Episode 54 — Goodbye

The train runs as if swimming through a sea that still holds the faint afterglow of sunset. The place we had been heading toward only moments ago. And as if its role were done, the sea has stopped scattering its blue radiance — now only the moon floats there, quietly, alone.

With each sway of the carriage, something soft presses against my shoulder. Worn out from walking, Shion is asleep beside me — her faint breathing, the hand still gripping mine even in sleep, the way her body leans into mine — every element that makes up Shion fills my heart to the brim. Because I want to burn even this Shion into my eyes, I don’t sleep.

And so, in a stream of sounds that seemed to trace the whole day’s journey — Shion’s sleeping breath, the creak of the train, the faint lap of waves against the window — the one sound that makes my heart race, Shion’s words, washes back over me in a flash.

“I want you to keep watching me, Uta — all of me, all my firsts and everything else. Everything up to now and everything still to come — forever. I want to become your words. That’s what I think”.

The words that rang out a little while ago feel like something miraculous. The fact that what I want — to see all of Shion and put it into words — and what Shion wants are the same: it was a happiness so large it was almost frightening. The kind of happiness that spreads out beautiful and indigo before you, and yet the moment you step into it, draws you down and down without end — like the sea, I thought. Terrifying in its boundlessness.

When I’m with Shion, I’m so occupied with absorbing everything she brings that I have no room to look at my own feelings — and lately, with our calls and messages, I’ve been more and more filled up with the existence of Shion. Which made this time — touching Shion like this, able to look at my own emotions with some calm — precious. In that gentle, still interval, drifting between waves, a thought surfaced.

Right now might be the happiest I have ever been in my life.

It’s not that I’ve ever considered myself particularly unhappy — but my happiness is now inextricably bound to the existence of Shion, and today, having confirmed that we were in the same feeling together, was without question the highest happiness I had ever known. The tenderness of being able to spend unremarkable time hand in hand with the very ideal of beauty I had been reaching for — there was nothing in the world to equal it.

And so, sinking deeper and deeper, my thoughts kept finding feelings I had never known before. And what I was diving into was not the sea stretching before me, covering seven-tenths of the earth — nor the hippocampus that governs memory — but the existence called Shion, breathing softly beside me.

To quietly savour the preciousness of something as large as happiness leaning against one small, single person — I squeezed Shion’s small hand tight.

“Uta…”

Shion murmured my name softly, in her sleep.

“Next stop — ○○ — ○○. Last stop”.

The conductor announced it in a worn, tired voice.

It felt like a harbinger — that even this happiness would one day reach its end.

◇◇◇

From inside the terminus station we made our way to our separate platform exits. Both our nearest stations were reachable from here in one train — unlike after school, there was no excuse for taking the long way round together. So this was where we said goodbye.

“It was fun.”

Still carrying a trace of drowsiness, Shion murmured it quietly.

“It was fun for me too.”
“I don’t want to say goodbye.”
“Me neither. But if it gets too late, your mother will be cross with you. So — tomorrow, all the time outside your lesson, let’s stay on the phone?”

I said it soothingly — and:

“…I want to be with you during my lesson time too, Uta.”

Shion said it suddenly, in a clear and decided tone, looking straight at me with those violet-indigo eyes.

The hand gripping mine tightened.

“Shion — what’s wrong…?”

I asked without thinking. The serious expression on Shion’s face before me was so beautiful it was almost frightening.

And then, as if caught in the borderland between drowsiness and waking consciousness, Shion’s words came washing in. Like raw, unguarded honesty quietly spilling over.

“I thought about it today, being with you all day, Uta. I want you to watch all of me. Every single moment — I want all my time to be time for you. I want to keep feeling you without interruption, without division. I don’t need barlines. I don’t need a final note. I can’t even wait until tomorrow — I want to be on the phone tonight too. And in the morning when I wake up I want to hear your voice right away. And every time the lesson comes and we have to part, I feel lonely and sad, every single time. So — from tomorrow, will you watch over me during my lessons too…?”

Said in a tone so flat, so calm — like a still sea. And yet those words swallowed my heart in one surge, like a breaking wave, and left me breathless.

“All right.”

I nodded, quietly.

The darkness and the beauty of a sea stretching without end flickered behind my eyelids, over and over.