Because of You

Miyumatsu Owari stared at the notification on her phone as she stepped into her apartment. She had just finished taking off her shoes when the vibration startled her. Setting her bag beside the kitchen counter, she unlocked the screen and opened the message from Yamada Kyumoto.

"I'm outside."

For a moment, she genuinely wondered if she had misread it. Her eyes drifted toward the front door before returning to the screen. Nobody ever came to see her. Her parents lived hours away, most of her university friends had disappeared into their own lives, and her coworkers rarely contacted her unless it was related to work. Usually, when her phone buzzed, it was an email, a schedule update, or her younger brother sending her something ridiculous in the middle of the night. But this was different. Before she could convince herself to wait, she crossed the apartment and unlocked the door.

Yamada Kyumoto stood in the hallway with a convenience store bag hanging from one hand. His navy blue trench coat was damp from the rain, and his dark hair looked slightly messier than usual. More than anything else, he looked exhausted. Not the kind of tiredness that disappeared after a good night's sleep, but the kind that settled into a person's posture and became part of them.bFor several seconds neither of them spoke. "...Hello," Owari said.

"Hello."

She studied him for another moment. "...Why’d you come over all of a sudden?"Yamada looked genuinely caught off guard by the question. His eyes drifted upward as he searched for an answer. "I don't know."A laugh escaped her before she could stop it. The sound surprised both of them.Owari quickly covered her mouth while Yamada looked even more confused than before. "What?"

"Nothing."

"You laughed."

"I know."

"Why?"

She shook her head. "I don't know." Now it was Yamada's turn to stare. For some reason, that only made her laugh harder. The exhaustion on his face remained, but she caught the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth before it disappeared. "Are you going to stand out here all night?" she asked. "No."
"Then come inside." Yamada stepped into the apartment and immediately removed his shoes. Without thinking, he lined them up neatly against the wall. Owari found herself watching. Three months ago she never would have noticed something like that. Now she knew he always did it. Just like she knew he folded plastic bags instead of throwing them away. She knew he checked expiration dates before buying anything. And she knew he washed dishes while waiting for water to boil. It was always the tiny habits, little details, the kinds of things most people overlooked, that she had found herself taking interest in. Yamada's eyes slowly wandered around the apartment. 

The couch. 

The kitchen. 

The sink.

Checking.

Owari immediately knew what he was looking for. His gaze eventually landed on the drying rack beside the sink where the cleaned container from earlier sat drying."You ate dinner already?"

"I did."

"Good."

That was it.

Owari folded her arms. 

"That's all?"

Yamada blinked. "What?"

"You made me food."

"Yeah."

"The you came all the way over here."

"Yeah."

"You made your way halfway across town just to make sure I ate?"

"Yeah?" Kyumoto took two steps back.

His expression somehow became even more confused. She stared at him. He stared back. Eventually Owari sighed and shook her head. "You're weird."

"Probably."

The answer came so quickly she couldn't even argue. Her eyes drifted toward the convenience store bag hanging from his hand. "What's in there?"

"Drinks."

"What kind?"

"I don't know."

"You bought them, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Then how do you not know?"

Yamada opened the bag. Owari immediately kept herself from laughing. There had to be eight different drinks inside. Green tea, milk tea, iced coffee, sports drinks, orange juice, water, sparkling water, even an energy drink. "You bought half the store's drink selection." She said as her laughing became harder to contain. "I didn't know what you'd want." "So your solution was buying everything?" He shrugged, "That's ridiculous."

"I know."

"No, I don't think you do."

He actually took a moment to think about it. "...Maybe." A few minutes later they settled onto the couch. Rain tapped softly against the windows while passing headlights occasionally swept pale streaks of light across the room. Neither of them turned on the television. Neither of them reached for their phones. They simply sat there. The silence wasn't awkward. With each other, silence felt natural. Like sitting beside someone on a train and watching the scenery pass by without feeling the need to speak. Eventually Owari picked up one of the drinks and took a sip. She's never been in this situation before, so she didn't know what to say. To her, this was a situation that only characters from her favorite manga found themselves in.

"How was work?"

"The same."

"Busy?"

"No."

"Does anything interesting happen?" Kyumoto thought for a second before cracking a small smile. "A guy bought twelve instant curries." She turned toward him. 

"Twelve?"

