Chapter Three: “The Clod of Earth Dreams of Snow” — Part Six
“What do you actually like?”
I glanced toward the main road. The red of the distant torii gate caught my eye, the crowd walking beneath it, the shops lining either side. What did this town look like to Kai, walking to school on foot every day. Was there anything in it that shone for her at all.
“What’s this about?”
“Favourite foods, artists… that kind of thing.”
I needed to know that much. So the Christmas present would actually mean something to her, not just be a gesture.
“Food, well…”
She started, then her mouth curled into something mischievous.
“Are you interested in me?”
Kai braced her hands on the seat and leaned in, peering into my face.
“Sit properly, it’s dangerous.”
“I’ll go straight back once you answer. Do you want to know about me?”
I glared back at her, steady, aware she was fishing for exactly this.
Because I’m the adult here, I gave in.
“Interested… well, maybe.”
“Wow, unusually honest of you.”
“You could learn something from that. I just thought I should know a bit about who Kai actually is.”
Not entirely a lie. Should might have been the lie in it.
Want to was too honest to say out loud.
“Hmm.”
Kai kept grinning and settled back into her seat.
Once you accepted she was fundamentally contrary, she became surprisingly easy to read. Surprisingly… endearing.
“Now that you mention it, I don’t know much about what you like either, Yuki-san.”
“See? We really don’t know much about each other, as people.”
And yet, not knowing, this strange relationship had formed anyway. What had connected us at all.
Probably her eyes, still. That unsteady, lime-green surface I sometimes imagined myself floating on, the illusion those eyes produced.
I had been swallowed by them.
“As people… what a fresh way to put it.”
Kai turned the phrase over on her tongue, cheeks colouring with something like genuine curiosity. I couldn’t look away from that expression, that profile, a child’s face for a moment. Catching her unguarded like that, something protective washed over me in a wave. This flicker between this brat and this child was, I’d come to realise, simply what Kai was.
“In that case, I’ll think hard about it before tonight. We can talk then.”
Said as though my stopping by the hotel were already settled. Which it probably was.
The school came into view and I pulled over. Kai got out with her usual short “thanks” and nothing more. Through the open door, winter air slipped in, and I drew it in through my lips and let it back out again, almost without meaning to.
“Off you go.”
Kai’s eyes went wide, caught off guard, hand still on the door, frozen there. Usually we simply parted, wordless, seeing and being seen off without comment. I’d tied a small thread between us just now, on impulse. The one it was tied to hadn’t noticed, and when she tried to pull away, the sudden tug surprised her.
It wasn’t often I managed to catch Kai off guard, and something in that felt both ticklish and satisfying.
Kai leaned back into the car, closing the distance before I could react, and brought her thin lips right to my ear.
“I’m off.”
The same voice that always seemed to dissolve on contact, breathed right against my ear.
While I was still recoiling, Kai was already walking off, light on her feet.
“…Was that really necessary, coming that close just to say it?”
I muttered, having pulled back so far my head knocked against the window.
I brushed at my ear, the lingering, cotton-soft impression of it still clinging there, and resettled myself. Replaying it, I realised I was smiling, faintly, and didn’t much feel like stopping myself. The feeling of it was like admiring some small flower too delicate to actually pick. A fondness, a small joy, catching me by surprise.
With my family, I’d grown used to a kind of exchange that felt sufficient in itself.
Meeting Kai had produced a great deal that was strange, in me, and yet that strangeness wasn’t only confusion.
Something as small as trading stories with Kai, and I found myself genuinely looking forward to it.
Would I actually manage real work today, I wondered, a restlessness I couldn’t quite sit still with.
I recognised that feeling. And laughed it off lightly, shaking my head. That couldn’t be it.
Just giddy at something unfamiliar, that’s all it was.
Whatever resemblance it bore to the giddiness of university, of first dating my husband, was, surely, only in my imagination.
“I really didn’t think you’d actually do it.”
“Don’t shake your head.”
“Worth asking, apparently.”
“Don’t move your shoulder either.”
Every time I corrected her, Kai deliberately squirmed just to provoke me. That particular streak in her was infuriating, demanding, cheeky, and, somewhere underneath it, faintly endearing. She might, unexpectedly, be rather good at being coddled.
On the hotel bed, Kai’s head rested in my lap while I cleaned her ears.
This wasn’t at all what I’d planned when I first walked into the room. As agreed that morning, I’d only come to talk. Somehow, the conversation had drifted here anyway.
Arriving earlier than usual at the hotel, I told myself it was simply no traffic, no red lights on the way.
Today Kai had coffee ready before I even arrived.
The message earlier that day, asking me to let her know when I was on my way, had apparently been for exactly this purpose.
“Suite rooms come with complimentary ground coffee. I don’t usually drink it myself.”
“Huh… right, this is the suite, isn’t it?”
I looked around again, ceiling to floorboards. I’d been coming and going without really registering it, but of course the room was this large. Staying in a suite this long, she might genuinely be living better than I was. A joke, at first, until I pictured my own house, my family’s faces, and reconsidered, no, that wasn’t true.
Beyond the bedroom was a second room with four chairs, a table, a large sofa, and a television. It opened onto the balcony too, though in winter there wasn’t much reason to use it.
When had I last stayed anywhere like a suite. …Not even on my honeymoon, I think… which meant, possibly, never in my life. None of our family trips had come close either.
“Mmm, suite.”
I breathed in the suite atmosphere once more for good measure. The rich scent of coffee mixed into it.
“Here.”
“Thanks.”
I took the cup she’d poured. My cold fingers registered the warmth of the liquid through the ceramic, coming back to life like a small light switching on. I blew across the surface and took a sip, a familiar taste. Coffee roasted locally, the same kind we sometimes had at the office. I wanted milk, but assumed the room wouldn’t have any, and drank it black regardless.
Kai left her own cup untouched on the table and sat across from me. She only watched the steam rising from it, making no move to drink.