Chapter 3

We might meet again, the woman said. What did she mean by that? Was this meeting just an encounter, or more of a secret rendezvous? Nah, that’s not it. It couldn’t be. There was no hidden meaning. But this is probably the fiftieth time Takao Akizuki has tried reading into the things she’s said. He’s been wondering about these pointless questions for about two weeks now, ever since the official start of the Kanto area rainy season. And ever since that day, the sky has obediently continued the downpour. “We might meet again, then. Just maybe. If it rains.” What’s this “We might meet again” business? Was that “Just maybe” necessary in this context? Ugh, she’s so frustrating. The train pulls into Shinjuku Station, and Takao is roughly ejected onto the platform. The scent of rain wraps around him. Careful of the worn-down soles of his shoes, he jogs down the stairs to the ticket barrier. Besides, she’s already forgotten she said that. Now that we’ve seen each other a few times, I know what she’s like. She’s the type you find in the park drinking before noon. He opens his vinyl umbrella, stepping out into the rain. I should forget about it, too, then. She’s a drunk lady in her…well, I don’t know how old she is, but what she says doesn’t mean anything. Cutting across the congested Koshu-Kaido Avenue, he makes for his usual spot in the park. He shows his annual entry pass to the middle-aged woman at the turnstile and greets her with a “Good morning” and a smile. He’s in his school uniform, but the way to avoid getting called out is to cover any sense of guilt with a bright smile. Geez, how much water is gonna come down on us anyway? As he walks to the Japanese garden, he tilts his face toward the leaden sky. He can see a vast ocean—the Pacific Ocean, or the Indian Ocean, or the Mediterranean Sea—bounded by a curved horizon. The winds carried all these thousands, millions of droplets here from those faraway places. A crow is flying toward the western sky, pelted by the rain. Where is it going in weather like this, and why? It looks oddly somber, and Takao worries he does, too. As he walks through the garden under his umbrella, he wants to seem a little lighter, less serious. As he muses to himself, the arbor comes into view beyond the wet maple leaves. The woman is there, as she always is, and she’s waving cheerfully. As she always is. God, she’s frustrating, Takao thinks again. “Now that you’re a regular, you’re entitled to a freebie,” she says abruptly. When he glances up, she’s holding a disposable coffee cup out to him. “Huh?” “Oh, um, here. Do you want it?” she says hastily. She’s blushing over her own joke. Just don’t say it, then? “Oh, thank you. You’re sure it’s okay?” “Uh-huh.” “Because I’m a regular?” “Yep. At the arbor.” She smiles with some relief as she answers, and Takao reaches out and takes the cup. The aroma of the coffee mingles with the scent of the rain, and he catches the faintest whiff of her perfume. For no reason, the inside of his chest aches, just a little. Still smiling, she lets her eyes return to her paperback, and Takao looks back down at his notebook. She’s like a snow-woman. Takao sneaks a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. It’s a thought he’s had several times before. Or maybe a rain-woman. Her skin is so pale, she almost seems ill, and he suspects that it would be cold as rain under his fingertips. The color of her soft, bobbed hair is rather light, while her long eyelashes are as black as ink. Her delicate neck and shoulders seem dangerously fragile. Her voice has a sweet moisture in it, and it still sounds childlike. She’s always wearing a business suit, which looks out of place in the park, and her shoes are always conventional heels. Look, you’re in a park on a rainy morning, he mutters silently. He’s skipping school, so he’s got no room to talk, but she’s really sketchy. Most people would probably say she’s objectively beautiful. Really beautiful. Takao isn’t all that interested in the topic, but he’s sure the word applies to her. Her beauty isn’t very human, though. It feels more like a part of nature to Takao, like distant clouds or a tall peak, or a sight like a rabbit or deer on a snowy mountain. Yeah, she’s a rain-woman for sure. At first, her presence was an annoyance to him. He was skipping school because he wanted to be alone, and he had chosen rainy mornings and a park that charged admission because he was hoping no one would be there. But ever since their first encounter at the end of last month, she has always been there, in the arbor in the rain. This is the seventh or eighth time they’ve run into each other. And yet Takao hasn’t chosen another place to be delinquent, and even he doesn’t understand why. It might be because she doesn’t bother him, even when she’s sitting only a few feet away. She almost never speaks. She reads her paperback and watches the rain, sipping beer or coffee, while Takao sketches leaves or thinks up shoe shapes or pauses to watch the rain, too, just as he’s always done. Except sometimes, she does speak to Takao, and none of it is ever something that actually needed to be said: “The spot-billed duck just dived; did you see it?” or “These twigs have grown since last week, haven’t they?” or “Oh, I can hear the Chuo Line.” They’re