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

"He left."

"...That's the entire story?"

"That's the entire story."

Owari laughed again. Kyumoto looked mildly offended. "You asked." "I thought there would be more."

"There wasn't." She shook her head. "You're terrible at telling stories."

"I know."

The conversation should have ended there.Instead it kept going. Somehow it always did. That was one of the things Owari had started noticing about him. Yamada wasn't particularly funny. He wasn't charismatic. He wasn't exciting. Half the time he looked like he'd rather be asleep than participating in whatever conversation was happening. Yet she never got tired of talking to him.Even when neither of them had anything important to say. Especially then. "What did you do before we met?" she asked. Yamada looked over. "What do you mean?"

"For fun."

"I worked."

"No."

She pointed at him. "Besides work, i slept."
"Besides sleeping." Yamada frowned and actually thought about it. The silence stretched between them. 

Five seconds.

Ten.

Fifteen.

Eventually he shrugged. "I don't know." The answer wasn't funny. That was what made it sad. Owari lowered her eyes toward her drink. She understood immediately. Because she didn't really know either. "When I was younger, I thought I'd have everything figured out by now." Yamada remained quiet. She appreciated that about him. Most people immediately jumped in with advice. They treated every problem like something that needed fixing. Yamada never did. He simply listened."I thought becoming an adult would make me happy."

"It doesn't."

The answer came so quickly she almost laughed.

"No."

"It doesn't."

Rain continued tapping against the windows. Outside, someone splashed through a puddle. Somewhere in the distance, a train rolled past. The city kept moving while they sat inside a small apartment doing absolutely nothing.And somehow neither of them wanted to be anywhere else. "I thought becoming a lawyer would make me happy," Owari admitted quietly. "You told me."

"I remember."

"I thought helping people would make me happy too."

"Did it?"

She thought about it. "No." The word felt heavier than she expected. For a while she stared out the window. Reflections from the city lights shimmered across the rain soaked glass. "I kept waiting for life to start." Yamada looked at her. "I thought graduation would fix everything." Nothing."I thought getting a job would fix everything." Nothing. "I thought getting promoted would fix everything." Still nothing. The apartment fell quiet again.This time neither of them rushed to break the silence. Owari leaned back into the couch. When had she become this comfortable around him? She wasn't sure.Maybe it happened during their first walk through the woods behind his house.Maybe it happened when he cleaned her apartment without being asked. Maybe it happened when she realized he understood loneliness better than anyone she'd ever met. Or maybe it had happened so gradually that she never noticed. Her eyes drifted toward him.

Yamada was staring out the window. The reflection in the glass showed his tired face looking back at him. Dark circles under his eyes. Slightly messy hair. The expression of someone who had spent years moving through life on autopilot. He wasn't particularly handsome. Not in the way actors or models were. But there was something comforting about him. Something steady. Like no matter how bad things got, he'd still show up carrying a convenience store bag full of drinks because he couldn't decide which one you'd want. The thought made her smile. Yamada noticed immediately. "What?"

"Nothing."

"You're smiling again."

"I know."

"Why?"

Owari looked down at her drink. "Nothing." Yamada accepted that surprisingly easily. Outside, the rain continued to fall against the windows. Inside, neither of them noticed how much time had passed. The steady rhythm of the storm seemed to seal the room off from the rest of Tokyo, wrapping the small apartment in a layer of absolute stillness. The ambient temperature inside had begun to drop, a subtle draft creeping in from the balcony door. Owari shifted her weight on the couch, pulling her knees up to her chest and tugging the hem of her oversized sweater down over her ankles. She watched Yamada out of the corner of her eye. He hadn't changed his position at all. He sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his hands loosely clasped together, staring intently at the plastic bag of drinks resting on the low coffee table between them.

"Aren't you cold?" she asked, her voice dropping to a softer register to avoid shattering the quiet. Yamada blinked, his focus slowly shifting from the assortment of cans and bottles to his own damp coat. "A little." "Take your coat off then. It's soaking wet. You're just going to make yourself miserable." He looked down at the navy fabric as if he hadn't realized he was still wearing it. "Right." With slow, deliberate movements, he unbuttoned the coat, slipped his arms out of the sleeves, and folded it carefully. Even in his exhausted state, the instinctual neatness took over. He looked around for a place to put it, his eyes settling on the back of a wooden chair near the kitchen counter. He stood up, draped the damp coat evenly over the wood, and then stood there for a moment, looking uncertain about whether he was allowed to sit back down.

