By the time Hatano had walked Shinomiya home, the night had grown late.
She stood outside the door of the apartment Shinomiya rented, looking at it quietly, exhaling into the lit corridor. She had brought Shinomiya back to her own flat a number of times now, but coming to Shinomiya’s place was something new. She was taking in that novelty, watching Shinomiya unlock the door with hands that were faintly unsteady, when Shinomiya turned at the last moment and looked at her with eyes that held a particular kind of tension.
“If you have time,” she began, carefully. “Would you like to come in for a little while?”
The words, wrestled out with visible effort through anxiety and nerves, made Hatano blink. Shinomiya caught the reaction and pressed on, more hurriedly.
“I can make coffee, at least. The beans are proper ones, not that your cheap palate would know the difference. So just, um, just a little while…”
Her cheeks were faintly flushed with the early cold of the season. There was something about it that made the word lover surface in Hatano’s mind, from a considerable distance, and she found that some part of her didn’t dislike the thought. But putting all of her attention on that, while Shinomiya was still carrying what she was carrying, would only narrow her field of vision. She held herself back from the temptation, managed a wry smile, and shook her head.
“The last train’s nearly gone. I’ll give it a miss this time.”
Shinomiya’s expression wavered when she said it plainly, so there was no misunderstanding.
“If there’s a next time, I’ll take you up on it then. And when there is, don’t just have coffee ready. Get some proper snacks in too. Given my cheap palate, nothing fancy.”
Hatano kept it light to stop the air from getting heavy, and Shinomiya nodded with a composed smile and said “I suppose I have no choice” in her most put-upon voice, and then when the sentence was over, she looked down and bit her lip.
Hatano understood well enough what that particular gesture meant. She almost reached out to her, almost took back what she’d said. But spending any more time in Shinomiya’s company tonight felt like a risk of losing herself in her, and she was already aware enough of how drawn to her she was becoming. Beyond this point, she didn’t know what she’d do.
For now, she wanted to be Shinomiya’s friend. To stand at one step’s remove and face everything this girl was carrying, from there.
If she was going to fall for her, it would be when Shinomiya had taken a step forward on her own terms.
“Well. Goodnight. Lock up properly.”
She issued the instruction, felt the pull of everything she was leaving behind, and turned toward the station. The image of Shinomiya standing there with her face down burned at the edge of her thoughts as she walked, and she pressed a fist lightly to her chest and told herself to absorb it. That was for later.
Then, without warning, something hit her in the back. Something had collided with her.
She stumbled slightly, caught herself, and a moment later became aware that someone had put their arms around her from behind. White hands, soft, unmistakable. She understood without thinking whose they were, and was about to turn and ask what Shinomiya was trying to do, when a small, roughened voice reached her ear before she could.
“…I don’t want to.”
What it was she didn’t want. There was no need to ask.
Hatano held her lurching heart steady by force of will, and laid her own hand over the hands clasped around her. They were very warm. The warmth spread through her as though it intended to, and she felt her own temperature rise, just slightly.
“What’s this, all of a sudden.”
She kept her voice as even as she could manage, asking the question she already knew the answer to, keeping it calm. Was it too flat? Was her voice holding? Was her heart audible through all of this? She was still running through these worries when Shinomiya tightened her hold and spoke.
“…Please understand me.”
Something that had been braced inside Hatano’s chest made a sound like something giving way.
She closed her eyes and let the words settle. A girl who had never been understood by her family, who had been starving for acknowledgement for so long. A girl she was already falling for. If she was reaching out to Hatano with the expectation that Hatano, of all people, would understand her, there was no refusing that.
She really was an impossible creature.
The last train was definitely going to leave without her. A taxi back would cost more than she wanted to think about, and while she could have charged Rōkai for it, she’d already accepted Shinomiya’s invitation and stepped inside, so forcing herself to leave felt wrong. Hatano accepted what was happening and stayed.
The apartment was a 1LDK, larger than she’d expected. And, at odds with every assumption she’d made about Shinomiya’s life until now, the interior was plain and entirely undecorated. Functional furniture, simple bedding, nothing to catch the eye. No flair, no beauty for its own sake.
“I’ll run you a bath! You can use any of the hangers for your coat.”
Shinomiya dropped her bag and her jacket and pattered off quickly to the bathroom.
It wasn’t cold enough yet that the bath was strictly necessary, but it was a kind thought. Hatano found a hanger in what appeared to be the bedroom and hung up her coat, and as she straightened, her eye caught the cupboard beside her, half-open.
Behind the stacked textbooks and reference materials: boards of wood, sheets of paper, laid somewhat carelessly. Beside them, tubes and jars of paint, an assortment of art supplies. Used once, long ago, and untouched since.
