Chapter 2:
Wonder of You
Would You Fall in Love With Me Again?
He didn’t sit up, didn’t reach for his phone, and didn't even rub the sleep from his eyes. He just opened them and stared at the ceiling. There was a crack running across the plaster. It was thin, lazy, and jagged, starting near the far corner and stopping abruptly halfway to the light fixture.
He followed it with his eyes for a few long seconds, tracing the microscopic detours of the fissure as if it were a map of a place he’d never been. Eventually, the stillness of the room became heavy, and he rolled onto his side.
Saturdays were always quiet like this. No alarms to cut through the quiet, no distant rumble of city transit. In this house, the silence was a physical presence, something you could lean against. Most of the time, he would just roll back over, pull the duvet tight around his shoulders, and disappear back into the fog of sleep until the afternoon sun grew too bright to ignore. It was a safe way to kill the hours. But today felt… different.He remembered. A date.
He had a date with Miyumatsu Owari.The word "date" felt foreign, alien almost, like a piece of vocabulary from a language he had studied years ago but never mastered. It belonged to someone else’s life, someone with energy, someone with a future, someone who didn’t feel like a ghost haunting his own skin. He sat up slowly, the springs of the old mattress complaining under his weight, and dragged a heavy hand across his face.He had dated before, a few times. Usually, it was the result of a brief burst of social momentum that inevitably fizzled out. Nothing had ever lasted. He remembered a girl telling him once, a few years back, “You’re kind of a downer, Yamada.” She hadn’t said it cruelly; it was just a flat observation, like noticing the weather was overcast. He hadn’t argued with her. Talking had always felt like work to him. Keeping a conversation alive, tossing the ball back and forth, trying to look interested in the minutiae of someone else’s workday. It felt like lifting weights nobody had asked him to lift. He was tired of the exercise before it even began.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His bare feet brushed against the cold wooden floor, and a shiver traveled up his spine, grounding him. He just sat there for a while, his elbows on his knees. He let the thought sit. A date with Owari. He didn’t know how to do this. He didn't know what the expectations were or where the boundaries lay. He just knew that, for some reason, he had said yes.The house was quiet around him. It was a hollow, echoing sort of quiet. The place was empty, but not in a dramatic way, just structurally excessive. It was simply too big for one person to inhabit. His grandparents had left it to him when they passed, a gift that felt more like a responsibility he wasn't quite ready to handle. It wasn’t a manor, not really, but it was substantial, built in an era when families stayed together under one roof.
Yamada never used the master bedroom. It felt wrong to claim it, like he was playing dress-up in his grandfather’s clothes. Instead, he stayed in the smaller room on the second floor, a space that felt manageable. Less square footage meant less space to think about, less area to keep clean, less room for the silence to expand. The rest of the house still looked exactly like it had a decade ago. The furniture was dark and heavy, the decorations were dusty porcelain and faded scrolls, and the walls were lined with old framed photos of people he barely remembered. He hadn’t added a single thing of his own. No posters, no new rugs, no personal touches. He just lived around the existing history of the house. That was enough for him.He stood up, his joints popping, and walked down the stairs. He moved slowly, one hand brushing the polished wood of the railing, each step deliberate as if he were trying not to wake the house itself. The living room opened up in front of him: a high ceiling that disappeared into shadows, a wide expanse of floor, and a couch that didn’t look like it had been sat on in years. The walls were lined with trinkets and ornaments that held no meaning for him.
He stopped in the middle of the room and looked around. She was coming here. The realization hit him with a fresh wave of anxiety. Why did he say yes? He couldn't remember the logic of the moment, only the feeling of her hand in his. The thought came and went, unanswered. He began to pace. He walked around the room, strutting slowly at first, then faster, trying to find a sense of direction, trying to convince himself he wasn't panicking.He ended up in the kitchen. He opened the fridge and stared into the cold, pale light. Half a carton of milk, some wilting greens, a jar of pickles. He wasn't hungry. He closed it. He walked back to the living room. He sat down on the edge of the stiff couch. He stood up immediately. He walked around once more, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. Finally, he muttered to the empty air, “A movie…”
Yamada had never used it. Not once. Standing there in the dim light, he realized he had no idea how to even turn the projector on. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. Not really.