Underneath the coat, he wore a simple charcoal grey sweater that looked a bit loose on his shoulders. Without the heavy outerwear, he seemed smaller, less like an immovable fixture and more like a person who was genuinely running on the absolute last remnants of his energy reserve. "Sit," Owari said, tapping the cushion beside her. "I'm not going to bite you." Yamada sat down again, returning exactly to his previous posture. "You're like a statue sometimes," she murmured, reaching for one of the cans he had brought. It was a hot can of black coffee, though by now it had cooled down to a lukewarm temperature. She popped the tab, the sharp hiss sounding incredibly loud in the confined space. "Why did you buy an energy drink? Do you plan on staying up all night?"

"I told you," he said, his voice flat but not unkind. "I didn't think about it. I just reached for whatever was on the shelves. The worker looked at me like I was insane.""Because you were," she pointed out, taking a small sip. The bitterness hit her tongue, a stark contrast to the soft mood of the room. "Eight drinks, Yamada. If I drank all of these, I wouldn't sleep until next Tuesday."
"You don't have to drink them all tonight."
"Good, because I value my heart rate going steady." She set the can back down. "Did you eat anything yourself?" He didn't answer right away. He just stared at the table. "Yamada." "I had a sandwich," he murmured. "When?"

"This morning."

Owari let out a long, slow breath, her shoulders dropping. She looked at the kitchen cabinet where she kept a few emergency foods, mostly instant ramen and rice crackers. "You're a hypocrite, you know that? You practically cross-examined me through text messages to ensure I finished the food you left, but you haven't eaten a real meal since the sun was up." "I wasn't hungry." "That's not how your body works." She swung her legs off the couch and stood up. "Stay there." "Owari, it's fine, "

"It's not fine," she interrupted, already walking toward the small kitchen alcove. "If you faint in my apartment, I'm going to have to drag your body out to the hallway, and as I mentioned before, I don't have the muscle mass for that." She opened the refrigerator. There wasn't much inside, just some miso paste, half an onion wrapped in plastic, a carton of eggs, and a small container of leftover white rice from yesterday. It wasn't an impressive inventory, but it would have to do. She turned on the small stove, the blue flame flickering to life and casting a warm glow across the countertops. Yamada watched her from the couch. He didn't offer to help, which she appreciated, because she knew he was too tired to actually be useful. Instead, he just kept his eyes on her, tracking her movements as she cracked an egg into a small pan and began frying it.

The sound of sizzling oil filled the room, blending with the sound of the rain outside. It was a mundane, domestic noise, the kind that belonged in a completely different life than the one she currently lived. For years, her apartment had been nothing more than a box where she slept between shifts at the firm. She didn't cook complex meals; she didn't host guests; she didn't decoration the walls. It was a functional space, devoid of any real warmth. Yet, with Yamada sitting on her couch and the smell of fried egg filling the air, the box felt slightly less empty. She scooped the rice into a bowl, topped it with the egg, poured a splash of soy sauce over the top, and carried it back to the living room along with a pair of chopsticks. She placed it directly in front of him.

"Eat," she commanded gently. Yamada looked at the bowl. The steam rose from the white grains, carrying the salty aroma of the soy sauce. He picked up the chopsticks, separated them with a soft clack, and took a small mouthful. "How is it?" she asked, leaning back against the armrest of the couch, watching him.

"It's rice and egg," he said. "Wow. Tremendous review. I'll be sure to tell the chef." "It's good," he corrected himself, taking another bite, this one slightly larger than the first. "Thank you." They lapsed back into silence, but this time it was filled with the rhythmic sound of his chopsticks hitting the ceramic bowl. Owari found herself looking at his hands. They were rough, with short-trimmed nails and a small scar across the knuckle of his left index finger. She wondered where he had gotten that scar. There were so many things she didn't know about him, so many chapters of his life that had occurred long before he ever walked into her world. When he was finished, he set the empty bowl down and placed the chopsticks neatly across the rim, perfectly parallel.