simple statements, scenic descriptions. At first, he didn’t know whom she was talking to or how to respond, but he assumes she’s making conversation after he realizes she’s always looking at him. His responses are never anything more than brief agreements, so conversations with her aren’t much different from listening to the rain. “See you later,” she tells Takao with a smile when he slings his bag over his shoulder and gets to his feet. “Mm-hmm, later. Um, thank you very much for the coffee.” After that, Takao walks toward the Shinjuku gate in a lighter rain than before. As his pace gradually quickens, he realizes he feels exhilarated, the way he does after reading a story he likes. A single drop of her voice still lingers faintly in his ear. The sound of rain from a rain-woman. But I like listening to the rain, I guess, Takao thinks, and then, God, she’s frustrating. “Look who decided to show up at noon again.” When Takao walks in through the open classroom door, several of his classmates turn away from their lunches to look at him. “What time do you think it is anyway?” “You’re gonna get in trouble one of these days.” He laughs and responds to his classmates’ remarks, sits down in his chair, and unwraps his box lunch. Steak and peppers (his first-ever attempt) and rice with dried julienned daikon radish and powdered red shiso leaf. For the pepper steak, he experimented with a recipe he’d heard about at the restaurant. Apparently, the real deal used pork, not beef. Oooh, the lighter flavor goes well with the peppers. I think I like it this way. As he’s chewing the meat and musing about his food, he realizes the guy at the desk next to his has his English textbook open. “Hey, we’ve got classics for fifth period, right?” “Nope. Old Takehara’s out with a cold or something, so we switched to Nishiyama.” “Gah, seriously?” He’d been planning on doing more sketching, but that wasn’t gonna happen. Professor Takehara was nearing retirement, and his classics class was low pressure; as long as you were quiet, you could do anything in it. On the other hand, Nishiyama’s English class was both boring and strict. “You should probably raise your hand more so they see you’re here, Akizuki,” his neighbor says, without taking his eyes off his textbook. “Ha-ha. Wish I could, but I suck at English.” Even as he answers, he abruptly thinks, Ha, Shao Hon would laugh at me for throwing in the towel. * * * It happened in April, when even the late-blooming cherry blossoms had mostly scattered, forming white smudges here and there on the asphalt. Ever since March, when he’d learned he’d gotten into high school, he’d been working part-time at a privately run Chinese restaurant in Higashi-Nakano, and the incident was about a month after that. “Hey, kid, c’mere a second.” He’d had a bad feeling about the customer as soon as he waved him over. “So…Akizuki, is it? You a student?” The man was around thirty, his face red from drinking; he’d read the name off his nametag. Takao stiffened a little and answered, “Yes, I’m a student.” The man huffed audibly, then pointed at his stir-fry with his chopsticks. “This right here. There’s trash in it.” Takao peered into the vegetables by the man’s hand, and sure enough, there was a transparent shred of plastic between a bean sprout and a leek. “Well?” the man asked, looking up at him. “I’m so sorry about this, sir! We’ll make you another order right away.” “Don’t bother, I already ate.” He glanced at Takao and said nothing more. This was a test. His shoulders were solid and muscular. Instead of a suit, he was wearing an old polo shirt. It wasn’t clear what sort of work he did. “Then…we can give you a discount?” “Damn straight you will,” he snapped, and Takao flinched. “Show some initiative, wouldja? What’s the policy for stuff like this? Don’t you got a manual?” Takao hadn’t expected that question, and he was starting to sweat. This had never happened before, and all he could offer was an incoherent attempt at an explanation. “Um… I think what we’re supposed to do is, uh, exchange the order. With your permission, I mean. I’m supposed to call the manager and have him deal with—Um, explain things to you, but he’s out right now…so…” Words failed him, and he could feel other customers’ eyes on him. The man heaved a big, dramatic sigh. “Then what are you gonna do?” He sounded irritated. “And I can’t read your mind, kid. Speak up.” But the more Takao thought, the less he knew what to say. He scanned the restaurant for help, but none of the staff had noticed him. “Hey!” the man said again, more threateningly this time, and Takao hastily looked back at him. “C’mon, Akizuki. People are gonna think I’m bullying you.” “…I’m very sorry. Um, for now, let me get you a new meal—” “I told you I don’t need one!” “I’m sorry!” He bowed reflexively, hunching in on himself. “Excuse me, sir,” someone said calmly, and Takao realized Xiao Feng was standing beside him. In a smooth motion, he knelt so that the man’s eye level was above his, and said, “My name is Li; I’m the floor manager. I believe our server has been very rude to you. Could you tell me what happened?” He could feel the wind die in the man’s sails. Oh, thank God. His knees nearly gave out with relief, but at the same time, frustration bubbled up inside him. He didn’t know