Episode Forty-Eight: When I’m Down, That’s Exactly When I Do My Makeup Right
Maybe because we’d talked so late into the night, or maybe just from crying myself out, I slept like the dead the whole night. Even after something that shocking, I still managed to fall asleep — maybe I’m sturdier than I thought.
Even waking up, it still felt like I was somewhere inside a dream.
The next morning, Ritsu-san, who’d let me use her bed, took one look at my face and laughed, soft. My eyelids felt heavy, off, and I knew perfectly well I must look genuinely awful — but there was no need to laugh about it.
Without a word, Ritsu-san handed me a cold towel and a hot one, and told me alternating between them would help bring the swelling down.
Knowing something like that so precisely — maybe Ritsu-san’s had her own experience crying her eyes swollen too, I thought, distant.
People have all kinds of faces. Ritsu-san has them. So do I. So does Yui-san. Whatever came before we met each other, there’s no way to know unless the person tells you themselves.
Being separate people, raised in different circumstances — maybe fully understanding each other is something that’s simply never possible.
Sitting on the sofa, I pressed the towels to my eyelids exactly as she’d told me. With a face like this, I really can’t face Yui-san, I thought.
“…You can stay as long as you need, until you’re settled.”
Ritsu-san said it kindly, but running away forever won’t change reality. I know that, if I don’t face it, this will just stay parallel lines, unresolved, forever.
“…Thank you. But I’m okay. I’ll go home and actually talk to Yui-san properly.”
With the towel pressed to my face, I couldn’t see what expression Ritsu-san was wearing. After a beat of silence, she just murmured, “I see,” and left it at that.
*
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I studied my own face carefully. Following her instructions had worked — the heaviness in my eyelids was gone, back to normal.
I’d only brought a small touch-up pouch with me, so I was wondering what to do about makeup, when Ritsu-san beckoned me over with a little wave.
“Kanata-chan, let me do your face. Might as well, since we’re here. Sit.”
She said it, laughing, setting out her cosmetics box. Yui-san’s own vanity is crowded with cosmetics too, but apparently Ritsu-san loves them just as much. No wonder the two of them get along so well.
“You’re cute, Kanata-chan, so this is fun to work with.”
She said it, sliding a sponge gently over my cheek.
“You’re really practiced at this, Ritsu-san.”
“I mean, yeah. Used to do it for my little sister all the time, back home.”
That explains it, somehow. So Ritsu-san’s an older sister. That caring streak of hers probably comes from exactly that.
“You know, when I’m down, that’s exactly when I do my makeup right. Seeing myself all put-together like that, it fires me up — makes me think, I’ve still got this.”
She said it with a bright grin, and my own cheeks softened, unbidden. I really do love this side of Ritsu-san.
I don’t think being genuinely strong means never crying. I think it means having the strength to get back up, no matter how many times you fall. Surely, that’s exactly what someone like Ritsu-san means.
Will I be able to stand back up someday too? Right now, my heart’s sitting somewhere at the very bottom of a deep, deep sea.
*
I shook my head at her offer to take me home, thanked her deeply, and left her apartment. Ritsu-san waved, smiling, though clearly worried.
I walked the road back to Yui-san’s house. My steps — heavy.
Looking back, I’ve changed, ever since meeting Yui-san.
Before her, I’d never once considered that I could fall for a woman, and I’d never once imagined having a physical relationship with someone I wasn’t even dating.
The condition for letting someone touch my body had always been simple, clear-cut: dating, or not. I’d never once thought to look deeper, into the other person’s heart, their feelings.
Meeting Yui-san, I experienced, for the first time, a love breathtaking enough to steal the air from my lungs. I learned, in the truest sense, what it means to fall for someone, to love them.
Yui-san treated me with far more care than any of my past “boyfriends” ever had. She was considerate with me. So I’d thought — that was enough. Even without dating. Because I understood, down to my bones, that you loved me.
At first, I couldn’t understand Yui-san’s thinking at all. Sleeping with an unspecified string of people she wasn’t even dating — I never thought that could be called love, not by any definition. I thought we’d never understand each other, not in a hundred years.
The first night our bodies came together, you touched me like I was something fragile, something to be handled with the utmost care. Every ounce of love you had, poured into your lips, your fingertips, wherever they touched me.
Every time I’d had sex before, it was never love — just someone’s desire, thrown at me. I only understood that, truly, once I slept with Yui-san.
Yui-san was completely different. That night, I genuinely felt, in my bones — I am loved. I was happy. I can’t forget that feeling.
So — I won’t blame you anymore.
I told you I hated you. Your face, that night, twisted in despair like I’d never seen — it’s burned into my mind, and it won’t leave. I need to apologize for that. I need to take it back.
Come to think of it, I never once said it, did I. To Yui-san — that I love you.
The night of our trip. “No matter how much I like you, there are things I can never give you” — you said that. Words I couldn’t understand, back then.
I understand them now.
Marriage. Children. Things Yui-san’s future needs.
Things I can never give her — but Kitagami-san could give her, easily, without a second thought.
“…Yui-san in a wedding dress… she’d be beautiful…”
I would have liked to see it. Murmuring it, head down as I walked, the tears threatened to spill again, and I forced my gaze back up. A sky, infuriatingly, spitefully clear.
But I don’t want to see Yui-san standing beside that person.
For instance — ending the relationship, and staying by her side as before, the way things were.
Impossible. I can’t do it. Not after knowing the warmth of those arms — there’s no way I could keep myself from wanting it.
Then — pretending not to know, and just continuing on as we are.
That’s impossible too, unbearable. Now that I know, I couldn’t smile and send her off, every month, to that dinner with him. And besides, now that Yui-san’s already engaged, I’m the other woman — no matter how much we love each other, it’s nothing but infidelity.
And besides — even if that day ever came, I don’t have the confidence I could ever let Yui-san go.
So then, if I asked her to break off the engagement with Kitagami-san — what would Yui-san do? Would she smile, troubled? Or would she actually agree? I don’t know. I can’t even imagine it.
But for that, Yui-san would have to tell her father the secret she’s kept hidden this whole time — that she’s gay.
Otherwise, even if she broke off the engagement with Kitagami-san, another fiancé would simply appear in his place.
Demanding a breakup — that means, essentially, forcing her to come out. If it were something she could say that easily, she would have said it long ago. Since she hasn’t, that must be exactly why she kept it secret.
And even if everything somehow went perfectly — after making her go through all that, for my sake, what if things between us didn’t work out?
Marriage, children — the “responsibility” Yui-san once talked about — I can’t give her either of those. So is it really right to force a choice on her that could wreck her whole life?
—I already know, deep down.
There was only ever one choice, from the very start. My head already understands it. It’s just my heart, refusing, stubbornly, to accept it.
There’s only one thing left I need to say.
Before long, the house comes into view. I stop, just once, and take a deep breath.
I know I’ll never forget today, for the rest of my life.
Love that’s beautiful, and only beautiful — that only exists in movies.
That there’s this kind of unfairness in the world, loving someone and still being unable to be with them — that’s something I never wanted to accept.