I was the one who got in touch. On Monday night, sitting on the edge of my bed, I wrote the message and erased it several times. If I saw him once and made sure, I thought, whatever this sense of something being off was would probably come back to my side.
I haven't been able to see you lately, so if it's all right, maybe for a little
I hesitated over how to end it, and sent it without adding anything. The reply came in five minutes. Sure, sounds good. Wednesday at six, in front of the station. I wrote back only Understood.
Wednesday, the rotary in front of the station. Even in a crowd, his head stood out above the rest. The line of his thin shoulders, the slight stoop. Our eyes met.
"Oh, Sakurai. How are you?"
—Sakurai.
In the rainy season I had become "Shiori," with the courtesy still attached, and when the rainy season ended, plain "Shiori." I remember how low his voice was that night on the shrine approach, the first time he called me by my name with nothing attached. He had walked that distance back in two steps.
"Yes. I'm well."
My own voice sounded as if it came from farther away than I expected. The café was our usual place in front of the station. We ordered the same things. He had a hot house blend, and I had a milk tea with extra milk. The strongly yellow light fell in round pools on the surface of the table. Beneath the smell of coffee, the scent of a lemon peel someone had cut lingered faintly.
"How've things been?"
"Yes, nothing special."
"And your thesis?"
"Nothing special. This week I've been going back through all the sources I've cited, one more time."
"Huh."
He nodded. Tilting his head slightly, setting the last sound of the other person's words down inside himself—that way of nodding. The angle hadn't changed. Only, the shadows around his eyes were fainter than before. His fingertips stayed still on the handle of his cup and didn't move.
My fingers, resting on the clasp of the bag on my lap, paused slightly. I loosened them and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
He put the tip of his pen to the margin of the check, started to write something, and stopped. The fingers of the hand that wasn't holding the mechanical pencil traced the clicking motion twice in the air. That habit, the one that came out between his thoughts.
—Seto, you still do that...
I started to say it, and stopped. The next words crumbled like sand at the back of my mouth. That night, on the bench in the shrine grounds, I had teased him that I'd "counted that same habit about four times an hour," and I had watched from beside him as the corners of his mouth loosened just slightly. That exchange would not happen here anymore.
"...Oh, no. It's nothing, really."
He looked up.
"Hm? What is it?"
Straightening the angle of my cup's handle, I settled my voice one step lower.
"It's just, um, I happened to notice you doing that lately. Pressing twice."
"Oh, this?"
He glanced once at his fingers and smiled faintly.
"It's a habit, apparently. Even when I'm careful, it comes out."
—Apparently.
The words of someone talking about a stranger. In the place where I used to get ahead of him and set down "It's not a bad habit," only his "apparently" had been set.
I made a smile.
"No, it's not a bad habit."
With my own mouth, I tried setting down once more the words I had set down before. The warmth to go on with "It's cute" didn't make it into my voice.
"You think so?"
He smiled faintly again.
"Thanks."
It was a flat "thanks."
With the back of my spoon, I broke the thin skin on the surface of my milk tea, just once. I decided not to look at the swirl it left.
After about an hour, he said, "I should probably go." We walked to the station together. His stride was one step longer than mine, and as always, he gave up that one step for me. Today, too, I accepted the giving-up he never noticed.
"Well, then."
"Yeah, see you."
He went through the ticket gate and disappeared toward the escalator. He didn't look back.
A wave of people heading home from work slipped past me. The black belt of the up escalator carried people away. I couldn't see his head anymore. On my way home, I walked toward my usual bus stop. As I walked, I traced it in my heart just once more.
—Sakurai.
When did he start calling me that?