She stood looking at them for a while, took in what they meant, and closed her eyes. Then she turned away and went back to the living room, as though she hadn’t seen them at all.
Shinomiya was back from the bathroom, standing at the mirror in the hallway, fussing with her hair. She started when she noticed Hatano, gave a slightly self-conscious smile, and came in.
“I’ll make that coffee. Have a seat anywhere.”
“Yes, please. Sorry to put you out.”
The sofa was a two-seater, positioned near a low table and a television. A neat blanket and a small cushion beside it suggested she sometimes slept there. Hatano settled in, let the heating beginning to do its work, and fought off a drowsiness that was making itself comfortable in her limbs. The deep fragrance of the coffee reached her first, before the cup did, and then Shinomiya arrived with two mugs and sat beside her.
When Hatano lifted the cup, Shinomiya watched with an alertness that made it slightly difficult to drink. She did so anyway, out of a sense of obligation to the expectation, and the moment the coffee reached her mouth she opened her eyes.
She was no connoisseur; she couldn’t have told cheap from expensive, let alone distinguished quality from instant. But this was unambiguously good. “This is delicious,” she said, without any pretence, and took a second sip, and Shinomiya’s face went warm with pleasure she made no attempt to hide, lifting her own mug with something like smugness. An unexpected side of her. Hatano relaxed into the coffee and the warmth.
The silence that followed was comfortable. The sound of the bath filling came from somewhere distant. They sat without particular purpose, not doing much. Other people’s homes carry their own particular smell, and through the rich coffee fragrance came a faint citrus note that was distinctly Shinomiya, and Hatano was reminded again that she was sitting in Shinomiya’s flat. The awareness of her right there beside her made her feel more awake than she’d been a moment ago, and then Shinomiya looked at her.
“Are you staying tonight?”
A rather forthright question in the circumstances. Hatano smiled wryly.
“Someone held onto me and wouldn’t let go, so yes, I’ve missed my train. I’ll be staying whether you like it or not.”
She kept it light, and Shinomiya’s face broke into obvious pleasure that she covered immediately with “I suppose there’s no help for it” delivered in her most dignified register. Hatano wasn’t someone who missed this kind of thing; she knew Shinomiya was genuinely pleased, and found, without especially meaning to, that the same was true of herself.
“…You really are a strange person.”
An unprompted insult. She looked across with an expression that asked what she meant, and found the delivery wasn’t unkind at all: Shinomiya was watching her with a faint, quiet smile.
“Strange? Someone I met recently said the same thing, actually. Is it really so obvious?”
“Oh, it’s pronounced. The most unusual person I’ve encountered in twenty years. Probably an endangered species. In ten years I’d expect the Ministry of the Environment to have you listed.”
Hatano’s shoulders shook with suppressed laughter and she lifted her coffee. “I don’t feel like I’ve done anything particularly eccentric,” she said, and Shinomiya shook her head firmly.
“That’s exactly the problem. You’re strange because you’re perfectly serious about being kind. A good-faith pushover.”
“A pushover?”
The word was so clean and far from how she thought of herself that she laughed at it outright. She crossed her legs and dismissed the description with a “I’m not that admirable a person,” meaning it. She considered herself an ordinary enough human being, contradictions and all, and wasn’t inclined to go soft over more praise than she’d earned.
Shinomiya pursed her lips and pushed back.
“Shindo-san called you and you came. And when I held you back, you ended up staying, one way or another. And the aquarium, for that matter. A cold person wouldn’t have done any of that.”
She was holding the mug in both hands and building a case for Hatano’s good character directly to Hatano’s face. Watching it from the outside, Hatano found it oddly charming, and after a moment allowed that by most people’s reckoning she was probably, yes, somewhat more inclined to this kind of behaviour than average. But the particular reason mattered, and she wanted to correct it.
“All right. I’ll grant that I might be slightly kinder than the average. But if what you’re basing that on is tonight, I need to take some issue with the argument. I’m not someone who can be equally kind to everyone, and I’m not built that way.”
Shinomiya squared her shoulders slightly, as though readying for a counter-argument. Hatano continued.
“I wouldn’t stay over at a mere acquaintance’s place just because they asked. I know what it means when I do something like this, and it goes beyond recreation or ordinary company. So the reason I’m staying tonight isn’t that I’m a good person. It’s that with you, I didn’t mind.”
The first time she’d brought Shinomiya home, drunk, with no trains left. The second time Shinomiya had talked her around. Both of those had been different from this. Tonight, they had each wanted the other.
Shinomiya stared at her, expression suspended somewhere between hearing and understanding, as if the meaning were still finding its way in. Then understanding arrived, and her eyes moved with something that was probably alarm, and a small, scraped-sounding “oh, ah” escaped her.
The admission had embarrassed Hatano, belatedly and quite considerably, and she fanned her own face with her hand while Shinomiya sat beside her turning the colour of something boiled, ears and all.
