My fingers hit the keys of a piano, making a disconserting sound echoing in my head. Even in the numb dark I know where these keys of sound are, yet they sound different today and make my thoughts cluttered.
This is what I used to call a writer's block.
But I can't call it that anymore, because it simply has nothing to do with writing. My head hurts.
That is the cause of all of this, the barring piano notes, the locked door, and the muffled sound of a distant TV game show.
On the other side of that door, the TV's volume was turned on loud so that she could mask the embarrassment of looking through the papers, the papers of separation that I had already signed in red ink, with my well-practiced fancy signature.
Standing baffled in my office with a broken lip and a bloody face, I had realized it as I looked into Sakano's desperate face.
At one point in my life, I had hit the pause button of my life.
The realization dawned upon me a long time ago, but it's only now, in this darkened room, that I'd really understood it.
And with my hands over my ears, locking myself away from the distraction of audible things, I thought back to the time that I had met my Wife. That winter, it had been snowing in Kyoto. Her cheeks had been rosy and her lips dry as she met me at the train station. I am Eiri's sister, Mika, she had said, brushing the inconvenient snow off her dazzling brown hair.
And I thought, she really is Eiri's sister, but what I said was only my name.
Somewhere along the way, my resolution seemed perfectly normal. And most of all, sane. Even though I had a ring on my finger by the time Eiri and I left for New York, it was only when I came back that marrying her seemed like such a good idea.
Because as it would be wrong of me to love Eiri, no,, it wouldn't be wrong, it would just be inproper, and neither I nor Eiri could have that... yes, because of that, it would be right of me to anchor myself with Mika.
After all, other than being a strong woman in a neatly arranged marriage, she was also partly Eiri.
Her face was even structured the same way, I noted in critical joy, and her eyebrows even had the same slant.
So I could do my husbandly duties. And keep her happy. Just enough to keep the questions away.
She didn't ask, because she was afraid, and I would haVe been too.
To her father, I was the best man she could have married. I had money, looks, and even power. I had contacts. It mattered, more so than love, obviously.
However, once she got past her fears, she started to wonder, and I think she realized how I really felt. She didn't mention Eiri, of course. She loved her brother dearly, and wouldn't even suggest something as improper as the dreams in my mind.
As to why I never slept beside her, I told the shallow truth: I am a busy businessman.
I've never seen myself as a depressed individual. Certainly, I have my problems, but I've dismissed that more as trauma than anything else. It doesn't even compare to what Eiri goes through every single day.
Yet, lately I've been thinking... and when I think I can't put that smile on my face. When I think, I can't do anything. My fingers become twigs mutilating the delicate piano, destroying it inch by inch, and my voice is tied to a bottomless whisper.
The sound of a ring rolling off the keys off a piano is more unsettling than you'll ever know, Shindou Shuichi.