"Better?" she asked. "Yeah." He leaned back against the cushions, his posture relaxing by a fraction of an inch. "My brain was starting to feel heavy." "That's called starvation, Yamada." "Probably." She reached down, took the empty bowl, and set it on the floor beside the coffee table, deciding she would wash it later. "You know, when you sent that text, I thought something might have happened. My mind immediately went to the worst-case scenario. I thought you were quitting your job, or moving away, or that someone had died." Yamada turned his head to look at her, his dark eyes reflecting the dim light of the room. "Why would you think that?" "Because people don't just show up without a reason," she said simply. "Not in the city. Everyone needs an appointment. Everyone needs a justification for taking up someone else's time. If you don't have a specific purpose, you're considered a nuisance."

"Am I a nuisance?" The question was asked without any self-pity or defensiveness. He genuinely wanted to know. Owari looked at him for a long time. The rain outside seemed to intensify, heavy drops drumming against the glass like a frantic heartbeat. "No," she said softly. "You're not a nuisance. But you are weird." "I've been told that before." "By who?" "My boss. The regulars at the convenience store. My mother." He listed them off like items on a grocery receipt. "They say I don't look at people correctly." "What does that mean?" "I don't know," he said, staring back at the window. "I think I look at them just fine. I see them. I see when they're tired. I see when they're angry. I just don't always know what I'm supposed to say to fix it, so I don't say anything." "Sometimes not saying anything is better," Owari said. She leaned her head back against the wall, looking up at the plain white ceiling. "In my line of work, everyone talks constantly. The senior partners talk to hear their own voices. 

The clients talk because they're terrified of what will happen if they stop. 

The prosecutors talk to trap you. It's just an endless mountain of words, words, words. Half the time, none of it means anything. It's just noise designed to wear the other side down." She tilted her head toward him. "When I'm around you, the noise stops. It's like someone turned the volume down on the whole world." Yamada didn't respond immediately. He seemed to process her words, chewing on them the way he had chewed on the rice. "Is that a good thing?" "It's the best thing," she said. A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the apartment, casting sharp, stark shadows across the furniture for a fraction of a second before plunging them back into the dim twilight. A few moments later, the thunder rolled in, a deep, low rumble that shook the window panes slightly. Owari didn't flinch. She had always liked storms. They felt honest. Unlike the complicated social structures of the city, a storm didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was. It was just water and electricity, violent and indifferent. "You aren't scared of thunder?" Yamada asked. "No. Are you?" "No. But my sister used to hide under the kitchen table whenever it started."

Owari's interest piqued. "You have a sister?" "Yeah." "You never mentioned her."

"You never asked." She rolled her eyes. "That's not how conversations work, Yamada. You're allowed to volunteer information about your life. You don't have to wait for a formal subpoena." He shifted slightly, his shoulder brushing against hers. The contact was warm, a sharp contrast to the damp chill that still lingered in the air. "She lives in Nagano now. She's married. She has a son." "Are you close with her?" "We talk on New Year's," he said. "Sometimes she sends me pictures of the kid. He looks like her. Loud. Heavy-footed." "Do you miss her?" Yamada looked at his hands again. "I think I miss the way things were when we were kids. 

Everything was smaller then. The world didn't feel so wide. You knew exactly where the edges of your life were. You knew where the yard ended and where the street began. Now... everything just keeps going. There are too many streets. Too many people."

Owari felt a strange ache in her chest at his words. It was exactly how she felt every morning when she stepped onto the crowded train platform at Shinjuku Station, surrounded by thousands of bodies, yet completely, utterly untethered. "Why did you choose Tokyo?" she asked. "I didn't choose it," he said. "I just followed the tracks. I got a job here after high school. Then that job ended, and I got another one. Eventually, I forgot how to leave." "That's a terrible reason to stay somewhere."

"What about you?" he countered, turning the question back on her. "Why are you here?" "Because this is where the law firms are," she said, though the words sounded hollow even to her own ears. "This is where you go if you want to be successful. If you want to prove that you didn't waste four years of your life studying until your eyes bled."

"Are you successful?"

The question was sharp, slicing through her professional armor with effortless precision. Anyone else asking that would have been trying to insult her or measure her worth. But Yamada asked it with the simple curiosity of a child asking why the sky was blue. She looked away from him, focusing on the small green light of the refrigerator's power indicator across the room. "No," she whispered. "I'm just tired."

