She no longer even said “I’m home.”
After finishing her journey back and arriving at her apartment, Shinomiya locked the door, slid her hand along the wall behind her, and switched on the orange light in the pitch-dark entryway. The living room and bedroom, bathed in the comforting warm-toned light from the entryway, seemed even darker by contrast with the faint illumination. Shinomiya stood blankly in the entryway for a while, wasting time in idleness. Her worries had a habit of paralyzing her actions, and her tangled thoughts refused to allow any progress. As a result, only useless time flowed by.
After about a minute of this empty time, Shinomiya moved on inertia, taking off her shoes and stepping up. Without turning on any other lights, she placed her bag on the living room sofa and was about to sink down onto it when—suddenly, she saw the two lanterns placed on the shelf. She gazed blankly for a moment at the objects standing quietly in the dark room, then stretched up to take one of the lanterns from the shelf.
It was the one Hatano had made for her, with ‘Shinomiya’ written on it.
She plopped down heavily onto the sofa and switched on the light at the base of the lantern. The modern LED-style lantern immediately bathed the living room in a faint, soft, warm-colored light. Staring at the gentle light that made her want to squint, Shinomiya placed the lantern on the table with a soft clack.
It didn’t have the unstable, flickering charm of a candle, but it gave off a comfortable feeling that it would be fine to just fall asleep like this.
Sitting back up on the sofa, hugging her knees, she stared at the clumsy lantern. The skillful calligraphy and the not-so-skillful drawings. A cluster of things like cats, frogs, stars, hearts—like a grade-schooler’s doodles. On the awkwardly stylized drawing of a frog, there was a speech bubble with ‘Frog’ written in tiny letters. Not ‘ribbit’ or ‘croak,’ but ‘Frog.’ She couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle as she recalled the days beyond that faint light.
So that you wouldn’t feel guilty even if you couldn’t pick up a brush that day. She had said she drew these pictures with that intention, then immediately retracted it, saying it was a lie. She was a liar, but she was also kind-hearted, so her true feelings were unclear. But in the end, Hatano was connected to Rokai behind the scenes, and maybe that lie was to hide the fact that she could actually draw very well. The moment such doubts arose, Shinomiya was tormented by self-loathing and bit her lip.
Suddenly, something hot traced a path down her cheek from the corner of her eye. Suspecting a leak from the damp sensation, Shinomiya looked up at the ceiling, then a moment later realized it was a tear and wiped it away with her finger. Trying to shift her focus, she averted her eyes from the lantern in front of her and let her gaze rest on the middle shelf of the bookcase.
That bookcase, holding a single drawing on a sheet of drawing paper, was where Shinomiya—who didn’t set aside a place to store ‘important things’ as important things—had nonetheless crammed various items she wanted to keep specially into the gaps between books. They ranged from things from her childhood, when she used to draw, to the present, all sorts of things. Among them, the newest piece of paper caught her eye.
As if drawn to it, she swayed unsteadily in that direction and pulled out the piece of paper tucked between the books. It was the ticket from the aquarium she had visited with Hatano just the other day.
On the first day she visited this aquarium with the theater club, she remembered almost none of the memories—aside from the time of day, the members, and her regrets. The ticket was probably buried in a landfill by now. So why had she thought to preserve a memory with her like this?
‘Because I’m also someone who creates things and delivers them to others, I think I can understand at least a little of the anguish you’re carrying. If you don’t want to talk, I won’t ask, but if there’s something you can get off your chest to feel better, I’ll listen.’ —Had there ever been someone who said something like that to her before? And not because she had told them anything, not even something she was consciously aware of, but because they had noticed the festering wound deep in her heart. It wasn’t base desire or ill will, nor contempt nor fate due to bloodline; it was probably the purely affectionate emotion that felt more comforting than anything else.
Blankly, Shinomiya stood still, gazing at the ticket.
As she gazed, she endlessly recalled the time she had spent with her. Her words, her eyes, her breathing, her voice, her touch. Her heart. Each time she remembered, the corners of her eyes grew hot. They had spent so much time together. Starting with an act she barely remembered, going to a food truck, then to the aquarium, touring an art museum, meeting again at an izakaya, spending the night in the same bedroom, enjoying painting pottery together. Because she had never experienced liking someone this much before, she didn’t know how to face the hole in her chest, nor how to suppress her longing heart. She bit her lip hard, but teardrops formed at the corners of her eyes. ‘Did you have fun today?’ That question, her own nod, and the smiling face of the girl who had happily replied, ‘I see.’ The moment she remembered those, small, bead-like tears fell to the floor.
