Episode 47 — Front Memory

Summer break means no after-school hours, so the sound of piano doesn’t reach me.

In its place, Shion’s voice is close by, always.

In the morning, I wake to an incoming call from Shion. We brought the time a little earlier from that first call — seven in the morning now, at my suggestion. Every day, at exactly that time, my phone trembles.

We trade good mornings back and forth. My voice is thick with sleep; Shion’s is always clear and centred, transparent as ever — and I could easily tell she’d already finished her morning preparations and was waiting in front of her phone until it was time. The image of that rose in my head and made me smile.

At nine, a little before my mother comes home, the call with Shion ends.

“But I still want to talk…”

Shion always drags her feet like this, so we usually run about five minutes over — and it wasn’t unusual, as a result, for Shion’s mother to lose patience and break in from her end.

“Talking to Shiko-chan is fine, but be on time for your lesson!”

Apparently our calls had at some point been built into the Kanzaki household’s daily schedule — and the fact of that gave me a ticklish warmth. Summer break means spending more time at home, and the days have a way of sinking into themselves, a slow festering — and against that, being recognised as existing by Shion and Shion’s mother turned out to give me something larger than I’d expected.

And then Shion goes to her lesson, and as if in exchange, my mother comes home. I hold my breath in my room and try not to cross her path. My mother no longer knocks on the door. Most of the time what happens is: the sound of her retreating to the bedroom, and then five hundred yen left for lunch on the table in its place.

Every time I see that five hundred yen, I feel relief at having avoided her — and then self-disgust, and there’s no getting out of it. I know my mother is spending her life for me, that she loves me in her own way. And yet whenever I’m actually in front of her, something sits wrong, and her expression and her self-deprecating manner and her worn-thin body feel like a reflection of me somehow, and something crawls through my stomach. As if the place where I was once connected to her by an umbilical cord is still connected by an invisible vein of blood — the discomfort of that illusion — and while I’m trying to get through it, my mother drifts out of my sight again, so there’s no way of hoping for anything positive to grow from it.

And so I sink frequently. In a room with no air conditioning, as if tracing the path of the sweat trickling down my skin, sinking into the sea of my own thoughts in the darkened room. The pastry from the convenience store standing in for lunch tastes like fuel — the heartburn and drowsiness of the early afternoon carrying me into a half-doze.

At those times, without fail, like something illuminating the deep sea — Shion’s messages make my phone tremble.

finally on my lunch break
apparently there’s a contest at the end of summer break. mama is getting excited
i’m always thinking of you while I play, uta

Shion’s words always make my heart tremble. She runs so cold, and yet they make me feel warm.

“Do your best at the lesson.”

I send that back — and:

i’ll do my best because talking to uta tonight is something to look forward to
it’s a promise today too, okay

She presses the point as if to make sure I won’t forget, and heads back to her lesson. Messages like that — weighted, leaning into me — and yet somehow they make me feel weightless, floating. I’m painfully aware that in front of Shion, all my sharpness collapses into something embarrassingly simple.

From afternoon into early evening I kill time at the neighbourhood library — doing homework, reading. The air conditioning is too aggressive, biting into my skin, but it’s still immeasurably better than the heat.

And then, around the time I’d normally be coming home from school on a regular day, I go back. By then my mother is already gone. In her place, as if standing in for her, a portion of pre-made food.

Like running on a laid track: eat, wash the dishes, shower.

Write the novel, feel as though I’ve touched Shion’s existence, just a little.

And then, finally, Shion’s voice again. Around the time I throw my flushed body onto the bed floating in the tropical night, Shion’s call arrives.

“Uta — I’m home.”
“Welcome back, Shion.”

Without noticing when it happened, that exchange had become the standard. During the school term, I was the one who went to Shion — that was the daily shape of things. Over summer break, Shion is the one who comes home to me. Each of us was the other’s only place to belong.

That alone — simply being able to be Shion’s place — was enough to make me like summer break, just a little, when I’d always hated it before.

And I thought: I want to be painted over entirely, by Shion’s sound.