Supermoon Superstition

6. Supermoon Superstition

She put her phone away again, turning the hallway dark once more, “Shima… can I ask you something?”

I turned my body entirely, properly facing her. “Sure.”

“Do you sometimes…” she was quiet for a moment, perhaps rethinking the phrasing of her question. “—Is there anything…”

“It’s alright. Take your time.”

She looked up for a brief second. “I want to show you something…” She walked past me, towards the living room. This time, I was the one slowly slinking behind her.

In the living room, she went straight for the door leading to the garden. “…Shima?”

I put my futon down, placed my pillow on the sofa and wrapped myself inside my blanket, protecting me from the unpleasantly cold night breeze outside the door. “Coming.”

Once out the door, I followed her to the left side of the garden, all the way to the end. Standing by the fence, about as high as the bottom of my chest, I saw the full moon surrounded by faraway clouds. A full moon much larger than I ever remember seeing with my own eyes.

“…It’s a supermoon,” Katsumata softly said as she placed her hands atop the fence.

The sight sure is beautiful… though I wonder why we’re out at night. When I turned my eyes away from the moon and looked at Katsumata again, I saw how she held her trembling shoulders in. I unwrapped the blanket and dropped it over her.

“…Shima?”

“Why did you want to show me this?”

She clenched the blanket a little more tightly and took a second to ask, “Do you sometimes wish… you could kill a part of yourself?”

It took me a moment to process her sudden question. “…Doesn’t everyone have that?”

“Probably…” she forced a smile, facing the moon. “But when I look at myself, it’s… it’s like…”

My drowsy eyes turned wide-awake, In life—

“You tend to focus on the things that you don’t like about yourself… rather than the things you do. Right?”

Her smile spread a little wider across her face. “Yes… exactly that.” She reached for her pockets from underneath the blanket, took a pen out of one and a notebook out of the other, then closed her eyes. After reopening them, she started writing something down.

“What are you writing?”

“On full moons… I usually write down the things I don’t like about myself—” she paused for a bit. “—it’s an old habit of mine, sort of a superstition I guess. I like to wish that by the next full moon, the things I hate about myself to have disappeared… but as you can see; I’m still here with my notebook and pen, to write something down." She smiled to herself again. "But this time… I think I’ll write something different. This time I’ll write down the things I like about myself, and wish I’ll appreciate them just a little more by the next full moon.”

When she looked at me again, her lips trembled and despite the dark, that my eyes have gotten used to, I could see her face turning red.

“Can I see?”

She hopped sideways and turned her back to me. As she looked over her shoulder she whispered, “I absolutely can not show you…”

I leaned on the fence and fixated my gaze on the large moon once more.

When I looked at Katsumata again, I saw her glowing, enveloped in moonlight. Her white pyjamas, her white pen on the white pages of her white notebook, even her pale skin glowed white underneath the moon. In fact, she glimmered so brightly that I forgot I wasn’t looking at the moon anymore, until the moon suddenly said, “There… all done.”

I saw how the blanket was slowly gliding down her right shoulder. After readjusting it, I said, “Let’s head back inside.”

With her slinking behind me again, I suddenly heard the muffled sound of a sniff. Quick, and perplexed, I turned my head around and saw both of her hands underneath the blanket brought up to her nose.

Caught in the middle of her act, she slowly lowered her hands and turned red once again.

“Forget…” she whispered as she looked away. “Forget you saw that.”

I slid the door to the living room open, “Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I can.”

Once in the hallway after picking up my futon from the living room, I heard gramps’ snores again. In the back of my mind, I was thinking about heading back inside his room if his snores had stopped, though that wasn’t the case of course. It felt louder even, now that I’d been outside of hearing range for a bit.

I followed Katsumata on the stairs, destination: her guest room. When we arrived at her room, the sound of snores had already faded in the distance. She opened the door and whispered, “Come in.”

On the right side of the room was a window with flimsily closed curtains, though it’s dark enough outside to keep the room dark as well. Centred against the wall stood a double bed, with next to it enough space to place my futon down on either side. Other than that, there wasn’t much to the room, it’s a guest room after all.