Wiping her tears with her sleeve, she tucked the precious ticket back into the bookcase so as not to get it wet. Replaying over and over in her mind Hatano’s voice and words, which were burned into her memory and wouldn’t leave, and wanting to somehow bring an end to these endless emotions, to forget everything for now by sleeping, Shinomiya unfolded the blanket draped over the sofa. —At that moment, her eyes fell on the lantern on the shelf.
It was a work that projected memories. On the self-made lantern standing in the shadows were drawn memories of the girl she yearned for so dearly she could burn, and within the realism, she caught a faint glimpse of ‘herself.’ Remembering Hatano’s regretful words—‘Your paintings… I wanted to see them too’—Shinomiya gazed at the lantern for a while with tear-swollen eyes, sobbing.
Eventually, she wiped her tears forcefully with her sleeve and, as if driven by something, began assembling the easel placed at the edge of the living room. The self from her childhood, when she held ideals and aspirations for painting; the self from when she gave up and broke her brush; the self from the days she drowned in a degenerate life; and the self from the brief time she was able to change just a little, when she was by Hatano’s side—all of them were now pushing her present self forward.
The tears didn’t stop, but neither did her hands as she prepared her art supplies.
She placed an old canvas, one she hadn’t been able to paint on before, onto the assembled easel. The faintly bright orange light from the entryway, the celestial lights streaming in from outside the window, and the numerous dazzling artificial lights. In the dark room, she couldn’t even discern the correct colors, and her blurred vision vaguely captured the outlines she had drawn. Unable to even think of making excuses for such inconvenient conditions, she gave one final, forceful wipe of her tears with her sleeve and sniffled. Pulling a wheeled table beside her, she sat on the folding chair. To reproduce the faint red, the spreading black, and the ultramarine that colored the world with an almost hateful vividness reflected in her own eyes, Shinomiya picked up a brush. Without any preliminary sketch, without the slightest fear of failure.
She dissolved the hardened transparent watercolor paints with water, creating the colors of the room in her apartment that spread across her blurred vision and the scenery reflected in the window. Then, loading her brush with color, Shinomiya brought the tip close to the canvas. Once before, she had given up, saying she was too scared. Painfully aware of the gap in talent, subjected to harsh curses and words of contempt, disappointment and dissatisfaction, she had become afraid of the act of painting on a canvas.
But now, strangely, there was nothing to fear. The lantern on the shelf, the memories drawn on it, seemed to be pushing her forward, as if a presence resided in the tip of her brush. As if driven by the accumulated time, Shinomiya slid her brush across the canvas in one breath.
—The canvas and her heart overlapped. Color, fully prepared, settled onto it.
After five years, color finally bloomed on the aged canvas.
In this dimly lit room, she couldn’t perceive the correct colors, and she didn’t know if this old fabric would reproduce them accurately. But still, the colors she herself had created had definitely settled onto the canvas.
Five years—it felt like she had finally taken a step after spending far too long a time. But without lingering in such sentimentality, Shinomiya single-mindedly infused the scene reflected in her eyes now and the feelings in her heart into the colors, layering them onto the canvas. The watercolor paints dissolved in water expressed her heart in various hues, reproducing the scenery reflected in her tear-blurred eyes.
Until now, she hadn’t known what purpose there was in holding a brush. She was scared, she hated it, and she didn’t know why she had to deliberately face something that made her feel that way. If it was just painful, she didn’t want to face it, and if no one would praise her, she had no energy to endure the ordeal.
Even though she had thought that, now it was simply the feeling of wanting just one person to see it that moved her brush. In her twenty years of life, it was the first time she had felt this.
The second-hand circled round and round the clock. The minute hand followed slightly behind, and the hour hand marked its passage. In a sensation akin to drowning in scenery and emotion, she poured her life’s blood into the canvas, burning with passion.
And so, about two hours later, Shinomiya’s brush, which had seemed to know no stopping, finally came to a halt. Shinomiya, who had been absorbed in the painting, came to herself and opened her swollen eyes wide. Wiping the corner of her eye with the back of her hand, which had paint on the fingertips, she sniffled slightly and looked down at the canvas.
The night scene viewed through a window, in a rented room, on an evening swaying between reason and emotion.
That single sheet, faintly blurred by tears, was all too sorrowful, and at the same time, she was proud of it as a masterpiece without equal in her twenty years of life. Placing the brush she had been holding on a cloth for a few seconds, Shinomiya felt the large, empty hole in her chest grow more pronounced.
It was a step forward, finally taken after overcoming fate and shaking off obsession. However, the step taken along with bitterness and hardship was not a stride taken because she wanted to paint. Whether it was good or bad, liked or disliked, good or bad, skilled or unskilled—none of that mattered.
Shinomiya wiped the tears that had slowly welled in the corners of her eyes and bit her lip tightly.
