Tokyo Puts on Fake Smiles

EIGTH ACT: Candy Fire Apples

The Miracle of Correspondence

In stories and movies, love always ended up being reciprocated. The journey was long, and although sometimes bitter, it also brought with it the sweetness of a kiss at the end of the film, when closing the page.

Fantasy. They were a farce, in the real world where I lived, where kissing doesn't come with a background song or the sun doesn't shine after the storm, reciprocity was a miracle.

My panel darkened, and the spotlights illuminated Kazuhiro's. What were the chances that he and Nanako were one of those miracles? And what if a string orchestra played when they kissed in the rain? What if, for him, his story was already over. The final point, a steel clasp corroded by time.

Back then, I didn't know, but Kazuhiro and I were not so different. We had nothing in common, but his broken puzzle piece and mine, whole, fit together. I wanted to fulfill my dream in someone else's body, in someone else's life.

We both wrote unanswered letters. We fed off each other's vulnerability.

☻☻☻

I couldn't sleep. I laid in bed with the Mystical Key CD and listened to each of its songs. Together, they painted the figure of oblivion—gray, troubled, blurred against a completely white background.

But one stood out: The Girl at the Traffic Light The more I listened to it, the more convinced I was that it was an epistle, a letter meant to reach her. Nanako, that could be her name.

I felt guilty. As a journalist, I could be in front of a bomb, but I was still his roommate, and our relationship bordered on everything that was wrong.

I knew my weakness. What if Miyazaki was right? What if I needed to decide and take action? Loving Makoto and pretending I could endure his engagement was lying—lying to myself and lying to him.

☻☻☻

However, all that fuss with the postcard was not the protagonist of Friday. The next day came strong; it was the much-anticipated Apple Festival.

I was lucky that Friday coincided with one of my days off, or rather one of the days of my supposed interview and research with Miyazaki. I felt like they were vacations because all we did was stay at home, try to talk, with no results, until he went out to clear his head with the rest of his band. Unproductive, that's how my job was.

But that day was not just any day. There was a difference: Miyazaki and I would be together at night, not at my aunt's bar, but at a festival.

Even so, the morning wasn't much different from what it usually was. Miyazaki and I had breakfast in the dining room in complete silence, absorbed in our phones: he with his toast, coffee, and scrambled eggs, and I with my rice and leftover fish, recently heated. It was clear I wasn't the best cook around.

"Hey," I heard him call me.

Surprised, I turned off my phone screen and looked up.

"What time did we agree on?" he asked, stirring his eggs with chopsticks.

"At seven, why?"

He sighed. "I forgot to tell the guys yesterday," he took a sip of coffee and leaned back in his chair. "Kento and Kenichi usually come out of the gym pretty late, but Hideki might finish his classes early if I let him know."