whether he was mad at the customer or the restaurant. Why do I have to go through this? “You’re new here, so of course you weren’t sure what to do. Anyone would have trouble handling that. Make no mistake, though, the fault was yours, not his.” After they’d finished their shifts for that day, he and Xiao Feng were walking back to the JR station together, and Takao was surprised to hear what he had to say. He’d expected consolation—a comment acknowledging the harrowing experience, or a reminder that it was the customer’s fault. “But I’m not the one who made his food,” Takao argued back. The night wind was cold for April, and he was walking along glumly with his hands shoved into the pockets of his school trousers. The fast-moving clouds were tinted pale pink by the streetlamps. “He was probably lying about the plastic in his food.” “Huh?” “We only use colored plastic bags in our kitchen, specifically to avoid this problem.” “Then the whole thing was the customer’s fault! Why did you give him a free coupon?” Takao bristled; this just didn’t sit right with him. Although Xiao Feng was eight years older than he was, Takao was only polite when they were in front of customers. The first time they’d met, the man had told him to keep it casual; plus, he remembered Xiao Feng’s baleful confession that he’d quit Japanese language school after two months because the students had been forced to use polite speech. And yet his polite Japanese was still much better than Takao’s, which instilled in Takao a sense of respect regardless. “That’s because we couldn’t completely prove it wasn’t our fault. Besides, it’s foolish to argue with him in full view of other customers. People are motivated by what they feel, not what is right.” Takao didn’t understand what he meant right away, and he looked up at the man who was walking beside him. He was tall and slender, and the lines of his face were so sharp, they could have been carved with a knife. Everything he said came out like a proverb, and his faint accent made his words oddly persuasive. “You took an order from him while your back was turned. Remember? He asked for a beer when you were clearing away dishes, and you said ‘Yes sir’ without looking at him.” “Huh…?” He didn’t remember that. “I might have, but we were super busy today,” he hastily argued. “It wasn’t just once, it was twice. After that, you were talking to the lady next to him.” “Oh, that was because she spoke to me. She was just asking me questions, like how old I was and what days I worked there.” “And after that is when the customer called you over. He probably felt he was getting snubbed by an inconsiderate high school part-timer.” Startled, Takao looked at Xiao Feng again. He felt as if someone had slipped a sliver of ice down his back, and he could feel his face turning red. Xiao Feng looked up at the pink clouds as he spoke. “Everything has a cause. It’s all connected.” Xiao Feng Li was a twenty-three-year-old from Shanghai. When Takao had first met him at work, he’d said his name in Mandarin, as “Xiao Feng,” but Takao just could not pronounce it. The Japanese reading of the characters would have been “Shuu Hou,” but Xiao Feng had not been a fan of that. Eventually, they’d settled on “Shao Hon.” He was the first foreigner Takao had had any real contact with. He said he’d come to Japan because of his high school sweetheart. She’d come to Shanghai from Japan on a short-term language exchange program at sixteen, and then seventeen-year-old Xiao Feng had liked her the moment he saw her. She didn’t dress to impress, but even in jeans and a T-shirt, she looked somehow sophisticated. She kept her makeup light, but her shiny lip gloss was insanely sexy; she wasn’t especially opinionated, but the views she held were always rational. To Xiao Feng, she was an exception among the other Chinese girls, who were constantly vying for attention from the boys. She was a symbol of the unknown. As a result of his enthusiastic advances, the two of them became lovers, and their relationship lasted for half a year until her time on exchange was over. Although she had fallen head over heels for Xiao Feng by then, he had very casually, very considerately, ended the relationship. During their six months together, he’d mastered very basic Japanese, which had significantly decreased the mystery he’d initially sensed in her. However, the experience had made him determined to go to a Japanese university on exchange. As if she was the first step, and he’d find something that was more precious to him waiting on the other side. His father was in the import-export business, and with the Beijing Olympics just around the corner and the Shanghai World Expo two years after that, he wasn’t happy about his son studying abroad in Japan. (As he put it, “There’s no sense leaving home when you know it’s going to rain gold.”) But what young Xiao Feng needed wasn’t a guaranteed future, but a new unknown. What Xiao Feng gained from his four years at university in Tokyo was nearly perfect Japanese, a variety of connections, and a romantic history with about a dozen Japanese women. He moved frequently, owing to financial and relationship circumstances, but whether his living companion was a roommate or a girlfriend, he always chose a Japanese national and consciously worked