She just wanted someone or perhaps, her—to say one thing. But thinking that those words would probably never reach her ears, and holding that craving in her heart, Shinomiya moved her hand to start putting away her art supplies. That’s when, suddenly, a voice came from the direction of the entryway.
“—I knew it. You’re really good at painting.”
At the voice of that precious person, which made her heart tremble, Shinomiya looked over, speechless.
In the entryway, lit by the faint orange light, was ‘her,’ cheeks and nose tinged red from the winter chill. Looking at the girl who had gently spun the very words she had wanted most, as if she had read her heart, Shinomiya perceived her thoughts rusting and growing dull. Why was she here?
“…How?”
She asked blankly. It was an encounter that made her want to cry, a meeting that made her want to be surprised, but what came before anything else was the question of why the girl who shouldn’t be here was here. However, immediately after asking, Shinomiya remembered her words. ‘I’ll come again.’
She, Hatano—with one hand thrust in her pocket, held up something silver-glinting in her other hand and shook it. With a slightly tired expression and breathing a little roughly, she smiled. Clearly showing the spare key Shinomiya had once given her, she murmured jokingly, “Illegal entry.”
Seeing that the object in her hand was indeed the key she had provided, Shinomiya understood that she had used it to enter the room. But even if she understood the method, she didn’t understand the motive. Why, after pushing her away so unilaterally like that, was she here?
“Sorry. For coming in without permission.”
Hatano apologized with a gentle expression as she stepped into the living room. The things she wanted to say, the things she wanted to ask, the things she wanted to show—all tangled chaotically in Shinomiya’s head. With emotions like crossed wires, she couldn’t even spin rational words and, urged purely by emotion, simply called out to her, “Senpai.”
Standing before Shinomiya, Hatano gazed at her with a serious, yet gentle expression. Then, as if on second thought, she reached both hands out to Shinomiya’s cheeks and began squishing her soft, stiffened cheeks. As Shinomiya, unable to read the intent behind the action, looked bewildered with a question mark floating above her head, Hatano took a small breath and began to speak.
“I kept things from you. I think my actions earlier have already destroyed any trust you had in me, and because I didn’t have an answer to your question, I made you anxious and hurt you. I think there are a lot of things I need to say, but first, I want to ask you something.”
Hatano, showing nothing but simple, straightforward emotion to Shinomiya. Shinomiya couldn’t look away from those deep, powerful black eyes that held her straight and unwavering. With the sensation of the complexly tangled threads of emotion being gently unraveled, Shinomiya felt the corners of her eyes growing hot. To such a Shinomiya, Hatano tightened her grip on Shinomiya’s cheeks and asked with an intense gaze.
“—Do you think I’m the kind of person who moves just because someone tells me to?”
The person named ‘Hatano’ was a very strange person.
The literary club she had joined chasing after Shijima, one of the most famous people at the university, was, as expected, a friendly club that didn’t engage in proper activities. While most of its members lived freely to satisfy short-term desires, there was an outlier who, like Shijima, was dedicated to writing novels but, unlike him, hadn’t achieved any results. She wasn’t unsociable, nor did she have extremely few friends, but she never went along with others’ opinions, making one think she chose her own way of life—a ‘strange person.’
She had no particular feelings toward Hatano beyond that. If forced to say, she recognized her as the type of person she was least compatible with—someone who didn’t direct base desires or ill will toward her—while simultaneously perceiving something close to a subtle contempt from her. She probably despised the lifestyle of offering her body to anyone, regardless of gender, to satisfy a desire for approval, so Shinomiya had categorized her as a noble person.
The turning point was a drinking party in late autumn. Perhaps from the sense of accomplishment of successfully finishing a work for an open submission, Hatano, who rarely attended such parties, had surprisingly let the drunken Shinomiya stay over. They didn’t properly know what had happened that night, but that became the opportunity to form a connection with her, and they spent various times together. She, Hatano—had thought about whether there was something she could do and called her, suggested going together to the aquarium she still had regrets about, introduced herself to Rokai’s patron as her friend, came to pick her up when she heard she wasn’t feeling well, distracted her from her loneliness, and took her hand to help her start walking forward.
All of that was at Rokai’s instigation. That’s what she had thought.
She had thought Hatano was acting because Rokai had told her to. But, really? In response to her question, her heart involuntarily recoiled, and her narrowed field of vision widened just a little.
Until just a few months ago, she would have rejected her without hesitation, believing it was Rokai’s doing.
But even now, knowing Hatano was a kind person, could she really dismiss it as just that? Hadn’t she seen it many times? The person before her was someone with convictions, who would never act against her own will. Even if, by some chance, Rokai had said something to her, it was probably because her sister’s intentions aligned with hers, so she was acting.
She also knew she wasn’t that clever a person.
Therefore, the actions of this person she was drawn to were not something to doubt.
They were not something she should doubt.