I put my cigarette out under my heel and lit another one. The sounds of the city blurred lazily into the dark. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. Nothing was amiss, but I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling. Something wasn’t right. What was it? What had I done?

Then it hit me, right when I got off the train at Mejiro. I’d put her on the Yamanote Loop Line going the wrong way.

My dormitory was in Mejiro, four stops before hers. So she could have taken the same train as me. It would have been all so simple. Why had I taken it upon myself to see that she got on a train going the opposite way around? Did I have that much to drink? Was I thinking too much, or only, about myself? The station clock read 10:45. She’d never make her curfew. I hoped she’d realized my mistake and switched to a train going the right way. But I doubted she would have. She wasn’t that type. No, she was the type to keep riding the train the wrong way around. But shouldn’t she have known about this mistake from the start? She had to know she was being put on the wrong train. Great, I thought. Just great.

•   •   •

IT WAS TEN AFTER ELEVEN when she finally got off at Komagome Station. When she saw me standing by the stairs, she stopped in her tracks with this expression, like she didn’t know whether to laugh or fume. It was all I could do to take her by the arm and sit her down on a bench. She put her bag in her lap and clutched the strap with both hands. She placed her feet straight out in front of her and stared at the toes of her white pumps.

I apologized to her. I told her I didn’t know why I’d made that stupid mistake. My mind must have been elsewhere.

“You honestly made a mistake?” she asked.

“Of course. If not, why would I have done such a thing?”

“I thought you did it on purpose.”

“On purpose?”

“Because I thought you were angry.”

“Angry?” What was she talking about?

“Yeah.”

“What makes you think I’d be angry?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a shrinking voice.

Two tears spilled from her eyes and fell audibly onto her bag.

What was I to do? I just sat there, not saying a word. Trains pulled in, discharged passengers, and pulled out. People disappeared down the stairs, and it was quiet again.

“Please. Just leave me alone.” She smiled, parting her bangs to the side. “At first, I thought it was a mistake, too. So I thought, Why not just go on riding the opposite way? But by the time I passed Tokyo Station, I thought otherwise. Everything was wrong. I don’t ever want to be in a position like that again.”