Episode 72: The Piano That Won’t Sound

After the warning bell rang and Shion left, the atmosphere in the classroom was something else entirely. Which, thinking about it, was entirely to be expected — a genius beauty that everyone in school knows, and a completely unremarkable ordinary student like me, holding each other. In the middle of lunch break, in full view of everyone. Objectively, an inexplicable phenomenon.

Those questioning looks followed me persistently after that, and the feeling of being watched from a distance by my classmates never went away. I accepted the discomfort with roughly half a sense of resignation — well, obviously. And yet in that unsettled atmosphere, I felt just a little superior to everyone around me, which means something in me has gone genuinely, seriously wrong.

And the cause of that wrongness came to the after-school classroom too.

A little while after homeroom ended, I was packing my notebook and pencil case into my bag when something like a replay of the earlier stir brushed my eardrums. Then the sense of everyone’s attention gathering this way. I looked up, and sure enough — Shion was there. She walked with quick steps, silver hair swaying, catching the slanting afternoon light and glittering.

And that gleam came to a stop in front of me. Not just a stop — a touch. My hand was enclosed in Shion’s cool palm. Then, flowing smoothly from palm to fingertips, the area of contact grew, and her fingers laced through mine.

“Let’s go.”

She said it briefly, took my hand, and walked. With an urgency to her movements, not a trace of ease.

Every pair of eyes in the classroom pressed into my back. Unguarded whispers grazed me.

Then, as if to answer all of it, Shion pressed herself tighter against my arm. The closeness grew closer still.

“Uta is mine.”

Shion’s murmur touched only my ear.

◇◇◇

No piano sound fills the old music room. In its place, the aged wooden chair groans and creaks under the weight of two people. Just like before, Shion was sitting in my lap. Facing me, her warmth and scent and the feel of her skin coming at me from every side, which was doing something alarming to my heartbeat.

“Shion, aren’t you going to play?”

“…Yeah. Mama said it’s fine to take a break from practice for a while.”

Shion answers my question by pulling the embrace tighter. Every time she shifts, a sweet scent drifts out and the softness of her thighs presses gently against my knee. Every time the feel of her intensifies, I can’t help being brought back to the day of the summer festival — to the kiss — which is a problem. The fact that I kissed that ideal of beauty keeps replaying itself, and I can’t settle.

Getting carried away entirely by myself like that, even my breathing going difficult, I flee from instinct into borrowed maternal feeling, trying to cover it over.

“I see… you worked so hard at the competition. And you were practising all through summer break. You’ve been so good.”

I say it while stroking her hair in a soothing sort of way, running my fingers through the silken silver of it.

“…Thank you.”

Shion’s voice as she murmured it sounded somehow flat, sunken. Usually she’d be a little more open in how she leans into affection, but now she felt like an abandoned kitten — pressing close while bracing against something.

And then, as though following that intuition, Shion spoke again.

“Uta…”
“What’s wrong, you seem low?”
“You won’t leave me, will you…? You’ll keep watching only me, always…?”

Shion looked up with a clinging, imploring gaze. At those words, with their weight of implication, I rushed to answer.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry — not making it to the competition must have made you anxious. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for your big moment. I knew how hard you’d worked all summer, so it really hurt to miss it, I felt terrible about it… that’s why I was so genuinely glad, so relieved, when I heard you’d placed well. Thank you for trying so hard.”

I tumbled it all out quickly, hoping to hurry the loneliness away from her. But Shion’s expression didn’t brighten, and an awkward silence closed around us.

What broke it was something Shion did, and something she said.

She raised her face, slowly, unsteadily. Then she reached her arms around my neck and looked at me from very close, as if searching. And slowly, she murmured:

“Again… will you?”
“Wh — what do you mean.”

I asked as though I didn’t understand. But my gaze had already been pulled naturally to her pale lips, and Shion continued, drawing my gaze in along with her words:

“What you did at the summer festival. Do that.”
“But we’re at school…”

Which — if we’re talking about location — that time it was the corner of a park, so my objection doesn’t really hold. And besides, my racing heart, my unsteady breathing, my rising warmth were making my own wanting entirely obvious.

Shion set that wanting gently alight.

“I want to feel you closer. When you’re not near me I feel anxious and lonely, and without you I…”

Shion’s words didn’t reach their end. I stopped them, and stopped her sadness with them. I covered her lips with mine. The soft, cool contact of skin. Just that — and something deep in my head went pleasantly, dizzily numb. The hesitation from moments before, the confusion — all of it gone.

In the after-school hours, no piano sounds. In its place, the faint, half-hidden sound of skin against skin whispered in the room.