Chapter One: “The Clod of Earth Awaits the Snow” — Part Nine

“Have you met this friend yourself?”
“In passing. She came to study the other day, remember.”
“I don’t pay much attention to our daughter’s friends, I’m usually making dinner. What was she like?”
“What was she like…”
Being asked to size up my daughter’s friend was difficult to answer.
From where I stood, Chitaira Kai was.
Simply, just, a girl whose eyes were so deep they threatened to take my heart with them.
“We didn’t talk much, but she seemed quiet and composed… a perfectly ordinary girl, I’d say.”
It was unsettling, the way my throat and voice ignored entirely what was written in my mind.
“Ordinary, huh.”
“Yes. At least she doesn’t seem like the sort to attract that kind of rumour…”
What was running through me and the calm way I was speaking were so mismatched it felt like watching someone else talk. My awareness stalled somewhere in the middle of my body, and when I tried to look at what was sitting behind my thoughts, my vision went white, or lurched suddenly sideways, and I felt close to coming apart. The disconnect became unbearable, and I took a slow deep breath, carefully enough that my husband wouldn’t notice. After a few of those, the outline of myself from chin to fingertip finally caught up with the rest of me, and I felt relief just to have landed back in one piece.
What had that been, that sudden split.
“Saying something to your child about their friends is… a difficult thing.”
My husband happened to voice exactly that, so I rode the moment to make sure my head and mouth were back in working order.
“It really is.”
Good. That worked. Right, from here, calmly, let’s think about our daughter.
Our daughter had her own inner life. I couldn’t wade into her friendships freely, not even as her parent.
She didn’t seem troubled in the slightest, but in the closed environment of a school, those kinds of rumours circulated, and they had a way of making someone an object of avoidance. It might be prejudice, but Chitaira Kai herself didn’t strike me as someone who moved through social situations with easy warmth either.
In the middle of all this we crossed the level crossing, climbed the gentle slope beyond it, and arrived at my husband’s workplace. The pure white of the flowers in the vase on the outdoor table shone out of the jumbled colours around it with a kind of dazzle.
My husband’s work was this onigiri shop, his main occupation, apparently. By his own account. He had originally been the landlord of the apartment building behind it, and the rental income alone had been his contribution, but as the earlier conversation had confirmed, watching me had moved him to take on the onigiri shop as well. I still couldn’t trace the connection between me and rice balls.
“Well then, have a good shift.”
“Will do~”
I couldn’t very well go inside with him, so Maron made his way to his usual spot, tied up outside. In every season but winter and summer he curled up quietly beside the outdoor chairs and waited for my husband. He had no charm to spare for anyone but my husband, but he never barked and was well-behaved, so passers-by often stopped to fuss over him.
With the walk and the shopping both done, I turned back toward home alone. The return journey without someone to talk to felt a little longer than the way there. Perhaps that was what happiness felt like, the kind of thought that only came when you were by yourself.
I crossed the level crossing again and came back out onto the main road, and as I walked I spotted a rickshaw going past. A familiar sight in a tourist area, and the blonde woman pulling it was equally a fixture of the street. She had an easy way of calling out to people, and had once recommended a rickshaw date to me and my husband mid-stroll. My husband had genuinely deliberated over accepting, then turned it down on the grounds that Maron would get bored just sitting there.
The blonde woman and her rickshaw went by, the tail of her tied-back hair trailing behind her, and as my eyes followed it naturally onward, I let out a small involuntary “oh.”
“Oh.”
The girl in a middle school uniform who had just crossed the traffic lights diagonally behind me gave the same response.
Not quite speak of the devil, but close enough.
It was Chitaira Kai.
Having crossed to the pavement, Kai came toward me without looking away. Why. Her hair visibly tossed by the wind, she came to a stop in front of me, and held me in that gaze.
People, town, scenery, sky, background noise, school uniform.
Eyes that refused to dissolve into any of it, pressing their primary colours directly into my heart.
Like the white flowers outside the shop, existing entirely on their own terms.
“Good morning.”
Whatever else, a greeting was a greeting. Though I felt a slight awkwardness having just been talking about her and her house, and never expected to run into her, not on a day like this, at a time like this, in a place like this.
Since becoming aware of Chitaira Kai, I seemed to be running into her more often. Was that an illusion.
The opposite of the old friends who naturally fade from your thoughts and never seem to appear in town.
Perhaps when two people’s vague awareness drifts toward each other, that was what you called fate. …There it was again, fate. What did that even mean.
“Good morning. …Oh.”
Kai finally pressed a finger to her cheek, as if something had clicked.
“I thought something was different. You’re not in a suit.”
“Right, yes. It’s Saturday.”
I answered, touching my shoulder. Kai, despite it being a day off, was in her school uniform.
I could feel her eyes moving over me without any particular restraint. Enough that I almost said something about it.
After a moment she murmured, looking down at the ground.
“Bare legs are more erotic than stockings.”
“Sorry?”
“The frank opinion of a fourteen-year-old, please don’t take it too seriously.”
“No, you really shouldn’t say things like that…”
I corrected the improper language. It was simply too rude, in front of the person herself. …She’d said something along those lines last time too.
What on earth was this girl. With no way to read her true feelings, talking to her left me completely unsettled.
“Are you here for…” I was still turning it over when a convenient explanation occurred to me. “Club activities?”
“Yes. I dedicate my youth to club activities every day.”
The answer came back instantly, breezy and unbroken, which made it sound thoroughly unconvincing.
“Is that right… well, work hard.”
I said the safe thing, and Kai left with that same gentle smile that made it absolutely clear she was lying.
I watched her small figure trotting away, a little absently, and then, wait.
“Hang on.”
Kai turned at the sound of my voice. Her eyes said what is it, but I didn’t have a what. Just.
“That’s the completely wrong direction for school.”
I’d called out without thinking. Club activities would normally mean going to school. If it was the same school as my daughter’s, she should be heading straight up the main road toward the stone torii gate, but Kai had been heading toward the station.
“Ah, yes, you’re right…”
Kai reached up and pulled at her own hair in a way that was plainly annoyed at being caught out.
“You’re thorough…”
“Did you say something?”
“Club activities have been cancelled.”
She announced it without a trace of guilt. She was my daughter’s friend, but should I say something as the adult here.
“Why did you lie?”
“Explaining why I’m in uniform on a Saturday seemed like too much effort…”
Kai tilted her head as if weighing her options, then fixed her gaze on a single point.
“Would you like to get soft serve ice cream with me?”
Still looking out at the main road, she said something I couldn’t quite follow.
“Soft serve… sorry, what?”
Not catching on, I looked back at her, and her profile turned toward me with a smile.
“I’m hitting on you.”
“……………What?”
Further from understanding than ever.