Chapter Three: “The Clod of Earth Dreams of Snow” — Part Two
“…I’m sorry?”
This had suddenly gone from something almost literary to a request of a much more mundane kind.
“Santa Claus? Me?”
“Yuki-san in a Santa costume.”
She emphasised that part as if it were the entire point. Something in her eyes, if I wasn’t imagining it, seemed brighter than usual.
“Well, I mean… there’s no one else who’d really do it for me.”
Kai flipped onto her back, turning her upside-down face toward me. Even upside down, nothing about her looked out of order. Well-proportioned, I suppose that’s the word. She’d nearly disappear inside the category of “middle schooler,” and then, every so often, I’d catch myself actually appraising her looks and feel briefly startled by my own reaction.
If only she were a little more straightforward, I couldn’t help thinking.
“What exactly do you think I am, to you?”
Still lying on her back, Kai twisted her mouth and eyes into matching frowns.
“That’s a hard question.”
“I bet it’s… what, some oba-san, right?”
I said it with an edge, and she agreed with a flat “well, yeah,” offering no cushioning whatsoever, which irritated me more than it should have.
Erotic oba-san, over and over, whenever the mood struck her.
Oba-san, fine, annoying but probably fair from a fourteen-year-old’s perspective. But erotic, where was that even coming from.
My husband had never once said anything like that to me directly. Was she saying it to provoke, or did she actually mean it. If she meant it, that left me with nowhere useful to put the reaction either. What was I even supposed to do with that.
I was just living ordinarily, just being around her.
“Can you explain what you think I am to you, then?”
Cheeky, treating adults like fools, telling careless lies without a shred of guilt.
Sympathy, pity, compassion.
Something like an odd-aged partner in mischief, and beyond that.
Thinking of her almost like a demanding second daughter, was that too thin a way to put it.
“That’s a hard question too.”
“See?”
Kai’s mouth softened, as if satisfied with my answer.
“Honestly, I’m relieved it wasn’t something you could answer easily, like I don’t matter much.”
“…………………………………”
I recrossed my legs without a word, propped my cheek on my hand against the sofa back, and looked away.
This brat, I thought, half-cursing the sudden, unguarded honesty of it.
The way she occasionally pressed in close with some endearing little reaction like that, it was like a cat.
“Santa Claus… hm.”
I understood why Kai could never have wanted that at home. And yet perhaps she’d kept waiting for it anyway, all this time. I felt for her. I did pity her.
But that alone probably wasn’t enough to actually move me to act.
What was it, really, the thing that kept moving me, carrying me back to this room.
The time spent lying to my family was quietly, steadily wearing thin.
“…Why.”
Why did I keep saying nothing to my family. It felt like something they could understand, if I just explained it.
I pulled myself back from the edge of that thought and put some distance between myself and the danger of it. This isn’t a room for thinking difficult things, I decided, and let the thought go.
Leaning back against the sofa, I let the night sea outside pull in both sound and attention. Kai had mentioned once that opening the window let the sound of waves reach all the way into the room. Was that what the genius novelist was after, exactly?
A view with no connection at all to the family I loved, the particular scent and air of a hotel.
The sea I saw every day, somehow made entirely unfamiliar. A space outside reality.
It felt, somehow, like it represented exactly what my involvement with Kai actually was.
“Really is one erotic oba-san, this one…”
“Did you say something?”
“Really is one exotic fish, this lady.”
“First time in my life someone’s complimented me by comparing me to a fish.”
The first line had obviously been said loud enough to be heard on purpose, and Kai laughed, still lying down. It was the laugh of a child who couldn’t quite laugh without guard, without something propping it up. A childishness leaning against self-deprecation, holding up a stretch that shouldn’t have been necessary yet.
I looked away from Kai and let my eyes drift outside again, unfocused.
In truth, I couldn’t afford to keep losing myself in the view like this.
I had to go home. To the house where my husband and daughter were waiting.
Without raising suspicion.
…The reasoning that came out of me sounded like someone concealing something shameful, and I narrowed my eyes at it.
There was nothing to feel guilty about. Helping someone in need doesn’t carry anything dark in it.
But is that so, something in the dim corner of my mind seemed to ask, suddenly lit. Hidden in that shadow: the scene of the kiss. Kai’s eyes, arriving at a distance too close to bear. That rapture. Too knowing for her age.
And before I could get away from it, Kai’s lips surfaced again too. The patient, unhurried way her tongue had traced my finger, the temperature difference that ran a shiver down my back.
A duration of contact far too long to pass off as some idle game between two people alone in a car.
An unwashable sensation, as if Kai’s saliva were still, somehow, clinging to my skin.
A kiss was, simply, a sexual offence.
Licking a finger was… simply… I couldn’t find an escape route for that one. Too clinging, too intimate a form of contact to file away as one of Kai’s usual pranks. An act with nothing refreshing about it at all, something that seemed to want to dissolve the outline separating the two of us.
As a mother, I had some familiarity with the name and meaning of that kind of act. As a good wife, I had direct experience of it.
…And yet, surely not, I found myself thinking.
Surely that wasn’t it, I told myself. The age gap, the roles we occupied, both refused it outright - me lying in bed with a second-year middle school girl. It’s unthinkable. Whatever Kai was doing, the finger-licking, that was, yes, adolescence. Filing the whole thing under adolescence and closing the drawer on it. A whim of a mind still growing. A minor detour, nothing more.
“Are you sleepy?”
Kai, who had been watching my profile this whole time, asked. I could tell she’d been looking, from the gaze alone.
Where exactly Kai’s eyes had been resting on me, I chose not to think about.
“…I just got off work.”
Whether I’d managed to add a little smoothly enough after that, I couldn’t say for certain.
Having come far enough that even looking back at my own adolescence felt like an effort, I was, apparently, sharing that condition with Chitaira Kai now.
Time, and space, both.
As for how I actually felt, I couldn’t say. I didn’t know what Kai was thinking either.
Some part of me wanted to know. Some part of me wanted to keep my eyes lowered instead.
Keeping my eyes closed, staying at exactly this distance, felt like the easiest option available.
If only that could be permitted indefinitely.
Caught in something pleasant, something close to drowsiness, I wanted to stay in this room a little longer still.