The Daffodil of Sharon (2)
Inside the darkened theater, they climbed the steps with care, feeling their way by the glow of the exit signs and the low house lights.
"Here we are."
Hitomi called up the seat number she had only glanced at, and set the colas into the holders on either armrest.
There was no one else inside. Not a single ticket had sold even at this hour, so the chance of anyone coming in later was slim. It amounted to a private rental, and it hardly mattered where they sat.
"I've never been in a couple's seat before... so this is what they're like."
She studied the long seat stretched out beside her with open curiosity, looking it over this way and that before nodding.
She had known the general shape of them, but seeing one up close was new. Even Hitomi, who had been to the movies far more often than Han Seoyeon, had never until now had any reason to inspect the couple's seats in the very last row.
She dropped quickly into one end, looked up at Seoyeon, and patted the empty stretch of cushion with her palm. At that, Seoyeon smiled faintly and sat down beside her.
A low screen rose along the side of the seat, closing the space in with a peculiar intimacy. The theater would never admit it outright, of course, but the design wore its intention nakedly: touch each other where no one else can see.
"And your thoughts on your first couple's seat?"
"Come on, it's still nothing but ads. How am I supposed to have thoughts already?"
Seoyeon had asked while eating a piece of the popcorn resting on her thigh, and that was the answer she received.
Even so, saying it did not stop Hitomi from promptly leaning over to rest against Seoyeon's shoulder. She was clearly already set on savoring this seat to the fullest.
Seoyeon tilted her own head until it met Hitomi's, took a single kernel, and brought it to Hitomi's lips. Hitomi let her eyes fall softly shut and parted her mouth, and Seoyeon tucked it in.
"Movie theaters turn out to be better places than I thought."
"I'm telling you, the movie hasn't even started."
Seoyeon murmured it while watching Hitomi work the popcorn between her teeth. Hitomi only giggled, as if to ask what she was supposed to do about that.
In truth it was the sort of contact they could have managed just as easily on the living-room sofa, an impression with nothing to do with the theater at all. Hitomi chose not to point that out.
They passed the time lightly lacing their fingers together, and somewhere in the middle of it the film began.
The screen looked down over a city as if from high in the air. Then, at some point, percussion began to thread itself through the sound of the wind, swelling little by little into music.
Leaning on the fact that this was a musical, perhaps—trying to lock the mood in from the opening frame. With that thought, Hitomi gave the screen her attention.
"......?"
That anticipation did not last long.
She was nodding along to a melody that was decent enough, and then the highlight arrived, and what cut through her was a blank, baffled huh?
Wasn't this the passage meant to break open, full-throated? Not sung in that dull, smothered way...
Or perhaps they had done it on purpose, this being the opening. Strike too hard at the start, and the numbers that mattered later might come out limp.
She told herself that, and made herself let the complaint go. It took less than twenty minutes to discover what a foolish mercy that had been.
The second song kicked in without warning, midway through a chase with the protagonist. They were not singing on the run, nor even singing while closing the distance in long strides. They simply halted in a narrow alley, looked at each other, and partway through went so far as to dance.
Had it felt like contemporary dance, she might have granted them an attempt at some artistry too obscure to parse. This, however she looked at it, was a cheerful dance number.
Musical films do have a habit of dropping songs in at odd moments, but this was getting close enough to Bollywood to make her wonder.
"Maybe it was actually a comedy going for that B-movie feel...?"
"Hmm. I don't know... this is difficult to understand..."
They did their best to read it charitably, along those lines. Even that collapsed the moment the protagonist's friend was beaten by thugs and finally killed, and the grieving protagonist's third song arrived. They understood then that it had been an overreading.
It was simply a badly made film. A wreck so complete it raised the question of how no one had stopped it before it reached a theater.
The music, at least, was good—original work or otherwise—and that only made the whole thing feel more solemnly mournful for whatever fans the source might have had.
Nor could one throw the film's worth into the gutter and reclassify it as a hundred-and-thirty-eight-minute concert with strange footage running behind the songs. The actors were not good enough for that either.
Hitomi was a VTuber at a company that staged live concerts, so she did take lessons in singing and dance. She was nowhere near specialist enough to pass real judgment on music, but this isn't it was something she could feel with perfect clarity.
"I really don't say this kind of thing unless it's bad, but I'd sing this much better myself."
Unlike the haughty persona of Mary Tepes, Hitomi herself was a modest person. For her to go that far, the problem was serious. Han Seoyeon answered with a wry smile, as if conceding the point.
