A FRIEND HAD INVITED ME to join him working the night shift part-time at a TV station. Specifically, our job was to guard the studio’s many keys. At least two people had to be on duty at all times, but all the job entailed was lending out keys to people using the studio and making sure they got back to their appropriate spot on the rack when they were done. That was it. The shifts were irregular, but the work was easy. It was in Shibuya, too, so I got to brush shoulders with celebrities from time to time—not that I could exactly say anything to them, since they were there for work. The job felt like a surprisingly good fit.
I started over winter break, but once I was going to class four days a week during the day, then straight to my job in the evening, taking a morning nap in the break room and heading right back to school, it really did a number on my internal clock. I could never quite think clearly. My wallet was full, but I had nothing in particular to spend the money on. I don’t think I’d ever heard someone use my actual name at work—both my friend and I were uniformly addressed as “guard.” Even food was starting to taste bland. I knew I couldn’t keep it up much longer.
I’d signed up for a hardcore prep course for the civil service exam but hadn’t even been able to start studying. I’d never thought of myself as the kind of person who was very sensitive to this sort of thing, but I got the feeling it was just an issue of time management. Come April, it would have been two full months of this.
I guess I’ll just try to get my shifts reduced or find a new part-time job if I can’t manage it? Yeah, that’s the plan.
All of that swirled through my head as I walked through Yoyogi Park that evening. I heard the voices of some drunks coming from one of the paths off the main road. They seemed to be arguing about something, but a wall of high shrubs made it impossible to see anything. I had gotten off early that day, so it was about midnight, and there was nothing in particular going on that might lead one to expect this sort of rowdiness.
I crossed the road and ran toward the voices. There were four or five people—men in worn-out suits—raising hell. The man in the middle of the group, carrying a suitcase, had tripped and fallen.
One of the drunks cackled and dumped his beer on the man’s head. I took a deep breath.
“Officer! Right over there! Hurry! Someone’s being attacked!”
The over-excited drunks scattered and escaped into the station. The man on the ground remained. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket to wipe himself off.
“Are you okay?”
“…You’re a lifesaver.”
Under the light of the bug zapper, the man turned around. He had blond hair, blue eyes, and an impeccable command of Japanese, but his features were most captivating of all. I prayed he hadn’t caught the little “whoa” I’d let out under my breath.
I’m going to make a bold assertion: I’ve never laid eyes on a more beautiful human being in my life. He had high cheekbones and a perfectly sculpted nose, gently curled blond hair, and his skin was pale and silky smooth. His eyes were a shade of blue that I felt like I could stare at for hours. It was like someone had taken individual parts from all the most beautiful people in the world and combined them in immaculate balance to create this creature. Time and space—even down to the tiny particles of dust in the air—all flowed at a different pace around this man. It was almost enough to make you believe in the divine. It might have been some kind of fated meet-cute—if he’d been a woman, that was.
The most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life was standing before me in a grey suit.
He told me his name was Richard.
The two of us walked through the park together until we got to the police box in front of the station. I encouraged him to file a report. One of the wheels on his black cloth rolling suitcase was broken. I offered to carry it for him, but Richard stubbornly refused.
“Richard… Rana, uh… Sorry, could you say that again?”
Being stationed in Harajuku, the officer wasn’t terribly accustomed to foreign names as he struggled to file the report on his neglected computer. The blond man handed him a card from his wallet. His name was written in roman characters on one side and Japanese script on the other: Richard Ranasinghe de Vulpian. The difficulty certainly shot up in the second half of his name—it almost sounded like a tongue twister—and the officer had to make constant reference to the business card as he typed. The other officer offered us bottled green tea but didn’t say a word. He didn’t look nervous, though. Maybe it was a religious thing or something.
“Are you a Japanese citizen?”
“British, actually.”
“Are you here on vacation? Business? What line of work are you in?”
“Business. I deal in precious gemstones. I’m a jeweler.”
A jeweler. I had no idea how you’d even get to know someone in that profession, other than going to a department store or a jewelry store or something. What was he doing out here at this hour, anyway?