Episode 73: The Sound of Loneliness

To write the novel, I have to remember. Remember kissing Shion in the after-school music room, pressed close together. Once I let my thoughts go there, it isn’t easy to come back. The soft feeling of Shion’s lips, the rhythm of her breathing, the whiteness of her closed eyelids — I trace the memory over and over, and each time a sweet current runs through my brain.

Caught up in replaying the kiss, my fingers on the keyboard don’t advance at all. The screen in front of me is blank white. And that white makes me think of Shion’s skin again, which sends me back to the beginning — so I may be reaching a terminal stage.

But I think that’s unavoidable. Because the piano prodigy I watched on television as a child, the one whose image started this novel — that was Shion. And I’m kissing that same Shion, which naturally makes it hard to focus on anything else. She was already the reason I picked up writing again after quitting; now it turns out she’s the reason I started in the first place. The origin and the continuation — both filled entirely by Shion. Is it any wonder I’m consumed by her? What else would you call it, if not fate — kissing someone who isn’t merely close to the ideal of beauty but is the ideal of beauty, in its entirety?

Submerged entirely in Shion like that, the novel doesn’t advance at all. And besides, there’s no way I could write what actually happened today into the novel. Truth is stranger than fiction, they say — but at this point in the story, if the protagonist and heroine kissed it would be far too sudden. I didn’t write the summer festival scene either.

So in the end, I wrote the heroine playing piano in the music room, and left it at that. I spent the update describing the heroine’s sound — transformed, grown almost unrecognisably since before summer break. Shion’s playing really had deepened dramatically over summer, and she’d placed well at the competition, so I wrote that growth carefully, without getting anything wrong. To make the real Shion and the heroine overlap in the reader’s mind; to express the beauty of Shion’s music without omitting a thing; I took the performances I’d watched so many times in the basement practice room and transposed them into the old music room.

And so today’s after-school hours in the novel came to an end. I let out a small breath of relief at having gotten through the update, and as usual I poured the text from the word processor into the posting site, gave it a light proofread, and hit the publish button.

Then I showered, dried my hair, and opened the laptop again from sleep mode — and the red notification light was blinking. The notifications showed several readers had already given hearts, and comments had appeared.

But there was no comment from Otonashi-san today either. It had been like this for several days now. That one thing nagged at me; I knew it wasn’t healthy for a writer to be this fixated on one reader’s response, and yet I couldn’t help it.

If Otonashi-san had stopped reading my novel, I’d be terribly sad. Because — that’s exactly it. Otonashi-san is the sole witness to the beginning that Shion brought about. I want her to keep watching, if she will, until I can finally put Shion’s beauty into words with perfect completeness.

Thinking about Otonashi-san while staring at the screen like that, my phone on the tatami floor buzzed and broke my focus. I picked it up half without thinking and pressed the green button.

“Hello.”

First thing, before anything else, in answer to my voice —

“Uta…”

Shion’s voice calling my name sounded in my ear. We’d exchanged that greeting countless times through summer break, but I never tired of it — hearing that voice, my heart always lifted.

Tonight, though, the lifted heart came paired with unease, and that was simply because Shion’s voice saying my name sounded strangely damp, strangely sad.

“Shion, what’s wrong? You seem low.”

I put the worry to her directly. And then —

“…Don’t leave.”
“Hm?”

Shion murmured it in a transparent voice. The words were so abrupt that a small sound escaped me.

As if in reply, Shion’s voice began to flow.

“Uta’s words are drifting away from me.”

“…What do you mean?”

The kind of phrasing only Shion uses. Riddle-like, roundabout. I could only offer back a question mark, and so Shion’s sadness deepened.

“…It’s all right if you don’t understand. It’s all right, but…”

There she suddenly went quiet. A silence as though she were holding something back spread between us through the line. Not being together means even silence is two separate things, impossible to share completely — and I felt the fragility of being connected only by voice. And then, trembling and thin as a radio signal, her voice touched my ear again.

“Tell me you like me.”

The silence broke — and a bomb fell that destroyed all the surrounding context. My heart lurched so hard I thought it might break through my chest. My breathing stopped. Which is why no sound came out.

Impatient with my reply that wouldn’t come, Shion murmured:

“Why won’t you say anything…?”

That voice was so sad, carrying a desperate resonance as urgent as the piano melody the first time I met her —

My words left without waiting for my heart.

“I like you. I like you.”

The words came out of their own accord. But shortly after, my heart caught up to them. I really do like Shion — I feel that, from the bottom of me.

It’s always like this when I’m with her. My heartbeat racing and accelerating on its own, words coming out of my mouth on their own — nothing going the way I intend, as if I’m becoming someone other than myself. And yet Shion’s existence turns all of it into the right answer, remakes me entirely.

I was supposed to have quit writing, and yet for the single reason of wanting to write Shion’s beauty I picked up the pen again. While holding Shion’s hand, I’d managed, just a little, to face my mother honestly — when I’d been turning away from her for years. I had no interest in other people, and yet Shion’s every movement, every gesture, won’t stop mattering to me.

And even now, wanting to ease even a little of Shion’s sadness, I’m reaching desperately for the words she’s asking for. I pray they reach her.

Like falling stars, one by one, Shion let the words fall.

“I like Uta too. Your voice and your words, all of it — I like it. So don’t leave. Stay with me always.”

A plea cast back to the beginning in a clinging voice. And even a plea like that — I want to answer it.

“I’m not leaving.”
“Yeah.”
“My voice and my words are all Shion’s. I’m only ever looking at Shion. So let’s always be together.”
“…Yeah.”

But no matter how many words I offered, no matter how many words she asked for and I gave.

From Shion’s voice came the sound of loneliness.