An Envelope: A Collection

An Envelope

The envelope that lay on the top of the ticket gate was addressed to Someone. It was a small, thin envelope, perfectly square and an unremarkable shade of off-white. It was the kind of envelope that could be found in any run-of-the-mill hundred yen shop, not something that would catch anyone's eye. The word 'someone' was scrawled across the front of the envelope in messy, uneven handwriting. The pen in which the word was written seemed to have been running out of ink, the black letters dipping in and out of clarity. It was not addressed to me. It was not spectacular or unusual or bizarre in any way, so I cannot confidently say why it called to me the way it did.

I first noticed it as I passed through the ticket gate that summer morning. The station by my school was meticulously clean, not even a single bottle cap or stray piece of paper littering the sparkling linoleum floor. The hunched over station employees – the station fairies as I often called them – spent all their time prowling the station in search of litter. On the off chance they found any, they would waste no time in grasping the trash in their gnarled, aged hands with such ferocity it almost seemed like they had been chasing that convenience store receipt for the entirety of their seventy-something years. Although there were station fairies across Tokyo, the ones at this particular station were especially adamant about keeping their domain litter-free.

Perhaps that is why the envelope jumped out at me. It was not on the floor, not poking out from beneath a vending machine or someone's shoe. It simply sat on the top of the ticket gate, right above the slot, patiently bearing its sloppy message for some unidentified reader.

I had eyed it once, twice, three times. It was not addressed to anyone in particular, just Someone. That was suspicious. The train announcer regularly reminded commuters to alert station employees if there were unclaimed possessions left in the station or on the train. Did an envelope even count as a possession? I would have considered it trash, if its presence hadn't felt so deliberate. I glanced at it as I crept past, trying not to outwardly stare. I was curious. I wanted to pick it up, I wanted to see what was inside, but I also felt uneasy. What if there were something dangerous in there? Some foreign chemical, perhaps?

If it's still there, I told myself as I marched away towards the exit, if it's still there, after my class, in a few hours, I'll do it. I'll see what's inside.

The pointed mouth of the envelope seemed to smile at me as I returned. I didn't know whether to be pleased, surprised, or disappointed that it still lay on top of the ticket gate, even though hours had passed and hundreds of people had likely walked by. I glanced around, my stiff curls tickling my cheek as I moved my head. My back began to ache, and I realized that I was standing so upright I was actually beginning to curve backwards. A businessman nearby glanced at me from the corner of his eye, even though his thumb never stopped moving across the keypad of his cellphone, but no one seemed to notice the little square envelope addressed to no one in particular.

Bumping my hand against my nose, I then adjusted the strap of my purse, the straw hat that sat on top of my styled hair, and I stomped forward to pluck the envelope from the gate with trembling hands.

Inside was an even smaller slip of paper. Written in the same uneven, hurried hand was the word "Anywhere". I stared at it for a moment, trying to decipher the meaning of this vague phrase. Maybe there was something else on the back? I slipped it out of the envelope. Nothing on the back, just the crooked outline of the word from the pen pressing forcefully against the paper. Something fell out, and the edge poked me sharply on the top of the foot. I looked down to find a 210 yen ticket caught in the strap of my pumps.

Anywhere. The person who had left the envelope there didn't seem to care who picked it up or where they went. This should have been the biggest red flag that something suspicious was going on. I should have placed the paper and the ticket back into the envelope and headed home, and gone through the rest of my day as I had planned that morning. But instead, I pocketed the envelope and the directions, and fed the ticket into the gate.