The confession was so simple, so devoid of drama, that it brought a strange sense of relief. They were just two tired people sitting in a small room in the middle of a massive city, admitting to each other that they didn't know what they were doing. There was no need to perform, no need to pretend that everything was under control.

Owari closed her eyes. The sound of the rain was starting to make her drowsy. The warmth from the bowl of rice, the ambient heat of the stove, and Yamada's presence beside her were creating a heavy, comfortable weight in her limbs.
"You should probably go home before the trains stop running," she murmured, though she didn't really want him to leave.Yamada checked his watch. It was a cheap digital thing with a scratched plastic face. "The last train left ten minutes ago."She opened her eyes, turning to look at him in surprise. "What? Why didn't you say anything?" "You didn't ask." "Yamada!" She threw her hands up in exhaustion. "Now what are you going to do? You can't walk back to your place in this weather. It's miles away."

"Any chance I can sleep here?" he said, gesturing to the floor or the couch. She stared at him, trying to find any hint of hidden intent in his face, but there was none. He was just trying to find a solution to a problem he had created through his lack of urgency. "You are unbelievable," she muttered, though there was no real anger in her voice. "You're going to give me a headache." "I have aspirin in the bag," he offered seriously. She couldn't help it; she started laughing again. It was a tired, breathless sound that vibrated through her whole body. "Of course you do. Of course you bought aspirin along with eight different types of tea." She stood up and walked over to her small closet, pulling out a spare futon mattress and a thick woolen blanket. She dragged them over to the space between the couch and the television, spreading the mattress out on the tatami mats. "You can sleep here," she said, tossing a pillow onto the top. "It's not a luxury hotel, but it's better than the floor."

Yamada stood up, looked at the makeshift bed, and then looked at her. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. You're the one who missed the train." She walked back to her bedroom door, stopping with her hand on the frame. She looked back at him. He was already sitting down on the edge of the futon, pulling the blanket over his legs.

"Goodnight, Yamada," she said.

"Goodnight, Owari." She closed her bedroom door, leaving it cracked open just a tiny fraction so the light from the living room window could drift in. She climbed into her own bed, pulling her covers up to her chin. Through the thin wall, she could hear the faint sound of him shifting on the futon, the rustle of the wool blanket, and then, finally, nothing but the steady, unchanging sound of the rain against the glass.

For the first time in months, her mind didn't race with tomorrow's schedule or the cases she had to prepare for. The silence in the apartment was no longer empty; it was occupied. And as she drifted off to sleep, she felt a strange, unfamiliar sense of safety, knowing that just a few feet away, someone was there, keeping watch over the quiet.
                    

                                …

When Owari woke up, the rain had stopped, replaced by the pale, watery light of an early morning sun filtering through the blinds. The apartment was completely still. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, her mind momentarily disoriented by the lack of her usual blaring alarm. It was Saturday. She didn't have to be at the office until noon, if at all. Slipping out of bed, she opened her door quietly, expecting to see Yamada still asleep on the floor. The futon was empty. Not only was it empty, but it had been folded precisely into a neat square and stacked against the closet door. The pillow was placed perfectly on top. She walked into the main room, her eyes scanning the small space. On the kitchen counter, the bowl and chopsticks she had used last night were gone from the floor. She stepped closer and saw them sitting in the drying rack, sparkling clean and completely dry. Beside them, the eight convenience store drinks were lined up in a perfect, orderly row by type, teas on the left, coffees in the middle, juices on the right.At the very end of the row, sitting under the energy drink, was a small square of paper. She picked it up. Written in neat, blocky handwriting that looked like it belonged to a middle school student was a short note:The rain stopped. I went to work. Leftover drinks are yours. Thank you for the rice.Owari held the paper in her hand for a long time, looking at the sharp lines of his penmanship. A faint smile touched her lips, the same smile she had tried to hide from him the night before. 

She walked over to the window and pushed it open, letting the crisp, rain-washed air fill the apartment. The city below was already waking up, the distant hum of traffic, the chirp of a few birds, the sound of a neighbor opening their balcony door. It was the same world she had lived in yesterday, full of the same pressures and the same endless noise. But as she reached into the row of drinks and picked up the can of milk tea, still slightly cool from the morning air, she realized the noise didn't sound quite as loud as it used to.

