Chapter Three: “The Clod of Earth Dreams of Snow” — Part One
“When we look at something, when we touch something, when we hold something inside us, we hear the sound of sand spilling out somewhere. The sound of time’s sand briefly taking shape, then falling away. Memory is a thing made of accumulated sand, and so it can never truly be preserved. And yet we sometimes let ourselves be foolish. We start to believe that if we could just gather up every grain that’s already fallen, something might come back to life.”
“…Where did that come from?”
“A novel I got from a hotel friend, as a kind of calling card.”
“Mm…”
Half-dozing, hearing Kai’s voice fall into something almost like a recitation, I felt myself pulled toward a deeper sleep still.
It had been close.
Over two months had passed since I met Kai. Registering that thought, I found myself questioning why I was measuring the calendar by Kai at all. I noticed the question, and let it go unanswered.
Early December, and given how mild the region was, my breath still didn’t show white. Still, the moments the cold caught at my cheeks had become unmistakably more frequent, marking winter’s steady advance.
With the room’s air purifier humming quietly, Kai lay spread-eagle across the two beds pushed together, bouncing with a completely flat expression. Still in her uniform, so her skirt bounced mercilessly with her, unseemly. She’d started wearing white tights now that the cold had deepened, but even so, I thought she really ought to be more careful.
Still, the sofa by the window here welcomed me with the same comfort every time I sat in it. The view from here, glimpsed with a small turn of the head, was nothing like the town I was used to, Sagami Bay and Enoshima glowing faintly in the dark, quietly moving to look at. Apparently on clear winter days you could even see Mount Fuji.
“Yuki-san.”
“Stop deliberately getting the name wrong.”
“Come on, it’s fine, when we’re together you can just be Yuki.”
“…That doesn’t make any sense.”
Please don’t casually split me into two people. Wherever I was, I was only ever myself.
“Yuki-san, have you ever met Santa Claus?”
Kai kept bouncing with a recklessness that made me half-worry her neck might actually snap. Fixing the name felt like too much effort, so I answered the question, Yuki-san and all.
“Meaning, the real one?”
“There’s no such thing as a fake one, is there.”
An exchange whose intent was hard to grasp. I found myself wondering exactly what angle Kai’s Santa Claus question was even coming from. Getting caught up in working it out alone, I realised how foolish that was.
This was exactly the kind of moment where talking things through with the other person was the answer. That was, after all, what having someone else in the room was for.
“Let’s sort this out.”
“Hm?”
“Is the Santa Claus you mean the legendary imaginary figure, or…”
“Even if it’s a family member dressed up, they still leave the present by your pillow, so isn’t it the same thing?”
“I see… right, right.”
Kai’s answer gave me a rough enough sense of what she meant, so I answered.
“Given that, of course I have. Though calling it ‘meeting’ is a stretch since it happened while I was asleep… but I did genuinely receive that kind of love from my parents.”
I learned the truth in the third grade of primary school, catching a TV programme that discussed, matter-of-factly, who Santa really was. I remember being disappointed. Some things deserve more delicate handling than that.
“I see.”
I waited for something more to follow that flat response, but Kai just kept bouncing in silence.
“…You’re the one who brought it up, expand on it a little more.”
Kai’s bouncing gaze landed on me. She probably wasn’t aware of it, but being caught at the centre of that gaze always stole my breath for a moment. My own reflection floated clearly in that glossy iris, and I felt myself shrink, as if trapped inside it.
Which was why, no matter the distance between us, I always knew when Kai was looking at me.
“I made a hotel friend recently.”
“…Expand on that.”
Completely different subject. Well, fine, I thought, and settled back into listening.
“What’s a hotel friend?”
“Someone staying long-term at the hotel. We’re both bored on days off, hanging around the gift shop, and once we recognised each other’s faces we started talking. I don’t know if it’s true, but apparently they’re a genius novelist. Said they wanted to try writing while listening to the sound of the waves, once.”
“Mm… did you get a name?”
If I heard it, it might be a writer I knew. Assuming any of it was real.
“Kai.”
“That’s you.”
“Apparently they’re also called Kai.”
Not like a joke meant to obscure something. A pen name. Kai.
“Kai… Kai, huh.”
Nothing came to mind immediately. More urgently, I found myself worrying about Kai wandering around the hotel unsupervised.
“Doesn’t it seem odd to people? You’re in uniform even on your days off.”
“Wearing the uniform even on days off, without losing my dedication to scholarship, makes me more of a model student, if anything—”
“Never mind that.”
“We settled on ‘everyone has their reasons’ and left it there.”
“Ah, right.”
Perhaps the other person was simply giving a made-up name too, with their own complicated circumstances. I glanced sideways at Kai, whose circumstances, by contrast, couldn’t be hidden at all, a middle schooler with nowhere to disguise what she was.
“How’s hotel life?”
“It’s fun. I get to see you every weekday, Yuki-san.”
…This child.
She knew exactly how much that would embarrass me, and said it anyway.
Like she was courting me.
“I told you, I’m not Yuki-san…”
I deliberately picked at the wrong part of the sentence to smooth over the rest. I glanced at her hairline, let out a long breath.
“As long as you’re staying here and not getting hurt more… I suppose it’s fine.”
The detached way it came out made me wonder what I was actually trying to hide.
Various roles pressed against my thoughts at once. Something kept me from surrendering to any of this innocently. Propriety had become part of the outline of who I was, an entirely ordinary adult, and that was me.
I’d said it was fine, but in truth, it really wasn’t.
This life had been going on for close to two weeks now, and there was still no resolution in sight, no real landing point. Kai was living out of a hotel, so far without anyone stopping her from going to school.
And I was visiting her, in secret from my family.
…Sitting with it properly, though truthfully every night before sleep I always sit with it properly.
What exactly was the relationship between Kai and me. What was the right word for it.
The shape of it was, frankly, acrobatic.
Stripped of all responsibility, the first words that come to mind are protection, guardianship. A girl I’d learned the truth about, by accident, and couldn’t simply abandon, was now being sheltered by me in a hotel room. Even without paying for the room myself, I kept bringing her things she was short on, dropping her near school each morning. Honestly, since taking Kai under my wing, she’d become more work than my own daughter.
What would my daughter think, if she knew how devotedly her mother had been looking after her friend.
“I really am very grateful, you know.”
“Hard to take seriously while you’re bouncing.”
Her words bounced along just as lightly, enjoying themselves, and none of it landed with any real weight. Only once she’d said it did Kai stop bouncing and sit up. Only then did I finally turn my whole body toward her on the bed. While she’d been bouncing, glimpses under her skirt kept flickering into view, awkward to avoid looking at.
“Um, can I ask something?”
“What?”
Kai resettled herself, shifting to the edge of the bed, closing the distance between us. I half-braced for her to launch herself straight at the sofa the way she sometimes did. But what came flying at me wasn’t Kai herself, it was a request.
“If I’m going to meet Santa Claus for the first time, I want it to be you, Yuki-san.”
Said with her eyes lowered slightly, looking away.
Ah, that was the tell, the one I now recognized, for when Kai was showing something true.
Except I genuinely couldn’t parse the content of it.
Some kind of metaphor? I found myself already reaching for an overcomplicated reading.
Sensing that, perhaps, Kai broke it down more plainly.
“Fine. I’ll say it directly. I want you to dress up as Santa, Yuki-san.”