Episode 52 — I Want to Eat Prawn Crackers

The dolphin show over, we left the aquarium and retraced our steps back to the road we’d been on.

“The dolphins were incredible…!”
“They really were.”

Shion looked straight at me and said it, eyes bright. I smiled and nodded along. Even with her usual expressionless face, the elation came through in her voice, in the way she bounced slightly as she walked — and I found that gap between expression and feeling adorable.

A little while ago she’d been watching the leaping dolphins with that serene, still-water profile, murmuring “amazing” and “so high” at each jump, clapping with small quick pats — and it had been so endearing I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

I was savouring both the present and the recent past of Shion’s cuteness simultaneously — when she murmured, abruptly:

“I think the sea is close.”

She said it, gazing toward the far side of the town.

“How do you know?”
“I can hear waves…”

And with that, her pace quickened slightly, as if she couldn’t help it. I followed, pulled along in her wake.

A short walk further, and the buildings fell away all at once — replaced by nothing but indigo stretching to fill the whole of our view.

“The sea.”

Shion murmured it softly. That transparent resonance seemed to name the landscape for the first time.

A coastal road rose up between us and the beach below. Shion drifted toward the scene ahead.

The indigo sea glittered in the sunlight — and in contrast, the sand was dark-toned, murky and unpolished. Having taken in the reality of it, beautiful and imperfect at once, I dropped my gaze to Shion’s sandals with their pure white ribbons, and spoke.

“The sand looks like it would ruin your shoes — let’s keep going a little further first. The sea is supposed to be prettier over there.”

I pointed toward a large bridge and an island visible further along the coast. That was roughly where we’d originally planned to get off anyway.

“All right…”

Shion nodded, looking back and forth between me and the sea. And then:

“I’m so happy I get to walk beside the sea with you, Uta.”

Said with a faint smile, pulling me along by the hand. The force of that smile hit me full in the face and, belatedly remembering what season it was, I felt the inescapable heat and stared out at the sea, looking for somewhere to put it.

◇◇◇

We walked the summer-scattered coastal road, crossed the large bridge — and what awaited us on the other side was not the sea but a hill. A famous tourist spot, stalls lining the slope on both sides. We walked in silence up the crowded weekday hill, me in the lead, pulling Shion along by the hand — it reminded me, for some reason, of the penguin parent and chick from a little while before.

The sea view was supposed to be waiting somewhere beyond the top.

By now the sweat had crept into both our joined hands from one side or the other. Even Shion’s temperature had unusually taken on some heat, and tiredness was visible in her face.

“Shion, are you all right…?”

I asked, feeling fairly groggy myself. And:

“I can’t go on… carry me…”

Shion launched a request at an impressively steep angle of neediness. Even I, who tend to agree with most of Shion’s requests, had limits.

“That might be a little beyond me…”
“Does that mean I’m heavy…?”
“No. Shion is light. But gravity is heavy.”
“Can’t you do something about gravity…”

The heat and exhaustion had reduced our conversation to rubble. Even so — legs still moving — the slope gradually eased, and somewhere ahead of that, Shion suddenly came back to life.

“I want to eat that!”

Where Shion was looking, a foreign tourist was biting into a prawn cracker wider than their own face — and I found my eyes pulled over too.

“True, we haven’t had lunch — that sounds good.”
“They’re queuing over there…!”

Even as she said it, she took my hand and set off at a brisk walk toward the queue. At a speed quite inconsistent with someone who had recently requested to be carried. Smiling wryly at Shion’s boundless guilelessness, I found myself at the back of the queue before I knew it.

The system, apparently unlike a standard food stall, required buying a ticket first — so Shion and I each purchased a slip marked prawn cracker, and joined the line.

Before long our turn came, and we handed over the tickets at the prompt.

With an energetic shout, the prawn cracker and shrimp were pressed together with an enormous, sizzling sound.

“Amazing!”
“Yes.”

The tiredness forgotten, we stared in admiration — and then the pressing finished and the vendor lifted out a large cracker and handed it over.

We stopped at a small space by a vending machine a little away from the stall.

“It’s so big.”

Shion’s eyes went wide at the sheer size of it. Held up against her face, the scale was even more apparent. If anything, Shion’s face was just too small.

Gazing again at the extraordinary beauty of Shion’s face — she took a casual bite of the cracker.

“It’s hot… but it’s good.”

She peeked happily at me through the gap she’d made. I followed her example and bit into mine.

“You’re right — it’s hot.”

It was as if Shion were scorching not just my heartbeat and my body temperature but the inside of my mouth too.

Sinking into that small sentiment while steadily working through the cracker, I finished mine — and Shion, apparently as slight in appetite as she was in build, had stopped at barely halfway through hers and was looking at the remainder with an expression of despair.

Then she turned a pleading look on me — and, sweetly imploring, holding it out with an upward glance:

“Uta, help meee.”
“You have that side to you sometimes, don’t you…”

I murmured it with exaggerated resignation, failing to fully suppress the curl at the corner of my mouth — and bit into the offered cracker again.