Chapter Three: “The Clod of Earth Dreams of Snow” — Part Eight
“Kai, are you…” I nearly asked how she handled PE class at school, and pulled back.
“Getting the hang of the phone yet?”
I’d never once seen her actually touch it, even here in the room, barely registering as a presence at all.
“I’ve gotten better at swiping, at least.”
“Good progress.”
“Also, some stranger keeps calling for Shio-nee-san. It happened so often I’ve now learned about call blocking.”
“Terrifying.”
Both the persistence of whoever was calling, and the nee-san herself.
“Should I have properly set up a new contract for you after all?”
“Nee-san attracting swarms of women is nothing new, so, not particularly…”
Kai took another sip of coffee and grimaced at the cup.
“Add some sugar?”
“There’s nothing sweet in this room.”
The moment she said it, she looked up, at me.
“Correction. There’s one thing.”
“…Don’t smile like you just said something clever.”
Whether I was sweet to Kai, well, not overwhelmingly. Mildly, at best. Nowhere near enough to counter the bitterness of her coffee. And yet Kai looked thoroughly pleased with herself, savouring the compliment she’d handed herself.
Irritating.
“Fine, I’ll never be sweet to you again, starting now.”
Getting childishly stubborn with an actual child.
“You can’t help it. You’re a nice person, Yuki-san.”
“Give it five minutes, I’m about to become an absolutely terrible one. Working on it right now.”
Specifically, by drinking more coffee to intensify the bitterness.
“Being called a nice person is unusual enough that I’m honestly still adjusting to it, believe it or not.”
A rather lonely thing to hear. My own daughter was more than kind enough, surely. Though away from home, maybe she wore a different face too. Excessive concern wasn’t good either, but I couldn’t help worrying regardless. And while I was worrying about it, my coffee cup left my mouth and the bitterness slipped away with it.
“Lately, you’ve been replying quickly, so…”
Kai, mid-sentence, seemed to catch herself and stop short. A rare crack in her composure.
“So?”
Hiding my grin behind my cup, I pressed. The scent of coffee and the rising excitement in me were reaching some kind of peak together. A ripe fruit about to split. Watching flustered Kai’s head swivel this way and that gave me something like relief, exhaustion dissolving off my shoulders.
“…It’s reassuring.”
“That much?”
An overstatement, surely. Probably she’d been fumbling for something else and landed somewhere strange instead.
“Sometimes you could just say you’re glad, plainly, you know.”
“Being direct about everything would probably drain my vocabulary too fast.”
Kai jutted out her lower lip in a display of childish complaint. Not just childlike, actually a child.
“When you’re honest, you suddenly get…”
Now it was my turn to nearly say too much, and I stopped just as fast.
“Suddenly get?”
Kai didn’t let it slide, striking back at once. But I wasn’t as contrary as Kai. Probably.
This was the important part. Answer smoothly.
“When you’re honest, you seem like a cute kid. That’s just, well, a normal thing adults think.”
I delivered that a little too quickly and shut it down. Playing it as nothing, I checked Kai’s reaction, and she managed a level “I see” in return. Trading words with Kai often turned into something closer to combat, no room to relax. Nothing like the easy back-and-forth of family, splashing bathwater at each other.
A cute kid. That much was true, but.
Honest or not, Kai’s appearance was, simply, joy to look at. There was no other word for it.
Kai was built in a shape designed, it seemed, to please me. A beauty put together with something close to miraculous precision.
“How old are you, Yuki-san?”
Recovered, Kai fired off an impertinent question. Delivered with total neutrality, which somehow made it worse.
“Don’t just ask that so casually…”
This little brat, calling me erotic oba-san without even knowing my actual age. Unforgivable.
“Thirty-eight this year. Two full zodiac cycles ahead of you.”
Saying it out loud made even me register, freshly, just how large that gap was.
A twenty-four year difference… rare enough a span that a relationship would hardly form even between actual relatives.
Strange, I thought, nearly laughing at the middle schooler seated across the table.
“You really don’t look thirty-eight.”
“Thanks. Though you still call me oba-san regardless.”
Glaring at her got no reaction; her expression didn’t so much as flinch.
“Even if you looked twenty-five, you’d still be an oba-san to a middle schooler.”
“Twenty-five… well, I’ll take it as a compliment.”
Being seen as younger wasn’t unwelcome. I turned the number over like something worth savouring, pinching it like a cheek.
“By the time I’m thirty-eight, will you be sixty-two, Yuki-san?”
“A proper oba-san and grandma pairing, then.”
Thirty-eight-year-old Kai was impossible to picture even faintly. This girl who felt eternally fourteen, some grown, adult version of her simply wouldn’t form in my mind.
More to the point, would I even still be seeing Kai like this in twenty-four years? Unlikely. However long this strange arrangement of ours could actually continue, once it ended, Kai would surely become nothing more than my daughter’s friend again. Until then… until then, what, exactly. Not endurance, certainly not that.
In any case, to me, Kai was fourteen. Probably, always would be.
“Even when I’m thirty-eight, I definitely won’t turn into an erotic oba-san like you, Yuki-san.”
“Can I finally get properly angry now?”
“If you work hard enough, you could get there too. Thank you, I shouldn’t give up hope, should I.”
“Do you have earwax blocking something in there?”
I’d only meant it sarcastically, but Kai went still. Crossed her arms, tilted her head.
“What?”
“Might be, actually.”
The earnestness of her response caught me off guard too.
“I’ve never actually had my ears cleaned.”
“Never had them cleaned.”
Such a blunt, matter-of-fact statement that I found myself repeating it back. While I sat there stunned, Kai’s eyes lit up, faintly.
“Would you clean my ears for me?”