“That is to say…”
Whether it was friendship or something further, she didn’t entirely know. But whatever was making her face hot, she was fairly sure it couldn’t be kept where it currently was for much longer. Shinomiya looked at her with something expectant in her scarlet face, and Hatano looked away at the wall.
She didn’t have a clean answer to give her. So she borrowed hers.
“…Understand me.”
She said it aware that it was open to any number of interpretations, and Shinomiya’s expression moved with something disrupted at the edges. Hatano regretted it the instant she’d said it, pressing a hand to her mouth, because it sounded far too much like an admission of feeling, which was both true and not something she’d meant to say so plainly, and she wanted to take it back immediately.
But she heard Shinomiya swallow.
She looked at Hatano with an expression pitched somewhere between resolve and terror, then shifted on the sofa, turning toward her and closing the distance. She came close enough that their knees nearly touched, face still flushed, breathing warm, and she laid her hand over Hatano’s where it rested on her knee.
The heat spread through her instantly.
Her heart began to knock. Their shoulders made contact, fingers interlaced.
Her composure wavered. Hatano had been telling herself she should stay at one remove until Shinomiya’s situation resolved itself, and moreover she hadn’t believed, until just now, that she had any particular feeling beyond what she might call concern or care. But what was happening in her chest at this moment made rather a strong case against both of those positions.
Shinomiya, tense, leaned in to look at Hatano’s face. Their fingers stayed where they were. With her free hand she tucked her hair back behind her ear and then rested that hand on Hatano’s knee.
“If you want me to stop, say so.”
She said it quietly, barely above a murmur, and then began to close the remaining distance between their faces.
There was hesitation. There was uncertainty. But separate from any desire to protect her, to support her, to see her through the thing she was carrying, there was something else present in Hatano’s chest, and she was conscious of it now. And after everything that had passed between them, pulling back at this moment was its own kind of absurdity.
Just once. Just this. It didn’t have to mean anything beyond itself.
She told herself this, and brought her free hand up to Shinomiya’s nape, drawing her closer, and began to lower her face toward Shinomiya’s.
At which precise moment, a bright little jingle rang out across the living room.
They both jumped. Distance was put between them with some speed.
Hatano was still looking around for the source of the perky, slightly idiotic melody when she noticed Shinomiya’s eyes had gone to the bathroom. A beat later, a recorded voice announced: Your bath is ready. Hatano exhaled. Shinomiya, beside her, also looked exhausted by this.
She composed herself, gave a small cough, came back to the present. Then she seemed to notice something, touched her own inner thigh through her skirt, and checked. She looked up at Hatano with an apologetic expression and stood.
“I’m sorry, I’ll take my bath first!”
“Yes. By all means. Take your time.”
She watched Shinomiya go. The door to the bathroom closed. Hatano tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, and let out a deep, comprehensive sigh. She touched her lips with a fingertip, rueful, and then laughed at herself, quietly, for getting so worked up over what would only have been a kiss.
She looked toward the sound of the shower running and said, to no one:
“We’ve already had sex, for goodness’ sake.”
The order of things in this relationship was entirely backwards.
After washing her clothes and the relevant underthings and hanging them in the bathroom to dry, she changed into the borrowed sleepwear Shinomiya had laid out. If it had been a frilly pink confection she would have had to manage her expression, but the loan turned out to be an oversized shirt and a pair of shorts, which was merciful, and she was grateful for the restraint. She went to the sink, dried her hair, and came out.
Shinomiya was on the sofa in her own pyjamas, eyes half-open, nodding off. The alcohol and the accumulated tiredness, probably. Hatano stood and watched her with something fond, until Shinomiya noticed her and blinked properly awake.
It was past midnight. The lights beyond the curtains were going out in the neighbouring buildings, one by one.
Hatano smiled and indicated the bedroom.
“Let’s sleep. You’re tired.”
“…Mm. Yes.”
Speech slightly beyond her in her current state, Shinomiya rubbed her eyes, gave a small yawn. Then she appeared to remember something.
“Oh. Where are you going to sleep? You can use the bed if you like. The sheets get changed every day, so it’s clean.”
“I can’t take the bed from the person who lives here. I’ll borrow the sofa. There’s a blanket, and it’s perfectly fine for me. Go to bed.”
“Mm… that does seem a little unfair.”
“The alternative isn’t happening.”
Hatano sometimes fell asleep at her desk mid-sentence; bad sleeping environments were well within her tolerance. The sofa was, by that standard, practically luxurious. She spread the blanket as she spoke.
Then someone took hold of the hem of her shirt.
Shinomiya, with the expression of a child who has something to say and can’t find the words, was holding on with a look of dissatisfaction. She was holding the shirt and looking up at Hatano with a faintly pink face, making her unhappiness plain in the most indirect way available.
