Summer
She is better now.
If a younger self – say a flustered high schooler edition – had beheld the fruit of such moonshine she would have barely been able to comprehend its plausibility. Kaho no longer marvels. If anything, her dream had been quixotic, but the realization of it more so.
An impecunious student scores concerts. An impassioned aficionado rises above seasoned prodigies. This is the nature of surprises. It comes to the most undeserving of ingrates.
i.
Summer is a manic pixie dream girl.
She is leaning across the open windows, blowing pollen onto kitchen counters. In her laughter her full skirts swish. Wispy breath unfurls across neon-slicked grass.
And when she is truly in full swing, she courts the west wind. Or this is how Kaho will remember it, as an imperceptible change. When it clicks into place, her muffins are studded with flaxseed, and the wind has swept past her door leaving the hot air panting in its wake. This is the way with the best sort of surprises – they are unexpected.
When she opens the door to Len she is exclaiming. The crown muffins have risen magnificently to the occasion. Somewhere, someplace, summer grinned, single-dimpled. So perhaps this is the best part – when her eyes widen, when her heart swells. This is when summer teases involuntary squeals from Kaho, laughing. Summer sends Len to her doorstep, only mildly bedraggled from fearsome turbulence. Even her preconceived knowledge does not dim this surprise. Waiting for him, even if she swallows growing anticipation oceans of distance, was complicated. If anything it has completely stripped apart her defensive mechanisms and she is open, the way so many people refuse to be. Summer likes Kahoko. Summer will do this, because Kahoko has caught her fleeting, ephemeral attention. Besides, she likes games.
So this is modelled exactly the way summer likes it, toying with the joy and sadness. Summer likes the memories best, of tentatively shared ice creams and ensuing, stuttering silence. Summer stomps spike-heeled tantrums across their date, a drizzly overcast sky as the two of them conversed. But most of all, summer loves to bring in the present. Len, a gift loaned for the sake of more memory keepsakes.
Kaho whispers. You're back.
x
And back he is. They sit on the couch, Len rumpled and silent from airplane turbulence. She loves this. She has reached through her apartment door and felt him, living and inches away, so she holds on.
"What?" he asks eventually when he meets her unrelenting gaze. Years ago she would have stuttered, cowering from the impatience in his stoic expression. She knows better now.
"I'm just really happy that you're back," she responds, her face growing hot. Okay, she still has a few things to learn about composure.
To her surprise, so did he. Red sweeps his ears when he ducks his head, and the silence – what used to make her bumble and panic – fills her with joy.
"Only for a couple of days," he says finally.
"I know. Don't you have that Suzenn Lynch recital in the Czech Republic? And masterclasses after that."
He shrugs. "You've memorized my schedule."
She has not – this is from harried deliberations over the extent of his stay agonizingly, trying to milk hours from their packed schedules. Compromises and reschedules have been struck, and still they have only the little time shared with Len's numerous engagements, and with Kaho's recording sessions and classes. So they'd decided that he would shack up in her multipurpose room ("it's not improper, it's a practice room/study/library/gym") and visit their parents for lunch and dinner ("we'd really love to see you two").
"About your schedule. I was talking to your mum yesterday, and I thought maybe I'd leave you to her, they've missed you a lot. You haven't seen them in months."
Len frowns. "There's you too."
"Yeah, but I'm over there yakking about music and your baby photos all the time, it barely makes any difference. Besides," and Kaho smiles devilishly. "You wouldn't want to be around when that happens."
He scowls with unpleasantness that often left its receiver flummoxed. Kaho almost forgot the way she used to flinch. Now she leans in and kisses his cheek. When she pulls away it is with extreme reluctance.
"I haven't seen you in months too." Len says. It is so matter-of-fact and sweet; Kaho almost dissolves into tears as she tries to tease him. Instead:
"It's not really the same thing, is it?"
There is a pause, and regret creeps onto both their faces. This time, he is the one that leans forward, eyes softened. They are slower than their time together allows, and this time neither pulls away.
x
This is how she knows Len, with their fingers interlaced in chaste and demure subtlety. This is how she knows him, from the hesitant glance before tentatively sampling a muffin ("it's good!" he insisted as he set it down), from the meticulously catalogued contents of his case, from his silence as Kaho scurried away to secretively change. She doesn't know him by his sudden acceptance of tardiness in the way he drew her into an embrace as they left the apartment. She gladly accepts this development – he wouldn't succumb to public displays of overt affection, but he had been the one to reach for her, as they left and now, for her hand, as they strolled towards his family home.
People change in the most unexpected of ways. She will not be complacent enough to believe that she had elicited this, but she wonders if the distance has only brought them closer. They had not left answers when he left for Vienna, maintaining epistolary exchanges. Even that had surprised her. Comparatively she had never believed – imagined she certainly had – that when he returned he would seek her out or that they would sit and talk, for ages as it seemed, and emerged standing inches closer to each other. And even then, she had not once dared to hope for the length of their settlement, or that they would both smile at each other. Well, albeit the fact that his smile was visible only by the viewer's squinting. She is still grateful, for what has blossomed from their brief dalliance with a musical competition. Her heart swells, this time almost with giddy furore.
