Episode Twenty-Four: Better to Never Catch Up At All
Thinking back, this might be the first time I’ve ever wanted to celebrate someone’s birthday this seriously.
Not a lover. Not quite a friend, either. What Yui-san and I are to each other really can’t be summed up in a single word.
Our fathers are friends. Senior and junior, same university, same faculty. From the outside, it probably just looks like two people sharing a roof.
Unless my family suddenly moves back to Japan sometime in the four years before I graduate, this shared life is going to keep going as it is.
Right now, Yui-san’s a third-year, with barely a year left until she graduates. Thinking about that stirs up a small ache of loneliness in me.
Standing in the kitchen, listening to the clink of the muddler and ice against the glass, I stared at the clear, golden liquid inside.
Once she graduates, it’s already decided — Yui-san will join the company her father runs.
Even without job hunting to worry about, she’ll surely get busier once she’s actually working there, and the time she spends with me now might shrink.
Lost in thought, I startled when a hand suddenly closed over mine from above, stopping me mid-stir.
“…Kanata, stir it that hard and you’ll lose all the carbonation.”
Yui-san, who’d apparently wandered into the kitchen without my noticing, said it, half-laughing. I glanced, startled, at the wall clock — the hands were almost at the very top.
Tonight is the ninth. Tomorrow is Yui-san’s birthday. Of course, the proper celebration is planned for tomorrow night, but it was me who’d asked her to stay in the living room until the date actually changed.
Because I wanted to be the very first person to say happy birthday to her.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about something.”
I’m the one who’d asked her to be here, and here I was, completely checked out. A little embarrassed, I realized I’d lost track of time entirely, caught up in my own head.
“What’s up, something happen?”
Asked so gently, her fingertips gently tucked my hair behind my ear.
Not a single complaint about the highball I’d over-stirred into flatness, just a simple thanks for making this — and I couldn’t help wishing, desperately, that those kind eyes would stay fixed on me, and only me, forever.
“It’s nothing, just…”
“Mm?”
“It makes me sad, that you’re turning twenty-one, Yui-san.”
Honestly, the fact that Yui-san once dated an older woman still bothers me a little.
Calling me special, saying she liked me, and then it turns out her past girlfriend was older than her — I hadn’t expected that at all.
Maybe it’s vanity on my part, but I’d assumed, without question, that Yui-san had a thing for younger girls.
“Age gaps are a pain, right? You can never catch up.”
“You think? …Catching up would be lonely too, in its own way. Better to never catch up at all.”
Yui-san smiled, faintly wistful. I didn’t grasp, right away, what she meant by that.
Staring back into those endlessly deep eyes, like a midnight sea, I only understood the real meaning of her words a beat too late.
Right about then, the clock’s long and short hands were about to align.
Ah. Right — Yui-san lost her mother young. The dead don’t age. The gap in years only ever keeps shrinking.
Before too long, she’ll catch up to the age her own mother was. How will Yui-san feel, when that day comes?
If she finds that lonely, when it happens, I want to be the one beside her. Not anyone else.
Right as the clock ticked over with a small click, I leaned in, pressing close against her shoulder.
“…Happy birthday, Yui-san.”
A moment later, Yui-san’s phone, left forgotten on the coffee table, buzzed repeatedly.
Still as popular as ever, I couldn’t help thinking, with a small wry smile.
Glad we live together. A small thrill of superiority, getting to say it before anyone else.
Right now, I’m the only one who gets to have Yui-san all to myself.
“Thanks.”
An arm wound gently around my waist, pulling me into an embrace. Pressed close together, I could tell Yui-san was smiling, soft, against me.
“Ahh, I wish I could’ve celebrated your birthday too, Kanata.”
“It’s coming up soon. April, and all.”
That’s true — April will be here in no time.
Six months have already passed since I started living with Yui-san. Which means an eighth of our shared life together has already gone by.
Yui-san doesn’t do girlfriends. If she keeps holding to that, at least for the three birthdays she has left, I’ll be the only one who gets to say it first.
That’s enough. Even without a name for what we are, right now, she’s genuinely here, beside me.
What more could I possibly ask of Yui-san, beyond that? My heart just keeps wavering, endlessly, unable to settle.
Tomorrow, I’ll buy two shortcakes from our usual cake shop and wait for her to come home.
I don’t know if she’ll even have room for it after a full dinner, but since I’m no good with words, I wanted to convey my feelings to her in some tangible form, as best I could.
＊＊＊
The next day. No classes, so Yui-san started getting ready to go out in the early afternoon.
Even though it was supposed to be dinner with her father, she looked oddly reluctant about it, which nagged at me a little, though I didn’t push.
“Alright, I’ll be back by nine.”
Yui-san said it, fastening her watch, and I nodded silently from the sofa, hugging the orca plushie, and she laughed, peering into my face.
“…Are you sulking, by any chance?”
Called out on it, amused, which only annoyed me more.
“I’m not sulking, or anything…”
“I’ll come home as fast as I can.”
Gently stroking my head, like she could see right through my stubborn streak, Yui-san left.
No kiss, huh, I thought, sulky, kicking my legs idly on the sofa now that the house’s owner was gone.
The quiet, spacious house. Yui-san’s lived in a house this big — this whole time, alone.
I felt like I finally, vaguely understood why she loves movies so much.
In the evening, Ritsu-san showed up with the champagne, exactly as promised. Grateful, I accepted it, but she wouldn’t take any money for it at all.
Apparently the salmon jerky hadn’t been her only gift after all. I’d gotten a small taste of it yesterday too, and it had been genuinely delicious, so I’d honestly assumed that alone was her whole present for Yui-san.
I wanted to talk more, but Ritsu-san said she had somewhere to be and left quickly, and once again I was left waiting out the night alone.
Not yet, huh. Wish she’d come home soon.
The more I thought about it, the longer the wait stretched. The two shortcakes from our usual shop sat waiting, ready for their moment.
I wandered the house, tried cleaning things I never normally bother with, polished every glass in the place one by one, killing time.
Dinner was something simple from a delivery app. Eating alone really is like this. Sprawled on the sofa afterward, before I knew it, I’d drifted off to sleep.
*
The chime of the intercom woke me. I glanced at the clock, startled. Not quite nine yet. Just as promised, she’d really come home early.
Rubbing sleepy eyes, I sat up. Did Yui-san forget her key? Unusual, for someone normally so on top of things. Come to think of it, she’d taken a different bag than usual today.
Without even bothering with the slippers kicked off somewhere under the sofa, I padded down the hallway, bare feet slapping the floor.
Holding back my eagerness, I fumbled the lock open and threw the door wide.
“Welcome home, Yui-sa…”
My eyes met those of a tall man standing right in front of the door. A large bouquet of flowers in his arms.
Startled, maybe by the door swinging open so fast, his eyes widened — and I recognized that color instantly.
Deep, deep, gentle black eyes, like a midnight sea. Familiar features, layered over a face I already knew well.
This person, could it be—
“Oh, is Yui… out somewhere, by any chance?”
Caught off guard by the sudden question, I nodded on reflex, before I’d even managed to introduce myself.
“Should’ve checked her schedule first, my mistake. Ah, you’re Kanata-chan… right?”
“…Ah, um, yes, nice to meet you…”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Yui’s brother, Ichinose Yukiya.”
Something about that bright smile struck me with a jolt of recognition. Ah, I knew it, I thought.
There was no mistaking it.
That smile was almost identical.
The real Yukiya-san, Yui-san’s brother, stood right there in front of me.