Episode 71: Classroom

“…Morning.”

The ringtone sounded and I put the phone to my ear on reflex — then a voice like a small bell shook my eardrums, and for a moment I was convinced I was still somewhere inside summer break. But I squinted at the screen and the date read September 1st, and summer break had already become the past.

I rubbed at my bleary eyes and murmured back.

“Morning. Second term starts today.”
“Yeah… I’m sorry I couldn’t reply at the end of summer break.”
“You were tired after the performance, it’s completely fine. And anyway, I’m the one who should apologise — I couldn’t make it to the competition. Congratulations, though. I always thought you’d be all right even without me there.”

Shion’s voice was so unexpectedly subdued when she apologised that I made myself sound bright, on purpose — so she wouldn’t feel she had to worry, so the loneliness wouldn’t seep through. Then Shion murmured back, briefly, as though she were taking my loneliness onto herself:

“…Yeah.”

I couldn’t understand why there was loneliness in her voice too. Maybe she was missing the summer that had already gone, I thought, piecing together some loose explanation. And behind that loosely fabricated theory, I thought: if even a little of that loneliness has something to do with me, I’d be glad.

I covered that wanting with cleaner words.

“Looking forward to second term.”

◇◇◇

The classroom after summer break, the air still stubbornly hot with no trace of autumn, the ageing air conditioning working furiously at it. A restless space where noise and quiet traded places in quick succession. I had, regrettably, no idea who had tanned or who had somehow become more themselves over the summer. When you don’t remember what something looked like before, you can’t notice the change.

The one thing I knew was that Shion had rewritten me — my thoughts, my heartbeat, all of it. Nothing more than that. More intensely than before summer break, with the drone of some lesson as background noise, it was Shion I thought about.

The calls we’d started having. Going to watch her lessons. The sea. The summer festival. The kiss. Not being able to make it to the competition. And still, somehow, Shion placing well anyway.

Joy and elation and anguish and regret and loneliness — every emotion rising together with the memories, and all of it connected to Shion, so it wasn’t an exaggeration to say every thought I had had been taken over by her. The way Shion’s playing had kept climbing through the days of summer, my feelings for her had deepened with every page of that calendar turned. Shion was like the sea. The sunlight catching her, sparkling. Diving in to touch that beauty, and diving deeper and deeper, never reaching the bottom. No end in sight, just feeling and feeling until more feeling. Sinking into that depth, the ideal of beauty eroding me from the lungs to the heart, a suffocation I was approaching — that was me, now.

Even if I suffocate, if I can put all of that beauty into words and keep it — that’s enough. In exchange for sealing her beauty somewhere permanent, losing my life would be worth it.

She had already taken over not just my every reason to write but every reason to live, and in that state I had no chance of thinking about anything but her. Her absence only threw her presence into sharper relief, and I thought of nothing but Shion. The lessons in front of me never once carried more weight than Shion, who wasn’t there.

Then, as though putting a full stop to those thoughts, the chime rang. The class rep called the greeting, we answered, and lunch break opened out in front of me.

The classroom filled with the predictable noise of it, and I reached into my bag as always for a sweet roll and my wired earphones, sitting back down in my seat. I was about to put the earphones in, to block out the sound around me — when the classroom gave a faint stir. Everyone turned toward the front of the room in unison. There was something familiar about how the class was suddenly alert, and I followed their gaze without thinking.

Shion was there. Shion was walking straight toward me.

At the sudden arrival, my heart raced and my thoughts came apart, and in the middle of it all, watching her come toward me with quick steps, I found myself vaguely recalling the other competition. The image of Shion running up through the audience seats to throw her arms around me crossed my mind.

Almost tracing that memory — making up, somehow, for missing the summer competition — I stood up without meaning to. She probably wouldn’t throw herself at me, but the time we’d accumulated over summer was substantial enough that I felt sure she was coming for me, and I watched that approaching ideal of beauty with nothing in me but the desire to welcome her.

She came, as expected, right up to me — but contrary to expectation, she didn’t slow.

“…Uta.”

That murmur, and then the same coolness as that day touched me. Not in the concert hall’s audience seats but in the back corner by the classroom window, Shion pulled me into a tight embrace. The classroom noise turned up in volume. And at the same time, the noise receded. Everything Shion was giving me — the confusion, the elation, the hammering of my heart — took everything I had just to process, and nothing else existed.

“Uta. Uta.”

Shion repeated my name in a thin voice. She reached around my back and gripped my uniform tightly, as if clinging.

I lost my words at the suddenness of it, and could only stroke her back softly, the way you’d soothe someone. Then I managed, somehow, to offer one small thing:

“Shion… what’s wrong?”

Shion looked up, still holding on, and met my eyes from very close, and said:

“I don’t have anyone but you anymore.”

Right in front of me, those violet-indigo eyes were trembling. The words were so fragile, and yet they shook my eardrums with a sweetness that was almost frightening.

So the answer came naturally.

“I don’t have anyone but you either.”

At my words, Shion’s eyes trembled — and then, as if hiding something, she pressed herself back into me. I drew her slight, unsteady back gently toward me.

Like that, forgetting entirely that this was a classroom, we stayed there for a while — uniform against uniform, warmth against warmth.