She popped the tab, took a sip, and looked out over the rooftops, wondering if he was currently standing at his convenience store counter, watching someone buy twelve curries, and waiting for the next time he could show up at her door without a single thing to say. The rest of the morning passed in a slow, unhurried haze that Owari hadn't experienced in years. Normally, even on her days off, her mind was a battlefield of micro-tasks. She would calculate the exact amount of time it took to do laundry versus the amount of time she should spend reviewing case files, creating a strange, self-imposed prison out of her own weekend hours.
Today, she did none of that. She sat at her small kitchen table, the half-empty can of milk tea resting near her hand, and simply looked at the space around her. The apartment felt different. It was an abstract sensation, hard to pin down with logic, but the air felt less heavy. 

The walls didn't seem quite as close together. Her phone buzzed on the counter. She didn't jump this time. She picked it up deliberately, half-expecting another brief message from Yamada, perhaps something practical about a forgotten item or a train delay. Instead, it was a group chat notification from her old university law circle. Someone was getting married, a girl named Satoko whom she hadn't spoken to in nearly three years. The chat was already flooded with exclamation points, stickers of cartoon characters crying tears of joy, and a frantic coordination of dates for a celebratory dinner.

“Everyone has to come! It’s been too long!” the latest message read. Owari scrolled through the list of names. Each one brought back a faint, ghostly memory of lecture halls, cheap izakaya dinners, and late-night study sessions fueled by bad vending machine coffee. Back then, they had all been bound together by a shared terror of the bar exam and a collective ambition that felt entirely invincible.

Now, looking at their profile pictures, she saw professionals. One was working for a major corporate firm in Osaka; another had moved into political consulting; Satoko was marrying a man who worked in international trade. They all looked polished. They all looked like they had successfully converted their youthful ambition into concrete, high-value lives. She began typing a response: Congratulations! I’ll check my schedule and-

She stopped. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. A year ago, she would have sent the message instantly, terrified of being left out, terrified of appearing unsuccessful or stagnant compared to her peers. She would have gone to the dinner, spent two hours laughing at jokes she didn't find funny, drank too much white wine, and returned home feeling ten times more isolated than before she left. She deleted the text. Instead, she typed: Congratulations, Satoko! I won't be able to make the dinner due to work commitments, but I wish you both the absolute best. She hit send anyway, locked the screen, and placed the phone face down on the table. It was a small act of rebellion, a minor boundary drawn in the sand, but it felt remarkably good. She didn't want to spend her Saturday night performing the role of "Miyumatsu Owari, Rising Legal Professional." She just wanted to be a person who lived in an apartment and drank tea. She looked back at the note Yamada had left. The blocky handwriting was so distinct. It lacked any of the elegant, sweeping strokes that people usually cultivated to make themselves look educated or refined. It was just functional.

With a sudden burst of purpose, she stood up and walked over to her bookshelf. Hidden behind a row of thick, leather-bound commentaries on civil procedure was an old wooden box where she kept things that didn't have a specific place, old train tickets, a postcard from her brother when he went to Okinawa, a spare key to her parents' house. She opened the box, placed Yamada’s note inside, right on top of the postcard, and closed the lid.

The afternoon arrived with a shift in the weather. The grey clouds parted completely, revealing a brilliant, sharp blue sky that seemed to wash the remaining grime off the city streets. Owari decided to go out. Not to buy groceries, and not to go to the office, but simply to walk. She didn't take her usual route toward the station. Instead, she walked in the opposite direction, toward a small, residential neighborhood full of narrow alleys and old, two-story houses that had somehow survived the post-war construction boom. The air smelled of wet asphalt and blooming hydrangeas. It was a quiet neighborhood. Occasionally, an elderly woman would pass her, pushing a silver shopping cart, or a kid on a bicycle would rattle past, his bells ringing sharply in the afternoon air.

As she walked, she found herself looking at the small details of the houses, the way some people grew miniature bonsai trees on their windowsills, the specific color of the curtains behind the glass, the small ceramic tanuki statues guarding the front steps. She realized she was looking at the world the way Yamada looked at things. Not as a system to be analyzed or a problem to be solved, but simply as a collection of small, coexisting realities. A person lived there. A person grew those plants. A person chose that specific shade of blue for their door. Eventually, her feet led her toward a small public park, little more than a patch of green grass, a pair of swings, and a large, spreading ginkgo tree that cast a wide shadow over a wooden bench.

