Chapter Two: “The Snow Finds the Clod of Earth” — Part Sixteen
So much had happened. In bed, my thoughts fragmented far more than usual, thin and threadlike, running vertically without settling, and even exhausted as I was, sleep wouldn’t come easily.
The heat in my head simply wouldn’t recede.
I couldn’t wake my husband sleeping beside me, so I had no choice but to lie there watching those lines of thought fall like the afterimage of rain, unable to scoop up anything specific enough from them to occupy myself with, too thin even for idle worrying.
Tomorrow meant an early morning again. Earlier than usual, in fact, for both waking and leaving for work.
Shifting even one piece of a carefully assembled daily life brings discomfort and tension with it. It might genuinely be a very small change. But I was becoming something else. Just slightly, someone different. If I kept repeating that, would I eventually become someone entirely different in the end.
I couldn’t help wishing tomorrow were at least a Saturday. Without any gap between them, tomorrow couldn’t help but continue directly from today. I couldn’t simply spend a day forgetting about Kai.
Kai. Chitaira Kai. My daughter’s friend. Those otherworldly eyes. An abused child. And beyond that… nothing else.
Had what I did today been right? How far did my responsibility actually extend? Inserting myself into what should be a child welfare matter, was that truly the best course of action? Thinking about it too closely threatened to bring on regret and self-recrimination. This was a problem set in an environment clearly nothing like an ordinary household, and perhaps it wasn’t something an ordinary person like me had any business handling. But I had already gotten involved. I had already acted. There was no going back now.
I did think, at least, that it had been a good thing to do. I couldn’t simply overlook what it meant that Kai lived in that house.
But hiding my care for Kai from my husband and daughter… that was, undeniably, keeping a secret, and it sat uncomfortably. I considered simply telling them everything, but I couldn’t imagine anyone understanding what I’d been doing, it was too clearly strange behaviour. And beyond that, I didn’t want my family to have any connection at all to that Chitaira household. That place was wrong. Taking some comfort in still being able to recognise that it was wrong, I wished for my family’s continued peace.
Kai was also part of that house, but Kai was subjected to that treatment precisely because she didn’t fit its abnormality. Probably. Shiho had said something close to that too. Kai wasn’t exactly candid, but her sensibility wasn’t something foreign or strange. Well, aside from kissing people out of nowhere.
The kiss with Kai hadn’t unsettled me nearly as much as the first time. It had been only a moment, and what was behind it might genuinely have been affection. Something close to the feeling of kissing my own daughter… no, kissing my second-year middle schooler of a daughter would embarrass us both too much to ever be casual.
But still, it was nothing significant. Just a part of how we communicated. I caught my own tongue nearly moving, searching for the breath Kai had left behind when her lips touched mine, and stopped myself.
A middle school girl had kissed me out of affection, that was all. Telling my husband suddenly would probably only cause confusion, I thought, glancing at his sleeping face beside me. He knew nothing of today’s adventure. I had almost never kept anything from him before.
Meeting Kai had cast a shadow across my heart, and inside that shadow, things were accumulating where no one could see them. What would happen once there were too many of them to keep hidden inside the shadow any longer.
Everything else blurred, but my thoughts about Kai kept gathering like rain, forming a pool. My brain cells seemed to be shaping themselves entirely around Kai, apparently displeased that I kept running from that fact.
Enough about Kai. Time to rest. I begged whatever part of me was making that suggestion to accept it.
Eyes closed, I organised tomorrow’s tasks in my head.
Kai’s name was there among them, naturally. What if I simply erased it entirely.
No warning, just stop being involved with Kai at all, from now on. Don’t see her, don’t go to her. If she came to the house, feign ignorance. Perhaps that way I could return to the time before I knew her.
That’s it, I’ll do that.
I’ll forget about Kai.
“That’s fine, I suppose…”
Surely.
Nothing about it was fine, and yet the words slipped out anyway, for no reason I could name.
I wanted to sleep quickly and forget. That thing that had nearly surged up in me when I pulled Kai’s arm.
Kai, who had seemed like some unknowable presence, who had genuinely thrown me into disarray, turning out to be overwhelmingly weak underneath it all. That dark elation in the instant I understood the thinness of her wrists, understood that any resistance she offered was powerless once I pressed down. I wanted it erased before Kai ever found out it had been there. That’s the same as the people hurting her, isn’t it. I couldn’t help but feel contempt for myself. Hatred, for the part of me that had, even for a moment, felt something like superiority. I wanted to throw it away. Which was why I wanted to sleep quickly, and make it as if it had never existed.
I was tired. Genuinely. And tomorrow would bring another unfamiliar day, more exhaustion still.
The thought of living only to be exhausted was dispiriting before the day had even begun.
That’s fine, I suppose, I nearly said again.
It wasn’t fine. What wasn’t fine was this: every time I went to see Kai at that hotel from now on, the memory of my wedding there with my husband would keep being written over.
The resistance was real. It was still there.
Morning came. A new morning, one where something new had been forced into an already carefully assembled routine.
“Ohh, up early, are we.”
My husband, woken along with the alarm, checked the time and dropped his face back into the pillow.
“I wanted to get to work a little early.”
“Did you just say the single most admirable thing in the world?”
“Work’s gotten a bit busy.”
The lie, fresh out of sleep, left my eyes uncomfortably sharp and awake.
Lying to him this early already sat heavy in my stomach. Why was I lying to my husband to go see Kai. No answer came readily, so I decided to think it through once I’d gotten through the morning.
“Well then… guess I’ll get up too.”
“You don’t have to, sleep in.”
“No, well, heh heh.”
My husband hauled himself out of bed, struggling, pushing back his flattened fringe.
“Got to make your breakfast, after all.”
“…Thank you.”
His kindness settled into me, hitting family love and guilt both, each in its own distinct way.