The realization was paralyzing. He wasn't supposed to "do" anything. He was just supposed to be. And for Yamada, being was the hardest part of any day.Back upstairs, he checked the clock on the microwave. 1:32 PM. It was far too early. He didn’t know what to do with the remaining time, so he opted for his default state: doing nothing at all. He sat at the very edge of the couch, his back straight, staring at a knot in the floorboards. He thought about last night. He thought about the way the cigarette smoke had curled in the damp alleyway behind the Maki-modoshi Mart, turning grey and blue under the neon lights. He thought about the way her tired eyes had looked at him, not with judgment, but with a weary kind of recognition.He thought about the way she had reached out. The way her hand had felt in his, cold, a little rough, but steady. Why did she do that? What could she possibly see in a man who was essentially a human-shaped void? He had no idea. Maybe she saw the same thing he had seen when he looked at her: another person trapped in the same meaningless, repetitive cycle. Someone who was tired of the noise. Someone he might actually understand, maybe for the first time in his twenty-eight years.
The doorbell rang.The sound was like a gunshot in the silent house. He froze, his heart hammering against his ribs. He waited a beat, then another, before walking slowly to the door. When he pulled it open, she was standing there.
Miyumatsu Owari.She was about twenty-six, though there was a weight to her posture that made her seem older, perhaps even older than his twenty-eight. She looked sleepless. There were dark circles under her eyes that no amount of makeup could have hidden, though she hadn't bothered to try. She looked tired in a way that felt contagious, a heavy, atmospheric exhaustion that seemed to follow her like a shadow. The faint, sharp scent of tobacco clung to her clothes. She was wearing a simple black T-shirt and gray casual pants, nothing that drew attention, nothing that screamed "date." Yet, something about her presence made him pause. She occupied the space in a way that felt intentional.She spoke first. “Kyumoto.”
Her voice was soft, light from smoke and lack of use, but it was firm in its own way.“Owari,” he replied.They stood there on the threshold in a long, heavy silence. Neither of them knew how to bridge the gap between the alleyway and the front door. Neither knew what the next script-line was supposed to be.“Did you… have something in mind?” he finally asked.The words felt clunky. He was testing them as they left his mouth, half-expecting them to shatter on the floor. Owari didn’t answer immediately. She had a camera hanging around her neck, a sturdy, well-worn SLR. She raised it to her face, almost instinctively, then seemed to catch herself. She lowered it shyly, her fingers lingering on the lens.
“I like taking photos,” she said softly, her voice trailing off as if she were apologizing for having a hobby.He nodded, relieved that there was a physical object involved in the day. “There’s a forest behind the house,” he said, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder. “A path leads to a hot spring. A natural one. We could go there.”She glanced past him, her eyes tracing the line of the dark trees that bordered the property. She nodded slowly. “…Okay.”Yamada didn’t feel the need to change his appearance. He was already wearing a plain shirt. He pulled on a pair of dark sweatpants and grabbed a navy trenchcoat from the hook by the door. In his mind, that was a sufficient transformation.
They stepped out into the yard. The grass had grown taller than he realized, thick and unruly, brushing against their shins as they walked. It was uneven, with patches of clover and wild weeds colonizing the lawn his grandfather used to keep pristine. Owari looked down at her feet.“…My pants are going to get dirty,” she noted.Yamada glanced at the grass, then back at her. “We can wash them later.”She let out a breath, a short, sharp exhale that wasn't quite a laugh, but was the closest thing to it he’d heard all day.As they moved deeper into the forest, the sounds of the town, the distant hum of tires and the faint whistle of the train, began to fade. They were replaced by the rhythmic crunch of footsteps on dry needles, the rustling of leaves in the upper canopy, and the lonely call of birds hidden in the brush. Owari stopped at the edge of the trailhead. She raised her camera and snapped a few pictures of the way the light filtered through the branches.
The sound of the shutter was crisp and mechanical. She moved her position, crouching slightly to get a different angle on a gnarled root. She raised the camera again, her finger hovering over the button.
“Save some for later,” he said quietly.She froze. Her cheeks tinged a faint pink, and she lowered the device. “…Right.”He didn't notice her embarrassment. He was already looking up the trail.The path sloped upward, winding slowly through a thickening stand of Japanese larches. Neither of them spoke much as they climbed. The silence between them didn't feel forced or pressured; it didn't feel like the "work" Yamada usually associated with other people. It felt like a shared understanding, something they had both been waiting for, perhaps for years, without knowing how to ask for it.At the crest of the hill, the hot spring appeared. It wasn't a developed resort, just a natural pool where the earth’s heat bled through the rock. Steam rose in thick, ghostly plumes into the cold mountain air. Narrow streams of mineral-rich water trickled down the mossy stones, feeding into the pool. Massive larches stood like sentinels around the water, their needles turning gold in the afternoon light.
