Episode 78: Pure White

Alone in my room, still in my uniform, I lie back on the bed. I sink into the softness of the duvet. But in contrast, my heart is floating, buoyant, restless.

…I was the model for the heroine.

I think it and I can’t stop the corners of my mouth from rising. There’s no way I can settle — I roll back and forth across the bed, from one end to the other.

Because just knowing that Uta overlays my image onto the heroine and writes — just knowing that meeting me was what made her resume the serial — was already more happiness than I knew what to do with. Just being able to meet Uta had been a treasure to me.

And yet, even before that — she saw me on television when I was small, and admired me, and it made her start writing. That’s — that’s too wonderful, I’ll die from it. For the first time in my life I feel, from the very bottom of me, that I’m glad I was called a prodigy.

Because, because.

I stop rolling and touch my finger to the screen, and open the page of I Dedicate This Final Note to You that I’ve read back so many times.

This passage near the beginning that I’ve always loved. This passage that I love so much. All of it, all of it — not just from after the serial resumed. From the beginning. Uta had been writing while thinking of me. We were connected through words before we ever met.

If that isn’t fate, what is it?

I squeeze my phone tight against my chest. The fact that Uta admired the version of me from childhood alone — it’s as though colour is being painted back over those days that had nothing in them but music, days that were hollow and empty. That single fact reached back and rescued not just my present but my past, all of it at once.

And in the future too — I want to be Uta’s words for the rest of my life. That wish and the words Uta spoke at karaoke today overlap in me.

“Keep being my ideal.”
“For my sake. Play piano.”

I have to keep being Uta’s ideal. The only thing I can do for that is play piano. I want to take back the lie I told about the competition, and take back Uta’s words that drifted away from me.

I get up from the bed, leave my room, and walk straight to the living room. There, Mama was leaning back into the sofa, not doing anything in particular, just staring into the middle distance. Come to think of it — I’d been so consumed by my own sadness that I hadn’t noticed, but lately Mama has seemed a little low. Thinking that, I speak to her profile, that pensive expression on her face.

“Mama, do you have a moment?”

At my voice, Mama startles, body giving a small jolt, and turns toward me. Then, with the careful hesitancy of someone touching something fragile, she asks:

“Shion, what is it…?”
“From today — what’s the soonest competition I could enter?”

At my abrupt question, Mama’s eyes go wide. She checks her phone, and answers.

“From today — in exactly two weeks, there’s an international competition at the concert hall by the station, but…”
“Understood. I’ll enter that one.”

I looked directly into Mama’s eyes and said it with conviction. For a moment her expression lifted — and then, as though working through her various concerns one by one, she asked in a worried voice:

“I’m glad you want to, but I think it’ll be quite hard. You haven’t had a lesson since the last competition, and even with just that gap — they say one day off means three days to get your sound back. Getting back to your summer form in two weeks will be difficult enough, let alone exceeding it. And on top of that, the judges for that competition are—”
“Even so. I want to enter.”
“For you to say something like this so suddenly — what happened…?”

Pressed back by my urgency, Mama rose from the sofa and stood squarely in front of me, gently tilting her head.

I looked up at her face and spoke directly.

“Because I have to keep being Uta’s ideal. Because I have to catch up to Uta’s words as fast as I possibly can…”
“…It’s Uta-chan, after all.”

Mama murmured it with a smile that was just faintly sad. And toward that expression, I offered the rest:

“So I need your help, Mama.”
“Eh…”
“Like you said — entering a competition in this state is going to be very hard. Even the last competition went the way it did… But I want to win. I have to win. For that, I’ll work as hard as I need to — harder than when I was small, even. So…”

Because — when I was being called a prodigy, the world held nothing but sound. There was no colour in it, no warmth, just hollow days. But now I know that even those days, I was connected to Uta through words — and if those days hadn’t happened, if that path hadn’t been there, maybe I could never have met Uta and woven these days together with her.

And it was Mama who sustained me through all of those days. Mama who gave me music. It has always been Mama. She was the only one who was always there.

“Teach me piano, Mama.”

At my words, Mama’s eyes went wide — and if I’m not mistaken, her eyes grew wet, the corners reddening. But by the time the words came to me, she was the same strict, composed Mama as always.

“Morning, after school — not a single second can be wasted. Is that still all right?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have less time with Uta-chan.”
“…Just a little… I really, really hate that, but — it’s all right. Because I’m Uta’s ideal — because I have to keep being Uta’s words — so for that, I want to win.”

I nodded. And Mama nodded back, firmly, and said:

“Let’s win together. Win, and show Uta-chan the most beautiful, the most wonderful version of you.”

Promise.

Mama, as though suddenly embarrassed, murmured it and hooked her little finger through mine.

Mama’s finger was strong and large — and yet. It was the same pure white as mine.