Come Find Me

Here's what happened:

I was at my cubby again.

I was thinking about what Uchimura said.

Specifically: he mentions you. Like a fact.

This had been living in my head for forty-eight hours. Not loudly. Not catastrophically. 

Just — there. 

The way a song swells in. 

It was one hell of a passive and persistent thought. 

Middle of class: he mentions you. 

Eating lunch: like a fact. 

Brushing my teeth: like a fact, Azusa, spit, like a fact. 

Going to sleep: he mentions you like a fact, go to sleep, like a fact, LIKE A FACT —

I'd tried to analyze it from every angle. 

Of course I'd tried the rational approach, then the evidence-based approach, and then the approach where I make a list of alternative explanations and rank them by probability. 

The list had two items. 

The second item was "he mentions you because he finds your handwriting useful for reference purposes." I spent twenty minutes on this one. 

It did not hold up in Ishikura court.

And then...

And this is the part I don't fully understand even now.

My brain, which is usually my enemy, which usually spends its processing power generating heaps and piles of contingency plans and then arguing about which one is most inadequate — my brain said: just go.

Not as a suggestion. Not with caveats or footnotes or a risk matrix attached.

Just: go.

So I did.

I walked to the workshop room. The hallway was completely normal. People were in this hallway doing normal things. 

I was a person walking down a hallway. 

Nothing indicated this was remarkable. 

My legs were working fine. 

My hands were fine. 

From a physiological standpoint, I was completely in order. I was going to open a door and say a thing to a guy about a thing.

Yup.

I opened the door.

He looked up.

"Do you want to go somewhere this weekend," I said.

It wasn't a question. 

It came out as a statement. 

Flat. Hardly any upward inflection.

Eugh. Why'd it come out like that?

It came out like I was announcing something that had already been decided and he was simply being informed of it. Very commanding energy. Very decisive. I have never been decisive in my life.

For most things anyway. Step off.

My brain had apparently decided to start now, in this room, without telling me.

He put down his tool.

"Yeah, I'd like that" he said.

He'd what!?

No follow-up questions. No "where" or "when" or "what's the plan" or "that's interesting, tell me more about this completely new development." 

Just: yes. Immediate. Uncomplicated. 

Like the question had a home in him already and was just waiting to be asked.

"Okay," I said. "Great. Good."

A pause.

"Where did you have in mind?" he asked.

Oof, nevermind so there actually is more. 

Huh. I had not gotten to that part.

I had gotten to walking through the door and saying the words and that was where my plan had ended because I hadn't genuinely believed I would make it this far. The plan had a beginning and no middle and definitely no location.

"I panicked and came to find you before I planned that part," I blurted out.

He looked at me with that look. The one where he's not laughing but something in the neighborhood of laughing is happening somewhere in his face. 

Another precursor.

"There's a market near the Kaede district," he said. "Saturdays. Antiques, food. I go sometimes."

"Has it been good?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. That. Let's do that."

"Yeah," he said.

I turned to go.

I turned back.

"Yuta."

"Mm."

"What kind of things do you mention me for? In council. Like. Specifically. What's the context?"

He thought about it. The real kind of thinking, not the stalling kind.

"Depends. Last week someone asked about doing calligraphy for the winter display. I said you'd done the flyers for the festival and they came out well."

"Oh."

"Is that—"

"No, that's— that's just helpful. That's normal. You were just noting a relevant skill."

"Yeah."

"So when Uchimura made it sound like a whole significant thing—"

"He was pointing out," Yuta said, picking up his tool again, very calm, very focused on the thing in front of him and also apparently on detonating small explosions with his voice, "that I bring you up more than I bring up most people."

Very casually.

Like that was a piece of information in the same category as other pieces of information. Like it had the same weight as "the market is near the Kaede district" and "yeah" and all the other things he says without apparent awareness of what they do.

"Cool," I said.

"Cool?"

"Cool. Yep. Saturday. Market. Sounds great. Bye."

I left.

Tomoe was in the hallway.

She had clearly been waiting. She had the posture of someone who had been waiting and had known she would need to be waiting and had positioned herself accordingly. She should work for an intelligence agency. She has the instincts.

"Did you just say bye and leave," she said.

"He said he brings me up more than most people."

She grabbed my arm.

"AZUSA."

"I know —"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'BYE'—"

"I PANICKED —"

"YOU WERE RIGHT THERE—"

"THE INFORMATION WAS TOO LARGE, TOMOE, I NEEDED TO PROCESS—"

"PROCESS MY FIST DECKING YOU IN THE SHOULDER! YOU LEFT HIM IN THE WORKSHOP ALONE—"

"HE HAS A CLOCK TO FIX, HE'LL BE FINE—"

UGHHHHHH...

She was looking at me with the expression of someone who loves me and finds me genuinely exhausting and has made peace with both of these things being simultaneously true.

"Saturday," I said. "It's fine. We're going somewhere. It's a thing. It's happening."

She stared at me.

"...It's fine?" she said.

"It's fine," I said.

I thought about the door. About my legs working. About my brain saying just go and meaning it.

"That's new."

"Sure is, and it's really actually fine," I said. "I think."

She gave me an incredulous look.

The strange thing was — it was.

Like, I had just run away from a conversation mid-declaration and it was fine. I had panicked and not planned the location and said "bye" to a confession and it was fine.

