Episode 65: Sleeping Beauty

I didn’t write about the kiss. I wrote up to covering her ears. And yet the comment section had taken on a giddy, restless energy, which I found troubling.

“I love how the ending makes you imagine something more must have happened.”

Another loaded comment from Otonashi-san. But it wasn’t wrong at all, and I found myself marvelling at how sharp her intuition was.

In all the time since I’d met Shion and resumed the serial, this was the first time what happened in real life had diverged so completely from what I’d put on the page. After all, I write because I want to put Shion’s beauty into words — to seal it in amber, hold it in something that lasts. I want to keep writing her, as faithfully and as fully as I can, for as long as I’m able.

But the events of today — that one instant lit by fireworks — I want to keep just for myself. My wet hands over her ears. The drops running down Shion’s cheek, catching the light, sparkling. Those violet-indigo eyes, shimmering, alive with something. The feeling of her thin, cool lips against mine, her fist clenching the hem of my yukata, her warmth burning through even that faint contact. The sensation that crackled through every part of me. The feeling that came tangled up with all of that, which I haven’t yet sorted out — I want to keep it quietly inside, just a little longer. And when I finally offer it to someone, I want that someone to be Shion, not a sea of strangers.

I roll over in bed, my mind perfectly, infuriatingly clear. In the sticky heat of the summer night, damp with sweat, I hug my duvet like a substitute for something. I’ve been sleep-deprived from the daily trips to the Kanzaki house, and today I’d walked for hours in an unfamiliar yukata — I should be exhausted to the bone. My brain won’t let me rest. Over and over, the film reel in my head plays that moment back, nearly scorching itself with the repetition. And, incorrigible as ever, I think:

I want to see Shion. Now.

The fastest way to make that wish come true is to fall asleep. I know that, painfully, obviously. But body and brain alike refuse to stop turning the warmth over and over.

In the end, I didn’t sleep a single minute — not until the phone rang in the morning: Shion’s call, my alarm clock.

◇◇◇

Unlike me, Shion had no shadows under her eyes. What she had instead — the moment she spotted me — was cheeks that flushed bright red. The car stopped in its usual spot. Shion was waiting in the back seat, and she was fidgety in a way I’d never quite seen before. Even so, she laced her fingers through mine as she always does — except today there was something more insistent about it, the way she pressed into every gap between my fingers, filling each space completely.

“Good morning.”
“…Morning.”

We traded greetings a beat apart as I climbed in. As though to make up for what words couldn’t say, Shion squeezed my hand. Leaned into me.

The whole atmosphere was thick and awkward and sticky.

From the driver’s seat, Anon-san caught us in the rearview mirror and let out a small, helpless laugh. I realised I’d forgotten to greet her and called out hurriedly toward the front.

“Good morning to you too, Anon-san.”
“…Morning. You can sleep if you want to, you know.”

She must have noticed the shadows under my eyes. She swallowed whatever else she might have said, and offered me that instead.

“Ah — yes, thank you very much.”

I nodded. But.

“No sleeping.”

Shion murmured it from right beside me.

“Why not…?”

She answered by pressing her shoulder against mine — sulky, a little wilful, like a child who hasn’t quite gotten their way.

“Because if you fall asleep I’ll be lonely… I couldn’t sleep either. I kept wanting to see you.”
“…Well, when you put it like that.”

And so I agreed. It was a miraculous moment in which maternal instinct overcame the most fundamental of biological drives.

I raised my free hand and stroked Shion’s hair. She leaned into me, content, and closed her eyes. Looking at her like that — the long lashes, the flutter of her eyelids — my heart felt like it might scorch through my chest with everything yesterday had left behind. I didn’t know what to do with all of it, so I just kept stroking her hair, and stroking her hair, and —

Shuu shuuー A sound that shouldn’t have been audible drifted up from beside me. It was, unmistakably, a sleeping breath. Shion had fallen asleep on my shoulder, looking for all the world like there was nowhere more comfortable to be.

From the front seat, Anon-san burst out laughing.

I sighed, a little exasperated.

“Shion’s always been like this, hasn’t she…”