She sat down on the bench, leaning her head back against the wood. A few crows were gathered near the sandbox, squawking at each other over a discarded piece of bread. "You're thinking too much again." The voice didn't come from behind her, nor did it come from the side. It was just a memory, an echo of something Yamada had said to her during their walk in the woods three months ago.At the time, she had been spiraling over a minor mistake she had made on a filing, a misplaced comma that didn't actually affect the legality of the document but had earned her a sharp reprimand from a senior associate. She had spent the entire afternoon talking herself into a state of near-panic, convinced that her career was effectively over before it had even begun.

Yamada had walked beside her through the trees, his hands buried deep in his pockets, listening to her rant for forty minutes without saying a single word. When she finally ran out of breath and asked him why he wasn't saying anything to comfort her, he stopped, looked up at a large crow perched on a branch above them, and said, "The bird doesn't care about the comma. Neither do I. The associate only cares because he has nothing else to do with his afternoon. You're thinking too much again." It had been an incredibly frustrating response at the moment. She had wanted validation; she had wanted a detailed legal argument about why the associate was wrong. But later, after the anger had faded, she realized he had given her something much better than an argument. He had given her perspective. He had shown her that the world outside the office didn't operate on the same rules as the world inside it.

Sitting on the park bench now, she watched the crows in the sandbox. They were loud and chaotic, completely indifferent to the fact that they were surrounded by millions of dollars of prime Tokyo real estate. They were just birds looking for breakfast.She pulled her phone out of her pocket.She opened the message thread with Yamada. The last text from him was still the one from last night: “I’m outside.” She began to type. I went for a walk. I saw some crows. They were fighting over bread. She looked at the text. It was completely pointless. It contained no useful information, no question, no greeting. It was exactly the kind of message she used to hate receiving from people because it required an effort to sustain a conversation that had no clear trajectory. 

She hit send anyway. She put the phone back in her pocket and stood up, continuing her walk through the quiet streets. She didn't expect a quick reply. Yamada was likely at work, standing behind the counter, scanning bar codes, or stocking shelves in the back room where the reception was terrible.

By the time she returned to her apartment, the sun was beginning to set, painting the western sky in streaks of deep orange and purple. The city lights were flickering on one by one, a massive grid of stars spreading out toward the horizon. She unlocked her door, stepped into the entryway, and took off her shoes. She lined them up neatly against the wall. She caught herself doing it and paused, staring down at the leather flats sitting perfectly parallel to each other, exactly the way Yamada had lined up his shoes the night before. She let out a soft laugh, a real one that warmed the empty hallway. "Great," she muttered to her empty apartment. "It's contagious." She walked into the kitchen, intending to make herself a cup of tea from one of the boxes Yamada had left behind. As she reached for the kettle, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out. It was a picture. The image was slightly blurry, taken with a cheap phone camera that struggled with low light. It showed a small, grey pigeon sitting on top of a plastic trash can outside the convenience store. The pigeon had a small piece of a fried chicken wrapper caught around its foot, looking thoroughly annoyed by its own predicament. Beneath the picture, there was a single line of text from Yamada: 

This one is winning.

Owari stood by her stove, the phone held in her hand, the blue flame of the kettle flickering in the reflection of her eyes. The text wasn't a profound declaration. It wasn't an apology for leaving early, and it wasn't a question about her day. It was just a piece of his world, sent across the city to connect with a piece of hers. She set the phone down next to the drying rack where his clean bowl sat, filled the kettle with water, and waited for it to boil. As the sound of the heating water filled the kitchen, she found herself looking out the window at the distant trains moving across the tracks in the twilight. They were still moving. The city was still rushing. But inside the apartment, the silence remained perfectly, completely whole. Like no matter how bad things got, he'd still show up carrying a convenience store bag full of drinks because he couldn't decide which one you'd want.

The thought made her smile. She was thinking about what happened yesterday with Yamada. Yamada had said something that was funny but she didn't understand why. Yamada caught on and followed up.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You're smiling again."

"I know."

"Why?"

Owari looked down at her drink.

Because of you.

The answer almost slipped out.Instead she shook her head.

"Nothing."

She smiled again just at the thought. Outside, the rain picked back up again and begin to fall against the windows. Inside, even though they were in different places, neither of them noticed how much time had passed.