Chapter Two: “The Snow Finds the Clod of Earth” — Part Five
Whether fate truly exists in a person’s life, I genuinely don’t know.
But the one thing that is certain is that every person born will die. Birth, and death. Only those two points are fixed from the start. If that’s so, perhaps there are other points fixed from the moment of birth too, points that any line you draw must pass through regardless of what path it takes.
In order to trace the shape a person was born with.
In order for me to be me.
Perhaps that day too, I found Kai.
“Oh, it’s absolutely bucketing down.”
My daughter came downstairs in the morning, looked out the window, and lamented the obvious. She was right — it was coming down with enthusiasm. There had been reports of low rainfall this year, but this looked like the sky frantically making up the difference all at once. When the accumulated water fell from the roof it sounded like an upturned bucket.
“If you get ready a little earlier I can drop you at school.”
“I’ll eat breakfast quickly this morning.”
“That’s bad for your digestion, cut corners somewhere else.”
My husband, who had just brought that breakfast over, set his hands free and slipped quietly toward me.
“Mama, the onigiri shop too… would that be all right?”
“Yes yes. Everyone gets a delivery service today.”
Thinking through the route and timing, my daughter’s middle school would need to come first. I worked through breakfast calculating how much earlier we’d need to leave to fit in the detour. I observed my daughter eating her breakfast at a somewhat accelerated pace, and the movement of her jaw as she bit into her bread did seem, genuinely, at least slightly faster. Perhaps.
We each got ready quickly, and I reminded my daughter as she was putting her shoes on at the door.
“I can’t come and pick you up later, so take your umbrella.”
“Of course, Mama.”
“You’ve got your father’s voice down rather well.”
Both my daughter and my husband stood up straighter with pride. My husband hadn’t done anything.
“So Dad, do me now.”
“Hm, right, let me see… ahhh, ahhh-OHH SOO REEE, hold on, just let me warm up my throat—”
“Save that sort of thing for when you’re home.”
Even the short distance from the door to the garage was enough to feel as though every gap in my clothing and hair had been found by the rain. I got my daughter and Maron into the back seat and my husband into the passenger seat, then shook the water from my hair. Everything I had done to it that morning was immediately pointless.
The moment I pulled out of the garage, the sound of rain against the car threatened to fill my ears completely.
“This has quite the air of a family outing!”
“Very atmospheric weather for it.”
I needed the wipers at full speed or a waterfall would cover the windscreen. Driving with the family in the car in visibility this poor was more stressful than usual. When I was at university my husband used to drive us to all sorts of places, but without noticing it I had become the only one who drove.
I pulled out onto the main road as if following the current of water along it. Even the tourists who were usually everywhere were nearly absent. The set-meal restaurant that normally had a queue from the morning stood empty. The road itself was congested in their place, and the cars barely moved.
Sitting in the traffic, my daughter gazed along the pavement as if looking for someone.
“I don’t think she’ll come today either.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Chitaira-san was absent yesterday.”
I nearly let a beat pass before answering, and caught myself internally.
“Was she.”
“Yeah. If she doesn’t come on cloudy days, I figured a downpour like this would be even less likely.”
“Hmm, absent then…”
Playing truant? Unwell? Something at home? Not knowing Kai well enough, I couldn’t narrow it down.
That was right. I knew almost nothing about that girl.
And yet I was letting her lick my fingers. …What was that even about.
I dropped my daughter at school, left my husband and Maron in front of the onigiri shop, and set off alone for the office. Driving through rain that restricted visibility far more than usual, in the kind of darkness that swallowed the town and made everyone easy to overlook, with the loosened attention that came from having delivered my family safely — conditions working against me on every front, the kind where anyone else would have missed her, my daughter included.
And yet I found her.
Chitaira Kai was standing motionless in front of a sharpening shop with swords displayed in the window.
As if she had nowhere to go. Vacant.
For someone waiting for the shop to open she was standing in the rain without an umbrella, and just looking at her made unease and worry accumulate. I was not the kind of person who could ignore that.
I opened the window and leaned out, calling to her back. I had to raise my voice or the rain would swallow it.
“At least put your umbrella up.”
It was only after calling out that I noticed Kai wasn’t carrying her school bag either.
The soaking-wet Kai turned around, saw me, pressed her fringe down with her hand, and broke into a full run.
“What? Just a — wait — what on earth.”
My first reaction was bewilderment at the sudden response. I had no intention of leaping out into the downpour. But when I saw her foot catch on the rain-slicked pavement and her knee hit the ground, I decided to follow. I pulled the car to a temporary stop at the side of the road and ran with small, careful steps, keeping my back straight to avoid slipping.
Kai, apparently realising she was being chased, ran with everything she had, trying to get away. She turned down a road I didn’t usually take, cut past an empty lot for sale, and turned onto the road that led toward the station. It was only the difference in our leg lengths that finally let me catch up, grabbing her by the hand.
“You run… pretty hard… for someone trying to escape.”
I had let stubbornness take over partway through, and the sudden exertion had me close to sick.
“What do you want.”
Kai, arm caught, registered her objection.
I was the one who wanted to ask that. Running the moment she saw my face.
“I don’t know, but you ran, so I chased.”
“You’re a strange person.”
“You’re saying that to me?”
We were both out of breath, our words coming in fragments.
Kai put force into pulling her arm free. Or tried to.
I barely registered any resistance, and yet Kai was gritting her teeth. She meant it. Kai was genuinely trying to fight free, and this was the extent of it. When I pulled back with a little force, the feet she had been planting slipped and she was drawn toward me. The body that crashed into me was so light it might have been hollow. The impact of her full weight against me registered as almost nothing.
Registering those wrists, too thin to need more than one hand to hold, I caught my breath as if struck at the centre of my heart. Concentration, and something rising — the rain going distant.
She was weak. This girl who threw me into such disarray ordinarily was, at her core, so weak.
Feeling the helplessness of that impertinent Kai with my own hands.
“Oh.”
Ah.
For just a moment, something ugly surfaced like sewage rising from a drain.
I bit down hard on my lower lip and pushed it back down as it tried to lift its head. What was I thinking, at a time like this. Perhaps thanks to the rain pouring over me, that impulse cooled almost immediately.
We were both already soaked beyond recovery, the hair and makeup I had prepared before leaving now simply a place for rainwater to collect. There was no point taking shelter under an eave at this stage, so I stayed where I was and looked down at Kai, and what I glimpsed through her wet fringe made me startle.
I pushed her fringe back to get a better look. Kai tried to stop me, but her resistance was pointless, as I had just demonstrated. I held her arm aside easily, and at what was exposed on the uncovered skin, an unpleasant cold came over me.
“What is this.”
Above her left eye, around the hairline, a large blue-black bruise spread across the skin.
The shape of it was roughly the size of a human fist, scaled slightly down.