on honing his language skills. Meanwhile, he actively relied on the local Chinese community for part-time jobs, and he energetically worked at several of them—beginning in food service, then moving through imports, translation, selling Chinese-language teaching materials, and more—steadily building his network. By his third year of exchange, he was already confident that he could get any job he tried for. In fact, he was earning enough from part-time work to cover his school and living expenses, and he had managed to completely achieve economic independence as a student in a foreign country. His involvement with many Japanese women had given him opportunities to visit various areas of Japan. Some of the women he’d met in Tokyo had been from the snow country, while others had been from remote islands. He’d always been a friendly type, so he’d grab at opportunities to visit their hometowns and meet their parents, hear local stories and drink local liquor. As he did, Japan gradually lost its mystery for Xiao Feng. Shanghai’s World Expo had happened during his time on exchange, and he began wondering if the city in his home country was the new frontier for him now. And that was why, after graduating, he’d continued to help out an acquaintance in the import business instead of looking for an employer in Japan. He’d been issued a one-year visa when he graduated, and the looming expiration date made his hesitation stronger. The job at the Chinese restaurant, which had just happened to be short-staffed, was a temporary stopgap until he decided on his next destination. Or perhaps he was repaying a debt. Xiao Feng still remembered the feelings from when he first arrived in Japan—frustration at the foreignness of things and a craving for the food of his homeland—and how this particular restaurant had helped him through them. Since he was fluent in Mandarin, English, and Japanese, both the restaurant and its customers found him extremely helpful. And when Takao, as a third-year in middle school, had lied and said he was in high school when he came to interview for a part-time job, Xiao Feng had been the one who went to bat for him with the manager. He’d argued that Takao would be starting high school for real next month anyway, and that if he wanted to work, they should put him to work. Takao had learned about his life little by little, in the back of the restaurant when they were on break, or at the dim pubs Xiao Feng sometimes took him to on their way home. Spending time around this impressive Chinese guy sometimes made him feel as if his own life were part of some dramatic story. “Akizuki, let’s go get some tea!” He’s survived another English class, sixth period has finally ended, and just as Takao takes his next breath as a free man, Hiromi Satou enters the classroom. A few of his classmates send curious looks their way, wondering what an older student is doing here. “Where’s Matsumoto?” Takao asks. “He has another hour of student council stuff. He says he’ll meet up with us once it’s over.” “If it’s a date, go by yourselves, all right?” “He wants you to come, Akizuki. I think it’s easier for him to relax with three people there,” she nonchalantly says, completely oblivious to the potentially problematic implications of her comment. Come to think of it, he remembers Xiao Feng asking him for something similar, and he’s suddenly very weary. Why does this always happen…? If you like somebody, why don’t you spend time alone with them? The image of a rainy arbor surfaces in his mind, and Takao hastily shakes his head. Misinterpreting the gesture, Satou tugs on the hem of his shirt and laughs. “Come on, come on, it’s fine, let’s just go!” Her bangs are trimmed straight across above her eyebrows, bouncing softly with every movement. The clean scent of antiperspirant reaches his nose, and he suddenly catches a hint of something like the rain-woman’s perfume. As he’s dragged out of the classroom, Takao thinks, I don’t really get this guy-and-girl stuff. He manages to survive for two-and-a-half hours on a ¥180 iced coffee, and when he leaves the chain café, he can feel the humidity on his skin. Today might be clear, but the rainy season isn’t over. Looking up at the power lines gleaming in the slanting sunlight, he thinks, The days have gotten longer. And yet ever since the rainy season began, each day has gone by faster than the last. He and Satou had spent an hour together at the café. When Matsumoto eventually turned up, the three of them had chatted for about half an hour, and then Satou had left for cram school. After that, he and Matsumoto had spent an hour sipping melted ice with their straws. After a while, though, he started getting a bit frustrated with the other two. Talking about dumb stuff with these guys is fun, but geez, it looks like I’m dating both of them. Matsumoto had been in his class in middle school. Soon after beginning high school, he’d taken the plunge and started dating Hiromi Satou, who was in the next year up, but he still tended to avoid going on dates alone with her. And yet as soon as he was alone with Takao, he’d start grinning and talking about how much he loved older girls. Takao imagined that this mosaic of maturity and childishness was probably appealing to older women. Feels like I’ve got a lot of