"Shall we go to karaoke after this, then?"
"Oh! I want to."
She had only floated the suggestion, and the yes came straight back.
Seen in that light, even the maddening game ads that turned up now and then on Etube started to look like a marketing strategy with some sense behind it. Was there any feeling that made a person want to try something themselves quite like I could do better than that?
"You know Shion has to sing too, right?"
"I'll make an effort."
They were married, and still she had almost never seen Han Seoyeon sing. A few hummed bars, yes. A song carried all the way through—she didn't think she had ever heard one.
And most of even those had been hymns.
Which was why Hitomi's eyes had begun to shine, as if this was a chance she had no intention of letting slip.
"If the movie isn't to your liking, shall we just leave now?"
"That's... mm. But I want to see how far this unhinged movie actually goes."
She could already see, perfectly clearly, the future in which she watched it to the end and then raged at the wasted time. Even so, she could not suppress her curiosity over just how far this insane plot meant to run.
"...Though lasting until then does seem like it'll hurt."
It was, of course, a film hard enough to sit through without ever reaching the ending. Had the director, and the rest of those who made it, truly felt nothing strange before it came to this?
At this level, deliberate sabotage was starting to sound like the more convincing explanation.
She might as well treat the movie as something left on beside them and spend the two hours plastered against Seoyeon, being shamelessly sweet. She was thinking even that when an idea brushed through her mind.
"Oh, Shion. Do you know that thing? It's a drinking game, but..."
A game she had once half-seen online. Hitomi stood a long way from alcohol, and a longer way still from drinking parties, so at the time she had simply let it pass.
"You each pick one scene, and every time that scene comes up in the movie, you take a drink."
"We don't have any alcohol, so we count the times, and whoever's scene comes up more in the end loses?"
"Mm... that would be fine too, but while we're at it, wouldn't it be more fun if there was an instant penalty on top of that?"
A penalty whenever the scene appeared, and in the end the one who had taken more penalties lost. That was the shape of it.
The idea seemed to catch Seoyeon's interest as well. She nodded.
"And what would the penalty be?"
"......"
At Seoyeon's question, Hitomi seemed to think for a moment, then smiled a shy ehehe.
"A kiss... how about that?"
"...That counts as a penalty?"
"...I just want to. Is that not allowed?"
Hitomi looked up at her, eyes lifted, quiet and sidelong.
"Ahn— mm... hehe."
Faced with that, Han Seoyeon found herself pressing their lips together before she quite meant to. The sudden attack seemed to startle Hitomi a little, but she was soon smiling, soft and pleased, gently mingling her tongue with Seoyeon's.
"Heh. So I start with one point."
"You kissed me too, didn't you, Hitomi?"
"No. If you count it that way, both of us go up every time, and the game doesn't mean anything."
"Hmm. Then we'd have to kiss a cheek, or somewhere else."
Once their lips met, it was hard to say which of them had done the kissing. They could keep a separate count according to whose chosen scene had appeared, but it was a long way from the feeling of a penalty landing on one side alone.
So the kiss would have to fall somewhere other than the mouth. That, at least, would make it clear whose penalty it was.
"......"
Even so, Hitomi was not entirely free of regret. A kiss like that was nearer an expression of fondness than of desire.
They had an empty theater. A slightly bolder kiss would have been perfectly fine... That was the shape of her disappointment.
So she thought for a moment, and then she spoke.
"So, um... we're kissing somewhere other than the lips, right?"
"Yes. Well, that would be better, wouldn't it?"
Judging by Seoyeon's reaction, she had not caught on to what Hitomi was thinking.
Then again, it would have been strange if she had. Even Hitomi thought it a shamefully forward approach.
"Blehhh..."
"Nh...?"
Hitomi let her eyes fall gently shut and stuck her tongue straight out of her mouth in a long, teasing blep.
A flustered sound escaped Seoyeon. Set beside what had just been said, the intention seemed to have reached her as well.
At that dumbfounded reaction, Hitomi opened her eyes again and smiled with them, sly and a little pouty.
"...If this weren't a public place, you'd be in serious trouble, Hitomi."
"......♥"
In the eyes of the Seoyeon who had pressed a light, smacking kiss to that tongue, a flame was burning—impulsive, and hot.
"This time, for real... that's one point, isn't it?"
And because she herself stood at the far end of that gaze, Hitomi's expression grew all the more satisfied.