Episode 70: Summer Ends

After learning that Shion was the prodigy I had admired all those years ago, we went to the hospital. The doctor said it was exhaustion. He seemed to find it unlikely in a student, so he concluded I’d probably just played too hard.

“Yes, that’s right.”

That was all I could say. Doctors are perceptive. I briefly thought that Mum — who was almost certainly far more exhausted than me — should be seen while we were there, but I didn’t say it out loud. My throat hurt.

We went home and I fell asleep almost immediately. A sleep like sinking in mud. The frustration of not being able to be at Shion’s side, tangled up with the elation of realising Shion was that prodigy from back then. The fluttering realisation that I’d kissed that same Shion, just the other day.

And then, briefly, the memory of Mum’s warmth when she held me while I ate the porridge. A feeling of softness came with it — but didn’t that sit awkwardly alongside years of near-rebellious distance? She works the hardest job there is, gives me all the money that costs her, and yet the thing that gets deepest under my skin turns out to be porridge and the warmth of her body. What a hopelessly mercenary heart.

So — fever-fogged thoughts wandering — I turned things over. At the centre of all of it, still, was regret at missing the competition, and worry for Shion, and the wish for a good result. And just a little, a small shameful corner of me hoping the result wouldn’t be too good without me there. But then — Shion is Shion, the prodigy I once admired, so she’d probably pull off something wonderful anyway. That trust, and the elation folded inside it, and the resignation. I’d worked my way that far through the fog when I let go of it all, and sank into a sleep like drifting down to the bottom of a deep sea.

◇◇◇

When had I last woken naturally, without a ringtone? I reached for my phone without thinking and checked the time. Two in the morning. The witching hour. I’d fallen asleep in the late afternoon and surfaced here. And below the time, a notification: a message from Shion. I swiped it open immediately.

LINE opened, and there it was.

“The competition — I was all right.”

I let out a slow breath and typed back.

“I’m glad.”
“I always knew you’d be fine.”
“But I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.”

I sent all three in a row. Naturally, no read receipt came back.

With the relief, something that had been pulled tight went slack all at once. I sank back down to the bottom of sleep.

◇◇◇

In the morning too, I woke on my own — no call from Shion. No reply to the messages I’d sent in the middle of the night either. She’d probably worn herself out at the competition and was still sleeping. That’s what I told myself, while feeling the ache of it — last day of summer break, and I couldn’t hear her voice.

Then I noticed that my throat, and the exhaustion draped over my whole body, were already much better. One night’s sleep and it had changed that much. Which made it all the sadder that I hadn’t been able to go yesterday. Sadder still that I hadn’t been able to burn the image of Shion into my eyes, hadn’t been able to keep my promise to always be watching. And — just a little — sadder too, somehow, that a good result had apparently come even without me there.

All of that with nowhere to go. I only know one place to put feelings, so I went to the front room, moved the laptop from the corner where it had been pushed aside, and set it on the low table.

I write. I weave words together. I hadn’t been there — but I wanted to come as close as I could to the beauty that had actually happened. I wanted to close the gap that had opened when I didn’t write the kiss. I put into words the beautiful sound that must have filled the concert hall yesterday — Shion’s playing. I called up the image I’d watched so many times in the lesson room: the fluid performance, the overwhelming beauty of it, the way it held an audience. I wrote that.

And then, as before — the Grand Prize, won. She probably wouldn’t leap toward the audience this time, but — I wrote the version where she turns toward me with that lovely smile.

That scene that should have been. That performance that must have unfolded in a concert hall where I wasn’t present — I made it into a novel. It was the closest thing I had to an apology for not being at her side.

I finished writing and posted it.

Shortly after, as always, responses came in from readers.

But for the first time, no comment arrived from Otonashi-san. And in the end, no LINE reply from Shion came either.

And so summer break ended.