Episode 46 — That Girl Complex

The front door groans, uneven footsteps. The door closes with a bang, and the presence of another person draws closer. It’s only family coming home — and yet something about it sits uneasily with me, and I’m disgusted at my own coldness.

That self-disgust takes my words away.

“Uta…?”

Into my sudden silence, Shion asks anxiously.

I know I have to say something, but my voice won’t come. This is my room, and nothing has changed — I’m still alone in it. And yet even letting the sound of my own happy voice leak through the walls feels somehow wrong.

Probably because talking to Shion makes me feel good. Makes my voice light. And while my mother is out there working herself to exhaustion, I’m the only one who gets to be happy — I don’t want her to see that. I feel like she shouldn’t.

So I hold my breath and say nothing.

Then — as if throwing me a lifeline — another voice came through from Shion’s end.

“Shion, it’s almost time for your lesson”.

Shion’s mother’s voice. In response, the sound of Shion hurrying — and then:

“Sorry, Uta. I have to go. Can I call again tonight…?”
“…Sure.”

I managed that much of a nod — and after a lingering pause that seemed reluctant to end, the call cut off. Some part of me felt a flicker of relief at that, which only made the self-disgust worse.

With Shion’s voice gone, the contrast threw everything else into sharp relief. The clothes sticking with sweat. The steamroom heat. The whirr of the fan.

No sooner had her voice left than I wanted it back again. I wanted that sound.

And yet what struck my eardrums next was a knock on the door. A moment later it opened quietly.

“Shi — I’m home.”
“Welcome back, Mum.”

I twisted the corner of my mouth into something and got up from the bed to answer. At some point I stopped being able to smile properly in front of my mother. When she said Uta — that name — something stirred uneasily inside me.

When Shion says it, it makes me so light.

That contrast in feeling threw too many things into relief at once — and even so, I felt I had to show that the time with my mother wasn’t a negative thing. So I smiled, clumsily.

“Your loafers were at the entrance, so I thought maybe you had a fever.”

My mother murmured it, eyes cast slightly downward. Dark shadows thick under her eyes, hollowed cheeks, thin arms and legs, a nervous expression with the attitude of a concerned mother layered over the top of it. Deeply clumsy and ungainly — something almost self-deprecating about it.

Her face and gestures were her life, written plainly. She had wanted to be someone. Fell in love with literature. Fell in love with a failed novelist. Was left behind in the end.

And so that symbol of my mother’s complex — of never having become anyone — that negative inheritance left behind by my father — opens its mouth without a trace of shame.

“Summer break starts today,” I said.

My mother nodded vaguely.

“Right…”

Her eyes distant, her words without force. She’d just come off the night shift, which was understandable. And yet at the same time I was seized by an unbearable feeling. I couldn’t look directly at my mother — worn thin by unrelenting work, almost no days off, grinding herself down for my sake. I kept running away from it.

Meeting Shion, being so happy, I’d forgotten.

That summer break means coming face to face with a mother who works without stopping — making it a little harder to breathe. That I can’t escape the fact of my mother’s existence. That I only write my novel during the nights when she’s on the night shift and not home, at the shared old computer. That I keep striking the keys of a keyboard into which my mother’s long-ago writing has settled, without learning any lesson from it.

I was only half-receiving my mother’s murmurs, chewing on the discomfort — when:

“I’ll leave some money for food on the desk, then.”

Another murmur, barely audible — and like a midsummer ghost quietly fading away, the door closed, and my mother went back to her own room.

“…Goodnight.”

Into that silence, I offered the words softly. Knowing they wouldn’t reach. Using a small gesture of consideration purely to dilute my own guilt.

That shabby version of myself. My mother, grinding herself down for someone like me. And the mirror image of her that I am.

Just then, wanting Shion’s voice with an urgency that had no reason behind it — a sharp string of notification sounds rang through the room, cutting through the sweltering heat.

strange
i already want to hear your voice again
going to my lesson now
we’ll talk again tonight

Text arranged there as if tracing the exact centre of my heart. That alone — just those words, nothing more — was enough to make my heart lighter. Strange, how that works.

Shion is always on the other side of my complex. She plays the piano I wanted to play as a small child but couldn’t — plays it more beautifully than I could have imagined. She lives in a large house, unlike me. She’s more feminine and cuter than me, unlike me.

And apparently what people call the other side of inferiority is admiration.

Whether admiration alone could make my heart race like this — I don’t know. But I want to preserve Shion’s beauty in words. Even if it never reaches her, I want to keep reaching. I thought that again, newly.