Everybody Gets a Little Lost Sometimes...

Tetsudo was frozen. He was staring in disbelief, unable to process how Yai was just standing in front of him, while the rain kept falling.

“Could you let me in? I’m drenched,” Yai said.

“Wait, wait, wait- Why are you here?” Tetsudo was perplexed. “Did you miss the train or something? Was it cancelled?”

“No. I just refunded the ticket,” Yai said confidently. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

She crossed the threshold, breezing past Testudo, who was still in shock. She started climbing up the stairs to get changed with some not soaked clothes. Even as he was in shock, Tetsudo regained some sense of himself. He slammed the door and yelled:

“I thought I told you - I won’t be going with you to Niigata!”

Yai turned around, still on the stairs. She leaned against the wall and smiled.

“And if you stay, what will you do here?” Tetsudo didn’t expect that sort of question. Seeing the hesitation in his eyes, Yai continued:

“Tetsu, tell me…” She started going down the stairs back to the doorway where he stood. “What was your life like just before you met me?”

Her question hit him like a truck. Tetsudo’s eyes shrank.

“I know I never asked you that. So, tell me - were you doing anything of significance? Or were you wasting your time alone? You weren’t, right?”

Tetsudo couldn’t answer. He felt like his head was spinning a million miles an hour and the more he looked into Yai’s eyes, the more he felt like he was getting hypnotized. Her smile was just as sly as it had always been, but to this time he couldn’t take his eyes off her face, it was like it wasn’t his will that followed her lips as they moved.

“You were just spending your precious youthful time alone, doing nothing. So was I.” Yai put her right hand on the wall, left of Tetsudo’s head. “That’s why we need one another. We feel alone otherwise. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The rain outside got stronger. Tetsudo’s ears, however, couldn’t hear a thing. Only Yai’s voice traveled through his head.

“Don’t worry, after you send me back to Niigata, I won’t interfere with your life no more. So just give me this final roadtrip as a parting gift.”

Tetsudo couldn’t force his mouth to open and his voice cords to make a sound. Yai suddenly took off her hand of the wall and pulled back a little. The shadow of the door landed on her face, and it made her look disfigured. The hallway windows were blown open by the wind and Yai’s hair jumped. Her aura became something Tetsudo had never seen before – a mixture of determination, joy and… love?

“It seems I don’t need to hear your answer aloud. Your face speaks how much you want to be with me.”

Yai’s disfigured smile caused by the shadow sent a chill down Tetsudo’s spine. Was his face really giving away that much?

“Bet you were thinking about me after I left. Or what you were gonna do without me.” Yai’s penetrating gaze was tearing a hole into Tetsudo’s skull, and her words danced around his ears. He felt like they scarred themselves into his heart like hot branding iron.

But suddenly she turned away and went into the living room, and she closed the window. The wind stopped and now Tetsudo could only hear its whistle from outside. He finally seemed to be out of his trance.

“For a minute there I lost myself…” The rain kept pouring and now he could hear clearly the drops falling and the distant thunder.

Yai came back in front of him and sat on the stairs.

“It’s okay, we can go at any time. I’ll wait for you to guide me home.”

Tetsudo looked at her. He grinded his teeth and clenched his fists. But all that came out was sigh. And with a smile, that understood his hopeful defeat, he said:

“Let’s go after the rain.”

*

The rain had stopped and the smell of petrichor started to wane away. The little bugs and snails kept searching for more moisture, for them it just wasn’t enough. The rain should’ve kept going.

“Why do you want to go on the old railway? I don’t know where it leads.”

“I know. So don’t worry. I came with a train after all.”

The bushes were happy it seems. Their funny leaves slowly waltzed with the wind and their brown roots were fuzzy and warm beneath the dirt. You could feel how they vibrate in tandem with the leaves.

“So why did you come back?”

“Because I’m lonely and I need you. And so do you.”

“Where’d you get the idea I need you?”

“It was written all over your face the whole time I was here, dummy.”

The warm poles were silently buzzing and radiating. The sun had shown itself again, but only for the twilight. The station was quiet, so quiet you could hear the wires vibrating from above, their warm glow slithering across their whole length.

“Wait, we’re not going with a train?!”

“Why would we? That’s not a roadtrip. Besides, it’s only two or three days of walking to Niigata.”

“Aha, and where will we sleep, genius?”

“In the stations, dummy! Or at someone’s house – we’ll do chores if they demand payment.”

“God, you have thought of everything and of nothing at the same time…”

The view from the steep hill the train station was on, was a melancholic one. The town felt like it was getting colder and colder every time Tetsudo looked at it. He glanced at his phone - 8:00 PM on the dot. The sunset was taking too long for him, and the green mountains were getting blacker and blacker by the minute.

“The next station is about 10 kilometers away, so if we go at 8PM, we should reach it by 11PM to sleep there.”

“Hope you don’t stop for water on the way.”

“Hey, who is organizing our roadtrip? Me!”

“If I didn’t agree to it, there would be no road trip.”

“Yet you did, so shut up!”

The weeds growing on the platform were waving at Yai. She looked at them – they were shining, but were probably toxic. How’d they decide to grow right in the middle of the platform? The rusted rails were an eyesore to her, she couldn’t help but grimace every time her eyes glanced at them. The rain had made them rotten and their glow had faded away. But she still remembered the first time she was here how pretty they were, so full of hope and light…

“Are you sure just two reserve shirts for the both of us will be enough?” Tetsudo turned to her as he walked away from the view of the town behind him. “Maybe we should’ve bought more water also…” He looked pretty anxious, almost sick.

Yai smiled at him in an attempt to relieve him.

“Don’t worry, we’ll make it through.”

Tetsudo looked at her. She still shined like it was last Friday, despite her wearing his mom’s clothes. The twilight made her black ponytail, that was waving around in the soft wind, glow like the railway would before the rain started to come down. A smile appeared on his weary face. Her attempt at relief had worked.

“Let’s go.” Tetsudo said and grabbed her hand. Yai was surprised for a second, but smiled back wholeheartedly.

“Yeah, let’s go!”

They both started going from where Yai’s train had come from a week ago. Just left to them were the fading speckles of the twilight. The sky was still red and along the bottom a thin orange line had appeared. It made the wires much more beautiful to Tetsudo. Yai just looked forward to the wide horizon in front of them. Because their minds wandered away to the beautiful landscape, from time to time one of them would slip or trip on the concrete sleepers or the little stones that were sprinkled around the railway.

As they were walking they both looked at each other a few times, but couldn’t really say much, and just immediately looked away.

“The skyline is beautiful on fire, isn’t it?” Yai said, while looking up.

“Yeah, it is.” Tetsudo looked up with her.

As both were looking up, Yai started humming some melody. It wasn’t familiar to Tetsudo. Then she started to sing quietly:

So goodbye lovely train tracks

And goodbye broken trees

The devil poured his concrete

Across all our empty fields

From shadows across our sunrise

And stones beneath our wheels

So goodbye sleeping town

And goodbye sleeping weeds

Your beauty was a shining thing

That fell away from me…

Tetsudo was catching her melody, but at the same time it seemed foreign to him. The last line however she repeated a few times and soon enough, hand in hand and walking towards the endless dusk, Yai and Tetsudo started singing together:

Everybody gets a little lost sometimes…