I placed my futon down on the window-side of the bed. Only realising I forgot my pillow the moment I was about to lay down.

“I’ll be right back,” I whispered.

She sat on her knees on her bed and peered over at my futon. “Pillow?”

I nodded.

“…Catch.” She threw one of hers, which I caught right as I turned around.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded and took off the blanket that was wrapped around her. “Take this back as well…”

“Thank you.” I laid down next to her bed, facing the wall.

“Hey, Shima…”

I rolled over and saw her hanging over the edge of her bed.

“Yeah?”

“Would you mind… talking until we fall asleep?”

Surprised by that sort of request coming from her, I still agreed since I was close to falling asleep anyway, “Sure. What do you want to talk about?”

“You.”

Getting even more surprised by that, I was left speechless for a second. “…Me?”

She retreated her head and laid down on her back, like I did. “Mmhmm. I know you probably don’t realise it… but you’re pretty mysterious…”

Caught between two fires betwixt feeling cool about “being mysterious” and feeling like I should be worried about it at the same time. “Well… what’s there to talk about me?”

She paused again. Hanging over the edge of the bed once more she said, “Your winning complex.”

No need for caffeine to wake your body up when you’ve got a Katsumata Erika hanging over you, saying no more than three words that shook me right awake again.

“…What do you mean?”

“I think it’s admirable how far you’re willing to go just to win, albeit small or big things… I haven’t known you for a long time, but it still troubles me a bit…”

“I haven’t done anything admirable.”

“Is that so… Well, I—” she yawned in the middle of her sentence, giving me an easy escape.

“Let’s just sleep after all. Good night.”

“Oh, okay. Good night.”

* * *

“You don’t understand, Shima! We don’t need a bang-average player like Keito, we need someone with a ceiling way-out in the sky, massive potential, like you!” he pointed at me, ending it with a poke to my shoulder.

The more he said, the more aggravated I got. I grabbed my bag and stood up from my seat in the empty classroom where only the volleyball captain and I stood.

In times like these, where words are hard to find and I don’t have much else to express my thoughts with, I used to turn back to the only nonverbal communication that'll pierce through a thick skull like his; I slapped him in the face—right as the words I was looking for found their way out of my mouth, “Talk down on him one more time—” words more audacious than anything I imagined I would say, “—I dare you.”

“You’ve got guts hitting a senior like that.” He suddenly started laughing, “But I like it! Ha-ha! A guy with guts like you is what we need. Your reflexes, your attitude and your potential. Give it a year and you’ll be even better than I’ll be by then.”

“No one desires a spot on the team more than Keito—”

He shut me right up, “I desire a mansion and a sports car more than anyone in this school. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna get it by desire alone, right? I need to get my ass up, and fight for it! Do the work, reap the rewards.”

I grabbed him by his neck. “Who do you think has been working the most? All people from the trials combined haven’t trained as much as Keito alone.”

“Exactly…” he said, getting little air to breathe. “Which is why you’re the one we need… barely tried, yet still the favourite.”

I let him go. “What if I say no, would you go for Keito?”

He shook his head. “We’ve selected two players. From the leftovers, he’d be fourth choice.”

With a sigh filled with defeat, I set my sights on a vow of deceit. “Then, if I say yes, can you promise me to take Keito as well?”

“If that means you’ll join, then yes! We’ll be glad to have him even!”

As we walked through the hallway, after I’d agreed to join, he asked me, “Tell me, Shima. If you had no intention of joining the volleyball team, then why did you go all out to win in the trials?”

I shot a side-eye at him, “They’ll laugh if I lose.”

* * *

When I opened my eyes after that hazy memory of a dream, I saw the light seep through the gaps of the flimsily closed curtains and realised that I was sleeping in Katsumata’s room.

Without waking her up, I placed her pillow back on her bed next to her many plushies and took my stuff before going back to the grumpy gramps’ room.