Episode 40 — The Wrong Answer

The scenery through the window shifts with the sway of our shoulders touching. The train races along tracks stretching straight into summer.

The usual distance between us — which is to say, none. Shion rests her head on my shoulder. I think she might be asleep, and glance sideways — not at all. Our eyes meet head-on; I can’t look away, and we hold each other’s gaze. The collision means Shion was already looking at me, and my heart leaps at the conclusion that follows. When I try to stick a label on it — misreading, passing fancy — Shion refuses to allow it, and draws the right auxiliary line to guide me toward the correct answer.

“Your profile is lovely, Uta.”
“Wh — what’s that out of nowhere.”

Coming from Shion, who is lovely from every angle without exception.

“Just something I thought. You really are cute, aren’t you.”

And she keeps going, with no apparent awareness of her own beauty.

“I’d rather not hear that from you, of all people.”

The words escape before I can stop them.

“What do you mean?”

Shion tilts her head, genuinely at a loss.

I decide it’s better to give a compliment than to be destroyed by one, and throw it out carelessly, in a spirit of mild desperation:

“That you’re the cutest of all.”
“Why…?”
“What do you mean, why…”

I don’t think there’s a reason for finding something cute or beautiful. The only evidence I could offer would be the number of people who agree — and I happen to have neither friends nor family enough to supply that number. All I can produce is the shallowest possible answer: because that’s how I feel.

But that turned out to be the wrong answer. I’d misread the question entirely, to begin with.

Shion, as if in a daze, supplies the real question in full.

“Why — I’ve been called cute by so many people since I was small, and it never meant anything. So why does it make my heart pound so much when you say it — ?”

The train sways. The announcement reads out the next stop in its toneless, mechanical voice. But none of that is enough to drown out Shion’s words, or the sound of my own heartbeat.

All I can do is deflect.

“I — I don’t know. About as much as I don’t know mathematics.”

Deploying even that unsteady attempt at humour, I fight to navigate my way through this moment somehow.

“But you weren’t failing this time. So you should be able to work it out.”

A sharp counter-thrust.

“…Cramming really doesn’t stick, does it. I was sure I’d learned it, and it’s gone in an instant.”

Not entirely a lie for this occasion alone — I genuinely don’t think I could solve the same problems right now. Even so.

“Uta, you idiot…”

Shion mutters it, disgruntled. Understandable — she put all that effort into studying with me, and now I’m telling her I’ve forgotten. I think that, which is probably not the correct answer either, and then realise I’ve never asked about Shion’s own results.

“How did your exams go, Shion?”

A question from pure, genuine curiosity — but Shion seemed to think I was changing the subject to escape the earlier topic, and expressed her displeasure by headbutting my shoulder. For an attack from Shion, it was solidly on the painful side.

Then, with an air of lingering sulk:

“Top of my class.”
“Wow — that’s incredible. Are you some kind of genius?”

The sound escaped me involuntarily.

Shion, not entirely displeased, lets out a small huff of satisfaction through her nose.

Then, over my shoulder, looking up through her lashes:

“Genius is another word I’ve heard from so many people, for so long. But when you say it, it makes me happy.”

And just like that, the conversation is steered somewhere else entirely. Whatever the topic, I notice Shion’s arrow is always pointing at me. And the troubling part is that the arrow seems large enough that I might mistake it for something it isn’t.

Probably the closeness, the quietly clinging words — all of it is the unfamiliarity of having a friend for the first time, and it’ll probably ease with time. And yet I have a feeling that if it does ease, I’ll find myself feeling something like lonely — which is tiresome.

People are difficult, after all. This tangled mess of thoughts is more than enough for one person, and that person is Shion. My head is already exhausted from the unfamiliar struggle with studying.

For now, to smooth things over — I think of a compromise that might satisfy Shion well enough, and try it.

“Cute and a genius — Shion is really something, isn’t she.”

And with that, I gently stroke the head that delivered that headbutt just moments ago. Running my fingers through the silky hair.

“Ehehe.”

And Shion lets out a sound so absurdly soft and sweet it makes me blink — and presses her head further into my hand, asking for more.

And so, until the moment we parted ways — I kept running my fingers gently through silver hair that caught the sunlight and glittered.