Owari stopped dead in her tracks. Her expression, usually so guarded and tired, softened. A flicker of genuine curiosity, maybe even a trace of happiness, crossed her face.Click. Click. Click.
She took seventeen photos in rapid succession, moving around the perimeter of the pool, capturing the steam, the moss, and the way the water rippled. Finally, she lowered the camera, her chest heaving slightly from the hike.
“Owari,” he said quietly.
She turned to look at him, the camera still clutched in her hands.
“Why did you ask me out?” His voice was flat, devoid of accusation, but it carried the weight of a decade’s worth of confusion. “We don’t know each other. We’re strangers.”
She looked down at her shoes, scuffing a patch of dirt. Then she looked back up, her gaze steady despite the exhaustion behind it.
“I’ve been alone for a long time, Kyumoto-san. I wake up, I go to work at the office, I go home, I sleep. It’s the same thing over and over. Every day is a carbon copy of the one before it. Sometimes… sometimes I don’t even want to wake up because I already know exactly what the day is going to feel like.”
She paused, taking a breath of the sulfur-scented air.
“I saw you yesterday in the convenience store. I watched you for a minute before you saw me. And I just knew. You’re like me. You’re tired of the same things. Maybe… maybe if two people are like that, they don't have to be alone in it.”
Her words were small, but they landed like heavy stones in his chest, creating ripples he wasn't prepared for. He looked away, staring at the steaming water, then slowly began to unlace his shoes.
“…Take yours off,” he said.
She blinked, confused by the sudden change in subject. “…What?”
“Sit,” he added, gesturing to a flat, smooth rock at the edge of the spring. “Just our feet. The water is good.”
Her face went bright red. “…Oh.”
They sat down side by side on the cold stone, the contrast of the mountain air making the water feel incredibly hot as they dipped their toes in. A few yellow petals from a nearby flowering bush floated past them, drifting lazily on the surface before being carried down the small outlet stream. They didn't talk. They just sat there, the heat from the spring seeped into their bones, loosening the tension they both carried. They listened to the water and watched the steam rise.
After a long while, Yamada spoke, his voice barely a whisper. “I’m not an interesting person, Owari. I’m not rich, I’m not smart, I’m not funny. I don’t even… I don’t even know what someone would want from me. I feel like a house with all the lights turned off.”
She looked at him then. She wasn't smiling, but her expression was calm, almost gentle. “I told you. I don’t need you to be a show. I just want someone who understands what it's like to be in the dark.”
He shifted slightly, his shoulder brushing against hers. He glanced at her, and found she was already looking at him. She was waiting. Not for a punchline or a deep revelation, but just waiting for him to exist there, with her. The silence stretched out, becoming something comfortable, yet with a sharp edge of something he couldn't name. Maybe hope, or maybe just the fear of hope.
Suddenly, a sharp, electronic chirping broke the peace. Her phone alarm was going off.
She jumped, nearly slipping off the rock. She stood up quickly, her face flushed with embarrassment. “I… I have to go. I have the evening shift. I forgot I set that.”
The spell was broken. They dried their feet with their socks, an awkward, messy process, and pulled their shoes back on. They walked back down the mountain much faster than they had climbed it, almost jogging in parts to make up for the time. The grass and leaves blurred past them, the cold air stinging their cheeks. Yamada felt a strange tightening in his chest, a realization that the day was ending just as he was beginning to settle into it.
At the bottom of the trail, the house came back into view, looking just as lonely as when he’d left it. She stopped near her car, a nondescript silver sedan parked in the gravel. She turned toward him, her hand fumbling in her pocket. She pulled out a small, folded piece of paper and pressed it into his hand.
“Thanks,” she muttered. She looked at the ground, her face still flushed. “For today. It was… it was okay.”
Then she got into the car, the engine turned over with a rough cough, and she drove off, leaving a small cloud of dust hanging in the air.
Yamada stood in the driveway until the sound of her car had completely vanished. He looked down at the paper. He unfolded it slowly, careful not to tear the edges. The paper was soft, as if she’d been carrying it around all day. The handwriting was small, cramped, but very clear.
Thanks for spending the day with me, let’s do this again soon…
—M.O.
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