Kaho dispels Len's quizzical glance by regaling him with stories of her intensive violin classes, and the monthly recitals she attended. The likes of her mentor, critical and questioning, had driven greater musicians to his door. In a curious turn of events he had driven her exponential improvement.
"The caliber I'm chasing is impossible. I hear that a lot. Most elite spots are tailored for the child prodigies, after all."
He listens, and she sees the gears of his mind moving, formulating his best response.
"Am I to reassure you or," Len replies, his voice flat.
Kaho laughs. "Speak your mind."
"It's unlikely. But," he pauses. She looks away, purely because their gazes have snagged far too many times the morning, the unspoken words hanging heavy. "You're equally unlikely."
Kaho has to agree on the unlikelihood of their relationship. There they were, hands clasped and traveling down a meandering pavement where ivies tangle and bonsai plants line. Summer is almost in full swing, the pavement scorching mockingly, dappling streaks of blinding laughs. Far ahead the weather gleefully waltzes in her spike-heeled boots. She watches the couple.
"A lot could happen," Kaho admits. "But—"
"Happening only comes after," Len interjects.
Kaho nods, pleased that they share the same vein of thought. Agreeing with Len was awfully easy, to draw closer and to smile. She loves the predictability of the day, loves her acquaintance with tea and conversation with Hamai Misa, a woman with whom she shared surprising rapport (Len is, perhaps, slightly chagrined at that), loves how her family ruffles and welcomes Len in signature chaos.
"What?" Len asks, for the second time this same morning. They are both dressed down and casual now.
"I'm just really happy you're back." She tells him, again.
ii.
When they cross the apartment doors again it's about eight. Both are tired, Kaho only slightly weary and Len exhausted, clutching the bag of cakes he had stubbornly insisted on carrying. It was valiant of him. But with a pang she sees how haggard he is, gaunt and jet-lagged. Kaho bites her tongue, swallowing the nagging she'd always spewed over nightly calls. She does what she had longed to do, and runs her hand down his face instead.
They sit on the couch. After showering they both simmer in muggy heat, Len silent as Kaho talks, animated. There is nothing profound about tired nights where the time is too early (and little) to retire. Looking, hearing and thinking is laborious – summer has fogged the city with a veil of humidity – but Kaho sees Len do it regardless.
"Hey," she says finally. "It's been a long day. Go to sleep."
He nods, by default cold and blasé, rubbing his temples. "Thanks."
"Goodnight, then," Kaho says, grasping for appropriate words. "I'd wake you in the morning, but…"
Len chuckles lightly. "I daresay I'll manage."
"Right," she confirms. Tentatively she pecks his forehead. "Goodnight."
"Yes," Len says, rising to his feet. Kaho remains, shuffling pieces of theory and annotated scoresheets. Already, her thoughts wander – the few footsteps away are too far.
x
She has become disciplined, but not entirely so. At ungodly hours she pins the blame on abnormal mental states and she slips into Len's room. The dark envelops her in seeming soundlessness. She hovers over the makeshift bed. The curtains are drawn, and the dark-smeared corners are vaguely sinister.
She listens to the even breathing, the night sunken and deflated to usher in some semblance of coolness. The city is trembling with the fervor. In the morning summer will siege warfare, teasingly, pollens floating at her behest. But in the exempted pocket of Kaho's room, all is tranquil.
So finally she whispers the one wretched complaint. "I missed you." Her voice hangs in unheard wisps. It's pathetic.
The way her words resound, and bounce off the walls back into her unexpectant ears are what draw the final crushing blow to her tear ducts.
"I missed you too."
x
Hello, you.
Come here.
Summer will snigger softly, and she will leave the windowsill. "This is improper" – the single statement, hanging as if summer herself had said it (truth betold, there's no telling), where the undulating curtain stills and pools of moonlight dance. But summer will listen, and she will smile. It will be secret.
ii.
When summer walks into the morning, she dresses to impress. She rings the doorbell and scurries away. She brings wakefulness – with a start, and Kahoko jolted awake. In Europe summer is mellower, slightly tired from temper tantrums and forced into the heeled sophistication from where poetry praised its beauty. She settles for unfurling petals across stained glass windows. The particular apartment retained its cool. In the morning it was rare to find Len asleep after Kaho was up, but their ringed hands were still knotted together.
This apartment was not the same one summer remembers from all those years ago. They are strangers going by the same names, summer thinks. The room is meticulously arranged with objects of whimsy, a table left with a single baby's bib. Kaho passed a glance over it en route to the stretch of common space. The next door she opened was painted white, and opened to a chasm revealing a mobile affixed over a wooden crib. A mysterious assessment was passed, and she closed the door with an inexplicably gentle expression. When she returned to her bedroom her weight sank against the mattress.
These moments were soundless, artless. It was not unbeautiful, but it drew a blank in the mind, one that demanded the compensation of thought, each of which seemed quite inconsequential, until the owner of such a mind thrashed and squirmed uncomfortably, waking the other occupant of her room.
The season was ending. Kaho tugged away. She wanted to bake flaxseed muffins in this season. Muffins were best with a crown peaking over its mould, and flaxseed was an awfully foreign ingredient. Kaho didn't remember using it before. Perhaps it would surprise her.