older women around me lately. Satou from year two; Rika, the one my brother brought home the other day; Youko, Shao Hon’s girlfriend. And then there’s the rain-woman. I’m pretty sure Rika’s twenty-two, and Youko’s twenty-five. I wonder how old the rain-woman is, then. Is she older than they are, or younger? As Takao gazes through the window of the Sobu Line train at the darkening sky, he can’t even begin to guess. * * * At the end of June, the wisteria trellises in the Japanese garden have bloomed. They’re a month later than usual, almost as if they’ve been waiting for something. In the abundant rain, the vivid purple seems to glow. The round, lustrous drops are unbearably sweet as they build and build in the flowers until they spill free in an unbroken stream. It’s as if the wisteria flowers had hearts, brimming over with irrepressible joy. I bet that’s why I said what I did to the rain-woman. The wisteria got me carried away, Takao thinks afterward. There was probably one other thing to blame: the list of registration requirements that had arrived the previous evening. He’d ordered a pamphlet from a shoe trade school, just to see what it would take. As it turned out, the tuition and fees for two years were ¥2,120,000, and according to his rough calculations, he could save about ¥2 million just by working part-time through high school. Huh? That’s actually pretty doable, and the thought had given him a perhaps unwarranted boldness. And Takao does have some regrets over sharing something so embarrassingly beyond his own capabilities, and yet he’s still a little proud. No, but that was what I really felt. “—A shoemaker?” Even now, the exact sound of the question lingers in his ears. He examines her tone in retrospect; she sounded a little startled, but she didn’t seem to be making fun of him. Her voice was young and sweet—without seeing her, you could easily mistake her for a middle schooler—but it always seemed vaguely tense. She sounded like a committee chair or the student council president or some other honor student type. That morning, when they met in the usual arbor, the first thing the rain-woman had said was, “Hey, did you see the wisteria?!” She’d sounded unusually excited. “Oh? Where is it?” Takao had asked in reply. Under their umbrellas, they walked down to the wisteria trellis by the bank of the pond. When they stood side by side under the abundant clusters of blossoms, Takao realized that he was just a smidge taller. Yesss. Drops fell from the blossoms one after another, etching beautiful rings on the pond. Like one person’s feelings touching the heart of another, then spreading. The next thing he knew, he’d said, “I want to be a shoemaker” out loud. “…I know it doesn’t sound realistic. It’s just that I like thinking up shapes for shoes and making them.” Suddenly embarrassed, he added, “Of course I’m still not that great at it. I mean, obviously.” No response. He heard her inhale, quietly, but that was all. Nervous, he looked up, and their eyes met so dramatically, he could almost hear a sound effect for emphasis. Without saying anything, she smiled. And so Takao went on. “If I can, I’d like to do it for a living.” He said the words as if he were talking to the wisteria blossoms. Like a declaration of feelings even he hadn’t known about, the words echoed in his own heart, slowly filling his chest with heat. If she’d said, Wow, that’s amazing or Give it your best or something like that, I would’ve felt awful, Takao thinks. He might have blushed bright red, or lost his temper, or wished he’d never said anything at all. He was so glad the rain-woman wasn’t that kind of person. For some reason, her muted reaction was incredibly encouraging to him. From that point on, Takao had mentally stopped calling her “the rain-woman” and started referring to her as just “her.” He’s not sure when it started…but at night, before he goes to sleep, Takao always prays for rain. On the evening of the wisteria trellis day, Takao dreams about flying. It’s been a long time since his last flying dream. In this one, he’s a large-billed crow. Thick, hard, strong muscles cover the area from his chest to his fingertips; one stroke of his powerful wings pushes the atmosphere away like water, letting him fly free and weightless and as far as he wants. There are rows of thick cumulus clouds in the sky, and several rays of lemon-yellow sunlight lance through the gaps between them all the way down to the ground. Far below, he can see the familiar streets of Tokyo in detail, from the roof of his own building to the play equipment at the children’s park to a glimpse of a kitchenette in a mixed-use building, on and on forever. He passes Kouenji, passes Nakano, glides between the skyscrapers of Nishi-Shinjuku, and before long, the usual Japanese garden comes into view. And the clouds open up. The water soaks the ground in no time, and the buildings and roads and trees glitter and shine in scattered rays of sun. Then Takao’s crow eyes spot two umbrellas: a vinyl umbrella walking along the thin path to the arbor from the Shinjuku gate and a madder-red umbrella heading for the same place from the Sendagaya gate. It’s the couple that shelters from the rain. Then where should I go? He suddenly isn’t sure where he’s flying—until he is. Oh, I know where. He