Episode 45 — I Want to Talk to You

The fan churns desperately at the stagnant heat trapped in the room. Its small resistance is futile — a clammy sweat clings to my skin, and the discomfort gradually pulls my consciousness awake. The cicadas’ cry grazes the back of my retinas. I open my eyes slowly and check the time on the phone beside my pillow.

8:30.

For a split second I almost bolted upright at the time — then remembered it was summer break. Savouring both the relief and the happiness, I close my eyes again. My sweat-damp body is complaining, but the heat is so extreme I can’t summon the energy even to shower.

I murmur it to myself as a kind of consolation: what a luxury, lying in past the time I’d normally have to be up.

Drifting in that thought through the discomfort of summer break’s first morning — an alarm-like sound came from my phone. An unfamiliar tone that made me stare at the screen on reflex.

Kanzaki Shion

This time I really did bolt upright, and tapped the call button on pure reflex.

“Hello, Shion — what’s wrong?”

Assuming something urgent, given the hour, I asked in a tight voice. And Shion answered in her usual way — a clear, bell-like voice.

“I made a promise?”
“A promise…?”

No idea what she means — I repeat her words back. Then:

“I said I’d call. Yesterday.”

Those words finally brought her intention into focus. It’s true — we made a call promise over LINE yesterday.

But I hadn’t imagined she’d be calling this early in the morning.

“You did say that, didn’t you. I assumed it would be at night.”

I murmur it without thinking — and:

“Yes. Tonight too.”
“Oh.”

An unexpected affirmation, and a sound escapes me.

While I’m still reeling, Shion keeps weaving words together like music.

“In the morning, we’ll talk until my lesson. At lunch there’s a short break, so I’ll send messages then. And at night — after my lesson, after my bath, after I write my… diary. Then we’ll talk again on the phone.”

“Oh — right…”

I’m taken aback by how thoroughly my presence has been woven into the timetable Shion has just described — far more than I’d anticipated.

Then, as if my response has made her anxious, Shion asks in a thin voice:

“Does Uta not want to talk with me…?”
“That’s not true at all! I’d be really happy if we could talk lots.”

I soothe her, as if calming a small child.

“I’m glad… I want to talk with you lots, Uta.”

After a breath of audible relief, a faint buoyancy enters Shion’s voice and grazes my eardrum. That alone makes my heartbeat buoyant too, and I find myself thinking something like precious — which is hopeless. My body is hot, and the fan feels newly inadequate.

The floating sensation that visits when I’m talking with Shion — it was something that could only be tasted in those brief after-school moments. Something I could only trace, in its absence, through the form of a novel.

But on a call — that time with Shion could stretch further. As long as we both wanted to, we could be connected whenever we liked. I could hear Shion’s voice whenever I wanted.

The fact of it — only just grasped — felt as vast as a cloudless sky. Boundless joy and boundless vertigo resemble each other in temperature and outline, and I ask, as if to confirm this is the former:

“Let’s enjoy summer break.”

And Shion:

“Yes. For the first time in my life — I feel happy that summer has come.”

The resonance of that. A voice like a wind chime stirring in summer. It seemed to blow the clinging heat away, and light something in my heart like a small flame.

◇◇◇

The call doesn’t end. Not knowing when to stop, not wanting to stop — we stay connected through the phone indefinitely.

A transparent voice flows continuously against my eardrums. Its resonance alone makes me feel the world filling with colour.

“Uta.”

Shion calls my name in her slightly clumsy pronunciation. Day by day she seems to grow younger somehow — when we first met she gave the impression of a mysterious beauty, but now she seems more like a toddler. We’re about the same height, and yet she reminds me of a penguin chick trotting toward its parent. I have no business acting as anyone’s parent — I had no interest in other people to begin with — and yet somewhere along the way I’ve started thinking things like I want to protect Shion, I want to make her happy. Which means, like Shion, I too have changed.

From just two characters — her name — I find myself reflecting on how Shion’s image has shifted, on my own current state. And then give an answer wildly disproportionate to the volume of thought that preceded it.

“What’s up?”
“Just wanted to call your name.”

Shion’s voice is flat. Without any visual information, that flatness is even more palpable than usual.

And yet — something in it sounds like it contains a smile. Is that overestimating how she feels about me? It could genuinely just be called your name for no reason — and reading that as affectionate indulgence directed at me specifically might be rather too convenient.

“Oh — right.”

I force myself to give a neutral answer, desperately trying not to hope too much, not to misread. And then, as if to tear through all those careful defences:

“It’s amazing, isn’t it — being able to talk to you from my own house.”
“Y — yeah.”
“You’re in my head all the time, whatever I’m doing. And when I want to hear your voice — now I can. That makes me so happy.”
“I’m happy too.”

My heart goes light and floaty, and I desperately stop my face from softening. She’s a friend, she’s a friend — I recite it to myself, trying not to misread things. And watching that pattern repeat inside me — I wonder: what exactly would constitute a misreading? If I did misread — what is it I would be wanting from Shion?

I don’t know. But something — I want to be closer. Beautiful, cute, talented at piano, good at studying. I want a reason to stand beside someone like Shion, I think. Right now I’m there through writing her beauty and through the promise of watching only her — as if we’re equals — but I know that in every respect I fall short of her. And so I think I want something — a kind of strength — that would let me stay beside her even without those things.

“But even though it’s this much fun — you didn’t suggest exchanging contact details.”

In the same flat voice, from a completely unexpected angle — Shion dredges up yesterday again. She is surprisingly tenacious, fixates on small things. She takes promises absolutely seriously, and holds on to even the slightest hurt for a long time.

And I find that naked, unconcealed fixation — her inability to hide it — something to be glad about. That this person I’m reaching toward is clinging to my inadequacies, asking things of me — it makes me feel as though I might be worthy of it after all.

“Sorry. You’re my first friend, so I didn’t know exchanging contacts could be this much fun.”

Smooth words, neatly arranged. I’m surprised at myself.

“You’re my first too, Uta. Feeling this happy and this fluttery — Shi is the first.”

Shion is easily won over. My words instantly restore her good mood, and she tells me she loves me in her clumsy, earnest way — like a fledgling bouncing before its parent bird. And I, having my heart moved by that clumsiness coming from such polished beauty, from that bell-clear voice — am equally easily won over.

“Is that so…”

I give a short reply to disguise my own susceptibility. Taking that as a cue, only our faint mutual breathing sounds alternate back and forth. An unnatural pause. And yet no awkwardness — a gentle time, adrift in each other’s presence.

In that thin, stretched-out happiness, wanting to hear Shion’s voice again, reaching for some appropriate topic — the sound of a door handle turning came.

The room’s stifling heat, the unpleasant stickiness of sweat — I remembered them, belatedly.