with joy as she said it. And the warmth coming through our joined fingertips was, unusually, hot.

Then, after all the excitement had settled, she gathered our two hands — that had been moving separately — and held them close together. Her pure white fingertips, then her soft palms, wrapping around both my hands. Looking at me steadily.

And then, as if delivering the feeling directly to my heart, she whispered:

“Uta — I love you.”

At those words. At the warmth that felt like the arrival of summer. My cheeks went hot.

I’d been able to meet Shion’s eyes without any trouble — and yet now I looked away without thinking. But even where I looked away to, at the very centre of a heartbeat I couldn’t escape — Shion was there.

And more than anything. In the summer break that had arrived just ahead — there was the certainty that I would be with Shion, the wish to be with her, the joy of being able to picture that future.

The summer sky spread wide, as far as it would go.