“…What?”
“The bed is on the wider side.”
The predictable suggestion. Hatano made a face, but looked anyway. It was true. Not quite a double, but enough for the two of them without trouble. She did the mental arithmetic and shook her head, gently.
“If you feel bad about making me sleep on the sofa, don’t. I genuinely don’t mind. And I have quite bad sleeping habits, I might wake you. So just sleep on your own.”
She shooed her toward the bedroom, but Shinomiya held the hem more firmly and showed no signs of movement.
Hatano pressed a hand to her forehead and thought. She could refuse firmly enough to make her give up, but the truth was she didn’t want to refuse firmly enough to make her give up. She didn’t, in fact, object to sharing a bed with her.
The problem was whether her self-possession would hold through the night. She was already conscious of Shinomiya in a way that made the situation complicated, and Shinomiya would, if it came to that, in all likelihood not resist. Both of those things were problems.
She thought for a while longer, and concluded that continuing to refuse might only make her uncomfortable. This was, perhaps, a version of the kind of closeness that came from never having been permitted warmth from the people she loved, and there was no genuine objection from Hatano’s side. She simply had to manage herself.
“If I talk in my sleep, you forfeit the right to complain about it.”
The bedroom, lit only by moonlight. A slightly wide single bed.
Hatano on her back, using Shinomiya’s usual pillow. Shinomiya on her side, facing Hatano, using a small cushion from the sofa. The awareness of being looked at from the right made sleep resistant to approach, however determinedly Hatano tried to ignore it.
She exhaled at length and turned toward Shinomiya.
“Surely it’s customary to sleep back to back.”
“I always sleep facing this way. It’s a habit.”
“Then we’ll switch sides.”
“Pointless. I have the other habit too.”
“What on earth is wrong with you.”
She laughed in spite of herself and poked Shinomiya on the nose. “Ugh,” said Shinomiya, flinching, and then, with the aggrieved dignity of the genuinely put-upon: “I can’t sleep, please talk to me.” She’d been practically unconscious on the sofa twenty minutes ago. “Talking will only make it worse,” Hatano told her, and meant it.
Shinomiya turned away with a sulk.
After a while, she noticed Hatano’s hand between them in the dark, reached out from under the covers, and laid her own over it. The warmth of it, soft and immediate, made Hatano’s pulse do something small and quick.
She watched their joined hands at a slight remove, as though it were a scene happening to someone else. Then Shinomiya’s hand closed around hers, drew it toward her mouth, and raised Hatano’s index finger. She took it between her lips. She turned it with her tongue, looked up at Hatano with something deliberate in her eyes.
Hatano held very still and watched, aware of a pull in her abdomen that she was not going to do anything about.
Eventually Shinomiya was satisfied and released the finger. She wiped it with her pyjama sleeve, then shifted, took the little finger instead, and bit it, gently and persistently. A sweet, slow ache.
“Is that how you’ve been drawing people in all this time,” Hatano said.
“Are you going to let yourself be drawn in?”
Shinomiya looked at her with eyes that held sleep and something else in about equal measure, and with her free hand undid the second button of her pyjama top. Moonlight was enough to show what it showed. Hatano’s gaze received the offered view, and then Shinomiya undid the third button, and the fourth, and let more of herself come visible.
Hatano answered the question from somewhere honest and direct.
“You’re driving me to distraction. I want to mess you up right now.”
She’d been more candid than was perhaps graceful, and even she had to laugh at how plainly it had come out. Shinomiya laughed too, a small private sound, and then looked at her with full attention. In the deep of the night, those eyes, dark as clear sky, looked like they could reach all the way inside her.
She breathed out against Hatano’s hand, covered it with her own, and said, in a voice that was just above a murmur:
“Then go ahead. Come apart.”
Hatano’s heart struck hard.
The urge to pull her close and take her apart piece by piece rose in her and kept rising. She was aware of it, all of it, with her whole body. She owed Shinomiya an apology later for the state of the borrowed underwear, she thought, with some detachment. And yes, this was doubtless how it had always worked: people had encountered this, and lost their self-possession, and become what Shinomiya needed them to be.
But she had been the one to tell Shinomiya this wasn’t the way. She couldn’t, having said so, surrender to it now. Not before Shinomiya had a way through the thing she was carrying. What she wanted was to meet her in something that wasn’t desire or resentment or the hunger to be wanted. Until then, not like this.
She breathed, steadied herself, and reached out to Shinomiya’s face.
She pushed the hair from her cheek, and ran her thumb across the soft skin there.
“Goodnight.”
She said it, looking at her. Shinomiya immediately puffed her cheeks in pronounced dissatisfaction. That small, childlike sulk was the last thing Hatano saw before she closed her eyes.