Chapter Two: “The Snow Finds the Clod of Earth” — Part Twelve
The hotel had a pool in its inner courtyard, with the lounge and lobby arranged around it in a slightly unusual layout. Faced with something that unfamiliar, I find myself instinctively thinking expensive before I’ve done any real assessment. Though in this case it really did look expensive.
What kind of person was waiting here. She’d been calling her nee-san.
Even as someone Kai had chosen to contact, the fact that she was from that household kept my guard elevated.
“Oh, she’s already here.”
In the direction Kai pointed from the lobby, a woman in a wisteria-coloured yukata, slightly out of season, was standing. She noticed us immediately and came toward us.
A presence that brought to mind someone walking beneath a summer sky, the kind of beauty that makes the person facing her feel ashamed of their own vocabulary and fall silent. And softening that shame, a gentle smile that dissolved whatever had contracted in you. A floral scent drifted from the air around her, something I couldn’t identify the variety of. Objectively speaking, nine out of ten people would probably find in her the very pinnacle of beauty.
And as if to prove the blood connection, she had Kai’s eyes. Yellow-green.
“Hey. I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Same, Shio-nee-san.”
“You’ve grown so much… no you haven’t, not at all. Did you get any taller since fifth grade?”
“About two centimetres.”
The woman in the yukata rested her chin on Kai’s head with what looked like genuine amusement. Still resting there, the eyes of the one Kai called nee-san shifted to me. That smooth yellow-green, unlike Kai’s, had no depth to it, a water-mirror kind of luminosity that reflected rather than drew you in.
“I’m Chitaira Shiho.”
The easy, open smile that followed had a way of sliding past your defences and settling somewhere inside you before you’d decided to allow it.
She’s good at this, I thought, which amounted to a comprehensive introduction in itself.
“I’m… here’s my card.”
I handed her one. Chitaira Shiho glanced at it and tilted her head, which moved Kai’s along with it.
“Moving your jaw hurts, doesn’t it, nee-san?”
“I can’t immediately picture what a designer has to do with Kai.”
“This person is a friend’s mother.”
“And on my end, this is my daughter’s friend.”
Even less clear, Shiho’s expression said, her eyes crinkling with what seemed like genuine delight.
“I love a story that doesn’t make immediate sense. Let’s not stand around — how about over there.”
She moved off toward a corner of the lobby with the ease of someone long accustomed to these spaces. Kai followed with a pat on the head, and I came last.
As they walked, Shiho said, “You seem so much brighter, Kai.”
“You’re saying that looking at this face?”
Kai pushed her fringe back to reveal the taped bruise, and Shiho’s smile only deepened.
“You look like you’re having fun, Kai.”
“Unusually lively, yes.”
“…What is wrong with these people.”
Showing someone visible evidence of violence and carrying on a cheerful conversation about it. I couldn’t follow the register at all.
We settled into wooden chairs around a square table, Shiho across from me. Kai chose the seat beside me as a matter of course, and somewhere quietly inside me I felt a small, still pleasure at that.
I explained what had happened today to Shiho. She listened to the events with what seemed like genuine interest, but made no attempt to conceal that she was half-heartedly responding to the parts about the Chitaira household’s problems. I also gave her a broad outline of my connection with Kai, leaving out anything superfluous. I’d been bracing for Kai to interject at some point, but she stayed silent throughout. It felt almost like a test — Kai watching to see how I characterised what was between us.
“So, Kai wants to leave home?”
“I can’t very well send her back to a place like that.”
When I spoke up, Shiho murmured certainly a place like that with an almost musical lightness.
“But the only home Kai has is a place like that.”
Calm in delivery, but with cynicism visible here and there. Given that Kai considered her something like a foster parent, they moved alike. If Shiho was the source, perhaps the original was more twisted still.
“Kai. Do you want to leave home?”
She asked again, this time directed at Kai. Kai answered, “I don’t know.”
“Excuse me?”
I couldn’t see how that was possible at this point, but Kai continued.
“I don’t know. I’m not entirely clear on what meaning any of this has. But I want to believe that I’m doing something now because there might be something in it, something possible.”
Kai’s voice, usually light as fresh snow, had a faint harder core to it. Shiho and I both watched as she looked inward at what was swirling there and tried to put words to what she saw.
“So, Shiho-nee-san. I’m asking for your help.”
Kai bowed her head sincerely, asking. I hesitated over whether to bow alongside her, and in the end simply watched.
Shiho’s response came without fanfare.
“Of course. If Kai wants to live somewhere outside, that’s clearly for the best. I’ll cover the costs.”
An easy affirmation that held both respect and indifference at once.
“Um.” She glanced at the card I’d given her. “Amamiya Yuki-san.” “It’s Setsu.” “Setchan.” “Something’s off about that.”
“Kai, I’d like to speak with Amamiya-san alone.”
“You’re asking me to step out?”
Shiho’s smile served as the answer. Kai said “please keep it brief” and stood, walking toward the far end of the lobby. Watching her go, the smallness of that back pressed something in me, its fragility impossible to ignore.
“To see Kai that candid… she apparently wants to keep her cool exterior up. Unexpectedly endearing.”
“Candid?”
“She’s trying to be a good girl in front of you. Touching, really, more than I’d have expected.”
“That… counted as candid?”
The feeling that it couldn’t and the feeling that it might were fighting at something well short of even odds. When I happened to meet Kai’s eyes from across the lobby, the distant light seemed to turn directly toward me alone, and something inside me startled quietly. This is not the moment for holding each other’s gaze, I told myself as an excuse and looked away, back to Shiho.
Seeing her straight on like this, I still found her impression strange. She was clearly much younger than me, and yet she carried the atmosphere of someone who had accumulated years, and that atmosphere pushed against me.
“Well then. Properly this time — I’m Chitaira Shiho. Has Kai told you anything about me?”
“She called you something like a foster mother.”
“She really did only tell you the safe version.”
Her lips curved in something that wasn’t quite displeasure, but where exactly the dissatisfaction lay wasn’t clear.
“Did the Chitaira house surprise you? Everyone having the same eye colour.”
That’s the thing, Shiho said, pointing to her own eyes.
“It did. Somewhat… it had a particular kind of pressure to it.”
“Anyone who carries Chitaira blood will always develop these eyes, without exception apparently. I’m not qualified in genetics so I can’t speak to the science, but I have thought about what these eyes mean.”
“Which is?”
“My thinking is that they function as a warning and a threat. Signalling to others that anything carrying these eyes is dangerous serves as a deterrent, and those around them can receive that warning and keep their distance. I think that’s what these eyes were born to do. No basis for it really, purely personal conjecture.”
“…………………………………”
It sounded plausible enough, but something inside me rejected it.
Because I, rather than keeping my distance from Kai’s eyes, had been drawn toward them from the very beginning.