Episode 87: If Only I Could Become Words

The message from the site administration. It said that my work — I Dedicate This Final Note to You — had won a contest prize. I’d entered on a whim, thinking it might just pass the reader selection round. It had done that and then, apparently through some good fortune, been selected for an award.

I don’t know what to do with that. The feeling hasn’t arrived yet. Because I had been writing the novel purely to write Shion — and that hadn’t changed when my readership grew after resuming the serial; if anything, as my relationship with the real Shion deepened, the tendency had only grown stronger. So what I felt more than anything was bewilderment at the sudden appearance of a third party — the wider world — in something so private.

And yet, on the other hand: if that result meant even a few more people could feel Shion’s beauty, if the prize existed as evidence that my words had managed to capture even a fraction of what Shion is — then I was glad. If my words had come even a little closer to Shion. If I could keep accumulating moments like this, and one day stand on equal ground with her, seeing the same view—

And then I remembered: the Shion herself I was thinking of was somewhere out there, suffering over whether to aim even higher.

My thoughts scattered and wouldn’t settle. My throat was parched, my airway tight. My head was already a mess from the Vienna question, and now the prize on top of it — I wasn’t going to be able to write in this state.

I noted in the site’s journal section that I wouldn’t be updating today, then left the laptop open and went to the sink to ease my throat with water from the tap.

The door gave a click and opened, footsteps in the corridor. A moment later, Mum’s face appeared in the doorway.

“…Welcome home.”

I said it, eyes partly averted. I didn’t feel the old near-rebellious frustration toward Mum anymore — but there was still a shyness, something like embarrassment, when it came to speaking to her face to face.

“I’m home… You’re still up at this hour, Uta. That’s unusual.”
“Mm. You’re early tonight too.”
“No night shift today…”
“Ah.”

Mum strung together her halting words, and my blunt answer left her gaze drifting — until it settled on the open shared computer, and she asked:

“Were you writing your novel?”
“…You knew?”
“When I use the computer sometimes, the search history has the novel site in it. I thought maybe… Of course I haven’t looked at what you’ve written.”

Mum’s expression went complex — something like sadness, something like nostalgia — as she spoke slowly. On the room’s bookshelf, Dazai and Akutagawa volumes sat abandoned by whoever had left them there; that was probably the source of the nostalgia. My father’s shadow — an irresponsible, selfish would-be literary man, a drifter.

His traces in the room amounted to those books, and no more. But in Mum’s heart, his presence probably still lived with a certain vividness — and even my literary-tinged name, Uta, must call him up.

It struck me suddenly: perhaps part of why I couldn’t forgive Kanzaki Takuto was my own pain. That I had been unconsciously nursing a frustration rooted in having been abandoned by my own father, and it had come out at him.

Thinking all of that, and wanting to know what words meant to Mum — what kind of existence they were for her — I asked about my father for the first time in my life.

“What kind of person was Dad?”
“Someone who wrote beautiful words.”

Mum answered while staring at the old shared computer. Perhaps my father had used that same machine to write. No trace remains in the files — but if he had, how had Mum felt when she deleted his drafts? How does she feel about the fact that I’m writing novels?

As if in answer, she began to speak.

“We were in the same literary circle at university. I was captivated by his writing from the very first thing I read. I can read but I can’t create, so there was a kind of awe toward the fact that he could generate something from nothing — but beyond that, I simply loved his writing. And he himself loved words. He loved his own novel. I thought: this is the kind of person who becomes a novelist.”

She added quickly, as though catching herself: that wasn’t the reason she fell for him, of course.

It was awkward and slightly wide of the mark — but it was Mum’s way of being considerate toward her child, and I thought it was just like her.

After that aside, she opened her mouth again.

“But it didn’t work out. However beautiful his writing was, his novels were never recognised. I’m not sure what went wrong — he was someone with no room for anything but writing, and he kept narrowing his own choices, kept writing, and still couldn’t clear that final wall. He drove himself further and further into a corner in his desperation… It was as though he were drowning in words. I felt as though his beautiful words had sunk into something dark, something with no visible bottom. And in the end, even he himself suffocated.”
“I didn’t know…”

Mum spoke like someone slowly unearthing a time capsule buried deep underground, offering fragments of memory. The shapelessness of it told of all the years since my father disappeared; the fact that every fragment was filled with nothing but the novel told of how completely he had been given over to words.

Just like Kanzaki Takuto, held captive by his own sound.

And then Mum fell quiet, her face carrying a quiet sorrow. Wanting to ease even a little of that — I heard myself say it before I’d decided to.

“I won a prize, Mum.”
“Eh…?”

Her face shifted. I added quickly, the way she had:

“A prize, for my novel. But it’s probably because I was writing for Shion. So I’m not going to drown in words — don’t worry. I’m going to keep writing to put Shion’s beauty into words.”

At that, Mum spread her thin arms and drew me into a tentative embrace. The sudden contact was so utterly unlike Shion’s uninhibited way of throwing herself at me that I nearly laughed.

Mum’s temperature was cool; her body was all angles. And through that sensation, her voice reached me.

“Congratulations. I’m genuinely happy. Not because you’ve somehow redeemed what your father couldn’t — nothing like that. I’m happy that you’ve found someone who makes you want to put them into words.”
“Having it said back to me like that is embarrassing.”

Mum laughed at my deflection. And then:

“If only I could have become his words — I wonder if anything would have changed.”

She murmured it — with sadness, and yet with a certain brightness. There was no regret in her voice; and that absence, perversely, told of how long she had been carrying it.

So I wanted her to know that what she and my father had left me wasn’t wrong. I wanted to offer her the feeling that Shion had helped me find — hold it out toward her too.

Past the embarrassment, I let the words come.

“…Thank you, Mum. For giving me the name Uta.”

Nothing changes with those words. But I said it quietly, and stroked her small, thin back with care.