Chapter Two: “The Snow Finds the Clod of Earth” — Part Eighteen
“Thank you for this.”
Kai’s flat greeting nearly caught my eyes in the mirror, and I turned forward at a pace careful enough not to look deliberate.
“Seatbelt on.”
“Ah, right.”
Pulling out, a worry crossed my mind: what if my daughter spotted the car on her way to school. I’d need to work out a longer route that avoided her usual path. I checked the map on the navigation while driving, and found myself almost smiling grimly at the absurdity of it, driving my daughter’s friend to school instead of my own daughter.
Once we left the hotel and joined the coastal road, the view opened up all at once, lively with morning light.
“The sea’s pretty.”
“…Yeah.”
Hearing her say exactly what I’d said on the way here nearly threw me. And realising I’d been distracted enough by Kai to forget my sunglasses after all, I turned my eyes away from the glare.
“Though I can’t swim.”
“Is that right?”
I started to say something about school swimming lessons, and then remembered what my daughter had told me. About Kai never joining PE.
“I’ve been made to choke on water before, but never actually swum.”
“…You don’t need to tell me that.”
This was exactly what people meant by feeling sick to your stomach. I nearly hit the steering wheel.
“It’s fine, leave it.”
I saw Kai’s lips about to move further and cut her off. She looked down for a moment, then laughed.
“I was actually trying to talk about something completely unrelated.”
Sure you were, I thought, but said, “Go ahead, then.”
“Could we exchange… Line? Or whatever it’s called.”
Kai showed me her phone. The one from Shiho had cracks worn into all four corners of the screen, well used.
“…Fine, I suppose.”
It would be useful to be reachable in an emergency.
I pulled over briefly and we exchanged numbers quickly.
Registered as Kai on my end. On hers, probably as Yuki. The name people so often misread, and it should never have felt pleasant to hear, and yet Kai kept using it so freely that I’d simply grown used to it.
“Contacts… calls, connections… so many things I don’t know.”
“Turn your phone off while you’re at school.”
Kai was staring down at her phone with such focus she didn’t seem to have heard a word of it.
After a slightly overcautious detour, we pulled over where the stone torii gate came into view in the distance. Kai’s school and my daughter’s were within sight of it. I found myself scanning ahead, though there was no sign of my daughter.
“Is here all right?”
“Thanks.”
Kai gathered her bag and got out quickly. I braced for some parting mischief, and when nothing came… I felt relieved. Not disappointed, not even slightly. Kai gave one small bow at the end and walked toward the school without looking back once.
This was hardly the moment to sit here comfortably watching from near the school gates.
I need to get moving too, I thought, and as I went to start the car, my phone rang. Kai, freshly saved in my contacts. I’d told her to turn it off, I thought, narrowing my eyes as I checked it.
T
“T?”
That was the entire first message, followed immediately by another.
Test
“Ah…”
Apparently the first one had gone out by accident while she was trying to figure out how to send anything at all. There was something almost endearing in the clumsiness of it, but laughing off a direct instruction being ignored entirely felt like the wrong response.
Got it. Let’s keep phones off at school, all right?
I sent that along with confirming the test had gone through, adding a small piece of guidance while I was at it. No reply came.
…After that.
I’d gotten into work, consulted with a colleague, and for a brief stretch had genuinely forgotten about it.
Then, in what was probably the middle school lunch break, another message arrived from Kai.
Am I being taken for a fool here?
Irritated, I still checked it between tasks.
Are you comeing today
“…Comeing… no, coming.”
Apparently she was asking whether I’d come to her room after work. …What should I do.
Yesterday had ended with settling her into the room and a simple goodbye, so there were things I supposed I wanted to confirm now that things had calmed down. Were there? I wasn’t sure. It felt more like I was manufacturing a reason. Anything worth confirming, how school had gone, that sort of thing, could easily have been handled over the phone exactly like this.
There was no reason for me to leave my husband waiting at home for dinner together and instead drive out to see Kai at the hotel. There shouldn’t be one. By any ordinary logic I should simply decline and be done with it, and yet I was hesitating. Searching for a reason. And when I asked myself whether I actually wanted to go, the honest answer was something closer to indifference.
Same as this morning, really, there was hardly anything substantial to talk to Kai about.
Kai and I weren’t friends, exactly. Not mother and child either. What were we, I found myself wondering again, caught in that same unresolved question.
Trying to locate a reason within any framework I already had simply didn’t work. Which meant the old version of me remained unconvinced. The discomfort I was feeling now was, I think, exactly that: some faintly sprouting new version of myself pulling at my hand, and the old one resisting being led.
Which meant, put plainly: the version of me that had come into being through meeting Kai wanted to see her.
Wanted to settle herself inside those yellow-green eyes.
I had no idea what I was thinking, and it was entirely my own mind.
“………………………………..Well.”
It was her first day settling into the hotel, after all.
Just to check in on how she was doing, going today would be fine.
Having landed there, and turned back to my work, some voice I didn’t recognise laughed quietly at me.
As if I’d agonised my way to a decision whose road had already been paved.
As if it had already been decided the moment I told my husband I’d be a little late again tonight.