Growth.

***

The market.

Okay so. 

Okay. 

The market was — it was one of those places that looks like it got there before anyone planned for it to be there and now it's just part of the landscape. 

The stalls didn't match. 

The smells were fighting each other but in a way that worked, like when ingredients that shouldn't go together and then somehow just do. 

Old things and food things and handmade things and things that defied categorization. The kind of market that has been there long enough to have opinions.

And here I thought Yuta like law and order.

We walked without a plan.

He really is the same breed of chaotic good as me.

Well, maybe not exactly the same. 

He's more put together is what I'm saying.

Hold on, what am I saying?

Forget it. 

I had prepared three topics of conversation on the train. 

Real thoughtful ones. Interesting ones I found doomscrolling on Ramblr. 

I had even mentally rehearsed the transitions between them.

I did not use any of them.

It turned out we just — talked. About things. Whatever was in front of us. 

A stall with old maps that he stopped at and studied with that focused look. 

A tin shaped like a cat that I picked up and put down twice. 

A woman selling fabric that smelled like something I couldn't place but liked. 

None of it was the prepared topics. 

All of it was fine. Better than fine.

He found a watch stall immediately. Obviously. 

He was there before I'd fully registered the stall existed, standing over a tray of movements with his hands behind his back, not touching, just looking. Like a person at a museum. 

I watched him for a second before I moved off to look at the stuff around it.

A postcard of somewhere.

Another tin shaped like a duck.

Buttons.

And then—

A compass.

Small. Brass. The face was cloudy, like it had been somewhere, like it had done things before ending up here on a Saturday between other forgotten objects.

I picked it up.

"Does it work?" Yuta said, appearing at my side the way he does — without making noise and also without announcing himself, just suddenly there as if he'd always been there and I'd only just noticed.

"I can't tell."

"Hold it still."

I held it still.

His hands held mine as I held the compass in place.

The needle moved. Slowly. Uncertainly. 

It was alomst like Mr. Compass forgotten what it was supposed to do and was in the process of remembering, running through old instructions, finding its way back to something it used to know.

And then — there.

Settled.

"Oh," I said.

"Works," he said.

He bought it for me. Four hundred yen. Which is nothing. But also it had been sitting there not working, or appearing not to work, and it just needed someone to hold it still long enough to remember. 

And now it works and it fits in my hand and— fwuh I don't know. 

Sometimes you just find things you just have to pick up.

I needed a memory trinket from today anyway.

Thanks, Yuta.

We ate from paper containers walking around. He got yakisoba. I got something fried from a cart with no label that turned out to be sweet and slightly spicy in a way that made no sense but was completely correct, like a mistake that had become intentional through repetition.

"What is this," I said.

"Beats me," he said.

"It's good."

"Yeah."

"I'm going to think about it later."

"Probably."

We found a wall. Sat on it. The afternoon had gone amber — that specific late-afternoon color that makes things look like someone arranged them, like the light has an opinion about composition.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"A little," I said.

He shifted. Just slightly. Between me and where the wind was coming from. 

He simply adjusted himself, shielding me from the breeze. 

No commentary. No "is this okay" or "would this help" or announcement of any kind. 

Just a small, deliberate placement and then he went back to watching the market like nothing had happened.

I looked at the stalls for a while so I didn't have to make a face about it.

"This was good," I said.

"Yeah."

"I'm really glad I panicked and came to find you without a plan."

"You can do that whenever," he said.

"What, panic?"

"Come find me," he said.

I looked at him. He was watching a kid chase a pigeon with absolute commitment and no apparent strategy. The amber light. His face.

He reached over and adjusted my hairclip. The enamel one. It had been crooked.

He just — fixed it. Like he'd noticed and it was easy and of course he'd fix it, the same way you'd pick up something that had fallen, same category, same register, completely natural.

I leaned forward.

He was already there.

The kiss was —

okay I'm not going to describe it.

I'm going to say: it was exactly like him. Unhurried. Already decided. The kind of thing that makes you realize it had been decided for a while and you just hadn't caught up yet. 

Not a question. 

Just something that had been waiting for the right moment and recognized it without being told.

When I pulled back the market was still there. 

The pigeon had gotten away. 

The amber light. 

The stalls and the smells and the woman with the fabric and the man at the watch stall who was not Yuta. 

Everything the same.

Everything not the same at all.

"Okay," I said.

I was smiling. I could feel that I was smiling. It was involuntary. It was a problem.

It was not a problem.

"Okay," he said.

Then:

"Your clip is crooked again."

"You JUST —"

"It shifted."

"Then maybe it's meant to be crooked!"

"It's bothering me."

"It's not bothering me at ALL —"

"I know," he said. "It's bothering me."

He fixed it.

I made a sound that I will not be transcribing here.

He looked satisfied in a way that was completely unfair and also completely him.

"You're annoying," I said.

"Yeah."

"I like you anyway."

He nodded. Like I had confirmed something he had already known but was glad to have on record.

"Yeah," he said.

We sat there while the market packed up around us. Stalls folding in. The amber going. The kid with the pigeon had disappeared somewhere, hopefully to a warm building.

I had the compass in my jacket pocket.

The needle pointing somewhere.

I didn't check where.

I didn't need to.