Episode 51 — Freedom Inside an Aquarium

Once through the ticket gate, we lost sight of the sea before long. The town’s buildings swallowed it from view, and we walked on with nothing to guide us but the blue afterimage burned into our eyes and the direction we’d been heading. Our hands stayed joined throughout, and the mingling of Shion’s cool temperature with my own heat carried both comfort and embarrassment in equal measure. I walked, pulling Shion along, hoping at least to keep my too-fast heartbeat hidden.

The town that had swallowed the sea seemed to hint at its presence — blue-toned houses and buildings lined the streets. Shion’s light-blue dress dissolved into them naturally. And yet among all those many blues, Shion’s beauty stood apart, so that while she blended in, everything around her became her backdrop instead.

I was savouring that sweetness again — the fact of being this close to the edge of something so beautiful — when, like static cutting across the landscape, a sudden burst of noise and an unusually large building appeared before us.

A bare, box-shaped structure. Beside it, an open stadium-style hall. Water spray leaping from a tank, and a dark shadow. A trainer’s voice, almost aggressively cheerful.

“What’s this?”
“An aquarium, I think.”

As if to answer my words, the silhouette of a leaping dolphin, cheers, and a spray of water were all visible even from a distance. And when I glanced sideways at Shion —

“I want to go.”

Her eyes were shining exactly as they had been when she first saw the sea — so I nodded on pure reflex. And so, before seeing the real sea, we found ourselves looking at an artificial miniature of it instead.

◇◇◇

Tickets purchased at considerable cost to my wallet, we stepped inside. Past the gate, a large orca model to one side, and then the first tank.

It’s strange — even in the dark, Shion’s figure seems to glow. I thought that, watching Shion gaze fixedly at the tank. Every time the shifting light reflected off those porcelain-pale cheeks, my own face grew hot, which was inconvenient.

Shion moved slowly from tank to tank, sidling along, shifting her gaze from one to the next. I tried to look at the fish swimming past — and kept finding my gaze drifting back to Shion.

Shion reacted with fresh, unguarded delight each time something came close. When a pufferfish drew near:

“It’s round.”

When a shoal of fish moved past:

“There are so many.”

She turned to tell me, voice bright with excitement. I found those simple, pure reactions impossibly endearing, and to settle a heartbeat that was anything but quiet in this quiet aquarium, I reached for the question that had floated to the surface.

“Is this your first time at an aquarium?”

Shion answered with the expression of someone stating the obvious.

“Yes. The others went on school trips, but I couldn’t. Mama stopped me — she said you never know what might happen.”
“I see…”

I murmured it, not knowing how to respond. Shion’s past like that might be lonely — but using that loneliness to fault her mother’s strictness didn’t feel quite right either. Having touched a fragment of what her mother carries, I couldn’t simply offer pure sympathy any more. The feeling was neither white nor black — and I was turning that over, surrounded by the tanks, those symbols of constrained existence, when Shion reached one hand toward a tank as if holding it up to the light, and said:

“Do you think Uta might be in a tank somewhere…?”
“Wh — what do you mean?”

Her characteristic enigmatic phrasing. I asked back in genuine bewilderment. Shion squeezed my hand tight and answered:

“I was all right inside my tank, because you were there, Uta. So I thought — if each of these tanks had someone like Uta in them, they’d be happy.”
“I suppose…?”

I couldn’t quite process all of Shion’s words, and parts of them seemed likely to invite misreading — so I couldn’t take them in straightforwardly. I tilted my head, deflecting. At which:

“Uta really is mean sometimes.”

Shion bumped her shoulder against mine, dissatisfied with my inadequate response. Taking that adorable assault on the chin, I deflected further by reading out something I’d spotted behind her.

“Shion — look, over there. There are penguins.”
“Penguins — !”

Shion’s eyes lit up and she pulled me along, trotting eagerly toward them. So easy to please, so cute. Just like a penguin chick — I was thinking the same thing I’d thought before, and with the real thing right in front of me the comparison came into sharper focus, when:

We reached the penguin tank, and immediately Shion said:

“That one looks like Uta.”

She pointed with delight at a penguin standing a little apart from the group, alone on the ice. It held itself with an upright solitude — and yes, I could see the resemblance, so I decided to take it as a compliment. Hopefully it wasn’t a joke about my lack of social instincts.

“Do you think so…?”
“Yes. Different from the others — cool.”

Shion said it in her most guileless voice, arranging words that could just as easily read as teasing — and the fact that I felt a little pleased by it anyway left me uncertain where to put my feelings. While I was sitting with that uncertainty:

A penguin rather smaller than the others trotted over toward the solo penguin, and pressed close. I found myself grinning and said:

“Then I suppose that one must be Shion.”
“…I’m much more grown-up than that.”

My teasing earned a completely unconvincing, quite childlike protest from Shion. As if to mock her words, the penguin chick rubbed up against its companion in sweet dependence. Shion, catching that from the corner of her eye, dug in further — stepping toward me as if to shore up her own position retroactively.

“Because I’m about the same height as you, Uta. I don’t cling like that.”

All while squeezing my hand tight and bumping herself against me in protest. The protest, needless to say, lacked all conviction — and yet the lustrous skin close enough to touch, the violet-indigo eyes, the silver hair plaited and gleaming like ice, all carried more than enough beauty to blow the childishness away.

“W — well, yes…”

I could only let the words dissolve in the gap between the contradiction and the conviction. The two penguins stayed side by side, pressed warmly together, for the whole time we stood before their tank.

After that — jellyfish, and a touch pool where I watched Shion play with a small shark; through all of it, Shion’s guilelessness carried us along at an unhurried pace. And finally we arrived at the outdoor stadium we’d seen from outside. We’d taken our time, and the dolphin show was just about to begin.

“Shall we watch?”
“Yes!”

I looked sideways at Shion nodding with her usual guileless enthusiasm, and looked for seats. A weekday aquarium was quiet enough that two people could sit almost anywhere — and while I was wavering between options, the trainer’s cheerful announcement rang out:

“Anyone in the first three rows can expect to get thoroughly soaked!”

As if demonstrating, a dolphin launched itself in warm-up, and spray scattered wide.

Shion’s body gave a small surprised shiver — and yet her eyes were shining. Given how curious Shion was about everything, I assumed she’d want to sit up front, and asked:

“Do you want to sit in the front?”

But contrary to my expectation, Shion hesitated — and then shook her head.

“No. I’ll pass.”
“I don’t mind getting wet — you don’t have to hold back for me.”

Shion shook her head again, and murmured, as if gently holding several things close at once:

“The front does look fun. But Mama did my hair specially, and it would get ruined… and you said it was cute.”

Her cheeks faintly flushed. Into the gladness and the warmth and all those feelings together — I nodded.

“I see. Let’s sit at the back then.”

Shion nodded back in quick little nods, half-hiding her embarrassment. I felt it again — I couldn’t count how many times by now — that swelling tenderness.

The dolphin leapt once more, as if celebrating the freedom it had inside the tank.