Chapter Three: “The Clod of Earth Dreams of Snow” — Part Eleven
“What, what are you doing?”
“Couldn’t help it.”
“I don’t understand what ‘couldn’t help it’ means here.”
“Now now now now.”
Kai caught my head as I tried to pull away and drew it back. Wondering if she had something else in mind, I found myself settled into her lap again before I knew it. Watching her closely, half-expecting another lick at any moment, Kai just laughed.
“I’ll practice ear cleaning before next time.”
“If you lick my ear again I’m banning you from coming within five metres of me.”
“What colour is your natural hair, Yuki-san?”
Not listening to a word of my warning at all. And apparently the ear cleaning had never really been the point, she meant to keep talking regardless. Coming straight from work, once I’d lain down the strength to get back up seemed to have left me entirely.
Only my heart was still fluttering, ridiculous, like a chicken.
“…Before you ask anything else, no more of that kind of mischief. The ear thing.”
“Mischief… well, all right.”
A weak reply. If she did it again, what was I even supposed to do about it? I couldn’t think of a single way to actually handle Kai.
Well, that could wait. Not that it was fine. But it could wait.
Whose turn was it to ask, I found myself wondering, and hesitated for a moment over whether to actually be honest. Not something I’d sworn to keep secret exactly, but revealing something hidden still takes a little courage, a little trust. Sharing a secret with Kai carried something almost frightening in it.
A strange, nagging sense that it could become a habit.
“Gold.”
“Huh.”
I picked up a strand of my own hair where it had fallen across her leg. Rubbing it between my fingers did nothing to change the black.
Hair I’d once been told looked like golden thread, inherited from my father.
In nursery school it hadn’t bothered me much. But once I reached primary school, once other people’s opinions started to matter, the teasing started, and I stopped being able to like it. There was a boy in my class who wouldn’t stop pulling at it, and once, unable to hold back any longer, I found myself screaming I’ll kill you and hitting him, over and over. Not hit, but plural, which tells you clearly enough how far past the edge I’d gone. Naturally it became a serious problem. It didn’t stay contained to the violence either, it spread into taunts about my hair colour, my background, spiralling completely out of control, blowing up into something so large that I ended up with no friends left at all by the time it settled. A bitter memory.
Middle school brought more attention for the same reason. High school meant constantly having to explain it was natural. So once I reached university, I started dyeing it black to hide it. My husband, whom I met at university, knew the story, but had never actually seen me with gold hair.
Whether it was fortunate or not, my daughter hadn’t inherited it. For my own part, I was relieved, at least she’d be spared people yanking at her hair without a thought. That kind of thing wounds you on too many levels at once, the pain, the handling, the cruelty behind it, and I never wanted her to know any of it.
Even now, I still disliked having my hair touched, and haircuts had become something close to an ordeal.
“Lucky. Gold-haired Yuki-san.”
Someone entirely unaware of that history, dreamily indulging in the idea like a child.
“Gold-haired Yuki-san must be, like, ridiculously…”
“No vulgar language.”
“Must be gorgeous.”
A hollow compliment, arcing through the air and falling somewhere off the edge of the bed. She’d clearly been about to say erotic.
“I’d like to meet her, someday…”
The wish, murmured almost to herself, carried something different from her usual tone this time, something sweet and dreamlike, like sucking on a piece of candy.
At least, that’s how it felt to me.
If I stopped dyeing it, the gold would eventually surface again on its own. A colour no one at my office, not even my own daughter, had ever seen. Whether all I had toward it was bad memory, or whether I’d simply used the bad memory as an excuse to bury the whole thing entirely, wasn’t clear even to me.
Why had I told Kai. Her faint, wistful wish still lingered somewhere near my ear, and I closed my eyes against it.
If I did nothing, the gold would eventually come back on its own, someday.
Replacing the black-haired version of me, piece by piece.
Change how I lived, for Kai’s sake?
…Ridiculous. What was Kai to me, really? Just another family’s child.
A stranger, twenty-four years apart, trading laps on a hotel bed.
Too great an age gap. Far too great.
The hesitation I’d felt at first about the lap pillow had entirely given way now, my head resting fully against her leg. My body sinking into the expensive mattress beneath us made the whole arrangement almost embarrassingly comfortable. Smooth, everything, the sheets, Kai’s white tights. Her legs especially carried a youth impossible to mistake. An age gap that barely showed on the surface became unmistakable the instant we touched, even through fabric. An oba-san, genuinely, I thought, mocking myself, and closed my eyes.
“Yuki-san?”
“………..What?…”
“…Never mind.”
“You always say that… nothing at all…”
Kai’s fingers moved over my head, feather-light.
Being touched like this, on my hair, was supposed to bother me. And yet I felt too hazy to resist. Something at my centre softening like spun sugar, the numbness spreading from her fingertips oddly pleasant.
Things relevant, things not. Scattered thoughts and memories crossing over each other, asserting themselves without order before cutting off abruptly. A figure made only of a white outline running through the dark. A sudden wave of worry about work. Some half-remembered commercial from yesterday playing itself out incompletely. The classroom window I used to stare out of at school.
Like dreaming while still awake, my whole body seemed to float in exactly that half-dreaming state.
…Half-dreaming?
The word dream snagged at something, and I jolted upright.
“This is bad. I’m about to fall asleep.”
Or perhaps I already had, briefly, because checking the clock showed it had just gone past eight.
“You should’ve woken me.”
I leapt off the bed and ran to the other room. Grabbing my bag, I drained what was left of the coffee sitting cold on the table in one go. Kai’s cup hadn’t gone down at all.
“No thanks.”
Kai, still stretched out on the bed, declined cheerfully.
“Obviously not, waking you up.”
“…You didn’t have to put it quite like that.”
Rushed as I was, I was still faintly startled at how unpleasant she’d become, on purpose, and hurried out of the room regardless.
“See you, then.”
“Yes. Good night.”
Out in the hallway, door closed, I breathed in the quiet, and only then registered it.
“Not see you, idiot.”
Scolding myself for what had slipped out unguarded, I hurried toward the elevator.
Dozing there, in Kai’s lap, had filled me with something clean, almost like cool water running over skin.
I wanted the night air to carry that feeling, and the comfort of it, away from me as quickly as possible.