Episode 76: For My Sake

An intro built from single, distinctive notes. Shion sways gently. Then, threading through the gaps between repeated phrases, she raises the microphone and gives her voice to the melody.

A mistaken belief, beyond the sky —
Is life just one farewell after another?
I could see just a little of the future —
And still, it’s goodbye.

Shion’s voice was transparent as always, as beautiful as piano sound — and trembling, just slightly. I stared, fixed, at the side of her face, shadowed by the glow of the screen. Shion didn’t glance my way, shaping the melody with her own voice. Looking at her like that, I felt Shion distant in a way I hadn’t for a long time.

Shion’s voice spins out the lyrics, and the outline of our memories gathers around them and appears before me.

Singing this song at karaoke with Shion watching. Shion telling me she liked my voice. Listening to this song over and over in Anon-san’s car, the three of us together. My favourite song becoming part of Shion’s life, and the time I spent with Shion becoming the whole of mine. Colouring nearly all of summer, and then its ending ringing out like a missing puzzle piece, leaving a hollow in my chest.

Shion’s voice reaches the chorus and shatters my thoughts. Shion grips the microphone with both hands, leans forward, and cries out:

Say a gentle sort of happiness just keeps drifting on —
Surely something bad would take root—
And already — it’s goodbye.

I heard Shion scream for the first time. Her slight voice struggling desperately to make words into sound. That transparent voice, breaking. Her silver hair shaking, shaking, trying to convey something, failing to convey it, straining against the frustration with everything she has.

At the sight of her I can’t help wanting to stand. I want more than anything to rush to her and wrap my arms around her back.

But that won’t change anything. It would just be the two of us sinking into each other again. Just days of sinking into Shion’s beauty. That’s not what I want — what I want, what we need —

I want us to face each other from equal ground.

As if answering my silent cry, my resolve — Shion turns toward me. Looks at me. The cheap karaoke sound system announces the next lyric: “a cold can of coffee on a winter’s day” — a winter we don’t know yet, scrolling across the screen. But Shion didn’t follow those words. What reached my ears instead was her voice, trembling like it was cold, and a cold truth.

“I couldn’t play — at the competition — I couldn’t play the piano…”
“…What?”
“I couldn’t play the piano — at the competition!”

Shion screams it like music. But it was only cold reality — the root of Shion’s suffering, and the true shape of my guilt. I feel that poison eroding me.

“Why…?”

The words, wrested out with everything I had.

Why couldn’t you play.

Why did you stay silent.

Why did you lie.

Three questions collapsed into that single word. And yet Shion’s answer was only one thing.

“Because you weren’t there.”

Shion said it plainly, something cleared from her expression, looking directly at me. Those violet-indigo eyes fixed on me alone. Throwing my guilt into relief. Throwing into relief the sinful part of me that felt glad — glad that Shion had depended on me so completely that she couldn’t play without me.

Someone like me has no right to be forgiven. And what someone like me can do is still, in the end, only this: put feeling into words.

I cry out toward Shion.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the competition. No — more than that. I’m sorry I saw that something was wrong and pretended not to. I promised I’d always be watching, and I wasn’t watching you at all — I’m sorry.”

As if scattering my words back at me, the television screen reads: “Goodbye — I suppose that’s fine too.” As if to deny it, Shion shakes her head and forces out words through a worn-raw throat.

“No. It’s my fault. I knew. You were calling every day, coming to watch my lessons. I could see you were struggling. I knew that, and I was weak anyway — I let myself love you so much that I couldn’t play piano without you. That’s on me. I’m weak and a liar and ugly and not beautiful at all — it’s my fault.”

Tears run down Shion’s cheeks. The words end; the song ends. Even so, Shion’s eyes kept trembling, filled with sadness like waves. The tears kept falling.

I want to rush to her this instant and wipe them away. Hold her, and kiss her, and ease even a little of that grief.

But that still won’t change anything. So —

So I don’t want to give her my body or the feeling of touch. I want to give her my heart. I want to use words to carry my heart to Shion.

“I’m a liar too…”

Shion looks at me with tear-wet eyes. That gaze is more beautiful than anything, and even her grief is beautiful, and I don’t want her to look like that — and in knowing that, I understand: I love Shion, helplessly, completely.

That love, gently, is let go.

“I write novels. I’ve been writing a novel since long before I met Shion — a novel with piano as its theme, and Shion is a perfect image of the heroine, the very embodiment of the admiration and ideal that made me start writing — so like the prodigy girl I saw back then. So it might be strange, but — I’ve been writing with Shion’s image overlaid on the heroine…”

Shion nods silently, small. At that, I grow anxious that my words aren’t reaching her, feel the frustration of it, feel irritation at my own inadequacy mounting.

Such a scattered, shapeless thing to say. The moment an ideal is put into words it collapses with a sound. My words are still so far from the ideal, still falling short.

And yet there’s a heart that wants to reach her, a feeling that wants to be delivered, and the only means to do it is words.

Incoherent as it is, I spin them out.

“The day I got sick and couldn’t go to the competition, I was watching television — and Shion appeared on the screen, and old footage of Shion came with it — and that’s when I understood. When I remembered. The girl I admired, the one who made me start writing — she was Shion. Long before the day we met in the music room, my ideal of beauty had always been Shion.”

When that truth was laid bare, Shion’s eyes trembled. A sound escaped her. Shion, shaking as if with astonishment, with joy, murmured:

“So that’s how it was…”
“Yes. I’ve been writing Shion all along. So — keep being my ideal. Until the day my words can finally reach Shion’s beauty — keep being, from now on, always…”

In the end, my wish doesn’t change.

The reverse of that day — sitting now where Shion once stood, looking up — I reach out my hand toward Shion, still standing.

“Play piano for me. For my sake.”

The words that began everything rang out again, between the two of us.