Short Story: The Lost Night.
A short LINE message came in saying, "I want to confirm something." As I waited at the bus stop in the middle of the night, I felt like my smartphone lit up. Even though I had the vibration turned off, a message banner floated on the screen I happened to open. I heard a quiet, clicking sound of my spine coming loose.
My hands are cold. Even though it's midsummer. I can't stop sweating. An endless game of spot-the-difference. The answer should be within me. I carefully long-press the pop-up so as not to mark it as read. Other than that one sentence, there is no other message. While I was debating whether to open LINE, another message was sent.
"Read it, please, I'm begging you."
I saw it. I opened the screen. It wasn't intentional; it was a reflex. The cursor typing the text wavered. I wrote something, then deleted it, repeating that over and over. The sensation of my whole body sinking into the bus stop bench took over. I bit down hard on the thumbnail of my left hand.
We met at a bar. This is a common story, really. From there, the relationship dragged on. I didn't intend to hide the fact that I had a girlfriend. I mean, that's just how it is, right?
No way... I let out an involuntary sound. Displayed across the LINE screen was a photo of a cafe that my girlfriend and I often visit. It was taken from a distance, but it was undoubtedly "us."
It was supposed to be just a fling. Without understanding at all what was happening, the last bus passed right in front of me.
It was past 11:00 PM. There shouldn't have been anything around, yet I could hear the sound of an old pendulum clock from somewhere. I couldn't even tell if the sound was coming from inside my body or outside. It just steadily, tick, tick, tick, slowly eroded the depths of my ears.
I collapsed onto the bench as if staggering. There wasn't a single star to be seen in the sky. When I tried to close my smartphone, messages from my girlfriend had piled up. I had been ignoring them, thinking it was just her complaining about me coming home late. Just as I was about to open her LINE, a message arrived from that person again.
"You have a lover, don't you? A girlfriend. Sorry for taking the photo without asking. By the way, I hadn't told you, but I had one too, a boyfriend. But we just broke up. So, come back to me. I'm waiting."
What I had just eaten surged back up from the depths of my stomach. I pushed myself halfway up from the bench and vomited into the gutter with all my might. Yellow-green vomit, a mixture of stomach acid and bile, dripped from the corner of my mouth. Because I vomited in an awkward position, it splattered onto the sleeve of my dress shirt, and even at a time like this, my head was filled with thoughts like, "Will this stain come out at the dry cleaners?"
Suddenly, I became calm. It meant I was in a position to choose now. To be honest, I didn't care about this woman, but when she put it that way, I started to feel like it wasn't so bad. Laughter welled up in me.
I stopped messaging and made a call. The call connected on the first ring.
"Riko, listen."
"I was waiting. You're calling me."
"I want to tell you everything. I want to see you now."
The sweat on my hands had long since vanished. I quickly ended the call and opened a taxi app. It's about 30 minutes from here to Riko's house. Even with the late-night surcharge, it's 8,000 yen. I didn't notice at the time that messages from "my girlfriend" were coming in one after another during that ride.
"Ah, yes. Yes, at that corner, cross Kuramaebashi-dori and turn left."
"That's it, right there. Yes, please drop me off at that Chinese restaurant."
Because the road was slightly congested, it took longer than expected. The fare was 9,800 yen. I was annoyed, but the thought that I would be at Riko's house until morning made even that feeling irrelevant.
Gong... gong... the sound rang out. Again. The sound was louder than before. Suppressing the dull pain that seemed to pierce the depths of my eardrums, I knocked on the door of Riko's apartment.
I knocked, tap-tap. No answer. Once more, this time I pounded on the door harder. Still no answer. I rang the intercom repeatedly. A man passing behind me looked at me with a suspicious expression. I could feel the sweat on my forehead becoming sticky. I was banging my head against the door. I took my smartphone out of my bag and called Riko.
Riko answered on the sixth ring.
"I'm already at your place, can you open up quickly?"
A lukewarm wind blew. It felt like it was dampening my ears from the other side of the smartphone. I could hear some kind of sound from deep within the speaker. Bustling crowds, electronic noises. A train platform. Even though there was no way there were any trains at this hour.
"This is the announcement for the last train on the inbound line. Please be careful not to take the wrong train," the announcement said. But Riko didn't say anything.
"Don't run away," Riko's voice said.
"What are you talking about? Huh? Hey, Riko, you—"
"I think I was following the rules too much."
With a clanging sound, a loud, ear-splitting noise pierced through the smartphone, and the call was cut off. I immediately tried to call back. Only the mechanical voice saying, "The phone you are trying to reach is turned off or..." echoed quietly in the hallway of Riko's apartment.
I understood immediately what had happened. But I couldn't accept it as reality. I knocked on the door again. Riko didn't answer. Next, I pounded even harder, thrusting my fist against it. Only the quiet presence of someone could be felt from the other side of the door. When I slammed my head against the door with all my might, the door slowly opened inward, and I fell headlong into the room. Only the screen of my broken smartphone remained glowing white.
This article was written with inspiration from Yuriko Oribe's "The Lost Night."
I wrote this as an another story for “The Lost Night”, so please be sure to check out Oribe-san's work as well.
To spoil the surprise, the paragraphs contain a "vertical reading tanka."
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Weaving horizontal threads into a vertical poem, I wonder if my playfulness will become fabric too
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Oribe-san, thank you for expanding such a wonderful world of creation.
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