Well, I guess it’s not important, I think, watching the streets of Yotsuya sink into the dusk from a hill beside Sotobori Street. It really doesn’t matter now. I write the thought on a wall in my mind. I need to be focusing on finding a job next year, not ancient history I don’t really remember.

“The wind’s come up,” Okudera-senpai whispers, and her long, wavy hair rises softly. A sweet scent I smelled once, somewhere long ago and far away, reaches my nose faintly. Like a conditioned reflex, the fragrance sparks a melancholy inside me.

“Thanks for spending the day with me. This is far enough,” Okudera-senpai says when I offer to see her to the turnstile at the station.

We ate dinner at the Italian restaurant where we’d worked part-time as students. Thanks to a promise I totally don’t remember making—“Come to think of it, Taki, didn’t you say you’d treat me after you graduated from high school?”—I ended up paying for Okudera-senpai. Even so, I felt a little bit proud picking up the check.

“You know, I had no idea the place we used to work had such good food.”

“Yeah, all the meals they gave us during our shifts were like school lunches.”

“We went for years without catching on.”

We laugh. Okudera-senpai draws a deep, contented breath, then says, “All right. I’ll see you later.” She waves at me, and there’s a band like a thin drop of water shining on her ring finger.

“You’ll find happiness someday, too,” she’d assured me earlier over an espresso, after informing me she was getting married. I couldn’t manage a good response—I just mumbled something congratulatory.

I’m not particularly unhappy, I think, watching Okudera-senpai’s silhouette descend the pedestrian-bridge stairs. That said, I don’t really understand what happiness is yet, either.

I abruptly inspect my palm. All that’s there is an absence.

Just a little longer…, I think one more time.

Before I know it, the season’s changed again.

An unusually typhoon-filled autumn passed, moving straight into a winter of nothing but cold rain. Tonight, too, the rain is whispering down unabated, like the memory of a pleasant chat on some bygone day. Christmas lights twinkle beyond windows beaded thickly with water droplets.

I take a sip from my paper cup of coffee, as if swallowing my scattered thoughts, then look down at my notebook again. Even now, in December, it’s packed with job-hunting appointments.

Visits with former upperclassmen to discuss their work, information sessions, entry deadlines, paper schedules, interview dates. The range is chaotic, covering everything from major general contractors to design offices to old-town factories, and as I check the notebook against the schedule on my phone, even I’m a bit disgusted by it. I start organizing the main points from tomorrow onward, writing them into my notebook.

“Y’know, I’d like to go to at least one more bridal fair.”

Mixed with the sound of the rain, the conversations of strangers sound a bit like secrets. The couple behind me has been discussing their wedding for a while now, and it makes me think of Okudera-senpai. Their voices and bearing are completely different, though. There’s a bit of an easygoing regional accent to their speech, and their conversation seems completely relaxed, as if they’re childhood friends. I’m not really listening, but my ears pick up what they’re saying.