Episode 62 — Scorched Film

Morning, before the Kanzaki car arrived. On my way to the entrance. A slightly different scene in the living room greeted me.

A tatami room, a low table. On top of the closed laptop, in its usual spot — the lunch money was not coins but a banknote. And beside the banknote, a separate slip of paper.

Today is the festival. Go and enjoy it with Kanzaki-san, if you like.

I tucked the banknote into my velcro wallet and put the note in my pocket. When I got home, if I felt like it, I’d put it in the drawer, I thought.

◇◇◇

“Let’s call it a little earlier today.”

As always, after the flowing resonance of the sound faded through the basement, Anon-san clapped her hands and announced it. Shion, at those words, padded over toward me and fell into step beside me. In one smooth motion she took my hand. The childlike gesture seemed impossible to reconcile with the person who had just been making the air tremble with beautiful sound only moments ago — and I felt, with fresh gladness, that Shion turned this childlike side of herself toward me alone.

“Uta-chan, Shion — come with me.”

Anon-san said it and headed up the basement stairs.

“Yes…!”
“Okay~”

We answered in turn and followed after her. In the middle of that exchange I thought, with a certain presumptuousness: we’re like sisters. Me as the older sister, Shion as the younger. For some reason I couldn’t picture it the other way round — but considering the hand that clung to mine like something seeking support, and the shoulder currently bumping into me with the energy of someone about to play a prank, and everything else besides, perhaps that wasn’t so far off. The fact that I could entertain such a fantasy, with something almost like a sense of reality behind it — that was how much the summer spent in the Kanzaki house had given me.

Anon-san walked at her usual upright pace. Through the large house, past several rooms, then stopped before a tasteful wood-grain door. She put her hand to the rounded gold doorknob, opened it in a practised motion, and ushered us inside.

The moment I stepped in tentatively, a clean, soap-like scent grazed my nose. Before me stood a large open wardrobe, several competition costumes hanging inside. The jet-black dress Shion had worn at the last competition was there among them. And amid all of that — two garments in vivid, contrasting colours, their atmosphere entirely different from the rest. My gaze was pulled straight to them.

Anon-san took one from the wardrobe and turned to Shion.

“All right — Shion first.”
“Okay~”

Shion answered with her usual energy, and with the same energy in complete contradiction — fingers separating from mine one by one, with something reluctant about it — she went to Anon-san.

“I’ll get this done quickly — go ahead and take your clothes off. Oh — Shiko-chan, you’re next, so wait just a moment.”

The moment Shion heard Anon-san’s instruction, she took her clothes off without a moment’s hesitation. I hurriedly averted my eyes from the suddenly exposed expanse of snow-white skin.

After that, the sound of fabric rustling — and at the edge of my vision, Anon-san moving briskly and purposefully.

“There — done.”

At those words I looked back, and there was Shion, dressed in a violet yukata. Across Shion’s beautiful figure, flowers the same colour as Shion’s own eyes bloomed in abundance.

“How do I look…?”

Shion tilted her head with a trace of anxiety. I immediately spilled the words out.

“You’re so… beautiful…”

The vocabulary that came out was embarrassingly inadequate for someone who writes fiction — that was how refined the beauty of Shion in her yukata was.

“…Say cute too.”

Shion said it, lips pushed into a slight pout, cheeks faintly flushed.

“You’re cute… you’re so cute!”

I hurried to supply it — and:

“I’m happy.”

Shion said it and smiled, like a bud quietly opening. Draped in flowers in abundance, and yet the person herself had to go and be the most beautiful of all of them. I was inwardly making this unreasonable complaint against Shion’s beauty when:

“Shiko-chan, your turn.”

Anon-san, who had been watching our exchange with a gentle smile, called to me. In her hands she held a yukata, white as its base with sunflowers scattered across it.

“I think Shion’s size should fit you too… let me just check — go ahead and take your clothes off.”

I did as I was told, reaching for the hem of my T-shirt without even remembering to feel self-conscious. I undid the button of my trousers and pulled down the zip. Slipping out of everything in one motion, Anon-san threaded my arms into the yukata and murmured with a wry smile:

“Shion — stop staring.”
“I — I’m not staring…”

Behind me, Shion’s voice came out in an unusually flustered tone. She couldn’t possibly have been staring at me without my clothes on — so what had she been looking at, the yukata pattern perhaps. Thinking this, I watched, in the hands of Anon-san, as white and sunflowers were layered across my own body.

Yukata on, sash tightened, breathing grown just a little difficult — I noticed something important, belatedly.

“Actually — this yukata, did you prepare it specially for me…?”
“…It’s a festival, and it wouldn’t do to have only Shion in a yukata.”

Anon-san said it, tugging the yukata down firmly, in a way that seemed like she was hiding her embarrassment. Cheeks faintly flushed. Her way of speaking, her manner — a little like Shion when we first met.

This was no time to be savouring warm feelings, though.

“Then — the money. I’ll pay you back. It might not be right this moment, but…”
“It’s all right. This is a thank-you for watching Shion’s lessons all through summer break.”
“But…”

Even as I pushed back — Anon-san said, in a tone that brooked no argument:

“Then think of it as payment for modelling — let me take a photo of you and Shion later… there, done.”

And with those words she put her hand on my shoulders and turned me around.

And then:

“Uta, you look so cute…!”

Shion murmured it and immediately took a step toward me — arms spread wide, waiting for a hug.

“Shion — no hugging, you’ll wrinkle the yukata!”

Anon-san hurried to restrain her —

Watching that scene with a half-smile, I thought: I am happy right now.

The temperature of happiness turned out to be unexpectedly lukewarm. Its texture loose and yielding. Utterly slack, in contrast to the tightness of the sash. I noticed that.

Until now I had been writing fiction to put into words — to preserve — my ideal beauty, Shion’s beauty. But from here on, that wasn’t all. Moments like this one, small and irreplaceable — I wanted to put them into words too. To cut them out, seal them in vacuum, make them permanent.

Such moments pass mercilessly on. As if resisting that, Anon-san produced a proper camera from somewhere — the kind used for real shoots — and trained it on us.

“Shion, Uta, stand together… say cheese.”

At those words, the shutter sounded.

Just before it did, Shion pressed herself against my arm with her full weight, and both our yukatas yielded and bunched together. The panicked sound Anon-san made at that was funny. Even so, Anon-san didn’t lower the camera — and the shutter sound rang out intermittently for a good while after.

The sound of time being cut out turned the two of us, Shion and me, into something permanent.