メロウレイン / Futtara Doshaburi Mellow Rain
Yours
Hagiwara woke in the middle of the night. Half the bed was empty, but he immediately spotted Sei sitting with his back to him. The television was on beyond him, casting a faint glow around his outline.
“Nakarai-san.”
“Sorry. Did I wake you?” Sei turned around.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Mm. I’ve got into the habit of falling asleep with the telly on. I know it’s not good for me, but without it something feels missing.”
“You could’ve left it on tonight.”
“I thought it might bother you. Want to come over here?”
Hagiwara joined him, and they sat side by side against the bed. Apparently the channel was filling the middle of the night with a rerun of an old Western film.
“Do you think I’ve got a problem?”
“With what?”
“Watching so much television. I keep thinking I ought to cut down, and then the other day I ordered a Blu-ray recorder.”
“Through the staff discount?”
“Yeah. I buy all my appliances that way. Altogether, I’ve probably saved tens of thousands of yen. First time I’ve ever thought joining our company was worth it.”
“First time?”
Sei said it with such a straight face that Hagiwara laughed.
“Having the television on as background noise is handy. You’ll probably get bored of it eventually. Or settle down with it.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
Sei’s head dropped gently onto Hagiwara’s shoulder.
They had done far more intimate things than this, yet something as small as the weight of Sei’s head still made Hagiwara’s heart race.
Romance really did have strange wiring.
“Do you know this film?”
“No. First time… I think. You?”
“It looks vaguely familiar, but I’m not sure. Maybe my parents watched it. What’s it about?”
“So far? Dancing. Ballroom dancing, maybe? Some coming-of-age thing.”
Sure enough, the dubbed actors were talking about a dance competition.
Hagiwara had noticed a plain, awkward girl who looked as if she belonged in an old-fashioned shoujo manga, and apparently she really was the heroine.
“So other countries make stories this predictable too.”
“Doesn’t it feel exactly right for something terrestrial television would show in the middle of the night? B-movie in a good way.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
There were no famous actors, nobody was saving the planet, and there probably would not be a shocking twist or a devastating ending.
But for waking unexpectedly in the middle of the night and watching without much thought, it felt like exactly the right amount of film.
Somewhere around what seemed to be the middle of the story, the heroine, now much more polished than before, danced with the male lead.
Sei suddenly lifted his head.
“Ah. I have seen this. Only bits of it from behind my parents, but I remember this scene.”
His face softened with genuine delight. On screen, evening was falling, the sky sweet with a mix of orange and pink.
The two characters moved slowly across the rooftop of a shabby inner-city apartment building. They were not lovers yet. Only beginning to be drawn to each other.
Beyond them, a red-and-white neon sign flickered to life. It was a memorable scene, and a familiar ballad played underneath it.
Sei murmured, “…Is this a breakup song? Or a song about getting back together after breaking up?”
“They’re just remembering each other after the breakup, aren’t they? It says something about memories packed inside a suitcase.”
“But the chorus says things like, ‘If you lose your way, I’ll find you again,’ and ‘If you fall, I’ll support you again.’”
“Not literally. More like spiritually, I think.”
“A living ghost, then.”
“Can you not say things like that in the middle of the night?”
“You don’t like ghosts?”
“It’s not that…”
A song about remembering someone you had loved and lost still hurt a little for both of them. Sei seemed to realise that a second later.
“Ah.”
He turned towards Hagiwara. Sometimes Hagiwara genuinely could not tell whether Sei was extraordinarily sensitive or astonishingly dense.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise.”
If it had not bothered Sei, all the better.
Perhaps Fujisawa Kazuaki did not need to be deliberately remembered by Sei, because he was already somewhere inside him.
That was all right. Time built itself in layers, like strata. Hagiwara had known Sei for only a few months. He understood perfectly well that he could not simply punch through years of someone else’s history.
Whether choosing to be beside Sei now had truly been the right decision was something only the time ahead of them could answer. And how they shared that time was up to them.
Hagiwara lightly stroked Sei’s hair and kissed him. He had meant it almost like a greeting to the future, let’s take care of each other from now on.
But the moment Sei’s hand settled against his back, pulling away became difficult.
“…I’m getting turned on.”
When Hagiwara admitted it honestly, Sei smiled, felt around for the remote and switched off the television.
In the end, they never saw how the film finished.
Later, Hagiwara idly searched to see whether it had been released on DVD.
Every online shop had sold out of new copies. Only second-hand ones remained, and they were surprisingly expensive.
Once Hagiwara realised it was difficult to get, the happy expression Sei had worn that night suddenly came back to him.
He ended up buying one of the overpriced used copies. If it had been readily available, he probably would have thought, Oh, right, and left it there.
A few days later, the DVD arrived. Then Hagiwara found himself wondering what to do with it.
Sei had only just been talking about cutting down on television. Was giving him a DVD really a good idea? And giving someone a present for no particular reason was surprisingly difficult.
Sei’s birthday had already passed. Christmas was much too far away, and this was hardly a grand enough gift to save until then.
Surely one of the defining things about being lovers was that you could give each other something for no reason at all.
And yet a little time and distance had made Hagiwara absurdly self-conscious.
Sei had looked genuinely happy while watching that film. There were expressions that only memories could bring out in someone, and Hagiwara knew he could never make Sei smile in exactly that way.
Wanting to see that face again was Hagiwara’s own selfish wish.
What if Sei accepted it while thinking, I didn’t actually want to own this, but he went to the trouble of buying it, so I should look pleased?
The thought was mortifying. But Hagiwara could not quite decide to keep it either.
God, when had he become this indecisive?
Every time he discovered another side of himself, he somehow ended up falling for Sei again.
On Friday evening, Hagiwara went straight to Sei’s flat after work.
“You’re done. Want a bath?”
“Yeah.”
The building was old, and both the tub and washing area were cramped.
Hagiwara sat in the bath with his knees drawn up, thinking that next time he should ask Sei to come to his place so they could bathe together.
There was a knock on the frosted-glass door. Then it slid open before Hagiwara could answer.
“Hagiwara!”
“W-what?”
Had Sei somehow sensed the indecent request Hagiwara had been planning?
Obviously not.
“This!”
“Ah.”
Sei was holding the DVD that had been sleeping in Hagiwara’s bag.
He crouched beside the tub, pressed one palm to Hagiwara’s cheek and looked at him with bright, almost childlike expectation.
“Is this mine?”
All of Hagiwara’s pointless hesitation and self-consciousness vanished at once.
“Yeah.”
Without thinking, he covered Sei’s hand with his own and nodded firmly.
“It’s yours, Nakarai-san.”
“What?”
Now Sei looked flustered by the seriousness of the answer.
“No, I meant the DVD. I accidentally caught my foot on your bag, and everything fell out. I was going to apologise for that first…”
“Yes,” Hagiwara said, smiling.
“It’s yours.”
“I’m talking about the DVD!”
“I know.”
“Then why are you grinning like that?”
“Why are you turning red?”
“Because it’s hot!”
Ask me again and again, Hagiwara thought.
“Mine?”
Ask me as many times as you want. Because I’ll say yes every time. And Hagiwara prayed that time would keep flowing that way, one year, ten years, a hundred.