circles above the park and makes for the Yoyogi building. As he flies, he climbs higher and higher. The clouds are breaking up. Oh, the rain’s stopping, he thinks. I’m waking up. The moment his eyes open, he’s praying for rain again. “Takao, should I get you some more hot pot?” “You need more water spinach, too. You’re young! I hope you’re not holding back for our sake.” Xiao Feng’s and Youko’s voices urge him to eat in stereo, and Takao wonders, as he crams more crab into his nearly full stomach, why people think that being young means you have an unlimited capacity for food. But I guess that’s typical for Shao Hon, huh? Takao addresses the piled remnants of crab shells in a silent whisper. Everything Xiao Feng has made is delicious. All the dishes are Chinese, but the kind that don’t make it onto restaurant menus. Takao doesn’t even know the names of most of them. However, all of it—the crabmeat that melts sweetly in his mouth, the spicy hot pot with shrimp and dumplings, the stir-fry of thick-fleshed gourd and Spam, and even the simple dish of boiled bitter melon slices—has startlingly fresh, complex flavors. Xiao Feng must have gone to a lot of trouble to gather all the ingredients. Takao really doesn’t understand why he’s been invited to something like this. “You’re almost like our little brother, Takao. You have an older brother, right?” Youko asks. Her daring sleeveless dress exposes her white shoulders, and Takao is a bit distracted. “Yes, I do. We’re eleven years apart.” “Then he’s twenty-six? What’s he like?” “He works in sales for a cell phone company. He likes having money and showing off.” Youko is slurping up crab miso, her lips pursed, and Takao glances at her as he speaks. Youko’s kinda sexy, he thinks. The way she eats is skillful and a little erotic. Half of her thigh shows through the lace material of her lemon-colored dress. Her bangs have been swept to one side, and they hide half of her right cheek. Takao can’t take his eyes off the motion of her red lips. Her gorgeous sophistication reminds him a little of Rika. She’s very different from her. “What’s with all the questions, Youko? You want him to introduce you?” Drinking Shaoxing wine, Xiao Feng banters with her as if he were talking to his little sister. “You know, maybe I will. The age difference is perfect, and I’d love to have Takao as my little brother.” “No, no, my brother’s got a girlfriend, technically.” Takao hastily intervenes and immediately thinks better of it—Wait, why am I the one who’s getting flustered?—and he glares at Xiao Feng, trying to remind him that Youko is his girlfriend. Xiao Feng doesn’t notice. He just calmly takes another swig. “Aww, that’s a shame. Oh no, I’ll have to drown my sorrows in Shaoxing,” Youko says with delight. “Yeah, you want some?” Xiao Feng stands up and wobbles toward the kitchen to get a glass. Oh, he’s drunk, Takao finally realizes. Sheesh. Grown-ups, huh? he asks the crab shells again quietly. A few days ago, Xiao Feng invited him to come eat with him and Youko. Takao said he didn’t want to get in the way of their romance, but Xiao Feng humbly insisted that he really wanted Takao there. Takao couldn’t refuse such an earnest request, and so one sunny Saturday afternoon, he went to Nakano-sakaue. He’d expected a condo in that neighborhood to be in a shiny new high-rise, but it turned out to be in a five-story building probably more than thirty years old. Its apartments were spacious, though, with only two families per floor, and Xiao Feng’s place was even roomier than the rest, the only one on the fifth floor. When he entered the plain, neat living room, Youko was already drinking a beer. It was a brand he’d never seen, but the label called it Snow. Xiao Feng was in the kitchen, cooking; he told them the food would be ready soon, so have a drink and wait a bit. Takao had only met Youko at the restaurant a few times. When he greeted her, she smiled at him with a hint of sadness, and for a moment, he thought, Huh? Was she always like this? There were multiple lipstick-stained cigarette butts in the ashtray. Even so, when he drank the barley tea he’d been given and began nervously attempting conversation, Youko soon lit up into the cheerful woman he remembered. After drinking four or five glasses of sugared Shaoxing, Youko gets up. “I need to go use the little girls’ room,” she says. Xiao Feng’s eyes follow her briefly. Then he turns back to Takao, raises the brown glass bottle, and asks for the zillionth time if he’s sure he doesn’t want to drink. “I’ll hold off until I’m eighteen.” Takao laughs, repeating the excuse he gave the other times. “Gotcha.” Xiao Feng’s smile seems just a bit lonely, and he looks unusually tired. Dribbling some liquor into his own glass, he murmurs softly: “The thing is, I want to go somewhere far away.” His tone is very grave, as if this is the revelation of a secret, and Takao looks up. “I’ve always been trying to find a way to a different world. I still am.” Those words lightly brush against something soft inside Takao. He suspects this is the first time he’s ever connected with this man’s weakness. It’s strangely moving. But before he can ask what Xiao Feng means, Takao hears the sound of Youko’s returning footsteps, and his question remains unasked. Before he knows it, the