“You’ve probably figured it out by now, but that dog’s name was Allumi, and its owner’s real name was Aizawa Shihori. In essence, it’s my fault that Allumi died.”
I continued laying out the facts for her as I prepared two cups of coffee in the kitchen, setting one in front of Saitou.
“Shiori-chan…” she repeated softly, staring at the tabletop. “I never heard about this before.”
“That’s because I didn’t tell anyone.”
“…I see.”
“Hey,” she said, looking up at me for the first time in some minutes as I sat down on the sofa. “Is this all true?”
“It is, all of it.”
“Even about you causing Shihori-chan’s dog’s death?”
“Yep. In essence, anyway. Allumi ended up dead because I stole it away.”
For a second, I thought I saw her cheeks droop, but there was no reason for her to make such an expression, so I must have misjudged her reaction somehow. Her face soon returned to the same tint as before.
“Saitou…”
“That’s what I call you, even now.”
“Was everything you’ve ever said to me a lie?”
I supposed it was important to figure out what specifically she was referring to. I thought hard about all the things I could remember saying to her.
“I don’t know if I would say that it was all a lie.”
This time her face really did loosen up. There was a reason for that: I had purposely chosen my words to make it happen. I knew that if you wanted to really let someone down, it was best to get their hopes up first.
“I picked the words I thought you wanted to hear, the things that would make you like me. I knew that would make things go more smoothly.”
I figured that here I would see a more downtrodden expression on her face than ever before, but I only saw her features continue to relax. I wondered if I had not yet done enough and kept going.
“Like I said before, I’m no longer capable of romantic feelings. To be more precise, I left those feelings behind fifteen years ago.”
Even after this addition she showed no signs of despair. She just looked down and took a sip of the coffee that I had left on the table for her. “So,” she said, as daintily as dropping a sugar cube into a coffee cup, “your ‘gale’ was love.”
As the words hit my ears, I got the sensation of needles being driven into my fingertips. In the moment, I remembered a conversation we had once shared. She had asked me if I ever had an unforgettable love and called me a liar.
At the time, I hadn’t been able to unravel the true shape of her feelings, but it had now become clear. She was likely harboring some jealousy, wondering if there was some rival lingering in my heart that she needed to know about.
“So, this girl you liked. What was she like?”
I had to wonder what the driving philosophy might be behind wanting to know more about someone you felt jealous of. Was it so that you could convince yourself to give up? Or so you could snag a victory? Whatever the reason, the only choice here was to tell her the truth.
“I called her Chika, this girl of only eyes and nails.”
I pictured those lights floating in the darkness.
“She was always calm in demeanor. She had a lot of interests and loved things like books and perfume. Though, of course, those were all things of her world, so I never got to fully experience them.”
“I see,” she said casually, waiting for me to continue.
“In terms of species, I don’t think she was a human. Though I couldn’t see her, I was able to feel her body, and I definitely felt arms and legs and a face there, but her blood glowed, and her hair had a weird texture.”
I opened and closed my right hand twice, trying to recall the sensation. In that moment, Saitou took another sip of coffee, clinking the cup back down onto the table. It was as if she was signaling for something to happen.
“So, were you two dating? You and that alien girl.”
I sensed a variety of emotions in her tone; fear, astonishment, and hatred for this man who would start talking with deadly sincerity about a creature from another world when we were on the cusp of a breakup. The reservations that those emotions called forth were skepticism—Saitou was clearly wondering how seriously she should be taking me. But regardless of how Saitou felt, it didn’t matter to me.
“No, her world had no concept of romance.”
“So…?”
“So, I taught her about romance,” I said, bulldozing straight through whatever she had been about to say. “I poured everything I had into making this person from another world understand what love was, what lovers were, what lovers do together.”
How she understood and pictured my fantastical explanation probably depended on what media she had digested and what sort of romantic experiences she’d had. Either way, I was certain she got the message that it wasn’t just some trifling words.
Yes, what Chika and I had was special. The feelings I had for Chika were unparalleled. The light that Chika had shone on me shone nowhere else in this world. No matter how dreadfully basic of a person I was, that alone was crystal clear.
“I have no idea how well Chika actually grasped my feelings, but we worked hard to try to understand one another. No matter what the future held for us, we were happy as long as there were things that we could share.”
It was true. That was all I needed.
“The things that Chika gave me, and the things I feel for her, were my everything in this life, in this world. They still are. She was the only one who could ever change me. But that gale left me too soon.”
Saitou’s lips parted audibly again.
“Suddenly, I could no longer hear her voice, and she vanished right in front of me. I waited and waited, but I never saw her again after that.”
I had a wealth of hypotheses about this, but in turning it over so many times since then, I had come to believe that I was the reason that I stopped being able to understand her words.
That night, she had rejected me. She distanced herself from me emotionally, and I could no longer comprehend her. I thought about it over and over until the film of my memories started to fray. Perhaps I was mistaken, but at this point there was no possible way for me to confirm nor deny it.
“When Chika left me, my life ended. This time we’re spending right now is nothing more than me waiting out the rest of my days. It could end at any time; in fact I hope it ends sooner. I’m just here because I can’t bring myself to do something as involved as actively dying.”
Sitting here on this couch, facing Saitou, and even talking about Chika were just ways of killing time until my body perished.
“All I can do until I meet my end is to sit here, treasuring my memories of Chika. There is nothing left inside me but the part of me that cares for her. I couldn’t possibly give anyone else’s life meaning, and no one could ever bring any sort of meaning to mine.”
If I were to offer Saitou anything resembling sincerity, no matter how fake, I knew that muddling my words and making her guess at my meaning was not the way to do it.
“Sanae, I’ve never considered myself in love with Saitou.”
From this distance, there was no way she could not have heard me. The thrumming of my words would have carried straight into her brain. She looked at me dead on, falling silent, perhaps processing my words in her own way.
I wondered what reaction she might show me in the seconds that followed. Given it was her, I figured she would do whatever would best let her save face. Wailing or seething with rage would only wound her pride. I figured she would pretend to be calm and then say something dramatic about accepting the particulars of the situation.
As it turned out, my guess was mostly correct.
“I suppose I can imagine things.”
I assumed that this was a prompt for me to ask what she meant. Before now, I would have given her exactly what she wanted, but I couldn’t bear the thought of her mistaking that for kindness. So I kept my mouth shut, but apparently she wasn’t actually waiting for me to reply.
“I wouldn’t call it a gale, but I understand the feeling of encountering something that turns you, and your whole world, upside down. Of being held captive by that for the rest of your life.”
It seemed Saitou still was not understanding me. I wasn’t captive to the feelings. No. Those feelings were my everything. I started to try to explain myself again, to chide her, to persuade her, but this ended in failure.
“You and I are alike.”
I pondered what she meant.
“We’re the same, when it comes to how you feel about that girl.”
“…The same?”
Nothing could possibly compare to Chika.
“Back then, I encountered something that changed my life in the way that girl Chika changed yours. Something that has held me captive ever since.”
Hearing her so utterly disregard what was special about Chika, I felt an impossible sensation clawing itself up from the pit of my stomach. Yes, I waited for her words, perhaps because some part of me felt there was a possibility that even Saitou might have had some encounter, some feeling, that existed nowhere else in this world.
“For me…”
I waited.
“…it was music.”
“That’s not the same.”
I’m sure that some part of me tried to hold back the words that came spewing out. Yet, fittingly, now that I had spat them out, there was no longer any need for me to keep up appearances for her.