Chapter Two: “The Snow Finds the Clod of Earth” — Part Nineteen
“Evening.”
“…Evening.”
So, in the end, I had come after all.
Kai, who usually wore at least a faint smile, greeted me with an entirely flat expression, and it threw me off slightly. She was still in her uniform. Having said only that much, Kai retreated back into the room, and I followed her in.
“This is far too big for one person, isn’t it.”
The bedroom had room to spare even with the twin beds in place, and there was another room of equal size beside it. Even if Kai’s small frame were joined by three more of her, the space would probably still feel hollow. That was my thought, but Kai didn’t answer, keeping her back to me. Only the quiet hum of the air purifier filled the silence between us.
“Kai?”
Worried something else had gone wrong, I said her name, and.
“Um, I sent you a message.”
Kai turned, leaning forward with an almost accusatory edge.
It had come through, but I had no idea what she was actually getting at.
“You did send one. …What about it?”
Kai wasn’t making her point clearly. I waited for an explanation, but she seemed to catch herself and looked away instead. Her eyes flicked up to gauge my reaction as if deciding whether to say the rest, her feet shifting restlessly side to side.
“Your reply was slow…”
“…Huh.”
It was true I’d only answered, saying I was on my way, after finishing work.
Only after my own half-hearted response did I finally grasp what Kai was actually trying to say. Wait, is that really what this is about, I thought, genuinely puzzled by the substance of it. Sensing that reaction, Kai turned further away and got the rest out in a slightly rushed voice.
“I’m apparently… not great at waiting for replies.”
“…Huhhh.”
Apparently, genuinely, that was it. A little of the tension drained out of me. People actually get like this, I thought.
Kai’s stiffness this whole time had simply been sulking, because I’d taken too long to text back.
“Heh… heh.”
Laughter I couldn’t quite hold back tickled the back of my teeth. Kai’s eyes narrowed, plainly annoyed.
“What’s funny?”
“It’s just, you suddenly come out with something so childish and endearing at once, it’s, I don’t know… sweet. That’s the word.”
There was relief in it too, that Kai had voiced something so ordinary, so utterly unremarkable a complaint. That childishness in her put me at ease, made her feel closer somehow. Some small joy, too, in finding I could actually read Kai’s moods now.
“You act like someone who’s not normal, but honestly, you’re more ordinary than I expected.”
I gave her shoulder a light pat, saying it with conviction.
“…I hope so.”
This kind of guarded, sideways reaction from Kai wasn’t remotely strange, given her age. As I laughed, Kai pulled away, clearly displeased, and sat at the edge of the bed. Her expression was tight, unhappy at being laughed at, and the fact that she’d said it anyway, knowing full well how I’d react, was… endearing.
Endearing. There was no other word for it.
I set my things on the sofa by the window and sat down. Kai drew one knee up, pressing her chin and lips against it. She stared fixedly ahead, refusing to look my way at all.
“It would help if you replied to Line a little faster from now on.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll do my best.”
I’d never had a possessive partner before, so this was, oddly, novel enough to laugh about now. Not that she was a partner. No friend of mine had ever made that kind of demand either. If one had, I probably wouldn’t have stayed friends with them for long. So was it fine coming from Kai? …She was still a child, I supposed.
Not quite a friend. And when asked what else, I couldn’t put a name to whatever this actually was.
Together, the two of us were just, me, and Kai.
“But even so, if you say my replies are slow and then also complain if I text during work, that’s a bit much, isn’t it. And don’t message me during your lunch break either. No phones at school.”
Technically, bringing a phone to school at all was against the rules too, but the excuse of contacting a guardian meant that rule had long since lost its teeth. Kai let out a sigh, hands pressed against the bed.
“Are you my guidance teacher now, Yuki-san?”
“More or less, don’t you think? I’m the one looking after you, after all.”
This wasn’t the same as looking after a cat, the way I once had. I should have understood, from raising my own daughter, the weight of taking real responsibility for another person’s life, and yet here I was saying it so lightly. Not that I meant it lightly. But looking after, until when, exactly? Until Kai could stand on her own? However many years that turned out to be, it was too distant a horizon to hold onto with any clarity. This was, in the end, a stopgap that had been broken from the very start. The real solution was surely handing Kai over to some larger, more capable framework.
Whether Kai would even want that was an entirely separate question.
“Also, honestly, I did hesitate about whether to come tonight.”
Hugging her left arm to herself, Kai asked why with her eyes.
“Because… there wasn’t really a reason I needed to, specifically.”
There was no purpose to my being in this room. Kai surely had none either.
So this was, what, a detour, really, delaying the time I went home, yes, exactly, a detour and nothing more.
“For me, if you come, Yuki-san…”
Kai’s lips moved more clearly than usual, and then stopped mid-sentence.
Releasing her arm, she turned to the side.
“…It’s welcome.”
“…Isn’t there a more honest way to put that?”
The meaning had come through, and unexpectedly, for Kai, the sentence had been almost direct, up to a point.
Kai was, apparently, happy when I came. …Happy. My mouth softened at the corner, not with my usual puzzled reaction but something closer to quiet satisfaction. Being liked by someone doesn’t feel bad, especially not being taken to like this by someone as prickly as Kai, there was a particular way she closed distance that had something indescribable in it.
Kai rose from the bed and walked toward the adjoining room, and I followed her with my eyes.
I might be more sentimental about Kai than I’ve let myself think.
Barefoot, Kai opened the door to the balcony. Beyond the door, left open, Kai turned back wrapped in the night and smiled at me. Her index finger tapped lightly against the railing.
Drawn by the sound of waves arriving from beyond that deep darkness, I got up too.