Chapter Two: “The Snow Finds the Clod of Earth” — Part Twenty-One
“About your daughter, you should probably tell her to be more careful.”
“About what?”
“Chitaira.”
This, Kai said, pointing at her own face.
“The other students hear the rumours and steer clear of us properly, but Amamiya-san just talks to me normally, so… someone should really explain it to her.”
“You mean, tell her to forgive you when your prickly side occasionally gets on her nerves?”
“Yuki-san.”
“I don’t see what there is to be afraid of in a girl who’s kind enough to worry about her friend.”
Surely my daughter would feel the same way. I doubted any explanation would actually land with her either. Understanding how precarious Kai’s home life truly was probably required living through some version of it firsthand.
Kai leaned back against the railing again and let out a breath.
“You’re too soft, Yuki-san.”
“…Maybe so.”
The wind tossed Kai’s fringe out of place, and through the gap the bruise at her hairline flickered in and out of view.
Obviously it would be better if that mark didn’t exist at all, that went without saying. But if that wound hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be standing here with Kai now. One injury, one encounter, had started this whole strange arrangement, and I, drawn along in its wake, was here too.
“Hey, why not get your hair cut sometime soon.”
I suggested it, watching her hair whip in the wind from the corner of my eye.
“I’m not really into a super short cut.”
“Not cut so much as evened out. Yours is uneven, the way it’s trimmed. Do you cut it yourself?”
Midway through saying it, another possibility occurred to me, and I nearly added, or worse.
Kai kept her eyes on the night view, answering in the same tone as always.
“Yes. Myself.”
“…That’s not great, then.”
“A total rejection, huh.”
The thought had crossed my mind that someone in that house had cut it for her, or torn it. I couldn’t read the truth from Kai’s profile. She pinched her fringe and answered vaguely, “Well, sometime.”
“But talking directly like this is nice. You reply right away.”
Something in her voice made it clear she genuinely meant it. That I could pick up on that much now meant I’d started to understand her.
“Are you impatient by nature?”
“I just don’t like the waiting, in between.”
That’s what people call being impatient.
“So, while I’m asking — are you coming tomorrow too?”
If she’d said would you come instead of are you coming, I wonder how I would have answered.
“Tomorrow… I won’t be coming.”
“I see.”
Kai kept her composure, her manner suggesting she’d already known the answer.
“Because tomorrow’s Saturday. There’s no reason to drive out here specially on a day off…”
I started to say I couldn’t think of an excuse or a lie, and caught myself. I stopped short of admitting, out loud, that if one existed, I’d have come anyway. Whether Kai noticed or not, she moved as if to pin the admission down regardless.
“You’re my guidance teacher, so you’ll come check on me during the week, won’t you?”
“Ah… going with that approach?”
Kai would never simply say, plainly, please come. That she’d found her own roundabout, face-saving way of asking, and that I found something almost charming in it, my mouth softening despite myself, suggested I’d already been thoroughly corrupted by her by this point. Weekdays… the excuse would have to be, still, the year-end rush at work. If that had to hold up every single day going forward… though whether I was even meant to assume every day was on the table was its own question. Facing both my own feelings and my actual circumstances at once was exhausting.
I wanted tomorrow to hurry up and become Saturday already, so I could spend it with my family without having to think about any of this.
If this kind of day was going to keep repeating, I might need to start manufacturing reasons to keep visiting this hotel.
For now, at least, being able to feel this view and this wind was… looking out over the night sea from the balcony, I caught myself thinking, unguarded, this isn’t so bad.
Born in a town with the sea right beside it, I’d never let much of it into my actual life. The occasional glimpse of the coast on a walk with my husband, maybe. My life had mostly stayed contained within the town itself. Stepping just slightly outside the common sense I’d built for myself, there was an entire ocean waiting. I might have jumped into that ocean with no preparation whatsoever. Drawn down by that glossy yellow-green lurking at the bottom of it, caught like something in a trap.
Kai, I started to say. Whatever it was, a wish for her wellbeing, a hope for some daily peace, I couldn’t quite find the words for it. Being unable to say it plainly seemed to be something we shared.
“Ka~ai.”
An unexpectedly saccharine tone slipped out of me before I could stop it, and a cold sweat broke out immediately. Kai’s eyes went wide too, apparently just as startled. My cheeks lit with heat, and ironically the cold air felt welcome against them.
“What was that just now?”
“Nothing, just… a misfire.”
Watching Kai vacantly, apparently something had built up without my noticing, and it came out with an odd running start behind it. Heat crept slowly up to my ears, but Kai, surprisingly, didn’t tease me over it, simply accepted it.
Kai straightened from the railing and leaned her face forward slightly as she spoke.
“It’s probably a name with no particular feeling or meaning behind it at all, but hearing you say it, Yuki-san, it’s not so bad, unexpectedly.”
“Yuki-san isn’t anything either, really, that kind of thing.”
Because I wasn’t Yuki. A name with no history behind it, one only Kai used.
Kai’s voice was exactly like that snow, light, touching briefly before dissolving and vanishing, and reaching out to catch it always came too late, which was why I couldn’t afford to miss a word she said.
“When I say Kai, you know, what I picture isn’t a clod of earth.”
I traced the kanji in the air with a finger.
“I say it thinking of the sea.”
Exactly what we were both looking at, right now.
Not dry, cracked earth, but something deep, bottomless, the sea.
Some part of me hoped Kai might swim far, far away from that house, someday, if she could. That thought had only just occurred to me, prompted by the depth in Kai’s own eyes, nothing more considered than that.
“Sea and shell… Kai. I see.”
“I hadn’t taken it quite that far, so hearing that kind of ohh reaction back is a little embarrassing.”
I hadn’t been thinking of shells at all.
“Chitaira Umi, then.”
Whatever Kai made of that name, her shoulders shook slightly, eyes closed. It read as not bad.
Tracking Kai’s every subtle shift like some kind of researcher, I thought wryly to myself, and yet the feeling wasn’t unpleasant either.
Giving this girl’s name some meaning of its own.
Perhaps that was my role in all this, I found myself thinking.
“It’s getting cold, let’s go back in.”
“Sure.”
Kai answered, and breathed the wind in deeply one last time.
The cold sea air carried the announcement of winter’s approach, and yet I could still return to a room full of warm light.
Somewhere to escape the wind still existed for me.
…Had I managed, in some way, to sound like I meant it?
At the time, had I mistaken myself for someone who could guide Kai toward something healthy?
Being the same age as my daughter, perhaps I’d let myself think of her as something like a second, more demanding daughter of my own.
It would still be some time before I understood that I was the one who had taken that wellbeing from Kai in the first place.