Episode 79: The Place Without Barlines

Shion has always been like a cat — appearing without warning, leaving deep marks, then vanishing before you know it. It had been that way from the moment we met. Over and over, the same pattern.

And now, again, the pattern repeats.

The signal was a ripple of disturbance running through the noisy lunchtime classroom. I looked up, and there was Shion.

“Uta.”

Shion’s voice was different from usual — direct, forceful — and the suddenness of her arrival made me look up with wide eyes.

“Shion, what is it?”
“Uta, starting today — I can’t come to the music room for a while.”
“Eh, why—”

I stood up without meaning to and faced her. The chair scraped loudly and I felt a few glances collect our way, but that didn’t matter, and I looked at Shion straight on.

We’re nearly the same height, so her face — too beautiful, unreasonably beautiful — was right in front of me. And yet somehow, it was me who felt small.

“I’m going to put everything into piano to win the next competition. To keep being your ideal. To catch up to your words. Every minute goes to that. So — wait for me.”
“In that case—”

I was about to say: I’ll come to the lessons too. And then I stopped myself.

Because Shion — who couldn’t play at the competition because I wasn’t there — is trying to change, for me. She’s telling me she wants to try hard. Her determination, the feeling she’s directing toward me — I shouldn’t get in the way of that.

“Understood. When is the competition?”
“Two weeks from now. Will you come and watch…?”

She asked it with a faint anxiety, probably because of what happened before. I smiled, and answered while stroking her head, hoping to clear even a little of that worry.

“Of course I’ll be there. I’ll make sure not to catch a cold this time.”

Shion, being stroked on the head, narrowed her eyes and gave a crumpled, warm smile.

“I’m glad. I’ll play piano for you.”

Those words from Shion. They were exactly what I’d wished for — everything I’d wanted — and yet.

The warning bell rang, as if to tear us apart.

◇◇◇

The old wooden chair doesn’t creak under just one person’s weight. In the old music room, the only sounds from outside were the shouts from the sports ground and a wind instrument player running scales somewhere — and inside, nothing but the faint sound of my own breathing.

For some reason I was spending after-school hours in the old music room, knowing Shion wouldn’t come. Like someone lingering over something almost gone.

Shion is apparently having Anon-san drive her to and from practice so she doesn’t waste a single moment getting back to form before the competition, and the only way I can have any contact with her is through LINE messages.

Since yesterday at karaoke, when we shared our secrets with each other, things have definitely improved. Shion has returned to the piano she’d stopped being able to play, and started practising at full pace toward the competition. And what’s more, that’s for me — my words are what prompted it — and the fact that the direction of all that effort, from a girl as overflowing with talent as Shion, is pointing at me — it’s more than I deserve. An honour beyond what I’m worth.

Yes. More than I deserve. Those words echo through the soundless room, through my heartbeat. And their reverberations press a single fact against me.

Unlike Shion, who is overflowing with talent — I have nothing at all.

I’m just someone who keeps struggling to put Shion’s beauty into words, and can’t even manage that properly. Just an ordinary person who happened to slip through a crack in Shion’s heart at the right moment. Someone who wouldn’t hold a candle to Shion, normally — an unremarkable, replaceable person who has no right to stand alongside her.

That’s why, with Shion gone, my daily life becomes this empty. One single day of distance and the warmth of her, the feel of her skin, already feels impossibly far away.

I don’t want Shion to go somewhere far. Even without winning the competition, I know she’s beautiful — so I want her to stop moving away from me.

I think that, and I’m ashamed of myself for thinking it. I can’t stand the version of me that can’t even wish for Shion’s success. A self like this can’t stand on equal ground with Shion.

To stand on equal ground with Shion. What does that require?

I rise from the chair with no particular energy and pick up the bag I’d left on the floor. There is only one answer available to me.

Even in a world without sound, even in a place without barlines — I will keep writing your music into words.