sun has begun to set, and the living room is enveloped in pale shadows. They’ve drunk and talked themselves out, and just as the listlessness of an exhausted itinerary is setting in, Xiao Feng’s cell phone rings. Takao is somewhat relieved, and Youko sends Xiao Feng a wordless look. Xiao Feng glances at the display, then stands up and starts toward the kitchen, picking up the call and speaking softly on the way. “I’ll come up later, so you two go to the roof. Bet it’s nice up there right now.” Covering the phone’s mouthpiece with the palm of his hand, Xiao Feng tosses a small key to Takao. “The roof. That’s a good idea,” Takao says to Youko, and the two of them leave the room with the sense that they’ve just been kicked out. They take the short stairway up to a locked door, and it opens to reveal a space about sixty-five feet deep, illuminated by the evening sun. Xiao Feng is taking his time coming up after them. Ten minutes pass, then thirty. As the sun sets, it passes behind some clouds, emerges again below them, and finally sinks out of sight behind the distant ridgeline. With each change, the shadows in the street shift dramatically. Youko is smoking a cigarette. As he watches her back with a bit of concern, Takao thinks that maybe this is why Xiao Feng called him: so that Youko wouldn’t have to spend this time waiting by herself. But he can’t find a single thing to talk about with her. Well, it’ll be okay, he tells himself, lying down so he can feel the cool concrete on his back. The roof really is a pleasant place, like a poolside area without the pool. There aren’t many tall buildings around them, and the view is open on all sides. Yeah, he thinks, gazing up at the sky. Sunsets on clear days during the rainy season always look like this. The western sky is a transparent orange, the color of a slice of salmon with light shining through it. As the sun leaves it, the sky turns grape colored. Finally, as twilight ends, slowly, slowly, by imperceptible degrees, the grape darkens to midnight blue. “The thing about Xiao Feng…” Hearing Youko’s voice behind him, Takao sits up. She’s gazing at the eastern sky, with her back to him. “It’s written with the characters for ‘evening’ and ‘mountain peak,’ you know.” Getting up, he follows Youko’s gaze, and realizes that she’s looking at the skyscrapers of Nishi-Shinjuku. There’s a cluster of brand-new anonymous office buildings, and some very familiar ultra-high-rise buildings over 650 feet tall peek over them and through the gaps between them. There’s the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, the triangular roof of the Park Hyatt, the inorganic Sumitomo and Nomura Buildings, and the cocoon-like Mode Gakuen. The evening sun reflects orange off the very tips of the tall buildings, while the streets below sink into dusky blue. “Those buildings are like mountain peaks, aren’t they? From now on, whenever I see a skyscraper in the evening, I bet I’ll remember those two characters, ‘Xiao Feng.’” It’s impossible to read the emotion in Youko’s voice, and he still can’t see her face. Then she looks at him and gives a smile like a lost child. “Hey, Takao, tell me about the girl you like.” He doesn’t know why, but he feels it in the depths of his heart: Right now, I have to tell her the truth. “…I’m not dating anyone. There is someone I think I like, though.” Youko’s gentle smile deepens. The lace ripples in the wind, over thighs it doesn’t really hide. “And?” As Youko prompts him to go on, her voice seems to have a melancholy about it. “Lately, on rainy mornings, I skip class and eat lunch in the park with her. I pack a bigger box lunch than usual every morning for us.” “Hmm. What’s she like?” Takao thinks for a little. “She’s really bad at eating things. The fillings in her sandwiches fall out. She’s lousy at using chopsticks, I’ve seen her drool for a second when she put a pickled plum in her mouth, and she eats chocolate with her beer.” Youko narrows her eyes, as if she’s looking at something bright. She’s in the shadows, and peaks far beyond her sparkle and shine. “That sounds really nice.” “…Maybe. I don’t really know.” By the time Xiao Feng finally appears on the roof, both the grape color and the midnight blue of the sky have been replaced by the murky dark red of the city lights reflecting off the clouds. Takao thanks him for the meal, leaves Youko, and goes home on his own. He felt as if there was something he should say to the two of them, but he doubted he’d be able to find the right words, so in the end, he didn’t even try. It’ll be fine; I’ll save it for next time, he thinks as the cars whiz by along Yamate-dori on the way to the JR station. I’ll invite them both over to my place to thank them for today. I’m not as good at cooking as Shao Hon, but I’ll get some sake and make them traditional Japanese food. However, as it turned out, that would be the last time he saw either Xiao Feng or Youko. A few days later, Xiao Feng returned to China. Takao first learned about it when he got the text from Shanghai. I’m sure we’ll meet again someday, it said. Takao hadn’t asked for Youko’s contact information, and with Xiao Feng gone, there was nothing to link the two of them. * * * When he remembers how he once believed he could grow up in three years of middle school, he’s