Chitaira Kai’s Hotel Diary, Part One
Whatever had been swirling in both of us before our eyes met was, I think, probably the same feeling.
This one’s always wandering around the hotel.
The woman wore a T-shirt with some anime character’s face printed enormous across the front, paired with shorts, her long hair tied back with a polka-dot hand towel that had “FESTIVAL” printed on it. Before strange even fully formed as a thought, my first reaction was, it’s not summer, wondering at the sheer seasonal wrongness of the whole outfit.
“Why are you always staying at this hotel?”
Skipping any unnecessary greeting, the woman asked me directly. Still holding an item from the gift shop, I answered, wishing she hadn’t spoken to me at all.
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated. Nice. Sounds like there’s plenty to hear.”
She followed me smoothly all the way to the register, paid, and kept following even after that. Steering me, hand practically on my shoulder, this way, this way, all the way out to the lobby. She sat me down in an empty chair and took the one across from me.
“Do I have to sit with you for this?”
“Here, consider it your interview fee.”
The strange woman opened a bag of freshly bought potato chips and held it out, asking as she did.
“What’s your name?”
“…Kai.”
I left the surname vague. I’m Kai. Because that’s what she calls me.
“Ohh, Kai, huh. Not bad.”
“Not bad how?”
“As for me… well, I suppose introductions aren’t really necessary.”
Heh, she said, a little shy, as if this were simply how things were. I thought she might be joking at first, but slowly understood she was genuinely serious. She, for her part, frowned in confusion that I didn’t already know who she was.
“You mean to tell me you don’t know me?”
“Am I supposed to?”
“Well, well, this is a surprise… there’s still an elementary schooler out there who’s never heard of the peerless genius novelist, Kai Shoko…”
“Middle schooler.”
“Well, well, this is a surprise…”
She reached out, hand hovering over my head as if measuring my height. “Ah, elementary school, I see.” No, it isn’t.
“Come to think of it, on weekdays you’re usually in something like a middle school uniform, aren’t you.”
Apparently she’d finally remembered. It happened to be a day off, so today I was in a yukata instead.
A hand-me-down from nee-san, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
The genius novelist reached over almost absentmindedly and started crunching through the chips. So much for my interview fee.
“All the more reason a middle schooler should read my novels. Might change your whole life.”
“I’ll give it a read if the library has it.”
I’d already forgotten her name. Only Kai stuck.
“I always wanted to try writing at a hotel by the sea, once. For the atmosphere.”
“I see…”
For a genius, she seemed remarkably ordinary in every direction. My eyes had landed on the character on her shirt and stayed there, and the novelist puffed out her chest as if to emphasise the point. A flat chest, compared to hers.
“This happens to be my own work, you know. The character shirt they made when it got an anime adaptation… don’t tell me you don’t know that either…?”
I wished she’d stop looking at me with that pity.
“I’ve got the sample stock overflowing at home, figured I might as well wear them out rather than let them rot.”
“…How wonderful for you.”
“But your eyes are quite something too. Natural?”
She laughed, comparing them to the blue-eyed anime character on her own shirt.
“Yeah, more or less.”
Detestable eyes. A symbol of everything I could never merge with. Watching that whole crowd of them moving through the house at night, it looked like something monstrous. Realising I was part of that too, however peripherally, I couldn’t count how many times I’d tried, impulsively, to gouge my own eyes out.
But since being met with that particular gaze, the one that actually tries to look into them, I’ve started, slowly, to accept them.
“Right, right. That woman who visits you every day, is that your mother?”
“Mother…”
Her, my mother. That was almost funny too.
Whatever we end up becoming to each other from here.
“Does it look that way?”
“Not at all. She’s not old enough for that, is she.”
I complimented the confident novelist’s guess. “Sharp eye.”
She really did look young. Nowhere near old enough, at least, to have a daughter my age.
“So what does she look like to you, then?”
“Something like a young wife with a complicated situation going on. That kind of impression.”
Not far off, really.
“Not bad at all.”
Apparently satisfied with even that half-hearted compliment, she gave a self-pleased laugh.
A young wife with complicated circumstances, visiting a middle schooler at a hotel over and over. Well, that’s about the shape of it, from the outside for now. My eyes drifted, and I thought of her tight, unyielding mouth, a smile slipping out before I could hold it back.
For now, my actual goal is a married woman, coming here to commit infidelity with me.
For now, at least.
“Interesting people seem to wash up at this hotel. Worth the trip, I’d say. Kai, as in worthwhile.”
“…What?”
“Ah! Hold on a moment.”
Abandoning her own purchases entirely, the novelist bolted off. Not toward the lift, but straight for the emergency stairs. No particular reason to wait, so I considered just leaving, but the thought of her showing up uninvited at my room later was worse, so I decided to just settle whatever this was, here.
Only one person gets to come to my room. Everyone else is just an inconvenience.
Waiting, I closed my eyes and pictured her, all of her.
Her chest really is large, I thought, satisfied with the precision of the reconstruction. Having stared, closely, so closely, every time we met, the resolution of the mental image was, by now, extremely high, if I do say so myself. And it also left something hollow. I’d still rather touch her directly. Want to touch her. Want to hold her.
She probably has no idea how hard I concentrate, giving my whole self over to the feeling of her chest, every time I hold onto her.
That tension, tight enough to make my back tremble without anyone noticing,
A little later, the anime-shirt woman came running back, out of breath, and held out a paperback.
“This is my business card.”
“…It’s quite thick.”
The name she’d given earlier was printed in the corner. So that’s how Kai is written, for her.
“Ah well, always wanted to try that, handing one over like this.”
“Would’ve been cooler if you weren’t out of breath.”
A book, then.
Time spent apart from her is flavourless, dull, endlessly long.
Might do all right for killing the time, at least.
The genius novelist ate nearly all of the chips she’d handed over as my interview fee herself, and strode off without a shred of shame.
And that’s how I made a hotel friend.