Episode 84: I Was Making Music

Conspicuous in my school uniform even at the best of times, I chased after the departing panel of judges. Anon-san’s warning flickered briefly through my mind — but a stronger feeling was driving me forward. And at the centre of that feeling were the days I’d spent with Anon-san, and of course Shion, and the Kanzaki family. Time spent with a mother and daughter in which the father’s shadow was nowhere to be found.

So I called out.

“Kanzaki Takuto-san…!”

An out-of-place, out-of-turn voice rang through the space. But perhaps because it was out of turn, it reached someone who was himself not quite ordinary.

The broad back stopped, and slowly turned.

“You… just now, with Shion…”

A low, resonant voice sounded slowly. The deep-set face, the ash-grey hair — in person, Kanzaki Takuto gave a more rugged impression than anything television conveyed. I thought again: apart from the hair colour, Shion looks like her mother, not her father.

His expression showed no trace of surprise. Just a mild smile, and a murmur confirming facts, nothing more. For some reason that made me unreasonably angry.

I said it like throwing down a challenge.

“I’m Ogawa Uta. I’m close with Shion. I’m also in Anon-san’s care.”

I wanted to drive home the fact that there was someone here, someone who was close to Shion and Anon-san.

But it didn’t dent Kanzaki Takuto’s composure at all.

“Uta-san — thank you for looking after them both.”

Oh. I don’t like this person.

The instant his words reached me, delivered with that mild smile, I was struck by an instinctive revulsion nothing like what I’d feel toward a blood relation of Shion. If anything, because I loved Shion, because I had spent so much time with Shion and Anon-san, the feeling seemed to deepen into something closer to hatred.

Because those two had been fighting the whole time. Leaning on each other, approaching each other step by step, doing nothing but facing music. Together and alone.

And what had this man been doing through all of it?

Driven by that feeling, I was speaking before I knew it.

“What exactly have you been doing? Leaving Shion and Anon-san on their own — never coming home, not once standing beside them as a father — what have you been—”

My words were unforgivably rude. Unforgivably presumptuous. Even so, it seemed Kanzaki Takuto hadn’t lost enough of his humanity to absorb words that violent without reaction. Keeping his fixed smile in place, he shot back cleanly:

“I was making music. The whole time.”

He said it as though simply stating a fact. No guilt in it. No regret.

It was the exact opposite of Shion, who had struggled to find a reason to play, who had suffered under the curse she felt her own name to be.

I couldn’t find words in the face of that statement’s rough, mechanical texture — and then:

“Shall we find somewhere else to talk? The two of us here is far too conspicuous.”

He said it without waiting for an answer, turned on his heel, and walked.

I hurried after him.

◇◇◇

The concert hall corridors were packed with people now the competition was over. Even in that, Kanzaki Takuto’s large frame stood a head above the crowd, and his name alone drew eyes wherever he moved.

As he walked, he glanced back from time to time and lobbed questions at me.

“Are you in Shion’s class?”
“…No, but we’re at the same school.”
“You don’t do music yourself?”
“That’s right.”
“…Hm. So Anon didn’t send Shion to a music school.”
“That’s not something you have any right to weigh in on.”
“Ha — sharp.”

He scratched his head, showing not the faintest sign of contrition. His complete lack of interest in how Shion lived at home or at school, his manner of steering everything back to music no matter what — it infuriated me.

And then, as I was watching that broad back and the unreasonably well-formed profile, Kanzaki Takuto veered off from the crowd into what appeared to be a staff corridor. I hesitated briefly, then used the fact of having sat in the reserved section as a kind of pass and followed him in.

It was a dark space lit by nothing but the blinking green of an emergency exit sign. A silence that seemed impossible for a side passage off a busy corridor — the concert hall must be exceptionally well soundproofed throughout, I found myself thinking — and then:

Kanzaki Takuto, his back against the grey wall, asked:

“Do you happen to dislike me?”
“Yes.”

I was nodding before the thought arrived. I felt no regret about it at all.

“Ha — yeah, fair enough. Well, that’s something. Girls my daughter’s age usually go the other way, so being disliked this openly is a first.”

For some reason Kanzaki Takuto seemed to relax slightly, his manner growing a little less formal. Combined with that mild smile, the effect was somehow lighter than his physical presence suggested — almost breezy.

“Is that so.”
“So — what was it. You want to know what I’ve been doing. Is that right?”
“Yes. Leaving Shion and Anon-san alone — never once coming home — where were you, and what were you doing?”

I looked up at that needlessly tall face, words sharp as I could make them — and Kanzaki Takuto, smile still fixed in place, murmured:

“I really can only say it the same way — I was making music.”

And then, in the dark, a low voice began to sound, slowly, one word at a time.