embarrassed. How dumb was I anyway? The world wasn’t that simple, and people didn’t learn to control themselves so easily… Assuming that self-control was a sign of adulthood at all. But still. I want to grow up into somebody better, somebody stronger already. Sitting in the arbor, thinking and listening to the rain, Takao is sketching a design for a shoe in his notebook. I want to be considerate to the people who are important to me, to be kind and strong, to be okay if I suddenly wind up on my own one day, to find an unshakable strength. I want to really live. As he draws lines with his pencil, he thinks to himself over and over. Before long, he hears approaching footsteps on the wet earth. It’s her, he thinks, and when he looks up, he can see her slim, suit-clad figure under her madder-red umbrella, through the maple leaves. “Good morning. I thought maybe you weren’t coming today,” Takao says. Her cool, beautiful face is the same as always. It irks him a little, makes him want to needle her. “I’m surprised your company hasn’t fired you.” She responds with a small smile, then folds her umbrella and enters the arbor. Well, whatever, Takao thinks, letting his eyes return to his notebook. “Oh, wow. Is that a shoe design?” Her voice behind him startles him; she’s circled around him and is peering in at his notebook. Waugh, what’s with this lady?! “Hey!” Hastily, he closes the book. “I can’t look?” She cocks her head innocently. “I don’t actually show these to people!” “Really?” “Yes, really! Go on, go sit over there,” he says, waving a hand to shoo her away. She giggles. She really is frustrating, Takao thinks, even as his heart beats faster and his chest grows hot. A shrike or a titmouse or some other little bird is twittering cheerfully on a nearby twig. Now that the woman is here, the rain is growing heavier. The endearing splish-splash against the garden pond is louder now. “I’m going to eat breakfast,” Takao says, taking his box lunch out of his bag. As usual, it’s a larger box that holds full portions for two. He asks her the usual question: “Want to join me?” “Thank you, but I brought my own today.” Takao wasn’t expecting that. Huh? She can cook? “What, did you make that yourself?” It’s more condescending than he intended. “Oh, come on. I cook sometimes.” As she pries open the pink lunch box with her pale fingers, she sounds a little miffed. The small container holds two awkward rice balls, soggy-looking lumps of meat that vaguely resemble fried chicken, a rolled omelet, and a separate plastic dish with a pinch each of pumpkin and macaroni salad. Takao decides it doesn’t look very tasty, but as payback for looking at his notebook, he impulsively stretches out his chopsticks. “Okay then, let’s trade sides!” Without waiting for her response, he snatches the omelet from her lunchbox and pops it into his mouth. “Huh?! Wait, I’m not really that—” When she’s flustered, she really does sound like a child. He chews the omelet, and grains of sugar cling to his tongue. This is a really sweet one. “Hmm?” Something hard crunches between his molars. Eggshell? Oh, for the love of— He promptly regrets his prank. This is even worse than he expected. “—good at cooking…,” the woman says, nearly inaudible. When he glances at her, she’s rummaging in her bag, red faced. “Serves you right.” With that, she holds out a plastic bottle of tea to Takao. He takes it and washes down the lump in his mouth. Ahh. As he exhales, he starts laughing in spite of himself. “You’re clumsier than you look,” he says. It’s the very best compliment he can manage. “Oh, stop it,” she snaps moodily. Ha-ha-ha. She’s mad. I’ll compliment her more. “Still…it’s good, in its own special way. Plenty of…texture.” “Now you’re making fun of me!!” “Ha-ha. Can I have another one?” “No! Eat your own lunch!” “Guess that’s a no?” “Obviously!” Her face is getting redder and redder, and her frustration is getting more and more childlike. This is the first time he’s found anyone so endearing. Yeah. He can tell he’s stumbled across something incredibly valuable. It’s like that period just after the sun sinks behind the buildings, when the light from the train windows and the brightness in the sky are in perfect balance. Or the moment when he spots a familiar-looking figure on the Chuo Line train running beside his, and then the Sobu Line comes from the other way to cut off the view. Or when he’s walking through an empty shopping street, and he glances over to see a side street that goes on forever, perfectly straight, illuminated by streetlights. His chest constricts, like someone’s squeezing it from the inside. Every time it happens, he wonders if there’s a name for that emotion. Each day holds countless moments like these. Was that true before he met her, too? Was I like this before I knew people could suddenly disappear? What’ll happen if I stay this way? No matter how much thought he gives it, Takao doesn’t know. He only knows two very simple things. The first is that he wants to make shoes for her. And the second sounds ridiculous to him when he puts it into words—but he’s fallen in love with her. Beyond the curtain of rain and maple leaves, the woman whose name he doesn’t know is smiling and waving at him. He feels as if he’s discovered a hidden secret of the world itself.