The next day, Shoji woke up to the sound of the coffee grinder. He opened his eyes and felt his whole body ache. The couch was too small for his height and he had spent the whole night curled like a prawn. If he had known he was going to be this sore, he would’ve crashed in Jin’s room.

Getting up, he saw Yoko preparing breakfast.

‘I made some toast,’ she said. ‘Hope you don’t mind me using your kitchen.’

He rubbed his eyes. ‘You shouldn’t trouble yourself. Let me do it.’

She laughed. ‘It’s just toast. Not a big deal.’

He stood awkwardly near the couch.

‘Why don’t you shower first?’ she asked.

‘Ah, yeah,’ he said, scratching the back of his head. Why was he being so self-conscious?

A door opened and Jin came through. Before Shoji could say anything, Jin walked over to Yoko.

‘I didn’t know you were here. What are you making?’

‘Coffee and toast. Want some?’

‘Yeah, sounds great.’

Shoji wanted to tell Jin that nothing had happened between Yoko and him, but Jin didn’t seem to mind. He was chatting with Yoko while she buttered a slice of toast, so Shoji forgot about explaining himself.

After that night, Yoko often dropped in to Shoji’s apartment. On her fourth visit, they slept together. The mood was right, the timing was right — everything felt right. From then on, they often ended up in bed.

But there were also times when they sat on the floor, drank coffee, and talked for hours. He loved hearing about her backpacking adventures. Her voice was soothing, and she had a gift for telling stories. To someone like him, who had never set foot outside Japan, all these foreign countries sounded so fascinating.

He couldn’t pinpoint when they became a couple. Neither of them had initiated the relationship. No explicit words were exchanged. Everything happened naturally. Friends started to refer to Yoko as Shoji’s girlfriend. And somehow, instinctively, he began to think of her as his.

When he was with her, time passed like water running through his fingers. He could feel it, but he couldn’t stop it. Even years later, whenever he thought about that period when they were together, he always came to the same conclusion.

At that time, he had been happy.

CHAPTER 4

ONION AND WATER

Yoko raised her eyebrows. ‘You told your client how we met, and how we started dating?’

‘Not everything,’ Shoji said. He’d left out the part about how Yoko and another woman had spent the night with Jin, and instead gone straight to the morning he had first noticed her, keeping the location vague.

They crossed the road and waited at the bus stop opposite the building’s entrance.

‘I only told her the outline,’ he added. No, that wasn’t exactly true either. He had described their early encounters in great detail, especially the parts that he loved the most — Yoko’s melancholy, her aloofness, her strange fragility. The more Shoji had talked about Yoko, the more he had realised how much he longed to grow old with her. ‘I’m sorry, did I upset you? Was it supposed to be private?’